Authors: Jennifer Manske Fenske
Toss the Bride
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Contents
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For my beloved husband, Jonathan,
keeper of the secret language
1
The Horse Bride
My experience with horses comes down to this: When I was fourteen, my best girlfriend, Savannah, invited me to spend the week with her at Camp Sugar Dale near Atlanta. Savannah was sleeping away at the horse camp all summer and she could bring one friend for a week, just to try it out. It was probably a brilliant marketing campaign designed to breed another hundred girls begging their parents for a summer of riding overstuffed ponies and swimming in the mossy lake. I knew my parents could never afford to send me to Camp Sugar Dale for a day, let alone a whole summer, but I went anyway.
Wearing my beat-up tennis shoes and jeans instead of fancy jodhpurs, I rode with the best and brightest of Atlanta girlhood. We were on those ponies all day. After breakfast, after lunch. We even had a trail ride and campout one night with the horses tethered nearby. I could hear them rustling and stomping all night while I tried to get comfortable with the marriage of my sleeping bag and a twisted tree root.
I am reminded of Camp Sugar Dale because in the intervening twelve years, I have not been around horses to smell their horsey smell and breathe in their wholesome type of friendliness. That, and the way a horse's eyes can look you up and down and sort of pass an equine judgment. Those Camp Sugar Dale ponies had us little girls figured out, and from the look in their sleepy eyes, half-closed in the suburban sunlight, they weren't too impressed.
Francie is giving me the horse look now. She spies my white linen dress with the pretty eyelet shoulders. She searches over the borrowed white pearls and the slightly scuffed open-toed sandals. She marks my bare legs and takes note of the Band-Aid covering one knee. With a roving brown eye, Francie tells me she does not like what she sees. Heaving out her chest, shaking out her mane of blond hair, she steps back and snorts. Then she whirls around and heads back toward the barn at a trot.
Francie is the bride.
It's two hours before her wedding at the Cumberland Valley Botanical Gardens. The hydrangeas are wilting, the groom is late, and Francie's bridesmaids look like they need maids of their own to attend them. They lounge nearby in a converted historic barn with green awnings. No one is dressed, ready, or even slightly concerned that a major event is taking place in 120 minutes.
So far, I have been on the job three hours. My first task was to arrive at the barn and check the rooms where the wedding party would dress and wait. Are the embroidered linen handkerchiefs set out for the men? Is the silver monogrammed brush waiting on the bureau for the bride? Breath mints? Mint julep pitchers? My boss, Maurice, says never to trust anyone
ever,
and I've found more often than not, he's right. Take today, for instance: When I got to the bride's room, a fancy-schmancy hotel-type room with huge gilded mirrors and a large hook hanging from the ceiling for heavy wedding dresses, I almost fell over. The trendy Black Magic roses Francie wanted were there all right, but from the looks of the wilted petals and gummy stems, they needed some black magic about two days ago. I placed a frantic call to the florist, a local floral celebrity who is a bit on the touchy side. Once, when Maurice complained about a botched centerpiece, the florist pitched a box of two-hundred-dollar bridesmaid bouquets onto the floor.
Flowers can get pretty ugly.
Talking into my combination phone-wristwatch-calendarâa gift from my boyfriend, Avery, who recently went to JapanâI told the florist's assistant that the Magics were past their prime. The bride would be here any minute and if she saw her bride's room decorated with dead roses, it would not sit well. Right then, I pictured Francie in my head and got a shaky, sweaty feeling. Francie always looked past me when she met with Maurice, like my singleness and need to work for a living were catching.
I managed to solve the crisis by dumping the sagging blooms and stalling until the florist's assistant arrived with fresh Black Magic roses. I placed the vase on an antique sideboard, dodging the gaggle of bridesmaids lounging here and there. The afternoon marched on.
Sometimes, in my quiet moments, I reflect that my existence has come down to groveling at the feet of overpaid florists so that a mean-spirited bride can enjoy some expensive flowers for about twenty minutes. It really seems like there's something else I could have done with my life. If I could ever drag Avery to the altar, I would do it in the dead of winter, without flowers. There would be no doves, no clinging jasmine, and no powder-blue skies.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
A wrinkled-looking boy of about ten or so walks by listlessly. Kicking at a stone on the path, the boy looks up. Two bumblebees drone near my right ear.
“Hey,” I say to him.
“Hey, can I go down to the swan pond? My mom's saying I can go.”
I recognize the boy from the rehearsal dinner the night before. His name is Granger. I remember him because he stayed close to the dessert table all evening. “It's Granger, right?”
The boy's eyes widen. “You know me?”
“You were there last night. The party at the Magnolia Room?” I like this kid. He has round green eyes and hands that look like they would rather be climbing a tree. He grabs at his little-boy tie.
“Yeah. I had to go to it because my sister is getting married. My mom said I had to.”
“Is this the same mom who won't let you go down to the swan pond?”
Granger drops his tie and looks up at me with a smile. “How did you know she wouldn't let me?”
“Let's say I had one guess and I knew it had to count,” I say and smile back at him. Granger slides away, back toward the barn. I keep my eye on him until he walks behind a tall hedge of azaleas.
“Wedding party, party of wedding people,” hisses the loudest and softest of voices. “I need you to crack to it, step with it!” It's Maurice. As a really big-deal wedding planner, he can do what I cannot. I'll find out later he has just been to the barn and whipped those lazy attendants into shape. Dresses are flying and lipstick is being applied. This wedding might happen after all.
You don't get in Maurice's way. Not with the money these people are paying him. The higher his fee goes, the more they seem to do what he wants. But Francie's wedding party is clearly pushing him to the limit.
“Macie,” Maurice says, pushing down his creased sleeves from his elbows. “I need you.” It's a hot day, and Maurice will change for the third time right before the wedding. His first outfit of the day, jeans and a T-shirt, was hours ago. His microfiber pants and crisp cotton shirt are for now, and his ultraslick, costs-more-than-I-earn-in-three-months suit is in my car. I've stopped looking at the labels when I pick up his dry cleaning. Maurice is in his own fashion league. I once asked his wife who had the bigger closet, she or Maurice. She just smiled at me like a woman who has given up the fight. I found out later that when they remodeled their house last year, half of the bedroom space went to Maurice's clothes. His wife uses a closet down the hall.
“What do you need?” I ask. Maurice praises me for organization, so he'll probably want me to check over the distribution of wedding favors. The bride selected little sacks of chocolate for the 416 guests who will be here in 110 minutes. The chocolatesâimported from Parisâare cooling in a refrigerated truck attended by a bored college student. Sometimes I wonder whether my life would be easier if I had nothing to do but order chocolates from overseas. Francie spent a good month hounding me about what she should give as a favor. I finally found the chocolates when Avery returned from a trip to France. Francie popped one in her mouth at Maurice's office and that was it. I pointed out to her that the chocolates were a good idea because of her name. She stared back, licking her lower lip with a swift stab of the tongue.
“What? Huh?”
I sighed patiently. “Your name? Francie? France.”
“My real name is Lydia Jane. I don't understand what you mean.”
I gave up. Francie is just one of those brides we toss who will go out of my mind in a few weeks. “Tossing the bride” is Maurice's lingo for getting a bride married and out of his hair. When she's good and married off, it's not our concern anymore. Of course, I secretly want to conduct an informal poll someday to see how many of our brides are still married one or two years out.
“I don't know how to say this, Macie,” Maurice mumbles, looking past me to the wedding area. White wooden chairs with soft satin bows are arranged in an arc all the way to an altar that is arrayed with heaps of white freesia, lilies, and scented stephanotis. Combined with the sunlight, the effect is almost blinding. I hope the guests bring sunglasses.
“You don't know how to say what?”
Maurice pauses. He's a good boss, as far as bosses go. I know I'm fortunate to have this job. It pays way more than my gift-wrapping stint at Luck's department store. That's where I was working when I met Avery two years ago this month. I gift wrapped crystal bowls and china platters, making sure to tuck in the silver Luck's gift card. I was good at it, but mental gymnastics it was not.
Avery introduced me to Maurice and convinced him he should give me a try. I've been with Maurice for more than a year, and I've seen my share of weddings. It's time I had my own, I say to myself. In my head. Not out loud.
“Francie wants you to change,” Maurice says quietly.
“What? Lydia Jane wants what?” I have to struggle to keep my voice down. Nearby, a groomsman loafs about, trailing his fingers through a camellia bush. At least he's dressed in his suit.
“Francie thinks your dress is too, uhm, formal for what you have to do in the ceremony.” Maurice's eyes are still trained on the wedding area. He seems embarrassed, poor thing. But I want to run up the aisle, knocking over chairs as I go. I love this dress. It's gorgeous. Avery bought it for me from a little store near Lenox Mall I never even knew existed. And he was only one size off, so when I exchanged it, I saw how much it cost. It is not only “formal,” as that doltish bride suggested, it isâ
“So, you hear me?” Maurice asks.
“What am I supposed to do, then? Would my bra and panties be a little more, oh, I don't know, informal?”
Glancing around, Maurice grimaces at me. “Okay, so I think it's stupid. I mean, your dress is very nice. Avery must have picked it up because I've seen your taste andâ”
“Thanks, Maurice. Appreciate that. But I'm still walking down the aisle with nothing on unless you fix it.” I cannot believe the nerve of this bride. It is too late in the wedding parade to find something else to wear. I'm the horse wrangler. This is the dress I've picked.
A little background here: When Francie approached us about her dream of riding down the aisle on the back of her favorite horse, Rhubarb, we tried to talk her out of it. “Think of the horsehair flying everywhere,” we said. “Think of the chance of a horsey accident on the crisp green botanical garden grass.” It didn't matter. This is what Francie wanted. And Francie was going to get what Francie wanted. She even rented a special white leather sidesaddle from some rodeo in Tennessee. Her dress will cover its chunky rhinestones, thank goodness.