by Emily Tilton
Are you being a good girl?
A few moments later, from her:
What are you DOING? with an angry emoji.
Answer the question, Em.
To his delight, she sent back a blushing emoji. Then,
Kind of?
Remember.
Remember what? Two blushing emojis.
I love you.
Five smiling emojis, followed by one with a halo, a rose, and,
I love you, too, sir.
That made him miss her a little less, at least, even though his desire to see her in the gown she had promised would make his heart stop only grew.
* * *
The masculine portion of the wedding party watched Quint’s favorite movie, Master and Commander, after lunch. At three, in the middle of the climactic battle, Priscilla came in, having walked over from Arlington Street.
“Hello, gentlemen,” she called as she passed the TV room. “You need to think about getting into your tuxes.”
Hearing something a little exasperated in his mother’s voice, Quint got up to go to her.
“You’re seriously gonna miss this part, man?” Louis—who shared Quint’s interest in eighteenth-century sailing—asked.
“You know it’s fake, dude,” Quint shot back as he left the room. Really it was practically the only flaw in the movie, and it wasn’t really that fake.
“Book’s better,” called Dave.
“Truth,” Louis said as Quint followed Priscilla halfway up the stairs. The sounds of naval cannon seemed to echo his mother’s face as she turned to him.
“How’s Emily?” he asked, though he felt sure he wouldn’t like the answer very much.
“Well, she’s fine,” Priscilla said, “it’s the rest of us she’s driving crazy.”
“Uh-oh,” Quint said.
“Don’t worry, darling. You will have a beautiful bride, in a stunning gown, and then she will be your responsibility.” Priscilla managed a smile. “Now go get your ushers going. I need to get into my mother-of-the-groom dress.”
Quint turned around to find Dave standing at the bottom of the stairs, with an expression of disbelief as he held his phone. “Dude, I just saw some texts from Georgia…”
“What’s up?”
Dave seemed reluctant to answer for a moment, and then he spoke slowly, “Well… it seems like Emily’s having some problems with the photographer, and the flowers, and Jason.”
Quint chuckled. “Anyone else?”
He didn’t expect Dave to answer that, but the handsome doctor did. “Well, apparently she hates the bridesmaids’ dresses now, and she’s making Georgia’s life miserable.” He paused, looked down at his phone. “According to Georgia, anyway.”
Quint felt his face assume a glower. “I’m sure she’s not exaggerating.”
“Well,” Dave replied. “I’m sure she is, at least a little. She loves Emily, but she’s super jealous of her, especially right now.”
At that point they heard the movie end, and Quint went back down the stairs to gather his posse and get them moving toward the bedrooms where the dinner jackets hung waiting.
While he and Dave checked their appearance in front of the mirror in Quint’s old bedroom, he decided he should go ahead and broach the subject that had lain between him and his probable future brother-in-law, simultaneously uniting them and—because it hadn’t been discussed—dividing them.
“Emily’s got quite a spanking coming tonight,” he said, meeting Dave’s eyes in the mirror.
Dave smiled. “I was wondering about that, I have to say. You’re really going to discipline her on your wedding night?”
“I think I have to, right? What would you do? What do you think Jason would do?” It felt good to have it out in the open with a guy his age, who had received the same urgent invitation from the intimidating Jason Garrons, to make a commitment to the old-fashioned family discipline of his stepdaughters.
“I don’t know, man. I guess I’d do the same?” Dave focused on his tie for a moment, and then spoke with more assurance. “Yeah, I’d absolutely do the same. You need to make it clear that she’s got to think about the consequences. You could say that your wedding only happens once, but I guess I think that makes it even more important for her to behave, and even more important to teach her some self-control. How many times have you spanked her?”
“Just the once, after the shower.” Quint looked down to adjust his cummerbund. “How about you and Georgia?”
Dave chuckled. “That depends on what you count as spanking, I guess. I mean, I’ve only disciplined her twice. But she does this thing now where she tells me she’s been very naughty and needs a spanking, and that’s like almost every day.”
Quint felt a guilty surge of jealousy at this news.
“I don’t know if it’s the wedding or the spanking,” Dave went on, “but that girl has been seriously horny for a month now.”
He seemed to notice something in Quint’s expression, then, that drew a consolatory response. “I’m sure Emily’s going to be like that on your honeymoon. Don’t be too hard on her—this thing is really stressful.”
“You’re telling me,” Quint said, turning to greet the other four ushers, all of them looking dashing in their white dinner jackets and blue bowties to match the bridesmaids and the flowers.
Chapter Seventeen
Emily really, really hadn’t meant to scream at the photographer. But it just wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t been able to see the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses properly in the fitting room at the bridal boutique—they must have had some strange shade of lighting in there that made the blue look more saturated than it actually turned out to be. It wouldn’t match the periwinkles in her bouquet and in the men’s boutonnieres and on the tables at the reception, and it wouldn’t match the bowties and cummerbunds.
How could Priscilla and Georgia not see what a disaster the dresses were? The fit was horrendous even on Georgia, and Heather looked frightful.
Emily said, as the photographer and his assistant were trying to arrange the bridesmaids in the living room for a ‘candid’ shot of pre-wedding girl talk, “Georgia, go over to Comm Ave and get Dave’s bowtie, right now.”
Maria, looking impossibly elegant and old-world in a simple dark green dress that emphasized her modest curves just a bit, said, “No, Georgia, don’t do that, please.”
Priscilla said, “Emily, the dresses are the color they are. I think it’s the same as the ushers’ ties, but…”
“Em, it is the same blue,” Georgia tried. “I promise. It just looks a little different in the photographer’s light.”
Emily looked at the photographer’s assistant, moving one of those horrid silver umbrella things a little bit, so that the bright light from the lamp she had raised nearly to the Victorian high ceiling of the Easton living room would fall in some arcanely better way on the girls. She stood on a chair as she responded to the photographer’s impossibly fussy instructions on the positioning of the thing.
She looked at the photographer, an elderly man who had seemed so polite and kind when he had arrived at ten a.m., a half-hour after Maria, before everything had gone wrong. Jason had grumbled to Maria about the photographer invading their home, but that seemed to be a kind of private joke between them.
In that pre-disaster, rosy state, thinking about how very naughty Quint had made her be in bed the night before, so that she had drifted off to sleep with her pussy aching and her bottom tingling in anticipation of the spanking that awaited her at the end of the long, happy next day, Emily had hoped that her stepfather had indeed begun something with the wedding planner. Even if it was only a glorified hookup of some kind, Jason deserved some happiness.
Everything had gone well, with the roses from Quint and the naughty little texting episode during lunch with her bridesmaids. Emily could tell that she had begun to get nervous and even a tiny bit bitchy, but the whole thing, thanks to Maria, had remained under control.
But n
ow Devin Marks, the photographer, had shown his true colors, and they belied the immaculate suit he wore. He was a tyrant, and his assistant Susan was his thuggish director of secret police, or something, telling them to turn this way or that, touching Emily without warning to adjust her gown or even her hair.
“Turn the light off,” Emily said to Devin. She didn’t mean to sound rude, but she supposed she did. She didn’t care, however. She had to figure out exactly how big a disaster the color of the dresses was going to be.
“I’m so sorry,” Devin said smoothly but also unperturbed. “I can’t do that. We need to set up the shot.”
“Maria!” Emily said. “Tell him to turn the light off.” She paused for a moment, and her face grew hot as she looked from Maria’s calm face to see Jason standing behind her, anger growing on his. “Please.”
Priscilla tried to calm her down. “Emily, honey. The color is fine. I promise. Maria made completely sure of that. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Maria said. “Emily, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Georgia!” Emily said, realizing that she had raised her voice but now finding it appropriate since no one else could see the gravity of the situation. “Georgia! Where are you?”
“I’m right here,” Georgia said from behind her.
“Get me my bouquet. I want to check the color of the periwinkles in this light, if these people refuse to turn it off.”
Georgia stood for a moment, looking ridiculous in the horrible bridesmaid dress that Emily had no idea why she had chosen. She had an expression on her face somewhere between anger and tears. Emily had no time for that, but maybe she could at least smooth things a bit, so she said, “Please.”
Devin Marks said to Maria, “Can we just get this shot before we check the flowers?”
Emily felt the rage and frustration swell in her chest. She was trying so hard to keep it together in the face of everyone else doing all in their power, as far as she could tell, to destroy the happiest day of her life. For a moment, she thought about the consequences—she even thought about Quint, and wondered whether he would hear about this catastrophe. Something in the back of her mind said she might be sorry, at some point, for the way she was acting. The rest of her refused to listen.
She screamed, “No, you can’t! Why isn’t anyone listening to me? I’m the bride! Get me my fucking bouquet, Georgia!”
Georgia burst into tears and ran from the room. Jason, whose face had been angry a moment before, seemed to take the f-bomb like a chest wound: his face fell, and he turned and left the room after Georgia, clearly to console her. The other bridesmaids looked uncomfortable, but Heather said, “Don’t worry, Emily. I think the color is perfect. Let’s just let them take the shot.”
But Emily by that time didn’t care to have this precious memory committed to posterity. It wasn’t her fault.
Maria said, “Emily, why don’t you take a moment in your room? Devin, let’s just start without the bride?”
Ten minutes later, Emily and Georgia hugged and returned to the living room, and everything was tight smiles and babbling words about how beautiful the day was. Emily had to admit that the match of the dresses with the periwinkles was better than she had feared. But she still felt sure the appearance of the ushers and above all the groom would show how great a disaster Maria had created. And now she also had the wedding planner’s sending her to her room about which to seethe.
* * *
She got out of the limo in Copley Square, with the Hancock building looming in reflective glory behind her and the beautiful pile of Trinity’s two-toned brownstone in front of her. Jason extended his hand, and Emily took it, with Georgia adjusting her veil and her train behind her to get out of the car smoothly. She thought she could hear people in the gathering dusk going “Awww,” and that made her a little happier.
The sight of Maria standing there next to the bridesmaids, though, reminded her of how awful the afternoon had been, and how Heather had snuck a peek while Emily was getting dressed, and tittered at the lingerie Emily had chosen for Quint’s eyes only. She knew she should be glad to be a blushing bride, and even happy to show off what she meant to do to please her man tonight, but along with the debacle of the dresses and the photographer and the flowers, she just didn’t think she felt the way a June bride was supposed to feel.
Thinking about what Quint would say—how he would look at her, even, when she walked down the aisle, since she had no doubt that Priscilla had told him about her reaction to the problem with the colors—made her anxious, instead of happy. Even thinking about how wonderful it would be when they were alone at last in the honeymoon suite didn’t bring Emily any joy. She knew she had a good deal for which to answer, and she had to keep fighting the increasing volume of the voice inside her head that she had good reason to feel ashamed of herself.
She smiled at her bridesmaids, though, as she joined them on the church steps. And it wasn’t possible not to smile at the ring bearers and the flower girls in their beautiful outfits. Dave, looking absolutely gorgeous in his white dinner jacket, came out to give Georgia a kiss. A mixture of relief, shock, embarrassment turning swiftly to vexation filled Emily’s chest as she saw that the dresses, the ties, and the periwinkles in the boutonnieres all were, in fact, the same color blue.
“See, Em?” Heather said, obviously trying to be helpful but only succeeding in raising Emily’s blood pressure. “Everything’s fine.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Emily forced herself to say. She caught Maria’s eye, and found to her irritation that the wedding planner seemed to be evaluating the bride’s sanity. Rationally—and she thought it a credit to herself that she still had a rational voice inside her head—Emily knew that this constituted an important part of Maria’s job. It didn’t stop her anger from growing, though. She narrowed her eyes at Maria, as if to say, The colors may be right, but you sent me to my fucking room. You’re not my fucking mother.
Something in that thought stirred a different irrational part of Emily’s mind, but she had no time to wonder what it was: she shoved the mental lid back on it, because the music for seating Priscilla had started. The brass did sound lovely, filtering out, didn’t it? People were gathering to watch Emily’s entrance, weren’t they?
Priscilla kissed Emily on the cheek. She had tears in her eyes. Why?
Maria said, “Alright, let’s get ready.”
Why would Priscilla be crying? People always cried at weddings, of course, but now? When she was only just about to sit down?
You’re not my fucking mother.
Mom.
Priscilla had gone through the big, beautiful old doors of Trinity church, where Anne Easton had taken her girls every Sunday as they grew up.
An enormous, wrenching sob burst from Emily’s chest. Georgia turned to see. Georgia ran down the steps. Georgia hugged her, her own face red.
“Careful,” Emily said woodenly. “The… the veil…” But she didn’t really care. She didn’t care about any of it. Her mom wasn’t there. Her mom wouldn’t see.
Maria spoke into her phone, to her assistant in the church. “We’re going to have a hold here. I’ll keep you posted.”
Emily turned, looking through her tears, to find Jason standing, his own face so terribly sad, but with a smile for her.
“She’s watching,” Georgia sobbed. “I promise she’s watching.”
“Jason…” Emily said, stretching out her left hand toward him.
Jason stepped forward and took Emily’s hand. “She loved you so much, Emily. She’s so proud of you, today.”
That brought a fresh burst of sobbing, despite the fact that Emily could see some of the bystanders, even, were looking distressed. “I… I’m so sorry, Georgia. I’m sorry, Jason.”
“It’s alright, Emmie,” Georgia said, using the nickname of their childhood. “I love you. I understand. Oh, your makeup.” She turned to where Maria stood, looking rather tense. “Maria?”
Maria pulled a kit from h
er purse. Emily managed to stop crying. Her hair was fixed, and then her makeup, there at the base of the church steps.
Maria looked into her eyes. “You look absolutely gorgeous. You’re allowed to cry on your wedding day. It makes your eyes look brighter.”
Emily giggled through a final sniffle. Georgia said, “No, Em. Really, it does.”
“Ready?” Maria asked.
Emily nodded.
Maria brought her phone to her lips. “Go on with the procession.”
The brass and the organ found a convenient cadence. As Maria marshaled first the flower girls, then the ring bearers, and finally the bridesmaids in order at the door, the first strains of the sophisticated, distinctive overture to Charpentier’s Te Deum in D Major, the piece Emily had chosen as her wedding march at age ten, swelled from the chancel.
Emily could barely make out what was happening there, at the end of the long aisle down which she must now process on Jason’s arm, but she could see that the ushers stood in a row of gleaming white, to the right of the altar, and in the middle a tall figure waited in front of a priest in a white robe.
Oh, Quint, she thought, truly happy for the first time that day. Oh, Quint. Albright Peregrine Allerton the Fifth, don’t you go sailing away before I get there.
Chapter Eighteen
The scene in the Easton living room had not, in the end, amounted to the worst bridal meltdown Maria had ever experienced. That dubious honor belonged to a wedding at which she had assisted Heather two years before, when Maria had so offended the bride by adjusting her veil for a photograph that the girl had screamed to her mother that if Maria came near her again, ever, the mother must refuse to pay the wedding planner. That bride, all of eighteen, had then proceeded to scream at her bridesmaids, her father, and Heather, literally stamping her foot all the while, that the little Italian bitch needed to go, right now.
Heather had said softly to Maria, “I’m sorry. You know this isn’t about you.”