Once More with Feeling

by Cynthia Baxter

  He checked his watch. “If we don’t get started in five minutes, I’m going to have to leave.”

  “You can’t leave!” Laura cried, clutching her bouquet of wildflowers so tightly that a few of the purple blossoms up and died. “There are a hundred fifty people out there! They’re all expecting a wedding. A lot of them drove out here all the way from the city. Most of them brought presents!”

  The judge didn’t look impressed. With a shrug, he told her, “Five minutes.”

  “What’s going on, man?” asked Dirk.

  “Just keep playing,” Laura hissed.

  The judge was still engaged in his countdown when Roger finally appeared, surprising Laura by coming up behind her and throwing his arms around her waist.

  “See?” he said playfully. “I made it. And the arch looks fantastic, if I do say so myself.”

  Like so many brides before her, Laura took the long, measured walk down the aisle, which in this instance was a somewhat rocky trek from the back of the Darlings’ garage to the handcrafted wooden arch. Standing in front of it was the judge with his Brooks Brothers look. Beside him was Dirk with his Allman Brothers look. She tried to float, rather than merely walk, and to adopt an appropriately serene expression. It wasn’t easy, given her state of agitation over Roger’s tardiness, the judge’s surliness, and the fact that if she heard “Here Comes the Sun” one more time, she was certain she’d scream.

  “Friends of Laura and Roger,” the judge began, reading from the crumpled piece of paper in his hands, “today we have gathered together to share in the new life upon which these two kindred spirits are about to embark together....”

  Laura relaxed. Glancing to the side, she could see Roger, looking handsome indeed in his borrowed suit. There was an odd expression on his face, a sort of smirk, that she attributed to nerves. She could hardly blame him. After all, she was feeling the same way.

  The fact that she was taking a giant step was only part of it. What seemed even more significant at the moment was the fact that the two of them were the center of attention. More than a hundred people had showered and shaved, made up and perfumed, dressed and overdressed, all on their behalf. Over three hundred chicken parts were piled high in the Darlings’ kitchen, smothered in a special teriyaki sauce that had been created in their honor. An embarrassing number of presents were stacked up on the window seat in the dining room, enough glassware, silverware, ceramicware, and small appliances to outfit an embassy.

  At that moment, in a blinding flash, Laura came to a terrible realization. All the drama of weddings, the pomp and circumstance, the engraved invitations and the quest to find the perfect shoes and the decisions about flowers, napkins, music, the number of tiers in the cake, the type of filling in between the layers of the cake, the color of the sugar roses on top of the cake ... it was all meant to be a distraction. A distraction from a truth so monumental, so terrifying, so incredibly overwhelming, that to confront it head-on would have been devastating.

  That truth was that she and Roger, this man who suddenly seemed like a total stranger, were about to intertwine their lives forever.

  When she’d sat down to write her own wedding ceremony, Laura had made a point of omitting the clichés. All that business about sickness and health, better or worse, richer or poorer. Especially the part about death. Yet standing in front of the judge, listening to him stumble over words that had sounded so beautiful and so sincere in her own head, she understood that whether those words were spoken as part of the ceremony or not, they still spelled out what she was in for.

  What am I doing? The thought was accompanied by a wave of panic so great that for a fraction of a second she was tempted to flee. But it was too late. Struggling to focus on what the judge was saying in a voice as lyrical as that of a newscaster reciting the Dow Jones report, she realized he was almost at the end.

  They were getting to the “I do” part. This was her last chance to change her mind. To back out. Yet through the fog that had enveloped her, she heard herself say the words. “I do.”

  There were more of the judge’s mumblings, and then Roger echoed those same words. “I do.”

  And she heard, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  Snapping out of her reverie, Laura opened her mouth to protest. Wait a minute! she wanted to cry. I wrote that husband and wife! We’re both changing our status here, not just me!

  She didn’t have a chance to voice her protest. Roger was kissing her. A crowd was surrounding them, cooing like a flock of pigeons. Dirk had launched into a spirited version of You Are the Sunshine of My Life.

  It was over. She was married. This man who was kissing her was her partner for life.

  Laura Briggs was no longer simply Laura Briggs. She was a wife.

  * * * *

  As she heard Roger fit his key into the backdoor lock, the pounding of her heart increased alarmingly. She stashed the wedding album back on the shelf.

  “I figured you’d wait up,” Roger said.

  Laura just nodded. She couldn’t help noticing he was even better looking than he’d been on TV. It wasn’t only his tall, dark, and handsome look; it was also the way he carried himself, with a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

  “You saw the show?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re mad, right?” Both his tone and his posture was defiant. Laura was struck by the fact that he was actually daring her to react.

  “I’m too tired to be mad.” She sat down on the arm of the couch, her eyes downcast. “To tell you the truth, I’ve already spent too much emotional energy being angry at you, Roger.” She took a deep breath. “I think I’ve had enough.”

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. He sank into a chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “I just know being on that show is going to turn out to be a good thing. It’s a great way of breaking in.”

  “Breaking in?”

  ‘Television. The way I figure it, a few million people saw me on TV today. All I need is for one of them to have been the right person. A producer, or maybe an advertising executive—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “TV commercials.” He looked at her as if she were the one not making sense. “That’s what I’ve decided to do. I’ve always been interested in acting. Hell, I was in half a dozen plays when I was in college. Then there was that summer I spent at the Downington Theater Festival when I was sixteen. Anyway, there’s a lot of money to be made doing commercials. I just need my first big break—”

  “You didn’t hear what I said.”

  Roger looked puzzled. “You said you weren’t mad.”

  “No. I said mad wasn’t the right word. I said what I am is tired.”

  “Well, sure. It must be almost eleven.”

  “It’s past eleven.”

  “So go to bed. What are you waiting for?”

  What are you waiting for? Laura would have laughed if she hadn’t been so close to tears.

  “I want out, Roger.”

  “Out of . . .” he prompted.

  “Out of this marriage.” Correcting herself, she said, “Out of this poor excuse for a marriage. I —I can’t do it anymore.”

  Roger stared at her, a look of incredulity on his face. “All this because I went on some stupid television show?”

  She struggled to find something to say, but there were no words. She felt as if something were lodged in her throat—something that had been stuffed deep inside her for a very long time, but was finally coming to the surface.

  Her husband continued staring at her, his eyes wide. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  She nodded. The tears she’d been fighting to hold back began sliding down her cheeks. Laura covered her face with her hands, unable to look at him. When his response was nothing but silence, she peered at him through parted fingers.

  She saw that he was angry. Not penitent, not distressed, not even shocked. Just angry.

  “Fine,” he said coldly, alre
ady heading toward the stairs. “Do what you have to do.”

  Laura watched him walk away. This was her husband, the man with whom she’d lived for fifteen years. Roger Walsh, with whom she’d bought a house, created a child, established a credit rating, filed joint tax returns, experienced nearly every variety of foreplay imaginable . . . and envisioned a future that by definition would include each other. A decade and a half together, and this is what it came down to: “Do what you have to do.”

  To Laura, left alone in the living room, the air suddenly felt so cold that she retrieved the afghan from the floor and wrapped it around herself. As she curled up on the couch, she knew sleep wouldn’t come for a very long time.

  Chapter Three

  The words on the menu of the Sassafras Café were difficult to decipher under the best of circumstances, given the loopy calligraphic style the management used as one more way of justifying its inflated prices. Today they were just a blur to Laura as she sat at a corner table waiting for her two closest friends. Even with half a Valium in her system, she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes.

  Don’t you dare cry, she scolded herself. You can’t. You demolished your last tissue fifteen minutes ago.

  Desperately she tried every trick she could remember. Biting her lip. Taking deep breaths. Counting to a hundred. Thinking happy thoughts . . .

  The last one was her downfall. There were no happy thoughts. Reminding herself of that painful reality sent two fat tears running down her cheeks.

  “Something to drink?” the waitress chirped, pouring ice water into a glass. When she glanced at Laura, her expression changed to one of sympathy. “I’ll get the wine list.”

  Laura shook her head. Even though the Valium was doing little besides making her feel as if she no longer had feet, she’d heard too many coma stories on the six-o’clock news to take a chance.

  “Just ginger ale, thanks.”

  Glad to be left alone again, Laura looked around the restaurant. The Sassafras Café was a good choice, the perfect setting for ladies who lunched. The interior was all soft pinks and yellows, with tea roses on each table and such a profusion of ferns it was a wonder tick warnings weren’t posted. The menu included all the current food fads: sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, arugula at every turn. The other patrons certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves. Everywhere Laura saw happy faces, bright eyes, animated gestures, lively conversations. The scene depressed her immeasurably.

  She turned her eyes to the window, seeking the comfort of the outside world. In the parking lot, people got in and out of their cars, making their way to and from the restaurant and the other stores in the shopping plaza. She spotted a few solo flyers, but mostly there were couples. Men and women strolled along, talking and laughing together, paired off like passengers on the ark.

  Laura shut her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t block out the bad feelings. For the past two days she’d felt as if she’d stepped onto a roller coaster. The car was moving slowly but already picking up speed, embarking on a ride she knew would raise her up to exhilarating highs only to plunge down to valleys far below. Yet she had no choice but to hang on, clinging to the thought that, in time, it would all be over.

  She cast a grateful smile at the waitress who placed an icy glass of ginger ale in front of her. All the tears she’d shed had left her feeling drained and dehydrated. The surge of sugar, she discovered, was even more comforting than the Valium.

  Telling the people closest to her was apparently the first gut-wrenching drop on the roller-coaster ride. She’d put off calling her two best friends, Claire and Julie. She hadn’t been ready to speak the words, but she wasn’t able to lie, either, to act as if everything were the same as it had been a mere forty-eight hours earlier. And so she’d avoided them, wincing at the cheerful sound of their voices on her answering machine, dreading the moment she’d have to tell them.

  Saying it out loud, she knew, would make it real.

  The idea of ending her marriage, discarding what had been her life for well over a third of her nearly forty years, was something she wanted to keep inside a little longer. Until she went public, she could still turn back. Change her mind. Tell Roger she had simply been angry, neatly putting everything back the way it had been before.

  Then, suddenly, she found she could no longer put it off. She’d told Julie first, suspecting that Claire would be miffed but feeling it safer to try it out first on her softer, less judgmental friend.

  Julie Cavanaugh, with her cascades of long, wavy red hair, pale skin, and soulful green eyes, looked as if she’d just stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Her manner complemented her waiflike appearance. Her voice was soft and breathy, her movements graceful. She had a reassuring way of focusing on people as she elicited every detail of their problems, listening intently, sighing with indignation, then spooning out solid, commonsense advice.

  People who didn’t know her well were surprised at the competence with which she performed the duties of her rigorous job as a massage therapist. Giving expert massages was only the beginning. Her devoted clientele contended that she not only worked the knots out of their muscles, but out of their minds as well. That had certainly been Laura’s conclusion three years ago, when too much time hunching over a word processor had brought her to Julie’s massage table.

  “Laura, where have you been?” Julie’s voice had been filled with concern the day before when she discovered who was on the phone. “Didn’t you get the message I left yesterday?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Oh, that’s right. Weren’t you signing autographs at a new bookstore?”

  ‘The signing’s tomorrow night. Julie, listen to me.” Laura took a deep breath. “I’m getting divorced.” She’d promptly burst into tears, her resolve about staying calm forgotten.

  “Oh, Laura! Are you all right? What do you need me to do? Have you told Evan? How’s Roger taking it?” Julie paused to catch her breath. “You must be a bundle of nerves. Would you like me to come over and walk on your back?”

  Telling Claire had been more difficult. On the one hand, Laura mused, hesitating before dialing, Claire was bound to be better at empathizing, since she herself belonged to the sisterhood of divorced women. On the other hand, while Claire Nielsen meant well, her sledgehammer style was sometimes hard to take.

  “Well, it’s about time!” she’d exclaimed over the phone in response to Laura’s announcement. “I never could figure out what you were waiting for.”

  Despite Laura’s impulse to hold the phone away from her ear, she knew Claire was right. This bit of news was long overdue. For years Claire had been hearing about Laura’s unhappiness. She’d provided a well-padded shoulder for her to cry on, as well as a steady stream of no-nonsense advice.

  The two of them had been friends since college. During their senior year, Claire dropped out right after second-semester midterms. While Laura was scrawling an essay on the three most notable characteristics of Byzantine architecture, Claire was eloping with a student from the business school.

  From the start she worked alongside her new husband, channeling the energy that was a by-product of her type A personality into making his computer consulting business a success. She was the unofficial “silent partner.” The firm had exploded like a sky full of fireworks in the techno-explosion of the 1970s and early eighties. Yet during their entire marriage, she required nothing more than an occasional pat on the head and a “Thanks, honey.”

  When, after six years, Claire discovered that her husband’s frequent dinners out weren’t always spent entertaining clients, her response had been immediate. First she took off with the Mercedes, the Sony Trinitron, and the Rolodex containing his list of clients. Then she cut her hair to a length somewhere between Kevin Costner’s and Sinead O’Connor’s, bleaching the brown stubble a blinding shade of platinum blond. Along with her new look came a new identity. She switched back to her maiden name and became Claire Nielsen once again.

&nbs
p; As for the client list, that proved more useful than either the television or the car. Claire set up her own computer consulting firm and managed to lure away enough clients to become dangerous to her ex—or at least to his bottom line.

  Along with her success as a solo act came a harder edge. Even so, Laura knew her well enough to see through her defenses. Underneath her crisp facade, Claire was a loyal, concerned friend. She was also protective, anxious to spare the people she cared about some of the despair she’d experienced.

  Laura was tense as she sat with her napkin neatly spread across her lap, wailing for her friends. Telling them her news on the phone had been difficult enough. Confronting them face-to-face, bearing both their pity and the anger they were bound to feel on her behalf, was going to be even harder. Her heartbeat quickened as Julie and Claire burst into the restaurant, zeroed in on her, and made a beeline for her table.

  “There she is,” Claire cried, zigzagging through the café, arms outstretched.

  “We’re here, Laura,” cooed Julie, a few paces behind.

  For the occasion, Claire had decked herself out in black. On the surface, anyway; underneath the dark, loose-fitting jacket was a swirl of purples and blues. Beneath her mid-thigh hemline were long, purple legs and a pair of spike heels precisely the same shade as the stockings. Blue enameled earrings contrasted sharply with her white-blond crew cut.

  Every element of Claire’s outfit was matched, coordinated, or otherwise carefully thought out; Julie, on the other hand, looked as if she’d gotten dressed in the dark. With her long, flowered rayon skirt, a throwback to the Age of Aquarius, she wore a denim jacket, a man’s undershirt, and four different strands of beads. Her wild red hair cascaded around her like an aura. Still, on Julie, it somehow all worked.

  “That beast!” cried Claire, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. “I want you to tell us every detail. Every single, solitary detail of what that—that cretin did to you.”

  “Hello, Claire. Hi, Julie.” Blinking, Laura put down her menu.