Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest (12 page)

The first night we stayed up and had drinks together in the lounge downstairs at the inn. Many of Emily’s friends from high school were there, dates in tow. Emily had something to say about each of them, whispering in my ear, “He’s sweet, but not very intellectual . . . She’s always bossing him around, but he likes it, that’s the way they work . . . She thinks he’ll propose within the year . . . They’re trying for kid number one already . . . Has it really been three years since we were in the Dominican for Caitlin’s wedding? They seem like they’re doing great!” and so on. Part of me wondered what she’d say about me and Jason. The other part didn’t want to know what that same lens cast upon everyone else’s relationships might reveal if turned upon mine. He and I hadn’t slept together in a while—perhaps another symptom of our overall lack of confidence—and I doubted this would change in our hotel room in Vermont, the thin walls such that we could hear conversations in the next room.

I was right. When we went to bed he fell asleep quickly, and I stayed up, listening to Caitlin and Cash laugh across the hall, wondering if there was something wrong with us, something that couldn’t be made right. My greatest fear was that our
relationship was a charade, the two of us attempting to go through the motions of what was expected, but not really knowing how, or whether we even should. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be in love. Yet at this wedding what I found myself feeling most of all was confused, hopping back and forth between joy and sadness, excitement and worry, optimism and defeat. I was more settled than I had ever been, and yet I was anything but that. Maybe this was just how weddings were, especially when you brought a date along, I thought. Everything felt larger than life, but there were real-life questions that still needed answers.

The inn was known for its proximity to a store famous for blown glass, made on the premises. They had tours, we learned from our wedding packet, and there was a restaurant there that Emily vouched for. So the next day we went, partly also to buy the couple a wedding gift, oblivious to the fact that everyone at the wedding who hadn’t already purchased a present would likely have the same idea. The food at the restaurant was, as promised, good, and there were picture-perfect views of the nearby waterfalls. We shared chocolate cake for dessert, alternating bites. Afterward we took a tour, watching a guy with a long metal tube and heat-resistant gloves turn a shapeless blob of molten glass into something beautiful, and then we walked through the aisles and aisles of items for sale in the adjacent shop. In the end, though, we couldn’t decide what to buy. “I’ll find them something in New York,” I told Jason, and I did: vintage wineglasses in a shade of green I knew Emily loved, which I found in a shop near my apartment some months after the wedding. I signed the card from both of us.

•   •   •

W
e returned to the inn in the early afternoon and began to get ready for the wedding. I left Jason to shower and made my way with my dress and shoes and makeup bag to the suite in the next wing where we were to prep for the event with the bride. Emily was already there, standing in her white slip, her hair in curlers, being advised by the stylist she’d hired to do our hair and makeup. We primped and were pinned and polished, and as the sun streamed in from the windows, the pale blue of our gowns against the white lace of the bride’s created a dreamy, enchanted effect in this room full of ladies. We all felt beautiful, but more than beautiful, we had been transformed. With the help of bobby pins and hair spray and lipstick and our pretty dresses, we had shape-shifted from regular girls into bridesmaids.

It was time to walk down the aisle, a narrow grass-covered path surrounded by white folding chairs some yards away from the tent where the reception would take place. A few paces back from Caitlin, I strode out onto the lawn, clutching my bouquet of wildflowers carefully against my waist with both hands. I had not been a bridesmaid before, and I took it seriously, biting my lip slightly to make sure I didn’t laugh or cry. Despite the wedge warning, I’d worn heels, and they did sink into the lawn as mentioned, but I got through my brief journey without mishap and stood between Caitlin and Rachel, watching the ceremony from the bridesmaid vantage point that also allowed a view of the other guests. When Emily and Mark stood in front of us and promised the minister and the crowd of eagerly watching
witnesses that they’d love and honor each other forever, I couldn’t keep tears from welling in my eyes. The couple kissed, and I looked out at Jason in the audience. He was sitting alone in his suit and tie, diligently taking photos of me and my friends, and seeing this effort—an attempt to be a part of things without really having to be a part of things—again brought forth a complicated combination of pleasure and heartache. When he caught me looking at him, he smiled and pointed the camera in my direction. I smiled back.

The crowd descended on the bride and groom, hugging and kissing and back-slapping and congratulating, while in the background the lawn chairs were picked up and toted away. It was that in-between time, after the ceremony but before the reception begins in earnest, and Jason came over and slipped his arm around me. “You looked so serious,” he said. “I thought you might cry.”

“I almost did, a little,” I admitted. “It was so nice, wasn’t it?” He nodded. I remembered he’d once told me he wanted to get married in his own backyard, and I’d argued that the guy didn’t get to just decide everything. As a wedding, this had probably not been too far off from what he imagined for himself. That felt like a kind of decision-making connection between the two of us, and I hugged him. “Ready for some pecan pie?” I asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said.

He took my arm and we headed over to the tent, where hors d’oeuvres were being set out next to the bar. There were circular tables covered in pink tablecloths interspersed throughout the space. The band was setting up to play on the stage above the
dance floor. Emily’s little brother, a teenager in his own band, would be joining them for the first set. When he set foot onstage, the crowd began to cheer. Emily took to the dance floor with her dad, and Mark joined them with his mom. They swirled about elegantly at first before letting loose, legs and arms flailing, good and properly getting down.

The next hour, and the one after, seemed to go by in seconds. Wedding time is different, after all, than regular time. We mingled with other guests at our table and on the dance floor, catching up with those we knew and making conversation with those we didn’t. As a bridesmaid, I was part of it, this thing. People stopped me to say they’d heard about me, Emily’s college friend. They hoped everything was going well for me in New York, and what a pleasant day we were having! It was so wonderful that the weather had held. I’d looked lovely up there, during the ceremony. Had I nearly cried? They certainly had! Oh, was that my boyfriend? What a nice young man. He was, he was.

We helped ourselves to food and replenished our drinks, and then repeated. I convinced Jason to get up and dance, which was not an insubstantial win, and as we swayed in time to the music, the sun slowly set. Nearby, Emily’s mom and dad were dancing, too, and beyond them were Caitlin and Cash. We were surrounded by couples, and for a moment, we all seemed perfectly aligned, artfully poised in the scene before the scene. It was an unsustainable note, but it was a glorious one. I have a photo of Jason and me from that day, our cheeks pressed together. His eyes are very blue and match my dress. He is holding my hand, and we look happy.

We sat down again, and it seemed to strike everyone at once that the bride was gone. We had not seen her in quite a while, in fact. Had anyone? Her groom was gone, too. While at most weddings a disappearance by the newlywed couple wouldn’t necessarily be cause for alarm, this felt different. It was too early for the party to be over. We hadn’t had dessert yet. The pie, they hadn’t even brought out the pie. There was a cluster of people talking near one of the tents, and her dad was in that group. They looked serious. I left Jason at our table and made my way over. “Where’s Emily?” I asked. “Is something going on?”

“The pie,” said her dad, who put his hand on my shoulder, consoling and calm.

“The pie?” I asked. “What do you mean, the pie?”

“They were setting out the pecan pie,” he continued. “She took a bite and had an allergic reaction. She’s upstairs with Mark. We’ve called an ambulance.”

“The pie had
peanuts
in it?” I said, flabbergasted. I knew Emily could not have failed to explain her allergy. It was the first thing she said to anyone who was offering her food. The wedding planner had to know, the wedding planner whose job it was to take care of things so Emily could have fun. I remembered my EpiPen training, and I ran upstairs, joining Emily’s sister Rachel in the doorway to the room where we’d all gotten ready earlier that day. Inside, Emily was sitting quietly on a love seat with her new husband, who had administered the epinephrine. The yellow case that contained the injection lay discarded on a side table. He was checking her vital signs. “The ambulance will be here soon,” he said, glancing at his watch. “How are you holding up, Em?”

Emily nodded, confirming she was okay, but Rachel and I were both near tears anyway. “What happened?” we asked. “How could this
happen
?”

Emily spoke slowly, wearily. She’d said this before. “There were peanuts in the crust of the pecan pie. I ate a tiny, tiny piece before realizing. I knew it immediately and told Mark. Don’t worry, Mark knows what to do.”

Rachel and I looked at each other, worried anyway. “Thank God they’re both doctors!” I whispered, trying not to cry.

“Thank God she married him!” said Rachel. We clung to each other, staring at the couple on their love seat, and broke down in sobs like complete and total idiots. Everything is amplified at a wedding, feelings good and bad, and it may be that we were only doing our part to add to the emotional panoply at this event. We had to let our reaction to what had happened be known, to let it out somehow. It all felt so unfair.
Not peanuts, not on her wedding day.
Mark and Emily allowed us a moment before interrupting. This was their day, not ours, and they hardly needed two hysterical bridesmaids to make matters more dramatic than they already were.

“Look, you guys should go back to the party,” he said. “The ambulance is on the way, and, seriously, everything’s under control. Emily will be fine.”

“I don’t want you to miss anything,” she added diplomatically, and Mark nodded, keeping a firm grasp on her hand and an eye on her pulse, too.

“It will be okay,” he assured us again.

Emily’s dad appeared with two burly EMTs. As she was being
helped downstairs, she yelled back at us, still enthusiastic despite the circumstances, “You have to tell me everything that happens!”

•   •   •

W
e returned to the party. It seemed the only thing to do, the one thing we could give the bride in this moment. But the mood had changed. While we danced and ate and drank, conversations would not start or end without understanding looks, hugs, and hushed side conversations: “Is she back yet?” . . . “God, I hope she’s okay” . . . “I can’t believe this happened at her wedding” . . . “Seriously, who puts peanuts in a pecan pie?” . . . “I would sue the shit out of that wedding planner.”

The wedding planner could not be found. I imagined she had fled as far as she could possibly go, maybe even to Canada, knowing she’d have to show her face at some point, but not able to do it, not now. Out of respect for the bride, for a while most of us avoided the pecan pie, but it was left out and eventually it was gone, consumed by those who weren’t allergic to peanuts. Hours later, after the band had stopped playing, the tent had been taken down, and the lawn behind the inn had grown hushed and dewy, bearing little trace of all that had happened earlier that day, Emily returned from the hospital. Most of us had changed into casual clothes, and Jason had already excused himself for bed, but I had stayed up, waiting to see my friend back to the inn on her wedding night, unable to sleep until I had. Her dad had ordered pizzas for everyone, and we snacked and chatted idly and hoped she’d walk in soon.

Mark was right, we needn’t have worried. She was fine but tired, dazed from the epinephrine and her time in the ambulance and at the ER. It had been a long day. The couple came in together, him helping her across the threshold and into the room where we were gathered. When we saw them we broke into a round of applause. She managed to stay awake for an hour or two before going to bed, and at one point, she and I found ourselves alone in a conversation. She laughed as she told me of the sensation they’d made at the ER, her in her white wedding dress, Mark in his tux. “That’s how you get service,” she said. Mark joined us and was laughing, too, but when I asked what they were going to do about the mistake that had been made, he got as angry as I’d ever seen him. “We told that wedding planner over and over again that Emily’s allergic to peanuts,” he said. “We have it in writing. She could have died!”

“On my wedding day,” said Emily, shaking her head. And then came the question we’d all been asking the entire night: “Who puts peanuts in pecan pie, anyway?”

The next day, Mark, Emily, and her dad were called to a meeting with an extremely nervous inn manager. The wedding planner was there, too, standing in the background, circles under her eyes, wringing her hands. She offered to quit. “That’s not necessary,” they said. The inn manager offered not to charge for the pies. “Really?” said Mark. “That’s your gesture? You’re not going to charge us for a
dessert that could have killed my wife
?”

In the end, I was told, the prices of the pies and a Champagne toast were struck from the bill. As doctors, with concerns about malpractice insurance long drilled into their heads, Mark and
Emily were not inclined to sue. As newlyweds, they just wanted to get on with the business of being married. But the very next morning, as Jason and I were having breakfast in the inn before we began the drive back to New York City, I noticed a big bowl of peanut butter with a spoon tucked in it, set out among the inoffensive array of cereal and fruit and coffee for guests to consume with their English muffins and toast.