By Abigail Ronck
Outside the red brick of St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Sunset Park on a Saturday afternoon, there’s a vehicle parked curbside that looks like some kind of Chevrolet-inspired hearse—but even more lengthy. Either someone very tall has died, or this truckish-looking thing is some kind of new trend, the occasion for which remains unknown.
Soon enough, the doors to the cathedral open and out pops Jaime, a little boy wearing a gray, three-piece suit that fits perfectly. He’s carrying a ring-bearer’s pillow, which he tosses into the air and lets drop over his backside. The music is joyous. The event? A wedding.
Two little girls with black hair and olive skin, dressed in pavement-length white dresses with ruffles, bound down the steps. The miniature brides carry bouquets, taking Jaime’s lead in tossing them over their shoulders as if toward a crowd of wanting women behind them. They’re children, in pure and fantastic adult play.
Jaime swaggers over to a man in a tuxedo, who is standing against the hearse-hummer-limo-2×4 on steroids, and asks, “When are we gonna drive the car?” Twenty minutes, the man responds politely. Jaime looks up at him, and then counts aloud to 20. “Now?” he asks. He knows full well the difference between time increments, but before the driver can respond, Jaime reaches into his pocket. Apparently he has a cell phone, and it’s ringing. Back up the steps he goes. He can’t be more than six years old. Someone is looking for him.
Minutes later, 30 people file out of the church, cavorting in Spanish, hugging and kissing, bending to the level of their youth counterparts. The bridesmaids wear jade green, synthetic silk; the bride’s hair-sprayed curls cascade down the full, puffed vanilla of her dress.
They take pictures against what comes to be identified as an F-650 Super truck (googling it won’t even do this one justice) rented from the Amex Limousine/SUV Corporation. An elderly woman in shorter heels is hardly taller than half the vehicle’s height, and needs to be hoisted up and in. As do Jaime and the two little girls. The entire wedding party, mingling about, could line up side-by-side and not cover the length of their ride.
A hearse? A dead body? Hardly.
By the time all the attendees and wedding party are inside the vehicle—likely three or even four generations in all—vitality abounds, wind blowing in and out of the windows as it takes off down the street.
Leave a Reply