Love and Other Foreign Words (18 page)

We congregate this morning at Millicente's, a small bridal salon that takes customers by appointment only, and are offered croissants, orange juice, tea, and coffee in the cream-colored living room before being taken into the cream-colored fitting room where the alterations take place.

Millicente is Mrs. Millicente DeGraf, a French émigré with a round accent, sun-damaged skin, and hair the color of straw, expertly brushed off her face and flipped up at the shoulders. Married for the third time, she liked telling us this morning that her first husband was a boy; her second a mistake; and her third the great love of her life.

“
Pourquoi?
” I ask.

“
Mon coeur,
” she says. “
Il est à mon couer. San lui, une partie de moi est allée
.”

Why?

My heart. He is in my heart. Without him, a part of me is gone.

“Josie,” Madison Orr says as warmly as she'd speak a puppy's name. She turns to my mother and Maggie, right there next to me, and says, “Listen to her. She's speaking
French
.”

“You should hear me cipher,” I say.

“Isn't she great? Don't you just love her?” Madison asks Mother and Maggie.

“I do,” Mother says as Maggie shoots me a quick smile.

Madison looks more like Kate than I do, and always has. This resemblance, no doubt, is what has led her to the erroneous conclusion that I am as much her little sister as Kate's. And it is what persuades her to hug me now and kiss my cheek and turn back to Mother and Maggie to practically sing, “Love her.”

We bridesmaids stand, in our elegant if ill-fitting gowns, stealing glances at our reflections but not daring yet to pose on the carpeted stage rising in front of the three-way mirror in the center of the room. We agree Kate should be the first. She, the progenitress of the Grand Entrance, has chosen to slip into her wedding dress in the living room and join us only after we've changed.

“Okay, ready?” she calls.

Madison quickly surveys us and catches me tugging at the bust of my dress to keep it up.

“Josie, are you—?” she begins, but turns to Mother. “Is Josie ready?”

“She is,” Mother and I say in unison, which earns me a semi-reproachful glance, ameliorated by a hint of my mother's everlastingly patient smile.

“Ready!” Madison calls, and then we wait. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . sigh . . . five.

The door opens, and in walks Kate, slowly, as if the invisible and ill-balanced crown on her head weighs eight pounds. Then, as if on cue, her ladies-in-waiting gasp before their cacophony of compliments ensues, and the words
beautiful
and
stunning
and
gorgeous
reverberate through the room. Even though we've seen Kate in her dress at previous fittings, she elicits this reaction from all of us each time, and I privately seethe that her visage should be wasted on Geoff, who I feel certain has no appreciation whatsoever for invisible crowns.

While the other bridesmaids surround Kate, who basks in their praise and returns it in near equal measure, Millicente DeGraf says to Mother, Maggie, and me, “
Elle fait une belle mariée
.”

“
Pas encore
,
” I say to Mother's wholly disapproving glance and to Millicente's surprisingly polite response.

She merely bows her head toward me as if to say
Very well, then
. Then she claps her hands to get the attention of the room, calls for two seamstresses, orders us where to stand, and runs the rest of the morning in like fashion.

Millicente:
She makes a beautiful bride
.

Moi:
Not yet
.

I am the last bridesmaid to be fitted and receive a quick and concerned
hmm
from the rounder and grayer of the two seamstresses, who directs her eyes at the puckered bodice I still hold to keep from slipping. Even “padded for extreme lift,” I am not sufficiently filling out the top of the dress. The seamstress produces two foam falsies from a shoebox and promptly—“Excuse me?!”—shoves them into my bra.

“Josephine,” Mother cautions me, and before I can protest any more, the things are in place, and the seamstress begins pinching and pinning fabric.

“Oh, geez, how funny,” Madison says to Kate. The two, still in their dresses, stand just behind me a few feet, leaning close together to talk and conspire, or so it seems by their reflections, which I assiduously watch.

“Yeah, she can be funny about stuff like that,” Kate says.

“She was always funny about stuff like that,” Madison confirms, and I feel my ears burn and corroborate their beet-red color with a quick glace at my own reflection.

Maggie and the other bridesmaids carefully slip their dresses off, with Mother's expert help, and begin changing back into their jeans and such. Meanwhile, Kate and Madison continue their confab, critically squinting my way every now and then.

“What about her hair?” Madison asks. “Ponytail? Up-do?”

“I haven't decided,” Kate says.

I
have, I want to say, but don't.

“What about cutting it?” Madison asks. “Have you thought about that? She'd look so cute with bangs.”

I almost protest when Kate says, “No, she'll never do it.” Thank you, Kate. “Plus I just couldn't handle the scene after the one she made about contacts.”

You're the one who threw the fit
. Again—wanted to say. Didn't.

“Contacts?” Madison asks, thrilling wide-eyed to the idea. “Oh, good. I always thought you should do something about her glasses.”

I'm getting really sick of the phrase
do something.

“Done,” Kate says. “I mean, her glasses are cute for every day.”

“Oh, sure, but not a wedding.”

“Well, not my wedding. They'll look ridiculous,” Kate says. “I'm working on getting her ears pierced now. And the padded bra”—she points at my reflected bust—“was the best I could do for her figure.”

“Are you aware that I am three feet away from you and not deaf?” I ask them both as I twist around, furious, and interrupt my seamstress's work.

“Josie, we're just talking,” Kate says.

“About all of my
ridiculous
flaws. I know. I heard.”

“No,” Kate corrects me a bit more harshly than I think I deserved. “About
my
wedding and how
my
bridesmaids, including
my
sister, are going to look so that
no
one
looks ridiculous.”

“Everything okay here?” Mother asks, stepping closer.

“Fine,” Madison says.

“No, it isn't,” I protest. “You're both standing there picking me apart.”

“No, we aren't,” Kate says as Mother walks closer. “We're simply discussing how I want my bridesmaids to look on my wedding day.”

“You didn't criticize any of them,” I say, pointing. And as I talk, my throat starts to throb, and I grow even more irritated that Kate's about to make me cry. Here. In front of everyone.
And
my own reflection. “You didn't say you have to
do
something
about their glasses and their hair and their figures.”

“That's because I don't,” Kate snaps at me.

“Enough,” Mother says, looking deliberately at each one of us.

I turn back around so the seamstress can finish pinning the dress. Kate turns sideways to Madison and says, “I'd like to
do
something about her mouth as well.”

“How about my hearing too?” I snap at her over my shoulder, and Kate whips around to face me and to say, “No, Josie, just your appearance and your mouth.”

And when Mother scolds her with a stern, “Katriane,” I am not remotely soothed. Especially since the only comeback I have is
shut up
in any of a number of useless languages.

But at least as Mother continues to address Kate, neither one of them notices when the seamstress hands me a crumpled tissue from her pocket, which I quickly use to dry my eyes and stash down the front of my dress—naturally, there's still room—before anyone sees.

I spend the remainder of my fitting pretending to find great interest in the tips of my shoes and trying unsuccessfully to ignore the lingering pain in my throat.

Sunday night I have trouble falling asleep. Kate has refused to apologize for what I call insults and she calls wedding planning. She hasn't even acknowledged that her remarks
were
insulting, making me feel doubly miserable as I stand in front of my dresser tonight, leaning close to the mirror and attempting to evaluate the aesthetic difference between glasses on, glasses off.

Until yesterday, I thought no more of my glasses than I did of my shoes. They are something I need and use every day. But tonight, each time I put them on, I hear one word in Kate's voice.
Ridiculous
.

• • •

My mood lightens considerably Monday morning, when I spend all of Sociolinguistics practically channeling Sophie as I privately gush over the perfection of Ethan Glaser. Right down to his gorgeous wire-frame glasses. No one, not even Kate, would presume to tell him he needed to change a single thing about his appearance, no matter the occasion.

By the end of class I am determined to fight for my right to choose my own form of vision correction, but I change my mind during dinner, after Mother informs me my contacts arrived in the mail that day.

“I put them upstairs on your desk,” she says to me.

“Oh, good,” Kate says, sounding both relieved and excited.

It's just the four of us for dinner tonight. Geoff's hanging upside down in some dark old belfry near the river. Or working late. I think Kate said working late.

“Josie, go put them on,” she says. “I am dying to see how you look in them.”

I remove my glasses.

I set them on the table.

I look at Kate.

“I look like this in them,” I say.

She giggles when Dad says, “Excellent.” Then she adds, “Well, after dinner then.”

“Tomorrow,” I say.

“Tomorrow morning,” Kate says.

“Tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow before dinner,” she says.

“After dinner.”

“Josie,” she nearly whines.

“Okay, after the salad but before dessert,” I say.

“Josie,” Kate says, sighing and quitting a game I was enjoying. “Just put them in before dinner tomorrow,” and I concede with, “Fine,” and Kate hijacks the rest of our dinner conversation with topics such as monogrammed stationery, personalized church programs, and the global televising of her vows on NBC. Something like that. I stopped listening when she mentioned inviting the Queen. No,
being
the Queen. I think that's what she said. Or what I
thought
she said.

Monday, October 13

Kate was more fun before she started planning this wedding. (I pause to consider the events that brought her to such a fate.) For which I blame Geoff.

• • •

Tuesday evening she bursts through the back door, practically shouting the rest of the week's schedule to a colleague over the phone. “Sorry,” she mouths to Mother and me before starting up the back stairs.

I am chopping tomatoes for a salad when Kate rushes back down the stairs, saying, “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” into the phone.

“Josie,” she says to me in much the same tone she's been using to her colleague. “Contacts. Dinner. Go.”

I arch my eyebrows in exaggerated displeasure at my mother, who returns, without comment, to whisking oil and vinegar in a large measuring cup.

I take my time. I finish chopping the tomato. Then I set the table. Kate returns to the kitchen, dressed comfortably in jeans and a white top, and before she turns apoplectic at the sight of me in my glasses still, I tell her, “I'm going,” and hurry up the stairs to my bedroom.

There, I combine my two sets of lenses—a clear one in my left eye, and a dark gold-colored one in my right. Technically, the color I ordered at the optometrist's last week is called
warm honey brown,
but it is the color of whole-grain mustard, which I think matches rather well with tonight's dinner of turkey burgers and battle.

Downstairs, I take my place at the kitchen table and promptly lower my eyes for Dad's grace.

Amen
.

Then I stare bug-eyed at Kate as she begins the riveting details of the manifold ways to secure one's veil on one's head for one's Big Incomprehensible Wedding.

“Maggie seems to think the best way is to put a little bit of hair in a ponytail here,” she says, touching the top of her head.

“Uh-huh,” I say too enthusiastically.

“But I don't know. I mean, if it slips, then I look completely stupid, but Maggie says—”

As she continues, Mother passes me the salad, notices immediately, and sighs disapprovingly at me.

“Josephine,” she says quietly.

And not wanting to leave Dad out of the loop, I glance over at him as I pass the bowl, but he sets the thing down, folds his hands in his lap, and simply waits for the inevitable.

“ . . . and I know there's a clip on the veil already, but I was thinking,” Kate says, “that if we ask one of the seamstresses at Millicente's to add a comb, a small comb, I'd be—”

Boom
 . . . goes the shot across Kate's bow.

“A small comb. Go on,” I say.

“Jos— Mother! Josie! Take those out!”

“You wanted to see what I look like in contacts. Here I am.”

“Josie,
er
! Take those out!”

“But then I'll have to wear my glasses,” I say, “and we all know how
ridiculous
you think I look in those.”

“I didn't— You're not—you're not wearing those at my wedding,” she says, pointing across the table at me.

“First you say I have to wear them. Now you say I can't. I really wish you'd make up your mind.”

“You little monster!”

“Josephine, Katriane,” my parents caution almost simultaneously.

“You're the one who wanted me to be
pretty
for your wedding,” I say, startling even myself as I hurl the word
pretty
at her.

“That's not— You can't—you can't wear those!”

“Oh, I think you know very well that I can and that I will.”

“Josie! Oh!”

“Just wait until I get my ears pierced and you see the earrings I've picked out.” I look over at my mother. “They're pigs in bondage.”

“Josie!” Kate slaps the table.

“Kate, settle yourself,” Dad says.

“Settle myself?! She's going to ruin my wedding just like she ruined Maggie's!” she practically screams as she storms up to her bedroom, and I take a bite of turkey burger and privately triumph as Mother calls out, “Katriane.”

Mother puts ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire, breadcrumbs, hot sauce, and lemon juice in these. They don't need whole-grain mustard, but the mustard was a nice flourish, nonetheless.

“She ha i cuh-ing,” I say.

“She had it coming?” my father asks. “Why is that?”

I finish chewing and swallow before I say, “She's been picking at how I look for weeks now.” I turn to Mother. “You heard it.”

“She has been . . . unusually critical,” Mother says. “Kate has very definite ideas about how she wants you to look for her wedding.”

“She's been insulting. And I don't like it. And I don't like it that she hasn't even noticed how hurtful she's been.”

“So,” Dad says, pointing at my eyes, “you did this.”

“I knew the colored pair would come in handy one day.”

“Well, that day is over now. You've had your turn,” he says without the slightest trace of condemnation. “I want you to go apologize to your sister for your part in tonight's contest. Your mother and I will talk to Kate later.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, and on my way past his chair, he stops me by taking my hand and saying, “And when you return to this table, I would like your eyes to be the same color.”

“Okay,” I say, and as I start up the stairs, my mother calls out, “Blue.”

Darn
.

• • •

For the record, I did not ruin Maggie's wedding. She had taken to calling me darling around that time, and I asked her to stop because
darling
is a word grandparents and great-aunts who give you two dollars and mints for your birthday use. Not sisters. Not equals.
Darling
in the language of Family means
cute enough to be observed but not to be taken seriously
.

She ignored my request, even when I wrote a list of eight objections to the word, which she called darling and displayed on her refrigerator. This, coupled with my role as
junior
bridesmaid, vexed me to the point of torment. My job entailed herding a flock of small, sticky flower girls here and there and managing all their hundreds of grubby little hands reaching for every single food and utensil at the rather long buffet. Maggie understood my aversion to all things—and children—gooey, but declined my petition for a different role in the ceremony.

So at her wedding reception, I told all of her new in-laws that I was her daughter from a previous marriage and that, “you understand, we really don't like to talk about my real father, considering all the pending lawsuits.”

I might have mentioned an outstanding warrant.

Or two.

Apparently, some of the in-laws bought it and spread it through the in-law grapevine, ending with Ross' parents, who hazarded a few worried questions the next time their new daughter-in-law came for dinner.

Ross and Maggie laugh about it now, but Maggie sufficiently scolded me at the time, and my penance was writing letters of apology to a handful of those in-laws, who, Maggie later told me, found my notes and the whole situation just darling.

• • •

Kate is not in her bedroom or her bathroom. Or mine.

I grow increasingly irritated as I walk through the upstairs looking for her, but she's not anywhere, which is probably good since I've lost the spirit of repentance.

In my bathroom, I re-organize my lenses. The yellow ones really are bizarre, and I'll save them for Halloween, or for distracting opponents at volleyball games.

As I leave the bathroom, I adjust the newly inserted clear lens a bit with just the tip of my finger, blink twice, inhale, stop breathing and prepare to die—right there—from the sight of my desk drawer, slightly open, which is not how I left it.

Text to Stu and Sophie, 6:42 p.m.

Kate has stolen a deeply personal page from my journal!!!

But before I hit
SEND
, I delete the text with a shaking hand. They would ask about its content, something I would not want to share with anyone but . . . Kate. The Kate I used to know, Kate before there was anything in the world better than her brushing my hair and making up stories about birds and angels, Kate, who I could communicate with by mere looks while she carries on a phone conversation about work. Kate before she became bride-to-be-Kate. Kate before Geoff.

I could almost cry.

Except that there's no time for that—now that the war has begun.