The Wedding

By Jacqueline Pouliot

Nathalie is a world famous dancer who is obsessed with her work. She has successfully avoided involvement with her dysfunctional family and her much married mother. She did not even warn them when Nathalie casually announced to the world she was gay.
However, Nathalie’s mother is walking down the aisle again and, much against her better judgement, Nathalie travels to America to attend the wedding and to see her half-sisters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781471773860

Book preview

The Wedding

THE WEDDING

JACQUELINE POULIOT

Copyright © 2012 Lulu Press

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4717-7386-0

SYNOPSIS

Nathalie is a world famous dancer who is obsessed with her work. She has successfully avoided involvement with her dysfunctional family and her much married mother. She did not even warn them when Nathalie casually announced to the world she was gay.

However, Nathalie’s mother is walking down the aisle again and, much against her better judgement, Nathalie travels to America to attend the wedding and to see her half-sisters.

One

As they turned and stepped, I watched the thin women carefully. The girl at the end of the line was one beat behind the music while the girl at the other end of the formation was, perversely, a beat ahead of the music. It was a simple routine and yet they all appeared incapable of moving in time!

Telling myself to relax, that they were not dancers, I waved at the man controlling the playback.

‘Please, stop the music!’ The music track stopped immediately and the area was silent.

I heard a mobile ring behind me but I ignored its strident tone.

‘You are behind the beat,’ I said in French to the slow woman. ‘You will need to move faster.’

She nodded and practised turning again.

‘You are too fast,’ I said to the woman at the other end but, this time, in Italian as she was from Milano.

‘Nathalie!’

I turned to Laetitia, my assistant, who had her hand over the mobile to block our conversation. ‘It is your half-sister,’ Laetitia said in French.

‘Which one? Anglais or Américain?’ I asked and, not waiting for the answer, turned back to the line of women who were waiting expectantly for me to say something. ‘You are all very good…’ I lied, ‘…but we need to work a little more.’

I spoke in French as most of the girls could make do in French. The audience, thankfully, would be focused on the clothes and anything out of the ordinary the models did was a bonus. 

‘Practice those steps and tomorrow we will have the full rehearsal, yes?’

I applauded them graciously; they all smiled and rushed away, already checking their mobiles while others were lighting cigarettes, expressions of relief on their thin faces  as if they had just worked a eight hour shift in an automobile plant! Thankfully, we had another four weeks.

Laetitia moved to me and whispered, ‘It is the English sister, I think.’

‘Rosemary?’

‘She did not give her name. Do I ask her?’

‘Non. Give me the phone.’

I walked to the side of the runway and said, ‘Hello?’

‘There is an H in hello, you know,’ the cool, very English voice on the mobile said.

‘Every time I speak with you, it is like being in school.’ I said, switching to English.

‘Sorry. Who was that who answered your phone?’ Rosemary asked in her rich upper class tones.

‘Laetitia, my assistant,’ I said.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. She has just resigned,’ I sighed.

Rose ignored that and asked, ‘She sounded different from when I last spoke to your assistant.’

‘You do not call often. You probably spoke to Simone. She moved to New York with her lover a year ago.’

‘Probably. Do you lose assistants regularly?’

‘Can we speak of other things? Why did you call?’’

Rosemary and I were always polite to each other but nothing deeper than that. She was four years older than I was and the product of my mother’s first marriage. I was the child of my mother’s second marriage and by the time I came along, Rosemary was in boarding school in England or living with her aunt.

My other half-sister was Holly, six years younger than I was and the result of my mother’s fourth marriage as her third marriage wasn’t long enough for my mother to fall pregnant.  Perhaps that was the reason she moved on so quickly.

Holly was now a bras American teenage brat who, unlike Rosemary and myself, had never seen the inside of a boarding school.

Mother did not fall pregnant during her fifth marriage which ended two years ago. That marriage, however, brought the step-children into our large and completely dysfunctional family.

‘Nathalie, I have heard you have not replied to the invitation.’

‘What invitation? I said innocently.

‘You know very well,’ Rosemary said icily. ‘The wedding! Mother’s wedding!’

‘God, is she really going through it again?’

‘You know she is! Why haven’t you replied?’

‘I thought the relationship would fail before the wedding…’

‘You are an evil person, Nathalie! How could you think that?’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ I laughed. ‘I thought you English were always calm and collected…’

‘You forget our mother is French.’

‘Suisse, actually,’ I corrected.

‘I know,…’ Rosemary sniffed, ‘…but French sounds better than Swiss.’

‘Does it?’

Even though Rosemary and I shared the same mother, there was the gulf of nations between us.

‘It does on this side of the English Channel. Will you reply? Our mother is annoyed.’

When Rosemary said Our Mother it had vaguely religious tones.

‘Have you met him?’

It was Rosemary’s turn to be innocent. ‘Who?’

‘The new husband! The new stepfather!’

‘Yes, I’ve met him. She brought him to London to meet me.’

‘It seems you are the chosen one, Rosemary,’ I laughed. ‘Lucky you!’

‘Only because you made that silly announcement in that interview,’ Rosemary muttered. ‘Mother hasn’t forgiven you…’

‘Forgiven me?’ I said incredulously. ‘For being gay?’

‘Of course not!’ Rosemary said crossly. ‘Even our mother realises that some people in the world are gay.’

‘But not her daughter, yes?’

‘Honestly, Nathalie, I don’t think she cares. She didn’t like the world, as our mother said, to know before she did! You should have told her first.  As for you being gay, she told me it explains a lot of your past behaviour.’

‘Oh, I see. You discussed me with her?’

‘She brought it up,’ Rosemary said uncomfortably.

‘Was the new stepfather there?’

‘Yes, he was and his name is Stephen.’

‘He’s English?’

‘American. You knew that!’ she accused.

‘No, I really did not! She still has a thing for marrying English, eh?’

‘I don’t think Americans consider themselves to be