On the Rocks (26 page)

“Girls, stop it!” our mother screamed as she ran over to keep us from getting into another wrestling match. “Katie, the flowers are fine, relax. Abby, zip it. Not another word out of you. Today is supposed to be the happiest day of
my life,
and you’re both ruining it for me!” she scolded.

My sister and I finally stopped arguing with each other and turned to stare at her.

God, my family was screwed up.

I made a mental note to remind Aunt Patrice to shove gum in my mother’s mouth when it came time to say the vows to make sure she didn’t shout “I do” and accidentally end up marrying Katie’s fiancé. Thankfully, there was no more time to argue. It was time to walk the plank.

When the organ music started, I exited the church vestibule, clutching my flowers like a security blanket and feeling as if everyone in the room was staring at me. Not that that made me any different from any other maid of honor in any other wedding on planet Earth, but the attention made my knees shake so badly I was worried that I might actually fall in the middle of the aisle. As bad as that humiliation would have been, I wasn’t entirely sure that Katie would wait for me to get up before she began her procession, and I’d most likely end up a giant pink speed bump on her way to the altar.

I tried to bury the emotions that were brimming with each step I took. I knew it wasn’t meant to be for me, not yet at least, but it didn’t make attending my first post-breakup wedding any easier. I stood at the altar next to her, holding her bouquet, fluffing her dress, watching her float past me in this important stage of life. It was like I was being left behind all over again and forced to watch every moment of what could have been in slow motion, with a smile plastered on my face. When the priest asked if anyone objected to the marriage, I realized that maybe I was lucky that Ben had called off the wedding when he did. The only thing worse than canceling our engagement on Facebook would have been if he had objected to his own nuptials from the altar. If that had happened, I’d have had to spend the summer somewhere much farther away than Newport to rebuild my emotional switchboard. Like Guam or something. I guess I was trying to find the silver lining here too.

After the ceremony and innumerable pictures, most of which involved my mother attempting to stand in front of the bride and groom, we headed to the reception at the Boston Public Library, the venue I had booked for my wedding. I had attended dozens of weddings over the years, and no one had had their reception at the historic Boston site. It was one of the things I loved about it. It was different, it was original, it was going to make my wedding one that everyone would remember. In my dreams it was going to be perfect. Of course, in my dreams I was also skinny and wearing the white dress. It’s funny how things turn out sometimes.

We entered the reception hall, and I stopped in my tracks. The long rectangular tables were covered with white damask tablecloths and dotted with huge topiaries of roses and hydrangeas. Candles covered every surface in sight, and the high vaulted ceilings and dramatic paned windows made you feel like you had walked into a veritable wedding wonderland. On a table off to the side was a dramatic four-tiered wedding cake, covered with vanilla buttercream and adorned with pink and white sugar flowers. I didn’t have to wait for the cake to be cut to know that it was red velvet, Katie’s favorite. At the very least, provided I was able to stomach it, I knew I’d enjoy dessert.

I took a glass of champagne from one of the trays and turned to say hello to some of the guests. I was approached right away by Charlie, my brand-new brother-in-law.

“Hey, Abby,” he said as he leaned down and kissed my cheek. “You look beautiful, you really do. Have you lost weight?” he asked. Katie had clearly trained him well.

“Thanks, a little, yeah. I’ve been trying to at least,” I said as I reached up and straightened his boutonniere. “Let the record show that you’re officially my favorite brother-in-law.”

“Listen, I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but I just want to say that I think it’s really great how cool you’ve been about this whole thing. I know it’s been hard. For what it’s worth, it’s been hard on Katie too,” he said with a strained smile.

“What do you mean hard on her? She seems fine.” I caught sight of my sister out of the corner of my eye, playing the part of the perfect bride. You’d never guess that we had been mere minutes from a full-blown fistfight just a little while ago.

“You know, getting married so soon after everything happened to you. Ben’s an asshole, by the way. It’s his loss.”

“Yeah, I’ve figured that out already,” I answered, though hearing Ben’s name in this setting made my stomach churn.

“She loves you so much, and she’s been so torn up about this whole thing. I feel like I’m responsible. If I had known what had happened, I would’ve waited to propose. I’m sorry that the timing of this sucks so badly for you.” Charlie stared at the floor as he spoke. I realized he felt guilty, something he shouldn’t feel on his wedding day. No one in this room was to blame for what had happened, not even me. I think I believed that.

“It’s not your fault. And I’m happy you didn’t wait to ask her to marry you. That wouldn’t have been right either,” I said.

“I just love her so much, and I want both of you guys to enjoy today.”

“You do, don’t you? Love her,” I asked, looking at the expression on Charlie’s boyish face. It was one I’d never seen on Ben’s, not once in the ten years I was with him.

“I can’t imagine my life without her.”

“Me neither,” I said honestly. “Now go mingle. You don’t need to spend your cocktail hour over here talking to your new sister-in-law. We have years for that.”

“Okay. Promise me you’ll at least try and have fun,” he said as he hugged me.

“I will.” I meant it. I think.

Charlie smiled sheepishly as he walked away, and I smiled in spite of myself. I had been dreading this day since I found out Katie was engaged, and the truth was, this had nothing to do with me. Apparently, life did not stand still for everyone else just because my own world stopped spinning, and that’s exactly how it should have been. Now if only someone could explain that to my mother, we’d be all set.

Before I was able to sample an appetizer, Katie grabbed me and forced me to follow her into the ladies’ room. “I can’t get this comb out of my hair, and I want to take my veil off for the reception. Can you pull it out for me?” she asked. She sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs and tilted her blond head back so that I could remove the comb that held her fingertip-length veil in place. For some reason she had styled her hair in one of those bad hairdos you expect to see in your parents’ prom pictures from the fifties. Dozens of bobby pins were entangled in her ornate hairstyle, blond curls piled en masse on top of her head.

I tossed my bouquet of pink (fruit-punch pink, not raspberry) peonies down on the chair next to her enormous bouquet of white something or other and placed my glass of champagne on the small table next to her chair. I began to delicately move her hair out of the way of the comb to try to figure out which pins were catching, but there was no way to tell. She had enough metal in her hair to prevent her from getting through security at Logan Airport, and trying to identify the pins that were causing the problem was an exercise in futility.

“Can’t we cut the veil off the comb from the bottom and just leave the comb in your hair? It’s pretty, I don’t think it will look funny, and then we don’t need to worry about ruining your . . .” I searched for the words for what to call this look she had so carefully orchestrated. “Bird’s nest” came to mind, but I didn’t think that was what a bride wanted to hear on her wedding day. “. . . Curls?” I tried. Much better.

I gazed at our reflections in the mirror, and her eyes looked like they were about to explode out their sockets. She gasped and wailed in horror, “Cut my veil? I’d think that was a joke if you didn’t have a history of ruining my wedding attire. I cannot believe you just said that.” Her shoulders hunched forward as if I had somehow managed to suck all of the bridal bliss out of her body by suggesting I ruin her veil. I yanked on the comb a little harder than I should have, and her face tensed in pain.

“Oww! Abby!” she squealed. Tears welled in her eyes, and she began fluttering her hands in front of her face while looking up at the ceiling lest her falling tears ruin her eye makeup. Okay, making the bride cry was probably something I should have tried to avoid. Now I felt bad. I hated when that happened.

“Katie, I’m sorry. Just sit still a minute! I’ll get the comb out without ruining the veil or your hair, I promise.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” she snorted.

“Do you want to argue with me, or do you want to get back to your cocktail hour?”

The mention of her party immediately cheered her up, and her eyes grew wide with excitement. “You’re right. Let’s just take care of this so we can get back out there. By the way, did you see the scallops? They looked really good. We have mini-grilled cheeses too.”

“You do?” I began to work diligently on the curls and the pins with renewed urgency. “Why didn’t you say that to begin with? I would have had this out already,” I laughed.

Katie reached back and put her hand on my wrist. I looked at our reflections again in the mirror. My sister in her Vera Wang gown and crystal-encrusted bridal panty, and me in my horrendous pink dress and cotton Fruit of the Looms. No matter how often I saw the two of us together, I still could not shake the thought that one of us must have been switched at birth. How two such totally different people could be born from the same woman was really mind-boggling. Then again, she looked like my mother, and if I wasn’t really my parents’ child, my mother would’ve returned me by now. So I guess we would have to chalk it up to a medical mystery and the wonders of the human genome.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said quietly. “I’m really glad that you’re my maid of honor. I wish you had decided to bring a guest. It would be more fun for you.”

“It’s fine,” I said reluctantly. “There isn’t really anyone I would have brought with me anyway.”

“Have you met anyone at the beach? What about that guy you’ve been hanging out with? You talk about him a lot. What’s his story anyway?”

I held pins in her hair with my right hand while gently pulling at the comb with my left. The sooner I freed this comb, the sooner I could revisit the bar. “Sort of,” I sighed. “There isn’t much to tell about Bobby. He’s a nice guy who likes to make fun of me. We’ve had some interesting moments so far this summer. We get on each other’s nerves more than anything.”

“You and Ben started off that way, remember? You used to say he drove you crazy and not in a good way.”

“Exactly. And look how that ended,” I sighed.

She picked up her bouquet and spun it in her hands, checking the blossoms to make sure they weren’t starting to wilt. “Well, I hope you’re starting to realize how crazy he made you. I mean, you attacked me in a bridal salon. It was like you were possessed. He’s turned you into a nut. You know that, right?”

“I do. That wasn’t one of my prouder moments,” I admitted.

“I blame him for most of it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I blame you too. But mostly him. You weren’t acting like yourself. And the dress, I didn’t know, Abby. I swear I didn’t.”

“I know,” I said.

“I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d had any idea.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I don’t know. I would have at least talked to you about it instead of having you find out the way you did. I would have asked for your blessing.”

“You have it. It was meant for you.”

“Thanks. You look great by the way. Whatever you’re doing down in Newport, keep it up. I haven’t seen you look this alive in a very long time.”

“I’m trying to go back to being the old me.”

“Is it working?”

“It might be, actually.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled at me.

One final pull and the comb slipped out. I placed it on the chair next to me, letting the tulle fall in a tangled ball on the floor like a giant ballerina car wreck. “There,” I said as I tried to smooth the wayward hairs back into place. She exhaled, incredibly relieved that I hadn’t destroyed her precious bridal hair. I picked up my champagne and took a long swig.

“Can you do the bustle for me?” she asked sweetly as she turned her back to me.

I dropped to the floor and ran my hands around the inside hem of her dress, looking for the small fabric loops fastened to the inner layer of her gown. I attached them all to the buttons and then I fluffed the hem of her gown so that it fell gently around her.

“That should do it,” I said as I sat back on my heels and looked up at her from the floor.

She smiled wide at her reflection. “Time to join my party!” she chirped, grabbing her bouquet off the chair and floating out of the room like a giant, mobile cream puff, leaving me alone on the floor with my flowers and a pile of tulle, just like Cinderella after she helped the evil stepsisters get ready for the ball. Plus the champagne flute. Minus the mice.

I spent most of the cocktail hour slamming mini-grilled cheeses and washing them down with additional flutes of bubbly. I caught sight of my mother in the corner of the room, showing her guests her intricately beaded gown, and wondered if she had even the slightest clue as to how absolutely nuts people thought she was. Other than Katie, myself, and Aunt Patrice, I don’t think anyone really had a full appreciation for how crazy she was, but wearing a wedding dress to her daughter’s wedding certainly gave people a pretty good idea.

When the cocktail hour ended, waiters escorted us into the main dining room. I sat down at my table by myself, looking at all the couples on the dance floor, and realized there was only going to be one way to get through this event alone. I stood and once again smoothed my bubblegum dress over my thighs, then returned to the bar, the only place where a single girl could hide from the couples in plain sight. I was going to take my very full flute and disappear into the ladies’ room while I pretended to fix my makeup again when Aunt Patrice strolled up and lightly hip-bumped me.