by Elise Sax
“If it is, it’s the only relaxing thing in this crazy-ass town. July fourth wedding. What the hell kind of thing is that?”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. My first match was getting married in three days, and I was supposed to be the best man. Spencer didn’t want to go because the bride, who was Ruth’s grandniece, was a danger-prone Daphne, and he was sure that the combination of me, her, and fireworks was just asking to get blown up or at least burned alive.
“Fred says it’s patriotic,” I told Ruth.
“A patriotic wedding. What is this? The Reagan administration? Is Nancy going to be at this patriotic wedding?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Now you’ve put me in a good mood.”
“Sheesh, Ruth. That was harsh. Don’t you worry about karma?”
“No. I’m pretty sure karma is dead, too.”
I followed her into Tea Time. She flipped the lights on and walked behind the bar to make me a latte. The shop was empty except for Ruth and me, and there was a pile of wedding decorations in the corner.
“You’re up to your neck in wedding planning, I see,” I said.
“No more than you, I bet. You’re down to the wire. I bet you’re busy with wedding stuff all day and night.”
“Oh, sure. Of course,” I said and wiped at an invisible spot on the counter. Actually, I hadn’t done much of anything for my wedding. My grandmother and the entire town had taken control of it, and I figured ignorance was bliss.
“I heard that you’re going to be dropped out of a helicopter onto a mountain. I heard that lions were involved. I also heard something about trained bees.” She finished making the latte and plopped the cup on the bar in front of me. “I’m telling you right now, girl, I’m not coming to your wedding if any of those things are true.”
I took a sip of the latte. Yum. Ruth made the best coffee in town, and it hit the spot. “You were invited? How did that happen?”
“Very funny. The whole town was invited. You’re lucky I’m coming. I’ve got standing in this town, you know.”
I let her stew in her own juices for a moment while I drank my coffee. She was right. I was lucky she was coming because at least I knew her. My wedding was going to be a circus spectacle with me the main act in the center ring. I wasn’t particularly fond of being the center of attention, but at least I would have some friendly faces in the crowd. And Ruth would be there, too.
“Wait a second,” I said. “What do you mean, trained bees?”
I drank a second latte and waited around until eight o’clock, when I thought it was a reasonable time to visit Matilda Dare. Outside, the man dressed as a military dictator was yelling at passersby, and there was official-sounding trumpet music blaring out onto the street from his stores / country. I got in my car and made a U-turn.
It took me about fifteen minutes to find Matilda’s apartment complex. She lived near a strip mall, and her neighborhood had a very different vibe than the historic district. The apartment complex was nice, not one of the newer glass buildings, but stucco, five stories high, shaped in a square with a courtyard in the middle. Matilda lived with her husband Rockwell on the top floor. My grandmother told me to visit her without calling first. That’s why she didn’t know that I was coming.
She opened her door a few seconds after I rang the doorbell and greeted me with a wide smile. Matilda was about my height and weight. She had long brown hair with no sign of frizz, which filled me with envy. Her eyes matched the brown of her hair, and she was very pretty, despite a fine layer of flour all over her.
“Are you with the fire department?” she asked. “Nothing’s on fire this time.”
“I’m not with the fire department. I’m…”
“Oh, I have to stop Ina before she gets ahead of me. Come on in.”
I followed her inside. The apartment was hotter than hell. There was no air conditioning in the apartment, but all the windows were open and there must’ve been ten fans going on full blast. They sucked compared to air conditioning. They moved the hot air around but nothing else. It was like a sauna, and I had no idea how Matilda could think of cooking in this kind of weather. I started sweating right away and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
Matilda turned off the Barefoot Contessa video on her computer. Ina Garten was paused in the making of beautiful fresh pasta, and I noticed she didn’t have any flour on her. How could she? All of the flour in the world was on Matilda.
“My husband loves pasta, but it’s harder to make than I thought,” she explained and looked forlornly at her galley kitchen, which was part of one big room that included the living room and the dining room.
The kitchen itself looked like it had been in a war and lost. There was flour everywhere. And what I thought was a pasta machine looked like it was smoking. It could have been a pasta machine or some other kind of gadget. I didn’t know. I had never tried to make pasta. I had never wanted to try to make pasta. Why do people try to make pasta? Didn’t Dominos deliver? In any case, some gizmo gadget in Matilda’s kitchen was smoking. There was a fifty percent chance that she really did need the fire department. I gnawed at the inside of my cheek, wondering if I should call 911 for a pasta emergency.
Then, I wondered if the pasta emergency was what Grandma had been worried about. I wasn’t getting a sense that she was in danger, except maybe from fire. She didn’t seem unhappy about her domestic life. There was no sign of bruises on her. She looked pretty healthy, even though she was probably ten pounds lighter than I was.
Actually, come to think of it, ten pounds lighter than I was, was the perfect weight to be. Yikes. I didn’t want to focus on the fact that she was ten pounds lighter than I was because then I would have to focus on the fact that I was ten pounds heavier than she was. It wasn’t a good thing to focus on when I was about to be stuffed into my great-grandmother’s wedding dress and paraded around in front of thousands of people.
I clutched at my chest and tried to catch my breath. Would they point and laugh at the woman who was ten pounds overweight? What if I didn’t fit into the dress? What if the dress exploded from pressure while I walked down the aisle? My heart raced, and my face was getting hot. I was in full bridal freakout mode.
“You have any tequila?” I asked, even though it wasn’t even nine in the morning. I shook my head, trying to clear the anxiety away. “Sorry. Sorry. That just slipped out. I’m fine.”
“You want to sit down?” she asked, concerned. “I never get any visitors. I mean, except for Fanta from across the courtyard.”
“Fanta?” She pointed, and I looked through the windows across the courtyard. She had a great vantage point of her neighbors’ apartments. “Did you say Fanta?”
Matilda nodded. “Funny name, but she’s been very nice to me since I moved here. It’s hard to make friends in a new town.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had no shortage of new friends since I had moved to Cannes. The entire town had infiltrated my life. I was overrun with new friends. I had so many new friends that I was worried that I was going to be dropped out of a helicopter and trained bees were going to attack me during my wedding.
Matilda sat next to me on the couch. “So, you’re not with the fire department? I get a lot of interaction with the fire department.”
“Me too, but not as much as I do with the police department. I’m Zelda Burger’s granddaughter. I work in her matchmaking business.” It was a wimpy introduction. I did more than work in her matchmaking business. I was a matchmaker. I was Grandma’s partner, at least she said I was. “Actually, I’m a matchmaker. And I’m just doing a routine follow-up to see how you’re doing.”
It was a half lie. I was trying to find out how she was doing, but Grandma and I never did follow-up visits. If my grandmother matched them, we knew they would be fine. At least, as fine as a committed relationship could be in the modern age.
Matilda smiled wide. She was very pretty,
but she was sort of hunched over on herself, like she had little or no self-confidence. I could relate. I was well below average in the self-confidence department, too, but not as much as Matilda.
“Nice to meet you, Gladie,” she said, shyly. “I’m so glad you came by.” Then, she slapped her cheeks, Home Alone style and hopped up from the couch. “Oh my God. I need to check the oven.”
She ran into the kitchen and I ran after her, expecting to find a blaze. But the kitchen looked the same, and the pasta machine had stopped smoking. Matilda nervously adjusted the knobs on the stove and the oven. “I have to do this periodically because I keep forgetting and leaving the oven on. I don’t know why I do it. Sometimes, I don’t even remember that I ever turned the oven on. I mean, why would I turn the oven on when I’m not cooking anything? You won’t tell Rockwell, will you?”
“Your husband? Of course not.” Normally, this sort of confession would be a red flag. I mean, the fact that she wanted to hide something from her husband would be a red flag, not that she forgot that she turned the oven on. My grandmother regularly forgot that she turned on the sprinklers, and once I left the oven on for three days. Totally normal.
Anyway, the fact that she wanted to hide something from her husband could be a red flag for other matchmakers, but I hid pretty much everything from Spencer, so I decided to take her hiding stuff as being totally normal, too. Yup, everything looked very normal, as far as I was concerned.
“You want some chocolate milk and cookies?” she offered. “Don’t worry. I didn’t make them. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
We sat down in her living room and ate Nutter Butters and drank chocolate milk. Matilda regaled me with the tale of her whirlwind romance with Rockwell, about how it was love at first sight, at least it was for him and how he swept her off her feet. She thanked me a million times for the match, even though I had nothing to do with it and asked me to thank my grandmother, too. I liked her and even felt that she could be related to me, but in a good way. In other words, she was a lot like me.
As she spoke, her attention kept drifting toward the windows overlooking the courtyard and the other apartments. Finally, she said, “Can you keep another secret?” I nodded. Truth was, I was lousy at keeping secrets, but I wasn’t going to let that little bit of truth stop me from hearing whatever secret she had to tell. I guessed I was a lot like my grandmother. I was nosy as hell, and I would do anything for a bit of juicy gossip or the occasional secret.
Matilda opened a chest, and pulled out a couple of Afghan quilts. Underneath, she had hidden a pair of binoculars. She put them to her face and peered out the window.
“We have the only tinted windows in the apartment complex,” she explained. “No one can see through to our apartment, but I can see straight through to everyone else’s apartment.”
I watched as Matilda spied on her neighbors. Her entire posture changed. She went from a woman with little or no self-confidence to someone totally in charge. Matilda was a snoop. Matilda was nosy. I would have judged her, if I hadn’t wanted to spy on her neighbors, too.
“I’m not looking for naked people or people getting it on,” she explained. “I’m not a pervert. But you learn so much about people this way.” She put the binoculars down by her chest and looked at me. “I try to better myself all the time. Making homemade pasta, becoming a really good cook. It’s very important when you’re married to try to be the best wife and woman you can be. I’ve tried knitting, cooking, and the art of organization, all in attempt to better myself.”
“Impressive,” I noted. I’d given up on trying to be a better me. I was relieved if I could just maintain the status quo. But faced with Matilda’s determination to be a good woman and better wife, I wondered if I should have done more to prepare myself to be married to Spencer. Maybe I should’ve learned to knit, too. “So, you can knit and cook and organize? I should learn that, too.”
Matilda looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I wouldn’t say I actually know how to cook or knit or organize, but I’m trying. There’s a problem with my cooking and the fire department. And the organizational thing took a nasty turn. I don’t think I should talk about it.” She put the binoculars back up to her face and kept spying. “But I learned so much this way. You know, to see how married people are supposed to act. Adults. It’s not really spying. I mean, would you call Jane Goodall a spy?”
I had no idea who Jane Goodall was. “Of course not,” I said. “Jane isn’t a spy.”
Some people would’ve thought Matilda was crazy. But I was just crazy enough to think she sounded like a genius. My grandmother seemed to know people inside out without ever seeing them. I was bombarded with people—alive and dead—and had to figure them out after the fact. But this was understanding people by studying them in the wild without them knowing they were being studied. It was truly genius. It could answer so many questions, like how many times do people really brush their teeth.
“What have you learned?” I asked with a little too much excitement in my voice.
Matilda took another pair of binoculars out of the chest and handed them to me. “Look at the apartment across from us two doors to the left.” I followed her instructions. There was a woman eating a huge bowl of green beans. “She only eats green beans,” Matilda explained. “I think she eats like two pounds a day. And boy does it work. She’s already lost at least three sizes in two months. But she does spend a lot of time in the bathroom.”
The green bean diet. It was one of the few diets that Bird the hairdresser hadn’t suggested to me. I didn’t know if I wanted to eat two pounds of green beans, though. Sounded like kind of a rough way to get thin.
“You should be here around noon. That’s when the guy catty-corner from us does his laundry and folds his clothes. He makes Marie Kondo look like chopped liver.”
I practically drooled. I wasn’t much of a clothes folder. Spencer was meticulous about his clothes, but I was strictly a Walley’s box store clothes shopper, and those clothes did fine, shoved into a drawer. But now I was marrying a metrosexual with a designer wardrobe, and we were moving into a custom-built house with a cedar-lined walk-in closet with at least one hundred drawers. I couldn’t shove his Armani dress shirts in willy-nilly.
I had to grow up and be the wife and grown up, befitting my new position as a fancypants homeowner with a cedar-lined walk-in closet. I had to become fancypants in a hurry!
I also need to learn how to fold fancypants.
That’s how I wound up spending most of the day in the stifling heat of Matilda Dare’s apartment. I was supposed to be spying on her, but I wound up spying on everyone except for her. We ordered a pizza, which was delivered fifteen minutes before noon, just enough time to put away two slices of pepperoni before I got an eyeful of the art of folding.
“This is good,” I breathed, soaking up the wisdom and knowledge that only comes from spying on unsuspecting neighbors. “Boy is Spencer going to be surprised when he opens his underwear drawer. Do you do this at night, too?”
“Yes, but I have to be careful not to let Rockwell see me. He would get the wrong impression and think that there’s something wrong with what I’m doing. He doesn’t understand about bettering myself because he’s already perfect. But it’s easy to get around him at night because he sleeps.”
“Don’t you sleep, too?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I haven’t slept in fifteen years.”
“Not at all?”
“Nope. I try, but I can’t get beyond closing my eyes. My body and brain won’t shut off.”
She was speaking a different language than I was. I slept all the time. If I could have gotten away with napping twice a day, I would have and then would have gone on to get my regular ten hours at night, too.
“Aren’t there pills you can take?” I asked.
“I’ve taken them all. Even horse tranquilizers. There’s a name for what I’ve got, but it has a lot of syllables.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
&n
bsp; “I haven’t slept for fifteen years. I’m tired down to my bones.”
Hours later, my phone rang, and I answered it. “I’m on my way to your place,” my friend Lucy told me on the phone. “Get ready because we’re going to paw-tay tonight.”
“We are?”
“It’s your bachelorette party. Don’t you remember?”
CHAPTER 4
Drinking and drugs, bubbeleh. You know what I’m talking about. A little goes a long way. The problem is that it’s hard to tell when you’ve passed a little and moved on to too much, oy vey, why did I do this to myself, who’s in my bed. There’s a lot in life that’s like drinking and drugs, where a little is fine, but more than a little is a disaster and probably a big attorney bill. Now, if the attorney is single and making a good living and he’s interested in you, then maybe once in a while it’s good to go above the little mark, but keep that little mark in mind, dolly, for all things: Love, life, matchmaking.
Lesson 87, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
When I arrived home, the world’s longest limousine was parked on the street in front of the house. As I stepped out of my car in the driveway, my friend Lucy stepped out of the limousine in a peach organza cocktail dress and gestured to the limo, like she was pointing out a new refrigerator on The Price is Right.
“Don’t you love it? It used to belong to a rapper. I don’t know which one. But it was one of the ones with a lot of gold chains, and he may have married a Kardashian. Who knows? All I know, is that he’s in jail, and his bad luck is our good luck because this bad boy is ours for the night. And I mean the whole night for our wild women bachelorette party.”
I had my doubts about the bachelorette party. First of all, the only “wild women” attending were Lucy, Bridget, and me, and since Bridget was breastfeeding, I didn’t think she would want to drink. Also, a couple months ago, we had given Lucy a bachelorette party, and it was pretty much a disaster. Still, I was up for riding around in the rapper’s limousine and drinking until I couldn’t see straight. It was the upside to the whole wedding celebration, as far as I could tell.
