by Ethan Joella
She cried because her older sister, Lisa, had gotten leukemia two years before that, and nothing, nothing had been right since she died. She felt so far away from Lisa in Finland, and she cried because returning home wouldn’t fix anything.
She wasn’t programmed to lose her sister. Never. She could still easily see Lisa walking her to her kindergarten classroom—Lisa’s curls, her dark eyes and knowing smile, Lisa’s small plaid book bag she held like a briefcase. Her parents had adopted Lisa when they thought they couldn’t have children, and she was given everything in a way that didn’t spoil her but made her generous and confident. In a couple of years, her parents ended up being able to have Suzette, and then Carrie, and for a few years, the three girls slept in one room like The Brady Bunch kids.
At the bar that day so long ago, Suzette lit another cigarette, stronger than an unfiltered Camel. She cried because Finland could have changed her life, and she wouldn’t stay long enough to let it.
Now when the door opens with that subtle ding, Mrs. Crowley snaps the plastic guard of the register in place and runs the paper through it. “Hello there,” she says. Her curls are perfect. There are so many spools of thread behind her, and the radio quietly delivers a news segment from a BBC reporter. “Chilly one, isn’t it?” She glides over to the seamstress’s empty chair and takes a sweater off the back of it. “The air just stabs you when it hits, doesn’t it?”
Suzette nods. “I forgot to wear a coat.”
“You mustn’t… the bride can’t have a cold.” Mrs. Crowley laces her fingers together. “Ms. Tyler knows you have an appointment? Shall I ring her?”
“No, no. We talked yesterday. I think I’m a few minutes early.”
“You must be tickled that all this planning is coming to the end.” The woman adjusts her Christmas tree pin on her sweater. She wears a cream-colored satin blouse under the sweater, and pants that are so pressed they could hang without a hanger. “Want a candy cane?” She holds out a small ceramic gingerbread house with holes in the roof for miniature candy canes to sit in.
“Yes, please.”
“I love Christmas weddings… if Mother Nature cooperates for you.”
“Yes,” Suzette says. Did she eat today? She feels like she didn’t.
“My daughter, of course, was bound and determined to be married in July. I said, Mary Jane, you’re going to be hot the whole day. Your face will be shiny in pictures. You might not even want to take pictures outside.” She shakes her head and sighs. “And then she asked her friend’s toddler to be a flower girl… a two-year-old who wants her mommy, a sweltering day. Need I say more?” She looks up to the ceiling and smiles. “But it was lovely, all of that aside. A lush green golf course in the background.” Her smile comes and goes like lightning.
Suzette smiles. “I always wanted a Christmas wedding.”
“And your fiancé? Does he like a Christmas wedding, too?”
“Oh yes. Yes. He loved the idea.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t imagine Ms. Tyler being late.” She looks at the seamstress’s empty work station. “I always tell her she has an atomic clock wired to her brain.”
“Traffic probably.”
“Probably.”
Suzette sees her dress hanging in its thick white bag on a rack by itself and she feels her shoulders sag. Her sister Lisa had just picked out her wedding dress before her diagnosis. She never even went for a fitting. When the boutique phoned one day inquiring about the dress, her mother told the man to keep the damn thing. Suzette coughs now. “Did your daughter—”
Mrs. Crowley looks from the parking lot back to Suzette. “Did she what, dear?”
“Feel weird?”
“Weird? About getting married, you mean?”
“I guess.”
“Oh. Well, maybe.” She pulls out her own candy cane and holds it as if she’s never tried one. She unwraps it carefully and tastes it for a second. “If she did, she didn’t tell me. But I did. If an old lady matters.” She chuckles. “Do you?”
“What? Feel weird? Um, a little. Well, not weird. I just feel, I just feel… vacant.” The word surprises her. It is perfectly chosen, and she just chose it. Yes, that is the feeling. Her cheeks burn. Why did she say anything? People always gossip, and no one needs to hear this. It’s Finland all over again. Oh, and with everything her poor parents have been through. “I kind of don’t want to put that dress on again.” When did this feeling start? She can’t say. She wants the wedding to be over, and she wants to never put on the dress.
“Maybe you’re just tired of the preparation.” Mrs. Crowley’s eyes dart back and forth between Suzette and the parking lot. Suzette looks. Not a car in the lot besides theirs. A moving van charges by on Route 23, and way down the street she can see the traffic light for Gatehill Mall, a cluster of cars with people going Christmas shopping. In the other direction is The Dock, the restaurant where Damon proposed. (Damon’s sweet face that night, so hopeful.) The sky outside is crisp blue with threads of clouds. “Maybe you want to just be married, without all the fuss?”
This brings Suzette a moment of quick relief. Is that it? “I don’t feel like I know. I know that Damon’s a terribly nice guy. I know he has a smile that makes babies smile back at him when we walk downtown. I know if we had kids, they would be loved and valued—by him, by me. I know it all seems to fit. That I could set up an office in our home. I know he will go with me to chop down the best Christmas tree every year, and I know he will pour me wine if I have a bad day, and we can sit on the porch and I can put my feet on his lap. I know all this. I know it can be great. But I don’t want to pull the trigger. That’s what I don’t want to do.”
Mrs. Crowley nods. Her glasses reflect the overhead lights.
“I’m not stupid, Mrs. Crowley. I mean, I’m not crazy. I hear people say maybe they just don’t want to be happy, and I don’t think that’s me. I really want to be happy. I am pretty happy. I just feel, well, crushed by this. I keep fighting the urge to call Damon and say we need to cancel right now.
“Why would I want to do that? How twisted would I be to do that to the best man I will probably ever meet? I sound crazy. I’m sorry. I’ll be fine. We’ll have the wedding, and I’ll be fine, and you’ll see me one day at The Greenhorn or at Mateo’s sitting across from Damon, and you’ll think, wow, all that moaning for nothing. I mean, I’m in my thirties. I know what I’m doing. I said yes because I knew? Didn’t I know?”
Mrs. Crowley rests her elbows on the counter. She clicks her tongue as if she’s about to speak, but the words don’t come. Her face looks concerned, serious.
“I’m sorry,” Suzette says. “I—I still don’t see her. Maybe we should call her? I’m sorry. I really don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I think I’m just tired. It’s been dress fittings and paint colors for the new house and passport renewals and my parents. My parents think I’m like this mustang that Damon finally broke—only because I was kind of, I guess, trying out who I wanted to be. And they didn’t get to, you know, with my sister—they didn’t get to see her become an adult and all that. But I’m not wild. I just think, maybe I could do without all this? Is it bad to think that?” Suzette takes a deep breath. She feels mostly relieved. She has gotten out what she wanted to say for so long.
“No, dear, not at all. We feel what we feel, and we shouldn’t apologize for ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing.” Mrs. Crowley picks up her cordless phone and dials Freddie Tyler’s number slowly, her eyes looking at a laminated sheet of paper with all the important numbers written on it. “No answer,” she says.
“Hmm,” says Suzette.
“I believe that’s her home number. I thought I had her cell phone number, too, but it’s not on this list.” She shakes her head.
“I have it.” Suzette reaches into her purse. She sees Damon’s text again. She rereads his words. I’m worried. You okay? Poor Damon. She should write back right now. Yes. Of
course. I love you. She finds Freddie’s number under recent calls and dials it. “Right to voice mail.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, dear.”
“She’ll come.”
“No, I mean about your problem.”
“Oh, well. It’s not really a problem. I’m making it a problem.”
The radio mumbles. The door chimes, but it’s the UPS man. Mrs. Crowley smiles at him and signs for a small package. The deliveryman nods at Suzette and leaves. When he closes the door, the tinsel garland that’s draped across the store sways under the fluorescent lights.
“I think you should talk to your betrothed. I know what sadness is, my dear, and you look sad.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not… Maybe, yeah. A little.” Yes, she is. Is that what this all has been about? A need for something she can’t find? Why has no one else noticed this besides the woman who owns this dry cleaning place? But Damon notices. That’s what his text is about. He notices. He cares.
“Does something about the wedding make you sad?” Mrs. Crowley puts a dollop of Avon lotion on her hands and rubs them together.
“Kind of.” She takes off her vest. “It’s warm in here.”
“I’m always cold, as you can see.” She gestures to her sweater and smiles again.
Suzette is in full nail-biting mode. She shreds her thumb nail with her top tooth. “She makes me sad,” she finally says.
“Ms. Tyler?”
“No. My sister.”
“Oh.”
“You remember her, don’t you?”
“If I recall, there were three girls in your family, no?”
“Good memory. My older sister, I mean.”
“Of course. Beautiful, beautiful girl.” She frowns and looks down. She shakes her head. For some reason, Suzette wishes she’d say her name. Lisa. “You don’t ever get over that loss. It leaves a scratch in you like a record that never plays right again.” Mrs. Crowley reaches her hand out and waves it at her. “Now, don’t bite your nails, dear. Let’s not make things worse.”
Suzette smiles. “I haven’t bitten my nails this much since she was dying. It’s awful for someone to know they’re dying, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Crowley’s stare is far away. “Yes, yes. It is.”
“I didn’t know what to say to her.” She takes a deep breath. “I tried to act like she would still wear that dress… that this was like a broken leg, and she’d be out and about when it healed.” She looks at her other hand and realizes she hasn’t eaten the candy cane. The wrapper comes off so easily, and she wonders if they plan it that way in the factory. The thought comforts her—that someone in a far-off place cares.
“Tell me her name again?”
“Lisa.” It feels so good to hear it in the air. The two syllables echo for a second. Lisa. Lisa. She whispers it sometimes when she’s in the car by herself. Sometimes she writes the name over and over on a notebook page or a dry-erase board. She just wants her name to stay current. She loves when someone sends a Christmas card to the family and still puts Lisa’s name on it.
“Lisa, yes. Well, we do the things they weren’t able to,” Mrs. Crowley says. “We vote because they can no longer vote. We look at the ocean because they can’t. We think about them when we put up a Christmas tree, and later when we sit there and gaze at the lights. We do all the things they can’t. That is how we love them when they’re gone.”
Suzette swallows. She hopes her eye makeup isn’t running. She wipes her face and checks her hand. “I just wanted her to wear a wedding dress first.”
“I know.”
She snorts. “I think I picked these green dresses so she wouldn’t feel bad. Maybe in the back of my mind, I didn’t want my wedding to be nicer than hers, even though hers didn’t happen.”
“Oh, darling.”
“I moved to Finland because I was so sad. Because I wanted to try to be happy. But I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t make it work.”
“It’s good to try as many things as you can. Who knows what will stick.” Mrs. Crowley comes around and holds out her arms. The woman never seemed like the hugging type. Suzette holds the candy cane in her fist and laughs through tears as the older woman wraps her arms around her.
“Thank you.”
“I think you should give this a try. This guy. This future that might be happy. You might like it.”
Suzette digs a tissue out of her vest pocket and blots her eyes. “Thanks.”
The door dings then, and Mrs. Crowley ducks away and heads back behind the counter. “Ms. Tyler.”
“Sorry,” Freddie says. “Dead cell phone, and a dead car battery. Both on the same day.” Her eyes water from the cold, and her fine hair in a ponytail bounces as she hurries to her station.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Crowley says.
“How horrible,” Suzette says.
The three women look for a moment at each other, and then Suzette walks toward the bag with her dress in it. Freddie Tyler takes off her coat and grabs her materials from her station. Mrs. Crowley puts two new candy canes into the ceramic gingerbread house. The radio plays a holiday jingle.
Suzette holds the dress bag over her arm, and as she slides the curtain closed, she imagines Lisa standing outside the dressing room, smiling, hands clasped, waiting to see her. Wouldn’t she tug the curtain open before Suzette was ready? Lisa! Wait! Wouldn’t Lisa sigh as she saw her little sister, grown now, holding the layers of tulle on the skirt as she tiptoed out into the light?
Suzette slips the dress on, and it doesn’t feel as heavy as she remembered. She wants to see Damon at the end of the aisle, beaming as she walks toward him. She wants to walk toward him. This isn’t Finland. This isn’t Finland. She wants what’s next.
11. Homesick
The dresses aren’t all that bad. Ginger lines up with the other bridesmaids in the high-ceilinged reception hall at Oak Gate Country Club. Maybe she can see what Suzette was going for. The seamstress did a good job. All their dresses fit well, the fur capes on their shoulders look almost regal, and with her hair up and the pearl necklace, Ginger feels elegant. The other girls smile for the camera in a comfortable way, in a way that says they feel what she’s feeling.
“One more,” the photographer commands. “Stay close together.” The groomsman assigned to Ginger is named Ahmed, Damon’s best friend since nursery school. He keeps his hand on Ginger’s hip and smiles mechanically. “Death by flashbulbs,” he whispers. Ginger laughs. The band has started playing, and she sees the lead singer out of the corner of her eye and for a second convinces herself it’s Luke Crowley, her ex-boyfriend. Maybe the one who got away, if she believed such things.
Only he didn’t get away. They veered directly away from each other ten years ago. She won’t look at the singer full-on because his build is similar, his hair the same color. Luke. What would he say to see her there in this dress, listening to the music?
After the pictures are through, she sips a Mistletoe Martini and goes to find Suzette’s parents. People linger around tables in the large banquet room as the band plays in front of the dance floor. This room with its twinkling Christmas lights leads into a lounge area with a long polished slate bar. She finds Suzette’s parents near a raw bar of shrimp and oysters on ice. “Ginger’s the veterinarian,” Suzette’s mother says to an elderly aunt.
Ginger nods and half laughs. “Does anyone have a cat or dog in their purse that needs checking?”
“No, dear, I’m allergic,” the aunt says seriously. “But you look the nicest in your dress.”
“Oh, thanks.”
The aunt is wearing a gardenia corsage. Ginger can tell she had her hair done today because it’s perfectly in place. The woman touches the top of her hand. “Some of the other girls are too skinny.”
Ginger smiles and moves on. Does that make her fat? No, that’s not what the woman meant. She is fine.
Ginger thinks about how she will return to Johnny in a few days. How he’ll probably give her a belated Christmas
gift, maybe some chocolate from his stops in Argentina and Peru, and she’ll give him that brown attaché bag she got from the Coach Men’s store: not wrapped, maybe just a bow around it. Why can’t she wrap a gift for him? Does she love him that little?
She wishes Martin, her cat, weren’t alone in the apartment in Savannah. She hopes their neighbor will check in often. She wonders if everyone her age feels this unsettled.
Since she set up practice in Georgia, she has felt like she’s at an extended sleepover at a friend’s house. Sure, she knows where everything is (it was she who found the apartment, who bought the flatware, the plates, the small sofa from Crate and Barrel), but she still wants to be home. Home. That apartment with Johnny isn’t it. But what is? Not her parents’ house. She’s homesick for something that isn’t anywhere. Thirty-three and homesick.
Damon, the groom, has requested Sinatra, and “Strangers in the Night” plays as he beckons Suzette. She puts her bouquet on the head table and walks coyly to him while everyone watches. She kisses his cheek and rests her head on his shoulder as they slow dance. A stunning bride and groom. They look otherworldly, classic, like something from the fifties. The windows at the country club are high, and outside Ginger can see stars and the black sky. There is a tall Christmas tree by the French doors, and on the large fireplace is a garland with red ornaments the size of grapefruits. Each table has an ivory tablecloth and ten flickering votives.
The band plays, and Suzette and Damon sway, and Ginger wants to ask her if this is everything she wanted, and how did she know? How did she know it would all work?