Chapter One

It began the day my father sliced off his index finger. I was thirteen, and that was the hottest fall of my life. Summer that year had refused to take its own scheduled vacation. As my older brother Jack's October wedding approached, our conversations were mired in talk of the perfect honeymoon locale and multilayered carrot cake options.

I've never put much stock in the saying that all things have a beginning. After all, I can't tell you exactly when I realized that my friends at Laguna Heights didn't read as much as I did. I don't know when I began to like the way my legs looked in a skirt, the smell of gas stations, or the company of my mother. And while I'm unable to locate the inaugural date of my adolescence, I guess, when I think back on it, I started to become a player in my own life on Jack's wedding day.

My brother's reception convinced me that weddings are a tricky business. If they go as planned, some people go home happy, some drunk; the luckiest teeter home both. But like anything that involves planning, there's always the element of surprise, and Jack's big day was no exception. There is no such thing as a pleasant surprise at a wedding.

Jack met Mae on a sunny day in June at Mission Beach. The waves were glassy barrels curling two feet overhead, and she liked the way he carved the surf with his board. A few Mai Tais at Woody's Wharf and a salty kiss later, they were in love --- at least, that's how they told the story at the rehearsal dinner.

In keeping with my family's tendency to avoid normalcy, Jack and Mae had decided early on to get married at the beach, scorning floral arrangements, stained-glass windows, bow ties, and frocked ministers.

"This ceremony isn't progressive, it's preposterous," my Nana Sue began. "I should not have to wear SPF forty at my grandson's wedding." She huffed as she spoke, clutching the peeling paint railing, following my father and me down the earthen stairs toward Woods Cove, a well-hidden beach in Laguna. Nana Sue limped with both legs, but her odd march made her that much more intimidating. Around the weathered banister, a mat of phalecia, lupine, and bright golden poppies wallpapered the hill, swaying in the breeze --- a dazzling backdrop to our steep descent.

"This is the only wedding I've seen where I have a better chance of catching melanoma than the bridal bouquet," she wheezed. My grandmother laughed at her own joke with a gentle sucking of air that exploded into a cackle.

I had been told by most everyone who knew her that Nana Sue was beautiful when she was young --- so beautiful, in fact, that I wondered if her now-cragged face made her bitter when she stared at it in the morning mirror. Whenever I looked at her, I thought of the faded photo perched atop our TV. In it she stood holding my infant father, Hollis, enveloped by a parched Reno desert, her face shaded with the unmistakable softness of youth. Now she looked jagged and cynical in pictures.

Nana Sue always smoked half a pack of Virginia Slims in the morning and drank at least four tumblers of Knob Creek, straight up, by the time she went to bed. The day of Jack's wedding, she wore a collared ivory shirt with tiny anchors across it. Navy slacks hung loosely from a tan belt over the SAS deck shoes that women her age often wear. A visor shielded her face. Her hair was the smooth color of Xerox paper, and her face was a dehydrated version of Hollis's. Still, she was spry for a seventy-four-year-old, and she'd made the five-hour trek in her black '78 Mercedes from her home in Las Vegas without complaint.

When I had finally reached the roped-off section of the beach at the bottom of the cliff, it was half full with guests mingling in bikinis and swim trunks. Some of Jack's friends were bumping a volleyball in a circle, killing time. Old beach chairs were strewn in uneven rows around the seaweed-draped podium. Rainbow-colored paper lanterns swung from poles like airy tetherballs in the coastal breeze. I lagged behind as Hollis and Nana Sue plodded toward the matrimonial sandlot.

"Why, that woman's in a thong!" Nana Sue shouted, looking half amused and half appalled at the procession of scantily clad guests.

"I still can't believe Jack scheduled this thing during game one of the Series," my father grumbled. "The kid grew up bleeding Dodger blue." It was true --- the two things the entire Sweet family watched together were Dodger games and sunsets. I'd been initiated at an early age.

In fact, the Los Angeles Dodgers were as close to a religion as we Sweets had. While other girls were learning to crimp, tease, and braid, I was learning to recognize the topspin of a curveball from our field-level box seats at the stadium. A good portion of my life was spent staring out at nine players in Dodger uniforms. Sometimes my eyes would venture toward the faint lights of LA's urban sprawl outlining the hills of Chavez Ravine. It was understood that Hollis, Jack, and I would be at each home night game. We'd sit side by side, content to spend three hours together fixated on Orel Hershiser's pitch count. During the season before Jack's wedding, Hershiser had wowed us, pitching fifty-nine consecutive scoreless innings to break Don Drysdale's major league record. In between Dodger Dogs and seventh-inning stretches, I had discovered that watching baseball with my father was a way of surreptitiously peering into his past. My father had grown up on legends like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Maury Wills, and he prided himself on his knowledge of even the most obscure Dodger trivia. He talked warmly of hot afternoons watching games with Nana Sue when they'd made the trip from their home in Reno to Los Angeles.

"I just wish the wedding wasn't during the Series, that's all," my father said, tugging my ponytail.