Demonology by Rick Moody Read Free Book Online Page A

Sis, and you had now been gone just over one year. I had passed through the anniversary trembling, in front
     of the television, watching the Home Shopping Network, impulsively pricing cubic zirconium rings, as though one of these would
     have been the ring you might have worn at your ceremony. You were a fine sister, but you changed your mind all the time, and
     I had no idea if these things I’d attributed to you in the last year were features of the
you
I once knew, or whether, in death, you had become the property of your mourners, so that we made of you a puppet.
    On the anniversary, I watched a videotape of your bridal shower, and Mom was there, and she looked really proud, and Dad drifted
     into the center of the frame at one point, and mumbled a strange
harrumph
that had to do with interloping at an assembly of such beautiful women (I was allowed on the scene only to do the videotaping),
     and you were very pleased as you opened your gifts. At one point you leaned over to Mom, and stage-whispered —so that even
     I could hear —
that your car was a real lemon and that you had to take it to the shop and you didn’t have time and it was a total hassle
     and did she think that I would lend you the Sable without giving you a hard time?
My Sable, my car. Sure. If I had to do it again, I would never have given you a hard time even once.
    The vows at the Mansion on the Hill seemed to be the part of the ceremony where most of the tinkering took place. I think
     if Glenda had been able to find a way to charge a premium on vow alteration, we could have found a reallyexcellent revenue stream at the Mansion on the Hill. If the sweet instant of commitment is so universal, why does it seem
     to have so many different articulations? People used all sorts of things in their vows. Conchita Bosworth used the songs of
     Dan Fogelberg when it came to the exchange of rings; a futon-store owner from Queensbury, Reggie West, managed to work in
     material from a number of sitcoms. After a while, you’d heard it all, the rhetoric of desire, the incantation of commitment
     rendered as awkwardly as possible; you heard the purple metaphors, the hackneyed lines, until it was all like legal language,
     as in any business transaction.
    It was the language of Brice McCann’s vows that brought this story to its conclusion. I arrived at the wedding late. I took
     a cab across the Hudson, from the hill in Troy where I lived in my convenience apartment. What trees there were in the system
     of pavement cloverleafs where Route Seven met the interstate were bare, disconsolate. The road was full of potholes. The lanes
     choked with old, shuddering sedans. The parking valets at the Mansion, a group of pot-smoking teens who seemed to enjoy creating
     a facsimile of politeness that involved both effrontery and subservience, opened the door of the cab for me and greeted me
     according to their standard line,
Where’s the party?
The parking lot was full. We had seven weddings going on at once. Everyone was working. Glenda was working, Linda was working,
     Dorcas was working. All my teammates were working, sprinting from suite to suite, micromanaging. The whole of the Capital
     Region must have been at the Mansion that Saturday to witness the blossoming of families, Sis, or, in the case of Brice’s
     wedding, to witness the way in which a vow of faithfulnessless than a year old, a promise of the future, can be traded in so quickly; how marriage is just a shrink-wrapped sale item,
     mass-produced in bulk. You can pick one up anywhere these days, at a mall, on layaway. If it doesn’t fit, exchange it.
    I walked the main hallway slowly, peeking in and out of the various suites. In the Chestnut Suite it was the Polan-skis, poor
     but generous —their daughter Denise intended to have and to hold an Italian fellow, A. L. DiPietro, also completely penniless,
     and the Polanskis were paying for the entire ceremony and rehearsal dinner and inviting the DiPietros