Beautiful Day

OUTTAKES

Jethro (boyfriend of the best man): There are two other black men in the tent. One is a server, Jamaican, I think. He is very black and very, very big-I heard one of the female servers call him “Jungle Gym,” which sounded like a sexual nickname rather than a racist one.

The other black man is the bandleader. He has light skin and Adam Duritz dreadlocks, and he wears funky glasses with black rectangular frames. When I saw him at the outside bar I asked his name and he said, Ernie Sands. Then he said he was from Brooklyn and I said I was from Chicago, and he asked what part of Chicago and I said that now I live in Lincoln Park but that I grew up in Red Houses of Cabrini-Green. He squinted at me and said, “What you doing at this party, man?” And I said, “My boyfriend is the best man, the groom’s brother.” And he held his hands up like I’d pulled a gun on him and said, “Cool, man, that’s cool.” Then there was an awkward moment of silence.

I said, “Did you know Frederick Douglass came here in 1841 and spoke out against slavery on the front steps of the public library?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, and the bonding ended there.

Ann (mother of the groom): I ordered the rib eye, as did the Lewises and the Cohens, but the Shelbys got the swordfish and they say they wished they’d ordered the fried chicken, even though fried chicken wasn’t a choice. I said, “Wait until tomorrow, you will taste the best fried chicken ever, served with honey pecan butter.” Devon Shelby said, “Amen to that,” and went to get himself another bourbon.

Out of a sense of duty, I spent a few minutes talking to Maisy, Jim’s sister, who insisted on wearing one of her prairie dresses, which turned her into someone whom everyone else at the wedding wanted to avoid at all costs. I could practically hear the Carmichael side wondering, Who invited Laura Ingalls Wilder? Did she arrive in her Conestoga wagon? Maisy had approached me, something she doesn’t like to do, and said, “Where’s Helen?” And I said, “Helen had a dinner date.” And Maisy said, “Who with?” And I said, “With one of her old flings from Roanoke.” Maisy made a sour-pickle pucker face of disapproval-whether at me for using the term fling or at the thought of Helen having such relationships with men (there were many, we all knew it), I wasn’t sure. Maisy said, “Well, why didn’t she tell me?” And I said, not unkindly, “Oh, Maisy, who knows, it’s Helen.” And Maisy nodded along, as if she understood perfectly.

Ryan (best man): Perhaps you missed my toast. Your loss! I was funny and charming and appropriate and hugely complimentary of Stuart and Jenna’s union, and I took out my veiled joke about She Who Shall Not Be Named because that boat had been rocked-and righted-already. I could have posed thorny questions about why Stuart and Jenna, but not me and Jethro? Really: why a man and a woman, but not a man and a man, or a woman and a woman? I could have referenced Chick-fil-A, a place I will never eat again, despite the fact that I love their coleslaw. The main reason I kept myself in check is because I didn’t want to embarrass or upset my mother. That woman has been through enough this weekend, thanks to the horrible drama queen Helen Oppenheimer. The last thing my mother needed was for me to make GAY a political issue. All weekend, she has been introducing Jethro as my “boyfriend,” and she makes it sound wholesome and normal, like Jethro is the person I take to the drive-in and then later out for milk shakes. So the GAY issue has been sensitively treated. I had wanted the punch line of the toast to be me saying how happy I was that Stuart was marrying Jenna because I had waited a long time for there to be another girl in the family.

But Jethro vetoed it. He can be prudish that way.