Clown Shoes, Private Jets, and a Knife Fight at a Wedding

 S.E. Schaible

Two weeks before Christmas in 1983, the basement payphone in my fraternity house rang. I heard a pledge recite the scripted Chi Phi greeting and then remark, “Hello, Mrs. Schaible – let me see if he’s in his room,” prompting me to shuffle down the sticky hallway, beer cups and Domino’s boxes scattered about, the detritus of an impromptu end of semester pub night. “Thank you,” I said, cupping the receiver. “And listen, grab some pledges and let’s get this place spic and span before you guys leave campus.”

“Hi Mom, what’s up? I’m still coming home in the morning. Yeah, I think finals went okay,” I lied, the words floating in a groggy monotone between sips of my vanilla Pepsi from the Marquis snack bar, purchased an hour earlier in my bathrobe and morning breath. Mom had some news. “I wanted to tell you we’re going to be spending Christmas in the Cayman Islands, so if you have your snorkeling gear at school, bring it home with you,” she said. No, we weren’t that family. At the time, my father – after working late every night and missing dinner all of my childhood – was on the precipice of making better money than he’d ever known, but we weren’t a luxury travel family by anyone’s measure.

It turned out that my aunt had wrapped her car around a tree, or a similar single-car accident that would predictably be blamed on a dog running across the street or a defective tire. It was never her fault, and just as we had grown accustomed to her slurred speech at family gatherings, it was never a surprise to see her adorned with facial bandages, an arm cast, or fading purple bruises. Whatever had transpired, the new injuries (or perhaps a quiet two weeks away) would prevent them from enjoying their non-refundable trip. I’m certain my uncle tried to claw back some portion of his costs, “Come on, Charlie, you should at least cover the airfare,” but my mother very likely reminded my father that we already had plans for a quiet holiday with her parents and, no, we’re not paying a couple grand to stay in Dolly Parton’s private condo near 7-mile Beach.

My uncle and my father were nothing alike. He wore bright pastel sport coats and gaudy white loafers and had the magnetism of a carnival weight-guesser; my father wore no such clownery, was reliable and relatable, and had to work that much harder because many customers of the family business would only engage with him. We lived on a quiet, wooded lot in rural New Jersey, whereas my aunt and uncle lived across the street from Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown – the two homes likely in a statistical tie in terms of which McMansion had more visits from the police over on Shitshow Street.

In the few years since we moved, my mother became very friendly with the family that ran the video rental store in our bucolic village center, next to the pharmacy where my brother Drew worked after school. He made deliveries in a tiny car that he beat on like it was a bachelor weekend rental. Mom had casually mentioned to the video-rental matriarch that we’d unexpectedly inherited a trip to the Caymans over Christmas, and her response surprised us. “Are you kidding me? Our daughter is getting married there on the 27th! You absolutely must come to the wedding!” This gave my mother a serendipitous excuse to embrace this verkakte trip. Instead of being forced to conceal the true reason we were spending Christmas on an island known mainly for private banking and scuba diving, she could now tell the ladies at the salon that we had a holiday wedding to attend. It was the perfect antidote to gossip, eyerolls, and raised eyebrows that the truth would have yielded.

The trip would mark the last time my family – all five of us – would travel together. This was before any major hotels had been constructed; Grand Cayman was a place where people refueled private jets and grabbed conch fritters while they delivered sleek metal briefcases to a Swiss bank, going wheels up in an hour. Or where scuba divers stayed in ramshackle marinas and were rewarded with clear waters and pristine reefs with Lemon Sharks, Great Barracudas, and sinister-looking Moray Eels. Because he was a natural braggart, I can’t vouch for the veracity of my uncle’s claim about Dolly Parton owning our unit, but it was a nice enough place. I took a few dives, and it turned out to be a fun getaway.

The wedding night came, and despite being assured that it was an “island casual” affair, my mother had to beg my Rotary Club father not to wear a tie. Curious if there might be some single women at the festivities, I sported a small gold hoop in my left ear, espadrilles I had seen the European men wearing, and a short-sleeved button-down shirt with epaulettes like Daniel Craig wore in every James Bond movie he made. The sunset service was mercifully brief. The groom, whom I recognized as a crew member from the dive boat, wore a white Cuban shirt and flip-flops. The bride wore a terry sundress that was probably a bikini cover-up from one of the island shops and Candies high-heeled wooden slides. The rum and the beer flowed with abandon. Even by my college standards, these Caymanians knew how to get after it.

Within two hours of the nuptials, the harmony of the outdoor setting changed. Serious

drinkers became seriously impaired, and the happy vibe slipped away with the last spray of color in the western sky. One side of the patio held those of us who knew the bride, mostly New Jersey types sporting sunburns and sipping umbrella drinks; the other side was occupied by the groom’s people, who worked and played hard, uniquely handsome locals with cerulean eyes that glowed against cappuccino skin. The groom’s crew no longer used the trash can for their bottles and glasses; they smashed them right where they stood. Something had clicked, as though the islanders were on a synchronized cycle, triggered by the moon or the tide or, more likely, the collective tipping point of inebriation. All at once, the fights started, and the knives came out.

I was telling someone the story about my morning on the water. The first mate on my boat had smeared fish paste into my hair and instructed me to grab a weight belt and adjust my buoyancy vest to suspend a meter below the surface, where massive Southern Stingrays came out of nowhere and hoovered the stinking treat off my scalp. We heard the bride’s horrified scream and turned to see that the groom had been slashed across his chest, his white shirt now resembling a Japanese flag with a growing circle of crimson. We later heard that one of the groom’s cousins had gazed too lustily at his new wife and had been called out and tossed to the ground, where he grabbed a rum bottle by the neck and smashed it into a jagged weapon and lunged forth. With one hand on his bloody chest, the groom calmly reached down the back of his pants and produced a blade so long it defied logic how it could have been concealed. Clearly, it had been there the entire time, like it was perfectly normal to have a massive knife down your butt crack on your wedding day. In all fairness, I never walk my dogs without a switchblade in my pocket.

Drew quickly turned my parents away from the scene. “Time to go,” he announced, as the party devolved into a bloody brawl. Chairs and tables were flying; dudes were squaring off. I didn’t see any police the week we were there, and perhaps none were called to the scene. We walked back toward the condo, the mayhem fading behind us. For several moments, none of us knew what to say, just strolling along quietly stunned. My mother looked back with her eyebrows raised and said what we were all thinking: “Holy fucking hell!”