Always the Bridesmaid

by Whitney Lyles

  “Anyway, it’s good to see you, darling.” She squeezed Cate’s arm.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  Cate noticed her back grow stiff and her gaze fixate over Cate’s shoulder. Mr. Lyons had arrived. His pudgy face was as red as a raw steak, and he dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Excuse me,” Ms. Van der Berke said. She turned to her gentleman friend and began to whisper something.

  Cate wondered why Ms. Van der Berke couldn’t be happy with her boy toy. So what if he looked like a young Sam Donaldson? She could make him her slave.

  Leslie grabbed her arm. “I need to give you your shoes and I’d like to introduce you to someone.” She led Cate to a corner of the lawn. A large brown box was filled with smaller shoe boxes. “Seven, right?” Leslie asked as she rummaged through the box.

  “Yes. I’m a size seven.”

  “Here you go.”

  Cate was dying to see her hundred-eighty-dollar shoes. She didn’t recognize the designer name on the box. Nestled in the tissue paper inside the box were two powder-blue satin sandals with matching satin flowers sewn to the front. “Oh. Wow,” Cate said. “They have flowers on them.”

  Leslie beamed. “Yeah! Now. Don’t lose those. Put them in a safe spot.”

  She pulled on Cate’s arm. “Now let me introduce you to the guy you’re going to be walking down the aisle with. He’s a great guy, Cate. He’s rich. He owns his own computer company. He has a nice four-bedroom house in Newport, a BMW, a Range Rover, and a boat.”

  They passed a frail-looking man with a long beard, wearing a yarmulke. He was conversing with a heavyset younger man wearing clerics. The rabbi and the minister. Then she led Cate to a group of people situated near the chuppah.

  “Cate, this is George.” He was shorter than Cate, which meant that he had to be about five-five. He was slightly overweight and had a strikingly upturned nose.

  Cate shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, George.”

  She was in no mood for small talk and thanked God when Sarah and Miles interrupted.

  Most of the rehearsal was spent planning for the Arabian horse that would be dropping Leslie off at the chuppah.

  “I want Russ to pick me up right under my arms like this,” Leslie said, cupping her hands under her armpits. “Then I want him to lift me, kind of in the air like in the ballet, as he pulls me off the horse.”

  Leslie was five-seven and had been trying to knock off twenty pounds for as long as Cate had known her. Russ was maybe an inch or two taller and probably weighed less. How was he going to hoist her around like a ballerina? This wasn’t The Nutcracker.

  The rehearsal became complicated when Ms. Van der Berke told the coordinator she didn’t want to sit on the same side of the grass as her ex-husband.

  “Well, he’s the father of the bride. He’ll be escorting her down the aisle,” the coordinator said.

  “I don’t care who he is. Figure out a way to keep him at least thirty feet from me. I have a restraining order.”

  A sharp whizzing noise came from Ms. Van der Berke’s territory. Cate turned to see Leslie’s mom stretching a tape measure across the lawn. She was crouched down in her Ferragamo heels, instructing her boyfriend to pull on the other end.

  “Thirty feet and three inches,” he called.

  Ms. VDB’s eyes locked on the coordinator. “Well, I guess he’s lucky.”

  Leslie inched closer to Cate. “I’m so embarrassed.” She looked drained. “This is supposed to be the happiest time of my life, and my parents have to stay thirty feet away from each other.”

  Cate put her arm around Leslie’s shoulders. “It is the happiest time of your life. I think if they knew how much pain it caused you to see them this way, they would be more civil. Just focus on the life you’re going to start with Russ, and let them worry about their problems.”

  She squeezed Cate’s hand. “You’re right. Thanks for being here.”

  The dinner that followed was a blur. Cate sat next to Sarah and Miles, who ordered martinis as if vodka would be officially banned tomorrow.

  She drunk-dialed Ethan somewhere between dinner and dessert to tell him that his food was better than the garbage they were eating at this rehearsal dinner. He wasn’t there but she left a lengthy message, reiterating that he was the best caterer she had ever known and a great friend at that.

  She received a monogrammed mirror that Leslie had given as gifts to her bridesmaids, then later lost it somewhere at the restaurant. It didn’t matter though. She had two others just like them in her purse.

  George had been seated somewhere to her left. By the time dessert came he had asked Cate if it would be all right to E-mail her. Smashed, God only knew what she’d written as her E-mail address on her napkin.

  The phone rang, and Cate groggily reached for the receiver, ready to hear the Marriott wake-up call.

  “Hello,” she said, noticing that her voice sounded as if she were a chronic smoker.

  “Cate! Where the hell are you!” It wasn’t the hotel wake-up call she’d been expecting. It was Leslie.

  Cate bolted up. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty!”

  “Oh my God. I didn’t get my wake-up call. I can’t believe this.” She had committed a wedding felony.

  “Didn’t you read the itinerary? We’re supposed to be back at the hotel in an hour for pictures!”

  “Do I still have time to get my hair done?”

  “Hurry!”

  Cate jumped out of bed. She endured ten seconds of a freezing cold shower, barely dried off, then dressed in something that didn’t match before sprinting from the hotel.

  “Finally!” Leslie said while her hair was getting the finishing touches.

  “I knocked on your door this morning,” Sarah said. “You didn’t answer, so I assumed you were in the shower.”

  A hairdresser smelling of cologne approached Cate. “Hi, are you Cate?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m Michael. Come with me. If we hurry, we can still do your hair.” He pointed toward a revolving chair. “Why don’t you have a seat?” Once Cate sat down, he immediately began running his fingers through her hair. “Since we don’t have much time, I think we should just put your hair in hot rollers and go for a nice curly effect.” He spoke to her reflection in the mirror. “It will take too long to pin up your bob.”

  Cate remembered Val’s wedding. The hairdresser had used curlers, and it had come out looking nice and wavy around the face. “That sounds great.”

  Leslie complained about the way her veil looked, loud enough for people in the shopping center across the street to hear. After the poor hairdresser readjusted the veil for the eighth time, Leslie said good-bye and gave Cate and Sarah specific instructions for the rest of the afternoon.

  Michael turned out to be an interesting character. He loved to talk about himself, which was perfectly fine with Cate. His tales of a porn star sister and cocaine parties kept her hanging on his every word while he rolled away. After he’d covered her head in rollers, he set her under the dryer.

  “Just stay here for about ten minutes. I’ll be right back,” he said. “I’m going to go smoke.” She wished he wouldn’t leave her.

  Sarah was finished with her hair by then, a nice classic French twist. She sat down next to Cate and they took a personality quiz in Cosmo together.

  They were reading their horoscopes when Michael returned. “I’m going to the bathroom,” Sarah said. “I’ll be right back.”

  One by one the rollers came out. She started to feel alarmed when she noticed that the curls looked like an explosively bad perm. They were tight, boingy—obnoxious. Complaining seemed premature at this point. She figured it was probably safe to assume that he had other plans for her hair and wasn’t finished. She was petrified when he ran his fingers through her hair, doused it with hair spray and said, “All done.”

  She looked like Shirley Temple on crack. This couldn’t be happening. Words esc
aped her as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t want to hurt Michael’s feelings. However, she sure as hell was not walking out of the salon looking like a wired poodle. Paul was going to be there.

  “Can you—um—flatten it a little? It’s a tad more poofy than I’m used to.”

  Michael looked at her with little expression on his face. Then he shrugged. “Sure. We can flatten it a little.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. He smashed his hands over the curls as if he were stuffing a turkey. A thick cloud of hair spray choked her as he pushed the fro against her head. “Is that better?”

  Cate was coughing. She couldn’t tell him, “No. It is definitely not better.”

  She could see Sarah’s reflection behind her. Cate sensed that she was just as horrified. “Cate, we were supposed to be there twenty minutes ago.”

  Cate was panic-stricken. “Michael, I’m sorry, but I’m not really comfortable with . . .” She motioned her hand around her head. “This. Is there anything you can do to change it? Just get it back to how it was before.”

  “Yeah.” Sarah nodded. “Do you think you could just run a flattening iron through it or something? Straighten it out a bit?”

  He released a deep sigh. “We’ll have to start all over. I can wash it and blow dry it if you’d like.”

  “We don’t have time.” Cate stood up. “Just forget it. It’s fine.” She’d figure something out in the car. At this point she just wanted to leave the salon. Her temples had begun to pound from holding in a flood of tears. If she looked in the mirror for another minute, she would start crying. She quickly paid Michael fifty dollars for doing nothing but embarrassing the hell out of her.

  “I hate my hair!” Cate yelled as soon as they were outside.

  “It’s not bad.” Sarah was a terrible liar. “It’s just really curly.”

  “Sarah, we have to do something. I cannot go to the wedding looking like this.”

  “You mean you don’t want to wear an afro in your royal blue disco suit?” They both began to laugh as Sarah smashed Cate’s hair with her hands. “Geez, he put enough hair spray on here. I can’t even get it to budge.”

  “I know. I could render someone unconscious if I accidentally bumped him with my hair.”

  “We’ll see what we can do when we get back to the hotel,” Sarah said.

  Nothing could be done when they got back to the hotel. All the other bride’s slaves were dressed in their outfits, waiting for Cate and Sarah.

  Ms. Van der Berke closed in on Cate. “You need to go get dressed immediately,” she said. “The other girls have already begun taking pictures.”

  Leslie glanced at Cate when she passed. “Your hair looks . . . curly.”

  She felt like crying.

  She spent a frantic five minutes in the bathroom doing everything in her power to salvage her image. Combing her hair only made it worse. The tight curls turned to frizzy blonde poofs when touched with a brush. She even wrapped her head in a towel while she changed into her outfit. She was minutes away from Paul. He was supposed to be sorry he’d broken up with her, not glad. For weeks she’d envisioned herself greeting him with an Academy-award-caliber up-do and flawless makeup.

  Ms. Van der Berke knocked. “Everyone is waiting for you!”

  They spent a hellish hour taking pictures that Cate hoped were destroyed.

  All she wanted was a new hairdo and food. Her body felt shaky and weak from hunger. It was two o’clock, and she hadn’t eaten a thing all day. After the pictures were over, she attempted to sneak away. She could practically smell freedom when Leslie intervened. “No one can leave. The wedding starts in an hour, and I can’t afford to have something happen to any of you.”

  She heard the horse neigh outside the hotel.

  “I’m really hungry.”

  “Snacks will be provided after the wedding.”

  Leslie’s grandmother, a small woman wearing a snowy white wig and mink stole overheard the conversation. “Well here, honey,” she said. “If you girls are hungry, I’ve got some peanuts in my purse.” She pulled out a bag of nuts that looked too large to fit in her bag.

  Cate wanted to kiss her on each cheek and hail her a hero. “Oh! I’d love some!”

  Cate anticipated the crunch of the nuts and the taste of salt on her lips. Her hand was within a millimeter of the bag when Leslie snapped. “No!” she barked. “They can’t have those. I don’t want the bridesmaids ruining their clothes before all the pictures have been taken. Besides it’s on the itinerary; no eating until after photos.”

  Leslie’s grandmother looked startled. Obediently she sealed the bag and stuffed it back in her purse. Cate felt the moment fade as if she had turned on her radio and listened to the last five seconds of her favorite song.

  For the love of God, Cate felt like she was going to faint. She felt like shaking Leslie’s shoulders and asking who she was and what had happened to her friend, Leslie. She could rent an Arabian horse and order four hundred table linens from China, but she couldn’t feed her friends.

  Watching Leslie get heaved on top of the horse was worth sticking around for. She needed three grown men to hoist her on top, and it took five tries before they finally got her up there, sidesaddle. Apparently the horse wasn’t comfortable either, because he reared, lifting his two front legs, just like in a Western. Leslie hung on for dear life as the beast attempted to lunge forward after bucking. Luckily, the trainer grabbed the lead line before any real damage was done. But she had to readjust her whole veil, which required her mother standing on a stool so she could reach her.

  Ms. Van der Berke was just about finished pinning Leslie’s veil when the horse parted its back legs and lifted its tail.

  Cate heard someone behind her whisper, “Oh no,” right before the horse dumped a giant heap of shit onto the lawn. The bridal party retreated as if a sprinkler had unexpectedly begun watering the lawn, barely missing grainy pellets of horse crap.

  “The horse shit?” Leslie glared at the trainer. “Is he going to do that when I’m at the altar?”

  “No. He just went to the bathroom. He probably won’t have to go again for a couple of hours.”

  Cate felt sorry for the man. He was just a skinny horseman, probably used to lifting small children onto his pet at birthday parties—not a high-strung bride, using his horse to emulate a love scene from Legends of the Fall.

  She was so curious to see how the horse would do when it came time to walk down the aisle that she forgot about Paul, her hairdo, and her gnawing hunger pains. She strode down the aisle at a comfortable pace, the idea of Paul as distant as the South Pole. She didn’t even notice if he was there as she stood at the chuppah.

  Excited gasps came from the guests when Leslie approached on horseback. A little girl stood on her father’s knees and clapped her hands together when she saw the fairytale-like scene unfolding.

  From her mount Leslie’s gaze locked on Russ. Cate thought she saw tears glistening in his eyes. Mr. Lyons led the horse with a gold rope. The guests were mesmerized. Some dabbed away their tears with tissues. As instructed by the coordinator, Russ headed to the horse just as it reached the second row. Leslie’s face was a spread of joy as she lovingly looked at her groom. This was her moment.

  Russ lifted his arms, pulling the back of his coat up and revealing part of his tucked-in shirt. And for a moment it was like a scene from a gold medal Olympic pairs skating performance. For a moment. When Russ’s hands locked onto her armpits, the horse shifted its weight. Instead of gracefully slipping into her groom’s arms, Leslie was shoved forward, the layers of her satin skirt cascading over Russ’s head and arms like a sheet settling over a mattress. The tent over his face made him disoriented. He lost his footing and accidentally toppled into the side of the animal. The horse, clearly agitated, began to jerk its head from side to side.

  “Help!” Leslie screamed as she tried to pull at her skirts, revealing her stocking-covered calves. “Heeelp!”

&
nbsp; Russ tried to maintain his balance, blindfolded and still suspending Leslie in midair. “Oh my God!” someone screamed as Leslie and Russ fell to the ground, tangled inside her gown.

  The horse released a disgruntled neigh and shook his head, flaring his nostrils as strands of his long mane swung over his face.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” Leslie screamed as the horse backed up. “My foooot!”

  Mr. Lyons yanked on the rope. The trainer sped down the aisle like a cop after a thief. Immediately, he grabbed the rope and led the horse away.

  The little girl who had been clapping earlier held her hand over her mouth, and those who had been dabbing at tears now sat wide-eyed. Cate sensed that everyone was wondering the same thing: What next? Would they continue with the wedding? Was Leslie’s ankle broken? Would they sue the horse trainer?

  Leslie popped up, smoothed over her dress, and announced, “I’m fine! I’m fine! I swear! I meant to do that!” She grabbed Russ’s arm, tossed her chin up, and proceeded to the altar. A few lime-colored grass stains were smeared across the bottom of her dress.

  The rabbi and the minister stood next to one another, waiting for the bride and groom to approach the altar. When Leslie and Russ arrived, the minister took a moment to clear his throat. He lifted his arms to either side as he looked out at Leslie and Russ. “All right then,” he said. “We are gathered here to—” He stopped, clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and put a fist to his mouth. For each second that passed, his eyes squeezed tighter. Cate thought he was praying until he turned his back to the audience. His shoulders and chest shook with uncontrollable laughter, tears streaming down his cheeks. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said as the entire wedding party surrendered to their own battle, laughing like children caught in the most inappropriate fit of hysteria.