Once Upon a Bride

by Jean Stone

  It was beginning to seem that the other roommates had been more likely to succeed than Jo had, after all.

  She ignored the waiter who flirted with them, passed on dessert, and tried to quell the gnawing ache in her stomach that warned her the next day would be more difficult than she might imagine.

  Limbo.

  Jo remembered being fascinated by her second-grade best friend's story of the Catholic belief of limbo—the place where dead babies went because God didn't know what to do with them. It was not a bad place, just a place where nothing happened, good or bad.

  That was how Jo felt the next morning as she watched one man and three women wrap and pack and seal her life in corrugated cartons called book boxes and wardrobes and dish packs. She had worn old jeans and a denim shirt as if she were going to be the one who dug in and got her hands dirty.

  Crinkle, crinkle went the plain, brown paper as it cushioned Jo's crystal and pottery from Crate and Barrel and her gleaming silver cookware from Williams-Sonoma.

  Rrrrrrrrrip went the tape from the dispenser.

  Thump, thump went one carton as it was stacked on top of another.

  By ten-thirty she escaped across the street to Starbucks, where she ordered lattes for the packers and a double espresso for herself. Caffeine, perhaps, would distract her nervous system so she wouldn't feel the pain.

  On the way back to the condo, she ran into George, the doorman. She had hoped that wouldn't happen: Jo no longer could afford the ten- or twenty-dollar tip she gave to George when he'd done something special like carry up her packages or give her clothes to the pick-up-and-delivery man from the dry cleaner's.

  Tweaking the long sides of his gray mustache, George said, “Are you leaving us, Ms. Lyons?”

  “Yes, George. Time to move on.”

  “Heading from the city?”

  She gripped the tray of coffee cups. She thought of Brian. “George,” she said, “remember Mr. Forbes? The man who stayed here for a few months?”

  George nodded. Naturally, he saw, heard, and knew it all.

  She handed him the tray of coffees, which he accepted without hesitation, while she dug into the pocket of her jeans. She withdrew a wrinkled twenty, two ones, and a bit of change. “If Mr. Forbes comes by looking for me,” she said, extending the cash, “would you please tell him I've gone home to West Hope?”

  George looked at the cash, then pushed the tray back toward her. “Put away your money, Ms. Lyons. If the gentleman comes by, I'll be sure he gets the message.”

  Jo smiled at the grim irony that while the man who had supposedly loved her hadn't hesitated to take hundreds of thousands of her hand-earned dollars, her doorman wouldn't accept a mere twenty-two. She returned the money to her pocket, took the coffee tray, nodded, and went into the lobby and up the elevator.

  Back inside the condo, the sounds continued.

  Crinkle, crinkle, rrrrrrrrrip, thump, thump.

  Jo stood by the window, looking out across the city, sipping her espresso, wishing she'd gone with Sarah.

  The next day Sarah had insisted on going to the condo.

  “It will make it easier if you don't have to stand there all alone,” she'd said over breakfast of coffee and croissants. “We can leave right after the truck is loaded, and save the cost of another night in the hotel.”

  Because she'd barely slept, because she didn't have the strength to argue, Jo merely said, “Only if you promise not to say how beautiful the condo is, or ask how I could give up something so perfect for, of all things, West Hope.”

  Sarah had smiled and said, “Cherokees believe that only God is perfect.”

  But that had been in the morning, and now Sarah was the one who stood at the window looking out across the city. True to their agreement, Sarah did not even say, “Wow, what a great view this is.”

  By one o'clock the truck was loaded with boxes and furniture: pink stickers indicated Shannon Drive, yellow for Marion's garage, basement, or attic.

  “See you out west,” the driver said with a chuckle.

  And then Sarah and Jo stood alone in the gorgeous, empty condo.

  “I'll meet you at the car,” Sarah said, “if you want to lock up first.”

  She went out the door before Jo had the chance to say, “No, wait! Don't leave me with these memories!” But Sarah was gone, leaving Jo to lock the front door and the back door and, most of all, the past.

  The rooms echoed with change: the guest room with its private bath; the library with the mahogany walls, the built-in bookcases, the fireplace; the living room, the dining room, the gourmet kitchen. The master suite, where she had spent so many lonely nights until Brian found her again. The Jacuzzi, where they'd made love so many times among the bubbles, with champagne.

  She ran her hand around the white marble of the Jacuzzi, wishing she could hear Brian's voice again, his laughter, his whispers to her in the night, of love and lust and where he wanted to touch her.

  And then her tears spilled down her cheeks, onto the white marble. She held her arms around her waist the way Brian once had done, and finally Jo cried for all she'd had and all she'd lost and all she'd never need again if only Brian would come back.

  Somewhere between Palmer and West Springfield, Jo told Sarah that she and Brian had gotten back together, that he had disappeared, and that was the real reason she was going back to West Hope.

  She did not tell Sarah that her money had gone, too. Of all the roommates, though, Sarah would be the one she could trust with any secret. Unlike Elaine, Sarah was not easily scandalized. Unlike Lily, Sarah was realistic. Still, Jo was only able to reveal so much, as if the older she became, the harder it was to admit her mistakes, her weaknesses, her character flaws.

  When Jo had finished, Sarah merely patted Jo on the knee. “Shit,” she said. “We're intelligent women. Savvy. Talented. Why is it we still let ourselves get so screwed up by men?”

  Apparently life in the log cabin was not idyllic after all. “Jason?” Jo asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “Jason, Brian, are any of them different?” She looked out the window of the car and said, “I love my son with all my heart, but sometimes I wish I hadn't brought a boy into this world.”

  “Maybe Burch will be different,” Jo said, and Sarah laughed and Jo laughed, too, at the absurdities of men. Then they quit the subject over which they had no control, and spent the rest of the trip talking about weddings and how, even if women were foolish enough to tempt fate again, at least they could make the second wedding extra special.

  An hour later, they parked the car and went into the storefront.

  “I won't go into shock if you won't,” Sarah said to Jo as the two of them stood in the doorway, staring at the changes that had happened in their absence.

  Where once there had been rubble, now the room was sparkling clean, with shiny navy walls and a rich walnut desk. Behind the desk, oddly enough, sat a man.

  “Welcome to Second Chances,” the man said. He stood to all of nearly six feet. His hair was blond with a few streaks of white along the sides. His eyes were slate, perhaps made darker by the deep blue shades around him. “My name is Andrew,” he said with a broad smile. “How may we help you ladies today?”

  12

  I have no idea where the inspiration came from, Andrew typed into his laptop, which he'd offered to use in the shop until the women ordered a computer system.

  One look at that newspaper ad and I realized that the common route of trying to get to know a woman, of taking her to the movies or to lunch, of talking on the phone, of sitting in a bar over well-olived martinis, was way too artificial. The women would, without a doubt, say the things they thought I wanted to hear. I knew that because I knew I'd do the same.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Where did you go to college?”

  “What's your sign?” (Do they still use that one? he wondered, but kept typing anyway.)

  What an awful way to meet a woman, he typed with a smile. How lon
g would it take to learn if she was being herself or a persona who'd been packaged by her girlfriends or her mother, who had told her what to say and how, because they had been so much more successful (?) at the game of love?

  He raised his fingertips above the keyboard and eavesdropped on the voices in the other room.

  “Good grief, Lily,” one of them said. “Do we honestly need a receptionist? We don't even have a business yet.”

  “Oh, hush. I decided a receptionist would give us credibility. Then, when a man walked in—oh, darlings, don't you see? It's perfect! Women will adore having a man greet them at the door, help them with their coats, fetch them coffee if they want.”

  “Lily, you're insane.” That came from the other one who'd walked in the door, the one, Andrew suspected, with the long, dark, Native American–looking hair. “These women are getting married. They're not coming to a singles bar.”

  Andrew smiled. How could he not smile?

  “But darlings, don't you get it?” Lily's voice asked with a giggle that sounded like little bubbles dancing on the taut strings of a harp. “Andrew isn't here to woo them from their bridegrooms. No, on the contrary, Andrew is quite gay. And every woman needs the attention of a gay man to make her feel extra, extra special.”

  Andrew sank his teeth into the knuckle of his forefinger to avoid laughing out loud. He turned back to his work.

  And so I've found the perfect ruse to let us go behind the scenes, the perfect twist to help us see inside the real thoughts and real lives of women. As a bonus for my daughter, Andrew added, this might be considered something close to a real job.

  “You told them what?” Cassie rolled her eyes and flopped on the vintage 1920's overstuffed chair that had come with the furnished cottage. Andrew might know squat about women, but he had known that his leather and chrome furniture was too New York for the Berkshires.

  “I told them I'm gay,” he repeated. “It's not a crime, Cassie.”

  “Maybe not, but it's a lie. What kind of example does that set for me?”

  He studied his freckle-faced daughter, whose huge turquoise eyes, thick, dark lashes, and shiny, coal-black ponytail predicted that she'd be as gorgeous as her mother was. He needed Cassie's help, because chances were good the women would learn of her existence, and what would happen then?

  He laughed. “Think of it as undercover work. Pretend I'm a famous detective. Like that Nora Roberts character you love, or that Crossing Jordan girl.”

  The huge turquoise eyes rolled again, then closed. “Eve is from the future, Dad,” she said. “And Jordan is a medical examiner, not a detective. You're a college professor who's trying to make a buck writing something you don't know anything about, by way of doing something you know even less about.”

  “Ouch,” he said, clutching his heart. “You really know how to hurt a guy.”

  Cassie sighed.

  Andrew picked up a fringed, square pillow and tossed it at her. It knocked off her baseball cap. She tried not to laugh. “Good shot,” she finally said.

  “At least I'm not washed up at everything,” he said.

  She bent her head in resignation. “No, Dad. You're not washed up at everything. But this is weird.”

  “Weirder than if I dated Ms. Brouillard?”

  She threw the pillow back at him. “Don't you dare!” she shrieked.

  “Then help me! Be my cover!”

  She groaned, then looked back at him with Patty's woeful eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I thought we might say you are my sister's daughter and that my sister was killed in a car accident, so I adopted you.”

  She stared at him. “You really are weird, you know that?”

  “Well, it's not as if we'll have to make a big deal out of it. But just in case, you know?”

  “And in the meantime,” Cassie said, “how are you going to pretend to be gay?”

  He scowled. “I was counting on your help there, too.”

  “My help? What do I know about gay men? Geez, Dad, I'm only eleven.”

  “Yeah, well, you know, I thought you might know what gay boys do. They like show tunes, don't they? And singers like Liza Minelli and Julie Andrews?” He supposed it was an odd conversation to be having with his daughter, but what else was he to do?

  “Have you ever even had a gay friend, Dad?”

  He thought for a moment. “Hap Little.”

  “Who?”

  “Hap Little. He was a photographer assigned to me at The Edge.”

  “Can't he help you?”

  “I doubt it. The last I heard he'd moved to South Beach and opened a camera shop.”

  “Oh, God,” Cassie moaned. “Face it, Dad. Your little scheme is never going to work.”

  She had been on the cover of every major women's magazine by the time she was twenty-two. Patty O'Shay was more than beautiful: She had a wide, wide smile; perfect, flawless teeth; and a mane of thick hair that dared most red-blooded males to bury their face and hands and other body parts into.

  From the first moment Andrew saw her, he had been a hopeless mess.

  It was at a cocktail party, a kickoff for the advertising campaign of O'S cosmetics, the line of ultraexpensive creams and lotions and foundations and concealers that, if used, could offer other ladies the same silken complexion as Patty O'Shay herself.

  Yes, O'S, the campaign slogan read and featured a photo of a barely-clad Patty on the deserted beach of a desert island, looking to the horizon for her ship to come in. Andrew had no idea what the hell the slogan had to do with selling cosmetics, but one look at the erotic ad that had been enlarged to a mural and hung from the ceiling of the Waldorf banquet room, and Andrew knew his life would never be the same.

  It was three months before he found the nerve to ask her on a date. She said yes, which he realized too late was because he was with the media and she needed exposure to help jump-start disappointing cosmetic sales. He slept with her that night and the next. Two months later, they were married. It hadn't occurred to Andrew that he'd become just another desperate strategy in what turned out to be a flagging career: first, the cosmetic line that offered nothing extraordinary beyond the packaging, then marriage to a journalist, then—the final publicity-seeking stunt—a baby, Cassandra O'Shay Kennedy.

  But by then the magazine covers were graced with younger, fresher faces. At twenty-nine, Patty was a has-been, her husband and daughter not enough. So she joined a rock band and went on a world tour. By the time the divorce was final, she had landed in Australia and was living with a cowboy in the outback. When she remembered, Patty sent a card to Cassie on her birthday.

  Andrew went to bed that night wondering what the girls at Second Chances would say if they found out the truth.

  13

  Jo stayed at her mother's house until the movers had deposited the yellow-stickered furniture and boxes and she decided what went where. Over and over, she told herself that everything would be fine.

  And it would be fine. She asked Lily and Sarah to wait for her until she was settled; then she would devote all her time to the business. They offered to help her move in, but Jo declined, saying it would go more quickly if she did it herself. The truth was, she didn't trust herself to unseal a carton—any carton—and not burst into tears. She would not, would not, would not, burden the others with her teenage-like emotions.

  On the first night Jo was going to sleep at Shannon Drive, she surveyed the remaining cartons in the living room. She was considering getting a take-out salad from McDonald's when there was a knock on the door. The sound startled her: Jo was accustomed to a doorman announcing visitors.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Jo? I know you don't want any help, but can we talk for a minute?”

  It was Elaine, the perfect homemaker, who'd brought homemade bread, a small pan of lasagna, and a plastic container of romaine salad. “If you've already eaten, it will keep until tomorrow,” Elaine said as she handed the things to Jo.

 
Jo could say that yes, she'd eaten, and Elaine might take a quick tour and be gone. But her eyes seemed quite red, as if she'd been crying, and Jo couldn't turn her friend away. “Actually, I'm starving,” she said with a smile. “Come in and join me.”

  They wove around cartons and went into the kitchen. Elaine dug a plate, napkins, a knife, fork, and butter from her oversized purse. From her pocket she retrieved two bottles of water and handed Jo the one that had not yet been opened.

  “I thought your dishes might still be packed,” she said. “Please, serve yourself. I ate with the kids.”

  “You are wonderful,” Jo said and kissed Elaine's cheek.

  While she put food on the plate, Elaine moved from the kitchen and found a seat in the living room on the white sofa. “Your furniture is gorgeous.”

  “Thanks,” Jo replied and did not explain that her entire condo had been gorgeous, that the furniture had been bought by a decorator who had created a breathtaking home overlooking the city skyline and the Charles River.

  She carried her plate into the living room and sat on the opposite end of the gorgeous sofa.

  “Lasagna on a white sofa?” Elaine asked, cocking one eyebrow over a red-rimmed eye.

  Jo laughed. “You've had too many kids, Elaine.”

  After hesitating a second, Elaine laughed. “Right,” she said.

  Jo took a bite of her dinner and exclaimed how delicious it was. Then she chewed slowly, waiting for Elaine to reveal the real reason she'd come.

  “I feel abandoned,” Elaine suddenly blurted out.

  Oh no, Jo thought with knowing resignation. Another woman dumped by another man. “Oh, Elaine,” Jo said, setting her fork down, “I'm so sorry. Martin seemed like a nice man . . .”

  Elaine looked at her with a frown. “‘Martin'? Oh, it's not Martin. It's you. And Lily. And Sarah.” Tears spilled from her eyes. She picked up her water bottle and quickly took a drink.