Unexpected news
Seymour’s wedding was about as expected as snow in July. Consequently, it was next to impossible for the whole family to make it to New York in time. The news about the upcoming ceremony found Buddy on a “hospital” bed at “Fort Benning.” A letter from his “sister Boo Boo” stated that Buddy was the chosen one to attend the wedding. “Mother and Daddy” couldn’t “get here from the Coast.” Franny had “the measles, for one thing” and the rest of the family was just busy. Buddy had to interrupt his reading, for his “diaphragm” was “being strapped with adhesive tape” that was supposed to prevent him “from coughing” himself “to pieces.” When “the ordeal was over,” he resumed reading. It became clear - thanks to Boo Boo’s writing style and mild threatening - that no one would ever forgive him if he dared to miss the wedding. This imagery evokes a smile, for it is simply an ironic situation. Buddy is about to spit his lungs out, yet Boo Boo doesn’t even ask him about his well-being. A wedding manages to outweigh everything else.
Hurrying up
As Buddy remembered, “all sit-up coaches on trains in 1942 were only nominally ventilated” and smelled of “orange juice, milk, and rye whiskey.” The poor man spent the night “coughing and reading a copy of Ace Comics” that someone was “kind enough to lend” him. When the train pulled into New York “at ten after two on the afternoon of the wedding,” he was already “coughed out, generally exhausted, perspiring, unpressed,” and his “adhesive tape was itching hellishly.” Unfortunately for him, Buddy didn’t have time to go to the apartment he and Seymour shared, so he left his luggage “in one of those steel boxes at Penn Station” and hurried up to find an empty cab.
The mysterious groom
According to the Matron of Honor, “nobody” met the groom, even she - the bride’s best friend - had never met him. There were “two rehearsals,” and “both times Muriel’s poor father had to take his place.” Seymour was supposed “to get a hop here last Tuesday night in some crazy Army plane,” but it “was snowing something crazy in Colorado, or Arizona.” Then he called Muriel “at insane hour” and asked her to meet him in “the lobby of some horrible hotel” so that they could talk. Then the Matron of Honor “shuddered eloquently.” The whole situation made her “so mad.” This imagery evokes confusion, for no one knows why Seymour misses his wedding, where he is and whether he is okay. On the other hand, the bride’s guests feel disrespected.
