Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (17 page)

That wasn’t true. Mike was not a grandstander. Being proud of himself would have been enough for him.

“The only one of us,” he continued, “who has the right to say anything is Jeremy, and, son, I would advise you not to.”

“I don’t want Cami upset,” Jeremy said. “That’s all I care about.”

“And nothing will upset her more than feeling as if she’s caught between you and her parents.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Zack said. “I’m staying out of this.”

“And I’ll keep my mouth shut too,” I promised.

“So are we done here?” Zack asked.

“If you go help with the dishes,” I said. “You too, Jeremy.”

He grimaced at me, but moved toward the kitchen. Jeremy looked at us suspiciously for a moment, then followed his brother.

Claudia was still holding Mike’s arm. She turned closer to him, clearly speaking to him and only him. “Have you resolved the rehearsal dinner?”

“Not yet,” he answered, his eyes quickly shifting to me, then back to her. “I was about to bring it up.”

“Then I’ll go rescue the boys.”

She did just that, going into the kitchen and waving Jeremy and Zack off from the chores I had assigned them. I don’t care what kind of mom you are, you don’t do that.

And what was she doing calling them “the boys”? They were seventeen and twenty-one. I could call them “the boys,” Mike could, my father could, even Mike’s mother could, but everyone else should respect their maturity.

I turned back to Mike. He was looking a little troubled. “So what’s up with the rehearsal dinner?” I asked. “That’s the groom’s family’s deal, isn’t it?”

“Apparently so, and Claudia has offered to help plan it. I think she would like to. Is that all right with you?”

Not really.
“I’m sure she’ll be a lot better at it than I would be.”

“It won’t be like the engagement party. Your name will be on the invitation.”

I knew that he was planning on paying for everything himself, and the stubbornly proud tomboy in me didn’t want my name on anything I wasn’t paying for. On the other hand, I was sure that I couldn’t afford Claudia’s very refined choices.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m out of line here—”

“One of your strengths.”

I stopped. Was I out of line so often that he could mock me about it? “That was a horrible thing to say.”

He blinked. “Well, no, it isn’t horrible. It is a strength—that you’re willing to say things that no one else is willing to, things that need to be said.”

“That’s true, but that’s not what you meant. You were being critical, and you know it.” I started to walk off. I had just been trying to help. Let Claudia screw up. See if I cared.

He grabbed my arm. “Come on, Darcy, what were you going to say?”

If Claudia screwed up, I might not care, but Jeremy would. I took a breath. “Okay . . . it’s about Claudia’s Web site. My guess is that the Zander-Browns won’t want anything about the wedding plans on her Web site.”

He looked puzzled. “Why would she put anything on her Web site about their plans?”

Because that was what she did. The whole purpose of her life was to have things to post about. “I don’t know . . . I’m not saying that she would or wouldn’t; I’m just saying that it’s probably a bad idea, and, for the sake of all of us, you might mention it to her.”

“I can’t imagine that she would, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to mention it.”

I went into the kitchen. Claudia was at the sink, so I looked for something to do on the other side of the kitchen. The trash can was full. I started to gather up the loose edges of the black plastic liner. Someone had scraped the dessert plates into the can.

The top layer of garbage was crescents of uneaten piecrusts. People hadn’t finished their crusts. They’d eaten the filling but left the elaborate outer rim on their plates. All the handling to make those perfect little circles and crimped edges had developed the gluten and made the crust tough.

No one ever left my piecrust on their plate.

Friday morning, Rose commandeered the long table between the kitchen and the family room for the wedding-planning session, laying out various brochures and printouts. She had four copies of many of them, one each for Cami, Annie, herself, and me. I poured myself a cup of coffee and as we were waiting for the girls, I picked up the glossy brochure from the tent-rental company. The photos made the tent look like something out of the boys’ old King Arthur books. The white roof slanted sharply down from multiple peaks; it looked medieval and romantic. The interior shots showed a space that was soft and spacious. The company recommended draping the interior with fabric, and in case of inclement weather, windowed walls and canopied walkways could be added. A thinner sheet of paper had been tucked inside the brochure. I glanced at it and then instantly dropped it as if it were radioactive. That sheet was the price list. I looked at it again, thinking I had to have read it wrong. I hadn’t.

Mike wasn’t kidding. This was very serious money indeed.

Rose had typed up an agenda, flagging the things that we absolutely had to decide this weekend. I was overwhelmed. Not only were there so many different things on the list, but for each item there were too many choices, too many possibilities. The calligrapher had offered eleven sample scripts—some intricate and scrolling, some stately, some contemporary. The printer had at least twenty fonts, seventeen different shades of white papers, at least ten times that many colored papers, and eight ink colors.

But we didn’t need to limit ourselves to those fonts, those shades of white, those ink colors. Everything was custom; anything was possible. And that would be true with the rental company, the caterer, the florist, everyone.

We got nowhere. Cami couldn’t make up her mind. She wasn’t a perfectionist; she wasn’t a princess for whom nothing was
good enough. Quite the contrary. She loved everything. Everything was beautiful. She couldn’t choose.

My responsible, beautiful daughter-in-law-to-be was a ditherer. I hadn’t known that about her. I hoped that she wasn’t planning on being a surgeon or an ER doc. She wouldn’t be able to make decisions quickly enough. She might well end up as one of those internists who drive everyone else nuts because they keep ordering more tests, never committing to a diagnosis.

She consulted with Jeremy, but he knew even less about this than I did. “Whatever you want,” he kept saying, “that will be fine with me.”

Clearly a major problem was that she didn’t have her dress. Without a dress, we couldn’t set a theme or a tone. Cami liked Annie’s idea of an English cottage garden, to have everything charmingly informal with a glowing mixture of flowers, mosses, and vines. “But what if the dress is really formal?” Cami kept saying. “Then that won’t be right.”

Cami and Rose had appointments at bridal salons on Monday and Tuesday. Rose was letting Annie skip school to go with them. So we were not going to have a dress today or tomorrow. Did that mean we wouldn’t be able to make any decisions at all?

I needed a pill. I glanced at my watch. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t take another Ritalin for two more hours. It sure felt like it had already worn off.

Rose was struggling to remain patient with Cami. “Let’s at least settle the portable toilets.”

My father and his EpiPen had taken Finney out to explore the town, and Guy was sitting in a big chair at the far end of the family room. This was apparently his concession to Annie’s memory of how, in the Adirondacks cottage, everyone sat in the same room all the time. So he sat where we could see him, but since he was working, I wasn’t sure how much his presence added.

He was reading manuscripts that someone on his staff had prescreened for rejection. On one side of his chair were two cartons full of the manuscripts. On the other side was a big recycling bin. He would read the first three pages carefully, then flip through the next seven or so. Apparently agreeing with the decision to reject the manuscript, he would take the cover letter and scrawl something across the top. He would put the cover letter in a pile on the carton side of his chair and let the manuscript drop into the recycling bin.

I forced myself back to the port-a-potties question. Except they weren’t port-a-potties. They were “luxury comfort stations.” Companies brought in trailers with stalls, vanities, and mirrors, just like a restroom in a restaurant. The trailers had electrical connections and sewage hookups so that the toilets flushed and the sinks had running hot water. Some of them were Mafia-grand, white with gold rococo trim. Others were Euro-tech chrome and rosewood.

Why was Rose handling all this herself? Sure, it was easy to make fun of wedding planners, but some of them had to be sensible and efficient.

We were now talking about the music. We needed music for the ceremony, music for dinner, music for dancing.

If this had been a normal wedding, one deejay would have brought three sets of CDs and done it all. But this was not a normal wedding. We were going to have woodwinds at the ceremony, strings at dinner, and a band for dancing, all of them live, all of them needing to be selected.

And even after those decisions were made, Rose would have to read and sign their contracts, then write and mail the deposit checks. She would have to figure out where the musicians were going to be positioned while performing. She would have to remember to have the caterer provide them with meal service. She would have to be sure that they got directions and knew where to park.

Why
was she doing this herself? This was not what Marys were supposed to be doing with themselves.

When Dad and Finney came back, we took a break, rounding everyone up for lunch. Jill Allyn monopolized the conversation, talking about a new book that only she and Guy had read, and she got her little digs in at Rose. “It really is the sort of book you used to enjoy.”

Cami didn’t eat much. She was supposed to go upstairs with a stack of CDs and pick music for at least one part of the event. As Rose and I were finishing the dishes, she came into the kitchen, carrying her laptop, looking uneasy. “Mom, would you look at this?”

“Of course.” Rose dried her hands. “What is it?”

“It’s an e-mail from Claudia. With pictures of a dress. A wedding dress.” Cami set the laptop on the counter and Rose peered at the screen.

“This is pretty.” Rose adjusted the angle of the screen and then clicked on the keyboard. “Oh, there’s a video.”

“Isn’t it nice the way it moves—how it looks so simple when she’s standing still, but then all those layers swirl and float?”

Annie came over to look. “Is there a train?”

“Let’s see if they have a rear view.” Rose clicked some more.

I joined them. All morning Cami had talked about what she
didn’t
want in a dress.

She didn’t wanted it to be strapless, but sleeves were sort of frumpy, weren’t they?

This dress had a light drift of chiffon over the shoulders.

She didn’t wanted a stiff, Jackie Kennedy kind of dress, but she didn’t want it to be sexy either.

This dress was soft and flowing.

She didn’t wanted something all heavy and beaded, but she didn’t want something superplain either.

This dress looked as if it didn’t have any embellishments, but when Rose enlarged the picture, we saw tiny seed pearls and insets of narrow satin ribbon.

And, above all, she didn’t wanted a super-Cinderella fairy-princess gown.

Except that she did want that.

Cami was young, just two years out of her teens, and she wanted to look like a princess on her wedding day. But as a literate, ambitious young woman, she knew that she was supposed to think that a princess fantasy was absurdly girlish.

This dress, with its swirling layers, combined the restrained elegance of a Grecian goddess with billowy romanticism.

“What do we have here?” It was Guy. He put one hand on my shoulder and one hand on Annie’s to look at the screen. “Now that’s one good-looking dress.”

“Do you like it, Dad?” Cami asked eagerly. “Do you really?”

Annie and I moved aside so that he could get a closer look. Then there was a lot of back and forth, Cami asking her parents if they liked the dress, if they
really
liked it, while Guy and Rose tried to be supportive and encouraging without making the actual decision.

“It does have the same neckline as my prom dress. I liked that so much.” Cami bit her lip. She was making up her mind. Then her features started to blur. She was about to cry. “Oh, Mom, Dad . . . I think I love it. No, I know I do.”

When Cami had brought her laptop into the kitchen, she’d been hesitant. She’d suspected that this was the dress she wanted, but she’d been unable to trust her first impression. Now that she had made up her mind, she would never look back.

This was probably how she had fallen in love with Jeremy. She would have been cautious at first, suspicious of her strong attraction. Then suddenly one day, a day that was no different from the day before, she would have been flooded with absolute certainty
that he was the one. Just as she would never stop loving this dress, she would never stop loving my son.

Guy went back to his chair while Rose and Cami made plans to see the actual dress. Annie was at the table, lining up the papers and brochures that we had shoveled aside for lunch. Her back was to us; I couldn’t read her expression, but it didn’t seem like her to be organizing other people’s papers.