Father of the Bride by Edward Streeter (illustrated by Gluyas Williams).
Title: Father of the Bride.
Author: Edward Streeter (illustrated by Gluyas Williams).
Genre: Fiction, humour, satire.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1949.
Summary: Stanley Banks is just your ordinary suburban dad. He's the kind of guy who believes that weddings are simple affairs in which two people get married. But when daddy's little girl announces her engagement to Buckley, Mr. Banks feels like his life has been turned upside down. Who would have thought planning your only daughter's "simple wedding" can so quickly become a huge, unmitigated disaster.
My rating: 8.5/10
My review:
♥ No matter what Kay might have done about marriage it would not have been looked upon with any great favor by Mr. Stanley Banks, merely because he happened to be fonder of his first-born than he realized.
During her teens he had dismissed all aspirants with a contemptuous snort. From the time that Kay had first revealed herself to the social world, minus a mouthful of braces and plus a permanent, leggy adolescents with porcupine hair had begin to beat a path to 24 Maple Drive. Mr. Banks had regarded these inarticulate sufferers with a jaundiced eye.
If they caused him any uneasiness it had been wasted. Not that Kay spurned male attention, but, during those exciting days, she preferred it to be universal rather than specific. Nature had endowed her with what amounted to a season pass to every dance, sporting event and week-end party that her strength permitted-and she had the stamina of a six-day bicycle rider.
♥ The result was that the youths who fluttered around her with such unco-ordinated eagerness seemed callow to her beautiful blue eyes. Lord Byron and Leonardo da Vinci being dead, the field had struck her as limited.
♥
Unlike the old days, when he had been curt, suspicious and, on occasions, frankly hostile, he now began to receive them with an open-armed cordiality that would have driven any alert young male out into a snowstorm.
♥
Kay continued to look dreamy. Buckley, during his brief appearances, maintains his air of uneasy aloofness. After a few stiff moments they would both rush, unleashed, into the night.
♥ At this point Mr. Banks began to come down with some strange kind of psychic rash. From the night of that conversation at the dinner table he could feel it creeping through his system. With a detachment which was anything but calm, he watched himself change from a logical, well-balanced lawyer into an unreasoning, anxiety-ridden psychopathic.
♥ Snatched. That was the word for it. She was sleeping in her own room, but only in body. She would always love them of course, but never in the old way-never again with her whole trusting, needing self. From here on her love would be doled out like a farmer's wife tossing scraps to the family rooster.
♥ Could he support a family? That was the point. How could he know that this guy had what it took? Up to date he'd sounded vaguer than dishwater every time he'd opened his mouth. An impractical dreamer-that's what he was. Kay was an idealist and she'd fallen for this fellow because he agreed with all her ideas and didn't make any sense.
He flopped onto his other side and looked over at Mrs. Banks. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Women were inconsistent creatures. If the kids were out at some little dance she couldn't sleep until she heard them come in. But when it was a question of how (or if) her only daughter was gong to eat for the rest of her life, she fell asleep like a baby.
♥ Wise men never discuss topics of a potentially upsetting nature until they have finished their breakfast. The wisest refuse to talk to all until they have been spiritually fortified by a couple of fried eggs.
For many years this had been one of Mr. Banks' ground rules. It was a sound, functional rule, for by the time he had gulped his breakfast he was invariably late for the eight-fifteen. One could not get into much of a controversy while trotting from the breakfast table to the garage. Thus the day was automatically started right and morning problems, like morning mists, had a tendency to disperse as the sun rose higher.
..Mr. Banks' hand trembled and a drop of blood discolored the soap on his chin. The stout, dependable dam which had heretofore restrained his morning thoughts gave way without warning. Over Mrs. Banks' unprepared head poured the swollen torrent of his accumulated apprehensions.
He was possessed of a doomsday eloquence. As he warmed up to his theme it began to sound like a description of Hiroshima. She listened in dismay to the recital of possibilities that he had not even considered. By the time her husband's emotional reservoir was emptied he had missed three trains to the city.
♥ From her casual remarks it became gradually clear to him that her mind was not on Buckley at all, but rather on the ceremony which he promised to bring into being and on the material things connected with it-on dresses and hats and shoes-on underwear and sheets and towels-on all the thousand things which, to a woman, truly legalize a marriage.
♥ Buckley, Kay informed her parents with her best Old School irony, also had a father and mother. It seemed to her that the situation called for a minimum display of interest from the Banks family unless, of course, they preferred to make it look like a shot-gun wedding and introduce themselves at the altar rail.
♥ "In the first place I don't see why you assume the Dunstans are terrible and in the second you're not marrying Buckley's family."
"I might just as well be," groaned Mr. Banks. "I'll probably have to support them."
♥ "I'll bet it's a shack."
When they finally located it, the Dunstan shack turned out to be a large, whitewashed brick house about a mile out of town. It sat well back from the road surrounded by old elm trees. The discovery that it was at least twice the size of his own seemed to add fuel to Mr. Banks' agitation.
♥ The first meeting of in-laws is comparable to the original hookup of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the Rocky Mountain Indians.
In the latter instance it is recorded that for a brief moment after the encounter both sides glared at one another with mingled hostility and curiosity. At this point a false move would have been fatal. If anyone had so much as reached for his tobacco pouch the famous Journals would never have seen the light of day.
Then, each side finding the other apparently unarmed, the tension eased. The elders stepped forward, embraced, rubbed noses and muttered "How." Skins were spread and refreshments laid on them by squaws. The party was in the bag.
The Banks-Dunstan meeting followed similar lines. For a split second the two families stared at one another in the Dunstan entrance hall. During that instant Mrs. Banks took inventory of Mrs. Dunstan from hair-do to shoes. Mrs. Dunstan did the same for Mrs. Banks. Then, finding everything mutually satisfactory, they approached one another with outstretched arms, embraced and said, "My dear."
The two males merely shook hands awkwardly and said in unison, "It certainly is nice to meet you."
♥
"Another, Stan?" asked Mr. Dunstan.
"Well, just to help you out, Herb," said Mr. Banks.
His wife moved over beside him. "You'd better watch your step," she muttered.
It was too late. The release from supertension was more than he could combat. He graciously helped his friend Herb finish up the shaker.
♥ As his mind focused on the actual ceremony he began to have secret qualms about it. Weddings had never meant much to him one way or the other. They were pleasant parties where he was apt to run into a lot of people whom he had not seen lately. Now, when he considered his role as father of the bride, it became alarmingly apparent that he was slated to play a lead part in what looked more and more to him like a public spectacle.
♥ What was more, there was no need for all this fussing. Her mother didn't need to raise a hand-not a finger. When she (Kay) gave the word everything would fall into place. That was the way she and Buckley were going to live. Simply and without all this effort. She had seen nothing but fuss and feathers all her life. Now she wanted no more of it. That might as well be understood.
From this point on the conversion began to resemble the Chicago wheat pit on the day of a big break. It was Buckley's first family free-for-all. Quite obviously it upset him. From where he sat, in a corner of the living room, it seemed like the breakup of basic relationships. He watched with dismay as the storm raged. Then, like a tropical hurricane, it was unexpectedly over. Instead of the tangled and broken wreckage which he had anticipated, he was astonished to learn that it had been harmoniously agreed that the wedding would take place on Friday, June 10, at four-thirty P.M. at St. George's Church.
♥ He sat on he edge of his bed radiating aggressiveness. Mrs. Banks thought he looked rather gray and tired.
♥
And so it was that, a few days later, Mr. Banks came out from town on the three-fifty-seven, composing an informal and, he hoped, dryly humorous little speech. It was to be about Kay as a little girl, Kay growing up and finally, in a big surprise climax, Kay announcing her engagement.
♥ Mr. Banks was a hospitable man and in many ways a generous one. There were limits, however. He groaned with pain as he listened to one bottle after another of his best gurgle its lifeblood into the pitchers. But when it was all done and he stood back to inspect the result, he realized that it had been a labor of love.
♥
He shouldered his way into the room. Except for a few absent-minded smiles, no one paid the least attention to him.
♥ "At a party like this it's a cinch. Now, for instance, there are just two female types here-those who are married an the still unasked. You can spot them a mile off."
"How?" asked Mr. Banks.
"Oh, it's the way they're enthusiastic about the news," she said. "You see, with the married ones it's more relief than enthusiasm. You know. Like the way you feel when somebody you're fond of, that's sort of backward, passed an exam."
"Exactly," said Mr. Banks.
"And those who are still among the unasked are full of beans in that fine old Playing-Fields-of-Eaton sort of way. You know. You're a better man than I am Gunga Din and pip pip."
"I think you've got something here," said Mr. Banks.
♥ He found himself facing a blond young woman with big deer-like eyes. To his dismay she suddenly burst into tears. She was sorry, she sniffled, but this sort of thing did something to her. The thought occurred to Mr. Banks that it usually did if you took enough of it.
♥ Like an old cattleman cutting calves from the herd, he disentangled his guests one by one and propelled them through the front door with such light-handed skill that they were unaware of his treachery until they found themselves in the open air.
♥ Miss Bellamy was more excited about the wedding than any of the principals. She had been his secretary for fifteen years, during which she had devoted so much time to his personal as well as his business affairs that she had found no opportunity to get married herself. As a compensation she had gradually assumed remote, but nonetheless complete, control of the Banks family.
♥ She was a great comfort to Mr. Banks. Although much too tactful to make any direct comment, she always made it quite clear to him that she knew what he was up against.
♥ A modern wedding is somewhat like a new theatrical production. Once the cast has been decided upon, the next thing is to determine whether it is to be Big Theater or Little Theater and then fill the house.
♥ The argument grew more violent. Mrs. Banks was for a very small wedding to which everyone should be asked.
..Mr. Banks finally had an inspiration. He fetched a yellow pad of paper from "The Office" and placed it beside his plate. On it he wrote three names.
"There," he said, "that's the smallest wedding you can have under the law-you and Buckley and the Reverend Cyrus Galsworthy. Now. Anybody else?"
.."Just put down the Dunstans and ourselves and Ben and Tommy."
"And Aunt Harrier, naturally, and Uncle Charlie," said Kay.
"Of course," said Mr. Banks. "But I'd go slow from there in." He wrote rapidly, keeping a tally on the side of the paper. After three quarters of an hour he ran out of sheets.
"Do you know how many you have on the list now?'
"About fifty," said Kay sulkily.
"Two hundred and six. And that doesn't include most of our friends, and perhaps Buckley's family might have one or two people they'd like to squeeze in."
"Oh, all right, Pops, if you're going to be so disagreeable about it. But I tell you it's my wedding and it's going to be small. I don't care."
♥ Three hundred people drinking his champagne. Three hundred people eating his food. Three hundred-
He was ruined. Clearly and utterly ruined. All his life he had been a prudent and thrifty man. Now he was caught in the nutcracker of the conventions and was about to squeeze out his economic life with his own hands.
"I won't do it," he groaned, rolling onto his side. But he knew he would.
♥ He wondered how it was that women could go through these shattering emotional scenes and bounce up a few hours later as care-free as a sea gull behind the Queen Mary.
♥
"Guess how many."
Mrs. Banks squirmed uneasily. "Two hundred?" she ventured, without conviction.
"Five hundred and seventy-two," shouted Mr. Banks triumphantly. "Five! Seven! Two! What did I tell you? It's either the immediate family or Madison Square Garden."
♥ Mr. Banks wondered why it was that, every time he discovered an attractive woman, Mrs. Banks said her hair was dyed. And anyway what if it was?
♥
Each card was removed from the box, debated at length, and returned to its original place with a sigh. At the end of each round, when they came to Carlton B. Zachery, they had succeeded in eliminating or relegating to the church only a handful of names. Quite obviously they were getting nowhere. They had too many dear, close, loyal, lifelong friends,to all of whom they seemed to be indebted.
♥
Mr. Banks made some calculations on the table cloth, and the spirit of hospitality fled from him. That evening he had a business dinner in town, but the following morning he faced the shaving mirror with the set jaw of leadership.
Someone had to take the helm. Someone had to tie up this disintegrating situation before it fell apart completely. For three seventy-two a unit he would undertake to tie up a wounded lion.
♥ Mrs. Banks looked at him with an astonishment that experience never seemed to dim.
♥ He felt masterful and composed that evening as he entered 24 Maple Drive. Next to achieving sudden riches, acquiring financial equilibrium is almost equally gratifying.
♥ "Pops." Kay came out and threw a slim arm around his neck. "Pops, you big stupid. Do you know what you did? You forgot Buckley's list. It just came today."
Mr. Banks' psyche collapsed like an abandoned bathrobe.
♥ It was Mr. Banks' last decisive act for many days. He and Ben and Tommy continued to live at home, outwardly just as usual, but actually more like three harmless family ghosts than active participants.
The clothes carnival was on.
♥ Buckley never lost confidence during these trying times. He appeared each evening like a faithful sheep dog, to spend it staring at Mr. Banks. Neither of them could think of much to say to one another so they usually listened moodily to the radio and to the undertone of women's voices from the floor above-a never-ending dialogue occasionally punctuated by screams of pleasure. At each scream Mr. Banks winced, for he knew from experience that such female ecstasy is purchased at a high price.
♥
Mysterious boxes began to arrive. They appeared to be from women who did not have any last names-"Annette," "Estelle," "Helene," "Babette."
"They sound like a bunch of madams," said Mr. Banks to no one in particular.
♥
Well, his legs were through at least. A bit smug, perhaps, but it might not be noticeable if he sat on the edge of things. Inhaling deeply, he sucked in his stomach as far as possible and buttoned the trousers. The effect was like squeezing the lower half of a sausage balloon.
"If any of these buttons give way they'll put somebody's eye out," he muttered, walking stiffly to the long mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Not bad for fifty, though. It was going to be a strain, of course, to keep his chest blown out like a pouter pigeon and his stomach wrapped around his back bone, but the general effect was good-like a well-preserved old oarsman.
He put on the vest carefully. The cloth around the buttons had the stained look of a sail in a heavy blow, but if it held there was nothing to worry about.
Now for the coat. This was the crucial garment-the one which must withstand the hostile eye of the general public. Nobody looked at a man's pants.
♥ He finally stopped on his way up from the station to discuss the matter with that bon vivant and connoisseur of good living, Sam Locuzos, owner of the Fairview Manor Wines and Liquor Company, whom he had been patronizing, illegally and legally, for many years.
♥ Mr. Banks watched Sam's skillful fingers as they wrapped the bottles. "There," he said. "Don't drop. An' don't forget to freeze cold. Then nobody don't taste."
♥ The telephone, which had never been an inarticulate instrument in the Banks home, now started ringing the moment the receiver was replaced in its cradle.
♥ What an innocent he had been! His original wedding budget had included a case or two of champagne, a couple of hundred water cress sandwiches, a wedding dress (if he was unfortunate enough to have reared a daughter who couldn't slip into her mother's), a handsome present to the bride, some miscellaneous tips and that was about all (although bad enough). The church was free. What else was there?
Now he suddenly appeared to be the sole customer of an immense and highly organized industry. He reminded himself of the Government during the war. "Keep those production lines moving for Banks. Get the finished goods to him. He's committed now. He's in this mess up to his ears. There's no drawing back. We're all behind you, Banks; behind you with caterers, photographers, policemen, dressmakers, tent pitchers-behind you with champagne and salads and clothes and candid cameras and potted plants and orchestras and everything it takes to win a wedding."
♥ "You know perfectly well that we give Kay her flat silver and her linen."
"Her linen?" repeated Mr. Banks. His voice sounded as if he had been drugged.
"Yes, dear. Of course. Her sheets and towels and napkins and all that sort of thing."
"My God!" It wasn't an oath. It was a prayer. "Doesn't Buckley's family give anything but Buckley?"
"For an intelligent man, Stanley, you are very stupid," said Mrs. Banks.
Tommy and Ben came in. Perhaps it was just as well to let the matter drop. He looked at them closely for the first time in weeks-Ben, six feet of good looks-Tommy, a bean pole which seemed to add an inch a week. They were no longer boys but men-men ready to rear families of their own.
A warm comforting thought burst upon him and filled him with sudden peace. Soon they, also, would be getting married. Then it would be his turn to hand them over to some bride's father as his contribution-his sole contribution.
♥ Basically it should have been so simple. Boy and girl meet, fall in love, marry, have babies-who eventually grow up, meet other babies, fall in love, marry. Looked at from this angle, it was not only simple, it was positively monotonous. Why then must Kay's wedding assume the organizational complexity of a major political campaign?
♥ "Oh, dear. This is a mess. Wouldn't you know she'd accept."
And so it went while Mr. Banks browsed absentmindedly though the evening paper and wondered what would happen if he suddenly began to make queer noises and froth at the mouth. The incident of the champagne was still too recent, however, to make free speech advisable.
♥
It was not intentional. In fact, they were all so polite they embarrassed him. As he entered the room the young makes rose in a body and mumbled something ending in "sir." Then Kay would embrace him dramatically, one foot raised slightly behind her, and say "Pops! We were waiting for you to make us a cocktail."
It was no time to protest. Mr. Banks would take a hasty inventory and retire to the pantry. It seemed to him that each night another empty went into the garbage pail, where Delilah observed it glumly, brooding obviously on her rather meager salary.
♥
♥ Mr. Banks became increasingly impressed with the stupendousness of the spectacle which he was about to produce, and with the importance of the role which he was slated to play. It wasn't a wedding. It was a pageant. There should be an electric sign on the awning into the church:
MARRIAGE BELLS.
A SUPERCOLOSSAL SCENIC DISPLAY.
PRODUCED, DIRECTED AND ACTED
BY STANLEY BANKS.
As a form of self-torture the idea pleased him. He developed it leisurely as he composed himself to sleep that night. No one had thought of loud-speakers outside the church to take care of the overflow, or of putting the show on the air, or of billboards.
♥
Alone, pacing slowly to the measured rhythm of the organ, he started down the aisle. It was several hundred yards long and at the end of it he could distinguish the figure of the sinister which kept growing larger and larger until it towered over the whole scene and reached into the shadows-huge, sinister, forbidding, daring him to run the gauntlet.
Now he could hear titters from either side. "It's Banks. How grotesque! Why, his clothes don't fit him. Look at his figure! Why, he can't even get his coat buttoned! What a clown of a man!"
The tittering was giving way to shrieks of laughter. People were standing on the seats of the pews and pointing at him. "Look at his knees shake! He'll never make it. He'll go down in a minute. How could a man like that have such a beautiful daughter? They say she isn't his. It's a joke. He's a joke. Banks is nothing but a big fat joke-a big fat joke-a big fat joke. My God, his pants are undone!"
He was sitting up in bed.
♥ Standing at the head of the aisle, he studied the terrain like a hunter. Why had he thought of this intimate place as a cathedral? The pillars on either side, as he studied them critically for the first time, looked rather short and dumpy. As for the aisle, from where he stood a hop, skip and a jump would land him in the minister's arms.
♥ "We might both have a short snort just before the show starts," he suggested finally, but without conviction.
"No sir. That won't do, Pops. I'm not going to blow gin in the minister's face at my own wedding."
"I was thinking of a whiskey and soda," said Mr. Banks.
♥ Anyone faced with the necessity of giving a wedding present should remember that only the first few to arrive will receive the admiration they deserve. Shop early and avoid oblivion.
The first present came two days after the engagement had been announced in the papers. It was a hand-painted tray. Mrs. Banks had cleared out the spare room and set up, against the wall, a card table covered with her best tablecloth. Kay placed the tray on it like an acolyte arranging an altarpiece, while the family gathered reverently around.
♥ What puzzled Mr. Banks was that neither Mrs. Banks nor Kay ever forgot a detail in connection with any gift. For twenty-three years he had been impressed bu the fact that neither of them seemed capable of grasping or retaining the most elementary details. Mrs. Banks could never remember, for example, whether the mortgage company owed Mr. Banks money or vice versa, and Kay still thought that the Rubaiyat was a toothpaste, but when it came to the matter of wedding presents, their donors and their sources, they both had memories like rogue elephants.
♥
Time passed and in its course Kay accumulated three dozen old-fashioned glasses, two dozen glass muddlers, four dozen highball glasses, three large cocktail shakers, two martini stirrers, two bride and groom midget cocktail sets, two whiskey decanters, five silver bottle openers, a half acre of wineglasses, a portable bar and sundry jiggers and corkscrews. The place began to look like a setup for The Lost Weekend. Mr. Banks' connoisseur's enthusiasm was displaced by misgivings.
He was no teetotaler. On the other hand he now began to wonder whether he possibly had not overdone things a bit and conveyed to the world the impression that he was rearing a brood of alcoholics.
♥ Given enough ointment there is always a fly. Given enough presents there is always One-of-Them. They are as inevitable as death. The only thing that is unpredictable is the direction from which they come. Kay's arrived one Saturday in a large wooden box, buried deep in Its nest of excelsior as if trying to hide Its shame.
..A composite sound came from the Banks family. It was the cumulative cry of man's frustration through the ages. It might have been made by a Neanderthal father who, returning to his cave, finds a saber-toothed tiger licking his whiskers at the entrance.
Aunt Marne, of all people! The one member of the family who had been counted on to come across handsomely-preferably with a substantial check! She was rich, she was unmarried and she spent a week with the Bankses each fall. When Mr. Banks thought of all the evenings he had spent listening to Aunt Marne's non-stop chatter he was sorry he had not given way to his instincts wile the opportunity was at hand and regardless of the consequences.
This was the Great Betrayal. From now on the name of Aunt Marne would be coupled with those of Judas Iscariot, Brutus, Benedict Arnold and Tojo.
..They put It on the card table in a far corner. They tried it on top of a chest of drawers. They hid It on a window sill behind an electric clock. No matter where they placed It, It was the first object which struck the eye when one entered the room.
The visitors' opening gambit was unvaried. "My dear, I never saw so many lovely presents." Then they would walk straight to the Thing and stand before It, picking up little obkects in the neighborhood and laying them down. It was only a matter of minutes before they would have their hands on It. Operating on the theory that offense is the best defense, Mrs. Banks stepped in at this moment and explained that it was all a huge practical joke. Once they knew how excruciating it was everyone laughed heartily, but there was a malicious note in their mirth that Mr. Banks did not like.
Life was never quite the same after the arrival of Aunt Marne's present. Gone now the simple note. Gone the spirit of guileless appreciation for a gift as such. Gone the impartial screams of pleasure as the wrappings fell away. He who deceives a trusting dog does harm. From this point on the contents of each incoming package were appraised with the cold commercialism of an Oriental bazaar.
♥ Mr. Banks hated to see Kay get hard.
♥ True to the American tradition, the receiving of gifts, which had been started so simply and spontaneously, soon developed into an organized industry in which each person became a specialist.
Mr. Banks' field was the disposal of empty cartons, wrapping paper and excelsior. No one appointed him to this important work. It merely seemed to fall to his lot by a process of natural selection.
Being a thrifty man, when left to his own decides, he foresaw a vague future use for all this material. He cleaned out a corner of the cellar by consolidating other objects for which he also had a vague future use.
Each day the debris was piled waist-high in the back hall. One by one he bumped the cartons down the cellar stairs, sorted out the wrapping paper, jammed the excelsior into a special box and nested the empties neatly.
..
The place began to remind him of the hold of a badly packed cargo ship. Which boxes had come today, which yesterday or which a week ago was any man's guess.
♥
Mrs. Banks was a meticulous housekeeper and she had always been proud of her home. Now, as Mr. Massoula and Joe wandered from room to room with cold appraising eyes and occasional mumbled comments, she realized that neither of them had ever before catered in such a hovel.
♥ When one concentrates fiercely and at length on an event in the distant future it eventually becomes fixed in the mind as something forever remote. As a result it is a shock to awake some morning and find that the distant future has suddenly become the immediate present. It is like a foolish rumor about a lion in the district, which no one takes seriously until the beast springs at you from behind a lilac bush.
♥
The ushers and bridesmaids who had made the great sacrifice stood in small groups glaring at Mr. Banks with unconcealed hostility. It was evident that each and all had torn themselves away from agreeable situations for what they clearly considered to be an old-fashioned whim of Mr. Banks'. By their attitude they said, "You got us here. You ruined our fun. Now what are you going to do about it?"
It made Mr. Banks nervous.
♥ They lined up, tittering and unwilling, as people line up for a group photograph which nobody wants taken. Once in place they unlined immediately. Mr. Tringle pushed them back like errant cattle.
♥ "I do hope-" said Mrs. Banks.
"So do I," agreed her husband.
♥ Mr. Banks would have given a year of life to lie quite still, indefinitely, but he felt the moment was a poor one for advancing whimsical ideas. As unostentatiously as possible he went to the bathroom cabinet and poured a large spoonful of Bromo Seltzer.
♥ "You wouldn't come in and have a spot, perhaps? You got a hard day ahead of you."
"Sorry," said Mr. Banks. "We're kind of busy at the house this morning. I'm just doing an errand for my wife."
He walked briskly away without the slightest notion where he was going.
♥ "You shouldn't cry today, Kitten. This is your wedding day."
"Oh, I know it, Pops. That's just the trouble. It's my wedding day, but it isn't. It's everybody else's wedding day but it just isn't mine." She let her face down into the pillow again, but now she was quieter.
Mr. Banks rubbed her back for a few minutes without answering. "I know, he said finally. "I know. Mine either."
♥ The bridesmaids, made confident by the conspicuous newness of their clothes, exuded vitality and youth. The ushers, on the other hand, had the drawn, haggard look of men who have just completed a dangerous bombing mission. They grabbed the cocktails from the passing trays as the occupants of a life raft would seize a wounded albatross as it floated by.
♥
In the confusion Mr. Banks managed to escape, only to be recaptured by a man with a walrus mustache.
..His primary interest was in world politics and his mind would not be at rest until he had Mr. Banks' opinion of the international situation. When Mr. Banks disclosed the fact that he had no opinions on the international or any other situation, the floor passed to the stranger, who obviously had a direct wire to God.
♥ "Hey, Pops, I haven't anything but soft shirts. These stiff collars won't fit on soft shirts. What am I going to do?"
If Mr. Banks had had a blunt instrument in his hands he would undoubtedly have used it. As it was he merely stared at Tommy without affection.
..Mr. Banks resumed dressing, musing on the sordid eugenic tricks that Nature plays on men.
♥ Not many of his friends could wear their old cutaways at their daughters' weddings. If he didn't move impulsively it was perfect.
♥ A moment later Mrs. Banks entered the room and Mr. Banks forgot everything else. He knew that he would never be able to remember what she was wearing. He knew also that, to his dying day, he would never forget her as she stood, framed in the doorway, waiting for his approval-slim, graceful and lovely. All the beauty of hew own wedding day lay upon her, tempered by a serenity and dignity that made Mr. Banks feel suddenly shy.
♥ "You're wonderful, Kitten. Wonderful."
She squeezed his hand. "Thanks, Pops." For an instant her eyes met his-not as a daughter but as a woman. "Now, on to the slaughter."
♥ Mr. Banks sat uneasily in the rear of the black limousine. Beside this lovely, calm stranger he felt small and a bit ridiculous. Their ages had somehow been mysteriously reversed. Instead of being the father of the bride he was a small boy being taken to dancing school in an asinine costume.
♥ Solid citizens continued their ceaseless, neurotic fight to civilize nature with a pair of clippers and a lawn mower. Little boys continued their suicidal ball games under the very fenders of the car. In the front seat. Mr. Pomus gazed benignly over his wheel. If he had raised two fingers in blessing to the urchins that he so nearly ran over, it would have been in character.
♥ Mr. Pomus opened the door quietly and half stood on the running board. Form his lips there poured, without warning, a torrent of electric invective. It contained many words which Mr. Banks had not heard since World War I with adaptations of old ideas. For a few moments he stared at Mr. Pomus in dismay. Then something long dormant within him was touched into life.
Lowering the rear window and carefully removing his high hat, he stuck his head out and joined Mr. Pomus, adding a number of words that the latter seemed to have forgotten. For the first time that day he felt like himself.
♥ Although he had been in St. George's many times before it was as strange to him at tis instant as a Byzantine mosque. The sea of faces that shot suddenly upward from the pews as the organ paused were unreal. They reminded him of a high-speed movie he had once seen of a growing poppy field. Even the girl beside him was a stranger. She was no longer his little daughter, but a beautiful, serene woman into whom all wisdom had suddenly and mysteriously flowed. She stood, poised on the threshold of her greatest adventure, her face lit with understanding and confidence.
It was difficult to conceive how an earthly chap like Buckley could have produced this miracle. Having produced it, his responsibility to maintain it was great. It would be a terrible thing to betray that expression in Kay's eyes. They were fixed far beyond Buckley, on an ideal which perhaps no mortal could hope to achieve, but which was all the more precious because of its unattainability. A thousand generations of women were standing behind Kay now. For a mystic instant she was a generic part of that selfless, intuitive race which since the days of the mastodons has been quietly guiding awkward, bumbling Man to an unknown destiny of greatness.
♥
"O.K. with the right foot," hissed Mr. Tringle. "Right foot, I said." Mr. Banks shifted quickly.
♥ "Who giveth this woman-?" intoned the rich baritone of the Reverend Mr. Galsworthy from far above him.
It caught him off guard in spite of all precautions. Kay nudged him and placed her hand in his. "I do," he murmured almost inaudibly, and passed her hand to Buckley. As he performed the simple act he was conscious that something deep within him ripped slightly.
He did not see the rest.
♥ It was over. The wedding dress, the bridesmaids' dresses, the struggles with cutaways, the invitations, the flowers, the lists, the rehearsal, the arguments, apprehensions, doubts and bewilderments had all suddenly become memories.
A wedding was like the experimental explosion of an atom bomb, thought Mr. Banks as he walked out behind his wife, smirking to right and left. You made the most careful preparations for moths, then someone like Mr. Tringle pressed a button-and it was all over. There was scarcely any present tense in connection with weddings. They existed either in the future or in the past.
♥ Now it is every a for himself, sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost, for the last man to arrive at the house knows that he must spend the balance of the afternoons standing in the reception line watching his more active neigbors guzzling free champagne.
♥ Finally the Bankses and the Dunstans took their places before the flash bulbs. Mr. Weisgold's ability to produce an endless supply of bulbs fascinated Mr. Banks. The man must have been a hand grenade thrower in the war.
♥
♥ After all, she would probably never see any of these people again. Maybe she had something there.
♥
Something was wrong, very wrong, with Mr. Massoula's "circulation." Theoretically the guests were supposed to slither off the end of the reception line, through a French door, and into the marquee where Mr. Massoula had set up his bar and buffet tables. It was all laid out like a pinball game.
The first few couples to come off the line, however, had chosen the French door in which to hold a long, eager conversation. Those who followed had merely rebounded from this obstacle back into the living room. The pinball idea still held, but it was not working according to plan.
♥
Mr. Massoula's gnomes were so efficient that no one needed to go to the bar anyway. They slid like eels through the melee, mysteriously carrying trays full of champagne glasses where no amateur could have transported an uncorked bottle.
♥ "That's darling." She gave him a look that might have meant anything-but didn't-and disappeared into the crowd.
♥ It struck Mr. Banks that the accepted belief that men married women was a colossal hoax-they were merely married by women.
♥ It was all the same to Mr. Dixon, however, whether Mr. Banks understood him or not. He was marshaling his facts and he would have marshaled them with equal gusto if Mr. Banks had been stretched out insensible on a window seat.
♥ This was the scene that Mr. Banks had visualized so often during the last twenty-five years; the moment when his first-born would come running down a broad staircase on the arm of a muscle-bound stranger, to disappear from his life forever-at least in the role of his little daughter.
When he had stood at the foot of other people's staircases waiting to throw damp paper at their daughters, his heart had been warm with sympathy for the fathers of the brides, who strolled with such brave nonchalance among their guests. He had hoped that he would have equal courage when his time came.
♥
A bridesmaid peered around the corner of the stair landing, grinned sheepishly and disappeared. Someone cried, "Here they come," as if it were a horse race.
♥
And so it came about that, while Officer Mullins exchanged views on wine and women with his fellow craftsmen, the more prominent citizens of Fairview Manor locked bumpers and cursed in the scarred field behind the house.
♥ The last guest had gone. The last damp hand had been wrung. The bridal party had disappeared noisily to seek bigger and newer adventure. The Dunstans had left. The relatives had returned to the oblivion from which they had emerged. Mr. and Mrs. Banks were alone with the wreckage.
♥ [Mr. and Mrs. Banks] lapsed into exhausted silence. In the brain of each a projector was unreeling the film of the day's events. It would have amazed them if they could have known how different the films were.
♥
Here was the place where she had stood. He paused and looked over the rail at the confetti-strewn hall. Queer about places and houses. They remained the same yet they were never the same. By no stretch of the imagination was this the spot from which Kay had tossed her flowers to the waving arms below.
He continued up the stairs, thinking of all the money and energy that was wasted each year dividing the scenes of great events under the impression that they were still the same places.