THE ROLLS
A gaggle of girls in coordinated but nonidentical turquoise dresses filed out of a white Escalade SUV stretch limousine and up the stairs to the main Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, bringing a cacophony of laughter, gossip, and jitters with them. Olga herself hung back, nervously searching down Fifth Avenue for the classic white Rolls-Royce that would be bringing the bride, Mabel, and her parents. The drive from their house on Fifty-third Street to the church was short, almost impossible to fuck up, really. Yet Olga held her breath until she saw the vehicle approach.
The car was Tío Richie’s. Ever entrepreneurial, he had a number of side hustles, including renting vintage cars out for weddings and film shoots. He’d made a big fuss about loaning Mabel the Rolls for the day as her wedding present—a pretty cheap gift in the first place, Olga felt—but then the driver, who didn’t have a working cell phone and had never driven in Brooklyn before, showed up late to pick up Tío JoJo. When JoJo called Mabel to say he was running late, Tía ChaCha, who’d been getting ready with all the girls on Fifty-third Street, was all too happy to launch into a diatribe about how this was typical half-assed Richie shit and how Mabel would’ve been better off paying for this herself. This, of course, set Mabel off. She asked what did ChaCha know about paying for weddings since she’d never done anything but go to City Hall? ChaCha, not one to take things lying down, then commented that maybe Mabel wouldn’t be so stressed if Julio carried his very large weight and Mabel didn’t feel like she needed to be so extra.
Since she was a kid, before Mabel would start to cry, she’d begin to sweat. First across the bridge of her nose, then around her temples. So when Olga looked over and saw her cousin’s baby hairs begin to glisten with moisture, she knew the waterworks were on the way. She intervened before her cousin completely wrecked her edges, suggesting Tía ChaCha take the programs over to the church; a walk might do her good.
“Olga, ven acá.” As ChaCha left, Mabel called her cousin over to where the hairdresser was just fixing her tiara and veil onto her updo. She looked ahead into the mirror and made eye contact with her cousin. “Thank you. Por todo.”
Olga knew she meant it. For more than just getting ChaCha out of the room. They never spoke about the money, but Mabel pulled the cash to pay for hair and makeup out of Olga’s bank envelope. She felt a deep closeness with her cousin then that she hadn’t felt in years. Since they were girls, even. Before society’s apparatus began to sort and place them onto different life paths. One deemed clever, the other coarse; one anointed pretty, the other told to keep out of the sun. Over and over again, Olga realized, they’d been told these things in different ways, by teachers and at home—implicitly one a little better than the other—and eventually, they had come to believe and resent it. As she looked at her cousin in the mirror, she could feel Abuelita’s warmth on them, happy. Olga wanted this moment to last. She wanted to hug her cousin, kiss her perfectly airbrushed, made-up face, but she could see the beads of sweat forming on Mabel’s forehead again.
“？Ay, Mabel! You’re gonna jack up your whole face if you don’t stop!”
Mabel laughed, pressing her undereyes with her fingers to stop the tears.
Though the early part of the day had been smooth and lively, full of laughter, music, chisme, and mimosas, the family was, admittedly, on edge, the week’s events having compounded the heightened emotions wedding days always elicit. Both Tía ChaCha and Mabel’s mother still had family in P.R. living without power from Hurricane Irma. Maybe an hour before JoJo called about the trouble with the driver, everyone’s phones had buzzed with news alerts. A new storm was approaching, this one named Maria, Puerto Rico again in nature’s crosshairs. ChaCha had tried in vain to reach her mother in Ponce while Mabel’s mom knelt to pray. Olga, thanks to Reggie’s assurances that her mother was safer and more secure than 99 percent of people on the island, was relieved of worry. At least regarding the storm. For most of the day, her mind had been preoccupied by Matteo.
She had no idea how to go about making up with a guy. It wasn’t that she’d never fought with Reggie, or even Dick. She just had never wanted or needed to do the work to make it right. Eventually, they would come around. This time, though, she wasn’t so sure. She had sent him all the details for the ceremony, and he had simply messaged back that he got it. In a panic, she sent him a dozen roses. He texted her thanks. She called and left lengthy voicemails saying she hoped he’d give her a second chance. She got nothing back. She was unsure if he’d decided to come and was making her sweat it out—give her a taste of her own medicine—or if he’d simply decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. She tried to keep herself busy being helpful so as not to drown in the anxiety of wondering which of the two it was.