“Brooke, I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said as he gave me a kiss hello.
“Me, too,” I said.
“Vanessa, you look exactly the same,” he said as he gave her a kiss. “Gorgeous as ever. When are you going to come out here so that I can make you a movie star?” She giggled and all I could think was Why doesn’t he want to make me a movie star? I would have to clarify that with him later.
“Trip,” I said, “I would like to introduce you to my fiancé, Douglas,” I said, as he shook hands with Jack/Douglas. Trip smiled at us with a million startlingly white teeth and I realized that I had forgotten how good-looking he was.
“Ah, Douglas,” Trip said, “nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“G’day mate,” Jack/Douglas replied, Crocodile Dundee triumphantly returning to our midst.
Now, does that sound Scottish to you?
Trip looked at me in confusion and I looked back with one of those smiles that says “I know you think my fiancé is Scottish and he’s speaking like an Aussie, but really, there is a very logical explanation for this.” You know, that look.
As I stood there with my mouth gaping open, horrified that Jack had given up the game before the game had even begun, a thought ran through my head for the very first time — maybe this would be harder than it had originally seemed.
18
“Chhhhhhh! Hmmm. Ahmmm…”
Jack began to do his acting exercises, making strange noises with his throat. As he gargled, Trip began to look around for other, more normal, wedding guests to greet.
“Right,” Jack quickly recovered in a Scottish accent. “Just kidding, there, chap. Did our girl here tell you that I’m part Australian? Damn pleasure to meet you,” he said, shaking Trip’s hand furiously. I smiled and tried to recover, but not before Jack then said: “For fuck’s sake!”
While I looked around for a cliff to throw myself off, Jack continued speaking, with his Scottish accent now under control: “Uh, congratulations, I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“And I you,” Trip said as a waitress approached us with a tray of champagne. We all quickly grabbed a glass. “Glad you could make it.”
“I hope you’ve got some haggis here,” Jack said. “I could really go for some haggis.”
“Maybe at the cocktail hour, honey,” I said, downing my champagne in one gulp.
“Trip, dear,” Trip’s mom called from a few feet away, “could you please come and say ‘hello’ to the Hendersons?” She looked right through me. It was as if she didn’t even see me standing there, even though I knew that she did. Trip excused himself and I overheard her whisper to Trip, “Who invited that Jewish girl?” It’s comforting to know that some things never change. Who said you can never go home again?
“That went well,” Jack said, putting his arms around Vanessa and me. “I don’t know if you noticed, but for a second there I sort of lost the accent.”
“You don’t say?” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, I think that I might actually be a bit nervous about this whole thing. For a second there I was all Australian, but I don’t think that anyone noticed,” he said looking down at me. “You don’t think that Trip noticed, do you?” Now, my mother is always telling me that you need to be gentle with men, that they have fragile egos that need constant massaging, so I knew what my mother would have said in this situation.
“You said G’day mate,” I said. (Unfortunately, that was not what she would have said.)
“So, you think Trip noticed?” Jack asked. I wasn’t sure whether Jack was asking me if I thought that Trip noticed that he was nervous or that Trip noticed that his accent was all wrong, but since the answer to both questions was an unequivocal yes, I didn’t think that I really needed clarification before answering. Vanessa shot me a dirty look.
“No, honey,” I said and smiled. That was what my mother would have done. Vanessa smiled back at me and nodded. (Married women always seem to know what to say at times like that. They must get a handbook on it or something after their ceremony.)
After about a half an hour of milling about, drinking champagne (or downing it in my case), we were ushered into the Grand Ballroom. It had been transformed into an ethereal space. The untrained eye would have no idea that one week earlier, the very same room had hosted the Dungeons & Dragons annual convention. Jack did, though, because he, like my dad, feels it necessary to strike up conversations with anyone and everyone within ten feet of where he is standing. Apparently the general manager of the hotel had told him about the convention in response to Jack saying, “Beautiful wedding so far, huh?” (To Jack’s credit, my father would have then added, “Wonder how much this little baby set them back?”)
White lilies and roses filled the Grand Ballroom, and tea lights were lit everywhere you looked, giving the feeling of an intimate atmosphere, even though the room itself was bigger than an entire Manhattan block. There must have been over five hundred guests coming into the room, each taking a perfectly dressed chair along the candle-lit aisle. Trip’s ushers walked us to three seats directly across the aisle from a famous celebrity photographer who had shot everyone from the Artist Formerly Known as Prince to President Bush.
The string quartet began to chirp and the bridal procession began. First, Trip came out, escorted by his parents on either side of him. He smiled an enormous smile and walked down the aisle, stopping every few steps to greet wedding guests and shake their hands as if he were the pope. When he reached the aisle of a prominent Hollywood producer and his twenty-four-year-old wife, he actually stopped for a brief instant. I could have sworn I saw him shake hands on a deal. Was I the only one who saw it? Or was I the only one who noticed because this was just what they did at Hollywood weddings?
“If that man just made a deal, I hope that it was at least on the bride’s behalf,” Vanessa said, matter-of-factly, as if there were a Miss Manners chapter dedicated to the etiquette involved with making deals while walking down the aisle to one’s own wedding.
Next, members of Ava’s family came out, one by one, in what I could only assume were their traditional outfits of royalty. A cloud of red and gold fabric surrounded each family member as they walked down the aisle — slowly, somberly. I frantically checked my program as each person passed, anxious to see who they were and where they fell into the royal scheme of things.
Then came the Hollywood bridesmaids and ushers. Each bridesmaid paraded down the aisle in her red-and-gold satin gown as if she were on a red carpet. The groomsmen, dressed beautifully in white dinner jackets, all mugged for the wedding photographers as they walked. Vanessa told me that all of the major fashion designers were fighting over who would design the bridesmaid dresses. She said rumor had it that Karl Lagerfeld actually came to blows with Ralph Lauren over the dresses, but I don’t believe that for an instant.
I was about to make a catty comment about the royal bridesmaids out-glamming the glamorous Hollywood actress bridesmaids when the quartet began to play an achingly beautiful melody. Everyone spun around and rushed to their feet as Ava walked out with her father. She was wearing a delicate off-the-shoulder gown that framed her petite figure beautifully.
I wondered if I would ever walk down an aisle as I turned my fake engagement ring around my finger.
“Dearly beloved,” the priest began.
“Sorry about before,” Jack whispered, leaning into me.
“No problem,” I whispered back. I was too busy feeling bad for myself to give Jack any grief.
“I think that I covered well, though,” he said, eyes beaming like a little boy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he hadn’t.
“Is it cold in here?” he whispered.
“I’m fine,” Vanessa whispered.
“It’s because your legs are exposed,” I told him, observing that his legs were covered in goose bumps.
Stop looking at Jack’s legs. Stop looking at Jack’s legs!
“Now you know how we feel,” Van
essa whispered to Jack.
“I guess you should have put on some hose with that skirt,” I said.
“A — it’s a kilt,” Jack said, “and, B — that wasn’t even funny.”
“Okay,” Vanessa said, voice getting a bit louder as she laughed, “A — yes it was, and B — I feel, like, totally vindicated as a woman now. It’s like, if just one man can feel our pain for an evening, it’s all worthwhile.” A couple sitting in front of us turned around and we all looked ahead, pretending that we hadn’t been the ones talking.
“You’d better watch out,” I warned Jack, “before Gloria Steinem over there signs you up for a bikini wax.”
The woman in front of me caught me on that one and quietly shushed me. But really, how could I be expected to listen to all of this? The priest went on to detail Ava’s life and all of her martyrlike pursuits: Ava works with the blind; Ava works with the homeless; Ava works with children stricken with cancer. He just droned on and on about how Ava did this and Ava did that and just generally explained how Ava is a saint and I’m evil. Except he didn’t come out and say the part about me being evil, he just inferred it.
You know the way religion tends to do that? Makes you feel guilty? I asked a friend once what a Catholic mass was like and she said that it could be summed up with a simple topic sentence — the point of just about every sermon — you’re bad, try to control yourselves. We really bonded over that because I told her that rabbis practically use the same sermon. They must all get it off the Internet or something. Or at least I think they all use the same sermons, because, truth be told, I really only go to temple on the High Holy days. And I don’t even go to the whole service.
Actually, now that I think about it, Mormons aren’t really based in guilt (I guess that Mormons don’t really have the time for such things as guilt what with having so many wives and all). When I was sixteen, I went on a cross-country tour and spent a day at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. We were led around for the day by a missionary named Ted. He taught us tons of fun facts about Mormons such as the fact that they have a living prophet. Can you believe that? An actual living breathing prophet. You would think that in today’s day and age of cynicism that people would doubt you if you claimed to be a prophet sent from God, but apparently not. How do you get that gig? And exactly how does one announce that he or she is, in fact, the living prophet? Who would have the gall to think so highly of themselves to think that they were a living prophet? Come to think of it, most of my ex-boyfriends thought that they were God. So did their mothers. Does that count?
Missionary Ted was so dreamy — all blond hair and blue eyes. I was so lost in his eyes that when he told me about his love for Jesus Christ and how he wanted to scream it from the rooftops, I wanted to tell him that I would go with him to scream. I hoped that my brown hair and dark eyes wouldn’t betray me. I was afraid to tell him that I was Jewish for fear that he would scream out “Jewess! There is a Jewess among us and she is trying to seduce me!” But, he didn’t. Instead, he led our tour group into the visitor’s center where an enormous statue of Jesus served as the centerpiece of the room (and I mean enormous — this thing made the statue of David in Florence look, well, small). Ted sat beside me as the lights went dim and an elaborate presentation began. I was so excited that he chose to sit next to me that I barely even noticed when Jesus began to speak à la Disney’s Hall of Presidents. I was so disappointed when the lights came on and Ted quickly got up. He didn’t even try to hold my hand or brush against my knee or some other completely innocent Mormon-esque gesture of affection. He thanked us all for coming and told us to enjoy the many exhibits about the life of Jesus Christ on the way out, helpfully pointing out that restrooms could be found between the crucifixion and the resurrection.
“Ava actually became an actress to overcome her severe shyness and now uses drama therapy with handicapped children at Mount Sinai….”
Enough with her good qualities already! I don’t hear anyone talking about Trip’s wonderful qualities up there. Maybe that was because Trip would never do anything unless there was some form of reward, monetary or otherwise, in it for him. But, I never heard them go on and on about one’s qualities this much at a wedding before. Granted, I never attended the wedding of someone quite so saintlike before, but still. I mean, I billed over two thousand hours last year! I sincerely doubt that my parents’ rabbi would be talking about that at my wedding.
This is why I much prefer a Jewish wedding ceremony. Twenty minutes long. You’re in, you’re out. Bring on the kosher cocktail franks.
“This can’t be real,” I thought but didn’t say. Or, I should say, I thought and meant not to say, but said. Oops.
“Actually, it is,” Jack whispered. “When I saw her on Entertainment Tonight, she took Mary Hart to this shelter where she —”
“You are a litigator in a big firm in Manhattan,” I said to Jack. “How do you get home in time to see Entertainment Tonight every night?”
“I think that the better question is why do you watch Entertainment Tonight every night?” Vanessa asked.
“What’s wrong with Entertainment Tonight? I used to be an actor, you know,” Jack said.
“Let’s just put it this way,” Vanessa explained, “you’re about one step away from watching Lifetime Television for Women.”
Vanessa and I snickered as the priest announced that it was time to kiss the bride.
Trip and Ava kissed as the audience stood and applauded.
19
Finally, some cocktail franks. Kosher or not, those things always hit the spot.
The cocktail hour was amazing. Now I know the meaning of “rubbing elbows.” The room was filled with Hollywood’s best and brightest, and there was little old me, rubbing elbows with them. Literally. Brushing by them elegantly and then smiling to say “hello.” Or, I should say, bumping into them very ungracefully and then checking my boobs to make sure that they were still in my dress, but you get my point. Glamorous actresses, brilliant directors, rich producers, the most successful agents and even a few sports stars had turned out for the wedding of the season. And I seriously doubt that it was the sushi bar that brought them there. Even though that was where my date had parked himself all night, I was sure that for the Hollywood folks, it took more than a spicy tuna roll to get them excited.
Vanessa and I, on the other hand, had parked ourselves at the caviar station. It was perfectly situated to the right of the vodka slide, but to the left of the kitchen doors, so that as the waitstaff came out with hors d’oeuvres, we missed nary a shrimp skewer, vegetable dumpling or smoked salmon on toast points between the two of us.
I left Vanessa over at the caviar station with a football player who had mistaken her for a famous model while I met Jack at the prime-rib carving station. He was being quizzed by old family friends of Ava’s parents.
“Where in Scotland are you originally from?” Mr. Martin was asking Jack.
“Who me?” he asked in a perfect Scottish accent. “Ah, yes, Perth. Perth. Lovely Perth.” He looked at me for approval, and I stood beaming from ear to ear. I was so happy I could have kissed him right then and there. In a platonic way, of course.
“Ah, yes, Perth! We’ve heard that it’s so beautiful there,” Mrs. Martin said.
“Beautiful,” Jack said as he sipped his drink.
“We were just there!” Mr. Martin said.
“You were?” Jack said, his vodka straight up practically coming out of his nose.
“Why yes!” Mrs. Martin explained. “We just got back from Scotland last week, you see.”
“You did?” Jack asked. I signaled for the waitress. This was going to be a very long cocktail hour.
“Yes,” Mrs. Martin explained. “But I’m afraid we never made it to Perth.”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Mr. Martin chimed in. “Is Perth near Edinburgh?”
“Edinburgh. Edinburgh, uh…no?” Jack guessed as he brushed his hand through his hair. I could tell he was trying to
visualize the map from www.visitscotland.com in his mind, but I didn’t know how much that would help, since the map wasn’t drawn to scale. I offered nothing to the conversation as I stood next to him smiling like an idiot — I hadn’t studied where cities were in relation to each other, either, so I really couldn’t be mad at Jack for not knowing the answer himself. “Uh, well, Edinburgh is where Paris ought to be. Yes, that’s what I always say.”
Where was that cocktail waitress? Can’t she see that we’re thirsty over here?
“Oh,” Mrs. Martin said.
“Ever played St. Andrews?” Mr. Martin asked. Jack nodded and shrugged knowingly so as to say: “Don’t I always?”
“So, what’s your favorite part of Scotland?” Mrs. Martin asked.
“Ah, yes, well, that would be my own hometown,” Jack said. I put my hand on Jack’s shoulder as a show of support. He was recovering from the Edinburgh incident quite nicely.
“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Mrs. Martin asked.
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Martin agreed. “But come on, there have to be some other places you could tell us about. Tell us about some of the places that the tourists miss.”
“Uh, yes, of course,” Jack said as Mr. and Mrs. Martin looked on with anticipation. “Well, there’s Aberdeen, also known as the City of Roses, did you see that? It’s beautiful. And then there’s Stirling, the smallest city in all of Scotland, that’s quite beautiful, too. And then, of course, there are the famous lochs. Did you know that Loch Ness is actually the second largest loch? Not the first?” He was spewing off information quickly and in short snippets, as if he were a contestant on a game show.
“We did not know that!” Mrs. Martin said, clapping her hands together with excitement.
“What else do the tourists miss?” Mr. Martin asked, a big smile on his face.
“What else?” Jack said. “Did you know that over 790 islands make up the country of Scotland?”
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