The Wedding Revelation

As so often happened when I was young and looking for order in my life, I found myself at my grandparent’s house. Sifting through old photos like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle was soothing. My mother and father had announced their intention to divorce a week previous, when my father had disappeared and my mother had come home with the Mad Micronesian. I was sorting out my feelings by rummaging through an old shoebox full of wedding photos.

Every time I looked at an old photo, I lived the image in my mind, trying to find its context. It was strange. I had once thought I had seen all of my parents’ wedding photos, but this box had been shoved in a dark dusty corner underneath my grandmother’s bed. Had I thought my grandmother capable of deviousness, I would almost have thought she was hiding it.Barely thirteen, I huddled in a corner flipping through photo after photo and wondering where it had all gone wrong. The fact that I could not find my father in any of the pictures only seemed to emphasize the fact that he was now going to be strangely absent from my life. Worse, I kept seeing some gangly red-headed man-child dancing with my mother and had no idea who he was. Further, I saw my grandfather actually smiling. Having never seen such a sight before, I felt like the floor had fallen out beneath me. The confusion was too much. I felt tears brimming in the corner of my eyes.

The door opened suddenly as light fell upon my huddled, sobbing form. “BC, what on earth is wrong with you?” my grandmother asked.

Snot bubbles popped in my nostrils and super-heated tears flowed down my face. I tried to articulate my problems. “My parents are getting divorced… and there’s some crazy island guy at my house… and… and… Grandpa’s smiling in all of these pictures, and I’ve never seen him do that before!” Taking a moment to deposit the stalagmites of nasal leakage hanging from my nose onto my sleeve, I threw the pictures to the ground and screamed, “And there’s some red-headed guy dancing with my mom at her wedding!”

My grandmother looked down at the pictures. “Honey, don’t be upset. This is your mom’s first wedding. You’re looking at the wrong pictures.” She clipped her mouth shut only seconds too late.

I stopped crying at the sudden shock. I leaned forward and said, “What?”

My grandmother cleared her throat, and gently placed the picture back on the floor. “Nothing.” She had forgotten that I didn’t know. “Just put all the pictures back please. I don’t even know where you found these.”

“Did you say my mom’s been married before?” I inhaled sharply through my nose, to try to stop the flow of sinus magma.

“BC, please just pick up these pictures. I’ll make you a sandwich when you’re done.”

“Hold on… was my mom married to the red-headed guy?” I felt like I had discovered an entirely new country full of terrifying and mysterious monsters. If my parents could hide this from me, they could be hiding anything. Hell, I could even be an alien they found in a field.

“Oh come off it, BC! It’s not like you’re father’s never been married before either.”

“Dad’s been married before!” I shouted in shock.

Feeling the need to stand in defense of my mother, my grandmother nodded. “Yes, he was married twice before your mother, so just because she was married one time before him doesn’t mean nearly as much, now does it?”

I felt light-headed. “Wait… Dad’s been married twice before?”

As though I had been punched in the face, it took me a moment to recover. “Dad and mom have been married before. Holy crap!” I bounded to my feet and ran to the kitchen. Rachel was there eating a bowl of ice cream.

“Mom and Dad have been married before!” I yelled. Rachel turned her ice cream bowl vertically and slurped the melted remains.

When she didn’t say anything I announced, “And Dad’s been married twice!”

Rachel snorted at my ignorance. “Well don’t think mom’s some kind of saint because she’s only on her second marriage.” Her tongue cleaved itself into the space between her philtrum and the tip of her nose, licking up chocolate goo.

My jaw dropped. Rachel never failed to deliver when it came to bad news. “What are you talking about?”

Holding up her chubby fist, Rachel pointed to each of her fingers and said a man’s name. “And those are the people Mom’s been having affairs with in just the past five years.”

“Mom’s been having affairs!” I shouted.

“Rachel, watch your mouth!” my grandmother shouted.

I clutched either side of my head as the room spun. My great powers of deductive reasoning brought a sudden terror to me. “Oh my God… oh my God! Am I really even Dad’s kid?”

Rachel shrugged, and then muttered the name of one of my uncles, causing my grandmother to slap her on the backside of her head.

“Now you just watch your mouth, young lady!”

“Well, it’s not like it isn’t true.”

“Oh my God!” I shouted. Anything really was possible. “Grandma, am I an alien?” I asked.

“What, BC?” she looked at me confused. “Of course not. None of this changes who you are, so please just sit down, and I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“Really?” I asked, barely able to understand how I had not been changed.

“Yes, turkey and mustard, your favorite.”

“Wow.”

In less than twenty minutes, I discovered my parents had hidden three marriages between them, that my mother had been having affairs for years, and that I might in fact not be my father’s child. Unable to do anything else, I ate a turkey sandwich and wept.