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Show Wrack Line My mother wore black to my wedding, a choice that proved provident as the divorce would take place three-and-a-half years later, but one that, at the time, I found horrifying. Her hat was black, as well, with a brim so broad that it extended past her shoulders, helping to keep the Hawaiian sun at bay. Dressed for a funeral but elegant all the same, she managed to conceal with makeup the gash across her eye, a result of a box that had fallen off a shelf and hit her in the face the day before. Her wound would not show in the pictures taken by the military photographer hired by my father, but I would always know she spent my wedding day in pain. Neither of my parents was pleased. She was not the only one in my family who spent my wedding day broken. Bryan's body also bore scars, another brush with fire, though here I cannot blame Pele but instead must consider the various manifestations of an anger handed down. Two months before I walked down the aisle wearing a dress with a train that unfurled like a fairy tale, Bryan blew himself up with a Drano bomb, leaving a furrow of scars on his face and chest that fissured and cracked like lava cooling near the sea. He and his friend had been making bombs while my parents worked downtown in mirrored buildings that reflected the Hawaiian sky. Small bombs at first, big enough to decapitate a frog but nothing more. Late in the day, boredom set in and the two decided to build a giant bomb inside a Gallo wine jug, the kind with thick green glass and a round handle no bigger than your thumb. The Drano hummed and sizzled inside, foaming and brewing, trapped in the capped jug, and Bryan realized with a start that this bomb was 213 |