Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
To Sébastien’s everlasting bemusement, one of my brothers actually wore an American-flag tie to this fake wedding. Not a blue tie with a small American flag printed discreetly on it; no, the whole tie was an American flag. This display provoked a second brother into tying an American-flag bandana around his head to make some kind of political point, but I managed to get him to take it off by threatening to have hysterics again.
“And then,” Sébastien said, when recounting the day to his mother, “the judge put us against the wall as if we were about to be shot and read us our rights, every other word of which was ‘God,’ but I guess we have different ideas of a civil ceremony in our country.”
Afterward, everyone decided it would be nice to go out to lunch together, in honor of the occasion. Unfortunately, the day after Christmas in a town with a population under twenty thousand, not much was open, and we ended up in what Sébastien called “some kind of run-down fast-food joint,” but which was a very nice sandwich place really. Okay, so the murals on the walls hadn’t been finished in five years, and the unmatched wobbly tables and chairs had come from garbage dumps. It still had the best sandwiches in town, although none of the waiters knew how to pronounce the focaccia they used in them. While waiting for his wedding dinner of pot roast on a bun, Sébastien drew out and examined the plastic bag presented to us by the judge’s assistant and filled with what the assistant had described as wedding gifts.
He held up one after the other in a deeply puzzled fashion. A small package of Folgers coffee. Paper napkins. Anti-aging cream. “You know, in France, we don’t give anything remotely like this to people on their weddings.”
“That’s because it’s not the real wedding,” I said. I was getting tired of explaining the difference between a legal wedding and a real one to everyone I knew. People seemed remarkably dense on the subject. “The real wedding is in July, in a church.”
Sébastien put his chin on his hand and sighed. “Are you telling me we don’t even agree on when we’re married?”
“Oh, that’s not cultural; that’s just her. We think you’re married,” my brother Stefan reassured him. “Don’t we, Larry?”
“Of course,” the second to the oldest of my brothers said. David wasn’t there, which was why he and Stefan got a chance to talk. “We’re delighted to welcome another man into the family. You about all done there, Seb? Because we’ve got to dig up that septic tank before it freezes tonight.”