Once Upon a Bride

by Jean Stone

  “We'll start with the bridesmaids, then,” Ms. Dixon announced.

  Andrew dropped his dusting wand and headed to Ms. Dixon's van to retrieve the gowns. “Man's work,” he said with a wink, and Jo laughed.

  They moved into the back room, where Andrew hauled the goods. Then the rustle of plastic and zippers and tissue paper and clattering hangers played an enthusiastic symphony.

  “Andrew won't mind if we change right here, will you, dear?” Lily exclaimed, and Jo noticed that he blushed.

  “I'll cover the phones,” he said, and Lily shrugged, and Andrew darted back into the showroom as if the ghosts of Princess Di and Jackie O and Grace Kelly had all arrived.

  By four o'clock Lily and Sarah and Jo had been nipped and tucked and pinned, when Elaine finally waltzed through the doorway.

  “Sorry I'm late,” she said. “I had to take Kory to the dentist and there was a wait and it took the Novocain forever to take and . . . oh, God, what a day.” Her face was flush; she blinked rapidly as if she wore ill-fitting contact lenses. Certainly it wasn't the first time she'd taken a child to the dentist, never mind that Kory . . . wasn't he almost twenty?

  “Get undressed,” Ms. Dixon commanded.

  Elaine blinked again. She looked to Lily, Sarah, and Jo. Then she did as she was told.

  The gown was exquisite. Gone was the housewife-mom of West Hope, transformed into a radiant, silken goddess. Jo had never realized that Elaine actually had a good figure: It usually was masked by sexless cotton skirts or Bermuda shorts and tailored cotton shirts.

  “Wonderful,” Jo said.

  “Beautiful,” Lily said. “It's not fluffy like all that first-wedding sugar. But it's a long way from second-wedding suits of the past. I love it,” she exclaimed as she clapped her hands, then ran upstairs. She returned a moment later with a small velvet box. She opened it and extracted the enormous diamond necklace. She placed it around Elaine's neck. Sarah nodded approval.

  “Perfect,” Sarah said and studied the look. “Let me make a quick sketch so I can design the headpiece.”

  It was six o'clock before the work was finished and the women had discussed possible ways they could partner with Dorothy Dixon and her outstanding firm.

  “We don't want to be in the business of selling gowns,” Jo explained, “but we want to help a bride and her attendants find the perfect attire to complement every moment and every aspect of the event and its theme. For second weddings, we must always focus on quality and memorability, not sequins and splash.”

  They settled on percentages of retail costs, which were higher on accessories than on gowns because the margins of the “add-ons” were much fatter and the profits often upward of seventy percent. At last they said good-bye to Ms. Dixon, and Sarah left, as well, saying Burch was home now and she had to get him ready for school.

  Elaine stayed in the studio, poking through Sarah's sketches.

  “Well,” Lily said, “I suppose I should go, too.”

  Jo followed her into the showroom. She had an idea where Lily was headed. “How is Frank?” she asked.

  Lily smiled a small smile. “Upset, I think. I don't know him well enough yet. I can only imagine how it must feel to think your brother's dead. Even though he hasn't seen him in so long, to actually have to go to a morgue . . .”

  Jo looked over at Andrew. He winked at her, the kind of wink that reinforced a friend's support. “Are you going to see him now?”

  “Yes. He didn't feel like lunch, but maybe I can interest him in dinner.”

  Jo looked at Andrew again and drew in a long breath. “Could I come with you, Lily? Maybe there are a few things I can say that might help Frank feel better.”

  She followed Lily out the door and wondered where on earth she would possibly begin.

  “Elaine?” Andrew asked as he went to shut the lights off in the back.

  The bride sat at Sarah's drawing table, staring at the sketches.

  “Everyone's gone. I was about to lock up. Are you planning to stay?”

  She sat motionless. Andrew waited for an answer. Then he noticed a tear drop from her eye and land on Sarah's table. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I'll go home.”

  He felt a kind of trepidation that he would rather not have felt. With a hesitant step, he crossed the room. “Elaine, are you all right?”

  That's when her shoulders began to shake, when a low moan rose up from her toes, and when the tears burst out, as if someone's underground sprinkler system had just been activated.

  And all Andrew could think of was, Oh shit, why me?

  26

  I cannot marry Martin,” Elaine said after she'd composed herself and Andrew had slumped onto the chair beside the table.

  He patted Elaine's hand because he figured that a gay guy would. Hap Little would be proud.

  “What could possibly be so terrible?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the details, but knowing he was past having a choice. Do it for the column, he tried to tell himself. But her tears flowed once again and he felt like a schmuck.

  “I just can't,” she said between spasmodic sniffs.

  She just can't? Oh, man, Andrew thought, I really suck at this. He thought for a moment. If Elaine just couldn't tell him, it must be the one reason for which men were so renowned.

  Martin had probably said he'd be working late, that he had to deliver a new Lumina to someone in Egremont or something like that. Then Elaine must have caught him. She must have seen his silhouette in a restaurant, heard him laugh with his furtive female companion, seen them bend their heads close, maybe even kiss.

  Or worse, she might have seen Martin's vehicle parked in a motel lot, somewhere seedy and dank, like the Route 7 Motor Lodge.

  Suddenly Elaine jerked her head and looked him in the eyes. “Andrew,” she barked. “You must tell the others.”

  “Me?” he asked. “Me?”

  “They'll be so upset.”

  Upset? Andrew wondered. What about her?

  Men, he thought, hating his gender, we can be such scum.

  He patted her hand again. “I'll tell them, if you want. But are you sure about this? Sometimes men do some real stupid things . . .”

  She looked at him oddly. “Martin didn't do anything,” she said. “It's my fault, not his.”

  “You cheated on him?” The words shot from Andrew's mouth like an unexpected bit of spit.

  Elaine frowned. “No one cheated on anyone, Andrew. I just can't marry Martin. Being with my friends—Lily, Jo, and Sarah—well, it made me realize I need to be free. I've spent most of my adult life being married to someone. I need to find out who I am.”

  “And Martin?”

  She did not hesitate in her answer. “Martin deserves someone who's devoted to him.”

  Andrew didn't add, “Good God, Elaine, don't we all?”

  27

  DON'T

  Invite your boss with the assumption you'll receive a wonderful gift. Ditto goes for wealthy relatives who are retired and live in Florida. We never, after all, really know those we think we know, and at a second wedding, gifts should not matter, anyway.

  Jo was weary: weary from working, weary from talking, weary from thinking about things that had been and things that never would be.

  She wanted only solace now, she thought, as she let herself into her apartment. She wanted quiet. Darkness. Solace.

  Then a small piece of paper caught her eye on the foyer floor. She stooped down and picked it up. Something must have fallen from her purse, a store receipt, perhaps.

  It was not a store receipt. As she placed the paper on the counter she saw the handwriting. Clear, distinct handwriting.

  If you want to have dinner one of these nights, the writing read, I'll tell you the whole story of the soapbox derby and what happened to that bully Jimmy Thompson.

  The note was signed only with a “J.”

  Jo smiled. Of course, there was no way she'd go. She didn't even know the man. Just because she'd almos
t run him over, did that mean she owed him dinner? All she knew about him was that he lived in the secretaries' building, which must mean he was no more prosperous than she was, and that was the last thing she needed now, another man without a dime.

  She tossed the note into the wastebasket, turned on the small light over the stove, fired up the teakettle, then kicked off her shoes. She stepped down into the living room then went to the windows and looked out at the silhouette of the mountains etched onto the sky in the light from the stars and the half-moon.

  No, she didn't need another man who obviously hadn't found his dream as yet, or, if he had, then his dream wasn't very lofty and wouldn't rise to hers. Because she still could dream, couldn't she? She still could dream that once again she'd move up in the world, maybe to those condos over by Tanglewood, after all. Someday, she thought. Soon. But another pauper of a man would not get in her way. And no one would ever again take away what she had worked so hard for.

  Frank had not been surprised. Lily had sat through dinner, her small mouth parted open, her eyes wide, her heart aching, no doubt, with question after question.

  “He took all your money?”

  “How could he do that?”

  “Oh, Josephine, why didn't you tell us before?”

  Jo made certain that she blamed herself as much as she blamed Brian. He had been the rogue, but she had been the fool. “One can't scam another person unless they have a willing victim. I should have seen the signs that his business wasn't ‘taking off.' I should have been smart enough to stop giving him money, to stop taking loans against my business collateral. Good God, any businessperson knows better.”

  “But you loved him,” Lily said.

  Jo sat in silence. A pair of unexpected tears slid down her cheeks. “Yes,” she replied. “And for a little while, my money bought his devotion.”

  Frank hung his head as if he should be the one to feel embarrassment and shame.

  “Didn't you try to get your money back?” Lily asked. “Didn't you try to trace it or something?”

  Jo shook her head. “He deposited everything into his own account, then withdrew it in cash, a few thousand at a time. He left the receipts in the drawer of the bureau, as if he wanted me to find them, as if he wanted me to know there was no way to trace what he had done.”

  “You can be sure it's gone,” Frank said. “Spent on the high life to which Brian always felt entitled. I have no idea why he was that way. My mother said he had been too good-looking, that things came too easily to Brian because of his looks. It made him think he deserved to have things handed to him. It made him think he was better than the rest of us.”

  Jo couldn't disagree. “But still,” she said. “I should have seen the signs. I just didn't want to. I wanted the fantasy. I let it cloud my head.”

  Frank had picked at his steak. “That's what I told myself when he tapped our till,” Frank said. “He was young and he had big dreams. My father and Brian never saw eye-to-eye. Dad was always holding me up as an example, I'm afraid. ‘Why can't you be more like Frank?' he would say time and time again, sometimes with a whack across his butt, a punch in the arm, or a slap on the face. I wasn't surprised when the money started disappearing. Fifty here, a hundred dollars there. Never enough money to make a big deal out of it. I always covered up for him. Until that last night.”

  Jo had been uncomfortable. She'd never known that Brian had lived in the shadow of his brother. She'd never known that Mr. Forbes had been mean to him.

  “Anyway,” Frank shrugged, “then they had the big battle. In the morning, three thousand dollars was gone, and so was Brian.”

  Jo closed her eyes. She couldn't believe what Frank said next.

  “He always said he was going to marry you, Jo. When I realized the money was gone and that Brian was, too, I thought that's what he had done. I thought he used the money to take off with you.”

  She'd pushed aside her plate and taken a long drink of wine. “He said he was going to marry me?” she asked. Her thoughts flashed back twenty years. To the pain of having been abandoned. To the ache about the baby that never had been born.

  “I thought you and Brian had planned it together,” Frank continued. “But on the day you graduated from college, I went into the butcher shop. Ted wasn't there. ‘Gone to watch Marion Lyons' girl graduate from Winston,' the clerk told me. That's when I knew Brian had taken off alone.”

  Yes, Jo acknowledged, he had taken off alone.

  And now she was tired. Tired of thinking and talking of him. It would take time, she knew, to shed Brian's skin from her life. Eventually, she'd do it. But not by having dinner with a stranger, a neighbor, who had few aspirations of his own.

  She changed into her nightgown as if the act would ensure a decent night's sleep.

  When the whistle of the teakettle blew, Jo fixed a strong pot, then returned to the living room where she curled up on the sofa and only drank three sips before she fell sound asleep.

  Sometime later, a loud knock on the door quickly jerked her awake. She pulled herself up and considered not answering. But what if it was her mother? What if Marion needed her?

  Still half-asleep, Jo floundered to the door.

  “Yes?” she called, then suddenly feared it might be the neighbor, the one who'd left the note.

  “Jo?” a man's voice called. “It's Andrew. Can I come inside? We've got a big problem and we need to talk.”

  “Elaine wants to call off the wedding.” Andrew looked at Jo. Jo rubbed her eyes. This must be a dream.

  “What?” she asked.

  Andrew stepped past her and walked into the apartment. “May I turn on a light?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Would you like tea? Or something?” She supposed if she were dreaming about anyone other than Brian that was a good sign. Even if it was Andrew.

  Andrew shook his head, snapped on the chandelier over the small table, then sat in a straight chair. “I spent the past couple of hours talking to her,” he said. “I got absolutely nowhere.”

  The longer Jo stood there, the more real this became. The edges of the room, the furniture, and Andrew all came into focus. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  He nodded. “After everyone left I found her in the back room. She was crying.”

  Jo slid onto a chair across the table from him. “Elaine?”

  “I took her out for a drink to calm her down. She said she needs time to learn who she really is before becoming someone else's wife. She said she can't go through with it, even for the three of you, even after all the work you've done.”

  Jo raked her hands through her hair. She knew she must look a mess. Andrew would not, of course, care. It occurred to her that if all men were gay, life would be far more relaxing. Then maybe no one would get married and everyone would be wonderful friends. Life, she thought, could be worse. Then she remembered Elaine. “What should we do?”

  “I have no idea,” Andrew said. “I never knew weddings were so important to women.”

  “To some women,” Jo said. She did not admit that while they'd been trying on gowns earlier that day, she'd had a moment or two of longing for a day of her own, a special wedding day when she'd be wed to a special man. Fantasy, she thought again. God, why do women, including me, still buy into the myth? She shook her head. “I thought Elaine was crazy about him. I thought this was a match made in heaven, her second chance at love.”

  Andrew snorted. “All I know is that she seems pretty definite. And I thought you should know.”

  “Should I go to her house? Should I try and talk to her tonight?”

  “She had a few drinks. My guess is she's dead asleep. If I were you I'd leave her alone for a day or two. Then maybe go to her if she hasn't come around.”

  “Wow,” Jo said. Her robe had fallen to one side, exposing her short silky nightgown and the soft curve of her naked breast. She tied the robe slowly: Thank God it was Andrew and not the neighbor. “I never expected Elaine to back out.” She looked back at A
ndrew. “Are you sure you don't want tea?”

  He stood up. “No. Thanks. I need to get home and do some work before bed.”

  “Oh,” Jo said, “that's right. Your dissertation. How's it coming?”

  “Well,” Andrew replied before he hurried to the door, “it's interesting.”

  She said good night and that she'd see him in the morning. Then she closed the door and leaned against it and wondered what would now happen to Second Chances. Without Elaine's wedding, would Lily lose interest in the business? Would Sarah?

  And then where would Jo be, alone again?

  28

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, Andrew typed. If my mother ever heard that, she'd wash my mouth out with soap. But my mother would not have been prepared for the women of today.

  Lesson #5: If they don't think you're interested, they will show you some flesh.

  He squirmed a little in his chair. God, Jo had beautiful breasts. Still high and firm for a woman her age, still luscious-looking and . . . Shit, he typed. Why the hell do I have to pretend that I am gay?

  Wiping his brow, he discovered that a thin line of sweat had formed. Just the thought of Jo made him so goddamn hot. How long had it been since he'd had sex with a real, live woman, with something other than his well-callused hand?

  He toyed with a few ideas of how to break the news that he had lied. He tried to think of plausible excuses: He could say he thought if he pretended to be gay he'd have a better shot of getting the job, that he really needed the money while he was working on his dissertation. He could say he had a lot of respect for what the women were trying to do, and that jobs were scarce in West Hope, and that he'd lost his and would take anything to avoid going back to New York.

  He could say he was only trying to give his little girl a good home.

  He would never, never admit to what he was really doing.