Wedding Season (23 page)

“Gabe?”

“Yes, Red?”

“I meant thank you.”

Henry gallops toward us. She gives me a crushing hug.

“I suspect you had a hand in this spectacle,” I tell her.

“Moi?” Henry asks. “Perish the thought. I know you hate surprises. And birthdays. And birthday parties. Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Because you’re evil.”

“Come sit, birthday girl.” Henry takes my hand.

As she leads us through the crowd, people call greetings, smile and wave, stand to kiss me. All of my girlfriends are here with their new spouses. So are the members of Delia’s band Mercy Fuck, the entire staff of Invisible Inc., past and present, and a dozen old friends and colleagues I haven’t seen for ages. How did Gabe track all of them down? Aunt Charlotte and Burke are here, seated with Josh and Ruth and, to my great relief, my mother and Howie. Mom gives me a small smile and waggles her fingers at us.

By the time we make it to the head table in front of the stage, Miss Trixie has finished her song.

“Happy thirtieth, gorgeous,” she says, bending down to kiss me. “God, thirty. I remember it well… well, not really. Actually, not at all.”

“You don’t look a day over,” I tell her.

“A day over forty-five, you mean. But you lie divinely. What would you like to hear?”

“Cry Me a River?”

“Bitch.” She turns and whispers to the pianist, and he starts in on “The Lady Is a Tramp.” I salute Trixie and sit down between Gabe and Henry.

“You’re old now,” Henry says.

“Ancient,” says Delia, who is on her other side. “Thirty, and what have you done with your life?”

“You have a crap job,” Charles tells me from across the table.

“Family hates you,” James says.

“Friends don’t understand you.” Maud gives me a sly smile.

“No property, no savings,” Bix says.

“No husband, no children.” Erica giggles.

“No talents,” Miel says.

“No manners.” Gabe hands me a glass of champagne.

“And you can’t dress to save your life,” Joan says.

“To Joy Silverman!” Henry grabs my arm to stop me from sliding down in my seat, and raises her glass. “A complete disaster.” My friends clink their glasses together. “Oh, my god,” Henry says. “She’s getting misty-eyed.”

A
FTER DESSERT
, Henry gets up on stage and takes the microphone.

“Hey, you all,” she tells the room. “It’s time for presents. Invisible kids, you first.”

Charles gets up and heads for the stage, carrying a package under his arm. Pete, Tulley, Damon, and Myrna struggle forward through the crowd and clamber up beside him.

“First,” Charles says, “some poetry.”

“I’m not doing this unless she promises not to fire us,” Tulley says.

“You have my word,” I tell her as they gather around Charles.

“We work with a woman named Joy,” Tulley recites. “Her integrity one can’t destroy. She won’t compromise, and she never tells lies, and she never will marry that boy!”

I glance at Gabe, who takes my hand.

“She’s all that you’d want in a boss.” Damon tosses his hair back. “Though we operate at a loss.”

“Not true, Mom,” I call to her. “We’re turning a profit. Don’t worry.”

“But she has to confess that her desk is a mess,” chants Myrna, “and her file drawers are covered with moss.”

“Scraps of paper and Post-its abound, her notations are scattered around.” Pete plays a little air guitar. “Appointments get tossed, assignments get lost, and some of them never get found.”

“So we have developed a ploy, and we hope that it will not annoy.” Charles holds up the box, and opens it. “For we think Joy will find, if she opens her mind, that it’s a most useful new toy!”

Tulley reaches into the box and holds aloft, for all to see, a tiny, gleaming Palm Pilot. The crowd applauds.

“We’re going to pass this around the room,” Charles says, “and you can help our fearless leader to join our century by entering your contact information. Happy birthday, Joy.”

“You’re all fired,” I tell them, as James climbs onto the stage and takes the microphone from Charles.

“I’m up here on behalf of Joy’s long-suffering family,” James says. A couple of sympathetic murmurs are heard. “Thank you,” he continues. “You can imagine the horror. Joy has always been—how shall I put this?—firm in her beliefs. Which is an admirable quality, of course, but has sometimes put her and those who love her in difficult positions. She will never make a promise she can’t keep. She will never tell a lie. This makes her a loyal friend, an honorable business-woman,
and a colossal pain in the ass. And, as we have finally come to accept, she will never get married. So we’ve decided to dispense with the dowry and send her on a non-honeymoon.” James holds up an envelope. “From your long-suffering, loving family, an all-expenses-paid vacation for two to Aruba. Happy birthday, baby girl.”

I try to smile as James makes his way through the applauding guests to the table and hands me the envelope.

“Well.” Joan has taken the microphone. “It seems that great minds do think alike, James. Joy has attended many bridal showers this year, and purchased many items of lingerie for her friends, and we have despaired of ever being able to return the favor. Since she seems intractable on this point, we decided there was no reason to wait.”

My girlfriends begin pulling from beneath our table, and piling into my lap, an array of dainty boxes and bags embossed with the names of fancy lingerie stores.

“So now,” Joan says, “you have an untrousseau for your nonhoneymoon. Don’t open those packages here, as there may be minors present.” Laughter and applause. I cringe. Gabe squeezes my hand and stands up. “Gabriel, you can thank us later,” Joan tells him, as he ascends to the stage.

“I’m sure I will,” Gabe says. “But everybody, thank you for being here tonight. In particular I’d like to thank my partner in crime, Henry, for her contributions to the plot. And thanks to all of you for your remarkable discretion, which enabled us to throw a surprise party that was actually a surprise for perhaps the first time in recorded history—and certainly in the life of Nobel-winning gossip James Silverman. James, forgive me. You’re a national resource.”

“Get on with it, Winslow,” James snaps over the laughter. “That’s your mockery quota.”

“Okay, okay.” Gabe holds up his hands for silence. “I remember, when I turned thirty, it occurred to me that
growing up wasn’t really a matter of a dramatic or deliberate putting away of childish things so much as it was a recognition that certain changes were already taking place. I’d recently realized that certain of my opinions and views-some of which I thought would always be guiding principles—had shifted or faded, without my being conscious of it. And I wrestled with this for a while. First I’d assure myself it was a normal part of becoming an adult. Then I’d accuse myself of trying to justify the abdication of important beliefs that had just become inconvenient.” Gabe stops and clears his throat. He looks at me, and I feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

“At one point,” he continues, “a friend accused me of selling out because I’d begun to do editorial photography. And like a good artist, I stayed up for a couple of Sturm-und-Drang nights brooding about this, until it occurred to me that there was actually no problem. If I’d been acting contrary to my beliefs, that would have been a sellout. But my beliefs had
changed.
I had long since stopped thinking of commercial work as a crime against art.

“So our ideas, our values—they do change, they evolve. Even the ones we think are bedrock. It’s just the way things go. And if they have changed, the loss of integrity comes when we fail to admit it.” He stops and takes a breath. “It turns out the gift I’ve chosen for Joy is going to put your very thoughtful presents to an unexpected use.”

“Oh, no,” I say, and realize I’ve said it aloud. Charles and Delia give me puzzled looks.

“I’m afraid so.” Gabe smiles down at me.

“What is going on?” asks Henry, grabbing my arm as I try to slide down in my chair again.

“And I suspect you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Gabe tells the crowd, “as I was. As we were.”

“Gabe, no,” I whisper.

“Oh, my god,” says Henry. “Oh, wow.”

“Last night,” Gabriel’s gaze is on me, and his voice trembles slightly, “I asked Joy to marry me. And she said yes.”

The room is suddenly and quite utterly silent. All heads turn in my direction. Gabe reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and takes out what is, I know even before seeing it, an engagement ring.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he says, “and I want everyone to know it. And so, in front of God and everybody, I’m asking again.” He moves to the edge of the stage and kneels down with the ring in his fingers. “Joy, will you marry me?”

I turn and see James and Charles staring at me wide-eyed, my girlfriends with maniacal grins on their faces. I look at Josh and Ruth beside him, her eyes full of tears, and my mother, with her breath held, a ravenous expression on her face and her hands clutched tightly to her chest. Miss Trixie, seated beside her, is in precisely the same posture. I look at Henry, who sits beside me, open-mouthed and blank-faced, and back again to Gabe’s bright and expectant eyes. I did, as it happens, say yes last night—yes to him, yes to marriage. Still, I wasn’t prepared for this, but it doesn’t matter much now. What else can I say?

“Yes,” I tell him. “Yes, I will. Yes.”

I
T’S A HUMID SATURDAY AFTERNOON
and I’m trudging up Central Park West through the heat, dragging my unwieldy garment bag along behind me. I’ve been carrying the damn things to weddings all summer, and I still haven’t figured out how to do it gracefully. I sideswiped a toddler with it on the subway ride up. Unintentionally.

I climb the broad front steps of the brownstone where my mother’s wedding will take place, the home of Gertrude Something-or-other, an early divorce client of Mom’s with whom she later became friends. The house was part of the settlement she won for Gertrude; it seems to me like an inauspicious locale for a wedding. I ring the bell and wait. The massive front door swings open, and a tall woman in her early sixties with very red hair and a very small nose gives me a perplexed look, then clutches me to her chest.

“Joy! How nice to meet you at last.” She releases me. “I’m Gertrude—oh, obviously! Come on in. Boy, don’t you just look so much like your mother!”

I quash the urge to tell her she’s delusional, and follow her into a pristine, lofty foyer where a grand marble staircase rises up to an atriumed mezzanine, on which it seems likely that Cary Grant or the Von Trapp family might appear at any moment. Gertrude springs uselessly up a few steps and calls to my mother while I stare around at the lavish furniture
and shake out my left hand, trying to restore the circulation cut off by the garment bag. A voice wends from a distant upper floor, increasing in volume until my mother’s head appears from behind the mezzanine banister.

“Joy!” She brightens, looking down at me as if she’d only just remembered she had a daughter. “Come on up. And could you bring up the—oh, never mind. I already did. Gertrude, when you—” She stops midsentence, peers at us blankly, and whisks away like a windup toy. We stare at the empty mezzanine. Gertrude opens an elegant pewter box on a side table, pulls out a joint, and lights it.

“It’s hard to believe that’s the star attorney who kicked my ex-husband’s ass back and forth across the tri-state area.” She gasps through a lungful of smoke. “Want some?” She waves the joint at me.

“No, thanks. But maybe blow it through the keyhole of her dressing room.”

“Great idea.” She laughs out a great cloud of smoke at me. “Well, guess you’d better go on up. Top of the stairs, take a left, door at the end of the hall. I’ll be there in a jiff—just have to make sure the caterers are on track. Hey, take a look at that rock!” She grabs my left hand, which I’ve managed to revive, and raises my engagement ring to eye level, a maneuver executed by approximately a million people in the past week. All these heads bowed over my hand make me feel like a princess returned from exile.

“Nice ice,” Gertrude tells me. “You know what they say.”

Actually, I don’t. Diamonds are forever? A girl’s best friend?

“Clean it with a toothbrush and baking soda.” Gertrude drops my hand. “Once a month. And just a little water. Works like a charm.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I head up the stairs, stopping midway to do a little Ginger Rogers tap dance, and follow the descant of
women’s voices to my destination. In the boudoir at the end of the hall my mother, clad in a lacy slip, paces staccato circles while Aunt Charlotte and Ruth watch her. As I come in, Charlotte winks and flutters her fingers at me from the chaise where she is stretched out, smoking a cigarette. Norah, my mother’s oldest friend, attenuated as a greyhound, six-foot-two if she’s an inch, and as English as she is tall, puts away her microscopic cell phone.

“They found the bouquet.” Norah turns to my mother. “It was in the truck after all, but it got mixed up in someone else’s order. They’re bringing it over straightaway.”

“We only have an hour.” My mother stares vaguely at us. “An hour before the ceremony, right, Ruth? Where’s my watch? Oh, here. Yes, an hour. Joy, honey, do you think I should wear my hair up, or down? I was planning on up.” She sits down at a small dressing table, stands up, sits back down again. “But maybe down would be nice. What do you think?”

I open my mouth, and my mother shakes her head.

“Up. We said up and we’ll do up. Norah, where are the bobby pins? Oh, they’re in the bathroom. Will you—never mind, I’ll—” She gets up again and walks into the master bathroom, pokes her head back in and looks at us, then retreats. Ruth catches my eye and giggles. Norah and Charlotte exchange glances and sigh.

“Has she always been like this?” Ruth asks.

“Always,” Charlotte says. “We never made it to the first day of school on time—not once that I can remember. Joy, honey, you look great. Engagement suits you.”

“That’s right,” Norah says. “Best wishes to you, love. Your mom told me. God, she’s just thrilled.”