There was a knock on the door, and Lizette turned in her billowing dress. “Who is it?”
“Your papa,” said Eduardo, croaking as if he were choking on tears. “I’ve brought a visitor.”
“It better not be Al,” said Lizette. “He ain’t allowed to see me till the big show.”
“Pete’s come to offer his well-wishes, mija.”
Lizette motioned for her mother to open the door.
Eduardo stood there teary-eyed.
“So emotional,” Teresita said to her husband, ushering him inside. “Come on, you still have to walk her down the aisle.”
Papa Tikas trailed Eduardo into the chambers. He wore a white tuxedo and smiled under his mustache as he carried an enormous bouquet of peonies, roses, and carnations. It must have cost a fortune.
“My my,” said Lizette. “Christmas came early—thank you, Papa Tikas.”
“What a beautiful bride you make,” he said, handing the flowers to Teresita, who placed them on a side table. The petals absorbed light, as if competing with Lizette to be the center of attention.
“Lizette,” said Papa Tikas, taking her hands in his. “You’ve grown into the most exquisite woman. Our community is proud. And I wasn’t always so sure that’d be the case.”
She opened her mouth in mock anger.
“And, Luz,” said Papa Tikas, glancing her way, “how lovely you are, as well. I can’t stay long, and I’ll miss the party, but here—” He pulled from his coat pocket a white envelope, handing it to Lizette. “That should cover all of the meats. My treat for my beautiful girls.”
“Wow,” Lizette said. “Thank you so much, Papa Tikas.” She handed her mother the envelope and Teresita tucked it safely into her handbag. Papa Tikas leaned over and kissed Lizette on the cheek. She studied him for a short while. “I wouldn’t say your girls,” she said playfully, and then with some measure of thought: “I’m Alfonso’s now. But really,” she said, eyeing herself in the chamber mirror, “I’m no one’s. I am my own.”
The men laughed, and Eduardo edged Papa Tikas toward the door. Before they left the chamber, Lizette’s father turned around. “You belong to me and your mama. You’ll always be ours, mija.”
Luz smiled. She admired the closeness of family, how deeply they loved.
After the men had left, Lizette fanned her face with a printed homily, groaning about the heat causing her eye makeup to run. Luz laughed, imagining Lizette with smeared mascara looking like some enchanted clown. She stood, adjusting her underpants beneath her bridesmaid’s dress, then the lace collar covering her shoulders and chest, and finally the small bonnet affixed to her hair. She glanced at herself in the solemn mirror hanging in the corner.
“Someone get water in here, will ya?” Lizette rattled the homily in her hands. “This heat!” She lifted her arm, revealing sweat marks, and made a face.
“Right away,” Luz said, dutifully. All morning she had run errands for Lizette, waking up at four-thirty to prepare the pig for roasting. She had decorated the Fox Street home with a cedar arch, red and gold ribbons, white streamers like fringe. She had checked with Avel that his mariachi band could play well into the night. She had organized the younger cousins in teams, assigning tasks, finding chairs, filling jars with walnuts, stuffing paper bags with tea candles. The next morning, she was expected to return to the Fox Street home by eight o’clock to help tear down party decorations, but David had said he needed her in the office first thing. Lizette was irritated by this, and if there was one thing Luz knew that her cousin wanted to get right, it was her wedding.
Luz walked the innards of the church, past the old library, near the children’s room, beneath an archway of roses dedicated to La Virgen. When she finally arrived in the church’s kitchen, she filled a tin pitcher with water from the rusty pipes and made her way through the lobby toward the stairwell. She stopped in the doorway of the sanctuary, peering at the few seats already taken by elderly relatives. The altar was set with lilies and lavender drapes, reminding Luz of Easter Mass. Incense curled in the air and somewhere, from a distant pew, a wet cough echoed over wooden floors. Avel was also seated, his hair obediently parted to one side. At the sight of him, Luz felt happiness, a kind of ease. He turned then, and the lovers shared a look of admiration. Luz stuck her left hand into the holy water beside the door and blessed herself.
“Wow. You look…very covered.” It was David. He grinned and held his hat in his hands, dressed finely in a black suit, his cologne mixing with the musk of his skin.
Luz smiled. “It’s the rules, David. You should be used to that, at your churches.”
“If it wasn’t an ordinance of God, I might think that someone was afraid you’d overshadow them.”
Luz held up the pitcher. “I’m on way to deliver water. Do you need help finding your seats? I assume your date hasn’t arrived yet.”
David was quiet for a beat. He licked the edge of his right thumb as if about to turn the page of a book. “Going stag for this one. Most beautiful girls in town are already here.”
“Oh,” said Luz. “Well, please excuse me. Today, I am a servant of the bride.”
* * *
—
Lizette stood in the hallway outside the chamber with several cousins fanning her while Teresita and Maria Josie adjusted her veil.
“Where,” Lizette said to Luz, “were you?”
Luz held up the pitcher and was quickly dismissed.
Teresita let out a yelp. “You have to stand still,” she said to Lizette. “One of your pins got me.”
The women affixed the mantilla to Lizette’s hair, Maria Josie patting her head a little too hard as some kind of joke. What a sight she was. Lizette inhaled, her wedding gown tightening across her chest. She was beautiful, her hair and makeup impeccable, the scent of jasmine drifting from her body. She was joyous—it spilled from her eyes, her smile, her touch on the back of Luz’s hand. The cousins and aunties had gathered around her, as if Lizette were now a mother hen, leading her own flock. One of the madrinas appeared in the hallway, letting the bridal party know it was time to enter the church.
They marched into the sanctuary in pairs. Luz scanned the craned-necked crowd of Westside Mexicanos and Park Lane Filipinos and some Greeks and a few Italians and a full pew of Natalya’s family—how they all whispered and aahed at the sight of the wedding party. The men were dressed in gossamer barongs that Alfonso had special-ordered from California, the women were brilliant in lilac sheaths. Luz had linked arms with the best man, a cousin of Alfonso’s named Remilio from San Francisco. He had a skimpy mustache over shapely lips, a perpetual smile across his fetching face. As she walked the aisle to the altar, Luz remembered flashes of her childhood—she and Lizette dressed in pillowcases and sheets, young girls in the backyard beneath a peach tree, mimicking a groom’s kiss on their small hands. Now Lizette was a real bride, her father’s property to give away. Luz stood with the wedding party, gazing down the long aisle, awaiting her cousin.
Eduardo appeared first and the entire church seemed to watch as one penetrating eye. Then it was Lizette, her face hidden beneath the intricacies of her mantilla, lace dotting her vision, as if she had been fished from the Platte River and placed in a net. Luz stared at her cousin with wonderment. Was she prepared for what was to come? Were she and Alfonso to live in happiness? Would their friendship diminish? But in some horrible way, Luz knew that it already had. Their lives were diverging.