Wedding Night
by Robin Slick
After the wedding and cheesy reception at my parents’ house featuring Swedish meatballs and Mogen David wine, my close friends and father came back to our new apartment. We drank pitchers of Sangria and smoked a lot of pot and giggled at everything until around 2:00 a.m. when people started filing out the door, giving us hugs and boozy sloppy wet good luck kisses. My brand new husband was so high he went into our brand new bedroom and fell fast asleep, leaving me with the problem of my father and my best friend Shelley, who continued to do the stoner sprawl on the sofa. Well, not continuously, because my father kept leaning forward to adjust the knob on the radio. One day married and already he wouldn’t let me play anything rock and roll in my own apartment– he insisted on listening to the jazz station and that had a low signal and always came in fuzzy. I was glad my husband was asleep. He was a rock and roll drummer and always mixed it up musically with my dad. Sometimes it got ugly.
When he finished fiddling with the radio, my father would collapse back with a thud onto the sofa cushions and I swear, every time he did it he copped a feel from Shelley, who I knew didn’t mind because she was in love with my dad since we were little girls. I mean, my dad was a young, handsome pot smoking musician; her father was an old ugly Republican.
The phone rang around 3:00 a.m. I’d spent a futile hour trying to kick them the hell out and listening to Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Tommy Dorsey ad nauseum. I went into the bedroom to answer it. It was my mother. My husband was still passed out cold.
“I’m sorry to bother you, honey, but I’m really worried. Your father isn’t home yet. Don’t tell me he’s still with you?”
“Yes, he’s with me, Mom. Do something. Please. Make him come home.”
“I can’t believe this. Is he high? Oh god, I should have known. I would have come along to keep him under control but someone needed to stay home and clean up. You poor thing. How bad is he? Don’t let him drive.”
“Don’t let him drive? I have to spend my wedding night with Daddy? Are you serious?”
“What are you talking about? Call him a cab. Put him on the phone!”
I headed for the living room to hand my father the receiver but Daddy and Shelley were making out on my brand new couch. Oh perfect. What a Kodak moment. I somehow managed to keep from gagging out loud and walked backwards into the bedroom instead.
“Mom. I’m calling him a cab now. Everything’s cool.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Night, Mom.”
“Okay, I’m going to bed then. Night.”
Oh hell. I was blind drunk myself and couldn’t even see the numbers on the phone. So I didn’t call a taxi, but stumbled back out to my father and Shelley in sort of the same way you’d stumble out to look at something grotesque and decaying but they were thankfully standing upright and putting on their coats. I leaned up against the wall and watched in silence as they let themselves out.
In the background I could hear my new husband snoring.