Say Yes to the Death

by Susan McBride

  “Yeah, I know,” I told her, confused.

  “Everything’s fine, Olivia, I swear,” Terra went on, and I realized she was talking into her headset to my old buddy from Hockaday. “One of the guests helped me out,” she rattled on as she grabbed the big tote bag and led Penny out of the expansive bath. “A woman named Andy,” I could hear her saying in the distance, “Yes, she’s still here, but I’m taking Penny upstairs for an emergency nail repair.”

  And then the bedroom door slapped closed, and I was left blissfully alone.

  Chapter 4

  I struggled to my feet in the too-­small dress that suddenly felt that much tighter, and I quickly realized why. I definitely hadn’t pulled an ab getting Penny out of the toilet. My Spanx had popped off my belly and rolled down to my hips. Not a problem, as I needed out of them pronto. So I shimmied and pushed them past my thighs, finally getting them off entirely. I kicked them aside and hobbled into the water closet as fast as I could.

  To say that I relieved myself was to put it mildly.

  After I’d washed my hands, I bent to retrieve the Spanx and heard a tearing that sent a chill up my spine. It was the distinct sound of a zipper ripping apart. “Oh, fudge,” I said, only I didn’t say “fudge.”

  This could not be happening.

  “No, no, no,” I repeated, as if saying the word over and over again would change the outcome. But when I swiveled so I could see my back in the mirror, my eyes took in a horrifying sight.

  I swallowed hard, an anxious butterfly doing tailspins in my stomach as I surveyed the damage done. The whole back of the dress had split wide-­open. The zipper had torn clear out on one side. I could see my bra strap and a lot of skin down to my booty. If I’d had my phone, I could have called Cissy so she might wave her magic wand and produce a new dress (or at least call her personal shopper at Saks to hand-­deliver another).

  But the Black Suits had taken my cell. What was I supposed to do? Pretend like nothing had happened and sashay out of the house and back to Cissy with my backside in full view? Maybe that would work if I were attending the wedding of one of those Kardashians where the dress code was Clothing Optional. But my mother would die a certain death—­or at least be the butt of high society jokes, no pun intended—­if I were to appear in public half clothed.

  I tried not to panic.

  Think, Andy, think.

  Had Penny left the clothes she’d had on before she changed into her gown? I looked everywhere but saw nothing but dust-­free surfaces. No, Penny’s things had probably been stuffed into Terra’s big bag.

  Then another thought hit me: surely Lester Dickens had left some of his button-­down shirts or tailored blazers around the house, if only to show off the size of the closets to potential home buyers. If I had either one, I could cover up well enough to get back to my chair without too much scrutiny from Mother’s upper crust friends.

  I threw open the double doors of what had to be a massive walk-­in, only to find it completely and utterly empty. There was a bureau in the bedroom, and I checked all six of the drawers. Not even a balled-­up pair of socks. The Chippendale tallboy had been cleared out as well. Er, except for a dusty-­looking pack of condoms in the top drawer.

  I didn’t know what else to do and found myself on the verge of tears.

  When I heard the bedroom door open, I nearly swooned. If it was a Black Suit, I’d at least be able to borrow his jacket, right?

  “Oh, thank goodness you’re here! I’ve never been so happy to see anyone,” I said and rushed out from the bathroom suite only to stop cold.

  Instead of Obi Wan Kenobi come to save me with the Force, I saw Darth Vader standing in the doorway. I could practically hear the noisy breathing and the black cloak swishing as Olivia La Belle sauntered forward on her strappy Louboutins.

  Inwardly, I groaned. Really, could this get any worse?

  “You’re happy to see me? That’s a good one, Kendricks. Are you dipping into Mommy’s little white pills?” Olivia remarked in her patronizing drawl. She had one hand hanging over her shoulder, holding something behind her back.

  Before I could come up with a pithy response, La Belle from Hell droned on.

  “Terra told me you helped her out of a jam. Honestly, she’s an incompetent twit and does her makeup like she went to clown school, but I can’t seem to find a good assistant these days. I go through them like napkins.”

  What a shocker.

  “So I guess I should thank you,” she said, frowning.

  Wow, that sounded so magnanimous. Not.

  “It was no big deal,” I replied with a shrug. Though my heart pounded, I tried to pretend that everything was fine. I just wanted her to go away.

  “You’re acting weirder than usual. What’s going on?” She came closer and gave me a funny look. “Is that your underpants you’re holdin’?” she asked with a smirk on her lips. “What’s wrong with your dress? Before it was snug as a sausage casing, and now it’s hanging off you kind of wonky.”

  Oh, how I wished there was another way out than to ask for help from my worst enemy! But I had no choice. I had to come clean. Besides, I told myself, she owed me big for saving her bride.

  I swallowed hard and screwed up my nerve.

  “Look, I need a small favor, Olivia,” I said, because it was that or skulk back to Mother in a shredded dress. “My zipper ripped out.”

  “Why so it did,” she said and walked around me. I heard the swish of nylon over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of a slim garment bag. “Well, wouldn’t you know but I’m in a bit of a bind myself. Maybe we can help each other out.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. But beggars could hardly be choosers.

  “Help each other how?”

  She whipped the garment bag around and shoved it toward me. “Seems we’re one bridesmaid short. I just got a call from Penny’s cousin, Darlene. She has pink eye,” Olivia said as she unzipped it and unveiled the most hideous chiffon dress with a giant bow that looked like a butterfly perched on one shoulder and a skirt comprised of tiny rosettes all stitched together. To add to its crazy-­quilt quotient, the dress was a shade of purple somewhere between lavender and eggplant.

  “Couldn’t she just wear an eye patch?” I suggested.

  Olivia looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What is she, a pirate? Like that wouldn’t ruin all the wedding pictures entirely,” she said and shoved the chiffon monstrosity in my direction. “What do you think?”

  “Wow,” I said, for lack of anything nice.

  “It was custom-­made by a very hip designer named Draco,” she replied defensively, as if that suddenly made it pretty. “Okay, so it’s not his finest work. It was during his naturalist phase. But he couldn’t get the dresses Penny wanted done in time when the wedding got moved up. Even still, it’s not so bad”—­Olivia gave the dress a loving pat—­“they flew out of the store when Macy’s sold them off the rack last season. Though I shouldn’t expect someone like you to know anything about what’s fashionable,” she tacked on, and my back stiffened.

  Maybe they “flew” out of the store because that enormous butterfly on the shoulder needed to migrate to Mexico for the winter. Maybe my fashion sense was resigned to Gap T-­shirts and Levi’s; but I didn’t require a degree in runway to see that the dress was completely overdone. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in it.

  “Um, could you go get Cissy for me,” I said, because Olivia didn’t appear to grasp my situation. “I’m sure my mother can figure out how I can attend this wedding in something that’s not in shreds, or else I guess we’ll have to leave this lovely shindig you’re throwing, and what a shame that would be.”

  But Olivia merely wiggled the dress in my face.

  “It’s a size eight,” she said, giving me the once-­over. “You should totally be able to get it on without blowing out the zippe
r.” Then she looked at my feet. “There are shoes, too, in the bottom of the bag. Surely you can squeeze into seven and a half. So ditch the clodhoppers, will you and get changed.”

  Whoa. “What?”

  “Hurry up,” she said. “The natives are restless. We need to get this show on the road before anything else happens to derail the happy occasion. Penny Ryan needs to get married today! If she doesn’t, pissy old Les is going to pitch a fit, and I’m already on his shit list.”

  Pissy old Les?

  “Lester Dickens?” I said. “Why would he care?”

  “He’s the one who pushed up this wedding. Why do you think we’re at his house? There was nothing else available on such short notice except church basements,” Olivia said and swallowed. “If things don’t go as planned and Penny doesn’t tie the knot today, it’ll be my fault. You’ll see.”

  So Lester Dickens wasn’t merely being generous by allowing the ceremony to take place at his house. He’d pressured the Ryans to move up the wedding date. It was probably his idea to confiscate the cell phones, too.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” Olivia barked, causing me to jump.

  I had a sudden attack of déjà vu, since that was exactly what Cissy had said when she showed up at my condo with the Spanx and Carolina Herrera dress that still had its price tag dangling.

  “Five minutes?” I repeated, and then the full impact of the situation hit me. “Oh, no, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not getting into that chiffon mess and playing Penny’s bridesmaid!”

  “You can’t go outside this room lookin’ like you were mauled by a coyote, now can you?” She gave me a triumphant smile. “And I can’t have asymmetry in my wedding party. It would not play well in D Magazine.”

  “You’re nuts,” I breathed.

  “At least you won’t need a shoehorn to get into this puppy,” she remarked and eyed the crumpled Spanx in my hand. “Penny’s cousin isn’t skinny either.”

  Wow, was that a slam about my weight? If I’d had another option, I would have told her to take that dress and shove it.

  I started to say, “My mother will wonder where I am—­”

  “I’ll take care of Cissy,” Olivia cut me off. “I promise to tell her what’s up so she won’t send out a posse of Texas Rangers looking for you.”

  “I barely know the bride, so playing her bridesmaid seems almost sacrilegious,” I protested, only to have Olivia wave a hand to shush me.

  “Oh, honey, I’ve had to hire bridesmaids for society weddings so the spread looks good in Town & Country,” she said dismissively. “Some of these girls can’t drum up a real friend to save their lives and others have bridesmaids too ugly to photograph through cheesecloth.”

  I wondered if Olivia was speaking from personal experience about not having a real friend to save her life. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be buddies with her. That would entail having an eye in the back of your head to avoid being stabbed in the back.

  I wet my lips and made sure to properly enunciate every word, for all the good it would do me. “No,” I told her, “I will not replace Penny’s cousin in her wedding party. Capisce?”

  “Oh, yes, you can, and you will,” Olivia insisted and pushed the garment bag at my chest. “Now shake a leg, Kendricks. I’m going upstairs to grab the others then I’ll be back for you in”—­she checked the glittery watch on her wrist—­“four minutes and thirty seconds. And you’d better be ready or I’ll post a pic of you in your undies in the equipment cage on Facebook for Throwback Thursday this week. How does that sound?”

  It sounded like a threat.

  What could I do? Besides strangle her, I mean, which was pretty tempting.

  “Swell,” I murmured.

  I hadn’t even wanted to come to this wedding and suddenly I was standing in for a bridesmaid? I wasn’t sure if Olivia was doing a favor for me or if I was doing the favor for her. But I took the dress from her because I didn’t have a choice.

  Ugh.

  “Oh, hey, and run a brush through that tangled nest on your head,” my nemesis added as she sashayed toward the door and paused. Her grin disappeared, so she just looked plain irritated. She raised a fist in the air like Scarlett O’Hara and declared, “As God is my witness this ceremony’s starting in ten minutes.”

  She left me to change, and I glared at her retreating back. It was all I could do not to scream out loud. So I simply screamed in my head.

  Worst. Wedding. EVER.

  Yet another reason I didn’t want Olivia La Belle coming anywhere near mine.

  Chapter 5

  If there was one good thing about standing in for Penny’s cousin with pink eye—­and standing on my feet in borrowed heels for half an hour—­it was that I actually did fit into the ugly purple dress without the Spanx. Breathing felt natural again, and I realized I’d be able to eat every bite of the catered dinner and a piece of Millie’s seven-­tiered wedding cake to boot.

  So instead of wallowing in self-­pity, which I’d gotten pretty good at in my thirty-­plus years on the planet, I focused on the positive and tried to smile for Penny’s sake, ignoring the quizzical looks from her family and from my own mother as well.

  “. . . your love is like the sunrise, so pink and soft and promising sunny skies and calm winds . . . ,” the groom said tearfully, reading from a crib sheet tucked into his sweaty palm.

  I tried not to cross my eyes.

  Truly, I made my best effort to focus on the happy couple as they wept and stumbled their way through their handwritten vows, but my gaze kept straying to the rows of guests; in particular, to the way-­back row on the bride’s side where my mother sat.

  If I peered between two large hats, I could see her blond hair styled à la Grace Kelly in Rear Window. She sat as ramrod straight as ever, her chin up and shoulders squared. Her posture was always perfect, I thought; her composure cooler than a cucumber. So cool, in fact, that just the sight of Cissy had intimidated me for years, until my adulthood when I’d unearthed the gooey center buried beneath the Ice Queen exterior.

  Somehow, in the intervening stretch since losing Daddy, my relationship with Cissy had gone from adversarial to grudging respect. And it hadn’t been easy. After disappointing my mother with my failure to debut, I’d left Dallas for college in Chicago and tried to keep my distance for a while; but Mother was a riptide and I inevitably found myself caught in her current. It had taken a lot of growing up for me to understand that wasn’t necessarily a horrible thing. Call me a slow learner, but I’d finally figured out that sometimes it paid to go with the flow when it came to my mom. In the past, we’d often fought about stuff that didn’t matter—­because that stuff wasn’t really what we’d been fighting about. I loved Cissy, no question. Still, she could vex me like nobody else. Maybe that was the nature of all mother-­daughter relationships. If you didn’t rebel, how would you know how to be yourself?

  Cissy must have felt me thinking about her, because her gaze fastened on me and she returned my stare. Then she cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. I couldn’t tell if she thought my performance as a substitute bridesmaid stunk or just the giant butterfly on the one-­shouldered dress. It was probably a bit of both.

  I quickly disconnected, glancing at my feet—­the shoes were starting to rub my pinky toes in a bad way—­and then I looked at the bride and groom again, trying hard to pay attention.

  “. . . when I’m with you, your love wraps me up like my favorite Snuggy, warm and cuddly as microfleece,” the bride rambled on through her tears.

  And my mind wandered again.

  Thankfully, I stood well off to the side, the ninth of nine bridesmaids, so I didn’t have to do anything important like perform a reading or hold the bride’s bouquet. I tightened my hold on the nosegay of dripping purple orchids, and I smiled, thinking I’d have a good story to tell Malone when I got home.<
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  I could already picture him shaking his head and saying, “Geez, Andy, how do you always manage to get yourself into such messes? You’re like a magnet for trouble.” Then we’d both laugh, and I’d swear that I’d never go anywhere alone with my mother again because we both knew that always ended up in disaster.

  “. . . you may now kiss the bride,” the minister said, his voice interrupting my thoughts.

  Wait, what? Kiss the bride? We were there already?

  Yay, I thought, hoping I could ditch the borrowed shoes soon. My pinky toes ached like blisters were brewing.

  “Thank you, Jesus, now the baby’s legit!” bridesmaid number eight muttered beside me. “Penny’s mom and dad can stop having a cow.”

  I smiled and leaned forward, glancing past the other eight bridesmaids to catch Penny and her brand-­new husband Jeff leaning in for a kiss, which took some doing considering the width of her hoopskirt.

  Their lips finally locked, and I heard more than a few guests from the groom’s side whoop and holler from their Chiavari chairs. Those on the bride’s side merely clapped politely. Despite how cynical I often felt about old-­fashioned traditions—­pretty much meaning anything Cissy saw as “doing things right,” like debuting into society or wearing a chastity belt until marriage—­my heart twanged as I watched Penny and Jeff beam at each other before dashing up the acrylic aisle hand in hand.

  They certainly looked like a couple in love. They were young, yes, and maybe they should have waited until after college to get engaged, much less to get pregnant with baby Iggy. But whose life wasn’t full of ill-­timed moments? Just because you didn’t take the same path as everyone else didn’t mean your trek wasn’t worthwhile.

  If an old friend of mine hadn’t been wrongly accused of murder, I never would have met Brian. I’d still be living alone in my Prestonwood condo, designing Web sites for nonprofits, painting abstracts in my spare time, and wondering if I should get a cat. Not that it would have been a horrible existence by any means, but having Malone in my life amplified all the good, downplayed the bad, and somehow made dealing with my overzealous mother more bearable.