I spent the morning reading for work, avoiding my phone and my mom as much as possible. When it was finally time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner, I took my turn in the bathroom, and then my mom helped me zip up the black dress I had selected for the occasion. She chattered the whole time I got dressed, wondering why I hadn’t spent the previous night after my arrival with Michelle. I told her that I didn’t want to intrude on her and Marcia’s prewedding time together. A few of the other bridesmaids had stayed at the house with the two of them, but I left that detail out. I wanted not to care that I hadn’t been invited, to respond to this the same way I would to not being asked to a game night at Darcy’s house—with a shrug and a sense of relief. But I couldn’t. This was still Michelle. Even if the past few months had made us seem like strangers to each other, we weren’t. I had known her for my entire life. Forget it, my mind insisted. I’m here to say good-bye.
That evening, I walked into the front door of Jacques’ Bistro quietly, barely breathing. I had sent a simple text to Michelle to tell her I was on schedule, and I would be at the restaurant at six p.m. as planned. She liked the message to acknowledge its receipt, but we had still only communicated in tense wedding-related e-mails since the fight. I winced as my heels clicked on the tile floor, announcing my presence. The act of arriving alone instead of with Michelle or with the other bridesmaids felt conspicuous in itself.
Fortunately, Michelle had rejected a traditional rehearsal with an intimate group in favor of a large welcome dinner, inviting not just her bridal party but also everyone coming in from out of town. Out of town simply designated “not within thirty minutes of Birmingham” and thus comprised almost half of the wedding’s two hundred planned guests.
I scanned the room apprehensively as I approached the two long tables. Everything was bathed in candlelight, with dozens of votives adorning the bistro bar and long candlesticks dripping wax onto white tablecloths. The room hummed with indistinct conversation as guests milled around sipping predinner glasses of champagne, but then I heard Michelle’s laugh over the din as clearly as if she were the only person in the room. The clinks of glasses, the snippets of conversation, were all white noise, but I knew the jingling laughter belonged to her even though I couldn’t see her. It’s funny, the human ability to pick out one voice in a crowd. Why was Michelle that person for me? It reminded me of something I’d read, that the cry of a baby sounds wholly distinct to its mother, but that thought flipped my stomach, so I pushed it away and headed into the throng.
I didn’t know how to approach Michelle. I thought about simply greeting her quickly and then falling into small talk with whoever was nearby, busying myself until dinner. I thought about walking straight up to her and making a barbed remark, raising an eyebrow and daring her to make a scene at me in front of all her guests. As anger and anxiety coursed through me, strong enough to make the hairs on my arms stand up, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I spun around so fast I nearly collided with her. I thought about the moment we met, when I crashed into her on the first day of third grade. How far we’d both come since that day.
“Julie,” she said, and the cool tone of her voice denoted both an icy remove and, somehow, a greater note of respect than I had predicted.
“Hi,” I breathed, looking her up and down. She wore a white lace knee-length dress, sleeveless, which I had found browsing Revolve several months earlier and sent to her, eager to stop looking for outfits for her and get back to work. I hadn’t realized she had actually chosen it. I felt a wave of guilt in realizing that I hadn’t known. Maybe I hadn’t been paying attention as closely as I’d thought. She tucked her hair behind her left ear, revealing one of her large diamond studs.
“New earrings from Jake.” She gestured. “My ‘something new.’ Do you like them?”
My mouth fell open. That’s it? She didn’t have a snide comment planned, or a passive-aggressive remark? I almost sighed in relief, but then I felt a little sick at having assumed the worst. For every time Michelle had been judgmental or dismissive, there was a moment in our history that showed me how much she could be just the opposite. But that didn’t matter, I told myself. I was done weighing our respective strengths and faults. I had tired of arguing my own side, even just to myself. I stayed quiet.
She narrowed her eyes, and her expression seemed to contain a hint of genuine curiosity. For once, it seemed like Michelle wasn’t sure what I would do next.
“Well. They’re beautiful,” I said. This wasn’t the time, wasn’t the place. Maybe there would never be a time or a place for us to have a real conversation ever again, I realized. But I would let that be up to her.
“Julie, I—I am glad you’re here,” she said, squeezing my elbow, and I didn’t know if the words came from the woman who had once been my best friend or the woman who needed to telegraph to the room that everything was okay. Was it love, or was it self-preservation? But of course those two things could run together, braided so no one knew where the threads originated. She leaned closer to me, and I wondered if she might be about to say something more.
Then Jake walked up behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close to kiss her on the ear. He gave me a lopsided grin. Did he not know?
“Hiya, Jule,” he said excitedly. “Sorry for the PDA. Just can’t wait to marry this girl.”
He didn’t. This shocked me. I couldn’t imagine Michelle not telling everyone she knew what I had done, couldn’t imagine her not wanting to spin the story or be the first to break the news of our falling-out. I had seen her do that for all our lives, from the gossip about DeeDee Morrow to spinning the Divinyls tale about my father. But this time she had not.
“I’m so excited for you two,” I said, giving a tight-lipped smile. This wasn’t entirely truthful, but I realized that it wasn’t quite a lie, either. Seeing them look happy, so clearly excited for whatever lay ahead for the two of them, did make something flicker inside me. If I had stereotyped him as a little bit too much of an old-fashioned, oblivious fraternity type, well—he was also a guy who seemed to really love Michelle. I knew she loved him in return.
“We’re excited, too. Mind if I steal her for a minute?”
“I’ll round up the rest of the bridesmaids,” I told them. “It’s almost time to sit down for dinner.”
I knew then that I could make it through the rest of the night—the endive salad, the toast from Rich, the forced mingling—and probably even through the wedding. What I didn’t know was what would be left of us after it was all over.
* * *
• • •
Michelle and I didn’t get a chance to talk alone for the rest of the night. When I told Dana the week before how nervous I felt about the wedding weekend, she had assured me that this would be the case: “Oh, no one really gets to talk to the bride at a wedding,” she said. “Big weddings are about making everyone feel included, which means that no one actually is. She’ll be mobbed by her extended family the whole time, and then they’ll all turn around and complain that they didn’t get enough time with her anyway. Which is why I’m eloping, but that’s another story.” We had both laughed.
Her counsel had reassured me at the time, but I found myself strangely disappointed as I stepped into an Uber, alone, after dinner. At first I had thought I would want to fight with Michelle, to finally call out all the things that had changed between us and all the ways I’d been hurt. Then I had thought I’d be grateful for a lack of attention, for the ability to say a wordless good-bye and slink away. Now I felt something I hadn’t expected: I just missed her. I wanted to be at the Davises’ house, which had once been the closest thing I’d ever had to a home. On the eve of her wedding, I wanted us to talk about marriage, about how she felt about it and how I did, opening up to each other in the real and genuine way we’d seemed incapable of ever since she had gotten engaged. I wanted my best friend. I knew I might be missing a pe
rson who only existed in the past. It seemed like there was no way to go back and get her, at least not without reverting to a version of myself I couldn’t be anymore.
She told me I had lost myself, a voice reminded me.
Maybe something would happen at the wedding, I thought. But more likely not. I would get through the weekend, and it would all be over. That was what I wanted.
I walked into the house to find it completely dark, my mom already asleep. I stepped out of my dress and left it pooled on the floor, lying down without the energy to even brush my teeth.
* * *
• • •
The next morning, I arrived at the country club four hours before the wedding for hair and makeup. I also had photos to take with the bridesmaids as we helped Michelle get dressed—not to mention a level of normalcy to try to achieve before the ceremony.
I told myself it was fine to feel hesitant as I entered the main hall. Hesitant was the word I was using in my mind in place of the much more accurate “still utterly consumed with dread.” As soon as I opened the heavy oak door to the parlor, I found the other bridesmaids and some of Michelle’s family sitting on antique couches in front of hair stylists, waiting for Michelle as the photographer clicked away. Marcia stood up and crossed the room to approach me first, her beaded floor-length dress swishing audibly and her heels clicking severely on the wooden floor. But although she gave me a quizzical look—probably because I hadn’t stayed with Michelle the night before—she hugged me warmly, draping her tanned arms around me and holding me close for several seconds. I knew then that Michelle still hadn’t told her everything. Just like with Jake the night before, I felt myself more than a little bit moved by her discretion, but it also made the hug feel like a lie. I breathed in Marcia’s signature Hermès perfume and pretended that the embrace was meant as a sign of forgiveness. That she was saying she loved me anyway.
“You look beautiful,” I told her.
Of course, she still wasn’t as striking as Michelle, who came out of the dressing room a minute later clad in her strapless mermaid gown, covered in Chantilly lace and adorned with silk buttons all the way down the back. I had seen all the pictures of the dress, of course, but none of them had done it justice.
I bristled when I first saw her without meaning to, the same as I had the night before at the restaurant. Then my stomach churned nervously, and, just as suddenly, a stranger emotion filled me: I had to stifle an impulse to run and give her a hug. I hadn’t expected seeing her in her dress to flood me with such feeling, like a dam breaking inside me, but it did. Every scene from our life seemed to flash before me involuntarily, from the day I first saw her play dress-up for a wedding to the day she told me she thought she would marry Jake. I wanted to freeze time.
I wished it could be like when we were young. She stole the cooler Spice Girls lunch box and we argued about whose turn it was to pick a movie at a sleepover, but we always forgot what we were fighting about and made up before the sun went down. Everything had been simple, immaterial. I wanted to be able to forget this fight just as easily, but how could we when it was about so much more?
“So, do I look okay?” she asked the room. Her voice wobbled a little, weakened by nerves. It wasn’t the voice she used when she already knew she looked amazing and just wanted everyone else to confirm it. All the bridesmaids started to coo and exclaim, their praises indistinguishable, and so I took a deep breath and stepped closer. That’s when I saw it: a flash of green on her right wrist. The jade bracelet I had given her the week we met. I paused for a minute and just stared.
“My something old,” she said.
“You look perfect,” I told her quietly, getting hold of myself. “Almost as good as when you married Ashton.”
She didn’t laugh, but I swore I saw a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.
“Let me get the back of your dress,” I said, pivoting behind her to fiddle with the silk-covered buttons.
Enough, I reminded myself. Just get through the day and forget it.
After a makeup artist caked my face with foundation a shade darker than would have been flattering, the staged group photos followed. They were a blur of posed smiles and aching cheeks. Jen and Sylvie fought to stand so that their “good sides” were showing, and we obliged the photographer with a “silly shot,” tongues out and bouquets cocked at odd angles. I stretched my mouth into an approximation of a genuine smile, but it threatened to slip off at any moment, as if held up precariously by a piece of Scotch tape.
“All right, y’all,” Darcy called, stepping in as acting maid of honor, a title she had clearly been assigned in my absence. She cradled her pregnant belly. “It’s almost four o’clock. Let’s get our girl married!”
We walked out onto the lawn, where the guests sat on white wooden folding chairs. One by one, we made our way down the grassy aisle to the altar, followed finally by Michelle on her father’s arm. The string quartet played the processional, but I didn’t watch them—or Michelle, really. I looked at Jake and studied him as he grinned at her unabashedly. Guilelessly. In a strange way, it both thrilled me and gave me a feeling of relief.
At the altar, I fixed Michelle’s train dutifully and then stood stoically still, holding my flowers. “Dearly beloved . . . ,” the pastor began, but the words floated over me. I suddenly felt like an imposter being there.
Maybe she really should have just cut me out of the wedding. Why do this?
I started listening again at the vows. “For better, for worse,” Michelle said. “In sickness and in health.”
Whom did I love that much? I wondered. Could there ever be anyone? And without even meaning to think it, I knew that the answer was Michelle.
“’Til death do us part,” she finished. She smiled at Jake, and then, just before he started to echo the vows for his turn, she glanced back at me. Maybe she was looking at the other bridesmaids, or maybe it had been unintentional. But something in my gut said she was looking for me.
* * *
• • •
I knew I should stay at the reception long enough that leaving wouldn’t attract too much notice—in the form of a direct confrontation, anyway. There would be whispers about my lack of participation no matter what, but I no longer cared.
Jen’s husband, Mitch, was nice enough to ask me to dance for one song, even though Darcy shot daggers at us with her eyes the whole time. Michelle had clearly briefed her on my diminished role in her life. Mostly, I just sat at the head table and listened while Ellen, mercifully unaware of any tension between Michelle and me, chattered on about her new position as a kindergarten teacher in a neighboring district. I helped myself to a lot of champagne in anticipation of having to give my toast.
When the moment came, I stood up from my chair and took the microphone from Jake’s best man, Darren. I looked out at the sea of guests looking up at me expectantly, at the perfect peony floral arrangements at the center of dozens of identical round tables filling the country club ballroom, at the candles twinkling on the windowsills. I had the power to disrupt the entire scene, and while I had never done anything so bold in my life, there was a temptation about it, the same way there is about jumping off a high building. The call of the void. I could do anything, I realized. I could tell the truth about my friendship with Michelle in dramatic movie fashion, or I could put the microphone down and simply walk out, never to see any of these people again. I could do the opposite and give a glowing, fake toast, sucking up to the entire audience of the Davises’ family and friends the way I might have once in my youth, pretending that nothing was wrong. Or I could do something else entirely. I could do what the best version of myself, somewhere deep inside me, knew to be right. I could simply say what I felt. What I had known in my heart as I watched Michelle say her vows to someone she truly loved, and who loved her in return. Loving someone without the hope of changing them is the only way you can love t
hem.
Even from afar.
I smoothed the sides of my $395 bridesmaid dress and took a deep breath.
“I’ve known Michelle for almost my entire life. Tonight, she’s embarking on a new chapter in her life, and I have to say: I can’t believe the eight-year-old girls we once were are here.” I looked at Marcia, dabbing at the corners of her eyes, and I willed myself not to tear up, either, though for entirely different reasons. For everything about who we had grown up to become that I wasn’t putting into words. “The truth is, I can’t think about growing up—I can’t think about my life, really, without thinking about Michelle. She taught me to tie a high ponytail, she basically taught me to drive, she taught me so many things. From high school cliques”—I resisted a pointed glance at Darcy—“to a certain secret road trip I won’t reveal details about, we had . . . we went through everything together. And so I couldn’t be happier that she’s found a partner who wants to share her life in that way, too. All the ups and downs. Because that’s love.” I swallowed. “Real love, and . . . anyone who knows Michelle knows the kind of boundless love she’s capable of.” I glanced around the room again. Ellen nodded and dabbed a tear out of the corner of her eye. Marcia squeezed Rich’s arm. Was this really the last time I would ever see any of them? If it was, then this was my good-bye—not just to Michelle, but to everyone. What could I possibly say? I suddenly felt that I owed them a greater debt than I had ever realized, even if my life had taken me somewhere far away.
“And there are so many people in this room who have loved Michelle so well in return. I’ve been the recipient of that love, too. Jake, you’re lucky to be joining this family, but I know you know that.” Light laughter echoed from around the room. “I’ll wrap this up. But I want you to know I see the love you two have found with each other, and I hope it will always shine as brightly for you as it does tonight. Through everything that’s to come. Michelle, Jake, congratulations. Cheers.”
Friends from Home Page 20