Toss the Bride (9 page)

“Maybe it's a performance art piece?” I hear one woman ask another. Finally, a guest can't hold back his laughter. Another one joins in, and then everyone has the giggles. I look around, wanting to laugh myself. Even the older folks are in on the joke. Everyone knows this is Camille's crazy idea of a wedding, not Gwendolyn's.

Camille hears the laughter and looks around. I notice her coiffed hair is a bit wispy from the exertion of moving flowers. She breathes deeply and tries to smile, but she can sense that everyone is looking at her like she has lost it. Finally, she sits near her husband, who plainly wants to be invisible.

Taking advantage of the moment, the miniorchestra begins the unfamiliar strains of a classical piece that I've never heard. I love it. I don't know what it is, but it's not Purcell or Wagner, and that's good enough for me. The construction workers find their places at the back of the crowd and stand, arms crossed. One man still wears his banana-yellow hard hat.

The bridesmaids, escorted by the groomsmen, walk slowly down the limestone church steps and cross the little park area. Due to the candelabrum stuck awkwardly in their path, the women each have to do a little dip and sway when they get to the fountain. It's unorthodox, but it works. Traffic swooshes past on Peachtree Street, but it just seems to fit the occasion. The music changes and the guests stand. They turn around toward the church in time to see Gwendolyn and Jake walking hand in hand down the church steps. When they reach the bottom, they look at each other gently and pause. I know they do not hear the rattling of delivery trucks or the squeaking of brakes. They seem only to have this moment together. The construction guy wearing a hard hat gives a low catcall when he sees Gwen in her pink dress.

Then, just as quickly, the couple walks forward, shaking hands and hugging guests who are crowded into the little park. I see Gwen checking out the wilted gladiolas and the pesky ferns, but she just sighs. She and Jake, too, have to sidestep the candelabrum and a few white flower arrangements. But after that, Gwen just gazes at her fiancé and they stand beside the fountain. I know she has decided to move past what her mother has done. I admire her.

Everyone smiles and leans forward to hear what the pastor says. It is a lovely ceremony, and I am proud to have helped make it happen. Later, I will even save the program and a pink napkin printed with the couple's initials. I will also tuck away a picture of the bride with the construction workers after the ceremony. The guy who made the catcall apologizes. Gwen tells him she loved it, but she is a married woman now and off the market.

The reception at the Fox is divine, and the cake is scrumptious. Gwendolyn even gives me a little gift. “It's a velvet flower pin made from vintage material,” she says with a smile. “I think they are going to be hot this year in the new store I'm opening in Midtown.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thank you. It's a wedding gift from my dad. My mom will come down there after she reads about it in
Atlanta Magazine,
I guess.” Gwendolyn shrugs, but I know she is hurt. Later, I will overhear her mother bragging to a guest, “Yes, she made the dress herself and already has quite the following with her design business!” I am glad to hear it for Gwendolyn, and I hope her mother says it to her before too long.

Maurice ends up leaving the reception a bit early. I tell him to go, that I will make sure everything wraps up perfectly. I wave good-bye to Gwen and Jake as they leave the reception a few minutes later. She leans on her new husband's shoulder, a little tired, while he shakes hands with well-wishers. They are happily in love and seem grateful their friends have stayed to see them off.

I am filled with a desire to see Avery, so I speed dial him on my cell. We have the whole night to look forward to, and I think I will take him a piece of pink wedding cake. He should love it as much as I do.

5

The Naked Bride

I climb into Maurice's silver sports car. Luckily, the air-conditioning in the tiny cockpit is going full blast. It's a scorcher out here. I direct a little plastic vent toward my face. The Atlanta summer sun fills nearly every day with hot waves of light that hit your eyes, then skin, then lungs with humid persistence. Air-conditioning is vital to life.

“So, what does Carolina want now?”

Maurice taps his fingers on the leather steering wheel and tilts his head to the side. “Oh, I don't know. How about a wedding dress, for starters?”

This day cannot get any wackier. We're tossing Carolina in four days, and everything was pretty much under control until yesterday. As far as brides go, Carolina has been no worse than the rest. She's hard to get on the phone, flaky about making decisions, and pouts when she doesn't get her way. The biggest request she had was to allow her Aunt Gretchen to sew the wedding dress and bridesmaids' dresses. Maurice was against it—he's a hound for labels—but eventually caved in to pressure from Carolina's family. They own a chain of local appliance stores, all indicators of a handy pile of money and referrals for Maurice.

Aunt Gretchen was supposed to have been a big-time couture designer in her day. Carolina had a million stories about her aunt's prowess at the sewing machine. “Every garment I wore as a child was made with her hands in her Parisian studio,” she was fond of telling me. I would just nod. My parents outfitted me at the local Kmart in Cutter. Some people have charmed lives.

Carolina's wedding-party dresses have been a major ordeal. Patterns were obtained and fabric ordered with no problem, but Carolina's attendants—there are five women in all—live out of state. They have sent Aunt Gretchen their measurements and will cram their one-and-only fitting in right before the wedding. This plan seemed to worry everyone except for Carolina, who assured us that Aunt Gretchen was one of the best.

I told Avery about this plan over supper last weekend. He was in a mood, a bit on the tense side. I figured he was just tired of hearing wedding stories. After all, it's a lot of what I talk about because I am immersed in weddings all day long, and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. Avery, on the other hand, can chat about the latest art-house movie, a new tennis grip he's trying out, or the Bulgarian cheese trade. He knows a lot about a bunch of things. “Jack of all trades, master of none,” he is fond of saying with a grimace.

“So, this bride, Carolina, doesn't seem to be nervous that her wedding is a week away and ole Aunt Gretchen still won't let her see the dresses,” I said to him over a dinner of spinach salad and grilled tilapia at our favorite bistro, Tang.

“What?” Avery says, lost in thought.

“Never mind. It's just another story from the Bad Bride Files.”

Avery looked at me, really looked at me. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “I think you need a vacation.”

“Yeah, try telling Maurice that in the middle of the summer bridal season,” I said, rolling my eyes. I took a sip of sweet tea.

“Well, I just happen to know of a place where we could go, and if you get Maurice's blessing, maybe we can take off for a little bit,” Avery said, pulling a folded brochure out of his pocket and placing it on the table between us.

It was the Italian lagoon pool brochure that I had found a few weeks ago. There on the glossy pages was my fantasy vacation, complete with dazzling pools, sandy beaches, and exotic villas, nicely creased down the middle from the trip in Avery's pocket. A hopeful pitter-patter revved up inside my chest—was this going to be an engagement trip?—and then just as quickly turned to a cementlike thud. There was no way Avery was ready to propose. I just felt it deep inside.

“What's wrong? You look like I just asked you to help me pick up trash on the highway, rather than fly to Italy.”

“It looks wonderful, Avery, it really does.”

“But?”

“I can't possibly afford a vacation like this. With what Maurice pays me, I would be lucky to buy a glass of wine at this little poolside bar,” I said, poking my finger at one of the glossy pictures. Deeply tanned women and men hovered around a stone hut, lofting glasses into the air. It was hard to see in the small picture, but I was sure everyone had perfectly straight teeth.

“Ah, I had a feeling you would say that,” Avery said. “So, I wanted to tell you this trip would be a gift. From me to you.” He waited for my response.

If Avery had asked me to go away with him two years ago, and I'd had some money saved up, I would have said, “Where's my passport?” But now I am twenty-six years old, two years have passed, and we are no closer to making things permanent. Sure, we could jet off to an exotic locale, but when we came back, we would be no closer to marriage. Call me old-fashioned, but I want to travel the world with Avery as my
husband,
not my boyfriend. Is that too much to ask?

I love Avery, and I know he loves me. We play together, laugh together, so perhaps we can plan our lives together. I've never said it just like that to Avery, but maybe now was the time to try.

“Well, you know how we're tossing Carolina next weekend?”

“Can we talk about us, and not your robot brides?”

“Just listen,” I said. “When she is married off, Carolina's husband is going to whisk her away to some French island for the honeymoon, and then they are going to start their life together.”

Avery took a long sip of tea. “Is this before or after she walks down the aisle naked because Aunt Gretchen can't get her act together?”

I know he always listens to my bride stories, but sometimes I forget. “After,” I said, smiling a bit for the first time. Avery can make me laugh. I thought about this for a moment and then put on a more serious face. The face of someone who wants to get married to her true love. In this decade.

“So, what I mean is, Carolina is going to jet off to a perfect French island with her husband”—I leaned on the word for emphasis—“and then come back to Atlanta and start her perfect life. You know, married and all.”

Avery stared over at me before glancing down at the brochure. “I see. You want to go to France.”

“Avery!” I threw my black cloth napkin across the table at him, a gesture that fell on the less dramatic side.

Avery's mouth opened to give me a look of faux horror. “Oh, wait. That's not what you meant,” he said.

“Forget it.” Somehow we've moved from the glossy stiffness of an Italian beach vacation brochure to Other Big Life Questions. But it was not my idea, right? I was minding my own tilapia.

“Macie, Macie, listen to me. I know what you are saying. I really do. I was just playing around.”

I stirred my now-warmish iced tea. “What did I mean, then?”

Avery looked uncomfortable at that moment. I waffled on the edge of feeling sorry for him. But the feeling was short-lived. In Avery's mind, Italy was just a country. For me, a trip like that had to mean something, like we were moving toward more than just next Friday's date. I considered a big trip to be one with all the trimmings, like the vacations I read about in travel magazines: packable clothes, a wide-brimmed hat, a slim silver camera to record memories. As grown-up as it was making me sound, I wanted a guidebook for the future: Avery and me against the world. Or something like that.

“You feel as if a vacation like this one is for married people,” Avery said, looking into my eyes. “Real couples with plans and dreams and other important things like that. If we go just as we are now, you think we'll never get serious—we'll just keep coasting along. Am I right?”

I stared at Avery and leaned forward. He got it exactly right. This might be the moment where we settled it once and forever. Where we were going, what we would do. I could open my mouth, say the words. It would be a first, but he was worth it. I looked at Avery across the table.

Wordlessly, our waiter glided up to the table with the evening's dessert tray straddling his outstretched arm. “Who wants some chai flan?” he asked, mouth stretched into a wide grin. “Or perhaps the chocolate torte. It is, let me tell you, to die for.”

Avery asked for the check with a few terse words. We rode home quietly, neither one of us mentioning the Italian trip or anything else that mattered. The brochure was tucked back into Avery's tidy pants pocket. And I was left with thoughts darker than the richest chocolate torte at Tang.

*   *   *

With seventy-two hours to go until the wedding, Maurice decides that today will be the day we force dear Aunt Gretchen to show us the goods. We have actually spoken to her once by telephone, and she assured us the sewing was coming along nicely, thank you, and didn't we know that genius was not to be rushed? Carolina backed her aunt up, insisting that she has been to her home for fittings.

I meet Maurice at his home in Druid Hills. The tree-lined neighborhood is filled with handsome Tudors and stone mansions. Maurice and Evelyn live on a street across from a lush park. Evelyn's family goes back generations. Her maiden name used to be on a department store downtown and is carved onto more than one building over at Emory University. The house is hers.

“Macie, so good to see you.” Evelyn greets me at the door. I walk through the enormous antique wooden door and remember for the hundredth time that the foyer is bigger than my apartment. Quite frankly, the house dwarfs Evelyn. She is a really small person. Small hands, small body, short little hairstyle. I feel oafish next to her. We chat a little about our current bridal disaster.

“These brides today. They leave everything to the last minute,” Evelyn says. “I mean, Maurice is really worried about this one. He was making calls until eleven last night.”

“And we've got quite the work to do today if the dresses aren't ready,” Maurice says, walking into the foyer. He kisses Evelyn good-bye and nods to me. “Ready?”

Aunt Gretchen lives across town in an area genteel people refer to as “declining.” Her neighborhood, once proud and vibrant, has been swallowed up with rentals and occasional fits of crime. We find the house—a sagging bungalow with a sturdy hydrangea bush out front—on one of the better streets. Maurice parks the sports car out on the curb. “Ex-couture stars don't get much in the way of a pension, I guess,” he remarks.