Here, Have a Husband

by Heather Gean

“Well, ya know, I was just asking so I would know whether it was cool if I hooked up with him since he’s the best man and all.” I shot Liz a dirty look. “I’m kidding. But seriously, I would advise you to figure something out about it before the actual wedding since it would have been a waste of time keeping this big secret for months if Van decides to break up the televised wedding himself. It could be bad. I’m not trying to pry, Rainy, I’m just telling you as your friend, as your Maid of Honor, that I don’t want you to get hurt. You have three days. Cover all your bases.”

  I closed my eyes and sank further into the table and lied to make both of us feel better. “I’ve got it under control.” Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel that much better.

  Finally clean of all gooey goop and dressed in a white, tube-top, one piece bathing suit, I slipped into a hot tub with the rest of the bridal party. I was armed with a glass of wine and was convinced I had left all my worries on that massage table. Warm water whirled around me, and I closed my eyes and tried to ignore that my mother was also in the tub with us.

  “Rainy, this is amazing. You should get married more often,” Sasha said as she sipped at her mommy-friendly glass of sparkling grape juice.

  “I think once will be too much for me,” I replied as I sank further into the water. Steam rose up around us.

  “Once should be enough,” my mom said with a small smile, “but now once is all you get.” There was a tinge of nostalgia and sadness in her eyes. We hadn’t spoken since Thanksgiving, but she seemed to have softened a little since then. At least she didn’t have her finger in my face.

  “Don’t be trading dirty details without me!” Piper said as she emerged from her facial. Her strange salutation provoked tranquil laughter from the group. Once she arrived it was only the twins that we lacked. They were still being pampered somewhere in another room. “I could give you priceless advice for the wedding night.” Another round of laughter was shared.

  “I think only one of us here is entitled to give marriage advice,” Liz said as she raised her glass towards my mom. “C’mon, Mrs. Clarke, share your wisdom with us.”

  “I’m not sure if you’d call being married for as long as I have a result of wisdom or stupidity,” she jested to begin, “but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a secret. It’s about being in love, and working together, and working together when you aren’t in love, and loving when you can’t work together. It takes a lot of understanding and a lot of sacrifice, and it may hurt sometimes or it may be wonderful, but you just have to hope for the best.” I glanced over at her and saw a flicker of an apology in her eyes. She offered me a maternal smile.

  “That’s not very romantic,” said Penelope, who had entered just in time to catch the motherly advice.

  “That’s the truth,” Piper said. “Romance is dead.”

  My mom laughed at her cynicism. “I never said that, I just said that it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It’s no fairy tale, but it can be worth it in the end if you’re with the right person.”

  “How do you know you’ve got the right person?” Penelope asked as she slipped into the hot tub.

  “You don’t, I guess. You just go with your gut.”

  “You go balls out and take a giant fucking leap,” Piper embellished. We laughed, and my mom’s face reddened at the vulgarity. The whole conversation made me feel nauseous. I set aside the wine for a while and sent the conversation in a better direction.

  “This stuff is a downer for the bachelorette. I thought we were supposed to be celebrating my maidenhood?”

  Piper raised her glass. “To Rainy’s maidenhood, cheers!”

  “Don’t get antsy. There will be celebrating. We’re sending you out right,” Liz said.

  “You make it sound like she’s dying,” Sasha said.

  “She might as well be,” Piper scoffed. When everyone shot her a look, she shrugged apologetically.

  “How do you feel to be marrying my brother?” Walker asked as she finally entered. There was no escaping it. The topic kept coming back around like a stray dog with plague-carrying fleas. Her question, as some of us in the hot tub knew, was double edged, but I was positive she referred to Ashley.

  “There’ll be none of that until tomorrow. Today we’re celebrating maidenhood. God, catch up,” Piper said. Laughter broke the ice again. I could only hope the laughs kept coming because that was the only thing I had on my side.

  “Miss Clarke?” an attendant dressed in all white said politely as she stepped into the room. Amidst all the steam and wearing all that white she almost looked like an attendant might look in heaven. “You have a visitor that wishes to speak with you. He’s waiting in the hall.” Not exactly the kind of news I had expected to get from an angel. This seemed like a bad omen.

  All eyes were on me as I tried to swallow my heart out of my throat and climbed out of the hot tub and wrapped myself in a thick robe. “Excuse me, ladies,” I said as casually as possible. “I’ll be right back.” I noticed before I turned to go that the half of the group that was privy to my love affair looked incriminatingly somber. I padded across the room and followed the attendant into the hallway.

  Van stood with his back against the wall of the long corridor. The constraint in my throat tightened. “What are you doing here?” I asked in a loud whisper.

  “No hello?” he asked with a smile. When he saw that I wasn’t smiling he continued. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Or, something I wanted to tell you, really.”

  “Van,” I said, “please don’t do this right now. I’m supposed to be relaxing. My bridal party – my mother is in there. What the hell is up with the big gesture? Why couldn’t you simply answer your phone?”

  “Because this isn’t a phone-type of conversation, and I knew if I answered we wouldn’t talk about the things we need to.”

  “Van--”

  “Rainy,” he said as his fingers gently slid across mine, “I--”

  The door I had just exited opened behind us. When I glanced over my shoulder, my mother was standing there with a confused and disapproving look on her face. I closed my eyes but couldn’t get the image out quickly enough. Embarrassment warmed my face from top to bottom, as if someone had poured a bucket of it over my head. “I’ll call you about it tomorrow? We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Van took the cue and gave me a knowing stare before turning and disappearing down the hallway. With my mother standing there with her hand on the doorknob, watching me, I felt like a teenager. “Lorraine Clarke,” she said. The tone in her voice wasn’t as sharp or angry as I expected, but the sadness in it hurt me. She finally shut the door behind her so the others wouldn’t be able to hear the conversation she was sighing herself into. Her eyes glossed over. “I can’t say what I would do in your situation because you are in an extraordinary situation with strange circumstances that I could not in my wildest dreams image being in, but, all I can tell you is that you can’t do what’s easy and lie to people – or lie to yourself - because it’s not fair. Not to you. Not to Ashley. Not to whoever that boy is. It’s just not fair.”

  I bit my lip hard to keep from losing it. I can’t accurately describe the horrible, sickening feeling that came with disappointing my mother, but I tried to hold onto the hope that her little piece of advice meant that in some way she understood. I lowered my head and scrunched my entire face up until the whole thing ached.

  “I think I’m going to go now. Enjoy your party, Rainy,” she said softly. She briefly stopped to put her hand on my shoulder then silently retreated.

  ~*~

  I needed lots to drink. As much as I could get down. That was first on the agenda. And to help me along, Liz had planned a game.

  “Okay, ladies, we are playing a game,” Liz announced as we piled into the limo that evening. She was repositioning the bachelorette veil on my head as she further explained. “I have in my pocket a list of items that are worth points in the game. For every twenty-five points, we have a round of drinks on
the groom’s tab. We are splitting into two teams of three, and we will meet back at the bar an hour from our arrival. The team with the least amount of points is required to sing karaoke to a cheesy eighties song chosen by the winning team. Now, c’mon, ladies. It is our responsibility to give Rainy a night she will not remember. Don’t let her down.”

  Liz opened up her goodie bag and began handing out glow stick jewelry. By the time everyone had on two wrists full of bangles and a few necklaces in neon colors, it looked like we were going to a rave. “What’s on this list?” Piper asked impatiently.

  “I will pass out the lists when we get to the bar. Any other questions or comments?”

  “We’re not twenty-one,” Penelope said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re young heiresses. Nobody is going to care, and if they do we can pay them not to.”

  The limo stopped outside of a downtown bar that I’m sure we had half rented out for the night. As we grouped up out front, Liz handed out two folded lists. She checked her watch, told us the time, and we leapt into action. Each team had one hour to gather as many of the items on the list as possible, and the items were grouped into point categories. A condom, a box of altoids, a cucumber, a single man’s business card, a sex quiz from a magazine, and a fortune cookie fortune were all worth five points. Worth ten points were items like a pair of handcuffs, a policeman’s hat, a whip, a penny from my year of birth, and a penny from the groom’s year of birth. The items worth twenty-five points were definitely the most interesting: a roadside advertisement from the Department of Marriage Licensing, an advertisement for LUCC, a male stripper’s g-string (double the points if he’s still in it), a Viagra pill, a vibrator, and a tabloid with me on the cover. Things were bound to get interesting.

  I was not going to be outdone. I had no trouble conning the security guard outside the club out of his handcuffs. It is amazing what a semi-famous, scantily clad bachelorette could manage to achieve. The earlier events in the day had numbed me, and a rarely seen hard-ass Rainy was the result. I swiped a tabloid with my picture on it from a newsstand as we walked by. After all, he had no business being open in the middle of the night. I knew where at least half of the LUCC advertisements were in downtown, and they were conveniently placed near the DML signs posted up everywhere. When my mission neared completion we carried all of our spoils back to the bar where the other girls sat waiting.

  “Who’s gonna tally up the scores?” Walker asked.

  I grabbed an alcoholic syringe shooter off of a platter being carried by a girl walking around the bar and without considering what it consisted of, pushed the plastic of the syringe in on itself and downed it all. Whatever it had been, it was tasty, and I beckoned the girl back over for more.

  “Uh, Rainy obviously won,” Penelope said as she rummaged through the pile of advertisements on our table. Armed with a few more of the syringe shooters, I took one after another.

  “Slow down!” Liz said as she snatched them from me. “We’re supposed to be taking them together.”

  I grabbed the handful of them back from her. “Well, then I guess you need to catch up.”

  In a matter of ten minutes, while I sat in the semi-circular booth with the rest of the crew, I’d emptied at least twelve of the syringe shooters. Piper had affirmed after taking a few with me that the technical term for the mixture was called Fucked in the Shower. After my sixth shot, the name of that alcoholic mixture made me giggle.

  Liz and Sasha were busy making tally marks on a napkin to see who officially had won the bachelorette party game. But after all the shooters, I was tired of sitting quietly in the booth, and they were taking far too long with the calculations.

  “I’m gonna sing,” I announced to the table. I’m not quite sure why nobody stopped me when I decided to do this, especially since the tiara atop my head hung crooked and my sash kept catching on things I stepped too close to. Nothing about me made the declaration “I’m gonna sing” acceptable. Nonetheless, I took the stage. And what did I sing? Journey, of course. As a matter of fact, I spent twenty minutes on stage doing a Journey tribute. Van would’ve been proud – or humiliated to know me. The girls sure as hell thought it was funny enough not to pull me off stage.

  In the middle of my third butchering of a Journey song, I stopped singing the lyrics and began commentary on my bachelorette party. The speech went something like this, with epic eighties music playing in the background. “As most of you know, this is my last night as a free woman. What the hell does that mean, anyway? Free woman? Well, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean someone who files a request with the DML. No, siree, it does not mean that.”

  Howling laughter was coming from my table of friends. It seemed as if they were having a not-so-serious conversation about whether or not to stop me before I said something I shouldn’t have.

  “And you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking I need a couple of able-bodied men up here on stage with me to assist me in a little pre-wedding fun, if you will.”

  Piper’s Irish accent rose above the rest as she whooped and cheered me on. A few guys obliged me by climbing on stage. The dark haired one, who looked especially amused by me, quickly became my crutch as the alcohol further paralyzed rational movement. With my arm tightly around first the brunette and then the blonde, I returned my mouth to the microphone.

  “It’s a shame you’re getting married soon. We could have fun,” the blonde said to me with a smile of admiration for the absolute drunkenness that consumed me.

  “Who says we aren’t going to have fun?” A few people whistled and cheered in the crowd that had gathered in front of the stage. “So, if my lovely assistants would follow me outside, we have a bonfire to start.”

  I jumped, or depending on the viewpoint, fell, off the stage with the help of my handsome assistants and gathered up all of the DML paraphernalia I could from the table I’d dumped it on. Every shred of advertising we’d collected from the Department of Marriage Licensing was quickly piled into the middle of the street where we made no hesitation about stopping traffic. After dousing the pile of advertisements with a few of the syringe shots I still had in my back pocket, a few flicks of a cigarette lighter sent them up in flames. I’d never seen a fire so beautiful. I’d also never seen flashing blue lights show up somewhere so quickly.

  The singing of eighties songs could’ve been allowed by my crew. Even the massive amounts of alcohol I ingested was okay. But I half-expected someone to object when I announced that I planned to set fire to something in the street. However, in the spirit of the party, no one did, that I recall. Then again, my memory of the occurrence couldn’t be trusted. Most of all, someone should’ve stepped in before the police handcuffed me and shoved me into the back of the patrol car. That is something I know for sure.

  The morning news headline would read: Soon-to-be Mrs. Ashley Schroeder Jailed for Public Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct. Pictures on page six!

  Chapter 21

  I boarded the flight to New York directly after my parents came to bail me out. It’s amazing how much like a child they made me feel. The worst part, though, was their disappointed silence. All the way from 201 Poplar to the airport, they pretended as though I wasn’t in the car. They discussed departure times and gate numbers. My mother continuously scanned through the stations on the radio. It made me feel sicker than my empty, aching stomach.

  Liz had left me a voicemail to let me know that she had picked up all of my suitcases from my apartment. She’d apparently taken my keys from me before they shoved me into the police car, something she admitted she felt partly responsible for. She’d ended the message with such a cheerful, high-pitched “see you on the plane” that I winced and turned off my phone. I ignored the other seven messages in my inbox.

  The airport was relatively empty, which was a huge relief. My walk of shame didn’t need to be witnessed. I was still in the same outfit I’d worn the night before. Eyeliner was smudged around my eyes so that I r
esembled a raccoon. I smelled of liquor, as if I’d drunk so much it was seeping out of my pores. I felt disgusting.

  We breezed through security and found our gate. My parents deliberately sat with their backs to me on the next row of seats outside the departure gate. I turned around in my seat and crooked my head towards them. “I’m sorry,” I offered. Honestly, I was, but they didn’t believe me. “Really. I didn’t mean for things to get that out of hand.”

  My mother turned a page in a book she was reading. I spun around so that I was closer to my dad.

  “Daddy, please listen to me. You know I didn’t end up in jail on purpose.”

  He sighed and readjusted his baseball cap. “Rainy, don’t push things right now. Everyone needs some time to cool off, even you. Take this time to reflect on your thoughts.”

  “Is this like time out? C’mon, talk to me like an adult. I’m twenty-one years old.”

  “And I support you when you act like an adult, but when you act like an out-of-control, over-privileged child, you not only embarrass us but damage your credibility. Now, please, Rainy, drop it. By the time we land in New York I would like this to be a distant memory.”

  I spun back around and sighed some of the pressure out of my chest. I wanted to vomit. The smell of bagels wafting out of the shop across from our gate made the urge even more intense. The fluorescent lights made my head pound. I closed my eyes and attempted to reduce the spinning sensation when I did so.

  Liz arrived to the gate without the dramatic entrance she usually would. She motioned me out of my seat and into the large hallway. “Wow, you look fabulous,” she noticed.

  “Yeah… yeah…”

  “Sorry. I already checked your bags, and I brought you some supplies.” She shook the tote bag on her shoulder at me and beckoned me to follow her to the bathroom.

  I changed into a pair of jeans and a comfy University sweatshirt, exchanged the heels for socks and tennis shoes. I swept my hair up and washed my face in the sink. Liz chattered on the whole time. “I should’ve stopped you before you started a sign burning, but you had the whole crowd on your side.”