“Are you upset? You seem upset. I hope you’re not upset! Because Percy thought you might be upset.”
“Why did Percy think I would be upset?”
“Well, because you’re the maid of honor and you’ll, like, miss out on all the girlie stuff.”
I rolled my eyes so hard that the blowback nearly took my head off my shoulders. “Does Percy know me at all?”
“I told him you’d be relieved,” she said, relaxing a little. “I know you’re so not into the whole wedding hoopla.”
(Okay. At this point you might be a little skeptical about the veracity of this conversation. I mean, all this wedding talk so soon after your proposal. Really? I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I was pulling some James Freysian high jinks—you know, narrative manipulation that goes above and beyond the typical shenanigans employed by nonfiction writers through the ages. You will just have to believe me when I say that this conversation, even more so than others already documented in this notebook, occurred almost exactly as depicted here. The sheer implausibility of this conversation calls for a compulsory and most careful transcription.)
“But you know what I didn’t realize about myself until after I got engaged? I’m not into the wedding hoopla. In fact, I hate all the wedding hoopla. Am I really supposed to care so much about the font I use on my personalized napkins?”
She waited for me to shake my head, then continued.
“And what a waste of money. Did you know that my mother was going to put a second mortgage on the house so she could pay for this thing? If she’s determined to spend her money, it would be so much smarter to use it to pay off our student loans, or put it toward a house. But we’re not even sure she’ll give us the money if we’re not using it for the wedding, which is just so backward-thinking it’s scary.”
I barely got in a nod before she went on.
“And having people gush over me all day long as if I were Wedding Barbie come to life? Bleech. I don’t want anything to do with it!”
That part made sense. For most women, their wedding day is the only day in their entire lives when they are indisputably the most beautiful woman in the room—even if they are not. Bridget is almost invariably the most beautiful woman in the room. She’s so oohed and aahed at all the time, she doesn’t need fifty thousand dollars spent for the privilege.
“Have you ever seen Battle of the Brides?” she asked. “It’s a reality show. I think it’s on Bravo.”
“We can’t afford cable.”
“Oh, yeah. Right,” she said. “Anyway, this show is all about brides-to-be competing against each other for the wedding of their dreams.” She said the last words in a singsong, then stuck out her tongue. “They have to do all this crazy stuff. Like in this one episode it was the Touch of Silk competition. Six psycho brides standing outside in the freezing cold with one hand on this twenty-five-thousand-dollar wedding gown, which wasn’t even all that pretty. It was just too, too much. So tacky, like a cheaper version of the fifty-pound white duchess satin monstrosity the Donald’s latest wife dragged down the aisle.”
I don’t doubt that Bridget is indeed disillusioned by all the “wedding hoopla.” But the fact that she knows that Mrs. Trump III wore a fifty-pound white duchess satin dress—hell, that she even knows the term “white duchess satin” at all—indicates that Bridget has jumped through one or two of those hoopla hoops already.
“If they took their hands off the dress, even for a split second, they were out. These women were possessed. They just had to have this ugly gown like it was everything worth living for. And after, like, twelve hours, not one of them had been eliminated. So the evil producers made them take off their comfy shoes and put on white stilettos with, like, four-inch heels. Still, not one of them gave up. Finally, after they’d been in the competition for something like eighteen hours, they wheeled in these gigantic speakers and got this hyperactive wedding deejay calling himself DJ Jazzy Spaz to blast nothing but Barry Manilow songs.”
I’ve read somewhere that blasting Barry Manilow has proven to be a successful POW torture technique. The funny thing is, if I had been in this Battle of the Brides competition—and you know this is the ultimate counterfactual—the sounds of Barry Manilow would have encouraged me to keep on going, to never give up, to keep my goddamn hand on that gown until it was mine, all mine. One woman’s torture is another’s sign of the divine.
I was oddly compelled by Bridget’s dramatic coverage of this story. “So they stood out there for eighteen hours? Without breaks?”
“They got, like, a five-minute break every six hours or something. And they would hobble off to the sidelines and their future husbands would massage their aching feet and coach them through the next round. ‘They’re going down, honey! You’re the leanest, meanest bride ever!’ And then these psycho brides would start weeping about how hard this was, how it was torture, how it was the most difficult thing they have ever endured in their entire lives, and I was like, SOLDIERS ARE DYING IN IRAQ RIGHT NOW.”
The motley crowd assembled at the bar—all drinking pints of the hair of the dog that bit them the night before—turned around to look.
“Sorry,” Bridget said to the gawkers, then to me: “As you can see, the whole thing was really sick. That’s what started to turn me off weddings. Why is there so much emphasis on that day, and so little about the fifty years that come after?”
I laughed. “You sound suspiciously like me.”
“I know!” she said. “You’ve always said that if you got married, you would elope to Jamaica.” She was right. I have been saying this since my sister’s wedding. “Just you, your husband, and some Rastafarian minister…”
She stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes were magnetized to the bit of metal on the fourth finger on my left hand.
“What is that?”
I dropped my hand to my lap. But it was too late.
“Was that a ring?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“A ring on a significant finger?”
I brought my glass to my lips and choked down a mouthful of room-temperature tap water.
(I suppose I should provide a valid excuse for keeping your ring on the significant finger, knowing that doing so will only invite comment and conversation on a subject I’m not sure I wish to discuss. Ah, but therein lies the answer. Taking it off would mean that I wasn’t giving your proposal the full week of consideration I promised. Keeping it on forces me to confront the complications that made it impossible for me to respond to your proposal when it was first popped. And honestly, who would even notice an unblinged bit of silver that looks nothing like a traditional engagement ring…?)
“You’ve let me go on and on without telling me you’re, like, engaged?!”
“Well, I’m not—”
“Did Marcus ask you to marry him?”
I actually laughed when she said that because it was (a) absurd and(b) the truth.
“Is it true?”
I nodded, unable to say it out loud. Discussing this situation in the confines of Sammy was one thing, but saying it out loud, in public, was another.
“You and Marcus are getting married!” She squealed and bounced up and down in her chair, again drawing the attention of the bar crowd. But this time she was too happy to be embarrassed. Unlike Hope, who was shocked by the news, and Manda, who was merely amused by it, Bridget was sincerely thrilled by the prospect of our union.
“Did you hear that, Siobhan?” Bridget gushed to our regular waitress, a tough, thirtyish punk originally from County Cork with sleeve tats covering her milky-white, well-muscled arms. “She’s getting married!”
While I winced at my friend’s enthusiasm, Siobhan set down one empty plate in front of Bridget, and another heaped with steaming meats and starches in front of me. Our waitress then paused long enough to smile with her lips pulled tight against her crooked teeth, and said something unintelligible in a brogue as thick as a pint of Guinness.
I waited until Siobhan hustled ba
ck to the bar before asking, “Did she just say, ‘Coughs on your anus’?”
Bridget cackled and said, “I think she said, ‘Coffee’s on the house!’”
“Oh,” I replied with a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I thought it might be a traditional Irish blessing or something.”
As Bridget loaded up her empty plate, I realized such perks hadn’t been my imagination after all. I thought I’d noticed Bridget getting preferential treatment—free appetizers, cleaner dressing rooms, discounts taken off at the cash register—all given with a wink and a wish of good luck. But it was difficult to tell whether she scored freebies based on the humble diamond on her finger or the immodesty of her beauty. But free coffee for me? Is it possible that the whole world—including its most cynical city—is seduced by the sight of a betrothed young lady? I suddenly understood the advantages of an endless engagement, and not only those of a financial nature. Why not live in that lustrous state for as long as possible, when your love is only about the promise of a happy future? When total strangers want to get in on the goodwill and are compelled to wish you well?
“I can’t believe it!” Bridget burbled. “You’re getting married!”
“Well, I didn’t say yes.”
“Why didn’t you say yes?” she said, biting off a piece of bacon. Before I could open my mouth, she offered her own hypothesis. “I bet you feel too young to be married,” she said, gesturing with the half-eaten piece of pork. “I know! I kind of went through that, too. Everyone is like, ‘Bridget? What is this? Utah? In the 1950s?’”
“Well…”
“Manhattan is probably the toughest city in the world for marrying young. It’s got a lower number of married couples than almost anywhere else in the United States. And those who do get married do so later than the average, more like twenty-seven instead of twenty-five.” She paused to take a breath. “But there seems to be a bit of a reversal lately. In yesterday’s Styles section there was a twenty-three-year-old bride marrying a twenty-four-year-old groom—”
“It sounds like you’ve done your research.”
“I had to!” Her hands and fingers were flying like a whole flock of doves now. “Because, like, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t look at my engagement ring and tell me I’m too young, that marriage is a dying institution borne out of patriarchal oppression, that couples used to get married to have sex, and since the age of sexual liberation, of the Pill and Roe v. Wade, single women can have as much sex as they want without getting married….”
I imagine that Bridget’s fellow NYU undergrads have made these arguments many times over. For as many well-wishers as there are, there are just as many, if not more, naysayers. My predisposition is to be in the latter camp, but it was my obligation as maid of honor and best friend to stifle those natural instincts and put a smile on my face and a dress on my body that no alterations could turn into something I’d ever wear again.
Honestly, I could never understand how Bridget—an only child fought over in a nasty divorce—could have planned to get married at twenty-three. It didn’t matter whether they exchanged vows on the marble altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or on the soft white sands of Montego Bay, I loved Bridget and Percy so much that I didn’t want to see them walk down the aisle to their doom.
So their decision to defer marriage comes as a relief. Sort of. What if all those naysayers have made Bridget reconsider, and this marriage-for-everyone argument is just a clever cover-up, a noble way to drag one’s feet indefinitely, and avoid taking the relationship to the next level without having to break it off? Or are they really so confident about the depth of their love that they don’t need all the wedding hoopla, nor the crashing, crushing banality that follows? An unconventional life. Together.
“Let’s say you wait until Marcus graduates,” Bridget continued, making mental calculations. “That’s four years from now, which would make him twenty-seven and you twenty-six. That’s, like, right around the national averages, and not at all abnormal even by, like, New York City standards.”
Again, I opened my mouth, but Bridget kept right on going.
“And if you’re thinking about having kids, you can get them out of the way early,” she said. “And you’re still young enough to embark on a career after your kids are in school….”
“Bridget,” I said, tearing off a piece of crusty soda bread, “you’re talking crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got me married and pregnant already,” I said, “and I didn’t even accept his proposal.”
“Okay,” she said, “which brings us back to the original question: Why not? Don’t you love him?”
(Yes.)
“Yes,” I said.
(But.)
“But…,” I said.
“But what?” Bridget asked. “Would you have said yes if he had a degree and a job?”
“But he doesn’t.”
“But what if he did?”
“‘What ifs’ are what Marcus calls counterfactuals.”
“Counterfactuals?”
“‘What ifs.’ Counterfactuals. Hypotheticals. All the same thing,” I explained. “All a waste of time and energy. Because no matter how long you ponder them, it doesn’t change the reality of the situation: Marcus is in school for at least four more years.”
“Move to Princeton.”
“What worked for you and Percy won’t work for everyone.” I sighed. “You transferred from UCLA to NYU because you hated the superficial L.A. scene. You had other reasons besides Percy for leaving. If I leave New York for Princeton, it’s only to be with Marcus. I don’t have any reason for being there other than to be with my boyfriend.”
“But isn’t that enough?” Her pretty face was marred by disappointment when I didn’t answer right away. “So you don’t want to move. Isn’t a long-distance relationship better than none at all?”
“I don’t know,” I said warily. “We’re exactly where we were four years ago, with him one place and me somewhere else. You saw for yourself how he can’t handle the city….”
“That night with the drag queen,” Bridget said, visibly recoiling. “The Shit Lit Hissy Fit.”
(Does it bother you to know that my friends have a special name for that night? Well, they do. It was that…memorable.)
“Right. And I don’t want to visit him on the weekends at Princeton, only to compete for his attention with twice-a-day meditation, term papers, and impromptu coed volleyball games.”
(I wish I had said this to your face, before I left your room on Saturday.)
“Maybe I don’t want to compromise anymore. Why should I have to be the one to compromise? Because I’m a girl? Please. I’d be letting down our gender with that kind of thinking.”
A knowing smile crept across Bridget’s face.
“What?” I asked.
“You sound like Manda.” Bridget giggled.
“I DO NOT SOUND LIKE MANDA.” I was coughing, nearly choking on my eggs. “Don’t ever say I sound like Manda.”
“But you doooooo,” she taunted in a jokey singsong. “She’s rubbing off on you.”
“I hope not,” I replied. “I would have to get a full battery of STD tests….”
At that moment my cell phone rang. I groaned when I saw that it was my sister, calling to remind me that I was already late for her Labor Day soiree.
“You’re still coming, right?” Bethany asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m already on my way.”
“Fabulous!” she said. “Just remember you’re a guest today. Though you’re not really a guest, because you’re family! You know what I mean! Just have fun and enjoy, Jessie. I mean it. Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!”
I assured my sister that I would enjoy myself as if my motherfucking life depended on it.
I hung up and rolled my eyes. “Don’t even ask,” I warned Bridget.
Siobhan slapped our bill on the table as she hurried past.
“Look, I love you and Marc
us together,” Bridget said, returning to the topic I was eager to drop. “I just want you to be happy, whatever you decide to do.”
I sighed and examined the muddy grounds in the bottom of my coffee mug. “Me too.”
As we stood at the register paying the bill, I noted a small black-and-white portrait posted by the front entrance. In it, a foppish young man wearing a fur-trimmed cloak leaned toward the camera in a throne-like chair, one hand clutching an ornate staff and the other resting thoughtfully against his temple. His soulful eyes spoke almost as clearly as the words written beneath his photo:
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
—OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)
I had never noticed it before, though Bridget assured me that it has always been there.
We stepped outside and hugged good-bye. I turned to head in the opposite direction down the sidewalk when Bridget called out to me.
“Hey, Jess!”
“What?”
She raised her arm in the air, as if she were making a toast with an invisible mug. “Coughs on your anus!”
“Coughs on your anus!” I said, seized with gratitude for our friendship. “And Percy’s, too.”
twenty-seven
A Brief and Meaningful Conversation with Marin
“You know what would be awesome?”
“I don’t know, Marin. What would be awesome?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m going to invent it. And if I tell you, you might inventit before I do.”
“I wouldn’t do that!”
“You say that now, but once you hear how awesome it is, you won’t be able to stop yourself, because my idea is just so awesome.”
“Okay, then I’ll just have to wait.”