See Jane Date (15 page)

Grammy sipped her coffee. “All right, all right, she's seeing someone.” She leaned in close to me, her dark eyes on Karen, who was consulting a legal pad on a clipboard, then returned her gaze to me. “This coffee's too strong. And the bagels are hard. Probably from the supermarket.”

I smiled. I loved when Grammy and Aunt Ina ragged on people I didn't like.

Karen Frieman clapped her hands together. “Okay, girls! Time to get started!”

And I hated when anyone referred to women as “girls.” Especially when women did it.

“It's hard to believe,” Karen said, “but next Saturday is the big day. Dana's bridal shower. Which will be possible thanks to the help of everyone in this room. Let's all take a minute and give ourselves a hand. Come on, everyone, give yourselves a hand.”

Oh God. How cheesy was this? I clapped twice, then a third time when Aunt Ina shot me a you'd-better-watch-it look.

Karen eyed her clipboard. “Our first order of business is to make sure that the final details are covered. At this point, it's all about picking up items and ensuring they arrive here in a timely manner. Let's go down the list and make sure everyone knows what she's responsible for taking care of.”

Two months ago I'd been assigned the enviable task of getting the bridal shower invitations printed. My publishing credentials made me the “perfect person!” to walk into a printer's shop and order one hundred invitations. Of course, the invitations were adorned by tiny Eiffel Towers. Karen had wanted French phrases, too; I'd convinced her that RSVP was enough. The invitations had been sent out four weeks ago. Grammy, who'd taken a calligraphy course, had been responsible for addressing the envelopes; she was also in charge of making the Congratulations banner. Aunt Ina had paid for the invitations and the stamps.

Karen went down her clipboard. There was the French feast, catered by the local French restaurant. There was the French music, which one of Dana's bridesmaids was in charge of since she was the only one of us who'd been to Paris. No one, it seemed, knew anything about French music. We'd all heard of Edith Piaf, but that was about it.

The bridal party had to show up for the shower wearing stupid boat-neck tops with black-and-white horizontal stripes and black or white capris with little black or white Keds. Oh, and if we had a little black or white scarf to tie around our necks, “that would be great!” I didn't. And I wasn't borrowing Eloise's. Aunt Ina was in charge of the Registry; she and Dana had spent three days traipsing around Bloomingdale's, Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma to choose everything a new bride could want for her shower and wedding. Grammy was in charge of noting down who gave what gifts at the shower; one of the bridesmaids had to create the stupid bow hat, a tradition I'd never understood. Every time Dana ripped a bow off a gift, the bridesmaid was to stick the bow onto a paper plate to make a hat that Dana would then cherish forever.
Larry Fishkill's sister, Penny, was in charge of taking official photos of the shower. His mother and grandmother were in charge of catering. The other bridesmaids were responsible for this and that. And Karen was in charge of telling everyone what to do and keeping her ugly little fuzzy dog in the bedroom.

I poured myself another cup of coffee and watched Aunt Ina chat away with Larry Fishkill's mother. For the first time, I realized that my aunt's family was growing. She and my Uncle Charlie were getting a son-in-law, who came complete with relatives of his own. Dana was getting a husband. Someone was joining their family. Someone new. I shivered in the air-conditioned room. I'd never felt separate from the Dreers before. They were mine, my family. But I was just a relative, a granddaughter, a niece, a cousin. I wasn't the main thing, not to anyone. And I was the only Gregg left in the world.

 

A Fancy Affair was owned and operated by a tiny German woman built like a tank. She never smiled and walked around with a yellow tape measure draped around her thick neck.

“Let's line up by size, girls, since that's how the dresses will be kept in order.”

Another woman who liked to call women
girls.

The bridal party surveyed one another. No one moved. Women knew better than to even suggest that another woman was bigger or smaller or even the same size. You just didn't do it.

Ms. Fancy sighed like Aunt Ina and called out our names. We were handed our dresses and told to change into them.

My dress was a bit loose, I was surprised to see. Perhaps I had lost weight in the past month? Ms. Fancy
wrapped the tape measure around my waist, then went down the line, whipping it here and there and writing down measurements in her little pink book.

“In my day, women had twenty-two-inch waists!” she bellowed. “Today, we all eat too much, eh?” She let out a hard burst of laughter.

The eight of us each stood on a circular platform in our peach peau de soie shoes in front of a wall of mirror. We all wore the same peach sleeveless dress with a high neckline and an empire waist. There was something very Audrey Hepburn about the dress. It was utterly simple yet elegant. I still thought the color was weird. Why peach? It wasn't even a color. It was in between pink and orange. Karen, the maid of honor, was in the same dress with a different neckline, showing off her ample cleavage.

Aunt Ina and Larry Fishkill's mother stood smiling on their little perches in the corner. “You all look so beautiful,” Aunt Ina said.

“Just beautiful,” Larry Fishkill's mother agreed.

Ms. Fancy's assistants and seamstresses pinned and tucked and turned us around.

As a few other women let out little shrieks when they were stuck with pins, I was busy being annoyed that Dana had so many friends to make bridesmaids. Granted, out of the eight, one was her cousin and one was her sister-in-law-to-be, but that left six others who were honest-to-goodness good friends. Good-enough friends to stand up for her at her wedding.

I recognized four from Forest Hills, women she'd grown up with. So not only had Dana managed to find true love and book a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, but she'd also managed to hang on to her friends. Again I wondered what my cousin knew about life that I didn't.

Today Dana and Larry were meeting with their pho
tographer, then visiting the florist to confirm their order. Dana had already had her final wedding dress fitting last week. I'd been invited by Aunt Ina, but I'd made some excuse. I wasn't ready to see Dana in her white gown. I doubted I ever would be.

Ms. Fancy announced a five-minute break to stretch. I immediately reached for my purse, planning to escape outside to smoke. And then I remembered. I sat down on my platform and twitched.

“Omigod,” declared bridesmaid Julie. “My waist has gone up an entire inch! I am
so
going on a diet starting tomorrow.”

“Shut up!” sing-songed the other bridesmaid named Julie. “You're a size two!”

Julie number one smiled in the mirror. You'd think the size of her dress would have been enough proof, but no, she needed her friend to remind her and the entire room. The two Julies were from Forest Hills; Dana had known them from grammar school. I remembered my parents' delight in their little niece having two best friends named Julie.

Maid of honor Karen was admiring her cleavage; she still stood on the platform next to me, turning slightly to the left and to the right.

“Um, Karen?” I began, eyeing her in the mirror. “I just wanted to apologize for pulling an attitude the other day, on the phone. I know you're taking on a lot as maid of honor, and—”

“Forget it,” Karen said with a smile. “So tell me about Natasha Nutley! What's she like? It's so cool that you're editing her autobiography.”

Memoirs,
I wanted to correct her. Autobiography always sounded so official to me. And who was Natasha
Nutley to be writing down her life story at age twenty-eight as though she had anything to say to the world?

“She's, um, like you'd expect,” I said, not even sure what I meant. “She's very glamorous.”

“I'm so psyched that she's coming to the wedding. Dana says she has an amazing boyfriend who lives on a houseboat in Santa Barbara. Is that the life or what?”

I smiled, not sure what to say. It was bad enough that the Gnat had encroached upon my life at work and at home. Now she'd managed to become the topic of conversation at my bridesmaid dress fitting.

“So Dana mentioned that you're bringing your new boyfriend to the wedding too,” Karen cooed, checking out her butt in the mirror.” She smiled that
ooh, tell me all about it
smile. “Is it serious?”

“Uh, yeah, it's getting there,” I said. “I don't like to talk about it too much. You know how it is. You can jinx a new relationship by talking too much about it.”

Karen nodded sagely. “I know. I talked so much about my fiancé that it took him almost eleven months to propose. It's a year or forget it.”

A year or forget it. I'd been with Max Reardon for a year, and he hadn't even thought about proposing that we move in together, much less get married. I wondered what it was like to have the luxury of tossing aside a guy because he hadn't proposed after the big year mark.

“So were you and Natasha friends in high school?” one of the Julies asked me. “I remember her. My older brother was a year behind you guys. He was totally in love with her.”

“Him and every other guy,” I muttered. “We weren't friends then.”

“But you are now,” Karen put in. “Dana said she ran into you and Natasha having lunch in a really nice res
taurant in the city. You and your boyfriend are sitting with her and her boyfriend at the wedding, right? I'll bet her boyfriend is an actor too. He's probably
gorgeous.
”

“Natasha is only a professional acquaintance, nothing more,” I snapped. “We're not
friends.
I don't even like her. Don't forget that she's an
actress.
Just because she was on television doesn't mean she's a nice person.”

“Okay,
whatever,
” Karen said, eyeing her friends in the mirror.

“Who is this Natasha, the actress?” Larry Fishkill's mother called from her perch in the corner.

“Only a famous actress who's going to Dana and Larry's wedding,” Aunt Ina explained. “Natasha Nutley. She used to baby-sit Dana for years. She was a raving beauty even back then, a pipsqueak of a girl around twelve, thirteen. Homecoming queen, prom queen…Jane,” Aunt Ina called to me, “didn't Natasha win some local beauty pageant, too?”

According to the outline of her memoir, she'd won two local beauty pageants and was third runner-up for Teen Dream New York. But I'd known that then. I'd read all about it in the Forest Hills High newspaper, which covered every little and big thing the Gnat had done.

“She became an actress, commercials and one of the hospital dramas,” Aunt Ina continued. “I can't watch those—all the blood and guts, ugh. Jane, which was the program?”

“She was on two of them,” I said, stepping back onto my platform. “She had bit parts for a couple of days on each one.”

“Oh, so that's why no one knows who she had the affair with,” the other Julie said. “Because she was on two different shows.”

“Right,” I said. “She had bit parts on both.” I emphasized the
bit parts.

“I saw her on Sally Jessy Raphael last winter,” Aunt Ina said. “She almost brought me to tears! What that poor girl went through over that actor. I wonder who he is. Do you know, Jane?”

“How would she know?” Larry Fishkill's mother asked. “She said she's not even friends with Natasha.”

“Oh, Jane's her editor,” Aunt Ina announced, pride in her voice. “She's helping Natasha write her autobiography. Jane knows everything about her.”

All eyes swung to me. “I don't really,” I said. “Just what she chooses to reveal in her manuscript. I swear I don't know who The Actor is.”

I didn't. But I had an idea. It was almost too unbelievable to conceive. He was too stunning, too movie star. Too
everything
to have had a relationship with the Gnat, even for seven weeks. What was so special about a two-bit actress like Natasha Nutley when he could have had any woman in the world he wanted?

That was the only answer I wanted. The only answer I'd ever wanted. It was about her looks, yes, but it couldn't be just that. There was something else the Gnat had.
What? What
was it?

“Break time is over, girls!” Ms. Fancy announced. “Step back on your stools, please.”

“Did you know that one of your hips is higher than the other?” the seamstress asked me in a totally conversational tone.

The bridesmaid to my left eyed me in the mirror, then her gaze dropped to my hips.

“I didn't,” I said. “I never knew that. But I'm glad you told me.”

The seamstress had the decency to look embarrassed. She ducked her head back down and continued pinning.