Gifts for the Forlorn

“What is it?” The little girl asked, tugging on her older brother’s sleeve.

Victor Edward Frasier ignored his sister’s badgering and peered more intently in the hotel mirror. He had never worn a suit complete with a jacket, let alone a tuxedo.

Alexandria stood beside him separated by five years, two feet and a few inches, mesmerized by her own reflection in the long mirror in front of them.

“They’re called cuff links Alexa.” Vic responded belatedly. Almost instantly the boy looked down at his white sleeves loosely covering his bony arms, embedded underneath the dark jacket. The silver objects attached gleamed reflexively as he rotated his wrist below the overhead light, playing with the spark of artificial light.

“Am I pretty, Victor?” The three-year-old stepped closer to her own reflection in the Marriot Inn mirror. She took up even less space then than before, obstructing only the view of Vic’s pant legs.

“No, Alexa.” She turned around and frowned at him, pouting. Vic crouched, pretending to dust off his thighs, to meet his sister’s light green gaze. “In that dress you are beautiful.”

She raised her chin to make eye contact and jumped to embrace him as tightly as she could.

“Kids!” Alice Frasier’s call echoed gently from the adjacent room. “Are you ready?”

Vic dropped his sister from his hip as soon as he heard his mother, taking care not to wrinkle his rented suit.

“Victor, come here.” Frederick Frasier startled his son, the booming voice could be taken as intimidating even in the softest whisper. Vic’s heart sunk deep into his belly button. After years of being an orthopedic surgeon had grown his hands larger than his face and frightening the eight-year-old boy approaching him.

“Coming dad.” Vic called back, his tone having lost much of its enthusiasm.

“Here son, let me fix your tie.” Frederick moved past his wife swiftly, not without grazing her shoulder affectionately. The gesture allowed Vic to immediately relax, his father was calm and he had done nothing wrong. The words swirled around his head in a repetitive motion of reassurance. He leaned back and allowed his father to tend to his collar.

In the process, he couldn’t help but notice how tall his mother looked in four-inch heels, white as a cumulous cloud to match her dress. To Victor, she took the form of the guardian angel he knew her to be.

“Ouch.” The Jay Garcia felt like a noose, tightening its grip on Vic’s esophagus, limiting his intake of oxygen. He had only ever used clip-ons for the few Sunday masses he’d been to and hardly ever adhered a jacket to his dress shirt. There was no need for anything more than casual dress and unlike his father, he hadn’t yet mastered the sophisticated art of tie-tying.

“There, Vic.” Frederick grinned while releasing his son, exposing twelve of his front teeth, sparkling an unnatural white and standing stoically upright to resemble his stature. “Now you’re ready to lock and load.” He tapped Vic’s clavicle playfully before he turned around. “Listen,” he said quietly enough for only his son to hear. “I know things have been difficult lately since Ronnie…left us but they will get better. I promise you that.”

Vic didn’t respond but nodded and smiled nervously, without teeth. The smile was made genuine in order to set his mother at ease who had thrown him the concerned green-eyed look he had grown accustomed to in the past five months. It was the kind of look that went without saying, not to mention its implications which Vic had ceased trying to figure out.

He walked over to the hotel door to join Alexa who was in mid-play with the black haired American Girl Doll, Brandy. Vic tapped her on the right arm and appeared at her left side, knowing her giggle before it came and expecting her to exercise the cute expression that brought out the lush green within the boundaries of his sister’s eyelashes. They were less intense than her mothers, weighing less and being light in disposition.

“Alexandria, I’ve never been to a wedding before.” “Me neither.” She didn’t look at him.

He looked over expectantly to the room that held his parents and speaking to no one, wondered what it’d be like. Hopefully different than a funeral, Vic thought, and happier.

Sitting in the middle pew suspected to be made of oak in St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, Vic readjusted his suit jacket for the umpteenth time that day. Fidgeting in the uncomfortable wooden bench he likened to a park back home, he was startled by the abrupt sound of the intriguing instrument above in the choir loft. Vic instinctively spun around to see ten large metal tubes riddled with triangular holes for air and descending in size. In between each set of five was a woman, an elderly lady with glasses performing a balancing act on the bridge of her nose. His Uncle Larry had called her an organist.

Vic passed on the message to Alexa who cupped her ears and grimaced in a late response to the shocking noise. “What was that?” She asked in quiet exclaim. He hushed and encouraged her to play with Brandy, the doll sat haphazardly in her palm, stuck in perpetual nonuse. “It must be starting.” He whispered more to himself than his sister. He craned his neck at the sound of high heels and black buffed shoes that marked the beginning of the procession.

The extravagance of the men and women in black and white dress making their way down the aisle, donned with tulips on their outfits was dimmed by the fuss Alexa was making as Vic struggled to get her to pay attention. For a moment he forgot her as the second set of locked arms revealed his father to be next linked by elbow to another woman, who’s remarkably high heel drowned out the sound of his father’s heavy steps. This woman couldn’t have been his mother. For as long as Vic could remember, his dad’s words were the last heard in a conversation and usually profound enough to end one.

Alice’s unblemished face was one of the last to enter the church, adjoined with her was an unrecognizable man, walking in tune with the organ’s invisible melody. Taking her place at the left side of the priest, to the right of the bridesmaids and closest to the cross behind him. Despite a preconceived bias, his mother looked to him to be the most stunning overall.

From his upright vantage point in the middle, Vic saw his mother’s sister, Tracy Burgy, emerge from the doors hidden by a translucent veil covering the features between her chin and hairline. He could still make out most of the features he knew well, that he had seen on his own mother. Two years behind Alice failed to separate the similarities Tracy’s niece knew from her older sister first. Her father stopped at the foot of the marble and began to part with her arm as the priest gave them a quick nod.

As they did so, Vic’s eyes wandered from the main scene to his mother’s matching set: a soft but deep green allowed a lone tear to escape from her left eyelid. He watched as the droplet ventured down her cheek and hit the gray marble below, exploding silently adjacent to her diagonal heel. It caused his lower body to squirm after he sat down again with Alexa. There, with him, remained an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty. The last time he witnessed any tear from his parents came in the form of weeping or pacified sobs at the foot of a corpse.

Quickly Vic picked up a different feeling as the groom entered and took his place next to his soon-to-be bride, joy. A feeling he dug around for and found while playing catch with Ronnie, his father’s first cousin. His mother certainly wasn’t weeping now; she wouldn’t bother to wipe her cheek if she were nor would she be smiling. In the events that followed, Vic’s eyes then darted below instruments in the loft and the magnificence of the crowd gathered at the head, speaking words one by one that he couldn’t yet comprehend.

He didn’t yet grasp why the men and women, who looked so alike in skin and dress, had to walk so rhythmically and separate at the marble in two uniform lines. Vic didn’t think too long or too hard once he glanced briefly past his side, seeing Alexa’s pupils so dilated, focused intensely on the activities commencing ahead. This gave him a sense of satisfaction that evaporated his ruminations.

Not two hours later, Vic found himself at a fancy decorated table with his rented jacket swung over a chair that was at least a head higher than he. The children that encompassed his table were enthralled with their toys and gadgets, either electronic tablets or action figures and dolls. Vic soon wandered from them, seeing his Aunt and her new husband gave him a distant sense of things. He hardly knew her and Chicago was far from Voix and he had only briefly met her two times before that day. As a result, he could hardly share the sentiment that must’ve been boiling over inside of her at that moment.

Vic strayed from the table giving speeches and clinging glasses low on champagne, laughing boldly until more tears evoked out of comedic hysteria. He found himself gazing at an enormous cake coated in vanilla spiraled frosting, looming above him at a god-like culinary level. Topped with two plastic black and white figures that must’ve represented man and wife. He walked away from the intimidation towards the restrooms of the country club. Soon Victor felt the need for retreat. He hesitated and fought the thought to retrieve fresh air for two reasons.

One being he didn’t wish to concern his parents on such a special occasion. Two, his sister sitting alone at the table back by the dance floor, surrounded by seven other quietly behaved kids but occupied with Brandy. The doll should be enough to keep her interested for a while, he thought. Both reasons weren’t enough to refuse the aching temptation and soon he was starting towards the revolving door that served as both entrance and exit.

Suddenly, without warning, he felt a strange sensation. A tingling beginning where his ears ended and his throat began, making its way down his brain stem and crawling quicker than an impulse. Vic couldn’t put his finger on it, though it became more apparent, the touch of a finger to skin beneath the surface and escalating into a chill. Something was present inside of him and it wasn’t imaginary. He fast walked, nearly ran into the spinning glass door. Vic pushed, leaned nearly all his weight onto his forearm to get through. The stench of stale cigarettes met him followed by the car horns and tire screeches the late night traffic craze generated in the distance. These settled to the background, what was happening to him appeared at the forefront.

The heavy feeling now centered on his chest, sitting above his belly. Vic felt like he did when his father kicked a basketball into his ribs by accident, knocking the wind out from under his lungs to his tongue. But this was longer-lasting, inhibiting his ability to fully take in his surroundings. He was dazed and trembled, stumbling along the wall behind him. Eventually, he sat on the brick at the bottom placing his hands over his head.

“Everything all right kid?” Someone asked. A man dressed in the outline of black and white but more casual than friendly. He came into focus with an unraveled bowtie, unevenly elevated, circumventing his collar. The woman beside him coughed, she was one of the bridesmaids and had removed the cotton sweater they were all made to wear, revealing wonderfully freckled shoulders and a beautifully flowered dress underneath.

“I—,” Vic let out. “I just needed some fresh air.” As he said it, more and more oxygen returned to his body, he could breathe again.

The man nodded in agreeance and proceeded to adhere his lips to a tie-dyed pipe and inhaled while sticking a lit match inside, setting fire to the contents and coughing out a cloud of smoke which carried an unrecognizable aroma. The moment the couple went back inside, Vic felt something else. A voice he didn’t hear but felt graze his insides, sneak up on him and reach every fiber of his being. More of an oscillation that made its way up and then down like a vessel visiting his body, exploring every crack and crevice. Inexplicably, he was helpless to the force that held him down.

VIC. It didn’t scream but as it said his name, his world shuddered. The word alone was too much to bear. It’s power nearly put him face down on the littered cement. His eyes widened until his eyelids were hidden from view and his arms went to his sides, nails dug into the expensive cloth of the unbuttoned vest and exposed dress shirt beneath.

Vic, you were right. A wedding is not a funeral. The words landed softer, slower as time wound on and he could only bear to feel the gravity between the syllables. Its tone was familiar but sounded younger, stronger and all the more inhuman. A part of the voice, he recognized from the past. A hollow image that he couldn’t shake from his mind kept reappearing. There’s no need to be afraid, I’m an old friend.

Vic could almost fully breathe now, his life returning to him. He shook away the recurring wind that crept up his spine, regained his footing and started to stand up. As I was saying, the wedding tears were a sign. A sign of an invisible bond being made that may never break. No one expects you to understand right now. Before his father emerged from inside to find him, Vic saw a glimmer of familiarity. An older adult throwing a weathered baseball gently into his glove, underhanded and predictable just as he preferred to catch. Except this man seemed to replace the old memory, glowing under the setting sun. The refined figure smiled at him before disappearing as fast as it came.

Victor Edward gasped. “Ronnie?” He spoke the name internally and aloud. It wasn’t a question that the voice belonged to him. He fled from the spot with hopes to find the source of the ceaseless reverberation. He exhausted himself circling the shaking plaza. Sitting down where he started, he listened.