She said that Rich’s mother and some of the other women in his family had arrived there safely, and she, Gynnie, was now feeling upset. Rich had a big family, and in his mind it seemed like the arrival of the women was what got you upset. Rich’s mom, her sisters—his four aunts between forty and sixty—many girl cousins who he’d grown up with, played tag and footsie with and watched develop, his two beautiful younger sisters, who he loved, were all already in France. They were a close group and had fallen for the romantic idea of a trip to France as soon as Rich let his mother in on the wedding plan, and began planning their own trip to coincide. The e-mails of the women in his family were filled with endless logistics, ways to dodge frequent-flyer blackouts, how to wear the same outfit over and over, what kind of underpants you could buy in Paris that they didn’t sell in Saks. Fights about who would share a hotel room; fights about how beautiful Rich was as a baby, more beautiful than a girl; anatomical descriptions of hysterectomies; the pets—“If she brings Selma, I bring Fluffy.” They were children, looking for trouble. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he simply put them in touch with Martina, online, and Martina’s Italian, French, Swiss, German, and Spanish aunts, cousins, and nieces joined in, offering ideas to their future in-laws from the States, all using third-grade English so everyone could understand, so that the e-mail traffic became a wonderful if somewhat cryptic source of winery-stinky-cheese-château-barge-tour-lakeside-yoga-nostril-breathing-retreat suggestions. (During World War II, Gynnie’s mom’s family got bombed out of her hometown, a little city near Strasbourg, and when the war ended they spread like airborne diaspora. They hated France and Germany, where they were from. They became antinationalist, anticapitalist missionaries. They became shrinks and painters, trying to make peace. There were no men, for some reason, breathing, in that group. The men of Gynnie’s family were all in the ground.) Very quickly the globe was knit in the plans surrounding their wedding, forming a bond encasing the bridal couple. He didn’t want any more phone calls on satellite time delay from some old frau in broken cuckoo-clock land. They were already interfering with his ability to see Gynnie—they were guaranteed to be in the way when he got married. Before Rich even saw the French château Martina had been rebuilding by hand, alone, with her dead husband’s money—before he stepped across her front yard of Roman ruins in the little Loire valley town of Cravat—eighteen girls and women, soon-to-be in-laws who had dusted off their high school accents across seven languages, were falling in love in their nightgowns. Rich could hear his mother in the background, trying to clear her throat, the excitement in her rising voice. That night, Gynnie had taken a boat ride down the “Lo-arr”—that was how his mother pronounced it—and they were all still dizzy. They’d reveled as they motored into the sunset about what a colossal mistake the men had made by not coming until Friday. Rich would take the last flight out tonight, Wednesday, arrive Thursday at noon. His brother and father and best man had let Rich know (“Faggoty, Euro bullshit”) that the less time they spent in France the better. None of them knew French. They weren’t interested. He didn’t know French either, but he wasn’t afraid. They were afraid, and did what men in Rich’s family did when they didn’t like the odds against them: made fun of it and gave up. They’d be there with his uncles, Howard and Shel, and his cousins, Seth, Daniel, and Charles, by dinnertime on Friday.