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A Pinch of Ooh La La

Page 18

by Renee Swindle


  I looked down at her hand currently resting on my wrist.

  “Don’t be upset.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You look upset.”

  “I’m not upset.” I’m pissed off.

  “Please take that look off your face. You probably don’t realize it, but Samuel can be very shy.”

  “Shy?”

  “Yes. He didn’t have a lot of friends growing up and he doesn’t do well with crowds. And all these people you want to invite are disconcerting. Do you want him to feel anxious at his own wedding? Because that’s what will happen.”

  I assumed my role as future daughter-in-law was to respect my future mother-in-law and not argue, but I’d had enough. A person can only hold her tongue for so long. “Phyllis, I appreciate you coming by, but this is between Samuel and me.”

  She made a point of picking up her fork and taking a bite of cake. She chewed with her eyes closed. “Absolutely delicious.” I watched while she dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin, then took a sip of coffee. “He says he’s been doing his best to talk to you. I’m only here to help, not meddle.” She waved her hands in the air. “I have something for you!” She reached into the bag at her feet and handed me the white box. “Here. It’s something special from me to you.”

  I opened the box and pulled back the tissue and saw the ugliest wedding dress I’d seen in my life. Bright white. Fringe at the collar. “Oh my God.”

  “It’s my wedding dress!” she sang. “I want you to have it. I know it’s probably a little big for you, but we can have it taken in.”

  “Phyllis, I couldn’t.”

  “But I want you to take it.”

  “Really. I couldn’t.”

  “My girls won’t be marrying for a while, and I want to show you how much you mean to me. I insist. Stand up and let’s see.”

  The shape reminded me of something Laura Ingalls Wilder would wear skipping down the prairie. I thought, If I wear it over my head, I could go to my wedding as Casper the Friendly Ghost.

  Phyllis stood in front of me and held the dress at my shoulders. “You are going to look so beautiful. We can get a seamstress to take it in where it’s sagging.” She tilted her head to the side and smiled. “You know what I’m thinking, Abbey? Simple, pretty dress for a simple, romantic wedding.”

  • • •

  I had to finish the cake I’d been working on before leaving the bakery and didn’t get home until after seven. Samuel had already texted to say he’d be home around eight. He and his staff were working on an IPO for a pharmaceutical company, and he’d been getting home later than usual over the past week. Since I had the house to myself, I took a shower and ate cold pizza and drank beer for my dinner. I sat on the couch with Phyllis’s wedding dress spread out next to me. I listened to Nina Simone Sings the Blues with the volume turned up louder than I normally played the stereo.

  I thought about a couple I’d met a few months before: older couple, second marriage for both of them. The woman was going on about how much she liked her fiancé’s family, and at one point after noticing my ring, she said, “Make sure you like his family. You’re not just marrying the man; you’re marrying his family, especially his mother.” She was originally from New York and spoke with one of those heavy accents; mother sounded like motha. I took her advice lightly then, but now I was starting to get what she meant. I draped my arm over my eyes. Sad thing was, I could already feel a tinge of regret. I already knew I was going to give in and have the small wedding and wear the dress. I didn’t want to believe it, but while my mind wanted me to hold the fight—This is your wedding! Your life! Do what you want!—my heart was making the case that Phyllis had a point. I needed to learn to compromise. She was giving me her wedding dress; how could I turn her down? My heart told me not to be selfish or mean. Don’t start off your marriage being selfish! Don’t be so mean as to turn down your future mother-in-law’s wedding dress! Show everyone that you can be flexible and that you’re not a bridezilla. Make Samuel happy and you’ll be happy. When Nina began singing “In the Dark” I shot up from the couch and shoved the dress back inside the box and closed the lid.

  I was still on the couch when Samuel opened the door. He gave me a kiss, then went to the stereo to turn down the music. He went on about his day and told me what was going on with the IPO. Still talking, he sat next to me and helped himself to the second bottle of beer I’d started. He began unbuttoning his shirt after taking off his shoes and stretching out his legs. Finally he seemed to notice the box on the coffee table. “What’s that?”

  I explained, adding that I didn’t appreciate him telling our business to his mother.

  He sighed and leaned back into the couch as though he couldn’t believe that on top of everything else, he had to come home to a nagging girlfriend.

  “You tell your family our business all the time—and you tell Bendrix everything. So what? I had a talk with my mom.”

  “I might tell my family things, but they don’t butt in the way your mother did today.”

  “She was only trying to help, Abbey.” He looked over at me after a moment. “She gave you her wedding dress?”

  I nodded. And it’s ugly as hell, I considered saying.

  He took my hand. “That she gave you her dress to wear means a lot. You can’t turn her down. I’ve been feeling frustrated and I needed to talk to someone. I never thought she’d go to the bakery, okay?”

  He leaned forward while letting out a long, exasperated breath. He closed his eyes and ran his hands over his head. “I’m under so much pressure,” he murmured. He picked up one of the bottle caps on the table and played with it between his fingers. He leaned back and spoke into the ceiling. “I go to work and I have to prove myself. I’m here with you, and now you’re upset. Everything is so damn stressful right now. Even the wedding.” He shook his head and fell forward again. “All I know is pressure. It’s constant.”

  I felt my heart tugging. See there? He needs you. Don’t add more stress to this man’s life. He needs to know how much you love him. It’s just a wedding, Abbey. It’s just one day. Let it go.

  I studied his face and saw the puffy bags under his eyes and his unkempt hair. He needed me. I traced my finger around the curve of his ear and he fell into me like a child in need of a hug. I held him through the remaining bars of “Day and Night.” Then I kissed him on top of his head.

  “Small wedding,” I said. “We’ll keep it simple and stress free.”

  He looked up. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s just a day.”

  He sat up and kissed me, his lips opening and closing with mine.

  My gut, though, not trusting what had just transpired, whispered from somewhere deep, deep inside—Suuckeeer.

  • • •

  Samuel and I were married at city hall in late September by Sandeep Thapar, a bored officiant who conducted the ceremony as if handling a business transaction, going so far as to read our vows directly from a handbook hidden behind a blue binder. The reception was held at Dad’s. With only sixty guests in attendance, it felt like one of his parties. Samuel had invited a few friends from work. His family sat through most of the reception balancing plates of food on their laps while sitting stiff and guarded and talking mostly to one another. My family did their usual thing—dancing, singing, and making merry. Dad danced with me while Bailey and Dinah sang “Love Is Here to Stay” with my sister Billie on guitar and Dizzy on piano.

  Mom had flown in from Connecticut and helped me dress before we went to city hall. For a wedding present she gave me a necklace made by an elder from the Masai tribe in Kenya. She said the necklace was very old, but since it was new to me, it covered both “something old” and “something new.”

  Rita cried. But only because she didn’t get to help me plan the wedding she’d wanted for me and thought
I deserved. Joan spent an inordinate amount of time talking to Joseph and Phyllis, for which I thanked her. When I saw the wives later at their table laughing, I knew that Joan was laughing at my new in-laws and not with them. At one point she caught me in passing and said, “Dull has an entirely new meaning. God bless you, dear.”

  Bailey also caught me in passing. She looked at me, then slowly gazed over at the Howards, who sat motionless in their chairs while everyone danced. She then looked back to me. “Who comes to a wedding and sits like that?”

  “That’s just how they are. They don’t mean any harm.”

  She scowled. “What the fuck?”

  My wedding cake was three tiers, with a blooming hydrangea on top and smaller hydrangeas on the bottom two tiers. It took more than twelve hours of work for Beth and me to make the sugar petals for the hydrangeas, but I was proud of our work: From a distance, the flowers looked handpicked from a garden.

  I wore Phyllis’s dress, extensively altered to where it looked . . . decent enough.

  My sister Sarah, in from Austin, took photos. In one of my favorites, I sat in Samuel’s lap while we watched the sunset with our backs to the camera. My head rests on his just so, and my shoes dangle off my feet.

  Later that night after the Howards and more guests had already gone, I stood off to the side and watched my brothers and a few friends play “Get Me to the Church on Time.” Carmen danced with Samuel; Jake danced with Bailey; Anthony danced with Rita; and Bendrix danced with Aiko. Everyone was having what looked like a great time.

  I felt my mom watching me. “You okay?”

  “I’m great.”

  She had one of those smiles that turned downward in a sly, knowing manner. She was skinny, with thin bone structure and a small nose and mouth. Luckily, I had her metabolism, which allowed me to run a bakery without becoming as large as the bakery itself.

  She kept her gaze on the crowd. Mom wasn’t a talker. She wasn’t the kind of mother who tried to get me to open up and share every little thing. When I’d visited every summer and during winter break while growing up, she’d kept to her own routine, leaving me to fit myself into her life. So I was surprised when she bumped my shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”

  I watched Samuel switch from dancing with Carmen to dancing with Rita. He twirled her with one finger and she did a low back kick, resurrecting a move from her years as a dancer.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s a fun wedding, Abbey. Look at everyone. And your cake was stunning. No one wanted to touch it.”

  “I could make you one, if you ever remarry.”

  “That will never happen. I’m too headstrong.”

  We watched everyone dancing and whooping it up. Samuel—my husband—clapped to the music with his hands in the air. I said, “I thought I’d feel different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know.” I sipped from my flute of champagne. But I did know. I had expected to feel happier. I had expected to feel more alive, and oddly enough, more me; but in truth, my wedding reception felt like any other of Dad’s parties—a fabulous party, to be sure, but not a wedding reception, not my wedding reception. I knew I was going to look back on my one and only wedding and think—eh.

  Mom said, “Abbey, trust me on this: It’s the marriage, not the wedding. Your father and all those jazz standards have ruined you for reality.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  We smiled at each other. Mom was shorter than I. The edges around her barely there Afro were graying. Her eyes were small and intense enough that I felt I could spy in them all her years of travel and work.

  I thought: I have such odd parents, don’t I? A musical genius for a parent was enough to make for an interesting childhood, but toss the wives and exes in, and then there was Mom, who’d call from Bora-Bora after studying some tribe’s music or wherever to wish me a happy birthday. It took years before I understood that she genuinely loved me and I needed to let go of my resentment of her work and travel.

  Anyway, Mom was right. I didn’t get my dream wedding, but I should focus on the marriage. My kids would have two parents who would never divorce and never miss a birthday. I would be part Phyllis and make sure they knew how devoted I was to them, and part Mom: I’d keep the bakery and continue to work, but only while they were in school. They would have the kind of stability I didn’t have, and they’d have all the love. Because although my family could be wacky, at least I’d always known I was loved.

  Mom eyed me closely. “What is it, Abbey?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m okay. Better than okay.” I finished off my champagne and took her hand. “Come on, you. Let’s dance.”

  15

  You’re Driving Me Crazy

  We went to Yountville after the wedding, having decided to use Samuel’s annual bonus money for a real honeymoon . . . Italy or Argentina. We celebrated my birthday while we were in Yountville by dining at the French Laundry. I have to say, eating that exquisite food with my husband was a great way to welcome in my thirty-ninth year.

  I stopped taking the pill on my wedding night. I would’ve stopped before, but Samuel made it clear he wanted nothing to do with having a kid out of wedlock.

  And then we waited to become pregnant.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Month after month after month.

  By the time our one-year wedding anniversary came around, I began suggesting adoption, but Samuel said he wanted his own kids. I argued that he’d love any kid we adopted as his own, but he wasn’t amenable to the idea. We were both tested for any fertility problems and came out in the clear, except I was closing in on my forties, and the doctor told me in her own professional manner that I was foolish for thinking I’d get pregnant right away. Of course it was going to take time, she cautioned, if I was lucky enough to get pregnant at all.

  Time did its thing. Days and weeks continued to pass. I mean to say, no baby.

  In early spring, about a year and half after the wedding, I was featured in Brides magazine. I stood next to my van Gogh cake, named for its electric colors and sunflower design. Requests skyrocketed after the issue came out, and I began working longer hours to keep up. Samuel was busy at the office, too. Looking back, I think our work gave us an excuse to avoid each other and to “connect” only when we were too exhausted to do much more than watch a movie. We had sex whenever I was ovulating, but less frequently when it wasn’t crucial.

  I had no idea a man’s biological clock could tick as loudly as a woman’s, but Samuel wanted kids even more than I’d realized, or maybe even more than he realized, and it was heartbreaking to have to break the news to him, month after month, that my period had arrived.

  “So why don’t you just adopt already?” This was Anthony’s advice.

  About a month after the doctor’s exam, when Samuel and I were told everything was “fine,” we were invited to Bendrix’s for dinner. Samuel had to work late, so I took advantage of his absence and allowed myself to eat too much of Anthony’s paella and vent about my marriage. Aunt Nag was there. Bendrix and Anthony had been vacationing in Santa Barbara during her birthday and were making it up to her with dinner. She loved my cream puffs, so I’d brought several. We ate them in the living room with a dessert wine Bendrix had opened.

  Anthony didn’t bother hiding his frustration. “I’ve worked with many kids who were dumped into the foster care system and destroyed by it. Kids who need homes.”

  Bendrix’s house sat on a hill overlooking Lake Merritt. It was beautiful, with vaulted ceilings and dark wood beams that worked well with his modern aesthetic. The chair Aunt Nag chose was by a contemporary designer, bright orange with a high arching back that swallowed her whole. She looked so tiny she brought to mind Alice in Wonderland, except old and eating a cream puff.

  Anthony continued. “You could at least start
the adoption process while you wait to conceive.”

  I said, “Samuel won’t even think about it. He wants his own kids.”

  “That’s some bull, right there,” Aunt Nag said. “They’ll be his own kids just as soon as he sees them. They’ll really be his when he pays for their college.”

  “I know, Aunt Nag, but I can’t force him.”

  “Sure you can. Adopt ’em on the sly and bring some home one day and tell him, Hey, here are your kids, shut up.”

  We all laughed, although Aunt Nag remained perfectly serious, as her face disappeared behind her giant cream puff.

  Anthony cozied up next to Bendrix and wrapped his arms around him. Bendrix bristled, then appeared to remember that human contact from the man you loved was a good thing. I watched as he eased his shoulders back into a relaxed position and smiled at Anthony. Anthony, though, pressed his luck when he tried to play with Bendrix’s ear. “Okay,” he said, pulling his head away. “Let’s not get carried away.” Anthony shook his head at Bendrix: I love you despite your curmudgeonly ways. Bendrix scrunched up his nose: I love you, but you’re right: I’ll never change.

  I could feel a sense of envy rising. From the way they looked at each other, I knew they had something (but what?) that Samuel and I didn’t have. They turned from each other when they felt me watching. Feeling like I’d been caught, I bit into my cream puff and pulled my socked foot up onto the couch, a moss-colored thing that was anything but comfortable and should have been left at the high-end boutique where Bendrix had found it. I said, “I can’t believe I’m talking like this, about wanting to adopt and my fertility issues. Whoever thought?”

  “Maybe you and Samuel should consider getting marriage counseling,” Anthony ventured. “Never hurts to check in.”

  I tuned up my nose. “Samuel would never.”

  “Have you asked him?” Bendrix said.

  “No, but I’d be willing to bet this god-awful couch I’m sitting on that he’d say no.”

  “That particular couch is highly sought after by those who appreciate fine furniture. And if you don’t like it, the floor is beneath your feet and you’re welcome to sit on it.”

 

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