Elly informed me that in Poland you couldn’t just leave handfuls of invitations at your parent’s house for them to distribute as they visited people and people visited them. You had to make an appointment and special journey to give out your fancy little invites. Since they knew you were coming the relatives would prepare some vodka, cake and tea. It wasn’t helpful when you were trying to trim down to look good in your wedding photos.
I was so happy that my Mum was taking care of everything in England. I gave her the addresses of my friends and let her design the invites that she wanted.
She did show me prototypes on Skype but I didn’t care. I also knew that as much as she asked for my opinion it was more about confirmation than any artistic input.
Every mother feels that their child’s wedding day is their big day as well. There is no longer the passing of the guard at wedding ceremonies, fathers may walk their daughters down the aisle still but they are no longer giving them away.
Normally Daddy’s little girl will be all grown up and will have given herself away to more than one man before she says I do. Traditions persist against better reason, against evolution and common sense but they give comfort to others so we all partake in them.
The mass choreography of societal life is so delicate that whatever stage of life you’re at you are part of it. It may be that you’re learning or teaching, subverting or converting others. It is all the same and when individuals want affirmation of their lives they turn back to the age old steps and dance the dance of those before. Everybody dances along, some counting out the steps as they go and others free-styling because they haven’t quite mastered it yet.
I didn’t care but I practised my rhumba all the same. I considered Andrew our bond. I didn’t see the purpose of paying for everyone to come together to be bored for an hour so they could have an excuse to drink.
Screw the boring bit and then we can afford more drink at the after party!
I knew that wouldn’t work and I was scared of my Mum. She wanted a party and to get a party you had to have done something. She was from a different generation and had different rules. I would have thought that enough people had ignored their golden bands to render them worthless but even for Elly, whose father was a cheat, those golden rings signified so much more.
I thought we should get tattoos.
That would have been cooler but Elly vetoed it.
I nearly suggested that rings could be removed easier than tattoos but I thought better of it. I actually had a little speech prepared about how a golden ring had never stopped a pair of knickers falling off or a dick finding its way to somewhere it shouldn’t have been. I would have finished by telling Elly that only love and commitment prevented straying but she was very sensitive on the topic and veering away from her strict line meant that you were actually cheating. She was paranoid about it and saw opportunities for me to cheat that I was oblivious too. She noticed women flirting long before I did and her spidey senses usually tingled then she unleashed the beast.
I had planned our Saturday perfectly and we would have been able to hit a lot of houses if we had only spurned a second drink of tea or second slice of cake.
Elly agreed in principle but as we started at her Aunt and Granny’s house we quickly fell behind schedule. The weather was on top of me and I was taking an entire pharmacy for my cold. This meant I wasn’t pushing Elly as aggressively along our timeline, I was in fact silently enjoying the heady mixture of whatever rocket fuel I’d bought. This wasn’t Lemsip or Benecol.
On the way out we stopped by Krueger’s kin to say hello and stroke the flea bags. The fresh air only seemed to worsen my haze and I began to think the goodbye vodka wasn’t mixing so well with one or more of my medications. I really don’t remember much of that meeting and the rest of the day is still a blur that I had to piece together over time and with the recollections of Elly and Kins.
I know that we visited an old lady but we didn’t leave the car as we were surrounded by guard dogs. It was only Elly’s Grandma’s friend anyway. We argued about why we were inviting her. She wasn’t close to Elly and it seemed absurd to me.
“What does she do anyway?” I asked Elly.
“She prepares animals for shows.”
“What kind of shows?”
I thought about it and discounted the likelihood it was for television shows.
“Like they choose the best one.” She replied after a moment’s thought.
“She grooms animals then?”
Ha, I laughed to myself.
“What?” She asked.
“Does she ever do baby goats?” I said setting her up.
“I don’t know, why?” She asked confused.
“Just wondered if I could ask her about grooming kids.”
It seemed much funnier under the influence of dubious medication. We continued on our way and I began to make a mental tally of our guests and our cost. The Polish wedding was a real treat. We as the hosts put on free food, six courses and treats for the tables for in between the official dishes as well as free alcohol. The rule was a bottle of vodka for each guest and then a few bottles of wine for each table. The whole thing was a good excuse for free food and drink.
One of our neighbours in the village invited themselves and their family. I went fucking mental with Elly when she told me.
That happened later.
What happened next that day probably set me up for my later problems. We visited the Uncle who had rubbed his belly at me, the one with the St.Bernard and the whiskey. I partially recall trying to explain my medical predicament then giving in and drinking heavily with my new favourite Uncle.
On my way out I told his daughter, the mother of the little boy, that if she was single one of my friends from England would be happy to look after her. Elly told me that I said that he liked girls with big boobs, it is completely possible but I don’t remember it.
The next journey could have lasted minutes or hours because I was hanging out of the car window like a dog. It didn’t work and when we arrived at Elly’s friend’s house, my favourite Ken doll was chopping wood in the yard. The meeting didn’t last very long though as upon my entrance I slipped down the stairs and straight into a tray of cakes.
This is where Kins filled in a blank for me because when I went to the bathroom to clean myself up I apparently called him and told him of my escape attempts. I think I had well and truly lost it at this point. I just remember waking up and feeling great. I had a hole the size of the Tatra mountains in my memory but physically I was great. Elly informed me that I’d been ribbing Ken doll with a load of farmer jokes. Again I wasn’t sure if it was true but some of the stuff sounded like me.
I allegedly said that all farmers were gay because they spent so much time with their hands on cocks and asses, something about bulls charging that either Elly misremembered or wasn’t funny when I said it and I also accused all farmers of being untrustworthy because they are known for spreading shit.
I made myself laugh anyway and it seemed that everyone else took me in good spirits.
That or Poland really does love a drunk.
We spent the next few weekends handing out the invites but nothing as memorable happened. All that did happen was Elly devolved into a whining, self-centred princess. I wasn’t sure if it was pregnancy or just that she had read too many fairytales and expected her English gentleman to take care of her.
Polish women where a paradox in that sense; I remembered seeing a father looking after his daughter during the day and Elly saying how sweet he was. I asked her if that was what she wanted me to be like and she sternly said no, it was the middle of the day and that he should have been at work. It was funny at the time but gender roles were used when it suited her. Then when it was time for cooking or cleaning it was time to talk about the rights of women or our relationship being a partnership.
She had given up worrying about spending my money. As ‘our’ money could be spent on anything she liked. I had gotten a second card made for her so she could get essentials when she needed them but soon she was pestering me about seeing my company accounts. I refused and she accused me of all kinds of things.
I needed to keep that clean and I had hired an accountant so I wouldn’t get into any legal trouble. The last thing I needed was Elly siphoning off funds to pay for gifts for her Mum. She kept telling me how generous her Mum had been and how she needed to pay her back by buying her shit at IKEA.
It’s not generous if you buy her shit too.
It’s even less generous when she won’t get the fuck out of Andrew’s room and encourages you to do fuck all.
Elly had slowly learnt to cook and clean without her Mother but once she had moved in Elly couldn’t even boil the kettle. She began to neglect Krueger, the dog she had adored only weeks before and one day she hadn’t locked the gate and he got out. Unfortunately he had eaten brass balls and thought he’d pick a fight with a gang of dogs.
The police compelled me to go and clean him up from where they’d mauled him. I had to use marigolds as the blood was still fresh. I scooped up intestines and organs then buried him in the garden.
Elly played the grieving widow but she was the one to blame.
As I dug down into the rotten earth, tears streaming down my face I wondered if this was going to be my life. Me cleaning up Elly’s mistakes, her Mother consoling her, probably filling her head with nonsense about men, husbands, fathers and somewhere in there Andrew would have to find his place.
I was reconsidering the teaching even though I had passed my online course easily. Lessons were also easy enough and I could feel myself improving but I missed sales. I don’t know what I thought I could do.
I knew what was coming up though and I was looking forward to going home immensely.
I was looking forward to the time away from Elly.
That didn’t feel right but hell not a lot felt right.
I was at the end of the tornado’s spin.
I hadn’t planned any of this. I had just been hoisted up into the sky, spun around and dumped down in a shit suburb of Warsaw.
There was the European Championships to look forward to a few years down the line but that seemed about it.
Except for Andrew.
He was all I could think about on the flight home.