Chapter 20
This was Greta’s third wedding in less than a year. You would have thought she would have a handle over her emotions by now, that she wouldn’t wake up crying and rush to the bathroom to give herself a pep talk. “These are happy days,” she reminded herself as she ran the water and blubbered. “These are the days that remind you just how good it is to be alive.”
Greta brewed coffee downstairs and retreated to her study that morning. She’d agreed to host all of the Copperfield women starting at eleven o’clock sharp—with croissants and fresh fruit and cream and Scarlet’s famous mimosas, but first, she wanted to write for a few minutes. She wanted to drop back into Celeste’s world.
Greta wrote I’ve learned bits and pieces about Celeste’s wedding to Greg from phone conversations with Greg himself. He was all over the place after our first meeting and initially told me he wasn’t sure he was up to talking to me again. But he called me out of the blue in mid-July and said, “I want to tell you as much as you want to know. I want Celeste’s life to be recorded. Even the parts she didn’t let me know.” And so he told me, on the morning of their wedding, Celeste came to find him at his brother’s house and told him she couldn’t go through with it. She said she was sorry. Greg begged her to help him understand. She said she would if he promised to leave her alone. “Obviously, I was broken-hearted,” Greg told me on the phone. “I was completely in love with her, and I’d fallen for those two kids, too. I wanted to build a family with her. But I’ll never forget what she said. She said, ‘It’s all meaningless, Greg. All of it. Love. Life. I don’t know if I have the energy for any of it. I don’t understand what’s happened or what will happen next, and I’m terrified. I’m terrified I’ll let you down, or you’ll let me down, or we’ll fall apart for no reason at all.’ I’d never heard her talk like that, but it makes sense, based on what you told me, Greta, that she was a writer of fiction. That she had the heart of an artist. She was so upset. So I took her hand and said, ‘All I know is I love you. We can take this one day at a time. And there’s no way we’ll break each other’s hearts. We trust each other completely. And we’ll never lie.’ I really said that! And meanwhile, she’d never told me anything pertinent about her past. But she told me, ‘I want to be true and good to you for the rest of my life.’ And I genuinely believe she was. I believe we both woke up every morning and made decisions that made the difficult parts of reality easier for both of us. And I hate so much that she had to leave this planet so early. But I hope I made things comfortable before she had to go.”
Greta wept as she typed and cleaned herself up in the shower just in time for the girls to arrive. Alana was first. She wore a pair of shorts and a tank top and carried her wedding gown in its big plastic bag. “Uh oh,” Alana said before she hugged her, “It looks like you’ve been writing this morning?”
“Are my eyes still red?” Greta sighed and took Alana’s wedding dress from her just as Julia and Ella pulled into the driveway. “How are you feeling, honey?”
“I’m wonderful,” Alana said. She sounded mystical as she floated into the living room and sat down. The light beamed in from the window and cast her in a glow. “I hope you’re okay. Is the book taking too much out of you?”
Greta huffed. “You know how I am with writing. It has to take everything from me. That’s the only way I know how to do it.”
Julia walked in as she spoke and laughed. “You sound just like all of my writers.” She hugged her and added, “But you’re much better than they are, Mom. I would beg you to publish with me, but I know you have the Big Five publishing houses chasing after you.” There was no ill will behind what Julia said, and Greta smiled. She’d promised to publish a novella with Julia for next year—a short fiction piece about an older woman who handled the dramatic goings-on at an artist residency. She had plenty of inspiration after the past year or so of taking on artists. The list of crazy happenings was a mile long at this point.
The other Copperfield women and Sarah arrived soon afterward, and chaos reigned. Scarlet bopped around, passing out mimosas as Ivy passed out croissants with cream and sliced strawberries that tasted so tart and decadent that it was hard to believe Greta had picked them from a berry bush on that very island. Makeup artists and hairstylists arrived to do everyone’s hair, and Laura and Ella took over the LPs, spinning record after record to get Alana and the others in wedding mode, everything from Taylor Swift to David Bowie to Lana Del Ray to The Beatles. Greta fell from one conversation to another and insisted on having “very minimal makeup and very minimal haircare.” She just couldn’t stand to have too much crap on her face. And being surrounded by the love of her family made her feel beautiful anyway.
The wedding was set to begin at four-thirty that afternoon. A little after twelve-thirty, a crew came by to set everything up, including the floral archway beneath which Alana and Jeremy would say their vows, enough white chairs for the limited number of guests, a speaker system and tables for the heaps of food. Greta was thrilled that somebody else was going to cook for a change, but she had insisted on approving the catering beforehand. She wouldn’t have any shoddy food at her daughter’s wedding.
Alana put on her wedding dress a few minutes before four, and the Copperfield women went quiet with surprise. Alana was always a beauty queen regardless of what she wore, but the white dress had a startling effect. With her dark hair and dark eyebrows, she looked like a snow queen. Greta felt her eyes fill again. “You look beautiful, honey,” she said as everyone remembered they could speak and cried out their agreement.
The men were already here. They required no makeup, just a spritz of cologne and a bit of gel in their hair, and they were off. But when Greta stepped out on the back porch to see them all together, chatting in their suits and tuxedos, her heart skipped a beat. Bernard was standing near Julia’s husband, Charlie, smiling and chatting about something or other. It was probably about Charlie’s woodworking, which Bernard adored. Charlie had even made Alana and Jeremy a beautiful wooden chest for their wedding, which was a surprise that Greta had nearly spilled the details of to Alana a few weeks ago. She’d been able to clear her tracks. It was close.
Although Alana hadn’t opted for traditional bridesmaids, Julia, Ella, Sarah, and Greta served as her official “wedding attendees.” They hung back as the others found white chairs on the sand and then walked down the aisle slowly as the string quintet played “Pachelbel’s Canon.” Greta went last, following behind Julia. She looked every single guest in the eye and remembered how much she loved them and how much they loved Alana and Jeremy. And then she thought about Celeste on her wedding day, frightened out of her mind that something was about to go wrong. That the horrors from her past would come up and bite her. That they would hurt her children or Greg. But Greg had assured her everything would be okay. And wasn’t that what marriage was? Bernard was Greta’s intellectual equal. She loved his mind and his creativity. But more than that, she loved his heart. She loved his laughter. She loved cuddling up to him in bed and telling him little stories from her day. She loved drinking coffee with him. She loved that when he dunked himself in the ocean, he would always come up and shake his long hair like a scraggly dog. She loved him. And there was very little art in this world that could fully encapsulate what it meant to be in love with someone. Maybe that was what Celeste had figured out when she stepped away from art and writing. Maybe she reached total enlightenment in the form of making sandwiches for her children, flicking around on television and drinking coffee with Greg. Maybe she loved the ability to breathe more than the ability to think and think and think.
Greta held Bernard’s hand as Alana came down the aisle. Her eyes shimmered with the afternoon light, and Jeremy let a single tear fall. He took Alana’s hands in his as the pastor raised his hands and said a brief prayer over the couple.
Jeremy went first, “You came back into my life and flipped my world upside down. I had no idea what was in store for me and for us. But every single day has been an adventure ever since. I know who I want to laugh with and cry with, who I want to talk to every morning, and who I want to go to sleep beside every night. I know who I want to sing songs with in the car. And more than that, I know who will uphold my daughter and her life and her choices above everything. The fact that you’ve taken such good care of Sarah and me since you came into the picture floors me. I love you, Alana. I’m so grateful you want to be my wife.”
Alana went next, “I think it’s sometimes hard not to have regrets about the past, especially when you’ve been alive as long as we have.” The audience laughed gently. “But I can honestly say that I come to you today on this beautiful day in late July without a single regret. I know that every step we’ve made, both together and apart since birth, has led us here. I know it was written in the stars that we would grow old together in Nantucket, that all of our past sorrows would fade away in the immensity of our love. I can’t wait to talk about this day forever. And I can’t wait until we stop fighting about where we’re going to go on our honeymoon and just book a flight already. But know that I’m grateful I’ve found somebody I can fight with. Somebody who takes me seriously. Somebody who holds me when I cry.” Alana’s voice broke. “I know not everyone is lucky enough to find their person. I will spend the rest of my days thanking my lucky stars I found you again.”
Greta and Bernard clutched one another’s hands as Alana and Jeremy shared a kiss and sealed their marriage. The Copperfield Family burst up from the sand with applause. There, they stood together in exultation just fifteen feet from The Copperfield House as a big orange sun dropped lower in the afternoon sky and cast long shadows. Very soon, the summer would end and beckon autumn, chilly mornings, and gray dust. But today was for celebration. Today was for champagne and kisses and long nights of dancing. Greta planned to enjoy every minute.
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