by Heather Gean
“It’s fine.”
“Your parents pissed?”
Obviously. I nodded as I dabbed make-up remover under my eyes. “I’m ready for this whole thing to be over.”
“Well, you’d have to be some sort of magician to make that happen at this point and not end up the most hated woman in America.”
“I told you that Ashley and I have a plan.”
“I don’t know what the hell it could be at this point. C’mon, I am your Maid of Honor. Don’t I deserve to know? Let me know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I can’t, Liz. At least you know there is a plan. That’s more than I’ve told anyone else.”
“Does Van know what it is?”
My chest ached at the mention of him. I shook my head and then splashed more cool water over my face before drying it with paper towels from the dispenser. “Nobody knows, Liz. Nobody can know yet. It’s risky.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m just trying to look out for you. I don’t want there to be any reenactments of last night tonight at the rehearsal dinner.”
“Oh, you know, I don’t see what it would hurt. It will be way more entertaining than boring speeches.” Liz shot me a look. “Kidding…”
“At least you’ve still got your sense of humor.”
“Eh, I think I’m the only one.”
The Congressman and his wife still hadn’t cracked a smile about the whole thing. I sat across from them on the plane, flipping through a Sudoku puzzle book I found in the seat pocket. I didn’t know why I was trying. I hated numbers.
“Morning, love,” Piper whispered into my ear. I was almost asleep when she startled me awake. I was relieved to see her because she was the only one of the bridal party I hadn’t seen board. “Listen, I hate to interrupt your beauty sleep, but I think you’ll be very interested in the passenger sitting beside me.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s your lover boy.”
I stiffened in my seat and thought that I might finally puke. “You wanna trade seats?”
I slowly made my way towards the back of the plane, attempting not to attract much attention. Van was sitting next to the window with headphones hanging out of his ears. He stared blankly out the window. Nervousness seized my whole body. I took the empty seat beside him as casually as possible, but I struggled with sitting still. He glanced over at me, expecting Piper, and after a double-take he tugged the headphones out of his ears.
“Hi?”
“How was your stay in Memphis?”
“How was your night in jail?”
“Why are you stalking me?”
Van glanced around uncertainly. “I’m going back to New York, where I live, for the rehearsal dinner. I hardly consider that stalking you. It was one of the only available flights. Don’t flatter yourself.”
My face reflexively turned red. I crossed my ankles, folded my hands, uncrossed my ankles, shifted in the very upright seat. “You ignored my calls, too, ya know. You were returning the favor, I guess?” I asked.
“I needed some time to think.”
“About what?”
“About the conversation we had in Texas – why? What’s your excuse?” he asked.
“The same,” I admitted.
“That’s lame.”
“What, you can use it and I can’t?”
Van returned the headphones to his ears and decided to stare out the window again. There was nothing but clouds out there. Nothing to see. I sat there for a few awkward moments and considered switching seats with Piper again. As I started to stand, Van grabbed my wrist and yanked the headphones into his lap again. I lowered myself back down into the seat.
“God, Rainy, why do you have to be so…”
“So what?”
He seemed annoyed with himself, but his voice remained low. “I can’t get over you. I tried, trust me. After Texas I really realized how insane this whole thing is. You’re marrying my brother tomorrow. What kind of person does that make me?”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“Care to fill me in?”
“I can’t.”
“What are you, in the mafia or something? CIA? You can, you just won’t.”
“I can’t, Van. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal to you. You aren’t a commitment sort of guy. You made that clear in Texas.”
“What is commitment anymore, Rainy? It’s a federal law? A government program? You’re a hypocrite. I’m sure Lorna Schuyler is so proud.”
“So that’s it then?”
Van stared at the seat in front of him. Eventually he pressed the headphones back into his ears and leaned against the window. I retreated to the tiny plane bathroom to puke up what was left from the previous night before returning to my original seat.
~*~
The main table in an exquisitely decorated ballroom of the Plaza was shared by my five bridesmaids, Ashley’s five groomsmen, and of course, the couple of the evening. The grime of my bachelorette party, the jail cell, and the plane had been washed away, and I sat beside Ashley wearing my best happy face, a designer evening gown, and sparkling jewelry more expensive than the car I drove. The party could only have been more important if Jesus had been sitting at the head of our table having his Last Supper. After all, a public crucifixion was imminent. At least he’d had some experience.
Sasha forked at the salmon in front of her. She hadn’t taken a bite. Her wine glass also remained full. A pregnant woman needed more for dinner than just a few sprigs of salad and water. I remembered that on this evening, I carried just as much influence as Ashley. I flagged down a waiter. “My friend here didn’t order salmon. Could you bring her some soup and salad?”
“Mrs. Schroeder instructed us that it is inappropriate to serve soup and salad as a main course.”
“I don’t care what Mrs. Schroeder said,” I returned flatly. I looked to Ashley for support.
“Bring her the soup and salad,” he instructed. The waiter scuttled off. “Well, that was rude.”
“You must be referring to your mother who refused to give my best friend a vegetarian meal. I believe that was rude.”
“I know my family’s insane. You don’t have to remind me.” Ashley mirrored my forced smile. There was so much conversation in the hall that, paired with the music, no one could hear a hushed word we said even if they were sitting at our table. “What the hell’s with you tonight?”
I forked some sautéed vegetables into my mouth with a dainty, exaggerated shrug as if Ashley and I were sharing some joke. “Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.”
“You’re not the only one who feels that way,” he said in an exhausted tone. I saw his stare wandering off towards Dee. She was sickeningly gorgeous that evening.
“How are things between you and your girlfriend?”
“Fine. How are things between you and my brother?”
“Nonexistent.”
“That’s unexpected.”
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm,” I said before taking a sip of my wine.
“I was being serious. What happened?”
“Things just didn’t work out.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Stop it.”
“I was being serious,” he said.
“Why do you care?”
“We may be horrible for each other, Rainy, but you’re a good person. You deserve to be happy.” I couldn’t maintain my big fake smile as I assessed the authenticity of his statement. “I feel that on some level, through all of this, we’ve become friends.”
I slowly nodded. “I suppose, on some level, that you’re right.”
“Van’s sort of… emotionally retarded. It runs in the family. You have to interpret him. You should be good at that. You work in a museum and all.”
“You just want us to reconcile so you don’t feel so guilty.”
I felt weird having this conversation with Van sitting on the other side of Ashley, but he was feigning a conversation with Sterling that I couldn’t
hear a word of. The small orchestra, hired out for the weekend, was positioned entirely too close to our table. Whines from the violin rang in my ears.
At eight o’clock exactly, the music cued down, and Ashley realized that it was time for toasts. I’d dreaded this part of the evening all day. Not that I didn’t enjoy drinking, but wine became harder to enjoy when taken with embellished praises to the flimsy façade of a relationship. I dabbed my mouth with a napkin in hopes of distracting anyone watching from the look of terror on my face.
“Good evening,” Ashley said into the microphone that had been waiting on our table for just this segment of the evening. As I looked up at it, it made me think of the karaoke mic from the night before, the thing that had aided in recruiting accomplices for my illegal activity. I wrapped my freshly manicured fingers around the crystal glass and stared into the golden color of the wine, waiting for the intervals that allowed for a drink. “Rainy and I would like to thank all of you for sharing this lovely evening with us. I’d like to take this moment to say a few things about the emotional journey Rainy and I have made to get here.”
I smiled out of nervousness, pleased and terrified that he was charming the entire crowd so I didn’t have to. My hand was shaking so much that the gold liquid in my glass tilted like the plane of a see-saw. I returned it to the table cloth.
“As you all know, Rainy and I were matched by the Department of Marriage Licensing system.” Ashley paused for applause. From across the table, Liz twisted her pretty face into disgust, and I caught myself before I broke into laughter. “The past six months we’ve spent getting to know one another have been some of the most interesting of our lives. We’re happy you will all be there tomorrow to witness the culmination of these six months. But before I spend all night hogging the microphone, I’m going to pass it on to people who have far more important things to say than I do.” The crowd laughed appropriately.
Within seconds, Ashley’s mother was standing up in her a dress so white I wondered if she’d have the audacity to wear it the next day. When she smiled, her face hardly moved, probably from some special Botox injections she’d received specifically for this evening. Mrs. Schroeder beamed as the small spotlight hit her. She rambled on in a washed-out-Hollywood-starlet fashion, most of which I ignored, until her attention-grabbing ending. With her wine glass lifted, she toasted, “To Ashley and Rainy. She’s no me, but I’m sure she’ll make a fine Mrs. Schroeder.”
I was floored when she said it, but even more shocked when people actually clapped. By the time I’d finished washing away the bad taste her toast left in my mouth, I had to flag down another waiter to refill my glass. I’d been around long enough that her cruelty shouldn’t have surprised me.
My dad was the next one to find himself in the spotlight and holding the microphone. Since we hadn’t spoken since he’d picked me up from jail that morning, I wondered what sort of fatherly advice he’d bestow upon me in front of everyone. He pulled a pre-planned speech out of his jacket pocket, and it was filthy with political sentiment. “How fortunate my daughter is that the government in this great United States provided her with this kind of happiness. To Rainy and Ashley, and their pursuit of happiness.” I was nearly moved to tears, but not in the way I’d always imagined I would be when my father toasted to me before my wedding.
Liz smoothed the silk of her dress as she stood up. She was so much shorter than the other speakers that it took them a moment to readjust the beam of light until it glittered across her features. She was the only hope I had for a legitimate toast. One of her blue eyes winked at me as she unfolded a tiny piece of paper. “In our freshman year of college, Rainy and I attended my grandmother’s wedding to her most recent husband. We helped my grandmother with her hair and her make-up and her veil, and we took our seats to witness the beautiful ceremony. We’d nearly been moved to tears by the vows, but it was the kiss that really made us cry. When my grandmother’s husband kissed her, somehow, his false teeth slid out of his mouth and got stuck in hers. We laughed so hard that I thought we might die right then and there. The reason I’m telling you this wedding horror story isn’t because Rainy has false teeth, but is because directly after this incident, Rainy swore that she would never get married. Actually, I remember that we toasted to marriage being for losers. So, Rainy,” Liz said, turning towards me, “I felt it was my job as your Maid of Honor to remind you that after tomorrow you will officially be a loser. I love you!” She blew a kiss into my laughing face before taking her seat, proud that she’d thus far been the hit of the speakers.
Before I had time to recover from the aching side I’d acquired from Liz’s speech, it was Van’s turn. I downed the rest of my glass of wine as he stood up. He began with some lines about how Ashley had been a lifelong friend of his, and it dragged along as if he was reading some generic toast verbatim out of a Wedding Toasts for the Socially Inept book. His speech seemed to be drawing to a close, and he hadn’t said anything that made me squirm, but his closing statement had been packed with the punch. “I have to admit I’m a little jealous of Ashley. He couldn’t have been matched with a more incredible girl than Rainy Clarke. It’s unlikely that any of us will ever be that lucky.” He played it off as a polite comment, and the whole room burst into applause. As he sat down, he glanced over at me long enough to check my expression then returned to his glass. Nobody else in the room noticed what I noticed about his speech. Nobody else’s heart had sunk quite like mine did.
Ashley stood again to thank everyone for their gracious words. “Rainy and I hope to see you all at the wedding tomorrow. It will be an event to remember.”
As Ashley returned to his chair again, I leaned over to whisper to him with a sly smile, “If they only knew.”
~*~
I had seen out the window of my suite that the New York street outside was packed with both people and press from an early hour. In the condensation on the glass, I traced circles around the images of the people I assumed were protesting with LUCC and x’s over the ones I assumed to be press. I’d been sitting with my forehead pressed against the cold glass watching the growing mob long before sunrise. The bed was still made, but I had eaten the pillow mints, which was not the best idea I made considering I had puked a few times before and no less than twice afterwards. What little energy I had left in me to get up and disappoint everyone that day was draining out of me one bout of nausea at a time. I sat at that window, withering away into a sick shell. By the time someone knocked I wasn’t sure I had the energy to answer the door.
When I did rouse myself to open it, I peered through the peep hole, expecting to see a member of the bridal party or perhaps my mother, but I saw a periscopic distortion of Van instead. I would’ve been surprised had I been able to feel anything but gnawing anxiousness. He wasn’t in his penguin suit yet, instead sporting a blue and gray flannel shirt over a faded t-shirt, and inevitably my sleepless eyes caught a glimpse of Kurt Cobain. He was unshaven and unkempt, almost as if he’d been at a bar all night. He had angst written all over him.
I hesitantly opened the door and leaned my face against the chilly metal doorframe. “Checking to see if I’ve taken off yet?”
“Just checking on you,” he said, which really meant that he didn’t have a good reason to see me, just a dull, aching desire. He kept his distance, out in the middle of the hallway. I glanced both ways, but it was still too early for wedding-goers to be up and out. “You’re really going to do this whole wedding thing today?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t what I wanted to say, really, but was anything anymore? “I mean, it’d be a shame to waste the seven-tier cake…”
He shook his head. “Nobody gives a shit about the cake. You’re using that as an easy way out.” His eyes fell to his shoes, but the scuff marks and frayed laces couldn’t legitimately keep his attention for long. I couldn’t expect him to understand, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I felt he’d come to my suite to drag me through the coals one more time. One more time a
round, just to show Rainy that if she doesn’t run away with me that she’s the bad person. “Is that how you’re gonna be?”
I stood there and stared at him long enough to remember that he was a Pisces. How unfortunate. How ironic.
“Van, you knew from the first day you met me that this was how it was going to be. It wasn’t like one day I seduced you and then confessed months later that I’m legally engaged, no! You knew!” I was deliriously angry, fueled by exhaustion and the taste of bile in the back of my mouth. “Don’t stand there like you’re some innocent little thing prancing along when the Big Bad Wolf just snatched you up. I was unavailable from the start, and you knew. What’s worse is that I think that may have been the only reason you wanted me, because you knew that commitment would never be a serious issue. You were scared of commitment all along, and you decided to play around with the girl you knew couldn’t commit. I really – I love you, Van. But I don’t stand a chance, even if I call off this wedding. I never stood a chance.”
Van looked as if he had blood in his mouth that spurted up uncontrollably from multiple gunshot wounds I’d inflicted into his chest. Obviously, there was not a real gun and no bleeding organs, but both of us stood there with hand grenades for hearts, and we had long since pulled the pins.
“I fell hard for you, Rainy. Maybe I am bad with big commitments, or maybe I’m just bad with big commitments to girls who are already committed. I don’t know if I expected you to call off the wedding, really, I don’t. But I loved you like I thought you would.” He ran his hands through his hair and made a low, grunting sigh. “I guess this thing between you and me was dead before it started?” He squared his shoulders to regain some composure. He closed some of the space between us with an awkward step and placed a kiss just beside my lips. “I’m not gonna see you on these terms again. I’ve made some mistakes with you this far, but it ends here. I wish I could say I’m sorry.”
I stared blankly at his beautiful, boyish face. I blinked back the way my eyes lingered around the curve of his mouth. Suddenly, the boldly colored carpet became far more interesting than it really was. “I wish you could, too.”
