Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305)

by Topper, Jessica

  “Hey, want to know why urine smells funny after eating asparagus?” The guy in the opposite row leaned conspiratorially across the aisle.

  “Yes, do tell.”

  “Sulfurous amino acids.”

  “Fascinating!”

  “Are you really having this conversation?” Noah inserted. I dismissed him with a wave of my spoon.

  “And here’s the kicker: everybody has pungent pee after digesting asparagus, but less than half the population owns up to it. Want to know why?”

  “Of course,” I prompted.

  “Because not everyone has the special gene that allows them to smell it!” This guy was very pleased with himself.

  “I did not know that. Thanks.” I tipped my spoon politely at him and went back to scraping the sides of my dish. Noah finished his meal, including his asparagus, in silence. I wondered if he possessed the smell gene for asparagus pee or not. Something told me I’d better not ask.

  “Business proposal?” I inquired instead. He had all sorts of windows with Excel worksheets open.

  “Nope. Bachelor party.” Noah sounded thrilled . . . not. “A week-long extravaganza in Vegas. I’ve known the best man my whole life. Tim is what you’d call . . . a bit gung ho.”

  I glanced at the screen again, with its grids and flowcharts and color coding. It made my eyes practically cross just trying to find a spot to focus on. “Wow, looks like a wild time. Are you going to have strippers there, giving PowerPoint presentations?”

  He smirked. “Ha, you’re funny.” He highlighted a bullet point, made a notation, and clicked save. “Really. You should do comedy.”

  “Comedy is exactly what my mom always hoped I would pursue.” I waited a beat. “Said no child of a critical, overbearing, advice-dealing Jewish mother, ever.”

  Now he really laughed; it was a full-on belly laugh. The kind of laugh you’d just love to bottle up and save, to let loose on a rainy day.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are currently looking at an on-time arrival,” the captain murmured through the loudspeaker, and he ran through the time and current weather conditions in the Chicago metropolitan area.

  “I’ve got one of those, too,” Noah confided. “Minus the Jewish advice. Mine has the Catholic guilt component built in.”

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “And, folks, we’d like to give a special shout-out today to Flight 1232’s beautiful bride-to-be and her groom. They’re heading all the way to Hawaii for their big day. Let’s give them a big Windwest Airways round of applause!”

  I gave a polite little tap to my palm as the other passengers cheered. And here my mom thought she was doing something so special, having her destination wedding in Hawaii. Sounded like all the cool kids were doing it like that these days. I craned my neck down the aisle toward coach in search of the happy couple. Looking at brides and grooms was, for me, almost like rubbernecking on a highway at a car accident. I needed to observe the situation, then thank my lucky tail feathers it wasn’t me, that I had managed to escape unscathed.

  Noah wasn’t clapping, nor was he smiling anymore. “Do they think—”

  With two crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne in her hands, Anita was making a beeline up the aisle from the back of the plane. Her dazzling grin and eyes were definitely aimed at seats 3A and 3B.

  “Oh—oh, God, no.” This could not be happening.

  “You guys,” Anita gushed, her voice choked with emotion, “are going to have a great life together. Thanks for choosing to start it with Windwest Airways!”

  “Please, you don’t—” I began.

  “Of course we do!” The other flight attendant began to pass out glasses to the other handful of first-class passengers. Anita expertly filled the ridiculously phallic-looking flutes balancing on my tray table.

  There was static from the loudspeaker. “Congratulations to . . .” We heard shuffling from the flight deck. “Helen . . . no, that’s Helena and Noah!” I winced at the use of my given name from the flight manifest.

  Anita rolled her eyes and giggled. “Don’t worry, the flight crew is just drinking sparkling grape juice. But you’re having the real thing. Cheers!” She clinked her own glass to my flute and then reached over, practically giving me a mouthful of cleavage so she could clink Noah’s glass. “You lucky, lucky kids!” She looked barely older than us, but she had a knowing and nostalgic look in her eye. I noticed her hand was sporting a diamond ring big enough to need its own wheelbarrow, as well as a sparkly platinum band.

  This had to be karmic payback for that little white lie I told back at the gate in LaGuardia. Now I was stuck in first-class hell, with a bunch of rowdy well-wishers, clinking their glasses with whatever cutlery was left on their tray tables. The kissing-on-demand thing always struck me as a bizarre ritual at weddings. I knew it was traditional, but always wondered what would happen if the happy couple refused to kiss at the sound of clinking glasses. Would the mob turn on them, wielding their reception forks like pitchforks and grabbing the candelabras like torches? Kiss, kiss, kiss!

  For one insane moment, I contemplated what it would be like to kiss the perfect stranger in the seat next to me. A kiss with zero history built up behind it. He was Noah, app guy in 3A. That was all I knew. Would we go in, eyes open? Would what started as a chaste peck tease into something stronger, if my lips were to part and he happened to catch my top lip between both of his?

  Kiss, kiss, kiss!

  The plane hit a pothole in the sky and took a sickening drop, matching the turbulence in my stomach. Were these people blind? Yes, I had walked on board with a bridal salon dress bag. But the class ring, hanging on my finger like a hex nut, could hardly be mistaken for a Tiffany solitaire. And had they failed to notice the look on the face of my supposed betrothed? He hadn’t so much as glanced at me with even a hint of affection. More like abhorrence. The short civil moment and laugh we had just shared was now long gone.

  Under the red blush creeping up those impossibly high cheekbones, Noah looked green. He closed his computer screen with a hasty click, no doubt wanting to avoid puking across the keyboard. I hoped that, like the lotion in the lavatory, first class stocked a fancy supply of barf bags in the seat pockets.

  Kiss, kiss, kiss!

  “No, no, no, don’t you know it’s bad luck to do that before the wedding?” I tutted, fanning myself with Los Bros Hernandez. Was it getting hotter in here? I took another gulp of champagne. “We promise we’ll kiss if you clink on our return flight, okay?”

  My illogical statement garnered a smattering of applause.

  “Aw, you guys are so dang cute!” Sometime during all the mishegas, Anita had disappeared and reappeared with tongs and a tray. “Hot scented towel?” An inferno of lemon-infused steam enveloped us.

  “Yes, please.” Noah reached rudely past me and grabbed one. He pressed it to his face like he wanted to disappear behind it, and then wiped his neck and his brow, as if he had been put through the wringer.

  “Thanks, Anita. For everything.” I plucked a towel from her tongs and squeezed it, determined to wipe my hands of the whole business. As if I would be caught dead kissing some uptight jerk in a matching suit and loafers. The minute we landed, this guy could move on to his gate to Vegas or to Mars, for all I cared. With his little spreadsheets and overripe banana. And I would be one step closer to toes in the sand, a margarita in hand, and a good laugh with Danica over Mr. Energy-Suck. I thought of my drawing, and the frowning photo of him I had texted her. I bet he would be the life of his friend’s bachelor party. If anyone could drain the joy of sinning out of Vegas, it would be him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, from the flight deck. Looks like there’s an area of weather over Chicago. We’re just going to circle for a while so they can plow the runway . . .”

  Delayed

  “Tell me again how you managed to miss your connection?” />
  “Mom”—I tried to keep my voice even—“I had a forty-three-minute layover. We had to circle while they cleared the runway, and then we had to sit for twenty minutes until a delayed flight could push out of our gate and we could go in. Which gave me exactly five minutes to get halfway across O’Hare.” Flip-flops were a poor choice of running shoe, and my feet stung in protest. They were wishing for those lemon-scented hot towels right about now.

  “I can’t believe they didn’t wait for you. I’ve sat on the tarmac many times, just waiting for delayed passengers to straggle on. It’s not like they didn’t know you were coming!”

  “Yes, Mom, I know.” They knew the dress and I were on our way, because my mom had probably called and spoken to every supervisor she could reach on the Windwest Airways 800 number. Vera Hudson didn’t mess around. “They had to leave right on time because of the weather window.”

  “Figures. The one time they leave on time, and they leave you behind.”

  “I’m on the three o’clock flight now; it’s all good.” I sighed, glancing out at the gray skies and swirling flakes. Bands of snow were forecasted for throughout the day. I had really hoped to leave winter behind back in New York.

  “It would have been better had you flown out on Monday, like I asked you to in the first place.”

  Oh, boy, here we go with the guilt. I held the phone away from my ear, rolled my eyes at it, and placed it back before replying, “Dex was playing last night, Mom. I promised him I’d be there.”

  “You and your bands.” She clucked disapprovingly. “Isn’t it time all these friends of yours stopped playing Peter Pan and got real jobs?”

  “I think it’s time for me to hang up now. Gotta conserve battery.” And my sanity.

  My mother gave a resigned sigh. “Ernie and I will pick you up, no matter the time.”

  Ernie Crystal. Or, as my mother pronounced it: Crystal, like the champagne. I had a hard enough time getting used to the idea that my mother was dating, let alone marrying, a guy named Ernie. He looked and sounded less like the millionaire real estate investor he was, and more like a guy who should be in a domestic partnership with a muppet named Bert.

  “Oh, got to run, dear. Cousin Miriam just arrived with her doctor!”

  “Mom, he’s not her doctor. He’s her husband, who happens to be a doctor.”

  “Yes, well.” I heard my mother sniff, and I knew what was coming next. I had been there as she addressed her wedding invitations, sighing longingly over writing Dr. and Mrs. “You have a perfectly good doctor just waiting for a second date with you.”

  “Mike Weintraub really wasn’t my type, despite our shared interests.” The perfectly good podiatrist had been way more interested in my recently deceased rocker boyfriend than in getting to know me. “I can’t believe you dated Allen Burnside!” and “So what was he like?” were his version of breaking the ice on the first date, so I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about giving him the cold shoulder.

  “Your cousin Miriam had offered to bring the dress, you know. But I didn’t want her to have to schlep down from Westchester with the baby to pick it up.”

  I knew what she was getting at. The dress would’ve been there by now.

  And I didn’t have a doctor husband.

  I didn’t have a baby to schlep.

  I didn’t have an excuse.

  “And FYI, the latest batch of Veraisms should have hit your in-box. Toodles!”

  I gazed at the departures screen again, trying not to be alarmed at the growing number of flights marked Canceled in glowing yellow letters. So far, my new flight was still on time, and I could only hope my suitcase would be on it. I had my three pairs of emergency panties in my carry-on, along with my toothbrush and other essentials my mother had hammered into me ever since I was old enough to pack my own case. In her mind, as long as you had three extra pairs of underwear, you could handle anything that came your way. Why three? I could guess her theories:

  Bad things come in threes

  Three strikes and you’re out

  My mother was superstitious. Kina hora, the evil eye, and all that jazz. She hated Three on a Match, the name of Allen’s band, even before she heard their music just based on the lore behind the phrase.

  My dad, though, he believed in luck; or rather, his lack of it. “If it weren’t for bad luck, Laney, I’d have no luck at all,” he’d say with a laugh. My mother used to say that luck was for suckers. But my dad and I, we didn’t care. We were the dreamers in the family. My dad would always kiss my head for good luck, ever since I was a baby and even before I had a lot of hair. His preferred method was flipping me upside down with his strong arms and planting one on my forehead. “Kissing the Blarney Stone,” he would say in a fake Irish brogue. Even after I had outgrown his ability to flip me, he would go out of his way to lay a kiss on me if a Big Game, a Big Client, or a Pretty Pony was on the line. “Let me kiss the Blarney Stone,” he’d say and I’d giggle, because even though I had reddish hair and greenish eyes, I didn’t have a lick of Irish in me, and neither did he.

  I sighed; the last time I had heard from my father was eight months back, when he sent me a postcard from Ireland with a picture of the real Blarney Stone on the front. Wish you were here! was all it said, in his slanted, blocky script.

  Ernie Crystal was behind door number three of my mother’s love lottery. My dad had been behind door number two before flying the coop. And she never discussed her first marriage. The only thing she’d ever say when I’d ask about it was “Oh, that?” and wave a hand to pooh-pooh such silly talk. It was the seventies, and they were both way too young. That was all I ever got. That, along with her old engagement ring to play dress-up with. It was a gold band with an empty setting. Apparently she had taken “Oh, that?” and turned it into a lovely solitaire diamond necklace for herself. The empty prongs sticking up on the ring reminded me of those claw crane games at the mall that she would never let me play. “Like throwing money in the trash,” she’d say. “No one ever wins, those games are rigged.”

  Why set yourself up for failure, Laney?

  Says the woman on her third marriage.

  Ah, but there was one of my mother’s new all-time favorite sayings to balance out all the kina hora juju:

  Third time’s the charm.

  A tiny fat envelope popped with a ping onto my phone screen. No doubt the Veraisms—my mother’s priceless pearls of wisdom summed up in ten words or less and pimped out for $2.99. When my mom and dad split up, she had kept his last name and their greeting card company, Hudson Views. Designing graphics for her greeting card sayings was soul sucking compared to my dream job at Marvel, but at least it paid the rent. Barely.

  I opened her e-mail, which contained five of her latest Veraisms. Oh, fancy that, they were all on marriage:

  Two minds. Two hearts. One lifetime of happiness. Congratulations!

  Got rings?

  Welcome to the romantic roller-coaster ride of marriage!

  Knock-knock. Who’s there? I. I who? I DO!

  Old, new, borrowed, blue—don’t forget my best wishes, you two!

  My mom had pulled me off certain lines a while back, due to my “controversial interpretations” of some of her messages. Like the Get Well line, when I presented her with a sketch of a wide-eyed, wild-haired waif holding a dark mass to her mouth, bolted into a heart-shaped box, based on the Nirvana song. Feasting on tumors wasn’t exactly the wish she had had in mind. “I said ‘Beat your cancer,’ Laney. Not eat it!”

  I couldn’t wait for the day I got promoted to the Blank Inside line.

  Hauling my sketchbook back out, I studied the drawing of Tech-Boy for a moment. Not bad. There was room on his waist for a belt, and room on the belt for a holster. A banana-holding holster. I flipped to a blank page. For wedding and engagement, I tried to stay simple and sophisticated. I began t
o sketch sleek, interlocked rings and the silhouette of a gown on a hanger.

  “Bichonné? Isn’t that a breed of dog?”

  Speak of the devil. Noah was standing over me, eyeing the name on the garment bag I had draped over my neighboring two seats. A hard-shell, rolling carry-on sat near his feet like a sleek silver boulder. I bet it had perfect dimensions for overhead bin capacity. And I bet he had an app for measuring bin capacity, just in case.

  “Um, no. That’s bichon frise.” I knew, because my mother had one of those, too. Bitsy was probably the only living thing less thrilled than I was about this destination wedding. The poor dog was kenneled for the next week. “You miss your connection, too?” I wondered if he’d ask me to move my bag so he could sit. That would be rich, after he had hogged half of LaGuardia’s waiting area himself.

  “Nah. Mechanical trouble.” He rocked back on the heels of his expensive-looking leather shoes. “They’re trying to scrounge up another plane for us.”

  I rolled my pencil between my fingers as I studied him. Its hexagonal shape was strangely comforting. “You seem pleased.”

  “As long as the plane gets me from point A to point B in one piece, I don’t mind being late. Better than dead and early.” His eyes didn’t leave his phone screen. “It’s looking like a two-hour wait.”

  I didn’t comment about the departure screen displaying the same info two inches from his head. Funny how he, like me, thought in terms of point A and point B.

  “Want to grab lunch?” he asked.

  I hesitated to answer; I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or his phone. He seemed so enamored by it. Finally, he tore his eyes away and let them settle on me.

  “You sure you want to be seen with me? People might start throwing rice at us next.”