• It seemed like I had been in the backseat of the pickup truck forever. We had left our house in Lehigh Acres, Florida that previous night. Destination: Marshall, Michigan, for a wedding. By then, the misery of the car ride was even past the point where the constant boat-like rocking of the truck against the not-so-smooth asphalt of I-75 no longer bothered me. I had even forgotten that the long trailer holding three fully-grown palm trees was attached to the back of the truck, despite the way it exacerbated the rocking and bumpiness of the ride. No, instead it was just an inhuman level of boredom that consumed me, giving my lump of a body an illusion of a deceased child rotting away in the back of the truck. Where were we? Kentucky? Tennessee? Or were we already in Indiana? Or, perhaps, we hadn’t even gotten out of Georgia yet. I hadn’t the slightest idea. I heard my mom and her fiancé, Paul, talking up front. I decided that maybe they were saying something more interesting than the rattling windows.

    “I love you,” said a tall, slim-figured woman who, though approaching thirty, was still sometimes mistaken for my older sister. My mother, Jennifer Tooze.

    “I love you tooze,” came the responding pun that almost made me vomit. This voice was much louder, deeper, and more gruff than my mothers'. It belonged to Robert “Paul” Moore, who, in a few days’ time, would be my stepfather. He was much taller than my mother, standing a lumbering, ogre-like 6’ 4”.

    “I love you moore,” my mother delicately replied, a wide smile on her face. Any other twelve-year-old would probably react the same way when faced with the horrible, disgustingly cute romance of their mother – Eww. I realize now, however, that I miss that. I wish that I still heard that kind of over-the-top and silly affection between my mom and Paul. But when I really think about it, I’ve heard nothing like that since their wedding day in Marshall.


    Skipping forward a few days, it was the Fourth of July, 2003. We were staying at my grandpa’s house, where the ceremony and the reception would be held. His house was a spacious, white-sided, two-story (excluding basement) lakeside house with a massive stretch of well-manicured grass before a steep hill that led to the shore of Lyon Lake. Just before the slope sucked the yard downward into the lake, a gazebo with faded white paint stood strong, however precarious its stilt columns may have looked. Over the slope and down the wooden stairs attached to the gazebo was a quaint boathouse, where guests often slept when they stayed at my grandfather’s house.

    Now, in response to the wedding taking place there, that perfectly manicured lawn was adorned with a floral walkway from the back door to the gazebo. Large pots of all sorts of flowers, mixed in with the palm trees that had previously been on the trailer attached to Paul’s truck composed the path. On the right side, several yards away, a large stage and dance floor were set up for the reception, sound equipment already prepped for the band. On the left, slightly farther away than the stage, was a bamboo-sided mini-bar and small trailer packed full of booze from Paul’s nightclub, Pablo’s. Naturally, that was where Paul was at the time, several hours before the ceremony had begun. Closer to the gazebo, chairs lined either side of the path, though not many people were sitting at the moment. The people who were already there were at the bar with Paul.


    It figures.


    It took a few more hours for the guests to arrive. I was standing in the gazebo in some strange, island-style shirt. The wedding had a very tropical theme, abandoning the traditional formality of tuxedos. Instead, Paul, his groomsmen, and I were wearing a greenish-teal shirt that faded into a blue at the bottom, with two strips of ornate embroidery running vertically up the shirt and passing through our nipples, with khaki dress slacks. My keyboard was beside me, awaiting only my mother’s exit from the house with my grandfather, dressed in the same attire as Paul and I were, for me to start playing the wedding march.

    Paul was drunk, and the minister smelled like mothballs.

    Really though, it had always been like this. I remember thinking that it was going to be a disaster even before this, before the wedding day even, but now I knew it was destined to go wrong. Part of me wonders how I could have been so negative at such a young age. How could I have been such a pessimist that I couldn’t even believe that my mom’s wedding day would go right? But then another part recognizes that, in that moment, it would have been excessively difficult to find anything remotely positive. Here I was, standing next to an intoxicated buffoon of a man who was about to marry my mother and a priest who may possibly have been the oldest man alive. Paul was joking with an incredible volume, flailing his arms and spitting. The old man looked intimidated, though I suppose that was to be expected – he looked so frail, Paul’s arm would probably kill him. Actually, I’m surprised his bones were tenacious enough to withstand the vibrations of Paul's voice, which was several decibels louder than I believed the human vocal chords capable of.

    But maybe there was hope yet. The back door to my grandfather’s house swung open slowly, and my mother emerged draped in a shining white dress. Somehow, miraculously, Paul instantly regained his composure. She had no idea how he had been acting, how obnoxious he had gotten. And it was better that way. She was happy. And so my hands snapped to attention, and my focus drifted mostly to their movement along the memorized chords and melody that I had practiced for so many hours over the last two weeks. Her smile brightened, and somehow the once scorching sun seemed to relax. A gentle breeze rolled up from the lake, and for that moment, everything was perfect. Well, at least that’s what I remember.

    Talking to her later, the sun was still hot, there was no breeze, and her shoes were killing her feet. Alas, it seems that the mind can play tricks on us all when we want things to go another way. I was reminded slightly of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, where Vardaman insisted "My mother is a fish." It was easier to grasp this way, easier to deal with the rest of the day if I just pretended everything went right, just as, for Vardaman, it was far easier to grasp his mother's death when he equated her to a fish. I wouldn't go so far as to drill holes in her coffin insisting that my story was the right one, but it was certainly a more pleasant version. At least in my mind, everything was perfect.

    Even the imaginary perfection was short lived, though. My hands stopped moving, allowing me again to focus on the situation. I saw that her smile, real, fake, or maybe even entirely non-existent, was still there, but I could sense that she was no longer happy once she was close enough to smell the alcohol on Paul’s breath. She knew how he acted, and nobody would argue that a wedding is neither the time nor the place to behave as such – especially at your own wedding.

    From there, things only managed to get worse. The priest, whom I was now wondering the actual age of (Did he actually see Jesus die, or was he born a few years later?), formally introduced himself with some long title that I can’t even begin to remember, then began to read from the Bible. Paul, however, lacking the basic inhibitions that make us able to function as a society, got bored of this about halfway through.

    “We’re not really religious, so can you just get to the vows already?” he joked loudly, far more pleased with himself than he should be. The crowd managed a few awkward, uncomfortable laughs amidst the shock and awe, and he just thought he was the funniest man alive. I just stared. My mother looked down, eyes closed and cheeks red with shame – her side of the family was almost completely Catholic, and the man moments away from being her husband had just made a complete a** of himself. But Paul didn’t really get that, and so the slippery slope begins. More wisecracks follow, one of which involving me – “I don’t just get her, I get her kid too – it’s a package deal!” he roared, clapping an oversized hand onto my pint-sized shoulder.

    ‘Really, Paul?’ I wanted to say. ‘Does it have to be?’

    I just wanted it to be over.


    Luckily, it soon was over. The priest did end up skipping to the vows, and then shortly after they shared their first kiss in wedlock while fireworks shot up from the lake below (incidentally, a fragment of one ended up hitting someone in the crowd on the head). It was all romantic enough, but the damage had been done. My mother’s wedding had just essentially been reduced to the biggest party the tiny lake had ever had, with a wedding shoved in between, Las Vegas-style. I didn’t really even bother to stick around to see what happened afterward. By that point, I was just embarrassed and wanted to get away from the crowd before annoying people I hadn’t talked to in years came to talk to me about it and how they haven’t seen me since I was in diapers.

    “We should go to the boathouse,” suggested Matt, my best friend, a few minutes into the reception. I had no objections, and neither did the four cousins who were also about our age, plus or minus a year or two. And so we departed from the crowd quickly, climbing down the stairs that wrapped around the back of the gazebo. The path led to a blue and white shack, which was furnished with a futon, coffee table, some rocking chairs, a television, a radio, a dining table, and in the one other room there was a fully functioning bathroom. It was a pretty cool place to hang out, and was pretty much where I always played when I would go to my grandparents’ house. The difference this time was that there was a huge box of fireworks on one of the chairs and a lit candle on the coffee table.

    If the question has never been posed before, it should be: How many kids does it take to set off a box of fireworks inside a boat house? The answer is five, assuming that at least one of them thinks a mortar ball wick is as easy to put out as an ordinary fire, and the other ones are dumb enough to ¬encourage him just to see what happens. Matt, in his finest moment of intellectual prowess, was mocking fate by flicking the wick of a mortar through the flames, just fast enough so that it wouldn’t actually catch on fire. My cousins reminded me of the crowds you see in bad high school movies before someone does something stupid, chanting “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and I… well, I just sat back and watched. I figured that, worst case scenario, I could just pour my glass of water on the wick and we’d be fine. Besides, it was oddly amusing. I suppose the thrill is like that of a rollercoaster – it shouldn’t be fun at all, because if it goes wrong, you might die. That day, I learned the important lesson that fate does not enjoy being mocked.

    The tip of the wick suddenly began fizzing and cracking. I watched Matt try and put the flame out between his fingers, but it was no good. I reached for my glass of water, heart pounding, and managed to make it completely useless by knocking it onto the floor. Matt threw it onto the floor where the water had spilled, trying to stomp it out now (his fingers were burnt), but nothing seemed to be able to stop it. I looked up and somehow, all of my cousins had vanished. Awesome.

    BOOM!

    And just like that, we were engulfed in a torrent of red, white, blue, and green jets that ricocheted madly off the walls. Some exploded into mushroom showers of sparks and metallic splinters, others into even more ricocheting death-balls, and others still just exploded loudly. Matt and I were pinned against the wall, left to the mercy of random luck as violent bombshells that our limbs would not agree with echoed around us. The smoke completely filled the boat house, and things just kept going off. One of the jets had hit the box, and now fireworks were just exploding. Instinct told me to get out, so I ran toward, but ended up in the bathroom. I practically dove into the room, slamming the door behind me to shield myself from the artillery blasts on the other side. One of my cousins was in here with me, but I had no idea where Matt was.

    Reflecting back, it was a moment of supreme cowardice. I just ran, without grabbing him, without even telling him that I was going to make a run for the door. I just left him there and closed the ¬door behind me, leaving him. I don’t think that it would have made a difference in the outcome either way, seeing as everybody made it out with all of their body parts intact, but it bothers me to this day. What would I do in a moment where someone is truly depending on me? The rest of the wedding really didn’t help to nullify those doubts, either. In fact, if anything, that day proved to me that I would probably just look after myself and run away from the danger. I would just hope that everyone else was able to run with me… and that, to me, is disgusting.

    But it’s what I did – I just ran. The bangs stopped shortly after I got into the bathroom, and the exit door burst open with loud chattering and a few “What the hell!?!” shouts. I couldn’t tell who they were coming from. My cousin and I walked out of the bathroom and into the smoky main room. Matt was fine, and my other cousins were outside.

    “What the ******** happened in here?” demanded my Uncle Mike, who I later found out had actually been the one who left the box of fireworks down there unattended. We explained what we could (my cousin had joined his brothers and managed to escape questioning somehow), and listened to the yelling that followed. It came from all sides – my grandpa, who calmly told us off and made us feel guilty rather than afraid, my uncle, who basically said he should whoop my a**, and even my cousins’ mother (Paul’s sister), who refused to believe that her perfect children had had anything to do with the situation. Even my godfather chewed us out. And so, being immature and inconsiderate, I left the wedding with Matt and his parents to go see fireworks and spend the night at his house. I just ran away from the issue without even thinking about anyone else. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be yelled at anymore.


    A later conversation with my mom revealed to me that the worst part of her wedding wasn’t even Paul being so drunk and stupid that my grandfather actually punched him in the face and knocked him out. It was that she felt like I didn’t care enough to stay.

    “It hurt more that my own son didn't even care enough to stay with me for my wedding,” she said in a very weak and hurt voice. I felt terrible. I selfishly ran away from a problem that Matt and I had an equal contribution to creating, not even thinking about her. I was a coward. I had managed to have a bigger impact on my mom’s wedding than her husband, and it was almost entirely negative. Way to go, right? I guess that in the end, I’m not much different from Paul. Or at least, I wasn’t when I was twelve. We were both stupid, selfish bastards who managed to make a day that was supposed to be her best day into one of her worst.

    Hopefully I’m different now. Hopefully I’ve changed since then. Paul has even gotten a little better – he's managed to fall into the measly 52% of marriages that end up working (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2003). At least for now. That gives me some hope that, maybe, if both of us can grow up enough to abandon that stupid, childish selfishness, that we can make her smile again… like she did before the wedding.