Slightly Married

by Wendy Markham

  “You asked Sonja to be a bridesmaid?” Kate shouts incredulously as I plop down on her leather couch in utter misery.

  “Oh my God, Kate. Shhh!”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Billy’s at Chelsea Piers golfing.”

  “No, I mean shhh, you’re screaming and my head is killing me,” I tell her, rubbing my throbbing temples. “Not shhh, I don’t want Billy to know I’ve asked everyone and their mother to be in our wedding party. He’ll think I’m certifiable.”

  That’s what Jack thought when he found out I’d asked Sonja to be in our wedding.

  Well, he didn’t say it when he first found out…which was pretty much the second we returned to the table after the bathroom, holding hands.

  “Tracey asked me to be in the wedding!” Sonja announced.

  “Our wedding?” Jack asked, gaping. At least he didn’t say, “Why?”

  Not then, anyway.

  But as I recall—mind you, my memory is a bit spotty—he asked it a few times during the cab ride home. He also told me that I was out of my mind. He also told me, a little later, I think, to roll down the window and stick my head out. Later still, back at home, he advised me to put one foot on the floor so the bed would stop spinning.

  It didn’t.

  God, I feel lousy.

  And I must say, Jack could have been more sympathetic today.

  Okay, he did bring me a really strong cup of coffee in bed.

  He also said he’d consider having Buckley in the wedding party—which he claims I begged him to do in my last burst of coherence before the spinning bed got the better of me.

  So at least something good came out of the evening.

  “You’re talking about Buckley’s Sonja, right?” Kate clarifies, lowering herself into a Stickley chair as if she’s nine months pregnant and huge instead of five and barely showing. “Big-boobed Sonja with the hair?”

  “What other Sonja is there?”

  “I know a few.”

  “Well, I don’t, so what other Sonja would I possibly be asking to be in my wedding party?”

  “Hay-ell, Tracey, I can’t imagine that you’d ask this one.”

  “That makes two of us.” I sip the ginger ale Kate poured for me—she’s got an entire fridge full—and say, “It’s just…I mean, I was drunk.”

  “Being drunk is no excuse to go around asking random people to stand in your wedding.”

  “I didn’t go around asking random people, Kate.”

  “Sonja is random, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She’s just one person, though—I wouldn’t say people. I didn’t go around asking everyone in sight.” Thank God. It could have been so much worse.

  Still, you have to admit, this is pretty bad. “What am I going to do?”

  “Uninvite her,” Kate says with a shrug. “What else can you do?”

  “I can have her as a bridesmaid. I’ve got her size and her dress deposit.”

  “Tracey, you cannot do that. You don’t even like her!”

  “I like her.” Last night I did, anyway. Last night we were soul sistahs.

  And we’re going to be moving to the suburbs together, buying houses next door to each other, babysitting each other’s kids and playing bridge—or something like that. I have a vague recollection of that conversation happening over flan.

  Flan.

  Creamy. Rich.

  Sweet, sticky caramel sauce.

  Oh, ick.

  “Come on, you only hang out with her because she and Buckley are a package deal,” Kate says.

  I open my mouth to protest but it’s swept by a wave of bile before I can say a word.

  Sangria hangovers are the worst.

  “Seriously,” Kate goes on as I try really really hard not to vomit on her heirloom rug, “if they broke up tomorrow, would you care if you never saw Sonja again?”

  It’s purely a rhetorical question, I know.

  Which is why it’s so damn ironic that the very next afternoon, I get a call from Buckley who says, “Tracey? Listen, I thought you should know…Sonja and I just broke up.”

  “What?” I immediately aim the TiVo remote and freeze the television screen, where a young-looking Billy Crystal is in the midst of explaining to a younger-looking Meg Ryan that men and women cannot be friends unless they’re both involved with other people.

  “We broke up,” Buckley repeats somewhat glumly—but not as glumly as one might expect.

  “But…how can you break up? You’re getting married.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You called off the wedding?” I am now off the couch, pacing around the living room in my bare feet. “Why?”

  “I had to. It would’ve been a mistake to go through with it.”

  “But…I mean, Buckley, you guys have broken up and gotten back together before. I’m sure you can—”

  “Sonja burned the invitations.”

  “Oh.”

  “And every picture of us she could find. It’s over, Tracey.”

  It can’t be! Sonja’s in my wedding, dammit! I just ordered her a nonreturnable size two navy velvet sheath!

  I’m dying to say it, but that would come across as selfish. Wouldn’t it?

  Yeah, it pretty much would.

  And here I am, fresh from Sunday mass, where this week’s sermon was about how we should all strive to be more like Jesus; how we should stop ourselves whenever we’re in doubt and ask, What would the Lord do?

  (Yes, I’ve been going to mass weekly ever since that confrontation—I mean, conversation—with Father Stefan. What, did you think I wasn’t following through on at least part of my promise to him?)

  Anyway, Jesus wouldn’t be worrying about dealing with a random buxom bridesmaid, would he? He’d be concerned with his dear friend’s well being.

  I am anxious to prove that I’m a Christlike friend to Buckley; a friend who isn’t the least bit worried about herself.

  So rather than condemn his sucky timing, I nobly and calmly ask Buckley if he’s okay.

  “Yeah, I’m hanging in there. I just had to get out of the apartment—she’s upstairs packing her stuff right now. She’s going to go stay out in Jersey with Mae and Jay—remember them?”

  Of course. Mae is Sonja’s old roommate, an investment banker, and Jay is her psychiatrist husband. Mae and I were both there when Buckley met Sonja; she and I were both involved in long-distance relationships at the time. Obviously, hers ended happily ever after; mine was already over and everyone knew it but me.

  “How’s Sonja holding up?” I ask Buckley, remembering my own heartache when Will dumped me.

  “She’s pretty upset.”

  Yeah, well, who isn’t?

  My mind is spinning faster than the bed did last night. You know, a mere forty-eight hours earlier, I’d have heralded this news. We all know I wasn’t wholeheartedly rooting for Buckley and Sonja’s man-and-wifedom.

  “So what happened, exactly?” I ask. “Did you guys have a fight?”

  “It started over the guest list and escalated from there.”

  “The guest list for the wedding?”

  “Yeah. I told her she was being a bitch about it. She didn’t want to invite Raphael and Donatello and they just had us at their wedding. But she said that was different.”

  Different. Yeah, that certainly describes Raphael and Donatello’s wedding, all right.

  “She actually said it wasn’t a legal marriage so it doesn’t count—can you believe that?”

  Yes, but it’s pretty wenchy, even for her.

  “She said Raphael is known for inviting hundreds of people to every party he throws, so of course we’d be invited. I told her Raphael is my friend and I want him at my wedding, and she wouldn’t budge.”

  “So you called off the wedding over Raphael?” I ask incredulously, thinking our good friend’s ego is going to love this.

  “No, it wasn’t just because of Raphael. It was—” Buckley hesitates. “That was just the tip of the iceberg. There
were a lot of other…issues.”

  “Like…?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now. But trust me, this has been a long time coming, Tracey.”

  Yeah? Then why, why, why couldn’t you have broken up with Sonja before Friday night?

  Better yet, why couldn’t I have waited to ask her to be a bridesmaid?

  Waited? Ha!

  Here’s a thought: how about if I hadn’t asked her at all?

  Damn those mojitos, and damn my big fat bridesmaid-inviting mouth.

  “Where are you right now?” I ask Buckley, trying to focus unselfishly on my dear friend in need.

  “In the Starbucks across the street from my building.”

  “Do you want me to come down there?” I offer. Jack is over at Mitch’s apartment watching the game with a bunch of guys, and I’m on my own for the rest of the afternoon. I figured some serious Couch Time—sweatpants, chick flicks and Choc-Chewy-O’s eaten straight from the box—would be the order of the day, but if Buckley needs me…

  “No,” he says. “I’m good, actually.”

  He does sound good, actually.

  Much better than I do as I ask a bit desperately, “By any chance are you guys still going to be…you know, a couple? Even though you’re not getting married or living together?”

  “Nope, we’re definitely through.” Buckley sounds—dare I suggest it?—almost cheerful. “We were all wrong for each other. I guess deep down I always knew it.”

  “So did I,” I admit without thinking first. Oops.

  “You did?” Buckley sounds dismayed. “Then why didn’t you ever say anything about it?”

  Caught off guard, I offer a lame “I guess I didn’t think it was my place.”

  “So you were going to let me marry the wrong woman.” Okay, now he just sounds pissed.

  “You didn’t need my permission, Buckley. I mean, that was your decision.”

  “But…Tracey, we’re friends. I count on you. I’m the one who coached you through your breakup with Will, remember? I’m the one who told you to be strong when he came crawling back. Remember?”

  “Yes…”

  “I wouldn’t have let you marry Will.”

  “He didn’t want to marry me, Buckley. It was never an issue.”

  “But if it had been an issue, I wouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “No? What would you have done?” I have a sudden vision of Buckley galloping up to Most Precious Mother, shouting, “Halt!” and spiriting me away on horseback. The church has been transported to a bucolic countryside. I’m wearing my white gown and my hair is flowing, and Buckley’s wearing all white, too. Very picturesque.

  “I would have sat you down and talked some sense into you.”

  Oh. Well, as fantasies go, that’s not nearly as dramatic as the white-knight rescue scene in my head, but reality seldom is.

  “If I wanted to marry Will,” I tell him, “nothing you said would have changed my mind. I would’ve had to figure out on my own that it was wrong, just like you did.”

  He’s silent for a moment.

  Then he says, “Tracey, if you had ever said I shouldn’t marry Sonja, I would have listened.”

  “Oh, come on—you can’t pin this on me!”

  “I’m not. I’m just saying…you could have told me what you thought long before it came to this.”

  “And if I had, and you had married her anyway, you would have resented me for it. Same thing with Kate. I mean, I could have told her I didn’t think Billy was right for her, and where would we be now? Probably not even friends.”

  I think of how I resented her back when Will was my boyfriend and she was convinced he was gay. We’re lucky our friendship withstood the tension.

  “So if I didn’t think you should marry Jack,” Buckley says, “you honestly wouldn’t want to know?”

  That gives me pause.

  Would I want to know?

  Is that really how Buckley feels?

  “You don’t think I should marry Jack?” Yeah, I guess I do want to know.

  He hesitates. “I didn’t say that. I asked if you’d want me to tell you if I thought he was wrong for you.”

  “No,” I say simply, “I wouldn’t.”

  I’m in love with Jack. I’m going to marry Jack. He’s right for me, and nothing anyone says would change my mind about that.

  Buckley lets out a heavy sigh. “I guess we’re just really different, then.”

  “I guess we really are.”

  “I should go,” Buckley says then, and I don’t argue.

  We hang up.

  I aim the TiVo remote and press Play again.

  “—the person you’re involved with,” Billy Crystal resumes saying, “accuses you of being secretly attracted to the person you’re just friends with, which you probably are—”

  I scowl and aim the remote again, zapping Harry and Sally and their ridiculous theories into oblivion.

  10

  Flash forward to a gorgeous Saturday morning in June, the better part of which I have now spent drinking bad coffee at JFK airport in Queens.

  You’re assuming I’m waiting for a delayed flight to Buffalo again, aren’t you?

  Wrong!

  I’m waiting for a delayed flight from Buffalo.

  On the flight are seven Spadolinis: my parents, my grandmother, my sister, Mary Beth, my brother Joey, my sister-in-law Sara, and my nephew Joey Junior, newly potty trained.

  Or maybe he isn’t, because he reeks. I can smell him coming from a few feet away when my family finally appears in the baggage-claim area.

  Yes, my family. I know, I can hardly believe it either but here they are in New York City for the first time.

  They came, of course, for the engagement party Wilma is throwing for us tonight in Bedford.

  I couldn’t believe it when they decided to fly in for it. My parents haven’t been on a plane since my great-aunt Phyllis’s funeral in Fort Meyers years ago, and my grandmother never has, even though Great-Aunt Phyllis was her favorite sister.

  But she finally decided it was time she got over her fear of flying.

  When I asked her why, I thought she might say, “Because you’re my granddaughter and I want to be there to celebrate your engagement.”

  Nah. Her explanation: “I’m at the end of the road anyway. If I go down in flames now, I’ll get a head start.”

  A head start on eternal salvation. Now there’s something to strive for.

  But here she is, in one piece. Here they all are. Here I am, enveloped in hometown hugs right in New York, with a sudden, unexpected lump in my throat.

  “Oh, no, what’s happened to you? You’re too skinny!” my mother shouts at me in dismay, and everyone within earshot turns around expecting to see Nicole Richie. “Aren’t you eating?”

  “Yes, Ma, I’m eating.”

  “Dolce mia!” cries Grandma as she pushes past Connie the Cobra’s fervent maternal embrace to hug me herself.

  “Hi, Grandma! I’m so glad you could come. And you look beautiful,” I add, because as usual, she’s waiting to hear it, and because as usual, it’s true. She’s wearing full makeup, heels and what she likes to call “a slacks suit.” She’s also wearing lots of perfume, which I bet went over about as well with her fellow passengers as little Joey’s loaded diaper.

  Sara gives me a quick hug, then rushes away to find a changing table, carrying my stinky nephew and a diaper bag.

  “I still can’t believe we made it!” my mother announces loudly and dramatically enough for everyone else in the terminal to turn around and wonder if their plane lost a wing over Syracuse.

  “I told you we would, Ma,” my sister says, but she looks a little shaken. She’s never flown before either, and this is her first time away from Vince Junior and Nino, who are spending the night with their father. They’ve never done that before even though Vinnie’s supposed to have them every other weekend per the divorce agreement. He always claims he doesn’t have room for them t
o stay over. That’s fine with my sister, who lives for the boys and doesn’t want to spend every other Saturday night in an empty house anyway.

  “Ma was convinced we were going down over Elmira,” my brother informs me with an eye-roll.

  “I can’t help it. I’m a nervous flier,” my mother says, like she does it all the time.

  “So was it a rough flight, then?” I ask.

  “No, it wasn’t bad at all, once we got off the ground,” Joey tells me. “They just held us on the runway forever because there was some problem with air traffic on this end. The seat-belt signs were on the whole time, so we couldn’t take poor Joey to the bathroom.”

  “The plane stunk to high heaven by the time we took off, thanks to that kid,” my grandmother says, then cracks up maniacally, because puns slay her. “Get it?” She elbows everyone in proximity—me, my father, my brother—painfully in the ribs. “Plane! High heaven! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!”

  Joey asks me under his breath, “There’re going to be drinks at this party, right?”

  “Plenty.”

  Drinks, food, music, waiters passing hors d’oeuvres on silver platters. Wilma is going all out: she’s having this soiree at Toute l’Année, “a lovely restaurant with sweeping views of the countryside.”

  That’s how she described it to me, like she was reading from a brochure.

  “And Toute l’Année means all year round, Tracey,” Wilma had added helpfully, “so I’m sure the view is lovely all year round.”

  “And sweeping,” I couldn’t resist saying, and she smiled.

  She’s been such a sweetheart about the party, the wedding, everything. And she said she’s going to be giving us money toward the wedding. I told her the engagement party could be her gift to us, but she told me not to be silly.

  “Jack is my only son,” she pointed out. “This is the only time I get to be mother of the groom. I want to be a part of things.”

  It made me feel guilty for thinking she was trying to commandeer our wedding way back in February at Gallagher’s.

  Even my own mother hasn’t done that, for the most part. I’m sure it’s because the reception is off her home turf. She wouldn’t dare tangle with Charlie the banquet manager of Shorewood, who has a formidable reputation around town.