by Jen Doll
The inn was known for its proximity to a store famous for blown glass, made on the premises. They had tours, we learned from our wedding packet, and there was a restaurant there that Emily vouched for. So the next day we went, partly also to buy the couple a wedding gift, oblivious to the fact that everyone at the wedding who hadn’t already purchased a present would likely have the same idea. The food at the restaurant was, as promised, good, and there were picture-perfect views of the nearby waterfalls. We shared chocolate cake for dessert, alternating bites. Afterward we took a tour, watching a guy with a long metal tube and heat-resistant gloves turn a shapeless blob of molten glass into something beautiful, and then we walked through the aisles and aisles of items for sale in the adjacent shop. In the end, though, we couldn’t decide what to buy. “I’ll find them something in New York,” I told Jason, and I did: vintage wineglasses in a shade of green I knew Emily loved, which I found in a shop near my apartment some months after the wedding. I signed the card from both of us.
• • •
We returned to the inn in the early afternoon and began to get ready for the wedding. I left Jason to shower and made my way with my dress and shoes and makeup bag to the suite in the next wing where we were to prep for the event with the bride. Emily was already there, standing in her white slip, her hair in curlers, being advised by the stylist she’d hired to do our hair and makeup. We primped and were pinned and polished, and as the sun streamed in from the windows, the pale blue of our gowns against the white lace of the bride’s created a dreamy, enchanted effect in this room full of ladies. We all felt beautiful, but more than beautiful, we had been transformed. With the help of bobby pins and hair spray and lipstick and our pretty dresses, we had shape-shifted from regular girls into bridesmaids.
It was time to walk down the aisle, a narrow grass-covered path surrounded by white folding chairs some yards away from the tent where the reception would take place. A few paces back from Caitlin, I strode out onto the lawn, clutching my bouquet of wildflowers carefully against my waist with both hands. I had not been a bridesmaid before, and I took it seriously, biting my lip slightly to make sure I didn’t laugh or cry. Despite the wedge warning, I’d worn heels, and they did sink into the lawn as mentioned, but I got through my brief journey without mishap and stood between Caitlin and Rachel, watching the ceremony from the bridesmaid vantage point that also allowed a view of the other guests. When Emily and Mark stood in front of us and promised the minister and the crowd of eagerly watching witnesses that they’d love and honor each other forever, I couldn’t keep tears from welling in my eyes. The couple kissed, and I looked out at Jason in the audience. He was sitting alone in his suit and tie, diligently taking photos of me and my friends, and seeing this effort—an attempt to be a part of things without really having to be a part of things—again brought forth a complicated combination of pleasure and heartache. When he caught me looking at him, he smiled and pointed the camera in my direction. I smiled back.
The crowd descended on the bride and groom, hugging and kissing and back-slapping and congratulating, while in the background the lawn chairs were picked up and toted away. It was that in-between time, after the ceremony but before the reception begins in earnest, and Jason came over and slipped his arm around me. “You looked so serious,” he said. “I thought you might cry.”
“I almost did, a little,” I admitted. “It was so nice, wasn’t it?” He nodded. I remembered he’d once told me he wanted to get married in his own backyard, and I’d argued that the guy didn’t get to just decide everything. As a wedding, this had probably not been too far off from what he imagined for himself. That felt like a kind of decision-making connection between the two of us, and I hugged him. “Ready for some pecan pie?” I asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” he said.
He took my arm and we headed over to the tent, where hors d’oeuvres were being set out next to the bar. There were circular tables covered in pink tablecloths interspersed throughout the space. The band was setting up to play on the stage above the dance floor. Emily’s little brother, a teenager in his own band, would be joining them for the first set. When he set foot onstage, the crowd began to cheer. Emily took to the dance floor with her dad, and Mark joined them with his mom. They swirled about elegantly at first before letting loose, legs and arms flailing, good and properly getting down.
The next hour, and the one after, seemed to go by in seconds. Wedding time is different, after all, than regular time. We mingled with other guests at our table and on the dance floor, catching up with those we knew and making conversation with those we didn’t. As a bridesmaid, I was part of it, this thing. People stopped me to say they’d heard about me, Emily’s college friend. They hoped everything was going well for me in New York, and what a pleasant day we were having! It was so wonderful that the weather had held. I’d looked lovely up there, during the ceremony. Had I nearly cried? They certainly had! Oh, was that my boyfriend? What a nice young man. He was, he was.
We helped ourselves to food and replenished our drinks, and then repeated. I convinced Jason to get up and dance, which was not an insubstantial win, and as we swayed in time to the music, the sun slowly set. Nearby, Emily’s mom and dad were dancing, too, and beyond them were Caitlin and Cash. We were surrounded by couples, and for a moment, we all seemed perfectly aligned, artfully poised in the scene before the scene. It was an unsustainable note, but it was a glorious one. I have a photo of Jason and me from that day, our cheeks pressed together. His eyes are very blue and match my dress. He is holding my hand, and we look happy.
We sat down again, and it seemed to strike everyone at once that the bride was gone. We had not seen her in quite a while, in fact. Had anyone? Her groom was gone, too. While at most weddings a disappearance by the newlywed couple wouldn’t necessarily be cause for alarm, this felt different. It was too early for the party to be over. We hadn’t had dessert yet. The pie, they hadn’t even brought out the pie. There was a cluster of people talking near one of the tents, and her dad was in that group. They looked serious. I left Jason at our table and made my way over. “Where’s Emily?” I asked. “Is something going on?”
“The pie,” said her dad, who put his hand on my shoulder, consoling and calm.
“The pie?” I asked. “What do you mean, the pie?”
“They were setting out the pecan pie,” he continued. “She took a bite and had an allergic reaction. She’s upstairs with Mark. We’ve called an ambulance.”
“The pie had peanuts in it?” I said, flabbergasted. I knew Emily could not have failed to explain her allergy. It was the first thing she said to anyone who was offering her food. The wedding planner had to know, the wedding planner whose job it was to take care of things so Emily could have fun. I remembered my EpiPen training, and I ran upstairs, joining Emily’s sister Rachel in the doorway to the room where we’d all gotten ready earlier that day. Inside, Emily was sitting quietly on a love seat with her new husband, who had administered the epinephrine. The yellow case that contained the injection lay discarded on a side table. He was checking her vital signs. “The ambulance will be here soon,” he said, glancing at his watch. “How are you holding up, Em?”
Emily nodded, confirming she was okay, but Rachel and I were both near tears anyway. “What happened?” we asked. “How could this happen?”
Emily spoke slowly, wearily. She’d said this before. “There were peanuts in the crust of the pecan pie. I ate a tiny, tiny piece before realizing. I knew it immediately and told Mark. Don’t worry, Mark knows what to do.”
Rachel and I looked at each other, worried anyway. “Thank God they’re both doctors!” I whispered, trying not to cry.
“Thank God she married him!” said Rachel. We clung to each other, staring at the couple on their love seat, and broke down in sobs like complete and total idiots. Everything is amplified at a wedding, feelings good and bad, and it may be that we were only doing our
part to add to the emotional panoply at this event. We had to let our reaction to what had happened be known, to let it out somehow. It all felt so unfair. Not peanuts, not on her wedding day. Mark and Emily allowed us a moment before interrupting. This was their day, not ours, and they hardly needed two hysterical bridesmaids to make matters more dramatic than they already were.
“Look, you guys should go back to the party,” he said. “The ambulance is on the way, and, seriously, everything’s under control. Emily will be fine.”
“I don’t want you to miss anything,” she added diplomatically, and Mark nodded, keeping a firm grasp on her hand and an eye on her pulse, too.
“It will be okay,” he assured us again.
Emily’s dad appeared with two burly EMTs. As she was being helped downstairs, she yelled back at us, still enthusiastic despite the circumstances, “You have to tell me everything that happens!”
• • •
We returned to the party. It seemed the only thing to do, the one thing we could give the bride in this moment. But the mood had changed. While we danced and ate and drank, conversations would not start or end without understanding looks, hugs, and hushed side conversations: “Is she back yet?” . . . “God, I hope she’s okay” . . . “I can’t believe this happened at her wedding” . . . “Seriously, who puts peanuts in a pecan pie?” . . . “I would sue the shit out of that wedding planner.”
The wedding planner could not be found. I imagined she had fled as far as she could possibly go, maybe even to Canada, knowing she’d have to show her face at some point, but not able to do it, not now. Out of respect for the bride, for a while most of us avoided the pecan pie, but it was left out and eventually it was gone, consumed by those who weren’t allergic to peanuts. Hours later, after the band had stopped playing, the tent had been taken down, and the lawn behind the inn had grown hushed and dewy, bearing little trace of all that had happened earlier that day, Emily returned from the hospital. Most of us had changed into casual clothes, and Jason had already excused himself for bed, but I had stayed up, waiting to see my friend back to the inn on her wedding night, unable to sleep until I had. Her dad had ordered pizzas for everyone, and we snacked and chatted idly and hoped she’d walk in soon.
Mark was right, we needn’t have worried. She was fine but tired, dazed from the epinephrine and her time in the ambulance and at the ER. It had been a long day. The couple came in together, him helping her across the threshold and into the room where we were gathered. When we saw them we broke into a round of applause. She managed to stay awake for an hour or two before going to bed, and at one point, she and I found ourselves alone in a conversation. She laughed as she told me of the sensation they’d made at the ER, her in her white wedding dress, Mark in his tux. “That’s how you get service,” she said. Mark joined us and was laughing, too, but when I asked what they were going to do about the mistake that had been made, he got as angry as I’d ever seen him. “We told that wedding planner over and over again that Emily’s allergic to peanuts,” he said. “We have it in writing. She could have died!”
“On my wedding day,” said Emily, shaking her head. And then came the question we’d all been asking the entire night: “Who puts peanuts in pecan pie, anyway?”
The next day, Mark, Emily, and her dad were called to a meeting with an extremely nervous inn manager. The wedding planner was there, too, standing in the background, circles under her eyes, wringing her hands. She offered to quit. “That’s not necessary,” they said. The inn manager offered not to charge for the pies. “Really?” said Mark. “That’s your gesture? You’re not going to charge us for a dessert that could have killed my wife?”
In the end, I was told, the prices of the pies and a Champagne toast were struck from the bill. As doctors, with concerns about malpractice insurance long drilled into their heads, Mark and Emily were not inclined to sue. As newlyweds, they just wanted to get on with the business of being married. But the very next morning, as Jason and I were having breakfast in the inn before we began the drive back to New York City, I noticed a big bowl of peanut butter with a spoon tucked in it, set out among the inoffensive array of cereal and fruit and coffee for guests to consume with their English muffins and toast.
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Jason. “Quick, let’s get rid of it.” We returned the peanut butter to the kitchen and asked the staff not to put it out again while the bride was still a guest there.
A year later, Mark and Emily received a card from the inn inviting them back with an anniversary discount of 10 percent. They did not return.
9.
Forever and Never
A little over a year had passed since Emily’s wedding when Marjorie and Brian announced they’d be taking their turn down the aisle. I was still living in New York, still freelancing in publishing, and still dating Jason. We were twenty-nine, and it felt like it was time to start considering important things, like whether this was the relationship we wanted forever and what our next steps might be. I hadn’t told my friends—admitting it out loud seemed tantamount to relationship failure—but I was deeply conflicted. Jason was my best friend, the most important person in my life, and I couldn’t see my future clearly without him. Yet more and more I found myself thinking that if I really chose him, for always, and he chose me, we’d be missing out on something else, someone who would be better for each of us, and the better, if abstract, life we’d have with that other person.
The news of Marjorie’s engagement was hardly a surprise. We’d been expecting it for years, and so had she. After finishing grad school in Maryland, Brian had moved to Nashville to be with her. In my eyes, they were taking things slowly and reasonably, though later I learned that this time long distance had not been without frustrations. Marjorie was impatient to get things moving; Brian was hung up on finding the perfect book about proposing before he considered popping the question outside the confines of a page. They lived in separate apartments for a year before moving in together, into an actual house. Three years after we’d converged on my onetime hometown for Claire’s wedding, I went to visit them and slept on a queen-sized blow-up mattress in their den. We barbecued outside on the deck in the heat of the Nashville summer and drank cold beers from the icebox outside. They coexisted in an adult fashion of which I had been envious, with cars and jobs with health benefits and dinners they’d planned ahead of time and cooked together while drinking martinis. It looked natural for them, though I didn’t know if it ever would be for me, with Jason or without him.
Shortly after the proposal, Marjorie called to ask if I would be her maid of honor. I said yes and immediately went out and bought a couple of wedding-planning books to mail to her. This was the first and only such request I’d ever received (it still is), and I took it seriously. I would help in whatever way I could, I promised. Of course, I didn’t live in the same town and might not be the right person to coordinate the shower or bachelorette, or to get in touch with vendors or do whatever my duties might be—what might my duties be, exactly?—but I would be there and take care of as much as possible. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Maid of honor: This was a big deal.
Plans for the wedding began to take shape. The ceremony would be at the couple’s church in Nashville, the reception at the top of a building downtown offering panoramic views of the city. Marjorie, caught between the desires of her parents and future in-laws, and further challenged by the need to keep costs down, decided on a modest reception that she hoped would satisfy all. There would be beer and wine instead of a full bar, and filling snacks instead of a sit-down dinner. That meant crab cakes for Brian, a nod to Maryland; mini ham and turkey sandwiches for Marjorie, an homage to Southern banquet food; and a huge smoked salmon, lox without the bagels, to represent New York, where they’d met. I was invited with not just a plus-one, but with a date whose name came on the card, in calligraphy, right next to mine: Jen and
Jason. We accepted with pleasure. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.
A month or so before the wedding, a high school friend who lived in Nashville now, too, threw a shower for Marjorie. The New York–based bridesmaid team, which consisted of our former roommate, Violet, Marjorie’s college friend Kate, and me, flew down for the weekend to don our most ladylike frocks and sit and watch Marjorie open her gifts while sipping sweet tea and eating dainty little cakes. I wore a purple dress I’d bought at Ann Taylor Loft. It had beige polka dots all over it and a sash around the waist and, I thought, looked precisely like what a nice, wholesome maid-of-honor-type girl would wear to a wedding shower in the South. I dutifully took photos and recorded the gifts and names of their givers in a small pink notebook, until Marjorie’s mother, noting my unfortunate psycho-killer handwriting, took that duty over for me. I drank punch and ate finger sandwiches and mostly got over my latent horror of showers—is there anything worse than having to feign enthrallment over a bunch of brownie tins?—for one day. Violet and Kate and I had gone in together on our gift, which I did want to see Marjorie open. It was a large Le Creuset Dutch oven from Williams-Sonoma that I hoped would be a valuable contribution to the couple’s future in dining together. It was the prettiest shade of yellow-green and would look great in their kitchen. “Yay!” she said, opening the package and tossing the ribbons and paper to the side, where they were quickly collected by another party guest to make the rehearsal bouquet. “Thank you, ladies!”
Along with attending the shower, we three bridesmaids were there to help tie up any loose wedding ends. Issue Number One involved our wardrobes for the occasion. After searching all over Nashville for a gown, Marjorie had gone to visit her parents in Alabama and found a dress she loved at a David’s Bridal, that mass-market retailer that is both fearsome and functional, providing moderately priced, variously designed satin creations to the wedding-having public. Shipped to her in Nashville, the dress’s tea-length skirt, Marjorie’s rebel wink at tradition, had become a mess of wrinkles and uneven hems. While any issues were supposed to be referred to the store of purchase, the location where she’d bought it was nearly two hours away. That, combined with the matter of bridesmaid attire—we’d wanted to select our outfits together—meant a trip to her local David’s Bridal.