Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Loretta, staring at her mother, said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mom!”

Mrs. Perroni leapt to her own defense. “Well, it’s an interesting story.”

“Yes,” said his mom, in her usual distracted way, “it is.” Richie smiled to himself, pulled out Ivy’s chair, which was right beside the minuscule Mrs. Perroni, then went around the table and sat down beside his dad, who seemed to have turned to stone, he was so self-contained.

Things had moved quickly, because the first thing his mom said after they ordered dessert was “Well, what is it today? May 18? I guess Loretta and Michael, of course, want a June wedding, and the only Saturday they can get in June this year is the 23rd, so we have five weeks to put it together.” Richie now understood without being told that Loretta was saving herself for marriage, and nothing Michael might have done or said would change her mind.

“Oh goodness. Easy as pie,” said Mrs. Perroni.

And it was, because the Perronis had all the money in the world and knew every single person in Carmel and Pebble Beach, California, and it was as if the waves rolled apart, and all Michael and Loretta did was walk between them to the door of the Carmel Mission (the second in California). His dad flew them out: Richie himself, best man; Ivy, one of eight bridesmaids; and his mom. They left at 6:00 a.m., stopped in Des Moines to pick up Uncle Joe, Aunt Lois, Aunt Minnie, Jesse, and Annie, and landed in Monterey at noon. From there, they were driven in a stretch limo to a huge hotel on the ocean. Aunt Lillian, Uncle Arthur, Debbie, Hugh, and the kids had arrived the night before. Janet, with Emily and Jared, showed up in time for lunch beside the pool (the golfers were out in droves), and then Aunt Claire, Gray, and Brad (though Uncle Paul could not get away) in time for dinner, a huge buffet. Uncle Henry had promised to come, but called at the last moment to say he was stuck in Chicago. Aunt Eloise showed up for the rehearsal dinner, having driven down from San Francisco “just to have a look,” but she seemed rather at home, especially after Rosa, Lacey, and Rosa’s husband, Ross, the violin-bow maker, arrived. Apparently, Ross was very famous; all the Perronis’ guests went up to him and threw their arms around him; even the hotel staff smiled at him and shook his hand. The wedding party took up a floor of the hotel, and everyone stayed up talking. Aunt Eloise and Ivy went off in a corner and chatted about John le Carré and Henry Kissinger, and Uncle Arthur said, “Who are they, again?” which caused Aunt Eloise to take Aunt Lillian off into another corner and have a serious talk with her. His mom stayed with Emily, carrying her, kissing her, sitting her in chairs and on beds, bouncing her on her silk-clad knee. Ivy never looked at the baby at all.

The wedding was at four. The mission was a long, pale building set against a hillside not far from the ocean. Richie could smell the garden of flowers through the open doors all through the ceremony. The Langdons sat in four rows of pews on the groom’s side of the church, and when everyone had to kneel during parts of the Mass, they gave each other covert glances, leaned forward, and did not make the sign of the cross. Aunt Eloise sat through the whole thing and kept her mouth shut, as did Ivy, but Rosa and Lacey knelt and bowed their heads. After the ceremony, they took a bus along the winding, breezy roads back to the hotel, where the reception, for three hundred guests, was in a golden room with a huge set of windows that looked out onto the bay. Loretta, who Richie now understood was an only child, and therefore spoiled rotten, according to even her own father, wore her mother’s dress, updated slightly. It had a huge skirt and a twelve-foot train, and was covered with lace. Ivy kept whispering, “That dress is ridiculous!” All the bridesmaids were required to wear gloves to the middle of their upper arms, and black gowns. Once again, according to Ivy, ridiculous. Most of the men wore cowboy boots. Everyone was friendly. People kept coming up to him and saying, “Oh, you’re the twin! Are you the lefty?” There were two congressmen there, four state legislators, the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, as well as Nancy Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Doris Day, and three other actors Richie only sort of recognized. They all stared at his mom, who was wearing a beautiful Chanel suit. But there were lots of other people, too, who weren’t dressed any better than Uncle Joe or Aunt Lois, and who ran around dancing and laughing, so much so that Ivy had to go upstairs and change out of her long skirt. The champagne was Veuve Clicquot, and Richie had plenty, but he saw Loretta stop Michael after one glass, and Michael was smiling. So a miracle had happened after all.

The next afternoon, once Michael and Loretta had gone on to Maui, everyone got into a bus that took them to the Angelina Ranch. It was a long ride, even after they entered the gate. A hundred thousand acres was ten times the size of Uncle Joe’s farm, 156 square miles, all contiguous, all running up and down hills, over fields, into arroyos. In the seat in front of him, Uncle Joe was staring out the window at the pale-golden hills and the occasional groups of cows and calves. Next to him, Ivy was reading a manuscript. Across the aisle, his mom and Janet were talking about Emily. His dad was sitting in the first row of the bus, hunched forward, listening to little Mr. Perroni and the bus driver. Aunt Eloise and Aunt Lillian had decided to “forgo” the trip to the ranch, Aunt Eloise to go to the beach with Rosa instead, Aunt Lillian because Uncle Arthur seemed very jet-lagged. Lacey’s boyfriend had shown up, so they had gone into Monterey, and Ross was sleeping off the party. Richie heard Rosa say to his mom, “No, no booze. But he hasn’t seen that many people all in one place since the last Dead concert he went to, in 1969. It sort of freaked him out.”

The weather, warm and sunny by the coast, was now hot. All the windows of the bus were open, and everyone’s hair was blowing in the breeze. Ivy had to hold her pages flat with two hands. She looked at him and said, “I prefer Central Park.” They drove.

At last they turned in past a tall gate, crossing a metal grate in the road. The bus went up a hill through some huge trees that twisted in startling shapes. When they crested the hill, they looked down on the most beautiful house Richie had ever seen. He poked Ivy with his elbow and pointed. She said, “Oh, nice,” and went back to reading. Spanish-style, long, two stories, a balcony running most of the length of the second story, painted a pinkish color, with dark beams and a tile roof. The main door, dark wood, was two stories high. An adobe wall extended from each end in a big oval, embracing a courtyard. Water bubbled out of a dish that the hands of a fountain statue were holding aloft, then flowed down its arms, around the laughing face, and over its body, to disappear again into a pool at the figure’s feet.

Everyone piled out of the bus and went into the house. Though it was hot outside, maybe ninety-five degrees, it was cool inside — the window openings were a foot deep. The first thing they did was follow Mrs. Perroni into a large dining room, where they were given a Mexican brunch, including all kinds of food with hot sauce and tortillas that Richie had never eaten before, but also plates of peaches and apricots, melon and cantaloupe, blackberries and raspberries in heavy cream. There was also corn, like they had at home and in Iowa in the summer, but it was roasted in the husk, so that the kernels were brown and sweet; Aunt Lois and Uncle Joe ate three of those apiece. His mom carried Emily around the table, picking up bits of things and offering them to her with the tip of her finger. She did this as if she knew what she was doing, something that surprised Richie. He glanced around, but no one else was staring at her — the least motherly woman in the history of the world, fifty-nine years old and still built like a teen-ager.