Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  Chapter Five

  ON FRIDAY, I leaf through a book of wedding hairstyles while Arianna has her eyebrows shaped at Mario Diab. I think it’s one of her crazier expenses considering what they charge for the privilege of slathering hot wax on her face, but it’s Arianna’s wallet to empty. She insists that no one in the city holds a candle to her woman at the salon.

  Ten minutes later, Arianna clicks across the hard wooden floor to me. Her eyebrows looking imperceptibly different from how they looked entering the salon, but she is beaming. “Didn’t she do a fantastic job?” I nod in agreement and shut the book of hairstyles.

  “That’s smart,” she says, motioning to the book. “Gathering ideas? Do you think you’re going to go with an up-do or leave your hair free and flowing? You should tear out some pictures from magazines to bring with you to give the stylist a sense of what you want.”

  Stylist. My scalp suddenly hurts thinking about the complicated up-do I had for my first wedding. My first wedding. My mind gets stuck on that phrase like tires in mud. It’s not just marriage I’m going to have to do again; it’s the wedding itself.

  “You know, I sort of did all that the first time,” I admit, swallowing down my queasiness. “I’ve already done the up-do, engraved invitations, hors d’oeuvre route. I don’t want this wedding to be a repeat of the first one. I mean, I know Adam is traditional, and he said something about a white dress. And guests. You know, I’m really hungry. Do you want to go get something to eat?”

  “We just ate,” Arianna says. “I mean, we literally just ate before we came in here.”

  Arianna gives me a strange look, cocking one newly-shaped eyebrow as she goes over to pay. I wait for her outside, claiming a headache from the hair product fumes. Outside I deep breathe through my mini panic attack by timing my breath to match the taxis going by. I exhale with each yellow car, focusing on the rotating tires. City hypnosis. By the time Arianna joins me on the sidewalk, I’ve convinced myself that the wedding is still far enough away that I don’t need to deal with it today. Maybe I’m getting my period early.

  “Are you seriously hungry?” Arianna questions.

  “I would kill for a brownie,” I admit. See, this has to be hormonal.

  “We should go in here,” I hear Arianna say, and I turn my head, expecting to see a bakery’s glass display window or, at the very least, a ubiquitous Starbucks where I can pick up a wedge of chocolate laden with over a thousand calories. But she’s pointing to a stationery store. “Kate’s Paperie. If your wedding is really going to be in November, you need to get going on invitations.”

  My stomach plummets somewhere near my knees.

  She pushes open the door before I can say anything, so I take a deep breath and follow her inside. Kate’s Paperie is one of those stores where it’s impossible to feel sad. I can feel my stomach rise like a balloon and take its proper position amongst my organs. We are immediately met with an explosion of color—from the drying rack display of wrapping paper to the standing turntables of stickers. Arianna flits over to a shelf holding fabric-covered photo albums while I drag my feet to the boxes of prêt-a-porter invitations.

  They’re mostly geared toward showers and announcements—cartoon pictures of wedding rings and baby carriages abound. I pick up a plain box of crème-colored cardstock when my phone rings. My mother-in-law-to-be-again’s voice comes crackling through my phone and pierces my inner ear.

  “Where are you, Rachel?” she asks. I can hear distinctly un-Hampton-like traffic sounds from her end of the line.

  “I’m at Kate’s Paperie,” I tell her, returning the cardstock to the shelf.

  “Picking up some stationery?” she questions.

  “Uh. No. Arianna suggested that I start gathering ideas for wedding invitations. I thought maybe I’d make my own this time.”

  This piece of information is met with only silence, as if I have just cheerfully announced that we’re planning to get married in matching track suits. I swallow hard and pretend that she’s silent simply because she couldn’t hear me. “I thought maybe we could keep things traditional but casual this time. Make our own invitations.” I hear my voice trail off.

  “Rachel,” Anita says my name firmly. I can feel her words digging their figurative heels into the sand. “You are family. Do not worry about money. Ed and I want to take care of the invitations. I’m in the city, and I’m owed a favor at Strong’s. I’m going to set up an appointment for us tomorrow. I’ll call you back when I know the time.”

  Only Anita would abbreviate Mrs. John L. Strong, the famous stationery business, as if she’s a bothersome neighbor who has borrowed too many cups of sugar. I place my phone back in my pocket and walk around the store to find Arianna, feeling pinpricks of sweat leaking out the pores on my forehead. She is thumbing her way through one of the invitation books, running her fingers over the embossed print on the cardstock.

  “There are some really pretty invitations in here.”

  “Anita just informed me that we’re having a date at Mrs. John L. Strong tomorrow.”

  Saying it aloud makes it all the more real. It feels as if I was just happily driving along life’s highway a week or so ago, and now suddenly, I’ve been carjacked and thrown in the backseat, with someone who doesn’t really have my safety in mind at the wheel. My figurative car goes careening around mental curves.

  Arianna raises her eyebrows at this news. She is both duly impressed by the advantages that come from being related to Anita Goldman and amused by my horrified expression, which she probably thinks is a reaction to the way my mother-in-law-to-be-again bulldozes over my ideas.

  The reality is that it is easier to go along with Anita than to try to reason against her, because really, what am I going to say? That I said yes to the proposal because I was too thrown off to say no? Because while I love her son and know I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I wasn’t really looking to dive back into marriage so quickly? What could I possibly say to Anita Goldman that would make her put a maternal arm around my shoulder and have her tell me that I’m right; that everything will be okay. Admitting ambivalence to Anita is like pouring a cup of blood in front of a shark. Like confiding in my mother, I’ll only regret it months down the road when she’s still worrying about our marriage even though I’ve come to a place of peace. Because I will come to a place of peace, right?

  The reality is that Anita is right—Kate’s Paperie can’t compete with a private appointment with the premiere stationery maker in New York. They create hand-engraved invitations for presidents and royalty. It’s a wedding, not a random dinner party. An invitation from Mrs. John L. Strong creates an impression, and Anita is all about the way we present ourselves.

  Even if a fancy invitation isn’t exactly who I am.

  “You can say no,” Arianna points out. She flips to a random page in the book, and we both stare at the tiny cherry blossoms decorating the top of the sample card.

  “I can’t,” I tell her. “I mean, I can say no to the invitation, but she’s offering to pay, so it would be rude to turn down the appointment. This is where Anita is in her element—planning something.”

  I don’t add that it helps bring a shred of reality to my fake-it-until-I-make-it plan.

  I realize that I didn’t even ask Anita why she was in the city in the first place. We put Lisbeth and Emily on a plane last night. Unless she has schlepped all the way across Long Island just to make sure that her apartment is still standing after the storm of her daughter passed through town. Arianna replaces the book on the shelf and grabs her purse.

  I feel an air of judgment coming from Arianna as I trail after her on our way back to the subway, and I start forming arguments in my mind defending the way I let Anita strong arm me. It’s not as if I was set on a certain invitation. Stopping in at Kate’s was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I wanted a brownie; Aria
nna is the one who is bringing up the wedding left and right, practically shoving it down my throat while I’m trying to ignore it. If anything, Arianna is just sore that I’m taking Anita’s idea over her own.

  She breezes through the subway turnstile, a fluid movement of her card and her hipbone knocking the gate forward, and I trudge behind her, never quite as graceful, my card requiring three swipes before it’s read. Or maybe Ari is jealous because she’ll never get to go to Mrs. John L. Strong. My mother certainly isn’t taking her, and neither is her own sensible, Midwestern mother. By the time we get to the trains, I’ve taken the thought to its obvious conclusion and convinced myself that Arianna is just jealous because I’m getting married, and she’s not, even if I’d do just about anything to trade situational places with her at the moment. The grass is always greener, and that sort of thing.

  “How are things with Ethan?” I ask, hoping to get to the bottom of where Arianna’s resentment is coming from before we get to her subway stop.

  Maybe I have touched a nerve because Arianna startles, her purse strap almost slipping off her shoulder. She shrugs and looks down the track as if she hears a train coming. “Everything is fine. Why would you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, the whole coffee date with the Nightly guy.”

  “Are you still fixated on that, Rachel?”

  I don’t like the way she uses my name in the sentence. “I was just wondering. I mean, I haven’t really seen you two all week.”

  “That’s because you went to the beach,” Arianna points out. “And then Beckett was sick. We’re not avoiding you.”

  “I never said that you were!” I’m not sure how this became a full-fledged fight. We’re both silent as a train pulls up—it’s not as if we could really hear each other anyway over the clatter—and by the time we sit down, I can’t think of any possible way to word things to get us back on track.

  Arianna picks at her polish, which is always a bad sign. She is the type of person who brings her own nail polish to the salon so she can do touch-ups in between manicures. “Anyway, it’s funny that you should bring up Noah, because I actually bumped into him. Ethan was thrilledbecause he promised us four seats to a Nightly taping in the next few weeks. I was going to invite you and Adam.”

  Noah. Noah the Nightly writer. Arianna carefully scrutinizes one of the ads running along the top of the subway car ceiling. “Where did you bump into him?”

  “At the bodega, Rachel,” Arianna says. “He just happened to be at the same bodega, right near the exact same dry cleaner we met at last time. This isn’t some clandestine affair. Ethan knows all about it.”

  Instead of looking at her directly, I watch her reflection in the darkened window across from our seat. Her reflection stares back at me, lips drawn tightly into her mouth until they disappear.

  “I’d love to go see the Nightly tape,” I finally tell her. “Which night?”

  “I have to call Noah and tell him when we want tickets. He’ll put us on the list..”

  I decide not to point out that she has his telephone number. It’s a moot point. I can tell from her gaze, from the way she avoids turning her body to face me, that somewhere an invisible door has been shut; a door we didn’t even know existed until this moment.

  ANITA INFORMS me that she heard through her personal trainer that Mrs. John L. Strong is still perfectly fine, but truly in-the-moment brides-to-be are flocking to Papillon, the exclusive stationery company that just completed an order for a certain, much-publicized royal wedding. Anita points out that there are perfectly respectable and coveted European stationery makers, which begs the question why European royalty are working with a New York stationer. I push the buzzer on the unmarked office door, my stomach strangely swimming as I wait to find out the answer.

  A polished woman in a smart business suit opens the door and warmly shakes my hand as she leads me inside. Anita is already sitting at the end of a long table, looking through a book of samples, holding pages for future reference by sliding in flat, satin ribbons as bookmarks. I awkwardly take a seat next to her.

  I have an odd sense of déjà vu even though I’ve never been to Papillon, but I realize that it’s just because planning this wedding is unfolding exactly as it did last time, with Anita leading the charge, her credit card at the ready, which means her generosity translates into Anita-tinged nuptials that feel like a bridal corset. Last time, I ended up with everything from her four-tiered dream wedding cake in her favorite flavors of vanilla bean cake with raspberry truffle filling to her choice of wedding veil. She even chose our honeymoon destination, gifting us a week-long stay in the Caribbean.

  I want to take a stand, but I don’t know what sort of wedding I want. Or even what sort of wedding I don’t want. And maybe that’s why I’m being yanked this way and that by everyone who obviously has a better sense of what I should do at my own wedding and why I’m having such trouble asserting myself. I don’t even know what to say when someone asks me what sort of invitation I want except to say that I don’t know if I want invitations at all.

  But that would mean eloping.

  I picture Adam and me on a beach, completely alone except for a rabbi. My mind quickly erases out the rabbi’s bushy beard and black suit and replaces him with a local justice of the peace, a young guy who discreetly slips away right after he tells Adam that he can kiss his bride. The sun is setting, reflecting off my white gown, the train swirling next to me in the water. And then, out of nowhere, Anita is in my dream, and she is telling me how disappointed she is in us for getting married without her. I am so wrapped up in my daydream that I forget that I’m still in New York until a bus horn explodes several stories below me out on the street.

  “Your mother-in-law tells me that you like things that are simple,” the woman informs me, setting down a glass of sparkling water by my wrist and sliding one of the books out of Anita’s pile to pass it my way. “Each invitation is custom designed. These books of samples are just to get the ideas flowing. Once you have some ideas in mind, Mindy is going to sit down with you and talk size, shape, font, and colors. One thing we promise to all of our clients is that we will never make another invitation similar to their own, therefore ensuring that all of our invitations are one-of-a-kind.”

  I nod my head, even though I not only have no clue what sorts of colors and fonts I want to use, but why I’d even care if a stranger had the same invitation design as mine. The woman pats the table and leaves us to look through the sample books on our own.

  “Do you think the royal wedding invitation is in one of these?” Anita murmurs to me as she flips to the next page.

  “I’m sure they not only promised them a unique invitation but absolute privacy.”

  “Too bad, too bad,” Anita says, mostly to herself, wrinkling her nose at a pale pink satin invitation.

  I page through the books absentmindedly, exerting more thought into how to best tell Anita that even if I have no clue about what I want, I would like my wedding to reflect my tastes this time. That is, until Anita places her figurative ace card down on the table.

  “I forgot to tell you when we were on the phone that Cory was smitten with your story and wants to feature you in the Times.”

  “The Vows section?” I choke, accidentally spraying a lovely hand-painted orchid card.

  “The front page,” Anita finishes. “So few couples get the honor each year, and you get to say that you’ll be one of them.”

  My heart is pounding as I flip to the next page, imagining several million people opening up their Sunday newspaper over coffee and bagels, my beaming face next to Adam’s in duplicate—pictures from our two weddings side-by-side. Here Comes the Bride Again. Or maybe an everyday picture of me at the computer flanked by my two wedding dresses. Before and After. Of course they’ll mention the blog, which will be fantastic press, but better still, they’
ll mention my book, which will make my publisher insane with happiness. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

  My conscience raises her hand and points out that I haven’t even announced the news on the blog, and now I’m going to go shout it out to the whole of New York—wait, the whole of the world since the newspaper is read on other continents as well. Am I actually putting my book first and my blog second and Adam’s feelings third?

  I imagine my conscience being smushed down by an enormous index finger. Of course not. Adam comes first. I love him, and the fact that I haven’t told my blog readers about him isn’t commentary on how I feel about him. I am certain that Adam understands that the delivery of this news needs to be handled well considering I built my name as a divorce blogger (okay, a divorced food blogger, but divorce is in the description nonetheless). My readers could bail on me if they don’t see me as the same old Rachel that they helped through that first year post-marriage. And the book can’t be ignored—I’ve worked hard to get to this point, and it makes sense to want to do everything in my power to ensure the reception of the book goes well, even if that means a big spread in the New York Times wedding section. Plus, the timing of this wedding is entirely Adam’s idea. I’m the only person who hasn’t gotten an actual say yet in anything having to do with this wedding.

  And just to kick my conscience even deeper into silence—maybe knocking her out cold for a few hours so I can properly think this through, I point out to myself that I said yes to the proposal before Cory’s name was even floated through the kitchen.

  Plus wedding doubts are so common that there is even a phrase to describe them: cold feet. We wouldn’t have that phrase in the first place if most people didn’t suffer through a little uncertainty over whether they were making the right decision. Feeling unsure is nothing to be worried about, I convince myself.

  I finally let myself off the hook completely by telling myself that the Times is the Times, and I flip through the books with newfound gusto. While ladies may only want to be in the newspaper three times in their lives, writers want to be in the Times any chance they can get.