The People We Hate at the Wedding

by Grant Ginder

  A gull squawks before diving headlong into the sea, and Henrique says, “Our little Eloise is getting married. How exciting. I was worried it wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Because she’s thirty-five?”

  “Elle n’est pas jeune, exactement.”

  “I think it’s good. It’s smart. Getting married too young can be a disaster.” She adds: “She learned from her mother’s mistakes, I guess.”

  Henrique stands up. “This was a bad idea.”

  Donna reaches up and takes hold of his wrist; she doesn’t want him to leave and is fearful that he might. “Oh, come on,” she says. “There’s no need to be dramatic.”

  “What is it that you want from me? To sit here and listen as you abuse me for something that happened thirty years ago?”

  She doesn’t answer, mostly because she knows he’s right, and she’s too ashamed to admit it out loud. Yes, that is what she wants: to chastise and blame Henrique for what’s befallen her over the past three decades. She wants to strap him down and recount, in excruciating detail, the history of her life in St. Charles with Bill; her nights watching House Hunters International with Janice; what it’s like to have your fifteen-year-old Volvo break down on the side of I-88. And as much as she wants to tell him about all that, she also wants to tell him about the slow, always-there ache of being alone; of losing one husband to circumstance and the other to death, and realizing that while she may not have had the best luck when it comes to love, bad luck is better than no luck at all.

  And then she wants to start all over again, to retell it all, and make damned certain he understands it.

  But again, she doesn’t say any of that. Instead she tugs on his wrist, coaxing him back to the rocks. Because, she figures, the only thing worse than Henrique not feeling guilty would be Henrique not being here at all.

  He sits down again, and she tightens her grip.

  “I’m sorry,” Donna says, eventually. “That was uncalled for.”

  “It’s fine. I understand.”

  Kenny picks up two rocks, turns them over in his hand like they’re poker chips, then tosses them into the sea.

  She feels her throat closing up, and she swallows hard. “I’m still…” she ventures, “I’m still happy to see you.”

  “Ouais. Moi aussi.” He buries his toes beneath a small pile of stones. Being so close to him now, she considers how suddenly fragile he appears. In the glint of the sun, and the wet suits, and her own insecurities, Henrique had seemed timeless—aging, but still somehow locked in that youthful state with which she’d fallen in love. But here, on the beach, there are bags, shadows, that darken his eyes. His lips are thin and chapped, and loose pockets of skin form divots in his neck. She wonders what would happen if she were to reach out and take his hand. She wonders if she’d be any more capable of saving him than she’s been at saving herself.

  Then he says: “What is it that you want, Donna?”

  She lies down flat and stares up at the cloudless sky, exhausted by the realization of a fantasy thirty years in the making. “Oh, I don’t know, Henrique. I don’t know.”

  He lies back as well, and props himself up on his elbow. He’s rolled the top of his wet suit down to his waist, and evaporated water has left swirls of salt across his chest.

  “What don’t you know about?” he asks her.

  “Some of it.” She throws her arm across her face, shielding her eyes from the sun. “No. All of it.”

  She feels him reach out and run his fingers through her hair. He takes a few strands and rolls them between his fingers. Gently, he pushes her arm away from her face and leans over to kiss her.

  “How about we take it slowly,” he says. “Slower than when we were kids.”

  Gulls continue squawking overhead. The sea laps against the shore, beating limestone blocks into hollow, forgiving arches. Henrique dips down to kiss Donna again.

  “Yeah,” she says. Licking her lips as he pulls away, she tastes salt and peppermint Chapstick. “Okay.”

  Eloise

  July 10

  There’s a problem with the tea lights, and Eloise decides it’s best to take care of it herself. Dreadful, but not wholly disastrous. In short: her wedding planner, an expat American named Katie whose capabilities Eloise now realizes were woefully oversold, bought the wrong ones. Instead of arriving this morning at Ollie’s parents’ estate with three thousand Richmond votive unscented white ten-hour-burning candles, she showed up with three thousand Richmond votive unscented crème ten-hour-burning candles. When Eloise pointed out the flaw, and mentioned how the crème might clash with the white furnishings and the white linen tablecloths and the white lilies and the white everything else she had fucking ordered, Katie merely shrugged; she suggested that the flames from the candles would likely distract the guests, and that chances were they’d never notice the difference in color.

  “I’m sure your other clients might not notice,” Eloise had said. “But I’m not hosting a wedding for the lowest common denominator.”

  Which is why she now finds herself here, parking Ollie’s father’s Range Rover in a small lot in front of a party supply shop off Hound Street in Sherborne—the town where Ollie spent fourteen romantic and idealized years as a public-school boy. The town where, if everything goes as planned, tomorrow she’ll become a romantic and idealized wife. Mr. Horwood had been nonchalant this morning when he tossed her the keys.

  “Need three thousand more tea lights?” he said. “Isn’t that always the case. Here. Take my car.”

  But that’s just his nature: a casualness that makes Eloise think either that he loves her or that he’s fucking with her. No matter if it’s the latter, though—she loves him. Loves his bushy gray mustache, his gin blossoms, his general ease—a lassitude that’s happily out of place in such a buttoned-up country. The Admiral. That’s what they all call him, at least. A throwback to when he served as an officer in the Royal Navy. He never actually rose to such a high rank, at least according to Ollie; to hear her fiancé tell it, his father never made it past captain before he retired from service to take up work as a private military contractor in Rwanda.

  “Why do you call him Admiral, then?” Eloise had asked him. This was on their second date.

  Ollie had shrugged and finished his pint. “He just likes the sound of it, I guess.”

  Eloise loved this—the reasoning struck her as nothing but solid.

  “And what was he doing in Rwanda?”

  Ollie smacked his lips and licked away a spot of foam. “Unclear. All I know is that when he came back it was at the request of the British government. Something about an arms deal.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twelve? No. Thirteen. I’d just started third form at Sherborne.”

  “Did your mom go with him?”

  Ollie laughed. “No, ma’am. She stayed back and looked after the house.”

  Of course she did, Eloise thinks now, locking up the Range Rover. Jane Ainsworth scarcely has the disposition to work in the front yard of Horwood Hall on a hot day; she’d hardly do well in sub-Saharan Africa. Her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s a small woman, a mousy five foot two, with shoulder-length gray hair and sensible, ignorable features. In dealing with Eloise she’s deferential, always asking Eloise for her opinion or permission. It’s a dynamic that initially disquieted Eloise—shouldn’t she be the one trying to win Jane’s approval?—and now mildly irritates her. Particularly with all these wedding preparations, more than anything else Jane has been in the way; she rises early in the morning to brew coffee for the household, then stands back, waiting for instructions as people maneuver themselves around her. Yes, granted, Eloise and Ollie are paying for most of the wedding expenses—they are, after all, thirty-five years old—but would it kill Jane to have an opinion? To put her neck out there and criticize the flowers, or the marquee, or one of Eloise’s other aesthetic choices?

  “Consider yourself lucky,” Flossie had said to her when she first complai
ned about Jane. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t have a dreadful mother-in-law.”

  “It’s like dealing with a corpse in a doily” had been Eloise’s response.

  She locks up the Range Rover and walks across the lot to the party supply store. Opening the door, she hears the faint tingle of a bell. She orients herself and tries to find the cashier. The shop is longer than it is wide: seven aisles of shelves stocked high with tchotchkes and knickknacks: themed cocktail napkins and Mylar balloons and plastic utensils that she imagines have been sitting there since Britain went to war over the Falklands. Wandering down the center aisle, Eloise picks up a miniature plastic model of Sherborne Abbey, the church where, tomorrow, she’s to be married. Accidentally she pushes a small button next to the abbey’s nave, and the whole thing lights up like it’s being napalmed. From some hidden dwarf speaker, the “Hallelujah Chorus” begins.

  “Jesus Christ,” Eloise says, startled, and puts the thing back.

  She continues on to the cashier’s desk, which has been left unattended, and rings a small silver bell. After counting to ten, she reaches down to ring the bell again, but just as she’s about to do so an impish woman in purple chiffon emerges from the shop’s back office.

  “Hullo there,” she says. Her eye shadow matches her dress, and her cheeks have been rouged to a lethal shade of pink. Eloise catches whiffs of Rochas Femme and Earl Grey tea. “How can I help you?”

  She readjusts her purse on her shoulder. “Hi, yeah, I called an hour ago about the candles.”

  “Of course.” The woman smiles. “The three thousand white votives.”

  “Yes, those.”

  “Just one moment.”

  She slips away into the back office, and Eloise breathes, relieved. When she called, the woman—Polly, Eloise thinks she said her name is—assured her that they had the candles, all of them, and that they’d be here waiting when she arrived. But past experience has taught her that those types of promises are less than certain. There’s truth in that tired old adage about doing things yourself—if planning a wedding has taught her one thing, it’s that. Take this candle mishap: If she could, she thinks, she’d make the goddamned votives with her own bare hands. She’d buy the wax, cut the mold, fire ’em up. She can’t, though—someone’s coming to do her hair in two hours—and so the whole thing’s become a tragedy of delegation. Blessed are the incompetent, she thinks. For they shall inherit the earth.

  Polly reemerges holding a single box.

  Eloise balks. “I said three thousand.”

  Polly laughs and sets the box on the counter. “The rest of them are round back, by our service entrance,” she says. “I thought it would be easier if you brought your car there so we might load them into the boot, instead of trucking them through the aisles.”

  “Right. Of course.” Eloise nods. Polly’s just trying to help.

  “Thought you might want to peek at one of the boxes, though. Just to make sure they’re the right ones.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  Polly’s fingers are stacked with rings—big, bulbous pieces topped with faux sapphires and emeralds—so opening the box’s cardboard lid is slow going. She gets it eventually, though, and when she does, and Eloise peers past the tissue paper inside, she worries she might vomit.

  “Those are crème,” she says.

  “Are they?” Polly looks on the side of the box, which is unmarked. “No, dear, I’m almost certain they’re white.”

  “Polly—”

  “It’s Patty. Patricia.”

  “Patty.” Eloise reaches into the box and plucks out a votive. With her other hand, she digs into her purse for an old receipt. “This is white,” she says, holding the paper up. Then, she holds the votive at eye level, so the old bird can see it clearly; so she can appreciate how loathsome and filthy and entirely un-white it looks. “These candles are fucking crème. In fact, those are the same fucking crème candles that we returned to you an hour ago.”

  Patty clears her throat and smooths her chiffon. “I really don’t see the need for that sort of language.”

  “I need you to tell me you see the difference.”

  Eloise leans across the counter, still holding the votive in one hand and the receipt in the other. She thrusts them forward, and Patty recoils.

  “Do you want them or not?”

  “Tell me you see a fucking difference.”

  “There’s a difference!” Patty screams, and Eloise backs off. Once Patty’s confident that she’s escaped harm, she sighs. “My word.”

  “I’ll take all three thousand,” Eloise says, putting the receipt—and the candle—in her purse. Crème candles are better than no candles, she decides, and at this point, the universe hasn’t given her much of a choice. “I’ll pull my car round back.”

  * * *

  When she arrives back at Horwood Hall, Jane is in the front garden, staring helplessly at her roses.

  “I was so hoping they’d bloom before the wedding,” she says, and Eloise slams the Range Rover’s door.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Jane.” Eloise keeps her sunglasses on.

  Jane sighs and turns her back to the budless bush. “Did you find your candles?”

  “More or less. Look, I need you to do me a favor.”

  The color fades from Jane’s face, and, panicked, she reaches down to pick up an errant leaf that has floated down from the wych elm that looms over the house’s driveway. “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.” Jane’s voice cracks. “Anything.”

  “I need you to distract Katie.”

  “The wedding planner?”

  “Yes. Her.” A car passes by and honks. Jane and Eloise both wave, and Eloise continues. “I need you to keep her occupied and in another room while I bring these candles inside and have them set up.”

  Jane folds the leaf in half. “I can’t imagine why you—”

  “Jane?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “This is very important to me.”

  And it is. Because what sort of authority would Eloise maintain if Katie were to see her setting up the very candles that not two hours ago Eloise asked her to return? She knows, though, that she can’t explain that to her mother-in-law. Rather, she has to say that it’s important and leave it at that. Any nuance that she tries to convey will be lost on Jane, who she suspects doesn’t understand the necessity of saving face.

  “Well, if it’s important to you…” She slips the leaf into the pocket of her gardening coat.

  “It is.”

  “I suppose I’ll see what I can do, then?”

  “Thank you.”

  Eloise watches Jane slink back inside, then sneaks around to the back side of the main house, where preparations for the rehearsal dinner are under way. On the lawn dividing the house from the family’s old stables, men in uniforms work to erect three bars and twenty-two high-top cocktail tables. Eloise walks up to the one closest to her and, noticing how uneven the table’s linen cloth is, straightens it. Beyond the stables is the estate’s abandoned barn, a gorgeous, half-dilapidated thing that, tomorrow night, will be transformed into the wedding’s marquee. Using it had been her idea. After an afternoon of touring Sherborne’s dingy pubs and stale event halls in search of a suitable reception location, she floated the idea of the barn to Ollie over negronis on his parents’ back patio.

  “It could be really gorgeous,” she’d said, watching the sunset throw shadows across the barn’s splintered roof.

  “It’s filled with hay. We’d have to have it swept out.” He added: “And there aren’t any lights in there. Someone would have to find a way to hang lights from the ceiling.”

  Now, looking past the cocktail tables toward the barn, she thinks: Should I check on the chandeliers?

  Her planning, though, is interrupted; Ollie sneaks up behind her, wraps his arms around her waist, and kisses her cheek.

  “Hiya,” he says.

  She s
miles and bats his hands away, just as he’s starting to work his fingers up her shirt.

  “Hiya.”

  “Looks beautiful.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and flexes her back. “It’s getting there. Did you check in with the caterers like I asked?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “Enough canapés to feed us until Christmas. Was Candlegate solved? You know you’ve got that poor American girl crying.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ollie grins. “I’m not. Mum’s making her some tea right now.”

  Eloise nods, satisfied with Jane’s distractive abilities. Then, remembering the larger issue of the votives, she sighs. “It wasn’t solved,” she says. “The goddamned store in Sherborne only had crème candles.”

  “Think we should call off the wedding?”

  “You think I’m being crazy.”

  “I think you’re being detail oriented.”

  “That’s a euphemism for crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy.” He brushes his hair away from his eyes and kisses her forehead. “Come on inside, though. We’ve got to leave for the church in an hour, and the Admiral’s made gin and tonics. A little fortification before we practice our waltz down the aisle.”

  She turns back toward the lawn, and the stables, and the barn. Two of the cocktail tables are off center, and the last bar still needs to be constructed. Also: she hasn’t seen a single lily yet.

  “Sounds lovely,” she says.

  “Hey, you.” Ollie pokes her shoulder. “You okay with all of this?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You can tell me if you’re not, you know. I’m liable to go nuts and perch on top of the abbey with a machine gun, but you can tell me.”

  “I’m more than okay with it. I’m thrilled.” This time, she brushes his hair out of his face. “You need a haircut. Go start in on the gin. I’ll be there in a second.”

  He trots back inside, and she wanders out onto the lawn. Behind her, the limestone of the house bleeds red against the late afternoon light. Bending over, she picks up a twig and begins to tear away the bark—anything, she figures, to keep her hands occupied. The ground’s still wet—she can feel her heels sinking into it when she stands still—and she worries about whether that will be a problem before she forces herself to stop. She can’t keep doing this. She can’t keep going over every possible thing that could go wrong.