Free In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke Page B

she couldn’t speak. It was as if her mother had cast a spell over her. Jiselle saw that her mother’s hands were holding the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles had gone from white to red, and she was shaking her head in little snaps. Her lips were pursed, but she was also grinding her teeth.
    “I have been keeping my mouth shut about this for the last eighteen years, but didn’t it ever cross your mind? Do you ever remember your father taking an interest in anything about your life except for your friend Ellen?”
    Jiselle put her hand on the door handle, as if she might be able to simply step out of the car.
    “Well? Why do you think he was always so eager to give darling little Ellen a ride home or pick her up for you?”
    Jiselle didn’t move or swallow. She couldn’t.
    “And now my daughter’s about to make the same mistake I made, marrying a man because he’s charming and handsome, without knowing another damn thing about him.”
    Jiselle had to unroll her window despite the air-conditioning in her mother’s car, and still she could hardly breathe. She had to close her eyes. She let the air rushing past her pummel her face like ghosts in boxing gloves. Finally, her mother pulled over, brakes squealing, wheels thumping up against the curb. “Get out,” she said to Jiselle as she jumped out herself, in her salmon-pink suit, and disappeared around the corner of the restaurant.
    When Jiselle finally managed to get out of her mother’s car—carefully, she did not want to risk ripping the hem of her dress even more—and closed the car door, someone behind her called out, “Lady?”
    She turned to look. It was the man from Perfect Party Rentals. “Lady,” he said again, “there’s a problem with your tent.”
    “What?” Jiselle asked, but he’d already stepped past her to the garden. She followed him, holding her dress off the damp pavement with one hand, trying to hold the hastily tied ribbon in her hair with the other.
    The guests were already gathered, murmuring in a blur of colorful clothes. Mark was there. He stepped toward her, and then she saw it—the tent, collapsed onto the buffet table and the folding chairs and the ground. It looked as if a parachute had fallen to the earth with alarming speed, from a great height, directly onto Jiselle’s wedding. Her mother’s arms were crossed, her jaw set. She was standing in the shadows beside Pastor Gillingham, who had changed so much since Jiselle last saw him that she recognized him only by the way his bushy eyebrows, white now, took up so much of the surface of his face. His left arm dangled limply at his side. He looked back at Jiselle and did not register any recognition at all.
    “Jiselle?” Mark said quietly.
    He took her arm, peering into her face. His dark hair glittered with silver in the dusk. He appraised her, taking in the ripped seam, the safety pins, her hair wild around her face, the ribbon slipping out of it. Looking from her to the sky, he said, “If we do this before it starts to thunderstorm, Jiselle, we don’t need a tent.”
    She nodded weakly.
    She looked around.
    Her guests had circled the collapsed tent, and they were smiling apologetically at her. Sam, in his little blue suit, with his long strawberry-blond curls glistening in the hazy sun, had picked up an edge and was looking under it. Camilla, radiant in the yellow satin dress Jiselle had chosen for her, with her long elegant arms shining, brushed her blond hair out of her eyes and smiled. Sara, in a black lace dress, black tights, and black combat boots, stood with her arms crossed, staring at the ground, at her own shadow, it seemed.
    “All is well, sweetheart,” Mark said, cradling her elbow in his palm. “Nothing to worry about.” He motioned with his arm, then, to his children, calling them over, and they gathered behind him—Sam bouncing over, Camilla gliding, Sara shuffling reluctantly behind them.
    “Doesn’t Jiselle look lovely?” Mark asked