The War Game (18 page)

             
But I didn’t want to wake up next to a cereal box cover for the next several years.

             
I wasn’t worried. I didn’t really think about it. Because you see, I couldn’t picture myself living a life (or part of a life) with Steven. I couldn’t see it at all. So it couldn’t possibly happen. If they did somehow solder that ring onto my finger, it wouldn’t be for long. Even if I had to cut my finger off.

      How could I marry Steven when I was in love with someone else?

      That was the question I wanted to spit back in the wedding planner’s face whenever she asked me some dumb detail about the wedding. “What song list do you want for the dance floor? Do you want the YMCA song? That’s always a crowd pleaser.”

             
Miriam said I should humor this lady, act dumb, and let her suggest stuff to me. She talked forever when I did. I’d spent several hours already planning this stupid wedding that I’d no intention of attending so I just let her pick out everything. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that was her plan all along.

             
I didn’t know why the wedding planner, Michelle, even needed me to be there for the wedding planning details. Anything I decided on she overrode. And I was the one who was supposedly so picky, picky, picky. 

             
Before the “appointment” started, I met with the pastor who would be ordaining the service. A county judge was supposed to do it but backed out because they got more important things to do, I guess.

             
The guy’s name was Eldon and looked like maybe he was handsome once. He took my hand when he spoke with me, kind of made me feel weird. And he kept calling me child, but not in a condescending way. I think he knew how ridiculous the whole thing was. He didn’t have much to discuss, basically went over the things he would be saying, where I would stand, when to light a candle and such. 

   
             
Michelle brought a briefcase and from within it, she placed on the table some papers, brochures, a Tupperware container of cake samples, a box of plastic forks, ribbons, a photo album, and a stack of stapled papers. I read the top line, “Your special day is arriving...make it one to remember!”

  
             
She handed me a brochure with doves holding wedding bells in their mouths, “Hi, I’m Michelle and I’m going to be your personal wedding planner. Your special day is arriving...make it one to remember!” I had to hold in my laugh, it almost came out but it sounded like an aborted sneeze. “The wedding is being sponsored by our program, so no need to worry about the cost. We believe that the bride should have complete control over her wedding. It is, after all, the day she has been waiting for all of her life. Today we will be going over all the little details from what kind of cake you want served and the venue of the reception”

    
             
“Do I get a choice of husband?”

    
             
She ignored me.

      I thumbed through the brochure as she was reading the script out loud to me. I didn’t know why they sent someone over here to read me some Grimm Brothers-like fairytale, I wasn’t not four years old. They could have mailed it to me. I wasn’t the best reader or speller, but I could get the overall gist.

             
The first page had pictures of three different cakes. Vanilla, chocolate, and marbled. “Please make one (1) check mark next to your selection”, the thing read in a script so fancy, so hoity-toity it took me twice as long to read. Maybe that’s why they sent someone over. They’d probably printed a thousand of these things, like they did with the clock stickers, and now they were stuck with them. They hired a person who could actually read the font.

             
The next page had four selections of bouquets. Two selections of party favors (chocolate-covered raisins or chocolate-covered peanuts in small, white boxes). They had three choices of colors for the bridesmaid gowns (just one style of gown). The three colors were vomit, blood, and egg yolk but they gave them fancy names in the fancy font. “Ocean Breeze Green,” “Romantic Roses,” and “Sunnyside Paradise.” The wedding dress page didn’t show any pictures of the dresses but it did say that measurements would be taken and the dress would be custom-made.

             
“What does it mean when they say the dress will be custom-made?”

             
“Oh, that means someone will come out here close to the wedding date to take your measurements  to make your dress. Are you ready to go over menu choices, Mrs. Hunt?”

             
“I don’t have a last name.”

             
“Well, of course you don’t! Not yet, at least. Now, let’s talk about the rehearsal dinner. Have you picked out a maid of honor? The girls in your neighborhood are awfully nice. Many of them are engaged as well.”

             
“I don’t really know any of them.”

             
“Have you not been getting along at the book club?”

             
Book club? What book club? “It’s just that I already have someone in mind for my maid of honor.”

             
“Who, dear?”

             
“Miriam.”

             
She gave a haughty little laugh, like I was a little kid who was still making sense out of the world, like I walked head first into a glass door. "But she’s going to walk you down the aisle. I mean, he’s going to walk you down the aisle. Do you want a train on your dress?”

             
“No,” I said.

             
“Are you sure? I think trains are lovely,” Michelle cooed.

             
“No trains,” I said.

             
Her wrinkles broke through her heavily painted forehead. She looked like a girl who opened a Christmas present expecting a doll but just got a pair of shoes or something. She sighed, “Okay, then.” She wrote down some notes on her pad of paper. “It’s your wedding, after all,” she grumbled.

             
“Do you have something old, something blue, something new, something borrowed to wear down the aisle? It’s tradition.”

             
My wristwatch was probably old. How old, who knows. The dress would be new. I could borrow one of Miriam’s necklaces. And my heart was blue. And it also had four valves, which made that thump-thump sound. Oh, the stuff I could recall at random when it mattered the least.

             
“Pearl? Do you think you will be able to find one item for each of those? If not, I could give you some ideas. You should ask Carol, I mean, your mother, to borrow something of hers. I’m sure she will be so glad that you asked her! We could find a nice hair ribbon or butterfly clip for something blue.”

             
“Then it would match my heart.”

             
“Excuse me, dear?”

             
“I think I can manage.” Maybe.

~~~

             
I was sick of smelling plastic. Plastic flowers. Plastic table clothes. Plastic man and wife. The mailman dropped off a big box of samples on the doorstep. I had to give my signature in blood for the box. Okay, not really, but I had to sign a bunch of stupid papers. The wedding planner sent over all of these samples to me, probably to get me excited about becoming a child bride. They kept trying and trying to get me to make my mind up and decide on something, but when I did, they said no. I said I wanted real flowers, not fake ones. They basically implied if I wanted real ones, I would have to go out to the forest and pick them out myself. Or pay for them. Flowers were way too expensive, if you could find them. You’d think if people could figure out how to change weather patterns, they could figure out how to make real flowers last longer, or at least, stop the ones we have grown from dying so quickly.

             
I told Miriam that I wanted her to be my maid of honor but it wasn’t going to happen. She looked at me with sad eyes. “I’m glad that you want me as your maid of honor. I know that I’m going to be the one to walk you down to a doomed fate but I just wanted to let you know you can still find happiness. A cultured pearl made from intervening humans isn’t special at all. But you, Pearl. You are a natural pearl, far removed from being molded into something society expects. After five or so years or however long this stupid deal is supposed to last, someonefemale or maleI don’t know which way you roll, and you know I don’t care...Well, they are going to be very lucky to have found you.”

             
When I went on my walk, an old woman with curlers in her hair and bright red lipstick smeared over her face kept staring at me. She caught up to me on the moving sidewalk and whispered hoarsely in my ear. Apparently, when her “daughter” had a wedding, they weren’t allowed to keep any mementos. They were briskly taken away as soon as the bride and groom left the church. And then months later, she saw the same exact decorations being used for a neighbor’s wedding, down to the old nuts and chocolates that were left over in the party favor boxes. She knows this because she found someone’s used gum stuck to the inside of a little favor box. Even the wedding dress somehow disappeared after the honeymoon and then reappeared at different weddings in nearby towns. She had pinned a white rose she made of some fabric onto its bodice. She found this out by looking at the visual marriage records on the Internet and seeing that same one-of-a-kind flower she made on several brides. I think my “family” is a thousand interventions away from receiving any Internet access at all.

             
I asked her why they hadn’t made my “parents” get married and the old woman (Edna was her name) said it was because since I’m so young, I can easily be rehabilitated. Older “clients” need more interventions. Whatever that means.

             
Gross. Who knew how many brides had worn my dress.

             
I also heard that the “honeymoon suite” special was just a regular room at some hotel in the city. The wedding planner decorated it with a heart-shaped pillow and other such junk. I finally got word of the details on the much anticipated honeymoon vacation. It’s near a lake. And a cemetery. Nature walks, free continental breakfast, a tour of the area (the highlight being a visit to a tree where an imaginary elf lives at the lake) and an hour on the canoe. Which we would have to paddle ourselves.

             
I’ve annoyed everyone (except the pastor) by how indecisive I was about things. But the truth was that I didn’t really care if everything was painted in disco gold and teal because I had no plans to get married. So what purpose would it have served if I were to choose the chocolate-covered nuts over the raisins for the stupid favor boxes?

             
I suggested, instead of a color scheme consisting of two, maybe three colors, why not use all the colors for the flowers? “Like a rainbow,” I said.

             
What a stupid thing to have said. Now I’d have to take some bullshit classes on marriage preparation. So far, I’d learned how to set a table for a party, how to use a toaster (the thing you use to burn bread) and a microwave oven. More government-sponsored radiation, I guessed.

             
At least now the wedding had been delayed.

~~~

             
They were making me pack up my belongings from the house so it could all be moved into the new place. I only took a few items. I knew it sounded creepy but I did pack one of the “family” pictures of the three of us. We were at Mount Rushmore, which didn’t even exist anymore. It took me a whole three minutes to pack.

             
The new place was an apartment building. Not fancy, not upscale, but not crummy or in need of any serious repairs. Some of the light bulbs needed replacing but the apartment complex had already maxed out their limit of them for the year. The dim light made everything look creepy and dreamlike when it was late.

             
Bulging from within my pillow case-cum-bag was my anatomy book, my wristwatch (which wasn’t visible to anyone’s eyes unless I showed them a little ankle but why in the hell would I do that), some food, and other odds and ends.

             
I found the door open and Steven was already in there. He was on a ladder, wiping a thick layer of dust from a ceiling fan.

             
He looked at me and said, “I will be right down. I just need to finish this and then I can help you carry the rest of your stuff in.”

             
I dropped the bag down on the floor. “This is it.”

             
“Oh. Okay.” He seemed momentarily confused. “You sure didn’t bring much with you.”

             
Steven, I wanted to say, you have no idea how much stuff I brought back with me. You have no idea how much excess baggage I am carrying into your little world.

             
He climbed down the ladder and threw away the rag. He stopped and stared at me. “What?” I asked.