DAY
OF
THi
WEDOIN.
193
with a great grin on my face, rows of teeth showing; their faces fall
in horror and when I am finished my face will fall and my
grin
will disappear. I'll be transformed into a witch to tell them dirty
stories waving my long fingers and they will be able to scream in
tum. That will shake them out of their terrible gabbyness, their
endless gossip; that
will
drown and sink them below the surface
of their imitation grass miniature golf courses where they nibble the
false clover like rabbits eating appearances on the rounded contours
of the brain.
The music stops, the people around me are putting on their
coats, talking energetically. I wait until they have almost all gone
and then leave.
It
is one of the parking attendants who holds the
umbrella this time and I drive slowly throughly the long line of
family cars out for their rainy Sunday afternoon drive.
The rain is pouring down on the tents, cold air blows the table–
cloths away, men rush in their slick black raincoats to tighten the
guy ropes and hold umbrellas. Angry shouts rise from the parking
field which is a sea of mud and whirring tires. The house is lit with
candles, steaming with damp wool, cheerful under the circumstances,
the weather the only topic of conversation. Very few are outside
under the tents where the rain makes such a roar that it is impos–
sible to speak and be heard. When it lets up one hears the equally
loud noise of the wind and the sound of dripping from the trees that
shade the house. The afternoon darkens quickly, the light from the
house and from the tents recedes illuminating fewer and fewer of
the trees on the lawn.
I don't go through the reception line until late, the butler
shouting my name to the mother of the bride, your face is preoc–
cupied with something else, she smiles slightly her eyelids lowered
halfway over her large eyes.
I leave them swaying, pouting my lips and sucking them back
in between my teeth, chewing on the
thin
edge of a champagne
glass crunching it into small pieces swallowing a few slivers smoothly
and holding the others ready in my mouth. I use the jagged cup
with tiny cracks showing all through it for those people who stand
very close and for those who are more distant I spit the slivers that
are in my mouth.
As
the person moves about, the splinters like
splinters of wood will work deeper and deeper disappearing beneath
