Chapter Forty-Two
forty-two
Lanie
The morning of Gemma and Jonah’s wedding passed in a perfumed whirlwind of airbrushed makeup, safety pins, hair clips and mountains of spray hold. The bridal party had a five a.m. call time to begin a beautification process that involved plucking, shaving, flat-ironing, pinning, curling and primping. As maid of honor, Lanie found that a lot of her time was spent herding people to their assigned places at their appointed hours. They allowed Gemma and Gran to sleep in a little bit but Lanie and Les were up at the crack of dawn like drill sergeants assigned to reveille.
Then, finally, resplendent in their Western gown and morning suit, and accompanied by a far smaller audience than was expected at their reception later that evening, Gemma Turner and Jonah Perera were married during an intimate Catholic mass at Our Lady of Divine Grace at ten a.m. on Valentine’s Day.
Lanie exhaled when at last it was done.
The groom had cried, the bride had cried, and even both sets of attendants teared up. Jonah’s grandmother, Aachchi, and his parents, Nishan and Syreeta, whooped, which got big laughs from everyone but Father Gary. And through it all, Lanie only glanced at her phone four, maybe five, six times tops , waiting for a message from Ridley.
Despite the fact that they had been, at best, cordial for the past two days since Gemma’s bachelorette party, Lanie and Gemma silently agreed to a détente. They hugged, kissed, laughed and posed for pictures as if none of the rest had ever happened. And try as Lanie might to fight it, their happiness eased some of the latent animosity that had simmered for the past few months. Watching Gemma and Jonah together, looking perfect, excitedly running down the aisle and out of the church, Lanie understood that ultimately, it was their happiness that had mattered most.
They are still two of my favorite people in the world.
Afterward, the newlyweds hosted a small bruncheon for their church guests at a very swank eatery in Clapham, before adjourning to suites at a hotel in nearby Wandsworth to prepare for the evening’s big festivities. There, Lanie stood by the bedroom door of her suite, which was acting as ground zero of bridal party staging, checking her cell.
LANIE:
I’m getting worried now. Seriously, call me. Please.
No reply. No call.
Ridley was MIA.
“Well, this has been quite the whirlwind, hasn’t it?” Gran whispered, coming up behind her and pulling Lanie into an encouraging side hug. “I don’t think I’ve gone around the borough this much in years.”
“I’ve noticed. Things are open again. You need to be out more, Gran.”
Lanie glanced at her phone again. Maybe his plane disappeared over the Atlantic? The thought was both horrifying and comforting. Because he’d need a pretty compelling excuse for his radio silence at this point.
“I know, Sec,” her grandmother was saying when Lanie realized she’d spaced out.
“You gave us a real scare.”
“Yes. But don’t worry yourself. Gemma registered me for Seniors Aerobics at the leisure center.”
Lanie dropped the phone to her side and turned. “She did?”
Tulip nodded, with a smile that showed she delighted in surprising her granddaughter. “Les will take me to the first two classes and then Gem will start when she and Jonah return from their honeymoon.” Her grandmother kissed her cheek. “See? Nothing to fret over. We’re getting back to normal.”
“So, you’re feeling okay? You have a big part in the ceremony tonight.”
“Yes, I know.” Her grandmother emphasized, “And I’m feeling good.”
She looked good too. For the first time in months, Lanie felt like she could exhale on all fronts. Her grandmother’s cheeks were full and flush, looking closer to what Lanie remembered. Tulip wasn’t plump anymore, but according to her new doctor, she was approaching a healthy weight for her size and age again. She was finally on the mend.
“And you?”
“I’m great.” Lanie nodded, smile affixed.
That’s how it was all morning. People commending Lanie on how well she was holding up “under the circumstances” while she busied herself playing traffic cop, directing all the chaos around her. As a result, Lanie was the last at everything: last one to have her hair blown out and pinned up, last into the makeup chair, last one into wardrobe. Even now as Syreeta, Charity and a professional draper hired expressly to help the women into their sarees rushed around making sure everyone was folded, tucked and pinned correctly, Lanie stayed back, waiting to be last. Truth was, she wouldn’t have had the time to be upset, even if she was. But interestingly enough, she wasn’t.
Not about that at least.
“It’s like seeing the old you,” her grandmother said then, trying to rub a lipstick mark off Lanie’s cheek. “I’m so pleased for you and your young man. Where was he?”
“Don’t worry. They’re gonna redo my makeup after everyone else is done.” Lanie changed the subject rapidly.
Feeling an alert trill in her phone, she looked down. “Excuse me, Gran.”
“Of course.” Gran wandered back to the couch in her cute pink pastel mother-of-the-bride dress to hurry up and wait with everyone else.
But again, it wasn’t Ridley. It was Les.
“Okay everyone!” Lanie’s voice resounded through the room, bringing everything to a momentary pause. “Les says Gem will be back from picture-taking in fifteen minutes. We have to wrap everyone else up so that Mrs. Perera and Mrs. Verma can concentrate on the bride when she arrives.”
“That includes you too,” Gran called back.
Lanie looked down at herself, still in her Western bridesmaid’s dress. “Oh. Yeah.”
“Hit me with some more lippy, would you?” Gemma asked out of the corner of her mouth, while they stood waiting outside the banquet hall doors. A lush bouquet of white roses, ranunculus and gardenia in her hands prevented them from being of use.
Lanie dug into the left side of her breasts—where the draper, Mrs. Verma, advised her to tuck things—and pulled out the lip gloss the makeup artist had given her for reapplication. At their suggestion, Lanie had deliberately worn the same currant-red color as Gem.
“Ta,” she said, puckering as Lanie dabbed Gemma’s lips with the lip stain.
“I look okay, then? Not stupid?” Gemma asked for the millionth time. However, unlike in the hotel suite, when Gemma preened while people raved and fawned over her being draped in her white-and-gold traditional Sri Lankan Osariya , Lanie could tell now Gemma was unsure. “Not a culture vulture, yeah?”
“No, Gem, I was wrong,” Lanie whispered back. “You look spectacular.”
And she does.
Adorned with white hydrangeas that circled her bun, Gemma wore a Nalalpatha , a traditional Kandyan headpiece. Two long chains with round sun and moon engraved medallions looped by her ears connecting to a middle chain that ran down the center of her head, and all three were attached to a pendant that lay on her forehead. Her gown was resplendent, heavily embroidered with pearls, sequins and crystals. It was a more conservative choice than Lanie would have expected. Fabric obscured Gemma’s midsection with draped and folded organza to suggest exposed bits without actually showing any.
Gemma smiled in response, relieved. “Thank you,” she said primly, looking straight ahead at the closed hall doors. Then she paused. “...For all your help these past few months. I know what I said the other day but we couldn’t have managed any of this without you, Mel.”
Lanie’s cheeks heated.
“And you and Jonah did a beautiful job with this part on your own. But you know, I’ve always got you.” She put a hand on Gemma’s bangled arm. “What I don’t know is how you could afford all this jewelry. It looks expensive as hell,” Lanie said sotto voce, looking at what seemed like hundreds of pounds worth of traditional Sri Lankan twenty-four-carat gold jewelry that Gemma wore.
“Girl.” Gemma gave her the single word and a look in confirmation.
“It looks damn good though.”
Gemma was wearing the Padakkam , five gold necklaces of various sizes that Gran and Syreeta as her female elders put on her for good luck, an ornate gold choker called a Karapatiya and hanging pearl earrings called Dimiti , in addition to numerous bangles and a bracelet with five chains attached to five rings on her right hand.
“Tell me you rented all this stuff.”
Gemma shook her head. “It was all gifted to me by Jonah’s mom and the women in his family. They brought it from Sri Lanka, since they knew I wouldn’t get it from my own mother.” A dark look briefly transited her face.
As usual, despite being informed, Aunt Elliot was a no-show.
“Well, it’s her loss because she doesn’t get to see her daughter looking like an absolute goddess.”
Gemma smiled, blinking back tears. “Right?”
Les raced out of the banquet hall breathlessly. He was looking good himself in a gold-and-red brocade Nehru jacket with sparkly makeup to match. “Okay, it’s time. You good?”
“Honestly?” Gemma looked wide-eyed between Lanie and Les. She looked more frightened now than she had this morning in the chapel. “I’m absolutely brickin’ it, fam.”
Lanie grasped her arm again. “You already did the hard part, Gem. This is the fun stuff.”
“That’s right,” Les said jovially, switching places with Lanie and taking his twin by the elbow to escort her inside. “’Cos we’ve already locked it down, haven’t we?”
Gemma grinned, nodding.
Lanie beckoned their grandmother over from where she’d been sitting comfortably with Jonah’s aachchi to stand on the other side of Gemma.
“I’m gonna head in,” Lanie said as the Sri Lankan drummers began to play their opening to lead Gemma inside.
At the door, Gemma called to Lanie again and she turned. “If it’s any consolation, I think he’s gonna show.”
Lanie’s eyes burned, but she could not ruin this makeup. “Thanks, let’s hope so,” she managed to croak out, blowing a kiss before disappearing into the banquet hall.
After the Pirith nool unity ritual, in which Jonah and Gemma’s pinky fingers were tied together by a white thread, the mother’s ritual where Gran—in place of Aunt Elliot—was presented by Jonah with an intricately woven white cloth as thanks for raising Gemma, the Kiribath , a sweet milk rice confection, was fed to the newlyweds by Syreeta and Gran and then Jonah and Gemma both lit a brass oil lamp to symbolize their commitment to keeping their love burning forever, the Sinhalese Poruwa Siritha ceremony was over and the party began .
By nine o’clock, however, Lanie was more than ready to leave. The whole room was thumping with the DJ’s remarkably skilled set, and the heavy bass of reggae, hip-hop and R&B made Lanie’s brain throb. She was reminded yet again that she was thirty-one years old now, not twenty-one anymore. Getting over a night of hard drinking was no longer a case of drinking a lot of water and popping a couple of pain pills.
“Come dance with me!” Les shouted above the synthy, pulsating beat of 112’s aptly named “Dance With Me.”
Lanie resisted for a moment.
“You heard them, report to the dance floor,” Les declared, dragging her out of her chair as Slim began begging someone to dance with him. “But leave the cell phone.”
The dance floor was a crush of hot gyrating bodies. Lanie didn’t immediately get into it, but she was in the spirit by the time the singers were instructing people to clap their hands if they were sexy and they knew it. Before long, Lanie had lost time dancing with abandon in her surprisingly flexible saree. She danced with Les, she danced with Fatou and her husband, Arash, she danced with Gran and Gemma, and at one point she even danced with one of Jonah’s older male cousins, but had to remove his hands from her bottom twice before she finally gave up and pushed him away.
As the music changed to a slow jam, Jonah approached Lanie and extended his hand. She took it and let him pull her into a loose embrace.
Like Gemma, he was currently sporting his third look of the day, out of the traditional Kandyan outfit with its plush velvet four-cornered hat, elaborately embroidered matching jacket and draped ceremonial cloth wrapped around his waist. Now he wore another dapper white velvet sherwani with gold embroidery, kurta and pants.
Lanie smiled. He is too cute. She reached up to push back some of the stray hairs that had escaped the hold of his slick styling gel before catching herself. She lowered her hand.
“You having fun?” he asked, smoothing his hair back himself as they danced around.
“Sure,” she lied.
“You’d have better luck with someone who doesn’t know you. Now, what’s wrong? And I know it’s not about me. Frankly, I’m hurt,” he joked.
Lanie gave him a wary smile. “Too soon.”
“Sorry.” Jonah’s face got serious.
“This is your wedding day, Jonah. I’m not involving you in my romantic drama.”
“Ah, Les did tell me you’d been seeing someone.”
Oh wow. Les too?
“And I apologize for not knowing that already. For not being here for you like I should have. I’ve just been so caught up with changes at work and Gem.” He squeezed the palm he held in his hand. “But I should always be able to spare time for my best friend. I’m so sorry, Mel.”
Lanie teared up. It had been so long since he’d said something like that to her. She shook her head and smiled. “No, not tonight you don’t. Go find your wife.”
They hugged and Lanie made her way off the dance floor in search of the restroom off the hall’s lobby. She knew she’d sweated out her blowout and she was sure she must have otherwise looked a hot melted mess. Now it was finally time to find out exactly how hard it was to pee in a saree.
“Lanie?”
Lanie turned slowly to see Ridley standing there in a suit and tie, holding a bouquet of red roses.
The distinctive wail of Cameo’s “Word Up!” filtered out from the banquet room with its eerily apt interpolation of the whistling opening strains of Ennio Morricone’s theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . The only elements missing from this impending standoff were sidearms and tumbleweeds.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, extending the bouquet to her once he’d gotten close enough to hear.
“What happened to you?” she asked over the music, ignoring his greeting and the flowers.
It was infuriating that she was still so happy to see him. That he still looked so dashing, even with his navy suit a little rumpled, as if he was made for dressing up. He looked absurdly good in a pair of thick-framed glasses she’d never seen before, a pink shirt with a navy-and-pink-striped tie and a matching pink pocket square. His haircut was about as fresh as his shave and, like his cologne, faintly day-old but still dazzling.
“This is going to sound crazy,” he started.
“Try anyway.” Lanie refused to acknowledge the roses, waiting to see what he said before deciding whether to take them from him or thrash him with them.
“I forgot to plug in my cell at the hotel last night. I missed my alarm, then my flight. When I got on the next one and tried to charge my phone battery, the jack was broken. I figured I wouldn’t waste time waiting for the phone to charge in a café in the arrivals hall, so I focused on just getting here as soon as I could. I’m so, so sorry.”
Lanie crossed her arms. On the one hand, he nearly stood her up—after asking to be her plus-one in the first place. But on the other, he still decided to come after what must have been a harried commute. “Did you wear the suit on the plane?”
He nodded. “No time to change once we landed.”
“It looks like you were rolling around the aisles in it. So, I guess you really did come straight here.”
“Except for the stop to get the flowers.” He took a breath and extended the roses again.
She took them this time. “Have you eaten?”
A small smile broke across his face as he shook his head. “Not in about sixteen hours. No time and no food on the flight. I didn’t fly back business.”
“Ugh, coach sucks.” Lanie barely even feigned sympathy, taking him by the hand, but still intertwining their fingers. “I have no idea what that’s like.”