Four generations of family and friends are done up in white powdered wigs, and seventeenth-century Louis the XIV pageantry surrounds the bride and groom in the Parisian Rococo banquet room of the Hilton Hotel. I must admit, if you stop for a second and suspend disbelief—ignore the few invitees in modern-day suits and dresses and the Billie Joe Armstrong lookalike wedding singer—the scene could pass for all the royal avarice in the days before the French Revolution.
Penny is a giant puff pastry in her white lace gown. The bridesmaids were so worried she wouldn’t be able to get around with a five-foot-long train; I mean, her white wig alone is piled so high she has to duck through doorways. But she’s floating with happiness and managing just fine glazed in makeup, diamond drop earrings, and the big fake beauty mark that I drew on her cheek. She’s holding a slice of vanilla cream cake, and by the sly smile on her licorice-red lips, I can tell it’s about to end up on her new husband’s face.
I’m into the whole theme: the gilded Francophile trompe-l’oeil and floral place settings; the shit-faced men in waistcoats with ruffled cuffs, buckled shoes, and tricorne hats. But my corset, which needed the help of two bridesmaids to get into, is cutting—off—my—brea—thing.
I sit down at a far table, against a faux seventeenth-century mural of a couple picnicking in the French countryside. My petticoat smothers the chair as I fight off the room’s stuffiness with a few cool waves of a lace fan. The powdered wig is boiling my head. Sweat drizzles down my temples. Minutes later, a waiter sets down cake, and I pick at it, leaving the sickening sweet frosting to one side. What comes to me as I watch Penny’s two-year-old niece crawl onto the lap of her ninety-three-year-old great-grandmother two tables away is a picture of lineage and tradition—the Family Perfect, a stark contrast with my own.
I picture my dad’s only sibling: the childless mystery uncle in the Kentucky hills who makes his living crafting boutique bourbon, which he sells for resale to brand-name distilleries; and who, on his off time, shoots and skins possums and squirrels for sport. There was a time when Mom was alive—the vacant, lonely months when my dad was on secret missions at sea, long before her cancer or my Olympic dreams—when Mom’s sister, my aunt Brittany, would fly out to San Diego with my cousin Kate, an intellectually disabled thirteen-year-old who wore sparkly shoes, pooped in her pants, and drew me crayon pictures of rainbows and windmills and giraffes. Then she’d slap them in my hand and declare, “I made this for you! It’s pretty!” She’d smile and clap and go on, “It’s pretty! It’s pretty!” I’d tell her they were, mostly to settle her down, then post her pictures in my bedroom to make her feel good, but honestly—and don’t hate me for it—something deep inside me couldn’t wait for her to leave. When she did, my mom closed the door behind them, sighed, and said with heavy eyes, “Be happy with yourself.”
I am, really. I don’t take anything for granted. But there are three things that would make my life complete: Olympic gold, my father’s happiness, and a huge family like Pen’s, but that involves a husband, and right now all of it feels out of reach, as the entire world seems to be racing straight at me.
This sort of brain breezing does me no good, and right in the middle of my pity party, a cute guy in a pink waistcoat, ruffles cascading from his neck—thirtyish, maybe, with a Mexican beer in his hand—plops down a seat away from me and breaks my muse. For a second, I think it’s all hope and possibility.
“Hello, my lady,” he says, clunking his beer bottle on the table, his eyes glassy with alcohol. “I’m Zach.”
“Hi, Zach,” I say, “I’m Mafuri.” I wait through the usual confusion as he tries to decode my name. Without the Franco garb, I imagine he sells sporting goods or manages the waitstaff at a family restaurant.
“Ma-fury?” he asks.
“No, no. Not like fury. Like furry. Ma-furry.”
Still confused, he leans back before the lightbulb goes on.
“Wait. You’re that Olympic surfer chick, right?”
Just then, a drunken scamp swoops by and slaps him on the back, rustling up a cloud of white powder from his wig.
“You!” he says, pointing at Zach as he stumbles across the banquet room, eyes frat-boy drunk. “You!”
Zach snaps his head in the guy’s direction and returns the cry.
“No, you!”
The words downhill fast come to mind as Zach turns to me with the beer bottle to his lips, and utters dick before he takes a sip and decides to make me the center of his attention. Elbows on the table, he leans in, pointing his beer bottle at me, and blinks as if to recapture me in focus.
“Holy shit,” he says, talking through the powder cloud. “Riding that wave took some sack. Sack! You’ve got sack, Ma-furry!”
“I suppose,” I say, following the unapologetic migration of his eyes to my boobs, which are smashed little moon pies that I worked and reworked to make into cleavage and that now feel the tingling discomfort of a glance turned into an outright stare.
As if on cue, the familiar guitar signature from Green Day’s “Time of Our Lives” crackles from the band’s amps and buzzinates across the room. I’m worried Zach’s going to ask me to dance—you know, get in close with his stale beer breath, try to nestle his head in my boobs or something—but just as I’m about to concoct an excuse to get up and vamoose, Nixon is there, standing just beyond Zach’s shoulder, done up like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a royal-blue satin waistcoat and white knee socks, hands waxing on and off to the music. He points at himself and mouths dance? I mouth back OK in an overexaggerated, theatrical way so that Zach will take the hint. He cranes his head around to see Nixon, turns back to me, unfurls his hand as if to present his rival, and says in a faux French accent, “Monsieur awaits!”
“Excuse me,” I say, getting up from the table.
As we make our way to the floor, I grab Nixon’s hand. It’s warm and boyish, and I follow the other mesdames and mesdemoiselles tugging men behind them to the wooden parquet. Penny wanted everyone to feel comfortable with the dance music, so she went old-school and got a Green Day cover band instead of a chamber ensemble. Out on the floor, old people sway sweetly, better times reflected on their faces. Nixon’s several inches taller, all rail and bones; his body, even on the cusp of eighteen, is still searching for a way to properly configure itself into an adult’s, and it shows as he tries to lead me hand-in-hand into a comfortable groove.
“You look awesome tonight,” he says, trying to find a rhythm.
“You, too,” I say. “Your wig looks so cool. I like how you tied off your ponytail with a paisley ribbon when all the other guys used black.”
“I try not to be a follower,” he says, sending me into an awkward spin. It’s a grown-up statement, and I can hear the insecurity in it.
“That makes two of us.”
Soon the music changes into a medley from American Idiot. For me, it’s a struggle to keep up in my giant dress. My usual dance moves are reduced to rodeo style: one hand hiking up the gown, the other above my head. The bell of my petticoat is doing its own stupid thing. Nixon goes for it, unabashed teenage whatever, arms flailing, shoulders rolling, buckled shoes toggling on the parquet floor. It’s not exactly Shakeem Dumar with his slick popping and locking, but it’s Nixon’s own thing, and isn’t that what self-expression is all about?
“You’ve got some moves!” I shout over the music. He seems to take the compliment as a confidence booster and does a three-sixty spin that almost knocks over a grandmotherly type. Nixon grabs her by the arm, steadies her, and apologizes.
“That’s enough for me,” he says, and we head back to the table to sit down. I grab the fan to cool me. Nixon struggles