Wedding Season (8 page)

I find myself remembering an afternoon last fall at my mother’s apartment on the Upper West Side, where I grew up; she lives in Connecticut with her fiancé now, and they keep the place as a pied-à-terre. Gabe and I had gone up to water the plants and collect the mail, and for some reason I wound up looking through the white leatherette, silver-filigreed photo albums of my parents’ wedding. There they
were in black and white, forever younger than I as they came down the aisle, their faces lit up with bright unquestioning faith. Gabe found me on the floor of the living room, staring out the window with an album in my lap open to the photo of their first dance. We’d just moved in together, Gabe and I, and he didn’t say anything. He sat down on the floor next to me and took my hand. After a while, we stood up and put the albums back on the shelf, locked the door behind us, and went home in silence.

H
ENRY’S VOICE
rouses me. She’s standing in front of me with a vampire grin, patting at her hair.

“What do you think, Joy? The bridesmaid that ate New York!” Her way-the-hell-up-do brings Henry’s total height to nearly seven feet.

“Fabulous,” I tell her.

“Where’s that gorgeous bride?” coos Serge.

“Your turn, sweetie,” Assistant Hair calls to me. Melody looks earnestly at Makeup, who is giving her face a blankly searching appraisal. “Do you have any non-orange lipstick?” Melody asks.

“We’re working with a concept, sweetie,” Makeup instructs her. “Our concept is orange.”

When we emerge from the bridal boudoir, bedecked and be-flowered and besmirched, Mrs. Stevenson is directing the rearrangement of furniture with a photographer and his assistant. Henry makes obscene shapes at me with her shiny orange mouth while Erica’s oldest sister hands out the bridesmaids’ bouquets, neat little bundles of peach-colored freesia bound in an elaborate crosshatched pattern with straw twine. Erica gets a bundle of white freesia the circumference of my thigh. The photographer’s assistant pushes us into position for group shots while the photographer flirts
with Makeup. We pose and simper for the camera: bridesmaids only, bridesmaids clustered around bride, bride with sisters, and so on. The photographer positions Erica by the window, winsome in the afternoon light. Assistant Hair runs in to adjust her veil.

“My underwear is riding up my butt,” the lovely bride says through a clenched smile, and the photographer snaps the shot. Mrs. Stevenson claps her hands and the maid weeps and we’re hustled out the door and downstairs to the waiting limousine.

T
HE PHOTOGRAPHER MAKES
it to the church before us and takes pictures like mad, clicking and hunching as we climb out of the limo one after another, clowns at a wedding-themed circus. It’s a mild, sunny day, and the people out walking pause to watch us as we help Erica out of the car and loop her train over her arm.

“Oh, my god,” Erica says to me and Henry, as we walk toward the church’s front steps with the photographer trotting along beside us. “I’m getting married.” She stops on the bottom step and draws a breath. “Could someone make the photographer stop? I feel like I’m in a fashion shoot.”

“You’re a model bride, baby.” Henry waves the photographer away and puts her arm around Erica’s white waist.

“Where’s my mother? Where’s Melody?” Erica sounds plaintive.

“Right here, gorgeous.” Melody comes to take her hand. “Look at your adorable attendants.” She points to where the Stevenson blondes stand, in the great shadowy curve of the church’s entrance, with Erica’s tiny blonde niece and nephew, who are dressed, respectively, as miniature bridesmaid and groomsman.

“Look at our escorts,” I tell her, as the full-size grooms-men
fill the doorway, waving to us. “It’s just like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Wait until you see our musical number.”

Erica gets a laugh out, and we pat her encouragingly. Mrs. Stevenson appears, clapping her hands.

“Everybody ready? Boys, get inside and take your places. Girls, remember your order? Let’s line up, please.”

“There’s my girl.” Mr. Stevenson comes down the church steps. “Don’t you all look lovely,” he says to us. “We’ve got a full house, sweetheart. May I have the honor?” He offers her his arm, and Erica takes it; the organ music begins, and we move in our bridesmaidly regiment toward the doorway. Through the high, dark wood arch that stands at the entrance to the aisle, I can see hundreds of faces in the garlanded pews turn expectantly in our direction, and far up at the altar, Brian and his groomsmen are lined up like toy soldiers beside the priest. Erica’s eldest sister and the toddlers go first, and little murmuring cries rise up from the guests and echo in the church’s stony heights. Standing in front of me, Melody counts to ten, mouthing the numbers and nodding her head, then steps into the aisle. Watching her move away, I feel slightly ill. I stare at her retreating back until I feel Henry’s hands on my waist, giving me a little push forward, and I begin my long march down the aisle.

There’s a cinematic trick that you see a lot in movies, which I think involves the camera rotating on some kind of rolling platform, so the actor seems to remain in place while the world spins around him. I guess it’s intended to communicate a sense of confusion, disbelief, shock. That’s how I feel now: disconnected, as if I’m floating down the aisle, the upturned faces passing away beside me. I’m a wolf in bridesmaid’s clothing, I think; I have no right to be here, acting as a representative of something I condemn. My head feels absurdly light, and for a moment it seems certain that I’m going to faint. Then I catch sight of Gabriel in the crowd,
smiling at me, and remember a moment at my mother’s wedding to Bachelor Number Two. As she walked down the aisle, James turned and whispered to me, “If this is the happiest day of their lives, isn’t it all downhill from here?” I nearly laugh, and Gabe sees it and winks. The pews stop sliding around, and I nod at Brian and take my place on the bride’s side of the altar and watch Henry and her hair approach. She gives Brian a big, hammy wink and sashays up next to me. The remaining bridesmaids take their places. The music stops. There’s a moment of silence before the “Wedding March” begins, and everyone rises, rustling and whispering, for The Dress, The Bride.

Erica and her father come down the aisle toward us like a dream, a dramatic reenactment of a wedding. Each step, every sideways glance and inclination of the head and glinting tear, seems perfectly matched to some Platonic ideal, a perfect correspondence to the gestures of every bride on her father’s arm, kissing him good-bye, taking the hand of her groom, throughout the ages, forever and ever, amen. The reverend begins his dearly beloveds.

Traditions, I tell myself, keep us safely in the sweet embrace of the familiar; they are narrative touchstones that anchor us in the stories we’ve learned to tell about ourselves. Maybe I should be happy for my friends who find in these moments what they need to live, I think, as Brian fumbles to put the wedding band on Erica’s finger. Maybe I should be. But I’m not. I mean, I’m happy that they’re happy. But I want something more for them, something finer, newer, more visionary, broad and brave and pure. What that would be, though, I have absolutely no idea.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the reverend says. “You may kiss the bride.”

Brian lifts Erica’s veil. She is facing away from me, so I can’t see her expression, but I can imagine it: the happiest
china shepherdess in the whole world. They kiss, and everyone applauds, and the current of sound carries us from our places and back up the aisle. I take the arm of my groomsman, Gary, a solid, football-shoulders type who went to school with Brian in Virginia. Several paces in front of us, Henry and the blonde bouffant tower above her groomsman.

“Hey, young lady,” Gary says to me. “You sure look pretty.” There are tears running down his face.

“You look pretty, too.” I give his arm a squeeze.

“That was so nice I’m ready to run out right now and get hitched myself,” he murmurs as we pass the laden pews on our way to the church’s entrance. “What do you say, Joy?”

“Gary, I’m flattered. But how about if you just save a dance for me instead?”

“I’ll do that.” Gary kisses my cheek, and we follow the newlyweds out of the cathedral’s cool dusk and down the church steps into the bright day.

I’
M IN THE OFFICE
, looking over one of Tulley and Pete’s drafts for Modern Love—a love affair between a full-breasted young federal agent and the strappingly handsome computer hacker she’s been assigned to arrest—when the phone rings and I jump, accidentally sending a squiggle of red ink across several perfectly acceptable paragraphs. I guess I’m a little wound up.

“Hi, baby girl.” It’s James. “Still up for lunch?”

“Yes, please. Had any divine inspiration about Charlotte’s wedding present?”

“Since you mention it, an angel came to me last night and said unto me, ’Thou shalt honor the bridal registry.’”

“Well, that solves that. Did the angel tell you where they’re registered?”

“The usual fetish shops. Kitchen fetish, bathroom fetish. Charlotte’s a fag.”

“Because she shops the same places that you do, James?”

“Because she shops at the same places my boyfriends do. Professors can’t afford to sleep on seven-hundred-thread-count sheets, darling.”

“You sleep on them for free, don’t you?”

“Nothing’s free. Speaking of which, how’s your poor little rich boy?”

“Gabriel is fine. I hate it when you call him that.” I
crumple a piece of paper and toss it recklessly toward a recycling bin across the room. The ball of paper makes it in. Charles, at his desk, applauds.

“Why do you hate it, baby? Grandma always says it’s as easy to love a rich man as it is to love a poor man. We’re just proving her point.”

“Gabe is not rich.”

“He has a trust fund, Joy. His parents live in tasteful splendor in Beacon Hill when they’re not summering in understated shabby chic splendor on Nantucket or wintering at some posh resort on St. John.”

This I cannot deny.

“Gabe’s
family
is rich,” I tell James. “Gabe, as you know, works for a living.”

“I know, darling.” James takes a pacifying tone. “He’s a very talented photographer. I’m not attacking his character. I’m delighting in your luck.”

“You’re an old-fashioned tart, James.”

“Introduce me,” Charles stage-whispers. “I love a tart.”

“Like hell I will.”

“What?” says James.

“Not you,” I tell him. “Where shall we meet?”

“Let’s go to Boîte. It’s right around the corner from one of the places where Charlotte registered. One o’clock?”

“That den of celebrity? We’ll never get in.”

“I slept with the owner.”

“God, James. You probably did it just so you could get a table.”

“That’s not such a terrible motive, is it?”

“I’ve heard worse, I guess. One o’clock, then.” I set the phone down, and Charles gives me the evil eye.

“Why don’t you ever invite your brother over to see the office, Vern?”

“Because. Were the two of you to ever be in the same
room, I am convinced that it would result in some kind of natural disaster, and I don’t want to be held responsible.”

“Some people call that good chemistry. We might be perfect for each other. Would you rather be responsible for keeping me apart from the love of my life?”

“Nice try, Vern, but no dice. You know I don’t believe in fate.”

“But observe your metaphor, dear. Dice. Luck. You contradict yourself.”

“Not at all.” I push the
Love Bytes
manuscript around on my desk. “Fate assumes an outside force of some intelligence or a fixed structure that determines our lives, something we can’t avoid or change. Luck is the name we give chance when it works dramatically for or against us. Chance is an observable universal law. Fate isn’t.”

“Some people could argue with you, Vern,” Charles says. He shoots for the wastebasket and misses.

“Some people believe in the infallibility of the pope,” I say. “That’s the difference between science and religion. Certain things exist whether or not we believe in them. Others exist only by our faith. Like Tinkerbell. Do you believe in fairies, Vern? Clap your hands if you do.”

“And you know how to tell the difference?” Charles claps vigorously.

“Hector called again.” Pete knocks on the door frame and shuffles in. “He wants to know if we’re going to do that letter to his mistress or not.”

Charles and I exchange glances. I nod.

“You sure?” Charles asks me.

“Why wouldn’t I be? Go for it,” I tell Pete. “We’ve never done infidelity before.”

Pete grins significantly at us from underneath his hair.

“She means as an organization, you little hack,” Charles
says, trying to sound stern. “It’ll be a learning experience. Get to work.”

Pete bobs and shuffles out. A moment later Myrna sticks her head into our office.

“If a spurned wife brings charges against us, I sincerely hope that I will have the good grace not to say I told you so. But I doubt it very much.”

“You don’t suppose Myrna’s father cheated on her mother, do you?” Charles asks after she has disappeared, widening his eyes and putting one finger under his chin, an ersatz ingenue.

“Shut up, Vern. Personal anguish isn’t always at the heart of an ethical position.”

“Not always.” Charles looks at me hard. “But often, don’t you think, dear?”

A
T A QUARTER TO ONE
I leave the office and head downtown on foot. It’s a clear, cool spring day, the sky pale blue and the sunlight a watery gold on the streets and crowds. I cross through Washington Square Park, passing the corner where old men pair up at stone tables to play chess, with small groups of acolytes, still as statues, gathered around them. The park is full of tableaux like this—lovers on the benches, knots of college students tightening around earnest young men who strum guitars. Near the center of the park, a couple on Rollerblades are skating their hearts out in a fantastic duet around the broad circle of the empty fountain. I move through the shadows of the hulkingly ugly buildings of the university where James works and onto the busy sidewalks of Soho, weaving between laden shoppers and aspiring models, past shiny boutiques where bright dresses and trinkets fill the windows, tempting passersby. I
turn onto a side street and nearly walk past the entrance to Boîte, the door to which is marked only by a tiny engraving of a female figure, holding in her hand a box from which a mysterious ether drifts. The door is locked. I search for and find a small buzzer to the left of the door, press, and wait. I think briefly of the Prohibition era, and the strange pleasures of exclusivity, which have never held much charm for me. The door is opened by a neat young woman in black who eyes me silently.