For the Love of Friends

by Confino, Sara Goodman

  “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU PROMISED!”

  “Geez,” Megan chuckled. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “No. Did I do anything horrifying?”

  “Not at the party. But I hear you have a shirt that needs to be returned.”

  I scrunched up my face. “He told you to get his shirt back?”

  “No, he walked out of the hotel without it this morning and Tim got the story for me. I love that you made him do a walk of shame, too, though.”

  “I think it’s a walk of pride when a guy does it, not shame.” I paused. “Why didn’t he have another shirt?”

  “Because he was planning to drive home after the party before you became a factor.”

  I rubbed my temples. A vague recollection of holding a male arm while a disembodied voice asked a concierge if there were rooms available danced at the outskirts of my memory. “Can I give you the shirt next week and have you never speak of this again?”

  Megan agreed warily. “But don’t you think it’ll come up? You’re going to see him at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.”

  “That’s ten months away. It’ll be old news by then.”

  “If you say so. Probably for the best anyway. This way you won’t decide you hate him and make me rearrange the entire wedding.”

  Even though that was well deserved, I cringed. “See?” I said, faking a cheerful tone. “Totally responsible decision on my part.”

  I could practically hear Megan rolling her eyes through the phone. “You’re insane. I swear, you should write a book about your life.”

  “Right,” I said. “Lifestyles of the drunk and too old to be single. It’d be so popular.”

  “It would, actually.”

  “Yeah, and I totally want that out there for the world to see.”

  “Whatever.” I could hear the shrug in Megan’s voice. “Use a pen name. People would read it. And it’d be more interesting than what you write for work. You’d have fun.”

  I told Megan I would think about it, with absolutely no intention of doing so. Besides, even with a pen name, I would have to put a Sylvia Plath clause into a contract if I wrote a book about my current exploits. There was no way I could publish a book in which I didn’t know whom I had slept with unless my mother was good and dead. But, with Megan’s agreement to never again discuss my drunken amnesiac escapades, I could consider the subject closed for now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The rash of engagements all happened in the summer and early fall. There’s something about warmer weather that apparently makes people want to commit themselves to a life of fidelity. That or engagements are contagious. Like the flu. If you don’t wash your hands a lot, you might wind up sneezing and wearing a diamond. I don’t pretend to understand it.

  There’s also apparently an unspoken rule of engagements that they’re supposed to last just longer than a pregnancy would (coincidence?) and the ensuing wedding, if at all possible, is required to take place in June, or failing that, May or July.

  I assume these rules are given out to all couples by the wedding deities as soon as a ring is purchased. Or they’re the result of a biological urge that is activated by diamonds. Either way, having never been engaged, I didn’t know either rule.

  When Caryn got engaged, with eleven months to plan, I figured everything would be a piece of cake. I would have nearly a year before I actually needed to do anything for any of the weddings, and time to save money for dresses.

  But once I had five weddings to plan for, I needed to buckle down and calculate how I was going to do all of this.

  I estimated that each bridesmaid dress would probably cost around two hundred dollars. For five dresses, that felt ridiculous, because no one ever wears a bridesmaid dress again, no matter what the bride tells you. But over the course of nine months, I could budget a thousand dollars for dresses. Just saving a hundred and eleven dollars a month wouldn’t be so bad.

  Of course, there would be gifts too. So an extra hundred dollars each for that? Adding that to my current total and rounding up a little, that was one-seventy a month. And showers and bachelorette parties. The bridesmaids had to pay for those too. And bridal shower presents, which apparently didn’t count as wedding presents. That was another two hundred per bride. Suddenly I was at nearly three hundred a month.

  Where was I going to find three hundred extra dollars a month?

  Okay, I told myself. It’s only one-fifty per paycheck. If I start bringing my lunch to work a few days a week, I can save pretty close to that.

  To make my life easier, I opened an online savings account and scheduled automatic payments to begin with my next paycheck. I could do this.

  The scheduling of the actual weddings, however, meant that the following spring would be gruesome. Caryn’s wedding was the first weekend in June, Megan’s the final, and Sharon’s mother had booked the second weekend, leaving me worried about what I would do if either of my siblings selected one of those three dates.

  Thankfully, I was spared having to make such a Sophie’s choice, as Amy (or, if we’re being honest here, my mother) opted for the last open June weekend. Jake and Madison announced that theirs would be in the middle of May in Mexico. I confirmed to Jake that yes, I had a valid passport, and asked if Madison had gotten the flowers I sent, as I had gotten an arrival confirmation email but hadn’t heard from her.

  “I think so,” he said. “Mads—are any of those flowers we got from Lily?” I scrunched up my nose. If she hadn’t even mentioned them to him, that wasn’t a good sign about my apology being accepted. “Yup. She did. Sorry, this place is starting to look like a flower shop.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Is Madison mad at me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and then yelled away from the phone, “Hey Mads, are you mad at Lily?”

  “Jake! What the hell? Stop!”

  “What? She said she’s not.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Note to self: anything you say to your brother from now on will be repeated to Madison. But I could either stress myself out about my slipup or let it go. I chose the latter. I had made a peace offering. If she was lying to Jake about being mad at me, that was his problem, not mine.

  And now I had to factor the expense of Mexico into my wedding budget, which I guessed would run me about fifteen hundred dollars for airfare and hotel. And that was in May, so I only had eight months to prepare.

  Suddenly, I was at two-fifty a paycheck, five hundred a month, which, even if I prepared all my meals at home, was going to be an issue.

  I buckled down for the month of September and lived a simple, puritanical life of sacrifice for my friends and family. I opted to pre-drink at home before I went out, downgraded to drugstore mascara, splurged on Starbucks only three days a week, packed my lunch every night before work, and made a goal of putting away five hundred dollars that first month.

  Granted, my wine budget increased a bit as the brother/sister wedding whammy was taking an emotional toll in the form of phone calls and texts between my mother, myself, and Amy.

  “In my day, your sister was your maid of honor. What are people going to think?”

  I sighed, having had this conversation with my mother multiple times already. “It’s not that weird, Mom. Especially with the age difference and all.”

  “I just don’t understand why you won’t tell her that you want to be her maid of honor.”

  “It’s not my wedding or my place to tell her that. And if I’m being honest, I don’t want to be.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Mom, I’m in four other weddings. I don’t need that kind of responsibility.”

  “You don’t mind being Megan’s maid of honor.”

  I rubbed my forehead in frustration. “If Amy wanted me to be, I would say yes. But she already asked Ashlee, and I promise that’s fine.”

  “She may still change her mind.”

  “Please don’t nag her about it, Mom. It’s really not worth it.”


  She huffed, but didn’t argue. “I’m just grateful that you have all of these weddings coming up.”

  Had I been giving her my full attention, I would have known better than to ask why, but despite frequent requests to not call me with nonemergencies at work, I was still fielding at least four calls a week from her while trying to do my job. This was her first year of retirement and she hadn’t quite found her niche yet. But I was proofreading a proposal and therefore asked the question.

  “It’s just such a wonderful opportunity. I’m sure you’ll meet someone at one of them.”

  And there went all attention to the proposal. For a split second, I wished I could be honest with my mother and tell her about the mystery groomsman. But while the intent would be to horrify her into stopping the constant pressure, I knew full well it would have the opposite effect; she would insist I find out who it was in order to date and/or marry him.

  “Mom, I’m not trying to meet someone at one of these weddings.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “Because it’s not about me. I’m there to support my friends.”

  “And your friends support you, that’s how it works. Everyone knows weddings are a wonderful place to meet people.”

  I thought back to the singles table, where I had been placed, probably at my mother’s insistence, at my cousin Tina’s wedding. Everyone else in my family was at the same table together, whereas my table felt like the scene from Animal House where they keep introducing the pledges to the same losers over and over again.

  “That was probably true when you were single, but it’s a little different now.”

  She huffed again. “I just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy.”

  “Are you? You go home to an empty apartment every night and sit there alone.”

  My hackles rose. “Actually, I go home to my roommate, who’s one of my closest friends, and either hang out with her or go out with other friends. I’m not exactly sitting in the dark working on a hope chest.”

  “That’s not a life. You need a family. It’s time.”

  I opened my mouth to say what I wanted to say: that my birth family was currently a great example of why I didn’t want a family yet. I didn’t want to settle down and pop out three kids in the suburbs, then nag them until they got married and had their own kids. I didn’t want to be her.

  But the words didn’t come out. They never seemed to with her. Which was probably for the best. And I understood that she meant well. It wasn’t that she wanted me to be her, she just didn’t understand that there were other definitions of happiness than hers.

  Besides, my generation was the first one that really was finding a different life than the previous generations had. We didn’t have to get married and have kids in our twenties if we didn’t want to. For the non-independently wealthy of us, our careers kind of had to come first if we wanted any sense of financial security before we started those families. And while my parents were still happily married, I had seen enough couples who weren’t to know better than to settle for any of the guys I had met so far.

  Was there a way to explain that to my mother that she could understand? No. I had tried before.

  I looked at the clock. The proposal was due by the end of the day and I was only halfway through it. “Okay,” I said to keep the peace and get her off the phone. “I’ll try to meet someone.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” She paused. “Now if you could also work on your sister about this maid of honor thing . . .”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Okay, okay, I love you.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  I pressed “End” and shook my head. She couldn’t help herself and was never going to change.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  From: Caryn Donaldson [futuremrscaryngreene@gmail.com]

  To: [bridesmaids]

  Subject: Wedding newsletter volume 1

  Date: September 24

  Hi girls! Just thought I’d get a group email going so you all have each other’s contact info and so you can add my new email to your address books! Of course, it’ll change after the wedding to CarynDGreene@gmail.com, so you can add that as well, but I’m going to use this one until then. I’ll still get emails to my old address, but I’d prefer you use this one for all wedding-related correspondence. Thanks!

  Can you believe we only have a little under nine months until the wedding? There’s so much to do between now and then!

  I’m going dress shopping the next three Saturdays, and I thought it would be fun if you all came with me and we made a day of it! I have an appointment at three boutiques at Tyson’s Corner this weekend, three in DC the weekend after, and four more in Maryland the third weekend. I’d love it if you came to all three, but just let me know what works with your schedules and I’ll make sure the salons know we’re coming. This is just for my dress. We’ll schedule another day to go look for your dresses!

  Oh, and try to keep your weekends open in May. I’d like to do the shower and bachelorette separate weekends and we’ll need another weekend to figure out hair treatments, etc.

  Yay! I’m so excited! Love you all!

  —The future Mrs. Caryn Greene

  The journalism major in me cringed at the exclamation points, but I smiled over my homemade sandwich. This was what made all of the scrimping and saving worth it. Seeing how excited Caryn was. Was an interim email address excessive? Yes. But I had never seen an email that screamed excitement like this in all the years I had known Caryn.

  Sounds great, I replied. Just let me know what time to be there on Saturday! —L.

  Her reply pinged back less than thirty seconds later. Please ‘reply all’ in the future. It’s so much easier if everyone knows the plan!

  My inbox dinged again. I’m in, a girl named Dana replied. I can go all three Saturdays! Yay! I can’t wait! I’m so excited for you! What style of dress do you think you want? I love the mermaid ones, but you could pull off absolutely anything and look stunning! Do you have a Pinterest board for dresses yet?

  What’s up with this Pinterest thing? I wondered. I thought it was for recipes. Should I be on there?

  An email came in from a Deanna as I was typing Pinterest into a search engine.

  Wahhhh! The nanny is off this Saturday and it’s too late to switch her days. I wish I could go! I agree with Dana, I love the mermaid dresses! You’ve got the perfect body for one of those! Promise me you’ll send me pictures of every single dress you try on! I just looked at your Pinterest board and, oh my God, you’re going to be the most beautiful bride! I love every dress you’ve pinned! Every other bride in the world will be “Greene” with envy! I can’t wait to see the dresses!

  Love,

  Deanna

  I’ll be there! the next email began. It arrived before I even finished reading Deanna’s. I’m all yours until the wedding! Is Mom coming too? What about Grandma? Or is it just the bridesmaids? I love how organized you are! See you Saturday, sis! Love, Olivia.

  Do these girls not work? I went to Pinterest and created an account, but didn’t quite get what it was supposed to be. I would have to ask Megan. I also needed to mute my computer because the bridesmaids were starting to reply to each other’s emails and the thread was giving me anxiety about how much I didn’t know. What was a Kleinfeld? Why was Mia “the queen of bustling,” as Deanna called her, and what did that even mean? I pictured a Victorian-style bustle, but Caryn was pretty self-conscious about her butt. She wasn’t going to do anything to make it look bigger.

  I grabbed my phone and texted Megan. Am I supposed to know anything about wedding dresses?

  No, she replied. You get a manual on them for free with your engagement ring.

  Come on, Megs.

  You just get bridal magazines and learn about it that way, or you can watch Say Yes to the Dress.

  What’s that?

  Megan sent me three eye-roll emojis, then a link to the show on TLC’s website.
I clicked the link and felt my eyes widen as the show began to play on my phone. There was a whole world of this stuff that I knew nothing about, apparently. My only exposure to reality TV had been Becca’s obsessive watching of the Real Housewives and the Kardashians, and that was enough to turn me off of it all.

  As soon as I realized Kleinfeld Bridal was the shop where the show took place, I turned it off.

  I could wing this. As Caryn’s sister pointed out in her email, Caryn was organized. She had to be to keep the foundation running. And her type A behavior made my life far more functional at work. Dress shopping would clearly be an in-and-out operation. The other two weekends probably wouldn’t even be necessary. I just needed to ooh and aah when she put on the perfect dress and sip champagne for an afternoon. I could do that.

  I ran a quick Google search of “mermaid-style wedding dresses,” wondering at the intentions of the friends who had asked about them. There was only one part of her body that Caryn was self-conscious about, and it was her butt. There was no way she would wear something designed to show that off on her wedding day. No wonder she wanted me there with her. I wouldn’t let them pressure her into anything she didn’t like. No way, no how.

  The line at Starbucks had been atrocious, and I admittedly left late because I wasn’t sure what one wore to a bridal salon. But armed with my venti iced latte, a pair of heels with skinny black pants, and a sleeveless top, I was ready for a fun, if somewhat more glamorous than I was used to, Saturday morning. I went up the escalator to the bridal suite and was ushered into a marble-tiled room in soothing neutral shades of beige that allowed the fluffy, white dresses that lined the walls to pop. Four petite, blonde women, all looking like they were from the same cookie-cutter, country-club brunch, sat sipping champagne and cooing emphatically over Caryn, who stood on a pedestal in front of a triple-view mirror in a Cinderella-style white ball gown.

  And then there was me, melting into a sweaty, brunette puddle from the heat of the parking lot, dressed in black without even a hint of anything pastel or floral to make it look like I belonged to their group.