School of Fortune

by Amanda Brown

  “I hope tonight will be a total triumph for you.”

  “Thank you for humoring me, darling. I’ve had a lot of fun putting this all together.”

  Pippa’s stomach twisted into another painful knot as she left the elevator. A split of Cristal and a dozen chocolate truffles, consumed in the bath, helped somewhat. Pippa semidozed as Brent did her hair and a cosmetician applied her makeup. Margarita arrived with the wedding gown, a stunning confection of seed pearls and silk organza. Its strapless, beaded bodice limned Pippa’s torso like fondant on a wedding cake then, a few inches below her waist, blossomed into a gossamer waterfall of silk organza. Girls dreamed of such dresses when they gazed into the mirror and imagined themselves walking down the aisle; Pippa’s dream was now coming true.

  “Why you do not smile, Pippina?” Margarita asked, drenching her with Thayne perfume. “You are not happy?”

  “Just nervous. I think I strained my back pulling the train yesterday.”

  “Santa Marla! Tomorrow you relax the back. With Lance,” Margarita winked.

  Anson knocked and entered. His eyes teared up at the sight of his granddaughter in her gown. “You look stunning, Pippa.”

  “Thanks, Grampa. I’m so glad this is almost over.”

  He patted her hand. “So are we all, pumpkin.”

  Thayne, Robert, and two photographers awaited them in a white limousine. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen two more beautiful women,” Anson said.

  Thayne blew him a kiss. “Thank you. I do feel special today.” Besides the family diamonds, she wore a lilac chiffon gown with a belt of hammered gold. The brim of her lilac hat created a three-foot no-fly zone around her head. “Pippa, I don’t care if the roof comes tumbling down, just keep walking forward. When Lance takes your hand, everything will fall into place. The fate of the Walkers rests in your hands.”

  “That’s a bit over the top, luvvie,” her husband remonstrated.

  “Shut up, Robert! I’m talking about your grandchildren, not the eighteenth hole.”

  The bridesmaids were already at Meyerson Center, excitedly applying their final ten layers of mascara. Everyone’s half up, half down hair looked stupendous with the Henderson barrettes and the Walker earrings. Thanks to Lipo in a Box, their gowns flowed like rivers of aqua cream over their hips. The new bridesmaid, Carola, had absorbed three years’ worth of gossip in the thirty minutes she had been with the bridal coterie. She was the only one not too hungover to drink now.

  Ginny, regal in her second wig, swaggered over. “Where’s something old?”

  Pippa pointed to her diamond choker. “My grandmother’s.” “Something new?” “My bra.”

  “Something borrowed?”

  Pippa displayed an ankle bracelet belonging to Thayne. “Something blue?”

  “The tattoo on my butt. Would you like to see it?” “No thanks.” Ginny wrapped Pippa in a ferocious hug. “You’re ready to rock.”

  Arabella, the flower girl, arrived in an embroidered Victorian gown. The bridesmaids all screamed when Pippa wriggled into her train: fantastic! As the minutes ticked toward five, the excitement became almost unbearable. Florists distributed bouquets of gardenias and yellow roses. Seamstresses tacked emergency darts. Carola doused ten necks with Thayne perfume. Out in the hall, brass quintets began to play ceremonial introductions.

  Cedric rapped on the door. “Everyone in the lobby in two minutes.”

  His words precipitated a final death cloud of hairspray. Then the door swung open. The girls—even little Arabella—shrieked in horror as Lance walked in. He looked to die for in a black and gray morning suit. “You can’t be here! It’s bad luck on your wedding day! Get out!”

  His eyes found the bride-to-be. “I must speak with you, Pippa. Alone.”

  Seven

  Bridesmaids, photographers, florists, and seamstresses fled the dressing room as if Lance were radioactive. When they had all gone, he quietly locked the door. He and Pippa looked across the room at each other for a long moment, each taking in the other’s sheer beauty. “You look ravishing,” Lance finally said. His voice sounded sad.

  Pippa led him to the sofa. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I’ve known for days.”

  He sat without blinking for an eternity. When he finally spoke, Lance seemed his old self again. “Pippa, never doubt that I love you totally. To be your husband would make me the happiest man alive. I’ve hoped and prayed that we could have a normal life together. But mother nature has conspired against me.”

  “Are you ill?” she cried. Cancer? Brain tumor? “I’ll take care of you. You’ll get better.”

  Lance shook his head. “I’m gay. Always have been, always will be.”

  Pippa hardly breathed as the calamitous news sank in. Finally she whispered, “I think I need a drink.”

  He produced a flask from his coat. “Here.”

  They nearly emptied it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Pippa whimpered, near tears.

  “I thought I could change. I feel more attracted to you than to any woman I’ve ever met.”

  Tears stung her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? “All this time I thought you were obeying the Henderson code of honor.”

  “I’m deeply sorry, Pippa. I’ve been in therapy. Confession. Taken hormone shots. I even rented a whore for a week in Peru.” He laughed to himself. “She may as well have been a teddy bear.”

  That was fairly annoying. “How could you have let this charade go on so long?”

  “I didn’t have the courage to stop it once things got up to warp speed. I’ve been feeling so guilty and craven and worthless. After that speech last night I felt like killing myself.”

  All things considered, that wouldn’t have been a bad resolution to the problem. “Does Rosimund know?”

  “She suspects. That’s why she’s been pushing the wedding harder than Thayne.” Lance covered his face with his hands. “Thank you, mommy dearest.”

  “I’ll be the laughingstock of Dallas forever.” Pippa swallowed the last of the bourbon then threw the flask at a mirror. Lance winced as it shattered. “You stupid ass!”

  “We could go through with the wedding and divorce after a year. Woody and I will take care of you financially for life.”

  “Woody?” Pippa cackled. “You’re dumping me for that fat slob?”

  “Please, please don’t take it personally. And he’s not a fat slob.” Lance swallowed with difficulty. “What do you think? One year, then we call it quits?”

  After a moment’s reflection Pippa shook her head. “I don’t think so.” Cedric pounded on the door. “What’s going on in there? Everybody’s waiting!”

  “Tell them to play Beethoven’s Ninth,” Lance shouted. “We’re not ready.”

  After a stream of expletives, Cedric called, “Three minutes. Then I’m coming in with a shotgun.”

  Lance and Pippa listened to his footsteps recede down the hallway. “We could run away,” she said. “Make a break for the limousine and disappear to Tahiti.”

  “Our mothers would never recover. I’d never play football again.”

  Lance began to sob. “God, what have I done? I’ve let everyone down so hideously.”

  No kidding. “We have to make the best of it. We’ll just walk in there and tell them the wedding’s off.”

  “What would be the reason?” Lance wailed.

  “It will come to me.” Pippa’s mind locked into gear. “We can donate the flowers to the children’s hospital. Thayne can still throw a Derailed Wedding party. People don’t need a bride and groom to drink themselves under the table.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to just go through with it?” Lance repeated tearfully. He began to tremble. “Rosimund will never forgive me if word gets out.”

  “If I can take it, she can,” Pippa snapped. “Look, I’ll say it’s all my fault. She’ll believe that.” “But it’s not your fault.” “It’s half my fault. I should have known.”

  Lance fell to his knees and p
ut his head in Pippa’s overflowing organza lap. “I don’t deserve you. I never have. I love you so much.”

  As she forlornly patted his head, Cedric returned with a small army. “At the count of ten, we’re breaking down the door,” he shouted. “Ten! Nine! Eight!”

  Pippa sprang into action. “Get up, Lance.” She caught a glimpse of hot-pink underwear as he hastily tucked his shirt back into his pants. “We’re coming, Cedric.”

  “Seven! Six! Five!”

  As her fiance stood before her in all his male glory, Pippa’s heart broke. What a man never to have had! “I love you forever,” he whispered.

  “And I you. Could you unhook this damn train?” Pippa stifled a tear as he unsnapped the titanium harness: that was the closest Lance would ever come to undressing her.

  “Four! Three! Two!”

  She swung open the door. “Hold your fire.”

  “Do you realize what a mess you’ve made?” Cedric screeched, dragging them outside. “The organist has been improvising for the last ten minutes. The new bridesmaid started in without waiting and the rest of those f-ing cows followed. Now everyone’s onstage staring at the chandeliers.”

  Pippa’s father, pacing the foyer, was most relieved to see her. He held out his arm. “Ready to go, darling?”

  “Daddy, go sit with Mama. Lance and I have decided to walk up the aisle together.”

  “That’s a switch. When do I recite your mother’s eight names?”

  “You don’t.” Cedric shoved a potted geranium into Robert’s hand. “Pretend you’re a bridesmaid.” He pushed Robert into the packed auditorium.

  A murmur ran through the crowd as Robert slowly proceeded up the aisle. His wide smile allayed fears that anything could be wrong. “Where’s Pippa?” Thayne hissed as he sat beside her. “My God, you’re hopeless! Go back and fetch her.”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Where’s Lance?” Today Rosimund was dressed in a deep red gown that clashed badly with her hair and fatally with Thayne’s lilac outfit.

  “Right behind me, ladies,” Robert responded.

  Receiving a signal from Cedric at the back of the auditorium, maestro launched the orchestra into Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. Hand in hand, Lance and Pippa came down the aisle.

  “Where’s her train?” Thayne glared across the stage extension. “Have you stolen Pippa’s train?”

  “I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.” Rosimund was glad to see Lance smiling for the first time in days. She reached for her lace handkerchief. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  “Yes, darling. Perfect,” her husband replied.

  The bridal couple walked quickly up the ramp. The Reverend Alcott, majestic in a white cassock emblazoned with gold, smiled as if the gates of heaven had just opened. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered—”

  Lance turned around. “Could you hold off for a second?”

  Thayne’s gasp could be heard in the last row. “Get up there, Robert,” she said, pushing her husband out of their pew. “Tell them who gives the bride away. And don’t forget to say Tuttle!”

  Confused by the nonscripted material, the conductor motioned the chorus to rise. Two hundred voices began singing “How Lovely Are

  Thy Dwellings” from the Brahms Requiem while Lance conferred with the Reverend Alcott. Thayne and Rosimund nearly had heart attacks when the minister closed his Bible, walked to the far end of the stage, and stared serenely at the chandelier along with all the bridesmaids.

  Thayne craned her neck at the ceiling. “What are they looking at?”

  “What next, Thayne?” Rosimund asked as the music swelled. “A monkey and an organ grinder?”

  “Its all right, Mother,” Lance said. “Could you come up here with Dad?”

  “You come up, too,” Pippa told her parents. She would never be able to make a speech with Thayne glaring at her from the first row.

  Brahms finally ended. The audience of five hundred waited for something to happen. It was painful to view Rosimund’s and Thayne’s dresses side by side; each brought out the worst shades in the other. Finally Pippa took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  “Thank you for coming here today. Lance and I are so happy to see you. Marriage is such an exciting adventure, like climbing Mount Everest. Before you begin that climb, you have to be sure you’ve got the proper equipment. Oxygen. Sherpas. You’ve got to avoid blizzards. But the view from the top is worth it all.” She paused, wondering where to go from here. The room was beginning to tilt. When her grandfather blew an encouraging kiss from the front pew, Pippa got an idea.

  “Life is full of surprises and we’re all engaged in a long process of self-discovery. Sometimes people don’t even fall in love until ten years after they’re married, on a nice warm summer afternoon, when one of them has been napping in a hammock.”

  She noticed many sidelong glances in the auditorium, as if people were having difficulty following her train of thought. Strange, her speech made perfect sense to her. “I think love means acceptance of the good, the bad, and the ugly. There’s not much of the latter with Lance, of course.” Everyone laughed. “When he asked me to marry him, it was one of the happiest days of my life.” Pippa frowned, remembering the other truly, outstandingly happy day of her life, that being the afternoon Andre first took her to bed and ravished her. That man knew a woman’s body better than a woman did. His hands were like pools of warm light. His mouth—

  Anson Walker gently cleared his throat. Pippa’s thoughts snapped back to the task at hand. “Lance and I have had a wonderful six months watching our mothers plan for today. In a way, that was our gift to you.” The auditorium filled with applause as Rosimund and Thayne bowed stiffly.

  “Please wrap this up, Pippa,” her mother muttered under her breath.

  “Lance and I believe love must be a little blind if it is to survive. That doesn’t mean it should be deaf and dumb. We will love each other until our dying day. What do we need a little piece of paper for? Who makes the laws anyway, our hearts or a bunch of politicians in Austin?”

  Pippa’s heart began racing as Rosimund slowly raised her wrist and studied the face of her diamond watch. “How much longer will you be expatiating, dear?”

  The room began to spin. Pippa looked desperately at Lance and was flustered to see him standing with his eyes shut. He seemed to be mumbling to himself. “To make a long story short, Lance and I will not be exchanging wedding vows today. It wouldn’t be right. We’re very fond of each other, of course. It’s just that—there’s someone else!”

  After a second of deathly silence, pandemonium erupted. Pippa felt herself float to the ceiling as events roiled around her. She was dimly aware of Rosimund gathering up Arabella and Lyman and leading a platoon of outraged Hendersons from the auditorium as Lance stumbled after them, begging for mercy. Rosimund paused only once, to whap her son’s face with her red beaded purse. “Don’t you dare ask for mercy! You’re the first cuckold in Henderson history!”

  Things weren’t going much better in the Walker camp. Thayne had collapsed to the floor in a furze of lilac. The only doctor present was Seth Shapiro, the society dermatologist who Botoxed most of Dallas. He was having difficulty making his way to the stage against the flood of exiting Hendersons. Cedric tried to revive Thayne with a stream of bourbon from his flask, but succeeded only in ruining her makeup. He instructed the orchestra to begin Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. When this had no calming effect on the riot, he shouted at the bell choir to begin “O Happy, Happy Day,” the twenty-second kissing interlude by John Williams. That did nothing, either, so Cedric told both brass quintets to blow their brains out.

  Realizing there would be no celebration at Fleur-de-Lis, no catching of the bridal bouquet, and little hope of parlaying Dallas’s wedding of the century into nine more, every bridesmaid save Ginny crumpled to the floor in tears. Woody also dropped to his knees, sobbing more loudly than any of them. Pippa stood alone and forgotten in the eye of the
hurricane. She looked up to see Anson gazing at her with a mixture of surprise and bemusement. “I’m sorry, Grampa,” she heard herself call. She saw him smile as if he understood. A second later he clutched both hands to his chest and pitched forward.

  “No!” Pippa screamed. Then everything went black.

  Eight

  When Pippa came to, she was lying on a backstage couch at Meyerson Symphony Center. Ginny was daubing her forehead with a cool, damp cloth. A cacophony of brass, bells, tympani, and organ muddled the air. Far-off people were shouting. Pippa looked down at the big white dress she was wearing. “What happened?” “You blew the wedding.”

  It all came rushing back to her. “What a nightmare.” “Seriously.” Ginny winged her wig into the shadows. “Would you like to come to Costa Rica with me?” “Now?”

  “I suggest leaving Dallas for a few days. You really stepped in it.”

  Pippa recalled Thayne sinking to the floor. “Is my mother okay?”

  “She’s indestructible. The paramedics took her away. Along with your grandfather.” Ginny didn’t elaborate on that.

  Pippa’s head swam. “Where’s Lance?” she wailed.

  “Last I saw, he was sniveling down the aisle after his mother. Count your blessings, girl. You did the right thing. There’s only one woman in his life, and it ain’t you. Sorry.”

  “Rosimund left?”

  “The Hendersons all marched out. The Walkers rushed the stage.

  The bridesmaids took off with the groomsmen. I carted you back here. Hey! Scram!” Ginny shouted at one of the photographers before slinging an enormous duffel bag over her shoulder. “Think you can stand up? I’ve got a cab waiting.” She had booked it weeks ago to take her to the airport. “You’ve got to disappear.” “Dressed like this?”

  Ginny took her firmly by the arm. “Now.”

  They retrieved Pippa’s cell phone from the deserted dressing room. Before hustling Pippa into the cab, Ginny disposed of two paparazzi outside the artists’ entrance by tossing their cameras into oncoming traffic. “Drive until I tell you to stop,” she told the cabbie. He didn’t understand much English so she twirled a finger in the air. “Drive! Circles!”