Ultraviolet. Nancy Bush
“What about your mom?” I inserted casually. “Was she there?”
“Renee? No way. We don’t get along that great. I mean, she lives in Santa Monica and that’s just fine. I love her. She’s my mom and all, but when Sean and I moved to Portland with Daddy, she just stayed there. I haven’t lived with her since I was a kid.”
“But she came up for the wedding.”
“Yes.” Gigi’s jaw tightened stubbornly. She didn’t like being directed. She wanted to tell the story her way and that was that.
“So, you changed your hair and had mimosas with Deenie and your stepmother.”
“Melinda. Deenie and I had a limo and we were going to meet the other bridesmaids at Cahill for pictures at two. Melinda had her own car, so we all drove off around one o’clock. Deenie and I took a bottle of champagne in the limo. We turned the music up really loud and we were singing. It was so much fun.”
She stopped short, remembering. I could see her face start to squinch up and get blotchy. “So, we got there,” she said, her voice getting small and teary. “And everybody came for pictures but Daddy. It was almost two o’clock. The photographer took some photos of me and Emmett, and then the bridal party, but Daddy wasn’t there!”
“Emmett’s parents were there,” I said, sensing she was about to collapse into sobs.
“Uh-huh.”
“And your mother?”
“Why do you keep saying that! No! She wasn’t invited to the wedding.” Gigi looked like she wanted to throw her glass at me.
“I thought she came up from Santa Monica,” I answered, confused.
“She was disinvited, okay? She was invited. But then she was a bitch at the rehearsal dinner and she was disinvited. Melinda was there and she was being nice so I figured she could be in the pictures. I didn’t care if she and Daddy weren’t living in the same house. They really love each other. In fact, they’d be back together if it weren’t for Violet!”
“Okay,” I said, hoping she’d calm down.
“Want another glass of wine?” she asked, sniffing.
“Sure.”
I handed her my glass and she gave me a refill. It was kind of eerie the way she could throw a fit and then turn around and act like it didn’t happen. Maybe she’d been drinking before I arrived, although it didn’t seem like it.
“So, then…Daddy never showed at all. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, either. Honestly, I was kinda mad. It was my wedding day!”
I shook my head in commiseration, trying to look properly upset for her.
“And then it was three o’clock! Three o’clock! Deenie and I were just crying, holding each other up. It was like…” She shook her head, her nostrils quivering with remembered hurt. “It was like he didn’t care. We didn’t know what was wrong. That’s when we had to call my mother. Just in case she knew something.”
I waited.
Gigi shrugged. “Okay, look, I don’t like talking about my mother that much. It’s no big deal. She just doesn’t know how to act. The rehearsal dinner was a disaster. Big fight between Mom and Daddy, but then what did I expect? They’ve always been that way.”
“They fought at your rehearsal dinner?”
Gigi gestured impatiently. “She brought up Violet in front of Melinda and me and everybody. Asked where Violet was. Why wasn’t Violet there? Wasn’t Daddy seeing Violet? It was all just to bug him. That’s what my mother always does. You’d have to know her to understand. She’s kind of self-involved,” Gigi said with a straight face.
“Ah.”
“We were all at Castellina for the rehearsal dinner. It was a package deal—book the rehearsal dinner and the wedding preprep at Castellina, then go to the wedding and reception at the winery and it was a much better price. You know how expensive weddings are? Daddy got really upset toward the end. I mean, I thought Clarice, our wedding planner, was going to quit. It was awful. I really thought he was going to throw something at her. And Enzo, our florist? I’m not sure he ever got paid.
“Anyway, Mom shows up at the rehearsal dinner. And she brings a date that she didn’t mention. Some guy with dyed hair and a Ferrari. Can you stand it? They drove up from Santa Monica together, but did she tell any of us? We didn’t have a place for him. It was just rude.
“And then she started in about Violet. Melinda tried to intervene. She’s such an idiot sometimes. And Daddy says, ‘Stay away from me, Mel,’ real coldlike. Mom smirked and Melinda looked like she was going to cry. And then Mom says, ‘He gets like this every time he starts up with Violet. I should know.’”
“Did Violet break up your parents’ marriage?” I asked, wondering if Renee still held a grudge.
“Well…no.” Gigi sounded disappointed that she had to tell the truth. “They were split up a long time. But it still upset Mom when Daddy and Violet got together and we all moved away from Los Angeles.”
“Was there any thought of staying with your mother at the time?”
“I don’t know what this has to do with anything,” she muttered, looking away.
I took that as a no. “But it sounds like Renee blamed Violet for a lot of what happened in your family.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I could tell I was losing Gigi, so I said, “So, your father disinvited your mother to the wedding and reception.”
“The Ferrari guy got real upset. Told my dad he was no kind of man. They’d driven all the way here, they’d been invited, well, Mom had, anyway. Who did he think he was? Blah, blah, blah. It was a real scene. If I’d been sober I would have been even more mad, but we were knocked out by those Italian punch drinks they serve there. They got Campari or something in them? Makes them red? We drank tons of them. It was really the only way to get through that night, though Daddy did make a nice toast to me.” Fresh tears filled her eyes. “He said how I was his little girl.”
I smiled encouragingly, thinking that was pretty standard stuff for the dads of brides.
Gigi stabbed a piece of cheese with one of the ruffled toothpicks, then twirled it thoughtfully around. I wondered if she was rethinking putting it in her mouth. “I was kinda hungover in the morning, but by noon I was okay. The mimosas sure helped.”
“Hair of the dog,” I said.
“Huh?”
I shrugged, not wanting to sidetrack her with an explanation about why more alcohol was supposed to cure a hangover. I’m not sure I believe it anyway. Gigi went on, “I guess I was still hoping Daddy would show and we’d get a few pictures, maybe after the ceremony. People started arriving. It was just awful. I mean, it was getting close to four. Where was he? We told the caterers to open the champagne, so we started drinking some more. We even called my mother then, and she and the Ferrari guy came right over.”
“Did you try to call Violet?” I asked.
“We’re not stupid. Of course we did. She never picked up.”
“Okay.”
“People kind of moved around the grounds, staying out of the way. I think they were embarrassed. Deenie and I were crying and nobody knew what to do. Finally, we had to say there was an accident and the wedding was postponed. Emmett’s parents, Dave and Goldy, were upset.” Her lips compressed, and she started to say something, then cut herself off. I got the feeling it might have been something not all that nice about Emmett’s parents. She went on instead, “We didn’t really believe something bad had happened to Daddy. Not then…but then Emmett found Daddy and called his dad. He didn’t want to tell me over the phone.” She swept in