The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan Page A

which he sang whenever anyone got married. It was cloying and catchy, and it always stayed in her head for days:
Everybody’s getting! Ready for the wedding!
    The worst of the noise sprang from Kate’s own daughter, who had been screaming for fifteen minutes straight. They were due at the ceremony location in ninety minutes and Ava had selected this moment to have the biggest fit of her life. Kate blamed May for giving her Pop-Tarts and, on the way home from the beauty parlor, Chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s with a strawberry shake.
    Now her daughter was writhing on her bedroom floor in just a pair of star-printed underpants, refusing the dress, which was laid out flat on the bed, with the matching shoes on the rug directly below, as if whoever had been wearing the outfit had simply melted away.
    “I don’t want to be the flower girl,” she said through tears.
    “But you’ve been excited about it for weeks,” Kate said. “And you’re going to look so pretty in the dress.”
    “I don’t want to!” Ava screamed. She rubbed her head violently against the carpet. Strands of her braid fanned out around her scalp so that she resembled a tiny Medusa.
    Despite the fact that she was an aunt three times over by the time Ava was born, Kate had been surprised about so many aspects of motherhood, the parts you could learn only by experiencing them for yourself. The hardest of these was the crying, the hysterical sobs. When Ava was an infant, Kate would sometimes cry along with her, even as she tried to calm her down. She was scared the baby would suffocate if she didn’t take a breath, scared of so many things.
    It had gotten easier now that Ava was a fully formed person, with words and the ability to reason. But at the moment, Kate didn’t know what to do. She had never seen her daughter quite so upset.
    The effects of the whiskey she had shared with Toby earlier had worn off, leaving behind a slight headache. She wished she could take a nap.
    Ava lay on her back, kicking her, practically foaming at the mouth. “I won’t be the flower girl! I won’t!”
    Kate’s mother passed by in the hall, dressed in an eggplant skirt suit and heels, a cell phone pressed to her ear. She looked at Kate with the most judgmental eyes, as if Ava were having a tantrum in Mona’s office during a board meeting, instead of in her own room.
    Kate stuck her tongue out, which made Ava pause. “Mama, did you just stick your tongue out at Grandma?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    Kate pulled Ava into her lap before she had a chance to start up again. Her daughter’s cheeks were red and hot from crying, and Kate pressed her cool fingers against them.
    “Lovey, why don’t you want to be the flower girl?”
    Kate imagined she might say something profound:
I don’t like the idea that girls have to wear puffy pink dresses, Mama
. Or
I’ve decided that weddings just aren’t my thing
.
    But Ava sniffled, and said sadly, “Olivia said that’s for babies.”
    “Oh. I see.” a pair of 94togethern
    Kate had the urge to grab her niece, yank her up the stairs, and demand an apology. This was something that she’d never do to a child, though her sister May would, in a second. She took a deep breath, trying to feel calm.
    “Olivia’s just jealous, sweetheart. I think she wanted to be the flower girl.”
    Ava looked suspicious. “She did?”
    “You can do whatever you want tonight, you don’t have to wear the dress. But I know Uncle Jeff was really excited, and if you cancel on him, you might hurt his feelings.”
    She could tell she had her daughter’s attention now. Kate walked to the dresser and pulled out Ava’s favorite overalls. They were made of bright green corduroy, and Ava had torn a hole in the left knee, which Kate had patched over with a swatch of fabric covered in butterflies.
    “You can just wear these if you want,” she said. “What do you think?”
    Ava shook her head. She went to the bed, and picked up her flower girl dress.