The Wedding by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

From the time my grandfather, Pa, we called him, turned eighty, we worried whether he’d be alive for the next family event. He was milky-skinned with startling blue eyes, hair like dandelion fluff, skinny legs, and a belly that took up his whole lap when he sat down. Dozing in his chair, his head rested on his shoulder like a dove. He made us grandkids Pa Coffee, a precursor of lattes, milk with lots of sugar, and a small pour of Joe and told us mixed-up fairy tales like The Mermaid and the Three Bears. We wanted him there not just because he was the pendulum of our cuckoo clock family, but also if he died before an affair, it would, out of respect, have to be called off, or at least the band and the flowers canceled. It would have had the same pall as my Sweet Sixteen the day after President Kennedy’s assassination. The photos could have been captioned Youth in Gloom.

As my big sister’s wedding approached, Pa had turned ninety-two. My mother doubled her dose of valium, and my father, his Pall Malls.

The day before the wedding, we waited at the front door, tearfully watching Pa walk toward our house, steadied by Grandma’s arm. We never worried about her. Her stringy hair was still naturally black. She wore red lipstick, but the corners of her mouth were always white from swigging Milk of Magnesia, her cure-all. During the Great Depression, when they lost all the properties they owned, Pa took to his bed. She gave him a dose of Milk of Magnesia.

“Eli, drop dead now or get out of that bed,” Grandma ordered, and he stood up and went to work in his tailoring shop even though there was hardly any business.

Grandma and Pa were installed in a downstairs bedroom. But when Grandma went upstairs to see my sister’s wedding gown, Pa must have called out for her, and no one heard. He was so dependent on her that he forgot himself and climbed the steps.

“Pa!” I cried out as I saw him hauling himself up the steps in his slippers.

Grandma came to the foot of the steps. “Are you daft, Eli?” she shouted.

I was starting up the steps to help him, but he turned back on his own, and suddenly, he was in the air like a float in the Macy’s Day Parade before landing and thudding down the steps.

“Call an ambulance,” my mother shouted.

“Oh, God, my wedding,” my sister wailed.

“Pa, Pa,” I called to him as he lay on his big stomach, his arms out to the sides.

My strong father sat him up. My mother lifted his eyelids. A scream lodged in my throat. There were only the whites of his eyes.

“Don’t call anybody,” Grandma said, pushing us aside. “The doctors and the undertakers are partners. I’ll fix him up.”

She pinched his nose until his mouth fell open. She took a bottle of Milk of Magnesia from the pocket of her flowered housedress and poured some down his throat. She pulled up his eyelids, and there were his pupils again, clear and blue as a summer sky.

Somehow, we all managed to get to the temple on time. Pa couldn’t walk down the aisle with Grandma as planned because he hurt his knees. He was ensconced in an aisle seat toward the front. During the wedding march, when he let out a loud accompaniment of farts, it only added to our joy, proof that he was alive and the festivities could go on.