“She might say you ruined her wedding by dressing like a cult leader,” he says.
“A sister-wife. Not a cult leader.”
He sighs. “Well, great. I have an erection now.”
“This is serious!” I say, storming for the exit.
“I know, I’m sorry. What can I do to help?”
“Well, you can make ten shrimp party trays magically appear!” The other line beeps in. “I have to go,” I tell him. “It’s the firing squad.”
“Well, if your family doesn’t love you anymore,” he says, “you can always hop onboard mine. My parents love you.”
“Sweet!” I say and hang up. Uck. That’s like being loved by Christian tarantulas. When I get back to the hotel, I almost crash into my mother, who is racing toward the banquet hall. “It’s wonderful!” she says. “Brad fixed everything! Come see!” She hurries me to the reception ballroom, where the caterers are setting up big chafing dishes and waiters are placing wineglasses. The first guests are just starting to arrive from the church.
I see Brad marching toward the buffet table, followed by a string of people wearing Keller’s name badges. They’re all carrying trays covered with tinfoil. Twelve trays in fact, twelve trays loaded with crushed ice and fresh, succulent shrimp.
“Just called the store,” Brad says. “Told the chef we had a family emergency and he called a pal at some seafood distributor.”
I stare at the trays as they’re set on the buffet. It truly does seem like a shrimp miracle.
“Oh, Bradford,” my mother says, “I can’t tell you what this means to us. This is just wonderful. You shouldn’t have done it but I’m so grateful you did.”
“Freshest fish in the city,” he says. “I told them I wanted the best.” Brad puts his arms around me and I’m very proud. Not just of him but of me for bringing him.
We kiss and he says, “You are the hottest Mormon ever.”
When my sister gets to thank Brad in person she tells him he saved the day. “I usually hate Jen’s boyfriends,” she says, “but none of them ever brought me shrimp.”
“Consider me your first call for all your seafood needs,” he says. Then Hailey gives Lenny, who’s standing next to her grinning, a short, sharp look like, See, stupid? Some people know how to fix things. My mother tells Brad once again he’s a godsend and my father thumps him on the back. We join the happy guests as they eat cake, dance late, and comment on how amazing the shrimp is. Brad is perfect. He eats the chicken Kiev and says it isn’t dry at all. He drinks the cheap white wine and comments on how good the wines from Minnesota are getting. He even dances the Funky Chicken.
Then, at the end of the evening, everybody’s outside on the sidewalk where a white stretch limousine festooned with powder blue streamers is pulling away with Hailey and her new husband, driving them to the airport where they’ll fly off to their Hawaiian honeymoon. Everyone crowds together on the sidewalk waving. It’s still cold out, and you can see everyone’s breath as they yell good-bye.
“Marry me,” Brad whispers, putting his arms around me.
“What?”
“Marry me!” he says loudly.
“Why?” I realize it’s not the appropriate response, so I add, “Really?”
“Yes!” he says.
One of my cousins slaps me on the arm. “Did he just propose to you? Did he? Oh my God, this guy just proposed to Jennifer! This guy just proposed to Jennifer!” I see my mother’s face peering through the crowd at me, questioning curiously and smiling, my father at her arm. My whole family is here, everyone turning and looking as rumor spreads through the crowd. I’m smiling too—I think—a frozen smile that almost hurts as I greet everyone’s expectant faces.
There’s a big solid, silent moment. Heavy.
I can’t stand it.
“Yes!” I say and everyone cheers.
I think it’s just nerves or the excitement that makes me feel queasy a few minutes later. Like someone punched me and knocked the breath out of me. I have to go inside to be alone for a breather, while Brad receives handshakes, back slaps, and hearty congratulations outside.
Suddenly I’m somebody. At work I never saw so many flower arrangements on anybody’s desk. Roses, carnations, even a small juniper in a red foil bucket that says TO NEW BEGINNINGS! All these gifts and congratulation cards pile in along with personal notes from people telling me how happy they are for me and Brad.
These are all the very same people who have scowled at me in the past or gossiped about me behind my back or been mean right to my face. Good Luck! Best Wishes! Bon Voyage! Sucker Punch! It’s unbelievable. Now that I’m “official” it’s like they’re all scared for their jobs. Like I have any control over that. The cafeteria lady even gives me a free lunch. “Well, you’re going to be Mrs. Keller now,” she says with a toothy grin.
In cosmetics Brianna looks positively stunned. “I can’t believe it,” she says. I don’t even have the heart to be mean to her or rub it in. I might be offended if I didn’t know exactly where she was coming from. I’ve been that girl.
I am that girl.
Christopher is furious. We have a very awkward lunch.
“Just like that?” he demands. “Brad just proposes in the street?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess he was swept away by the ceremony and my family and everything.”
“Swept away by your family? Your family?”
“I guess I just manifested it.” I grin. “When you expect positive things, then positive things happen!”
“Oh, knock it off,” he says.
“It’s true.”
“Go manifest your mouth shut,” he says and crosses his arms. He looks at my hands. “So he just proposed without a ring?”
“He’s giving me his grandmother’s ring.” I try to keep my voice buoyant and bright, like a red beach ball being tossed around on a stormy sea.
“Are you pregnant?”
“No. God! No!”
“Then why is he proposing so soon after meeting you? It’s only been a month and a half!”
“He loves me!” I say, my voice shrill. “We’re meant to be together! These things happen sometimes! Sometimes you just know!”
“Poppycock!” he says.
“Poppycock? No one says poppycock.”
“Poppycock,” he repeats warningly.
“Whatever. Fine. Poppycock. Try to be happy for me. Just because it’s a whirlwind romance doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“Honey, nobody with a trust fund has a whirlwind romance. Doesn’t happen.”
“What are you saying?”
Christopher just gets up grumbling and leaves the table.
I distinctly hear him say “poppycock” again.
The only person who doesn’t machine-gun me down with questions is Ted. He’s silent. He doesn’t ask me how Brad proposed or when’s the big day, he just carries on as if nothing had happened. I guess that’s fine. I mean, he doesn’t have to make a big deal about my wedding. It’s just a little weird to have everyone talking about it everywhere we go and he just pretends like it isn’t happening.
“Jen, you sweetheart!” one of the PR girls squeals when she sees Ted and me walking down the hall. She rushes up and hugs me so hard one of her earrings catches in my hair. “I just heard Brad proposed to you! The girls and I want to take you out to celebrate! Party hearty with the bride!”
“Oh my God, that would be so awesome,” I say deadpan, trying to get a smirk out of Ted.
“How about tonight?” she asks. “It’s Blender Madness at the Anchor!”
“You know, I actually have to have my corns shaved down tonight. They’re really thick. I’ll probably be bloody and hobbling by cocktail hour, but send up a cheer for me!”
“I will!” she says with a weird face, like she’s trying to smile while a cockroach is crawling up her leg. I look at Ted to see if he’s smiling, but nothing.
I go to the Skyway to get a Cinnabon and on the way my phone rings. It
’s my mother, who tells me Lenny and Hailey came back from their honeymoon to bad news. Apparently Lenny’s factory announced cutbacks and some other guy on the floor got promoted. Lenny lost his job. “That’s how it goes with ham,” she says. “Cutthroat all the way.”
She tells me she tried to cheer Hailey up by telling her I got engaged to Brad Keller, but this didn’t cheer my sister up as much as she’d thought it would. “I just don’t know what they’re going to do,” she says. “They can’t live here. Did you ever see their bathroom after Lenny takes a shower?” I tell her I’m very sorry for them and I promise to call and see if I can help.
And I will, right after I get me a Cinnabon.
I make my way over to the counter, order the usual, and I’m about to pay when I spy Brad and Ed coming down the hall with a couple of the other executives. I panic. I don’t want them to see me here. This is not what the future wife of the president would be doing. She would be tending prize roses or polishing silver or attending a Chinese art forum at the museum. She would not be ordering a dinner-plate-size cinnamon roll slathered in icing, which she plans to wolf down in the emergency stairwell.
I look around wildly, but there’s absolutely nowhere to go. They are almost at the counter, any miracle that’s going to happen has to happen now, so I bolt through the little swinging door (meant only for employees) and crouch down next to the oven.
The counter girl watches me as I sit between the hot aluminum oven and the industrial waste can. “I said you could have more icing,” she says and snaps her gum.
“My fiancé!” I say, “in the gray suit!”
“Big guy?”
“Yes! Did he see me?”
She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “How ya doin?” She nods to somebody walking past. My heart is hammering in my chest. What’s wrong with me? Why would I leap behind the Cinnabon counter? Is this what adults do? Is this a mature, normal thing to do?
“What’s happening?” I hiss.
“Just wait,” she says quietly. “Be cool. He just walked by.”
Wow.
The Cinnabon girl just became my hero. No, she was always my hero. I have to think of what the next status upgrade is. “Is he gone?” I ask. “My knees are starting to hurt.”
“Pull the bucket out. Under the sink. I sit on it and read when it’s slow.”
I pull a red overturned bucket out from under the sink and there’s a thick, dog-eared romance novel on it called Hot Eternal Love. There’s an unmistakable smudge of icing at the corner. “No comments on the book,” she says.
I nod. “No comments,” I say, “but from my experience you get hot or you get eternal or you get love, but never all three together.”
“That’s a comment,” she says.
“Sorry.” I sit on my bucket and stare at the terra-cotta tiles on the floor, which are remarkably clean.
“Okay,” she says, “he’s gone. He’s around the corner.”
I stand up and brush off my skirt. “Thanks.”
She holds the swinging door open for me and I step out into the corridor, people rushing past without so much as a glance. I try to dust the cinnamon sugar off my skirt and then I reach for my Cinnabon, which has been waiting on the counter this whole time. The counter girl stops me. “Let me get you a fresh one,” she says. “These are warm.”
She drops a big, fresh cinnamon roll in a box with a pair of stainless steel tongs and then uses a little white paddle to smear extra glops of icing on it. She pushes the box across the counter at me. “No charge,” she says.
“No, really, I insist. Let me pay you. That was totally cool. I just didn’t want, I mean, thank you for, you know. Thanks.”
“No problem,” she says. “Take it. You won’t be back for a while.”
“I won’t?”
“Nope. After a ducking they stay away for a while.”
“A ducking?”
She snaps her gum. “Takes time. There’s the shame. Then guilt. Then you’ll swear to never come back, and then you will.”
I blink.
“You’re not the first one to duck behind the counter,” she says.
“I’m not?”
“We have duckings here on a semiregular basis. People don’t want their co-workers to see them eating a Cinnabon, or their bosses or their Weight Watchers sponsors or whatever.” She shrugs. “Lots of people have Cinnabon shame.”
“Gosh, Satan,” I say, “you’re completely awesome.”
“No problem.”
“Can I ask you something? The icing. Is there, I mean, is there like a pharmaceutical-grade painkiller in it or something?”
She looks at the cash register. “There’s a Cinnabon recovery program available but I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”
I stuff a ten-dollar bill into the tip can on the counter. I tell her I don’t want the Cinnabon, but then as I’m walking away I stop, spin on my heel, and dash back, where she’s already holding the box out for me in anticipation of my return.
“Drink lots of water,” she calls as I hurry away. “Helps when you’re coming down.”
“I actually hid behind a fast-food counter,” I tell Christopher on the phone. “I was like Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis.” I stretch out in the tub with two limp cucumber circles over my eyes.
“Poor lamb,” he says and then, “Jeremy! Stop it!’
The hammering in the background stops.
“God, he’s driving me crazy with that light fixture,” Christopher complains. “We haven’t had a light in the bedroom for two weeks because Restoration Hardware got the order wrong. The one they sent was perfectly fine, but Mr. Meticulous had to send it back.”
I sink lower in the water. “How could they keep quiet for so long in that attic?” I wonder. “I was sitting on that bucket for like five minutes and I was ready to run out screaming.”
“You have to admit, lighting in the forties was beautiful,” he sighs. “All that milk glass and alabaster. Even the streetlamps were still gas. Imagine walking down the street by candlelight! They really knew a thing or two about indirect lighting. I’m sorry, can you excuse me a second? JEREMY! I am going to come in there and smash that chandelier into pieces with a hammer!”
Jeremy stops hammering again and he says something muffled to Christopher.
“Say hello to Jen,” Christopher tells him. “She thinks Brad is a Nazi.”
“I don’t think he’s a Nazi!” I say. “I love Brad!”
“Well, you said you were like Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis,” Christopher says. “Who were the Nazis?”
“I don’t know, Brad was walking with his…I mean, I didn’t want it to look like…”
“Here’s Jeremy!”
“Jen?”
“Jeremy?”
“Honey, don’t listen to Chrissy. He has kitty litter in his vagina today.”
Christopher shouts at him and then they must tussle with the phone because I hear scuffling and the line goes dead.
I hang up and sink down under the water so the cucumber slices float up to the surface of the water. Nice and quiet. Just me and the sea.
And Brad…the Nazi?
Mrs. Keller invites my family to the house for brunch, and after the grand tour, she ushers us into the grand dining room. I stand beside my family in my fresh kelly green empire-waist dress, my hair pulled back in a preppy black headband, trying to look every bit like Grace Kelly. I doubt there’s even a fleeting resemblance.
“Those are eggless crullers,” Mrs. Keller says, pointing to the crispy fried brittle things on the sideboard, “and that is quince custard.”
Hailey’s nose wrinkles. “It’s orange gloop!” she whispers.
“Shut up,” I warn her.
“Over here we have pumpkin biscuits,” Mrs. Keller continues, “blood sausage, spinach soufflé, creamed beef on toast, Philadelphia scrapple, and chicken livers with orange sauce.”
“What’s a scrapple?” Hailey whispers. “Didn’t
we play scrapple at Aunt Joan’s house?”
“Shut up! Eat it and like it.”
“No way. I’m not freaking eating it. I’ll tell you what, Lenny won’t either.”
But just then Lenny leans behind Mrs. Keller and helps himself to a string bean right from the casserole dish. “Just like my grandma made ’em,” he says, “with almond slivers!”
“Yes, Leonard,” Mrs. Keller says, “you help yourself. I love string beans with almond slivers too.” What, is she in love with Lenny? “And for dessert there’s raisin-spice cake,” she says, “and of course steamed chocolate sponge pudding.”
“Steamed sponge?” Hailey says. “What the freak?”
“Look,” I tell her as everyone shuffles toward the buffet, “just take a little of everything or she’ll notice.” Hailey shakes her head. “No way,” she says. “I’m not freaking eating food they ate in ye olden days.” She even goes up to Mrs. Keller, probably to ask her for Froot Loops, but at the last minute she thinks better of it and goes to the buffet, where she plops a spoonful of spinach soufflé on her plate.
I sit at the table directly across from Brad, which is where I always sit. It’s where I’ve always been told to sit. I looked it up in a Miss Manners book and it does say couples shouldn’t be seated next to each other, but I think Mrs. Keller just likes to see us apart.
After the coffee is poured and we say grace, my mom asks Mrs. Keller what she thinks about “these kids” getting married.
“We think it’s the most wonderful thing in the world!” Mrs. Keller says, clasping her hands together. “The moment I met your darling Jennifer, I thought to myself she’s just the kind of girl I hoped Bradford would marry. More cream?”
“And we love your Bradford,” my mother says.
Mom did pretty good for the brunch, I have to say. She looks good in her new dress. I went over there yesterday to see what everyone was planning to wear, and thank God, because Hailey shrugged and said, “Jeans and a T-shirt?” and my mother said she hadn’t thought about it. I yelled at them and said they couldn’t go over to the Kellers’ house looking like hillbillies; this was important to me. My mother promised they would look decent, and basically they do, although my dad didn’t wear a tie and Hailey put a banana clip in her hair. She did pull Lenny together, though, who’s wearing a seersucker jacket and a yellow tie. Mrs. Keller said he looked dashing.
Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single Page 21
