Free Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) by Yona Zeldis McDonough Page A

worship, pure and simple. She and Portia had always adored Angelica; yes, she was their aunt, but since she was only thirteen years their senior, she really seemed more like some exotic older cousin or even a glamorous sister than anything else.
    Pulling open a drawer, Justine saw a jumble of underwear. She dipped her hand in and pulled out a peach thong, which she looped over her thumb. Well, thongs were hot; why shouldn’t Angelica wear one? More searching revealed a matching bra as well as a ribbed silk tank top with a tiny rosette at the neckline, and a long satin nightgown in the most beautiful shade of chocolate brown. Now, who but Angelica would think to have a brown nightgown? So much more interesting and less predictable than black. Justine held it up, admiring it, before carefully folding it and placing it back inside the drawer.
    When Justine and Portia were little, Angelica would swoop down from college in Cambridge and later from medical school for the weekend, and take them to the kinds of places for which their parents never seemed to have the time or energy. They went downtown to see a collection of amazing, intricately wrought eggs made by this guy named Fabergé. Justine still remembered the gold and the pearls, the jewels and the glossy enameled surfaces. She took them to a place in Soho where they got to make their own paper from recycled rags. They had dim sum in Chinatown, frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, pizza at V&T on 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. They went to Shakespeare in the Park, and rock concerts at outdoor plazas in Midtown. She took them Rollerblading along the Hudson River, to Coney Island, and to a stable out in Queens where they got to ride their horses along the beach. She talked nonstop, asked them a million questions, and really listened to the answers, infected everyone around her with her particular energized glow.
    She and Portia had only to hear the words
Angelica is coming
, and they would break out into what they called their
happy dance
, which consisted of chasing each other around the house in a wild syncopated gait accompanied by lots of whistles and hollering. Their mother, overwhelmed, would go into her bedroom and shut the door until they had worn themselves out.
    Angelica was just beginning her career as a gynecologist and obstetrician. “Women’s health is one of the most pressing concerns of our collective medical future,” she told Justine, who had just sat there, wide-eyed. “And delivering babies—what more joyful work could there be on earth?” She went on to describe the births at which she had assisted: the baby born to a mother with a gunshot wound to her abdomen, or the one who was blue and still, the cord wrapped around the tiny neck, or another so small as to fit in the palm of your hand. And she, Angelica, was part of the miracle that extracted the baby safely from the mother who had been shot, who breathed the air back into the lungs of the baby who was still and blue, who quickly whisked the preemie to the neonatal unit where it would be fed and warmed to have a chance at life, the life that she, Angelica, had helped usher into the world. Who could not love her?
    Justine closed the drawer. She picked up a bottle of perfume—it was from Chanel and had the intriguing name of Cristalle Eau Verte—sniffed and set it back down again. There was a cosmetic bag, partially open, sitting next to the perfume, and although she knew she shouldn’t, Justine peeped inside. Mascara, a trio of eye shadows, several lipsticks, pressed powder in a midnight-blue compact. Even though she kept her own face pure of makeup, all this stuff was perfectly familiar to her: it could have been the property of anyone in her grade at school or even Portia, who had lately taken to wearing goop on her eyelids and something slick and repellent on her lips. Then Justine saw the round blister pack of pills and knew immediately what they were.
    Her heart started beating more