Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  I meet Sarah and Penelope in Soho on a brisk Thursday morning, fortified by a Venti cup of coffee from Starbucks that I pick up on my way to the subway. Penelope is wearing a very sensible sweater and jeans this time, as well as a little scowl across her four-year-old face. She has moved on from the idea of first astronaut and is now insisting that she will only walk down the aisle if she can wear her favorite towel wrapped around her waist and carry one of her robot bug toys which vibrates in her fist like a businesswoman’s BlackBerry.

  “You cannot wear a towel,” I tell her, putting my foot down as the bride. “I’m sorry, but I’m not having a flower girl dressed in a towel.”

  “It’s a long towel,” she intones, following us into a clothing boutique because she doesn’t have a choice. She stands by the front window as if she’s threatening to bolt.

  “Penelope, you are going to wear a dress,” my sister tells her with the same sort of forcefulness she probably delivers surgical commands to her interns. “And it is going to be blue.”

  “Blue makes me sick,” Penelope says, clutching her stomach so that the electronic bug entangles in the hem of her shirt. “I only wear things that are vermilion.”

  “I don’t know what the hell they are teaching you in school,” my sister mutters, grabbing a dress off the rack, examining it for a moment, and then putting it back. “You don’t even own anything vermilion.”

  “Can I help you find something?” a saleswoman asks politely, giving Penelope a fake smile.

  “We’re fine,” my sister says brusquely, bordering on rude. I’m not sure who is crankier to be shopping for a flower girl dress—my sister or her daughter. I want to tell them both that there’s no need to do this, no law that says I need a flower girl or that Penelope has to accept, but I can tell by the way my sister’s mouth is set that the offer will not be taken well. I try to give a sympathetic look to the saleswoman, but she has already returned to her perch by the dressing rooms, and it is therefore wasted on her back.

  “What about this?” I ask, pulling a very pretty pale blue tea dress off the rack. Penelope takes her bug and places it against her lip so her entire face shimmers slightly with her mouth’s vibrations.

  “It looks like Alice in Wonderland’s dress,” she tells me.

  “Is that a good thing? A bad thing?” I question, holding it out to her. She backs away from me, knocking into a rack of dresses behind her. They shake on their hangers, threatening to slip onto the floor.

  “It is a very bad thing. Actually,” she drawls, as if she’s trying out a new word for the first time, “it’s a good thing.”

  “So let’s try this on,” I cajole, draping the dress over the crook of my arm.

  “I don’t like it,” Penelope finally decides. “Did you know some people eat bugs?”

  “It’s all we’re serving at the wedding,” I say dryly, putting the dress back on the rack. “Cricket stew and spider casserole.”

  Penelope stares at me for a moment and then decides that I must be telling her the truth. “I don’t think I’m going to eat it.”

  “We got your invitation,” Sarah informs me, flicking past a series of silvery and pink dresses. “It’s gorgeous. Lisbeth made it?”

  “Yes, she saved me from invitation shopping with Anita. The reality is that we’re doing everything so quickly that there was no way we could get something custom made in time. And Anita would have dropped over dead if we got something prêt-a-porter.”

  “Who cares what Anita thinks?” Sarah asks.

  “Who cares what Anita thinks? Who cares what Anita thinks?” Penelope repeats, turning it into a song. “Who cares what Anita thinks?”

  “Please stop,” Sarah says, taking a white sheath dress from the rack and replacing it a moment later.

  “I don’t care what Anita thinks. But sometimes it’s just easier to not poke the bear.”

  “It’s your wedding,” Sarah reminds me.

  “I know it’s my wedding.” Believe me, my clenched stomach is acutely, undeniably certain that this is my wedding. “Which means that it’s also my enormous to-do list. I don’t even have a florist yet. I have about four weeks, and I don’t have a florist. Which means that I don’t have a bouquet or centerpieces. We don’t have favors. We don’t even know what music we’re using to walk down the aisle or our first dance. We haven’t written a program. We don’t have a honeymoon planned, at all.”

  “So drop half of that and just enjoy these next few weeks.”

  “I can’t just drop half of it,” I tell her.

  “Sure you can. Sweetheart, we need to be quick. Mommy is on call tonight. What do you think of this one?”

  Penelope shakes her head just as Sarah’s BlackBerry buzzes, practically harmonizing with the electronic bug. “I have to take this,” Sarah informs me, walking outside and leaving me with my niece and her sour expression as she surveys all the dresses around her.

  “Well, Penelope,” I sigh. “If I invite one of your electronic bugs to the wedding, will you please wear a dress instead of a towel and walk down the aisle as my flower girl?”

  “Dresses are itchy and scratchy,” Penelope tells me.

  “Not all dresses. Not this one,” I tell her, grabbing a dark blue, empire-waisted velvet dress. “This one is soft.”

  Penelope runs her hand over it as if she’s petting a cat and shrugs her shoulders. “Are we really going to eat bugs at your wedding?”

  “No. No bugs. Just steak or fish or something like that. Finalizing that is also on my to-do list.”

  Sarah comes back in the store, sighing as if the person on the other end of the line can still hear her. She marches up to the racks and takes down a few additional options and places them across a counter, a wave of blue over the glass. “Penelope, this is the only place I’m going this morning. There are perfectly good choices here, and we need to get something off-the-rack because your aunt is having the fastest wedding known to mankind. So here they are—seven dresses. Which ones do you want to try on?”

  Penelope miraculously agreeably points at three of the dresses, and Sarah leaves the remaining ones on the counter. I carefully replace them on the racks before following them back to the dressing rooms.

  “None of these are vermilion,” Penelope reminds us.

  “I told you that the dress has to be blue to match ours. Hands over your head.”

  Penelope dutifully raises her hands over her head and allows Sarah to take off her sweater, then tells us that she wants to do her pants by herself which means that we all stand there for a full five minutes while she fiddles with the button.

  “Planning this wedding is obviously very stressful for you, and you’re not enjoying the process at all. So why don’t you drop anything that doesn’t need to happen and enjoy these last few weeks before the ceremony?”

  “I am enjoying planning this wedding,” I lie.

  “Rachel, every time I have spoken to you, you have been short-tempered.”

  “I haven’t. Or you’re catching me around my period. I have not been short-tempered.”

  “You are short-tempered right now,” Sarah tells me.

  Trying to convince her that I’m not being snippy is about as frustrating as shopping for dresses with a four-year-old. I take a deep breath and try to make my voice sound relaxed. “Sarah, I think you’re projecting your own annoyance. I am actually enjoying planning my wedding.”

  “Do you know what your problem is?” My sister launches into one of her speeches, reaching down and snapping Penelope’s button open so that she howls in protest while Sarah tugs a dress down over her head. “You can’t just admit that you’re not enjoying something and stop. You feel obligated to continue, even when you’re not getting anything out of it. This is all symptomatic of your issues with communication.”

  “Wha
t are you talking about? I walked away from my graphic design job,” I tell her. “I stop things when I’m not happy.”

  “I’m talking about things like this—planning your wedding,” my sister tells me, cutting closer to the truth than she knows. “You should have just eloped. Had a tiny ceremony with just the two of you on a beach. You think that you have to do the whole traditional wedding again because you’re a traditional wedding person. Rach, if you’re not having a good time picking centerpieces, don’t have centerpieces. If you don’t feel like carrying a bouquet, just don’t have a bouquet.”

  “But it’s not just about fun. This is about what Adam wants too. Adam is the traditional one, for your information. And if I want a bouquet to hold as I walk down the aisle, I have to pick a bouquet regardless of whether or not I enjoy the process. I mean, it’s like all the paperwork you fill out daily—you don’t enjoy all the background noise that goes along with surgery, but you like being in the operating room.”

  “But here’s the thing, Rachel. I have to fill out that paperwork. You don’t have to have centerpieces. There is no law saying that all weddings have flower centerpieces on the tables. Or bouquets. Or programs. Or assigned seating.”

  “Crap,” I say, pulling out the pack of Post-it notes where I’ve been jotting down reminders for the wedding. “I never started a seating chart.”

  “Stop,” Sarah says, and for a moment, I don’t know if she is speaking to me or to Penelope, whose finger is surreptitiously inching closer to her nostril. “You don’t need a seating chart. You don’t need to tell people where to sit. Just tell them to go pick a seat, dinner is about to be served. You don’t need centerpieces. Just throw something like a stack of books in the middle of the table. You have a theme reflected in the centerpiece, and you’re done. You’re done, and you can enjoy these last few weeks and actually think about the marriage instead of the wedding. The wedding is just one day, Rachel. It isn’t important in the grand scheme of things. A random Tuesday two years from now is more important, so you should be thinking about that considering this is your second time down the aisle. Because you know as well as I do that after all the excitement dies down, after the thank you cards have been written, you are stuck with this person, day in and day out. So you better be sure this is what you really want. There is still time to change your mind.”

  “You don’t believe this is what I really want?” I question, mouthing my words over Penelope’s head. Not that it matters. She is watching herself dance in the mirror—a strange, slow-motion dance like Tai Chi performed by a monkey.

  My sister is surgical even in her assessment of me, cutting straight into the patient, even if it makes me bleed. Which is why it is so wholly unlike Sarah to pause mid-dissection and put her hands over her face. “I was so proud of you when you left Adam. Put your foot down and said that a marriage isn’t sitting on a sofa waiting for someone to make time for you. I wish I had that strength to walk away from stability, but part of how I know myself is as Richard’s wife. It’s who I am. You’re different, Rach. You’ve never gone the traditional route, the careful route. It pains me to see you making a choice that puts yourself second.”

  I want to refute this out of habit, but I’m too stunned that my sister has admitted that all is not perfect in her incredibly neat, hyper-organized, practical Park Slope world. It feels like she has just opened a door a tiny crack, and I have to move carefully to avoid blowing it shut. “Are things okay with Richard?” I ask.

  “Of course, things are fine with Richard,” Sarah snaps, looking pointedly at Penelope. “We are talking about you, Rachel.”

  Richard would be horrified if he knew he was being discussed in the dressing room of a children’s clothing boutique. He likes his privacy just as much as he likes discussing heart health. Sarah lowers her voice and bring her head close to mine in a very un-Sarah-like manner.

  “If you’re not certain that getting remarried is what you want, you need to talk to Adam. You got yourself into a mess the first time by not communicating.”

  I thought she was about to tell me something about her own marriage, so I try not to look disappointed as we both straighten up and look at Penelope to see if she’s listening. She has stopped dancing and is trying to look at herself over her shoulder, her back to the mirror as if she’s trying to catch herself walking away. She looks up at us and smiles, the universe practically showing me my two options wrapped up in neon.

  I can go ahead with this marriage and have an equal chance of ending up like my sister, hissing at someone in a dressing room about the pitfalls of marriage, or being relatively happy with a child of my own grinning at me while she walks away from her own image. I pendulum between the two choices as if they’re the only two choices, until I realize that Sarah has told me what I’ve known since ten seconds after Adam put the Me&Ro rings on my finger. I need to go home, sit him down on the sofa, and explain to him that this is moving too quickly. I need to wait, think marriage through, figure out if it’s what we need right now.

  I am terrified that this conversation will mean that I lose him. But I also don’t want to get several years down the road and regret that I was hurried into this decision. I love him so much that it guts me to think of possibly hurting him by rushing in.

  “I’m going to talk to Adam when I get home,” I tell her. “Just do me a favor; let’s still get a dress for Penelope today. You can always return it.”

  “Because you know how I love using my lunch hour to run errands,” my sister mutters, sounding once again like herself.

  She pulls the current dress off Penelope and tries on the blue velvet one which feels as soft as a cat but sort of looks like an upholstered chair once on her body, and she swiftly removes it and replaces it with a beautiful, airy chiffon dress with a matching cardigan to winterize it. Penelope spins in front of the mirror, watching the individual layers fan out. “Do you think you can get the same thing out of marriage by living together indefinitely?” I whisper.

  “No,” my sister answers definitively in a normal tone of voice. She only looks up at me when she realizes after a minute or two that I haven’t spoken. “What? I don’t think it’s the same thing at all. Is that what you want to propose doing?”

  She says it using the same tone of voice she would probably use if someone told her they wanted to keep their brain tumor because they were emotionally attached to it. I shrug my shoulders, watching her daughter.

  Sarah’s tone softens somewhat. “I remember waking up on the first day of our honeymoon and feeling that everything had changed. That we had stepped over a line together whereas beforehand, we had each been stepping over our own personal line—lines that may have sometimes led the two of us to the same place—separately. There is something different about being a unit who operates as a unit, instead of being a unit comprised of two individuals.”

  “But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” I reason, playing devil’s advocate. “We’re told that marriage will change things, that we’ll feel different after the ceremony, so we feel different after the ceremony. I felt it too all those years ago on our honeymoon. Looking in the mirror and thinking that I even looked different.”

  “Because you were different,” Sarah stubbornly insists. “You still are different. All those tiny moments in life change you. Marriage is the first in a long line of things you will do together, one of those things that make you different. Together. Please think this through.”

  I suddenly need to be back in my apartment, back on the sofa where I gained all that clarity on my marriage years ago as I waited every night for Adam to come home. I somehow knew the right thing to do after sitting there long enough. Maybe the right answer will come to me again.

  I help Penelope out of her current dress, the one that she presses to her body howling that she doesn’t want to take it off until we tell her that we’re buying it. Even then, she watches us
suspiciously as we get her dressed again and move to the cash register to pay.

  “I love my dress, Aunt Rachel,” Penelope tells me quietly, suddenly shy and half-hiding behind her mother. “I’m going to wear it to school.”

  “Like hell you are,” Sarah mutters under her breath, grabbing the dress from the saleswoman along with information about the store’s return policy exactly in the same moment that her BlackBerry buzzes to life again.

  I AM WAITING for Adam to come home so we can talk when an email arrives from my agent, Erika Ledbetter, very gently informing me that while the second book sounds great, now isn’t the time to plow ahead with a second piece of non-fiction. Let’s see the response to the first book. We can’t even show a new proposal to your publisher until several months after the publication date. Let’s focus on promoting this first book and build your platform as a divorce expert before we expand out into relationship advice.

  I close the message and pop two Tums in my mouth to quell the lake of acid in my stomach that has begun splashing around like a storm-tossed ocean. I take out a Post-it note, determined to build a Plan C just in case we go through with this wedding. In the time it took me to get from the boutique to my apartment, I have flip flopped back and forth between postponing the wedding for a year or two, and rushing ahead as planned so we can just get on with life and stop being so dramatic about every decision. Okay, so I can stop being so dramatic, since Adam isn’t exactly falling apart as he grades papers. In fact, he seems downright tranquil whenever we talk wedding plans, as if he’s in the middle of getting a particularly satisfying hot stone massage. He whistles “Here Comes the Bride” to himself while he packs his book bag in the morning, tossing in a bagged lunch and all of his classroom books.

  He is not going to react well to this conversation. He is not going to immediately understand that I want to slow down things specifically because I love him, not because I have any doubts about us. That I want to make sure that he is cared for and cherished and protected . . . from me. Protected from me, I jot down on the Post-it note pad, finally finding the words to explain how nervous I am that I am going to mess this up. Mess him up. I bravely tell myself that I would rather lose him now than ever hurt him years down the road with my anxiety or resentment, but I quickly backtrack when I consider a life without Adam again. I can’t lose him. I want to slow this down so I don’t lose him. I jot down those words too, searching for anything that might help when Adam finally gets home.