Moments Before

Every morning when I wake up---and, let's be honest, several times throughout the day, too---I check two things: the condition of my skin and the weather report. Ideal state of affairs: no blemishes and plenty of sunshine.

The lanterns we hung yesterday in the backyard sway in a slow private dance, bright white against bright blue sky; for now, the ten percent chance of precipitation the Weather Channel has been taunting me with is still somewhere far off down the coast of Mexico. My face stares back at me in the mirror, clear and smooth, a little tired but still bright-eyed, anticipatory. Everything is holding steady. Just hold steady for a few more days. Just hold on.

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Although I spent the weekend in San Francisco making six batches of caramels, we are stil eighty short, which is a whole lot better than the 120 I thought we'd be short, but that's because I've started stiffing people and putting six in each bag instead of seven. Seven in the bag doesn't look any fuller than six in the bag, and the less time I have to spend boiling sugar and cream together, the better.

The day is packed and busy, so it's already ten o'clock at night when my sister and I gather the measuring cups, line the tins with parchment paper, chop up the butter. The pot is bubbling on the stove and I reach for something to stir it with. There are only wooden spoons and I hate wooden spoons, can't stand the feeling of them, so I tear off a piece of paper towel and wrap it around the end, a makeshift padded handle, a barrier between my phobia and me.

I'm stirring, I'm stirring, I'm stirring, and then I turn away for a second and when I turn back, there's a flame a foot high in the air, the butter and cream still bubbling away together merrily while a small inferno rages on around the saucepan. "Fire!" I scream. "Fire! Fire! Fire"!"

Later, my sister and I will laugh about how ineffectual I was, how all I could do was look straight at her and scream "Fire! Fire! Fire!", how it was she who ran to get my dad or the fire extinguisher---whichever she found first---while I stayed in the kitchen, helplessly cupping water in my open hands, throwing it at the pot, and then slipping in the water I'd spilled and landing square on my bum on the kitchen floor, like someone in the kind of romantic comedy you'd only watch on a plane or on a dull Sunday afternoon if it was showing on one of the free movie channels. Then there is my dad, leaping down the stairs two at a time, there are my mother and my aunt, both in their robes, and someone gets it under control, and it's fine, and we go back to making the eighty caramels, the wedding playlist turned down low so we don't wake anyone up, dancing occasionally, a step here, a step there, on the kitchen tile.

"Fire!" my sister will suddenly yell at me for days afterwards, while fixing me with a wide-eyed stare and flapping her hands about uselessly while rooted to the spot. "Fire! Fire! Fire!"

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My mother sends my brother out for walnuts and I come along for the ride, grateful for a break from working on chalk signs in the sweaty heat. We pull the top down on the convertible and cruise along the palm-lined streets, my brother's white-blond head and my dark one side by side, tipped back in the breeze. Luke only passed his test last week, but he is a careful driver, sensible and watchful, better than most people on the road. In the parking lot of Michael's---I am still visiting Michael's, even two days before the wedding; will I ever stop visiting Michael's?---we see a convertible with a vanity license plate that reads I AM JUDI. And then, what do you know, here comes Judi herself, striding towards her car with arms full of Michael's shopping bags. "Do you think she's Judi?" we ask each other. "How are we supposed to know if she's Judi or not? Well, maybe if she had some kind of license plate...."

And then it's back to the house cackling, Luke checking his mirrors dutifully, holding the steering wheel at ten and two. I'm getting married the day after tomorrow, I think, as my baby brother---still a baby! I remember when he was born!---drives me through the winding streets home.

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My best friend arrives from England, the only person I've known since I was seven, and she sits around the table with the rest of us for dinner and it's like a thousand dinners before, except one of us is six months pregnant and the other is two days away from getting married, but otherwise it's gratifying to find out that all remains the same.

My brother arrives from Singapore, carrying with him my mother's diploma from the Masters degree she earned last year but left the country before she could receive, and so we stage a mock graduation ceremony, all of us standing in a line on the landing. "Alison Burns," my brother intones solemnly, and my mother steps out of the hall bathroom and walks towards him to receive the diploma, and we all applaud.

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My dad and Luke want to practice playing the song Sean and I are dancing to for our first dance, so we head outside to the backyard, nine o'clock at night, and the dancefloor isn't laid yet, so the grass is wet and dewy on my bare feet. I twirl around, partnerless for now---Sean is still in San Francisco, will be arriving the following night---trying to imagine doing this on the day itself, how I won't be wearing a sundress and an apron smeared with butter, how tables of people will be watching us, how I'll be married then, finally, at last. The moon is almost full above me, the lanterns sway like globes---like moons themselves----and I dance my step-step-rock-step, arms held out empty in front of me in the humid night air---and I tell myself to remember this, remember it, remember it all.