Toss the Bride (26 page)

“You to talk of wedding plans, yes?”

Not trusting my voice, I nod. Amina shows me to the casual den. It is a grand room, silk curtains spilling from tall rods and antique furniture reupholstered in eye-catching modern fabrics. Like a room out of a magazine, every fabric complements one another and each accessory has a story to tell.

Mrs. Leland enters the den, grabs my shoulders, and gives me a rough little hug, enveloping me in a cloud of her perfume. She wears a black velour tracksuit and gold jewelry. “Macie, it's so good to see you. I'm glad you could come over!”

I am surprised by this unexpected affection, but I hug her back. “Thanks for having me.”

Mrs. Leland sits in an overstuffed chair with matching ottoman, inviting me to sit as well. “I was just waking up from my beauty nap. I take one each day if I can squeeze it in. Keeps the face young. You might want to try it once you turn thirty.” She sizes up my complexion. “Or maybe a little sooner, dear.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Leland.”

“You should call me Babs, Macie. I'm almost your mother-in-law. Oh, I am so happy that Avery is going to settle down. I never liked him globe-trotting by himself. A young man should have a wife. ‘Get a wife' I've said to him a thousand times. I guess he finally listened to his poor mother.”

Amina walks silently into the room and hands Mrs. Leland a squat glass filled with brown liquid. Mrs. Leland's eyes light up. “Cocktail, Macie?” she asks.

“I'm driving. I'd better have a sweet tea, please.” I resist the urge to look at my watch. Cocktail hour is coming early today.

“I remember my wedding. Jack and I were so much in love.” Babs closes her eyes and smiles. “Oh, it was a magical time. We went on a three-week European honeymoon tour. I brought six suitcases, two of them filled with peignoirs. Of course, little Avery was our memento from that trip. My, was he a surprise later on in the year.”

I cross and uncross my legs, unsure of how to respond.

Her eyes snap open again. “I've always felt Avery was a special child, Macie. We always took him everywhere—the club, Switzerland, Jack's investment trips. I always felt he was at his happiest with us. Now, I suppose he'll move out and make a home with you.”

Babs seems lost in thought. I decide to take an interest in the oil painting over her head.

“Now, as I was thinking about the wedding plans,” Babs says, her eyes narrowing, “I realized that you probably hadn't yet seen an important little piece of paper. Avery is so busy with his candy business, I don't think he has had the time.” Mrs. Leland takes a large sip of her drink and stares at me, a tiny smile on her lips.

“I'm not sure what you're talking about, Babs.”

Amina returns to the den and hands me a tall glass of sweet tea. “Thank you, Amina.”

My future mother-in-law dips one pinky in her drink and wets the lip of her glass. “Well, dear, not to be too direct, but I am speaking of the prenuptial agreement.”

“Prenup?” I squeak.

“Yes, dear. The one Avery will be asking you to sign. Don't give it another thought, Macie. Of course, turn out some adorable grandchildren and your settlement goes up per child. And each year your union lasts means a more generous severance for you should something happen. It's all very civilized.”

Amina appears on the scene again with another drink for Babs. I want to scream, “She's had enough!” but I restrain myself. If someone fast-forwards my life, will I be Babs, informing a future daughter-in-law to push out some kidlets so that she gets more money when my son dumps her?

“When I married Jack, I signed something, too. I never gave it another thought. You may not know this, but I came from a little country family. My father ran a dairy operation in White County. Meeting Jack was marvelous and he gave me a life that I would have never dreamed of. I had to go along with certain understandings, Macie. You do the same.”

I stand to excuse myself. “Babs, I need to get going. I have to see a bride and I can't be late.” It is a lame excuse, but Babs is sufficiently lubricated by alcohol. She might not even notice I am gone.

“Macie, do you have the time?”

I check my watch. “Four forty-five.”

As usual, Babs looks delighted that I know what time it is. “You're a smart girl, Macie. Avery is lucky to have you. When you quit that party-planning job of yours, you'll have even more time together.”

I wait until I am past the security cameras on the Lelands' property before I start to cry. Prenuptial agreement? Quit my job? Have children to increase my value? Avery has not said a word about any of this. I loved Avery, not his trust fund. I fell in love with him, not what he inherited from some moneybags great-grandfather. In fact, I never even knew Avery was rich until we had been dating for a while.

My phone rings. If this is Avery, he is going to get one heck of an earful. Instead, I see that Kimmie is calling.

“Macie?” a tearful voice wails. “I need your help. How do you know when you are in love?”

I try not to give off an audible sigh. How can I think about Kimmie's love life when my own is in such trouble? For the first time, I wish my job were anything other than manufacturing wedding bliss. But I know I need to try to help. Pulling off the road into a post office parking lot, I ask Kimmie what is wrong.

“Whitner is m-m-mad at me. He says I'm not serious enough about g-g-getting married. But I am, I am,” Kimmie says, and then I hear what sounds like a nose being forcefully blown into a tissue.

“When did this come up?”

“Whitner asked me about the ceremony. He wants all these words and vows and other boring stuff. And I am more focused on me and what I will look like when I walk down the aisle, you know?”

I lean back, touching the fabric headrest. I have to give this Whitner some credit. For a man who wants to marry a high school student, he sounds like he has some brains. To be fair, he is twenty-one, not exactly a lecherous old man on the playground, but almost a kid himself.

“I don't mean to pry, Kimmie, but have you ever thought of pushing the wedding back a few months or until this time next year? It's just a thought.”

“Why is everyone against me?” Kimmie starts crying again.

“Hush, there, Kimmie. I'm on your side. It's just sometimes, it takes a little while for everyone to get on the same page about a wedding. Maybe taking more than just four months to plan it would be the best thing. How about late spring? That's a lovely season,” I add, going for Maurice's smooth confidence.

“Can't,” Kimmie replies. “Too close to prom.”

“I see. Perhaps we can address Whitner's concerns, then. What, exactly, does he want in the wedding ceremony?”

Kimmie pauses, and I picture her doll-like features concentrating very hard. “Um, well, he wants to have a poem and some songs, like from the church hymn book. I don't know any of them, but he says that's okay.”

So far, so good. “What else?”

“And he wants me to write my own vows. Like I have time for that!”

“Anything else?”

Kimmie sighs. “Yeah, I'm supposed to find someone to sing a solo, like right before we are pronounced man and wife. I don't have to tell you that is not an option. I don't want everybody to focus on some singer while I am standing up there in my dress!”

A few cars zoom by on the side road beside the post office. I wish that I were in one of those vehicles, being taken somewhere, anywhere, but where I am. Just when I think I have seen the worst in bridedom, it just keeps getting better and better.

My conversation with Babs comes flooding back in my head. I want to scream at her, tell her off—something to make this awful feeling go away. My stomach feels sick, like I ate too much.

“Kimmie,” I say, “I know you're upset right now. What I recommend is that you and Whitner sit down tomorrow morning—”

“I have a student council meeting at seven.”

“Okay, then after school. Talk about what you both want in your wedding. There's still plenty of time before the ceremony has to be set in stone. Can you do that?”

“I guess,” Kimmie says. I picture her trembling pouty lower lip and her china-doll skin flushed pink. Oh, to be eighteen and planning a wedding. I say good-bye and head for home.

13

The Golden Bride

The hot air balloon strains against the tether lines, heaving with all of its might for a takeoff into the rosy pink sunrise. Eight stories of ripstop nylon tower above the pilot and me, the liquid propane–fueled burner keeping the entire production upright. The pilot asks if I want to climb into the gondola, “just to see what it's like,” but I decide to keep my feet firmly on the ground and out of the wicker basket. When my bride walks through the field to the waiting balloon, I want everything to be perfect.

“You know, I took
The Sun Cat
to Albuquerque last year and she was the belle of the ball,” the pilot tells me from inside the gondola, nonchalantly firing the burner to keep the right mix of hot and cold air in the balloon's envelope. I'm getting a lesson on the yards and yards of yellow-and-pink ripstop nylon that will carry Annette and Lee up, up, and away. I've learned that unless the air temperatures are a happy mix, the balloon's envelope slowly sags and collapses. Too much air and it becomes aloft. So far, Tony and his crew seem to be doing a good job keeping things together.

Annette is in a lower part of the field, saying her vows to Lee, her sweetheart from nearly fifty years ago. For the past hour, I've been helping Tony and company spread out the envelope and then slowly fill it with cold air using a large fan. I am so happy to help this dear woman, whom I've dubbed The Golden Bride, marry her long-lost love. But first, there is the matter of getting this older woman into the gondola. With a stab of panic, I realize Tony's crew has forgotten the stepladder they said they would bring.

“Don't worry, Macie, we'll get her in here,” Tony tries to reassure me.

I want everything to be perfect. Lee and Annette have already waited too long to be together. I don't want her to be heaved like a sack of potatoes over the wicker basket. Not with the couple's children and grandchildren watching. With a sigh, I realize there is nothing I can do. The wedding party is coming our way, stepping through the tall, green grass of this farmer's field south of the city.

Annette and Lee are first, of course. She wears a purple dress with a flowing silk scarf that promises to look quite dramatic as the couple ascends into the sky. Lee is dressed in a simple blue suit, his white hair shining in the early morning sunshine. The bridal couple is attended by a posse of running, shrieking grandchildren. The girls wear flower crowns with ribbons twirling down their backs. The boys carry sticks wrapped in blue ribbon. As they run, the boys joust at each other, annoying the ladylike girls. Behind them walk the adult children, arm in arm, laughing and pointing at the inflated hot air balloon. The pastor in his black suit brings up the rear.

I have learned so much from Annette, just by watching her and how she treats her family and those she loves. Hers was a relatively simple wedding that Maurice scheduled in the few weeks while everything was going crazy. I think he needed the money. “We don't have much time,” Annette told me when we first met, “so make it snappy.”

This got my attention. It was right around the week that Baker booked us, and I was stuck between battles with
Toot Magazine
and Zafir, Jeweler to the Stars. Meeting Annette was a refreshing change.

Over coffee one unusually crisp August day, Annette told me about her love affair with Lee. Before I heard the whole story, though, Annette confessed she felt a bit silly hiring a wedding planner.

“I know I am a good deal older than most of your brides, Macie,” Annette said with a deep, southern accent. “But I want to move quickly. Maurice told me you do a fabulous job with his nontraditional weddings.”

I paused, mouth dropped open. Maurice gave me a niche! This was big news. He trusted me enough to label me as someone who took on the tough brides.

“My fiancé and I want a nice wedding, and it has been about fifty years since I planned my last one. I need help, Macie. I won't lie to you. I don't know the first thing about putting on a wedding today, let alone in a big city.”

I smiled at Annette over our cups of plain coffee. Maurice taught me a casual meeting in a good coffeehouse is the best way to close the deal. When we meet with the brides, produce pictures of past weddings and talk about their special day, most of them practically pant to sign us up immediately. Maurice calls it the “Dream Meeting.”

“Lee and I met the second year of high school and dated for three years. We were madly in love at a time when people did things like that. If you found your fella, you made plans and got married.”

“That sounds so romantic,” I said, forgetting my problems with Avery for a moment.

“It was less dreamy and more the way things were done back then,” Annette told me, her hand trembling slightly on the coffee cup. “Lee was headed off to engineering school and it was expected that we would marry. I planned to work as a secretary to help support him. We were going to live in a tiny little house across the street from campus. I drove by it with my girlfriends and I remember the house number to this day: 1815 Blue Bonnet Drive.”

“What happened?” I asked, completely sucked into this woman's story.

Annette sighed and turned over her ring, a simple band of channel-set diamonds. “The summer we got engaged, I met a young man who worked in my father's office. Jim was handsome and funny and before long, I started to wonder if I was missing something. After all, Lee was the only boy I had ever kissed. It didn't take long for my fear of the future to make a mess of things with my fiancé. I gave Lee back his ring, and Jim and I later married. Within days I knew I had made a huge mistake. We stayed together thirty-five years and had two children.”