Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest

by Jen Doll

  In the midst of plotting my return to New York, the invitation came. Claire, a fellow high school sorority sister, was marrying a man from Louisiana. They’d gone on a date to a concert, and that had been it. We didn’t know much about him, and I hadn’t kept in close touch with her, either, in the years since we’d graduated, but this was a milestone. It seemed important to be there, as much for ourselves as for her.

  Marjorie called me. “I think we should go,” she said. “Fly to Nashville, and we’ll drive down together. We’ll stay with my parents. Brian will come, too.”

  I imagined my old house, the trees in the front yard, the parties we’d thrown back in high school. I could see the football stadium, the old make-out parking lot, the gas station where we’d bought Marlboro Reds and Boone’s Farm. I pictured the country club, where we’d thrown so many formals, and now the adult version that comes after. I didn’t know what I might find—baldness, weight gain, station wagons, babies?—but it was guaranteed to be at the very least interesting, worth the several hundred dollars I couldn’t afford on a plane ticket to delve again into my youth. And it was about looking forward, too. This was where so many things had happened. It might be time to consider what those things meant about who I was now, and who and where I wanted to be.

  “I’m in,” I told Marjorie. “Can we do a drive-by of my old house?”

  “Of course.”

  • • •

  I wore a wrap dress from J.Crew, small paisley patterns on black, paired with a wrist bangle and some cheap, blingy earrings. This was one of the few wedding-appropriate dresses I owned, though I’d frequently worn it to work, too. We spritzed and powdered and lipsticked and mascaraed and rolled our hair, sipping from little cups of booze, flagrantly breaking Marjorie’s mom’s No Drinks Upstairs rule. After a final check in the mirror, we grabbed our clutches and headed downstairs. Brian was waiting on the couch, watching a football game with Marjorie’s dad, who was reclining in his La-Z-Boy.

  “Oh, you look so beautiful and grown-up,” said Marjorie’s mom. “I might cry!”

  Marjorie’s dad tore his eyes from the TV. “Lookin’ good!” he said, giving a thumbs-up before a touchdown pulled him back in. I glanced at my friend. We did look beautiful and grown-up. As we should. We were on our way to see someone we’d known in high school get married.

  The majority of weddings I’ve been to in my lifetime have not been in churches, but this one was, a church with a choir and organ music and people seated neatly in mahogany pews. We filed in, the group of us in East Coast black. In contrast, the bridesmaids were dressed in a peachy, poufy pink satin, the color of a bride’s blush. The Southern ladies wore bright floral dresses while the men leaned toward navy and khaki, with preppy, colorful ties. Scriptures and stained glass filled the room, and there was a pastor in front of a cross. Before him were hands clasped in a promise, and after that came the pronunciation of man and wife. Violet, a bridesmaid, stood at the front of the room, holding a bouquet of flowers against the bouquet of material formed by the voluminous folds of her dress. I remember a feeling of surprise when the minister uttered a line about a woman’s role being to honor and obey her husband, though I’ve been told since that was another wedding entirely. That’s the trouble with weddings. As real as they feel in the moment, the memories, blurred by what you drank and how late you stayed up and how many people you spoke to or saw, but most of all by what you brought to the wedding yourself, can end up pretty cloudy. My recollections of this one are particularly so, it having been more than a decade ago, and attended by someone who in certain ways was more different from the person I am now than even the eight-year-old girl was.

  We arrived at the country club and made our way to a banquet room where silver buffet trays were lined up on tables covered in starched white tablecloths, Sterno burners underneath to keep things hot. The scent in the air was heavy hors d’oeuvres—melt-in-your-mouth fatty things, like baked brie and cheese straws and fried chicken fingers and Swedish meatballs. There they were, being carried about on plates, fragrant little gravy vehicles. There was no fear of butter here. Food was supposed to taste good. The walls were dark and woody, and the room felt akin to being in a high-end cave, or some wealthy person’s basement outfitted with all the bells and whistles so that if you didn’t want to, you’d never have to leave. The open bar was just opening. In the excitement of getting ready for the wedding, we’d barely eaten. I realized I was hungry and got in line.

  “Jennifer Doll,” I heard, and there was Nathaniel’s old best friend, Buddy, grinning at me and shoveling meatballs onto his plate. I had liked him a lot, until, in typical rumor-mill high school form, another friend had revealed he’d mocked my relationship with Nathaniel, saying he doubted we’d even kissed, much less “done it,” and that poor Nathaniel probably had blue balls worse than anyone in the whole damn town. That statement had brought more mortification to me than if someone had said the opposite. To be prudish, or to be considered that way, had made me feel I was forever uncool, the Coke-bottle-lens-wearing girl nearly getting pantsed in the playground all over again. There was also the fact that his statement wasn’t entirely false. Nathaniel and I had kissed, but we hadn’t slept together. I guess by the point we might have gotten around to it, I was already preparing myself for the future.

  We know this from class reunions, but it’s true at weddings, too: Just because you get older doesn’t mean you’re different inside. Feelings long past can pop right back up again when you’re confronted with something that wounded the previous you, especially when you revisit high school feeling only marginally confident about your adulthood. At twenty-five, I was sure of very little. Yet my former classmates were getting married. It was hard not to think about where I measured up, and I was afraid that when it came down to it, I hadn’t done much at all, not in my eyes, and not in anyone else’s, either. I desperately wanted to be something beyond misfit fifth-grade Jennifer, or high-school-debate-captain Jennifer, or throwing-parties-when-her-parents-were-out-of-town-and-getting-grounded sophomore Jennifer. Or Nathaniel’s-girlfriend Jennifer. And I was, I was! I was an adult, I had a job, I had a new town and an old town, too, I reassured myself. I had nothing to be afraid of. Also, Buddy might have information.

  “Hey, you,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

  He swallowed a meatball and nodded. “Sure has. How’s life?”

  “Great!” I said. “I moved to Boston, but I’m probably headed back to New York soon. I don’t know if you knew I was living in New York? Boston is great, too! Busy, you know, working, going out a lot . . .” As I rambled, I looked around the room. “How’s stuff here? Have you seen Nathaniel lately?” My ex didn’t seem to be in attendance.

  Buddy followed my eyes and inspected the crowd as well. “Last I heard he was living in Birmingham, dating some girl.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It’s Decatur, you know,” he continued. “Same old, same old. Claire getting married, though, wow. I guess we’re old, huh?” He seemed slightly dazed as he turned back to his meatballs. It appeared I wasn’t the only one confronting strange feelings about growing up.

  Moments later, Marjorie and Brian were at my side, ushering me to a table, sharing gossip. Weddings and babies, but also rehab stints, failing parents, even a divorce or two. Houses had been bought, companies founded. Jobs had been won and jobs had been lost. I didn’t see anyone who was suddenly bald and fat and driving a station wagon, just lives being lived, here like everywhere. “There they are!” someone shouted, and we all turned to applaud the bride and groom, headed out among their guests following their post-wedding photography session. “He seems nice,” said Marjorie. “She looks gorgeous. Oh, they’re so happy!”

  I caught sight of Jesse, another high school friend. He was the one who’d kept me most reliably informed about my ex over the years. He waved and walked over. “Well, hello there, stranger,” he said. When I’d
broken up with Nathaniel, Jesse had not been happy with me, but he hadn’t stopped talking to me or even, like my brother, yelled at me for being a jerk. He wasn’t judgmental. He had stayed in our hometown after graduating. His family was here, and I suspected he had never planned to leave, not permanently.

  “Hi, Jesse,” I said, getting up to give him a hug.

  “Mind if I sit?” he asked, gesturing to the place next to mine.

  This wasn’t a mere hello. He had news. I moved my bag to make room.

  “So, I have to tell you something about Nathaniel,” he began.

  “I just saw Buddy,” I said. I stopped eating and took a sip of wine. Everyone else at the table appeared deep in their own conversations. I swallowed. “He hadn’t seen him, though. What is it? Is he okay?”

  “Nathaniel is married,” said Jesse. “To a redhead! Get this: They eloped to Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii? Eloped?” This information did not compute. The Nathaniel I had expected, if not here, would be at home, watching TV from the couch of his little room at the back of the house, his Golf parked in the carport, its tape deck cued up to his favorite Hüsker Dü song. My Nathaniel, a lei around his neck, hula-ing into the sunset, cavorting in impossibly blue waves with a redhead?

  “As you can imagine, his mother was not happy with the elopement,” he said. “Anyway, his wife sort of looks like Little Debbie!” As Jesse began to laugh, I tried to conjure the all-American cartoon girl on the box of snack cakes, an image I hadn’t thought of since high school. I couldn’t picture her, and I couldn’t picture her as Nathaniel’s wife. But more than that, despite myself, what I felt was a strange kind of pride. Eloping to Hawaii has oomph. That’s the kind of thing I’d hope a future husband of mine would have the nerve to do, too. He must really love her, I thought.

  “I think he’s really happy,” said Jesse.

  We were interrupted by another friend from high school, a girl who’d been a cheerleader, who’d had the sort of popularity I’d once fruitlessly dreamed of attaining considering my lack of coordination and mud-brown hair. “How are you?” she said, grabbing my arm and squeezing. “Oh, my God, you look great. What are you up to now? Are you still living in New York?”

  “You look great,” I said. “You look exactly the same! Um, I moved to Boston for a while, but I’m in the process of moving back to New York. I miss it, you know?”

  “Totally.” She might not have known what I was talking about, but I got the distinct impression that she really did want to hear about my life and how it might compare and contrast with her own.

  Later that night, I found myself sitting at the country club bar next to Buddy. I’d had many drinks and, despite my best intentions, not enough Swedish meatballs. Things were winding down, but there was still that particular sort of tingly wedding electricity in the air. It’s a neutral energy that can so easily veer one way or the other. You can end the night in joyful tears over the shared beauty and love in this place, among these people in this moving marital moment. Or you can see fit to annihilate everything in your path. You will regret the latter, and you may even know that to be true as you persist in doing what you’re doing, but sometimes you can’t help yourself. As much as you try to stay with the light, there are certain weddings that take you into the dark.

  Buddy and I were talking or, more accurately, flirting. He’d always dated another of our friends, the artistic one with the great clothes, and I’d been with Nathaniel. Of course, Nathaniel was married now, I reminded myself. It seemed like the friendship between the two men had lapsed as well. All bets were off. I poured on the charm, talking Buddy’s ear off, bragging about how much fun grown-up life was in the big city. He seemed impressed, so I went a step further, wanting to rehash and resolve old wounds. “You know,” I said, “you really shouldn’t have talked about my lack of a sex life to everyone in high school.”

  “You never talked in high school,” he answered. “You never said a word. We were all just wondering who you were.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “’Cause I was wondering that, too.”

  “Well, shit, girl. We were in high school. Who wasn’t?” He motioned to the bartender for another drink.

  Marjorie, suddenly at my side, interrupted. “Claire’s dad is cutting everyone off,” she said. “We should go.”

  At this wedding, I listened, and we did.

  • • •

  On the way home, they told me later, I slid from side to side in the backseat of the car. I might as well have been on a roller coaster, involuntarily tilting back and forth, my whole body enjoying the ride. I sang along loudly to “Drift Away” and “Take It to the Limit,” alternating lyrics, as Marjorie and Brian laughed at my tuneless renditions. But it was a wedding, I thought, too deep in my own mind to explain; this was exactly what you were supposed to do at a wedding. Take it to the limit. Drift away.

  I woke up from a dream that I was in a dark cave permeated with a strange red light, and when I was able to pry one eye open realized I was facedown on one of the twin beds in Marjorie’s childhood bedroom. The pulsating numbers of a clock positioned next to me made for the crimson glow seeping into my subconscious. It was later than I’d intended to sleep. I touched my face. I hadn’t washed off my eye makeup or even taken off the dress I’d worn the night before. My shoes and bag were strewn across the room. Phone, check, next to my bag. What about my friends? Where were Brian and Marjorie? Had I lost them, through misplacement or, worse, offense? I heard laughter from the next room, her brother’s bedroom, which he’d vacated for college and where they were staying for this visit home. I pulled myself up into a sitting position, my hair a tangled mess around my face. My makeup, I was sure, was smeared down my cheeks. But I was here, and they were there, and nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. I was both relieved and disappointed. I shifted to the edge of the bed, and the clock fell to the floor with a loud thud.

  They heard. “Jennifer! Are you awake?”

  “Glahhhhhrrr,” I responded, seriously considering putting my head right back down on the pillow.

  “We need to get going if you want to see your old house!” shouted an altogether too chipper Marjorie. “Mom’s made breakfast. Some food will do you good!” I heard the clomping of their footsteps as they headed down the stairs, the clanking of silverware, bustling morning kitchen sounds. It sounded like home. It smelled like home, too, a home I remembered.

  For special events and holidays while we were in high school, Marjorie’s mom had made an egg, sausage, and cheese casserole, the sort of Southern food hospitable Southern ladies like to cook and serve. My mom would never make or consume such a thing, and surely it’s because of that that I loved it. It reminded me of growing up in this town, of the friends I’d made and their families, of who I was when I got here and who I was when I left. It made me think about the person I still had left to become. If family was the home you took with you, hometowns could also be families, no matter how distant they grew or whether you returned to them or not. Marjorie was right. This place was as much a part of me as Nathaniel was, as much as any of the shared history among all of us was. That didn’t mean it was the only part. But the next time I was asked Where are you from?, I might just answer Alabama and leave it at that.

  “Jen!” yelled Marjorie again. “C’mon, it’s getting cold!”

  • • •

  My old house looked almost exactly as it had when my family had lived in it: same gray paint, same trees, same Gothic columns, same three-car garage I’d parked in once I got my driver’s license, and even the same mailbox with its perky little flag. Across the street, there was the same sidewalk I’d taken every morning to get to the elementary school. It was all so familiar, like looking at an old photograph, and yet, as we slowed to a crawl and I stared long and hard at my former home from the window of Marjorie’s car, I could feel it wasn’t the same at all.

 
; 6.

  It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

  One weekday morning in the winter of 2010, I emerged from the subway to find I had a voice mail from my parents. Calls from them at odd times would always send a current of fear through me. We usually talked on weekends and in the afternoon or early evening. Why would they be calling me now? As I listened to the message, my anxiety level spun skyward. It was my dad, saying words no one ever wants to hear: something about Mom, a “brain bleed,” and the emergency room. I called him back immediately.

  “Hello, Jennifer,” he said, maintaining his trademark fatherly calm even in the face of inconceivable news. “I’m at the hospital. Mom woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move. I called 911 for an ambulance, and we rushed her to the ER.”

  I was stunned into silence. The last time I’d spoken to them, a week before, they’d regaled me with tales of upcoming biking and kayak trips and dinner plans with friends. There had been no clue of anything wrong. My dad had been making his famed beer-can chicken; my mother had been relaxing outside on the patio with her martini, enjoying the balmy Florida night. “Oh my God,” I whispered, trying not to cry.

  “She’s with the doctors now. They say she has dual hematomas, with bleeding on both sides of her brain. She’s going in for surgery within the hour.”

  A flood of questions began as I tried to find some way to make sense of this news. Information. Information always helps. “Does Brad know?” I asked. “Should we fly down? What’s going to happen? I don’t understand, how did this happen?”

  “I’m calling Bradley next,” he said. “I’ll know more in a few hours. Stay by your phone, and I’ll call you as soon as she’s out of surgery.”

  “But do they think she’s going to be okay? She’s not—”

  “Oh—the surgeon needs to talk to me,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”