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If I ever did fall in love with someone other than Janie’s husband, my wedding would probably be more of a city hall and Best Western affair. Maybe there’d be trays of baked ziti congealing over Sterno candles or desiccated stuffed cod swimming in lumpy cream sauce, but certainly not three separate dessert courses and a ten- piece jazz band.

After we got our nails done, I had to go with Janie to pick out lingerie for the wedding night.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, breathlessly, handing me hangers as she pulled gowns off the rack to take to the dressing room. “Mom wanted to come, but this just isn’t something you do with your mother! And I’ve been dreaming about shopping for my wedding with you since we were like seven at least.” She looked up at me. I thought she might get teary for a second, but then she bounced over to the next rack. “Ooh, we haven’t seen those yet!”

She was so happy. I felt awful about feeling awful.

“Why don’t you start trying these on.” I ushered her into a dressing room. “I’ll scope out the rest and bring over the good ones.”

I grabbed every nightgown in the size-four section in one scoop and fed them to her one at a time over the door. The nightgowns were so tiny. I held one up to myself in front of the mirror. It looked like a doll dress. But then, Janie’s waist was like the size of my thigh. We were cut from very different molds. Next to a normal- size person, I was average-a little on the tall side, and maybe I could stand to lose a few pounds-but next to Janie, I was an Amazon woman. Where she was angled, I was rounded. Where she was diminutive, I was bulky. I had a full seven inches on her five- foot-two frame. And to make it worse, she had this annoying habit of wearing ballet flats all the time. She didn’t feel the need to compensate for her height at all. She liked to emphasize it, like she was basking in the simplicity of her stature and figure. Janie was the type of person who could wear a potato sack and make it look like haute couture. On me, it would look like a potato sack. Plus, it would be way too short, and so tight across my boobs and butt that it would be completely indecent.

There was a brief little span of time when it didn’t bother me much. Janie was built like a twelve-year-old boy, and I was an early bloomer. In high school, most guys who wouldn’t give her a second look would follow me with their tongues wagging. But now, she wasn’t underdeveloped as much as refined. Everything about her was delicate, and everything about me felt overdone. Her hair was the perfect shade of chestnut. Mine was the kind of jet-black that almost looked blue in the wrong light. In the summer, even after hours in the sun, Janie would walk away a little golden, with perfectly pink cheeks. I’d turn a brash bronze instantly. Away from Janie, I felt like a normal person. Sometimes, I even felt beautiful. But next to her, my ears were too big, my nose was too round, my hands were too manly, and I couldn’t help but notice the way my thighs slapped together when I walked. And it was worse now that Peter was giving Janie so much more than a second look.

Janie was partial to a white satin gown with a high neck and a crisscross back, but then I handed her a red satin slip trimmed in black lace.

“Van! This is so un-wedding-y,” she said, trying to cover herself with her arms while I peeked in the dressing room. But she looked incredible and she knew it. With her dark hair piled up on her head in a sloppy bun, and the contrast of the red and black against her pale white skin, she looked regal and a little slutty at the same time. And she gave in, using me as her excuse to be wild.

“I guess you’re not going to stop pestering me until I get it, so I might as well,” she said, sighing and shaking her head like she was annoyed with me, even though she was grinning.

I wondered if there’s a special place in hell for jealous bridesmaids.

I was singing “Rock and Roll Band” at the top of my lungs when I got to the Castle on the Hudson, but I stopped singing before I pulled up to the front door. I turned the stereo off and gave Normy’s keys to the valet. I lugged the brown cardboard box out of the backseat. No one offered to help me with the box as I walked through the lobby to the elevator. My heels clicked on the marble and one of the orange gloves fell out of my purse. A bellhop rushed over frantically to hand it back to me. The concierge gave me a dirty look. I must have looked like a cheap hooker in my bright orange satin and fake fur. I couldn’t get to the elevator fast enough.

When I got to the room, I pulled the box apart quickly. I didn’t want to drag it out any longer than I had to. There was a big box of red rose petals, vanilla-scented votive candles in crystal holders, a book of matches, and a satin JUST MARRIED banner.

I threw big handfuls of rose petals on the bed, the floor, and the armchair, and tied the banner to the end posts of the bed. Peter could have had the concierge do this.

I couldn’t decide if I was supposed to light the candles. It was probably the point of having someone come get the room ready: so Peter could carry Janie over the threshold into a perfect, candlelit room. But I didn’t think burning down their honeymoon suite was the way to go, so I arranged them in a circle on the dresser and left the matches next to them.

In the bottom of the box was a white satin nightgown with a strappy crisscross back. I pulled the tags off and laid it out on the bed. I went into the bathroom and found Janie’s red slip hanging on a padded hanger. I took it down and tucked it in the bottom of her suitcase.

I
’d ridden in the limo with Janie on the way to the church, so my car was still at the Castle. It was the only economy car in the lot. The valet handed me my keys and rushed off before I could even say thank you. He gave me a better reception when I showed up in Norman’s car, but then, on top of being four times more expensive than mine, Norman’s car didn’t smell like stale French fries and old coffee.

I took a long time driving back. I really had intended to be there for the end of the reception, but I took back roads instead of the parkway. I drove by the high school where three new buildings had sprung up since I graduated.

Past the high school was the dead- end road where Kevin Ritter and I used to park. When we were in high school, developers cleared the road to build houses there. On warm nights, we would get out of the car and explore the house skeletons. Now, they were real houses with mailboxes and brass knockers on the doors. I drove slowly past the house that had
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painted on the mailbox in curly numbers with reflective paint. The blue light of a TV flickered in the living room.

I wanted to drive up the driveway, rap the brass knocker on the red front door, and tell the family inside, “The first time I had sex was on your living room floor.” I pictured a horrified woman in pearls covering her little boy’s ears while her husband slammed the door in my face. I turned my car around in the cul-de-sac and kept driving.

I drove to Gedney Park, where my mom and I used to go with fold-up beach chairs and a canvas bag full of romance novels to sit by the pond and “get away.” I parked in the lot and walked around the man- made pond, my heels sinking in the not-quite- frozen ground, until I found our spot-the place where the land curved into the kidney-shaped pond. It was a few yards away from the pavilion we pretended was our house.

Diane could never understand why we wouldn’t rather lounge by the pool. But when we lounged by the Driscolls’ pool, my mom was still working. Even if she was supposed to be off duty, something always came up. Gedney Park was away from all things Driscoll, and that felt good. It felt so good that we didn’t care if we looked silly in our baseball hats, cut-off sweatpants, and dollar store flip-flops. We sat by the pond, throwing stale cereal to the ducks, while we questioned who had already read which book before we settled in.

My mom always read a few chapters and then turned to me to say, “So what’s new, kiddo?” She’d sit sideways, hook her feet around the legs of my chair, and listen like I was the only person in the world.

At home, my mom was always on edge. Anything I tried to tell her could be interrupted by the cook quitting again, or the gardener planting the wrong kind of roses, or Janie calling to say she needed a ride home from a friend’s house; but at Gedney Park, there was no phone, no cook, no Janie. She was all mine, and I didn’t have to share her with anyone.

When we first started going to the park, I told her things like how Karen’s mom was letting her get highlights, and that Missy Gribaldi’s parents bought her a horse for getting straight As. The last time we were there, we talked about Peter. It was late summer, right before the beginning of my last year of college. It wasn’t sunny or particularly warm. It was threatening to rain, but my mom insisted we go.

“It’s our last chance before you go back to school,” she said. “I have to help Janie pack tomorrow.”

So we loaded up the tote bag with books and hauled the beach chairs out to our spot. My mom didn’t even bother with the pretense of picking a book. She planted her feet on the side of my chair and dove right in.

“Can we talk about it?” Her voice was soft but not tentative. It was a demand, not a question.

I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her studying my face.

“Talk about what?” I asked, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible.

“Well, what I can’t figure out,” she said, “is what hurts worse.” She tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Pete in love with your best friend, or Janie in love with the man you’ve been worshiping for three years.”

I raised my eyebrows and tried to pull off an “I don’t know what you’re talking about” look, but she didn’t fall for it.

“Come on.”

“I didn’t worship him,” I said. “It’s not like I was some sort of stupid puppy dog or anything.” I wrapped my feet around the bar at the end of my chair. “I’m just not Janie.”

“You look at me,” she said, planting her feet on the ground and resting her elbows on her knees. “Janie is a lot of things, but she’ll never be you.” She grabbed my hand. Her eyes watered up. “You really are something.” She dabbed at her eyes with her index finger, and wiped tears across her cheek into her hair. “It’s short, you know. It’s really short, Van. And you can’t-you can’t let him go. You can’t let him go just because it’s Janie.”

Standing in our spot in the cold, by myself, I realized she must have known then that she was terminal. And I couldn’t help but think that maybe it’s a lot easier to give advice like that when you know you won’t be around to see how it all pans out.

I stared at the water in the orange haze of light pollution creeping up from the city. My toes hurt and my fingers felt stiff. I tried to pull my arms up into the wrap Janie gave me so I could stay for a few minutes longer, but it was just too cold. I made my way back to the car. Step, sink, step, sink.

Back in the car, I turned the heat on full blast, but it hurt more to thaw out than to be cold.

By the time I got back to the reception, it was after midnight. I drove down the dirt road to the Kittle House just in time to see Peter and Janie climbing into the limo, while everyone waved and blew bubbles at them. I parked the car and turned the lights off so they wouldn’t see me when the limo drove past.

Norman wandered up and down the rows of cars. He kept stumbling and steadying himself on the nearest car, setting off alarms as he went. His jacket was off, his shirt was unbuttoned, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. I could see when he walked past my car, hitting the hood with his palm, that he wasn’t wearing an undershirt and his chest was red and hairless. I thought about getting out to tell him where his car was, but then he vomited down the side of a black Mercedes. I started up my car and headed over to the carriage house.

M
y key still fit in the lock, but the doorknob was polished free of all of our scratches. When I opened the door, the rest of the carriage house apartment was like that too. Everything was still there, but it was shinier and arranged like someone had dressed a television set to look like the carriage house. My mom’s worn-out romance novels were out of their beach bag, lined up on their own shelf in the big white built- in bookcase. The floors had been refinished and none of our shoe scuffs were left. The living room rug had either been steam-cleaned by a master, or replaced with the exact same one, only new.