So he did listen.
“Look,” he said. “You have a new lead. Let’s just go home and you’ll start fresh next weekend.”
“I’ll start fresh,” I repeated.
“You just said I didn’t have to come with you. That you were the one who was ready.”
Yeah, but.
I want you to come with me. I need you to come with me.
Charla came out of the diner, pressing a damp paper towel against her cheeks. “Don’t you know it’s bad for the baby to hear arguing?”
“You’re going to twist that ring right off your finger and it’s going to fly out the window,” Emmett said.
We were in the car, Emmett behind the wheel, I in the passenger seat, waiting for Charla, who’d decided she had a craving for cheese fries with gravy just as we’d been about to pull out of the diner’s parking lot.
“Wha—” Oh. I glanced at Emmett, then down at my hand. I’d been twisting the diamond ring and hadn’t realized it.
“That supposedly means you really don’t want to get married,” Emmett said. “Some girlfriend of mine told me that once when I wouldn’t commit to her.”
“You had a ring?” I asked.
“Some leather-and-plastic thing I got in Oregon,” he said. “She said I started playing with it whenever she brought up commitment, and that told her I was ambivalent about her.”
“Were you?”
He nodded. “Who haven’t I been ambivalent about?”
“Don’t you want to stop?” I asked. “Don’t you want to actually love someone and not want to escape them the next day? Don’t you want peace and serenity?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea what that is.”
“I guess I don’t either.”
“So you’re not sure you want to get married?” he asked.
I let out a deep breath. “I don’t know. My friends say I’ve got commitment issues. Father issues. Abandonment issues. The works.”
“But you did commit,” he said, nodding at the ring. “You’re getting married.”
“I eat a roll of Tums a day.”
“Me, too.”
“Do you love Charla?” I asked.
“A little personal, don’t you think?”
I rolled my eyes. “She loves you.”
“Viola,” he said. “Vickie. Valmont.”
“Valmont isn’t a girl’s name, and you’re not getting out of this conversation.”
“Are you going to make me talk?”
“You have to grow up someday, Emmett,” I said. “How about now that you’ve got a baby on the way?”
He stiffened. “With a sister like you, it’s no wonder I gravitate toward women who don’t get on my case and challenge me about my basic personality. Charla likes me the way I am. If you don’t, hey, oh well.”
I’d tried Oh well for an entire year and it hadn’t worked for me. But neither did Emmett in his current form.
So should Emmett be allowed to be Emmett? Run away when he liked? Never commit? Have love pass him by because he was too emotionally immature and unwilling to do anything about it?
And news flash, Emmett: Charla does challenge you. She just understands you so well that you don’t realize it.
Which meant Charla was my greatest ally at the moment.
“I’m not going to say it, Emmett, but you know what I’m thinking.”
“I don’t read minds, Eloise.”
I rolled down the window, despite the cold air. “Our father left because he didn’t want to commit. Didn’t want the responsibility of a family. Didn’t give a shit. That’s who you want to emulate?”
“First of all, you don’t know why he left,” he shouted. “And second of all, Miss Judgmental, don’t compare me to him. How dare you?”
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
“Why do you think he left, then?” I asked.
“Maybe he thought we’d be better off without him,” he said in such a low voice I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.
I turned around to face him. “Emmett, is that what you’re thinking? That Charla and the baby would be better off without you?”
“I’m not gonna win father of the year,” he said. “I don’t even have a job.”
“You can get a job. You can make a million dollars an hour smiling into a camera lens. And you have a Yale degree. You can do whatever you want.”
He leaned his head back and let out a deep breath. “I think about getting married, I think about a baby in a crib or a stroller, and I get totally claustrophobic. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“That’s how I feel about getting married,” I admitted.
“So why do it?” he asked. “Maybe it’s not the right time. Not the right time, not the right guy. Your gut is trying to tell you something.”
“Or I’m just chickenshit, Emmett.”
He glanced at me, then out the window. “Yeah, me too.”
“But I think we’re supposed to be,” I told him. “I think that means good stuff is happening in our brains.”
“Then why is the gas tank on E?” he asked, pointing at the tank indicator.
Oops.
The three of us took a vote and unanimously decided to head home. We agreed to make the trip to Scranton next weekend; Charla had even volunteered to Internet research the various city newspapers for addresses and potentially employees. Emmett and I didn’t know whether to thank her or glare at her.
A half hour later, Charla announced that she had to pee yet again and had a craving for a strawberry milk shake, so we stopped at the McDonald’s on the other side of the highway.
I pointed at an empty table. “Let’s eat in here. I’m sick of the car. And it’s beginning to smell like hamburger.”
Charla wolfed down a McVeggie burger and unwrapped a fish-filet sandwich. I ate the pickles Emmett had taken off his cheeseburger; he swiped my fries when he finished his own. We slurped our shakes in companionable silence.
I slid the invitation to my wedding onto the table. “So what do you guys think of this?” I asked.
“‘Eloise Manfred and Guest’?” Emmett said. “Your fiancé could be anyone? If I were Noah, I’d be pissed as hell.”
“He hasn’t seen it,” I said. “Anyway, I’m sure the ‘guest’ is just for the mock version. I’m sure the real envelope will be properly addressed.”
“‘Properly addressed’ sounds very traditional to me,” Charla said with a wink.
I hoped she wasn’t right.
“What’s Fifth Avenue Fantasy?” Charla asked. “It sounds like a reality TV show.”
“It’s a company that transforms spaces into whatever you want, like a submarine or a jungle,” I explained. “They own the penthouse of a midtown skyscraper and rent it out for ‘ultimate fantasy’ parties. They’re trying to get into the wedding biz.”
“So what’s your fantasy wedding?” Charla asked, also swiping my fries.
Philippa’s, I thought out of nowhere. A beautiful, traditional white wedding, with flowers and real prime rib and a gown that isn’t yellow. Invitations on heavy stock paper with lovely calligraphy. A ceremony and not a pairing union.
Philippa, of course, had loved the leather invitations. A week ago, during our Wow trip to Invitations By Pauline, she’d run to the display case with the heart-shaped leather invitations. “Omigod, these are so cool!” she’d trilled. “I want these—ooh, I can’t decide which I like better, the red or the purple.”
All the Wow Weddings staff members in attendance had said in unison, “Does that look like a classic wedding invitation to you, Philippa?”
Philippa sighed and put the leather invitation back on the display. She turned to the table across the aisle. “Oh look, there’s a really boring invitation. I’m sure that’s the one I ‘picked,’ though—right?”
Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Philippa, your attitude does not reflect the attitude of Today’s Classic Bride. If you cannot work on your attitude, I’d be happy to replace yo
u with a stand-in.”
Philippa beamed at the boring invitation. “The gold foil on the envelope is really lovely!”
Astrid’s thin red lips curled into a smug smile. “I couldn’t agree more, Philippa. That is why I selected that exact invitation for Today’s Classic Bride.”
The moment Astrid turned her back, Philippa stuck her finger down her throat and gagged.
“The invitations will be going out in two weeks,” Astrid announced. “I’ll need your final guest lists no later than Monday.”
“You’re not—” Philippa began to say, then clamped her mouth shut and eyed me.
Inviting yourself to our weddings, are you? I mentally finished. Please, no!
“You may each invite fifty people, including guests,” Astrid said. “Your other guests will include advertisers and staff.”
So my wedding table might be me, Noah and the caterer’s ad salesman and his date—and Astrid. Not that she would deign to sit with a lowly staffer, even if said staffer was the bride.
“Earth to Eloise. Eloise Manfred, please come in.”
Startled, I glanced up to find Charla staring at me as she sucked her strawberry milk shake. Emmett was smearing a French fry with ketchup on his hamburger wrapper.
“So, will Emmett and I be invited?” Charla asked.
I wasn’t even sure I would be going.
Ba-dum-pa.
“Of course,” I told her. “In fact, Noah is going to ask Emmett to be an usher. You guys, Grams, a few friends and a hundred strangers who footed the bill.”
Emmett shook his head. “The whole thing sounds nutso. Whose wedding is it anyway?”
Good question, baby brother.
“It’s just very modern,” Charla offered in defense.
“And free,” I added.
Emmett snorted. “There’s no such thing as a free wedding. Any idiot knows that.”
chapter 17
Woman #1: “He’s too good-looking for you. No one at the reunion will believe he’s really your boyfriend.”
Woman #2: “Well, I’m not paying two hundred bucks an hour for an average Joe.”
This was the conversation going on around Jane and Amanda and me in the reception area of Perfect People on Monday afternoon as two women flipped through the books of models’ photographs. At least I wasn’t the only one hiring a stand-in today.
One fake father to go, please.
“Eloise, check out this one,” Amanda said, holding up the celebrity look-alike book to an eight-by-ten glossy of a handsome fifty-something. “Harrison Fordsley. Wow, he’s a dead ringer!”
I shook my head. “Harrison Ford’s too rugged for ‘hip and cool.’ I need someone more Pierce Brosnan. Billy Bob Thornton. Or Bruce Willis, with hair.”
Amanda and Jane continued flipping. “Ta-da!” Jane held up a photo of Pierce McBrosnan.
“Not bad,” I said, checking out the model, whose real name, according to the vital stats on the back of the photo, was Howie Schwineman. “But forget the look-alike book—I need a regular Joe. Someone who looks like me, just twenty-five years older.”
They tilted their heads and studied me.
“Someone who looks like…this,” I said, holding up a picture of Theo Manfred.
“That’s your dad?” Amanda asked.
I nodded around the lump in my throat. That was my father. Once.
“It’s like the last pictures I have of my father,” Jane said, examining the wallet-size photo. “He’s so young and handsome. It’s hard to imagine this man as a fifty-or sixty-year-old man.”
That was true. In my mind, Theo Manfred would always be twenty-something, wearing Levi’s and a white button-down shirt and a skinny red tie. He would never age, get ill.
Amanda sat back down and flipped through the look-alike book. “I know who we need to find—Kevin Costnerberg. He could definitely be your dad.”
I laughed. “You guys pick him. I can’t bear it.”
Jane peered at me. “Are you all right, Eloise? You don’t have to do this, you know. You can tell your boss that your father is ‘unavailable’ and that you don’t want to hire a stand-in. You don’t have to explain anything to her.”
“I know,” I said. “But—”
But what? I didn’t even know what the but was.
No, that wasn’t true. I did know what the but was.
I wanted a father. For a picture, for a day, for an hour, I wanted a father. I wanted my father to say all the things Philippa’s fake father had said the day he’d visited the Wow Weddings offices.
I’d have to ask her how much extra she’d slipped him for that.
“Omigod,” Amanda yelped, triumphantly holding up an eight-by-ten glossy. “Here he is—Kevin Costnerly!” She flipped over the photo and laughed. “His real name is Gunther.”
I glanced at the photo. “Put him in a black suede trench, and he’s my metrosexual dad.”
“Let’s watch Field of Dreams tonight to pay homage,” Jane suggested.
“No—Dances With Wolves,” Amanda said. She stood up very straight and shouted, “I will find you! No matter what, I will find you!”
Jane laughed. “That was Last of the Mohicans.”
“Oh,” Amanda said.
“Hey, how about Waterworld,” I joked, and they both shook their heads. “Okay, I’ve got it. Bull Durham.”
“Now you’re talking,” Jane said. “I’ll bring the Jiffy Pop.”
Ten minutes later, Kevin Costnerly was mine on next Monday for two hundred fifty an hour. The extra fifty was for the special instructions: hair gel, a black leather jacket and ten minutes, minimum, of a gushing-dad routine.
“Is this a tantrum?” Emmett asked, eyeing Summer, who was crying hysterically while trying to reach my chocolate Santa collection on a high shelf.
“No, honey,” Charla said. “That’s just wanting chocolate.”
“So it gets worse?” Emmett asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “A lot worse.”
And then I remembered that we’d arranged this little baby-sitting gig to show Emmett the joys of parenthood, not some of the less manageable realities. Since we’d returned from Pennsylvania on Saturday, Emmett had been staying with Charla again. She’d been careful to keep all pregnancy magazines out of sight.
Natasha was on a date, Noah was Hot Newsing with Call Me Ash, Jane and Ethan were taking Kickboxing for Couples at their health club and Amanda and Jeff were what she called “TTC,” which I soon learned was Internet shorthand for “trying to conceive.” In other words, they were having lots of sex.
And I had one cranky two-year-old, one hormonally challenged new friend and one freaked-out younger brother to contend with.
Summer was reaching an arm up to Charla and saying, “Me. Me!”
“Does she want to be picked up?” Emmett asked.
“I think she wants to touch my pigtails,” Charla said, sitting down on the rug next to Summer.
Charla was right. For the next minutes, Summer examined, tried to mouth and flung the little sparkly red balls on Charla’s rubber bands. “Me, me!” Summer said, pointing at the pigtails and stomping her feet. Charla complied, twisting Summer’s wildly curly almost-shoulder-length red hair into pigtails, and Summer spent an additional ten minutes staring at herself in the mirror and smiling.
“So what do we do?” Emmett asked.
“About what?” I asked.
“Baby-sitting,” he said.
“We’re doing it.”
“This is it?”
I nodded. “We play with Summer, give her dinner, give her a bath, play a little more, have milk and cookies, and off she goes to bed.”
“At, like, eleven o’clock?” he asked.
I laughed. “At, like, eight.”
“Da-da,” Summer said, pointing at Emmett.
Emmett paled. “Why is she saying that?”
“Don’t worry, Em,” I told him. “She’s not accusing you. Babies tend to categorize all men as ‘Daddy.�
�� It just means they know you’re a man and not a woman.”
He relaxed. “Oh. Where is her father, anyway?”
“Where ours is,” I told him.
He looked at me, surprised, then at Summer. I could see him taking in that information. That this adorable little creature, not yet two years old, just three feet of sweetness and innocence and bursting with life, already had baggage.
Glum, Emmett watched Summer play with Hokey Pokey Elmo. While Elmo turned himself around and Summer squealed with delight, Emmett started to cry.
Charla and I stared at him for a moment. Was Emmett actually crying?
Charla put her arm around him. “Emmett, honey? Are you all right?”
“I’m such a fuckup,” he said and then glanced at Summer. “Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to curse in front of the baby.”
Charla cupped his face with her hands. “Emmett, you’re dealing with a lot.”
“I have to go, okay?” Emmett said.
Charla closed her eyes for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
And Emmett was gone.
Charla let out a deep breath. “I’ll bet you anything that he doesn’t come home tonight.”
Unfortunately, the odds were in her favor.
Charla called at midnight with the news that Emmett hadn’t come home.
“He’s gone for good. I know it,” she said. “Part of me wants to scream, ‘Good riddance, and grow the hell up while you’re gone.’ But the other part, most of me, wants him too much.”
I was trying to think of something comforting to say, when my apartment buzzer rang.
It was Emmett.
I ran back to the telephone. “Charla, he just showed up here. Let me talk to him, okay? I think everything’s going to be all right.”
“’Kay,” she said in a shaky voice and hung up.
I opened the apartment door and watched Emmett trudge up the stairs. It figured he took the stairs instead of the elevator. We lived on the ninth floor, and walking up was doable if you absolutely had to (as I’d been annoyed to learn during a recent blackout), but there was an elevator for a reason.
“What am I going to do?” he asked me as he came inside, his cheeks red from the cold.
Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? Page 17
