I now knew that Molly and Roger, the bride and groom, had lived together for three years, a fact that one gobbler relative was sure contributed to the recent death of the family matriarch. Because of some bachelorette party incident, Molly and her maid of honor weren’t currently speaking, and the father of the groom, who was supposed to be on the wagon, was sneaking martinis in the bathroom. And, oh yeah, the napkins were wrong. All wrong.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I heard Delia saying as I came back into the kitchen for a last round of goat cheese toasts. She was standing by the counter, where she and Monica were getting ready to start preparing the dinner salads, and next to her was the bride, Molly, and her mother.
“They’re not right!” Molly said, her voice high pitched and wavery. She was a pretty girl, plump and blonde, and had spent the entire party, from what I could tell, standing by the bar with a pinched expression while people took turns squeezing her shoulder and making soothing it’s-okay noises. The groom was outside smoking cigars, had been all night. Molly said, “They were supposed to say Molly and Roger, then the date, then underneath that, Forever.”
Delia glanced around her. “I’m sorry, I don’t have one here . . . but don’t they say that? I’m almost positive the one I saw did.”
Molly’s mother took a gulp of the mixed drink in her hand, shaking her head. Kristy pushed back through the door, dumping a bunch of napkins on her tray, then stopped when she saw the confab by the counter.
“What’s going on?” she said. Molly’s mother was staring at the scars, I noticed. When Kristy glanced over at her, she looked away, though, fast. If Kristy noticed or was bothered, it didn’t show. She just put her tray down, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.
“Napkin problems,” I told her now.
Molly choked back a sob. “They don’t say Forever. They say Forever . . .” She trailed off, waving her hand. “With that dot-dot-dot thing.”
“Dot dot dot?” Delia said, confused.
“You know, that thing, the three periods, that you use when you leave something open-ended, unfinished. It’s a—” She paused, scrunching up her face. “You know! That thing!”
“An ellipsis,” I offered, from the across the room.
They all looked at me. I felt my face turn red.
“Ellipsis?” Delia repeated.
“It’s three periods,” I told her, but she still looked confused, so I added, “You use it to make a transition. Also, it’s used to show a thought trailing off. Especially in dialogue. ”
“Wow,” Kristy said from beside me. “Go Macy.”
“Exactly!” Molly said, pointing at me. “It doesn’t say Molly and Roger, Forever. It says Molly and Roger, Forever . . . dot dot dot!” She punctuated these with a jab of her finger. “Like maybe it’s forever, maybe it’s not.”
“Well,” Kristy said under her breath to me, “it is a marriage, isn’t it?”
Molly had pulled out a Kleenex from somewhere and was dabbing her face, taking little sobby breaths. “You know,” I said to her, trying to help, “I don’t think anyone would think that an ellipsis represents doubt or anything. I think it’s more, you know, hinting at the future. What lies ahead.”
Molly blinked at me, her face flushed. Then she burst into tears.
“Oh, man,” Kristy said.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not about the forever,” her mother told me, sliding her arm over her daughter’s shoulders.
“It’s all about the forever!” Molly wailed. But then her mother was steering her out of the kitchen, murmuring to her softly. We watched her go, all of us quiet. I felt completely and totally responsible. Clearly, this had not been the moment to show off my grammar prowess.
Delia wiped a hand over her face, shaking her head. “Good Lord,” she said, once they were out of earshot. She looked at us. “What should we do?”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then Kristy put down her tray. “We should,” she announced, definitively, “make salads. ” She started over to the counter, where she began unstacking plates. Monica pulled the bowl of greens closer, picking up some tongs, and they got to work.
I looked back over at the door, feeling terrible. Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.
“Macy.” I glanced up. Kristy was watching me. She said, “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
And maybe it wasn’t. But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren’t what people wanted to hear.
“All in all,” Delia said three hours later, as we slid the last cart, now loaded down with serving utensils and empty coolers, into the van, “that was not entirely disastrous. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it was half decent.”
“There was that thing with the steaks,” Kristy said, referring to a panicked moment right after we distributed the salads, when Delia realized half the fillets were still in the van and, therefore, ice cold.
“Oh, right. I forgot about that.” Delia sighed. “Well, at least it’s over. Next time, everything will go smoothly. Like a well-oiled machine.”
Even I, as the newbie, knew this was unlikely. All night there’d been one little problem after another, disasters arising, culminating, and then somehow getting solved, all at whiplash speed. I was so used to controlling the unexpected at all costs that I’d felt my stress level rising and falling, reacting constantly. For everyone else, though, this seemed perfectly normal. They honestly seemed to believe that things would just work out. And the weirdest thing was, they did. Somehow. Eventually. Although even when I was standing right there I couldn’t say how.