Alberta signaled no to me with a little shake of her head.
I told Byron I was sorry. We were meeting friends who were giving us a party.
You lucky, man, you have friends. Me an’ Selma goin’ out to have a sangwidge an’ go to a movie. I don’t mind. Movie keeps her quiet, ha ha ha. Thanks for watchin’ my umbrella.
Byron and Selma left and I fell against the wall, laughing. Alberta tried to keep a bit of dignity in the occasion but she gave way when she saw Brian and Joyce laughing, too. I tried to tell them how the thought of the green umbrella saved me from laughing over the lisp but the more I tried to talk the more helpless I became till we were clutching each other going down in the elevator and wiping our eyes outside in the August sun.
It was a short walk to Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s Saloon for drinks and sandwiches with friends, Frank Schwake and his wife, Jean, and Jim Collins and his new wife, Sheila Malone. After that there was to be a party out in Queens given by Brian and Joyce who would drive Alberta and me in their Volkswagen.
Schwake bought me a drink. So did Collins and Brian. The bartender bought us a round and I bought him a drink and left him a big tip. He laughed and said I should get married every day. I bought drinks for Schwake and Collins and Brian and they all wanted to buy me one again. Joyce whispered to Brian and I knew she was worried about the drinking. Alberta told me to slow down. She understood it was my wedding day but it was early and I should have respect for her and the guests at the reception later. I told her we were married barely five minutes and she was already telling me what to do. Of course I had respect for her and the guests. That’s all I ever had was respect and I was weary of having respect. I told her back off and there was such a state of tension Collins and Brian intervened. Brian said it was his job, that’s what best men are for. Collins said he knew me longer than Brian but Brian said, No, you don’t. I went to college with him. Collins said he didn’t know that. McCourt, how come you never told me you went to college with McPhillips? I told him I never saw a need to tell the world who I went to college with and for some reason that made us all laugh. The bartender said it was nice to see people happy on their wedding day and we laughed even harder thinking of lisps and green umbrellas and Alberta telling me have respect for her and the guests. Of course I had respect for her on our wedding day till I went to the toilet and started thinking of how she rejected me for another man and I was ready to go out and confront her till I slipped on the slimy floor of the toilet in Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s and banged my head so hard against the big urinal I had a headache that made me forget the rejection. Alberta wanted to know why the back of my jacket was damp and when I told her there was a leak in the men’s room she didn’t believe me. You fell, didn’t you? No, I didn’t fall. There was a leak. She wouldn’t believe me, told me I was drinking too much and that so irritated me I was ready to walk out and live with a ballerina in a loft in Greenwich Village till Brian said, Oh, come on, don’t be an ass, it’s Alberta’s wedding day, too.
Before going out to Queens we had to pick up a wedding cake at Schrafft’s on West Fifty-seventh Street. Joyce said she’d drive because Brian and I had been too enthusiastic with the celebrations at Diamond Dan’s while she and Alberta were saving themselves for the party that night. She stopped opposite Schrafft’s and said no when Brian offered to get the cake but he insisted and dodged the traffic. Joyce shook her head and said he was going to get killed. Alberta told me go help him but Joyce shook her head again and said that would only make things worse. Brian came out of Schrafft’s holding a big cake box against his chest and once more dodged cars till a taxi sideswiped him slightly at the street’s dividing line and the box fell to the ground. Joyce put her forehead against the steering wheel. Oh, God, she said, and I said I was going to help my best man, Brian. No, no, Alberta said, I’ll go. I told her this was man’s work, that I wouldn’t risk her life with these mad taxis on Fifty-seventh Street and I went to help Brian who was on his hands protecting the wrecked cake from the traffic zooming by him right and left. I knelt with him, tore a cardboard flap from the box, and we shoveled the cake back in with bits hanging here and there. The little bride and groom figures looked sad but we wiped them off and stuck them back on the cake, not the top, because we didn’t know where the top was anymore, but somewhere in the cake where we could push them in for the security. Joyce and Alberta called to us from the car that we’d better get off the street before the police came or we were killed and they were tired of waiting anyway, hurry up. When we got into the car Joyce told Brian pass the cake back to Alberta for safekeeping but he turned stubborn and said no, after all his troubles he’d hold on to it till we were at the apartment, and he did even if he had bits of cream and little green and yellow decorations all over his lap and his suit in general.
The wives treated us coolly the rest of the way in the car, talking only to each other and making comments on the Irish and how you can’t trust them with a simple task like crossing a street with a wedding cake, how these Irish couldn’t have one or two drinks and be content till the reception, oh, no, they had to talk and treat each other to rounds till they’re in such a condition you couldn’t send them to the grocery for a quart of milk.
Look at him, Joyce said, and when I saw Brian dozing away with his chin on his chest I nodded off while the wives went on with their lamentation about the Irish in general and this day in particular, Alberta saying, Everyone warned me that the Irish are great to go out with but never marry them. I would have defended my race and told her how her Yankee ancestors had nothing to be proud of the way they treated the Irish with those signs everywhere that said, No Irish Need Apply, except that I was weary from the strain of being married by a man with a lisp while I carried Byron’s green umbrella and my heavy responsibility as groom and host at Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s. If I hadn’t slumped with the weariness I would have reminded her how her ancestors hanged women right and left for being witches, how they were a dirty-minded lot, rolling their eyes in shock and horror at the mention of sex, but having a grand time between their thighs listening in court to hysterical Puritan maidens claiming the devil appeared in various forms and frolicked with them in the woods and how they became so devoted to him all decency went out the window. I would have told Alberta how the Irish never carried on like that. In the whole history of Ireland only one witch was hanged and she was probably English and deserved it. And, just to clinch it, I would have told her the first witch to be hanged in New England was Irish and they did it to her because she said her prayers in Latin and wouldn’t stop.
Instead of saying all this I fell asleep till Alberta shook me and told me we were there. Joyce insisted on taking the cake from Brian. She didn’t want him to fall forward on the stairs and crush the cake entirely and she still had hopes of reconstructing it so that we’d have some semblance of a cake and people could sing, The bride cuts the cake.
People arrived and there was eating, drinking, dancing and misunderstandings between all the couples, married and unmarried. Frank Schwake wouldn’t talk to his wife, Jean. Jim Collins quarreled in a corner with his wife, Sheila. There was still a coolness between Alberta and me and between Brian and Joyce. Other couples were affected and there were islands of tension all over the apartment. The night would have been ruined except for the way we all united against an outside danger.