by Gretchen Tessmer

“Aimee, is that you?” Aunt Vernie asks. The poor woman has classic mother-of-the-bride frazzling carved deep into her features. Her wrinkles are showing beneath the make-up. If she stands too close to a light switch, her hair might stand on end. It’s nearly time for her only daughter’s wedding ceremony, and all her last-minute checklists are still woefully incomplete.

Vernie always makes too many checklists. She sets herself up for failure.

Her arms are overflowing with bouquets of roses, sunflowers and baby’s breath for six of Kasey’s seven bridesmaids. The seventh bouquet is sitting in my lap, my fingers lazily picking at the cream-lace ribbons holding the stems together. I’ve picked out some of the baby’s breath and set those white sprays on the little end table just beside me. I know it’s a wedding, but there’s no reason for so much baby’s breath. It’s choking out the flowers.

Vernie’s late and headed down the hotel’s stairwell at a rushed pace. She stops short when she catches sight of Gram and me, hanging out in a cozy lounge area by the 4th floor elevators. She says again, more insistently this time, “Aimee?”

“Yes, we’re here,” I answer, a little reluctantly. Since grabbing breakfast in the café downstairs, I’ve been enjoying a quiet interlude with Gram, feeling a little like maybe I belong at this thing, after all. With a last-minute, phoned-in invite from Vernie, “What? You never got your save-the-date? The post office is so unreliable these days.” I’d spent most of the drive up to Tremblant feeling like the alien cousin three-times-removed.

Guests dressed in pressed suits and fancy gowns, waistcoats and bow ties, sparkly jewels and patent leather heels, have been filtering through the hallway for the better part of an hour, mulling around, all on their way downstairs, to take their seats on the sunny veranda where the string quartet is already plucking out the first notes of Le Cygne and Kasey’s husband-to-be is currently joking around with his groomsmen, laughing with approval as the boys rate the bridesmaids on a scale of one to ten. At least, that’s what they were doing when I went downstairs half an hour ago to give that pack of frat boys a box of boutonnieres.

“Why aren’t you and Grandma downstairs?” Vernie demands, her tone as pinched as her expression, groaning at her own short-sightedness in thinking she had everything under control. She’s a tight wire, ready to snap. “We’re starting in fifteen minutes!”

I shrug innocently and tip my head toward the old woman in the chair beside me. What can I say? At Gram’s insistence, we’re waiting for the Andromeda Man to show up. My Gram is incredibly stubborn, always has been, and won’t be told what to do. Vernie should know this. She was raised by Gram, too.

And it’s not like she’s never heard Gram talk about the Andromeda Man before. Sure, Gram keeps the more absurd references light with everybody else, even Kasey … but not with Vernie and certainly not with me. I take it as a compliment. But not Vernie. At best, she finds Gram’s delusions inconvenient. At worst, she thinks her mother is doing this on purpose, ever trying to sabotage her entire life.

She moved to Montréal when she turned eighteen and hasn’t looked back since. She rolls her eyes whenever her mother starts talking this way, and she blames me for indulging the silly conte de fées, I’m sure.

Because I do. Or at least, I don’t fight Gram on it. Which, to Vernie, is basically the same thing.

“We’ll be down soon, chère, but we can’t expect the Andromeda Man to find his way to your daughter’s wedding alone, n’est-ce pas?” For Vernie’s benefit, Gram tweaks her reasons for waiting on our mysterious and long-awaited guest. She admitted to me earlier that the whole point of getting him here is to ditch this charade completely.

Oh, Gram …

Gram will be 93 next month, but that’s not really an excuse. Her mind’s still as sharp as a needle. And she’s more of a spitfire now than she’s ever been, still claiming the title of family matriarch by a long mile, much to Vernie’s eternal chagrin. But she’s been talking about the Andromeda Man since I was a little girl. I’ve always assumed it’s a mangling of some old Acadian saying that I don’t know or referencing a speck of village somewhere in France, lost in translation. She would refer to him like Santa Claus or St. Christopher, as in “best eat your vegetables, chère, or the Andromeda Man will be disappointed in you” or “remember the Andromeda Man in your prayers.” I thought maybe it was a joke.

But lately, she’s been leaning into it more literally. She’s convinced he’s coming this time. Here, today, beside the 4th floor elevators in this solidly 3-and-1/2 star Marriott Hotel, with all its polyester bedspreads, nylon carpets and sedate, pastel-colored still lifes.

But I love Gram. It was just the two of us for such a long time. She raised me in her little pink cottage in the Laurentians, with maple syrup on blueberry pancakes, jugs of apple cider lining the cellar each fall, and runaway flower gardens rivaling whatever blooms they have in Marché de Vieux-Port. My mother died early. Too early. And I’ve never met my father. I don’t know if he’s dead, too, or just a plain deadbeat.

Gram’s all I have. So, if she wants to sit by the elevators and wait for an elusive Andromeda Man to make some glorious appearance, that’s where we’ll sit.

Anyway, for all her long-suffering sighs, Vernie’s just as delusional, if on a different level. I’ve met Kasey’s groom. Several times now. He’s awful. There’s no question. I’m not just saying that. He’s hit on me twice in the last forty-eight hours and he hasn’t been subtle about it.

Hey, anyone ever tell you that your eyes are like fucking stars?

Yeah, a couple times. I’ve gotten long looks my whole life. And if that’s all he said, without the booze-influenced follow-up asking if I wanted to see his room—“the groom’s room,” he winked—I wouldn’t have been offended. But if this marriage lasts more than three months … well, good for them. I’m not holding my breath.

And I’m not holding so much baby’s breath either … I pull a few more sprigs.

“Maman, come on,” Vernie insists, begs, pleads, gestures with her chin. Her eyes are rolling to high heaven. “Kasey needs us downstairs now.”

Gram shakes her head firmly, and I just stay out of it. Why does Vernie think she’ll get her way in this? Still, I mouth the word “sorry” to Vernie after Gram’s gaze returns to the elevator, as a sort of peace offering. I can sympathize with my aunt. It’s a big day for her, mother-of-the-bride and all that. I get it. If I had any power to sway Gram and get her downstairs, I’d use it, je promets. But I don’t.

Neither of us do, Vernie. So just give it a minute, okay?

Vernie doesn’t buy my apology. She never does. She thinks I’m doing this on purpose. Her glare is icy as she disappears down the stairwell with the bouquets. Here’s hoping the girls downstairs take scissors to those generous sprays of baby’s breath before they head out down the aisle.

“Sometimes, I hate that woman,” Gram mutters as soon as Vernie’s gone. She’s dressed up in grandmother-of-the-bride best, with pearl earrings and a velvet cloche hat that my grandfather bought her in Paris, on his way back from fighting the Nazis. Her gnarled fingers are wrapped in her favorite rosary, counting out its glass beads.

“Gram …,” I chide her, if lightly. I’m seven decades too young to scold her. And I’m in no mood for it anyway, relaxed, my high heels abandoned to the carpet, my feet pulled up under me. Still, I remind her, “She’s your daughter.”

“Véronique’s insufferable,” Gram replies. “Your mother was never that way and neither are you, chère. I don’t know where she gets it. Look at these bridesmaids’ dresses she’s chosen …”

She gestures at the olive-green gown I’m wearing, reaching out to touch the fabric at my shoulder. She scrunches up her wrinkled face, adding solemn lines to the deep creases already there.

“It’s chiffon, Gram. Vernie says it’s classic.”

“She might as well have gone with fishing net. It clashes with your eyes.”

This isn’t Vernie’s fault. My eyes are colored like labradorite—blue, gray, green and violet mixed and tossed together like seas in stormy weather or rainbows bursting into pieces. Or, apparently, like fucking stars. My eyes clash with everything.

As do I, it seems.

Last night, after three grape-flavored vodka martinis, Kasey came over to where I was leaning on the bar, draped her arm around my shoulder as if we’re the kind of cousins who talk more than once every ten years and told me bluntly, “You know that Mom put you in my wedding just to make Grandma happy, right? Grandma said she wouldn’t come otherwise and Mom didn’t want everyone speculating on our family drama.”

She didn’t need to say it. I’m well aware that once Gram is gone, my invites to family functions will cease. Sometimes blood is no thicker than paint thinner.

“Should we head downstairs?” I ask Gram, gently attempting a change of scenery. We’ve been waiting for the Andromeda Man for an hour now. Not surprisingly, no one’s shown up.

“No, my sweet, not yet,” Gram shakes her head firmly. “He’ll be here. I sent for him this time.”

We listen to the calm hum of elevators moving through upper floors. Changing subjects, she wonders, “I thought you were bringing a young man to this thing?”

“Who—Marc?” I laugh, a little dryly. “No, he couldn’t make it. He’s been playing accordion in a post-punk-whatever band this semester and they have a gig tonight that pays in drinks so … yeah, I think I’m breaking up with him.”

“Good,” Gram approves. “Don’t waste your time, mon coeur. The men on Earth aren’t good enough for you. You’re like your mother that way.”

“How’s that?”

“She always loved her Andromeda Man. It was those eyes. Les yeux pleins d’étoiles.”

Les yeux pleins d’étoiles. Star eyes.

“Wait … the Andromeda Man knew my mother?” I smirk, amused at this newest twist in an old, old story.

“Bien sûr,” Gram replies, patiently. “If your mother didn’t know your father, chèrie, how would you be here?”

I blanch a little, only because she seems so serious. And we never talk about my father. Not ever. I don’t even know his name. He’s as foreign to me as …

At that moment, the elevator bell dings and the doors open with a shudder.

“Oh, Dieu merci,” Gram sighs with relief, crossing herself. A man exits the elevator—tall, middle-aged, his black hair streaked with liberal amounts of gray. He could be anyone.

“Hello, Yvette,” he greets my grandmother at once, without hesitation, reaching down and squeezing her palm gently. She beckons him down with her other hand, those rosary beads still laced between her fingers. He apologizes in an accent that’s hard to place, “Sorry I’m late.”

“You had a long way to come.” She touches his cheek with affection, spilling apologies of her own, “I never meant to keep her from you. That was my mistake, but I couldn’t give up my petite-fille. Not after we lost her mother.”

Gram glances at me. The man, whoever he is, wherever he’s from, looks at me too. I find myself face-to-face with eyes the same strange color as my own—blue, gray, violet and green. The color of storms, seas and stars bursting into pieces.

My father’s eyes.

So, turns out, I was more the half-alien cousin three times removed.

We don’t make it to Kasey’s wedding. Quel dommage, as Gram would say. And I’m sure Aunt Vernie will have plenty to say on the subject too, the next time I see her …which, honestly, might not be for a while.

Gram did mangle one thing in translation—the Andromeda Man hails from much farther away than the galaxy next door.