Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

  “We might have had one, if Julie had kept talking,” I told him. “In the future, remember we only use words like ‘stunning’ for the bride in the bride’s earshot.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. “She seemed like she needed some confidence.”

  “She’s a desperate attention seeker who had no qualms about hijacking her so-called best friend’s wedding,” I replied. “The worst thing you can do is give someone like that attention.”

  “And a mint is attention?”

  “If you don’t offer them to the bride first.”

  “Do you realize you sound like a crazy person?”

  Suddenly William appeared behind us, slightly out of breath from taking the outside route around the church. “Jesus, that maid of honor is a piece of work. Did you see those soap opera tears? I half expected her to swan into a faint and stop the whole ceremony.”

  I smiled. “What did you say to her?”

  “I told her to shape up, remember who she was there for, and do her job.” He shook his head, annoyed. “We’re going to have to watch her at the reception. Five bucks says she inflicts bodily harm diving for the bouquet.”

  “I bet she’s dying to get married,” I mused as, up front, Charlotte and her groom took each other’s hands. I couldn’t see Julie at all.

  “And nobody will have her because she’s so obnoxious,” William said. “Always a bridesmaid, until nobody even asks you to do that anymore.”

  I was so used to this kind of exchange, having it was like breathing. So I didn’t notice until we paused that Ambrose was watching us, his expression aghast. “You guys are horrible,” he said.

  “Did I try to upstage a wedding just now?” I asked.

  “Was I the one yelling loudly about a mint just seconds before my best friend walked down the aisle?” William said.

  Ambrose just looked at us. I said, “He’s got super hearing, too.”

  William pulled out his phone, glancing at the screen. “Your mom’s reporting a loud talker. I’ll be back.”

  I stepped back, giving him room to slip around us and down the side aisle to a row close to the front, where he slid in on the end. A beat. Then a very pointed expression to a woman in a flowered dress a few people down from him: I got quiet and I wasn’t even saying anything.

  “It’s so weird to me,” Ambrose said, as the vows began, “how you can be so cynical in this job. Aren’t weddings all about hope?”

  “Marriages are about hope,” I said. “Weddings are pure logistics.”

  “Is he married?” he asked, nodding at William, who was now studying the younger flower girl as she fidgeted, tugging at the zipper of her dress.

  “Nope,” I said. “He’s never even gotten close. The last boyfriend was the dad of one of my friends, and that was all the way back in middle school.”

  I had a flash of Mr. Bobkin, Elinor Bobkin’s dad, newly divorced, who had met William at one of my choral performances in seventh grade. They’d dated for about three months, Mr. Bobkin had started talking about shopping for furniture together, and William fled. Since then, there’d been no one except the occasional fling, usually on vacations he took with his friends. But I only got sparse details on those, via eavesdropping, and sadly, William could always hear me coming.

  “What about your mom?” Ambrose asked.

  “Same way. Dateless for years, no faith in the power of love and romance.” Realizing this sounded harsh even to me, I added, “Look, the wedding business jades a person. Clearly. This is only your first. By the end of the summer, you’ll probably be just as bad as we are.”

  He was watching Charlotte as she said her vows, a smile on her face. “We? You feel that way, too?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not totally cynical. But I don’t believe in the fairy tale, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “The fairy tale? What’s that?”

  A ripple across the crowd as the groom laughed, the priest joining in. “The idea that everything will be perfect, forever.”

  “Nobody really believes that, though.”

  “They do, though,” I said. “These brides, they come in, with their new engagement rings all shiny on their fingers, and they want the ideal day. Flowers, food, venue, music, even napkins have to be perfect. And we do it, because that’s our job and we’re good at it. But the marriage: that’s up to them. And it takes a lot more than putting peonies in mason jars.”

  Ambrose considered this as the priest spoke at the front of the church. “You know, if you really think about it, I should be the one who doesn’t believe in all this,” he said after a moment. “I’ve only been to three weddings, all my mother’s. I was in every one of them. Each ended in divorce.”

  “This is the first wedding you’ve attended that you weren’t in?”

  “Yep,” he replied. “It’s like seeing the man behind the curtain. And that man is scary.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “But that’s the thing,” he replied. “It’s okay. Because when I do get asked to another wedding, I won’t go into it thinking about everything that can go wrong. I’ll just enjoy the party and the moment.”

  “Good for you. I wish I could,” I said.

  “You can, though.”

  “Nope. Too late.” I cleared my throat. “That ship has sailed. Once you see how things can go, you can’t unknow it.”

  I felt him look at me, and realized this sounded harsh. But it was the truth. It took a lot to have hope in this world where so little evidence of it existed. We may all start in the same place, at a church, watching a couple begin a whole new life together. But what we glimpse beyond that is different for each of us, a funhouse mirror reflection of our own experience. Maybe if nothing bad had ever happened, you didn’t even consider those clouds and storms ahead. But for the rest of us, even the brightest sunshine carried a chance of rain. It was only a matter of time.

  “Interloper at ten o’clock,” I said to Ambrose. “Want to take this one?”

  “Sure,” he replied, moving over to intercept an older man making a beeline for the buffet despite our repeated reminders that we’d be going by tables. My mother hated a long, snaky line of hungry guests, but there were always the few who tried to circumvent the system. I watched, somewhat proud, as he politely redirected the man to his seat. When he flashed me a thumbs-up, though, I only nodded.

  Two hours into the event, I had to admit my mom had, again, been right. He was a fast learner, with the charm that initially bugged me actually being an asset at times like this. If you’re going to come between someone bold enough to jump the line and the prime rib, you have to do it with a light touch, and Ambrose had that in spades. So I’d let him do the heavy lifting while I kept the lines of people who were actually supposed to be eating moving smoothly. Half the room down, half to go. This was me being optimistic, I realized, taking note of it for once. And just like that, the universe noticed as well.

  “Excuse me.” I turned to see a woman in a red dress approaching, a toddler with pigtails on her hip. She was thin and angular, with black-framed glasses you just knew cost a fortune. “Have you seen my son? He’s the ring bearer?”

  “Ira?” I asked. She nodded, switching her daughter to her other side. “I haven’t seen him since the wedding party came in.”

  She turned. “I thought he was with his cousins, over there at the kids’ table, but they haven’t seen him either. Where is he?”

  I scanned the room: no sign of a kid in a tight-fitting tux. “Let me check the lobby. Maybe he went to the bathroom?”

  “Not by himself,” she replied, gesturing to what I assumed was her husband, a heavyset guy at the nearby bar. Now, she mouthed, and he started over.

  “People are hungry,” Ambrose said as he walked back up to me. “I just almost came to fisticuffs with a woman. She was clutching a plate and prepared to use it.
”

  Normally I would have questioned the use of “fisticuffs”—sometimes I wondered what era Ambrose actually came from—but there was no time. “Have you seen Ira?”

  “Little dude?” I nodded. “No. Why?”

  “He may be missing.” I said this in a low voice: the last thing we needed was unnecessary panic. “I’m going to check the lobby. You take outside.”

  “Ira!” the mother yelled. So much for staying calm. “Has anyone seen my son?”

  I walked quickly to the lobby, Ambrose right behind me. As I turned down a nearby hallway, he headed for the outside doors. Older couple, clump of teenagers probably up to no good, staff member pushing a laundry cart. No Ira. Outside the men’s bathroom, I knocked, hard, then pushed open the door. “Ira? Are you in there?”

  “Who?” someone yelled back.

  “A kid in a tux. Do you see him?”

  A pause. “Nope. Just me, as far as I can tell.”

  I let the door drop, regrouping, then pulled out my phone. RING BEARER MISSING, I texted my mom and William. IN LOBBY LOOKING. Then I headed back toward the ballroom, scanning around me as I went. Outside, I could see Ambrose in the parking lot, his hands cupped to his mouth.

  “Ira!” I recognized William’s voice before I took a corner, almost crashing into him. He said, “Definitely not in the ballroom. Mom’s starting to freak.”

  “Bathroom’s clear. I’ll go help Ambrose look outside.”

  “Your mom’s sweeping the kitchen. I’ll ask at the desk and do another pass through here.”

  We broke, neither of us running. Yet. As I pushed open the heavy glass doors to the parking lot, I could hear Ambrose. “Ira! Buddy! You out here?” Somewhere, a dog barked.

  I heard my phone beep and grabbed it: my mom, to all of us. NO SIGN YET. ANYONE?

  Shit, I thought, just as a big truck rumbled by on the street outside. Hearing a voice behind me, I swung around, but it was only a couple in formal wear, obviously late, hurrying toward the front entrance. “Ira!” I called. The dog barked again.

  “He’s not in this lot,” Ambrose reported, jogging toward me. “I’ve cased the whole place. Twice.”

  “Mom says he’s not anywhere they’ve checked either,” I said. “This could be bad. Ira!”

  Another dog bark. Ambrose turned toward the sound. “Ira!”

  Bark.

  “Ira!” I called. Bark.

  “This way,” he said, starting to walk again. I followed him, checking between cars—God forbid—as I went. My phone beeped again. MOM WANTS POLICE, William reported. Uh-oh.

  “Ira!” I called again, hearing a subsequent woof as I followed Ambrose’s blue shirt around some hedges to a loading bay bright with floodlights. Now I was running, my flats slapping the pavement. We passed a Dumpster and some smelly garbage cans before I spotted Ambrose’s dog, tied to a drainpipe. Beside him was Ira, patting his back.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, slowing to a walk as I pulled out my phone. FOUND HIM, I texted. “Ira! What are you doing all the way out here?”

  He turned, looking at us. The dog, seeing Ambrose, immediately got to his feet and began wiggling. “I saw a dog,” Ira explained. “I love dogs.”

  “Of course you do,” I replied, walking over to a nearby door and pulling it open, startling a table of people talking just on his other side. I scanned the ballroom until I found my mom, then gave her the high sign. As she started hurrying over, Ira’s mom in tow, I said, “You hungry? There’s mac and cheese.”

  Score: his eyes widened. I stuck out my hand, he took it, and I led him inside.

  “Ira! Where have you been? You scared Mommy to death!” his mom shrieked when she saw him. “Come here!”

  He dropped my hand. “I want mac and cheese,” he announced as he started over to her.

  My mom, smiling calmly at the onlooking table as she passed them, said to me, “What happened? If we’d had to call the police I never would have lived it down. Can you imagine?”

  “He just wandered out this door,” I said, pulling it shut behind me so she wouldn’t see the dog. “Next time we’ll know to keep an eye on it if there are kids here.”

  “Next time I’ll keep the ring bearer on a leash,” she grumbled, then looked at her phone. “William is reporting everyone’s going rogue at the buffet. He needs muscle.”

  “I’m on it,” I said.

  “No, you found the lost child.” She squared her shoulders, readjusting the diamond pendant she always wore to the center of her neck. “Take five minutes. Then go find the caterer to talk cake cutting.”

  “Okay.”

  She squeezed my arm, then started over to the buffet line, which had indeed become snaky and fidgeting in our absence. I opened the door again, slipping out into the loading bay. Ambrose was crouched down in front of the dog, scratching his ears. “Who’s a hero? That’s right, you are! Good boy!”

  I could see a cloud of wiry hair coming off the dog, rising into the light behind him. “I thought you and I just saved the day.”

  He glanced back at me. “Because Ira here told us where to look. You heard that bark! It was like breadcrumbs through the forest.”

  Of course it was. “You’re calling him Ira now?”

  “It’s his name.” He was still scratching, the cloud of hair growing wider. How could a dog shed so much and not be bald? “That was his way of telling us.”

  “The barking,” I said, clarifying.

  “Yep.”

  “Ira!” I called out. The dog didn’t even look at me, much less bark. I looked at Ambrose.

  “Do you always answer to your name?” he asked.

  I sighed. Even without the drama of a lost child, this wedding felt longer than others. “I have to go deal with the cake. Are you coming?”

  I started back around the building, having decided to take the long way for some extra fresh air. A moment later, he fell into step beside me, brushing his hands against each other. “I have to hand it to you. This job is harder than it looks.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Standing around while being bossy,” he replied. I raised my eyebrows. “Louna. You literally dragged me into my mother’s ceremony by one arm.”

  “You were holding up the schedule,” I replied, hating how prim I sounded.

  “My point is, there’s a lot behind the scenes the layman or guest would never know about. Like a secret world.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You make it sound magical.”

  “You don’t think it is?”

  “I think it’s work,” I replied.

  “Magical work.” He laughed at the face I made, hearing this, then added, “You know, you can act the part all you want. But my take on you is you’re not as cynical as you make yourself out to be.”

  “You have a take on me now?”

  “I have a take on everyone. I’m an observer, a witness.”

  “Usually those people listen more than they talk,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe.” He slipped his hands into his pockets, shaking that curl out of his eyes. “My point is, I’ve been around you a lot the last few days and I’ve seen things.”

  “Well,” I said. “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

  “A cynic,” he continued, ignoring this, “would not have looked as relieved as you did when we found Ira. Also, a cynic would have made sure the boss knew whose dog caused the lost child to wander off in the first place. You, instead, covered for me and Ira, the dog.”

  “I think you’re confusing a cynic with an asshole,” I told him.

  “Maybe. But I saw how you reacted, both times. You’re not that hardened yet, even if you prefer to think otherwise.”

  A car drove around us, the bass thumping. I said, “The key word is yet.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Because you stil
l have a choice in the matter.”

  “Or it’s only a matter of time,” I countered.

  “Okay, now you sound like a cynic.” He tipped his head back, looking up at the stars overhead. “But you’re not fooling me. I know what I saw.”

  To this I said nothing. What was the point? It wasn’t like I was proud of my hard little rock of a heart. Everyone’s life shapes them in their own unique way. No one could really understand how the events of the last year, highs and lows, had honed me into what I now was, sharper in places, more calloused in others. And of course I’d been worried about a lost child. I wasn’t a monster. Yet.

  We were back at the front doors to the club now, where a large party was exiting the reception, cigars in hand. As we approached, two men, suits rumpled and cheeks rosy, opened a door for us at the same time. In reply, Ambrose spread his arms, clearly loving an entrance. Before he stepped in, though, he turned his head, cupping a hand to his mouth.

  “Ira!” he called out. Of course, the dog barked.

  “Call me crazy,” my mom said, loosening the strap of one of her shoes. “But I’m thinking they might go the distance.”

  “Natalie Barrett.” William gave her a warning look. “Don’t you dare tell me you’ve become an optimist. I don’t think I can take it.”

  “Never,” she replied, as he topped off both their glasses, then dropped the bottle with a clank back into the ice bucket. “I just got that sense. They don’t seem like the divorce type.”

  “Which is the same as being married happily, yes?”

  My mom considered this as she took a sip of her drink. “I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s a whole spectrum between those two, at least in my experience. Like all the variations of gray.”

  William didn’t seem to buy it, even before he said, “Gray is gray, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I disagree.” She eased the other strap, wincing as she did so. “I remember being so unhappy at times in my own marriage, for various reasons. And yet the thought of it ending, of choosing to do that . . . I never would have even thought of it. And if I had, I’m sure I would have considered it the much worse option.”