Lorrie Moore - Bark - Stories

“The older generation,” I said, shaking my head, as if it didn’t include me. “They can’t take any change. There’s too much missingness that has already accumulated. They can’t take any more.”

“Geez,” Ian said, glancing up and over again. “I wish my dad would just get over her.”

I swallowed more wine while holding Ian’s lemonade. Over by the apple tree there were three squirrels. A threesome of squirrels looked ominous, like a plague. “What other songs ya got?” I asked him. Nickie was off talking to Johannes Hank.

“I have to save a couple for the actual ceremony.”

“There’s going to be an actual ceremony?”

“Sort of. Maybe not actual actual. They have things they want to recite to each other.”

“Oh yes, that,” I said.

“They’re going to walk up together from this canopy toward the house, say whatever, and then people get to eat.” Everyone had brought food, and it was spread out on a long table between the house and the barn. I had brought two large roaster chickens, cooked accidentally on Clean while I was listening to Michael Jackson on my iPod. But the chickens had looked OK, I thought: hanging off the bone a bit but otherwise fine, even if not as fine as when they had started and had been Amish and air-chilled and a fortune. When I had bought them the day before at Whole Foods and gasped at the total on my receipt, the cashier had said, “Yes. Some people know how to shop here and some people don’t.”

“Thirty-three thirty-three. Perhaps that’s good luck.”

“Yup. It’s about as lucky as two dead birds get to be,” said the cashier.

“Is there a priest or anything? Will the marriage be legal?” I now asked Ian.

Ian smiled and shrugged.

“They’re going to say ‘You do’ after the other one says ‘I do.’ Double indemnity.”

I put his lemonade down on a nearby table and gave him a soft chuck on the shoulder. We both looked across the yard at Hank, who was wearing a tie made of small yellow pop beads that formed themselves into the shape of an ear of corn. It had ingeniousness and tackiness both, like so much else created by people.

“That’s a lot of do s.”

“I know. But I’m not making a beeline for the jokes.”

“The jokes?”

“The doozy one, the do-do one. I’m not going to make any of them.”

“Why would you make jokes? It’s not like you’re the best man.”

Ian looked down and twisted his mouth a little.

“Oh, dear. You are ?” I said. I squinted at him. When young I had practiced doing the upside-down wink of a bird.

“Don’t ask,” he said.

“Hey, look.” I put my arm around him. “George Harrison did it. And no one thought twice. Or, well, no one thought more than twice.”

Nickie approached me quickly from across the grass. “Mom. Your chickens look disgusting. It’s like they were hit by a truck.”

The wedding party had started to line up — except Ian, who had to play. They were going to get this ceremony over with quickly, before the storm clouds to the west drifted near and made things worse. The bridesmaids began stepping first, a short trajectory from the canopy to the rosebushes, where the I dos would be said. Ian played “Here Comes the Bride.” The bridesmaids were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam. What a good idea to have the look of Big Pharma at your wedding. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why hadn’t I thought of that until now?

“I take thee, dear Maria …” They were uttering these promises themselves just as Ian said they would. Hank said, “I do,” and Maria said, “You do.” Then vice versa. At least Maria had taken off her sunglasses. Young people , I tried not to say out loud with a sigh. Time went slowly, then stood still, then became undetectable, so who knew how long all this was taking?

A loud noise like mechanized thunder was coming from the highway. Strangely, it was not a storm. A group of motorcyclists boomed up the road and, instead of roaring by us, slowed, then turned right in at the driveway, a dozen of them — all on Harleys. I didn’t really know motorcycles, but I knew that every biker from Platteville to Manitowoc owned a Harley. That was just a regional fact. They switched off their engines. None of the riders wore a helmet — they wore bandannas — except for the leader, who wore a football helmet with some plush puppy ears which had been snipped from some child’s stuffed animal then glued on either side. He took out a handgun and fired it three times into the air.

Several guests screamed. I could make no sound at all.

The biker with the gun and the puppy ears began to shout. “I have a firearms license and those were blanks and this is self-defense because our group here has an easement that extends just this far into this driveway. Also? We were abused as children and as adults and moreover we have been eating a hell of a lot of Twinkies. Also? We are actually very peaceful people. We just know that life can get quite startling in its switches of channels. That there is a river and sea figure of speech as well as a TV one. Which is why as life moves rudely past, you have to give it room. We understand that. An occasion like this means No More Forks in the Road. All mistakes are behind you, and that means it’s no longer really possible to make one. Not a big one. You already done that. I need to speak first here to the bride.” He looked around, but no one moved. He cleared his throat a bit. “The errors a person already made can step forward and announce themselves and then freeze themselves into a charming little sculpture garden that can no longer hurt you. Like a cemetery. And like a cemetery it is the kind of freedom that is the opposite of free.” He looked in a puzzled way across the property toward Maria. “It’s the flickering quantum zone of gun and none, got and not.” He shifted uncomfortably, as if the phrase “flickering quantum zone” had taken a lot out of him. “As I said, now I need to speak to the bride. Would that be you?”

Maria shouted at him in Portuguese. Her bridesmaids joined in.

“What are they saying?” I murmured to Nickie.

“I forgot all my Portuguese,” she said. “My whole childhood I only remember Maria saying ‘good job’ to everything I did, so I now think of that as Portuguese.”

“Yes,” I murmured. “So do I.”

“Good job!” Nickie shouted belligerently at the biker. “Good job being an asshole and interrupting a wedding!”

“Nickie, leave this to the grown-ups,” I whispered.

But the guests just stood there, paralyzed, except Ian, who, seemingly very far off on the horizon, slowly stood, placing his guitar on the ground. He then took his white collapsible chair in both hands and raised it over his head.

“Are you Caitlin?” The puppy-eared biker continued to address Maria, and she continued to curse, waving her sprigs of mint and spirea at him. “Và embora, babaca!” She gave him the finger, and when Hank tried to calm her, she gave Hank the finger. “Fodase!”

The cyclist looked around with an expression that suggested he believed he might have the wrong country wedding. He took out his cell phone, took off his helmet, pressed someone on speed dial, then turned to speak into it. “Yo! Joe. I don’t think you gave me the right address … yeah … no, you don’t get it. This ain’t Caitlin’s place.… What? No, listen! What I’m saying is: wrong addressee! This ain’t it. No speaky zee English here—” He slammed his phone shut. He put his helmet back on. But Ian was trotting slowly toward him with the chair over his head, crying the yelping cry of anyone who was trying to be a hero at his ex-wife’s wedding.