Wouldn't Miss It for the World

Alice Gilhooley Siren would never have heard of the Starter House had her daughter not been the band's lead singer. She might never have heard of Belize, either, had June not announced one Saturday morning, on a call from New York, that she and her longtime boyfriend and bandmate, Cash, had decided to get married there. Cash had called Alice earlier in the week to ask her permission to propose, and then had made her promise that she'd never tell June he'd done so. He'd never mentioned Belize. "You'reeloping?" Alice was midway through dusting her living room, which hadn't seen a visitor since the last time she'd dusted it. She'd been walking around the house for days practicing sounding surprised when she said things like "How wonderful!" or "Oh, June, that's so exciting!" She hadn't practiced "You're eloping?" "No, Mom," June said, in her usual exasperated tone. "You can come. I mean, everybody's coming. Cash's parents and Abby, if she can get out of school. Billy. Hopefully Lydia. The band. A few others. Or, I mean, we're going toaskthem to. We haven't actually told anyone yet." "I'm the first?" Alice looked at a calendar on the wall, noted that the date was the first of June. Cash could be pretty cute. "You're the first." Alice wasn't sure she believed this. She had never felt first in June's life before. "We're calling Cash's family next," June said. "And I'll call Grandma later, but you can tell her if you want. And I'll call Billy." Billy was June's brother. "Well, that's wonderful." Alice went to get a tissue then. She wasn't crying, but thought she might. "Where did he pop the question?" "Oh, just at home." June wasn't forthcoming with any further details. "Well, isn't that exciting!" Alice concluded. "Belize!" When she rang off, Alice got the stepladder from beside the fridge and brought it into the living room. She opened it near the bookcase, climbed up to the top step, and reached for the atlas in the slot under the globe. She'd been planning on neglecting to dust that top shelf, but that seemed foolish now that she was already up there, Swiffer duster somehow still in hand. Afterward, she settled onto one of her two identical couches (June had never had a kind word for their pink rose pattern) and looked for Belize in the atlas index. It wasn't there, and Alice all but harrumphed before remembering the computer. It still wasn't her first instinct -- to Google. So she trashed the disposable part of the Swiffer duster in the kitchen and then went into the den. A moment later, staring at a map of Central America on the computer monitor, she sunk back in the office chair, and sighed. "Oh, June." Alice, by her own admission, was not a world traveler. She clicked her way to Belize.com, where pictures of blue waters and jungles appeared atop a page of links to other sites. She scanned the screen and clicked on "Getting Married in Belize," feeling a modicum of relief that the link existed, that people had done this before. She found the page that loaded sort of busy and hard to look at and read randomly. "In the jungle or on the beach...." Then her eyes landed on, "Why go on vacation and get married?" Alice desperately wanted to know. She read on. "This concept is not new, it's been happening in Las Vegas for years, and the economics of getting married at a vacation destination make sense for those looking for the small to medium wedding." This wasn't really helping. Alice clicked on the photo gallery, which looked nice enough -- there were pictures of long stretches of beach, of monkeys, of toucans -- but then she clicked on a photo captioned "Belize City Slum." Her throat tightened as the image appeared -- two ramshackle houses, a haphazardly mended fence with posts of varying heights, and yes, there was a palm tree. She couldn't help but think that the people at Belize.com had a thing or two to learn about attracting touriMcCarthy, Tara is the author of 'Wouldn't Miss It for the World ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416503255 and ISBN 1416503250.