Best Friend for Hire

by Mary Mary Carlomagno

  “It would be my pleasure to serve the groom, my dear,” she said in a mock British accent that still came off as trashy, more Cockney than posh.

  I even bought her a little chauffer cap to complete her ensemble. Check, check, and check.

  After the rehearsal dinner ended, the invited guests and bridal party were shuttled back via minivan to the Hampton Inn on the Garden State Parkway, where they were treated to a discount room rate and a large amenity bag. Emily selected a large shiny pink metallic gift bag that looked like it could have housed a VCR rather than snacks. Emblazoned on the outside was Emily and Brendan, Happily Ever After, scrolled on them by hand, my hand, to be specific. All of this labeling was a helpful reminder to those guests who may have attended so many weddings that they might have forgotten which they were attending. Inside were a host of inedible pink snacks, including Hostess Snowballs, pink jelly beans, pink Jordan almonds, and an Evian bottle with a customized label. And of course, right on top of all that pink, sat a large box of Cheez-Its.

  Maggie rounded up her crew for their appointed rounds and was instructed to return by midnight, no later. I cautioned Maggie to stay close. I even stocked the minivan with water, snacks and aspirin to help, but I knew that would make little difference. I didn’t mind if Brendan was hungover, that was a given, but I didn’t want any vomiting. That would send Emily into a clinic.

  Emily stayed in my room, so we could have “a slumber party,” as she put it, but I suspected that she wanted to torture me with her mood swings and last-minute jitters until the bitter end. Maggie texted me at 11:30 to tell me she was leaving the last club and would be back to the “robin’s nest” soon. She had adopted using odd code language in her new capacity, as if she were guarding the president. Her ward she called “Dodo.” I expected “Dodo” and the boys to be tucked into their rooms, so I was surprised to get a text from her minutes later that said:

  “Hotel bar. Stragglers. Backup. Stat.”

  I popped into the bathroom, out of earshot of my captor. Emily pounded on the door, demanded to know what I was doing in there, without her.

  “Location confirmed. I am on it,” I texted.

  “Where are you going? You can’t leave me,” Emily stamped.

  “Just a last-minute little surprise for our little princess bride.” My lie had the desired affect and Emily’s mood suddenly swung back.

  “Yay, this is so fun. I wish I could get married every day!” she exclaimed as she clapped her hands. After I had her settled back in bed with her bunny slippers and a large pink grapefruit juice, I headed downstairs in yoga pants and flip flops, anxious to clean up whatever disaster awaited me in the hotel bar. When I arrived, I found Brendan sitting on the lap of a scantily-clad woman in a nurse’s outfit who introduced herself as “Candy Stripper.”

  “You see. We were reading to the blind.” He laughed.

  Any thought of getting sleep the night before the momentous day was swept away, since I spent most of the night trying to locate the ushers and, one by one, extricate them from their chosen professional dancer. Brendan, who had decided he had enough of the bride getting all the attention, made a late-night bid of his own and carried on at the hotel bar until hotel security finally persuaded him to go up to his room. His stunning rendition of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want to” was forever seared into my mind’s eye. At 4 a.m., I was back in my room, unable to sleep; I paced the floor waiting for the next breakdown to occur. I went through a mental checklist of all the events that would follow that morning, which, at that point, was just a few hours away. The hairdressing team of three was scheduled to “up do” all the girls at 7 a.m. The makeup team would come in 30 minutes later to do makeup for all the girls. Food would be delivered to the bachelor suite. Food would be delivered to the bridal suite. I adjusted the boys’ order to double the pancakes and bacon in an effort to soak up the alcohol each had ingested last night. The photographer and videographer also had early morning report times to begin the documentation. Emily did not want to miss a moment and asked that a camera crew be assigned to film the bride and groom in various stages of getting ready. Emily felt it important to have video as well as photos shot of her getting made up, getting her hair done, drinking her morning meal, checking her nail polish and then, finally, donning her dress, tiara, and veil. The video in length would likely rival that of a made-for-television miniseries, the only difference being that people actually want to watch made-for-television movies. With the exception of these video stars, I was doubtful that anyone would endure watching this epic.

  The lobby of the Hampton Inn was swarming with people, Emily’s people. The bride had gotten her desired effect of becoming the center of attention; there was simply so much staff on hand to get her ready for this day. The florist delivered all the girls’ bouquets. “Those look nice,” Emily noted. “Nicer and bigger than mine.” She then sent the florist back to readjust the size. To do that, a few flowers were taken from each girl’s bouquet so that Emily had the biggest and best one. The girls were gathered in the bridal suite getting ready and each was given an audience with the bride on camera to appear as if it were candid. The result was an awkward conversation with each girl, some of whom were so frightened of saying the wrong thing that they just bowed, smiled and left. By 8 a.m., we were posed for those awkward group pictures, like all the girls fanning their dresses around the bride to look like a huge pink flower. Maggie and I had donned Madonna-like headsets to keep in touch throughout the morning. As the wrangler of the boys, she had become essential to the process. And I needed her help to make sure that the groom was still standing.

  The makeup artist pulled double duty and headed over to the groomsmen for makeup as well. Normally this is not a necessary thing that happens on a wedding day. But the “stripper event,” as I referred to it, in the hotel bar had gotten a little out of hand. Pierce, the best man, had sustained some physical damage when he went to lift Candy Stripper over his head and smacked his face into the bar. The result was a black-and-blue mark that went straight across his cheek. The makeup artist used cover-up to make sure that he would appear as normal as possible in pictures. The groom, after a cathartic night of singing karaoke and screaming his lungs out about the impossibility of getting married, had fared almost as well as his best man. He got a few hours of sleep and was ill most of the night. I hoped that he had exorcised all of his digestive demons by the time the morning came. But the results of all that drinking and all that soul-baring rendered the groom with no voice at all. And no amount of Swiss cough drops was going to bring it back. The wedding vows, which were custom written by Emily, would have to be improvised unless he could regain his voice quickly.

  Another problem popped out literally with bridesmaid number six, Emily’s sorority sister, Rachel, or, as I called her, “Baby Mama.” Unknown to anyone, she was pregnant and not newly pregnant, either, but having-a-baby-any-minute pregnant. The dress that she had tried on had to be retrofitted to take into account her growing stomach. At the original dress fitting, she hadn’t “popped,” so to speak, so she didn’t see the point in telling anybody. Her logic defied the very notion of pregnancy itself; she didn’t expect to get any bigger. Two weeks before the wedding, she had a dressmaker secretly build a panel into the back of the dress to camouflage her growing belly, but the dress was still too small. I stuffed a pink Pashmina scarf into the back to cover as much skin as possible. We would be fine as long as she didn’t go into labor. I warned the photographer and videographer to shoot Rachel at a distance and only from the front, not the side. Once the girls were dressed and deposited into their Hummer limo to go to the church, I awaited the father of the bride, who would escort Emily in their own separate Hummer. Emily’s father was a wealthy man who had made his money in the pharmaceutical business, like many in New Jersey had. He ran Merck, or some other large company in the late 1990s and then bailed out on a golden parachute and took his secretary wit
h him for the next chapter of life. The two had been carrying on a secret affair for 10 years. Post-retirement, he spent most of his time golfing and smoking cigars and relished the fact that all of his hard work had netted a great wedding day for his “only baby girl.” But he’d divorced wife number one and upgraded to the newer model, so naturally, Emily hated the new wife, blaming her for “stealing Daddy” and shattering her perfect image of her parents’ storybook marriage. When the couple arrived at the bridal suite to see Emily, she ran into the bathroom and told me to “get rid of her.”

  Deidre, the quintessential trophy wife, was probably around my age. She left without causing a scene, making me think that she had been in that position before. And my position of being good cop to Emily’s terrible cop was also familiar. It was like one of those episodes of Law and Order when one of the cops is too emotionally invested in the case and the other, more logical, cop has to talk his partner down and get the convicted person to confess.

  After depositing everyone in their Hummer limos, I checked on “Dodo” and the groomsmen. Pierce looked adequate enough, if not slightly pink. The rest of the party was in working condition. But “Dodo,” unfortunately, was not well. The lack of sleep and dehydration had wreaked havoc on his body. In his weakened state, he was being held up by two groomsmen, who were giving him tiny increments of Gatorade that he fought to keep down. With assistance, he joined his men in their Hummer.

  The horse and carriage, looking for all the world like the one that had carried Cinderella to the ball, awaited in the parking lot. Emily wanted to make a grand entrance. The plan was to exit the Hummer and slip into the carriage with her father to enter and exit the church that way. I tried to explain to her that no one would see her arrive as the guests would already be seated inside, but she insisted on getting into the carriage nonetheless and going for a little ride with Daddy. It seemed impractical to have a horse and carriage drive around a parking lot and then load up the horse into a horse trailer that would travel down Route 22 back to the reception hall, where the horse again would be walked around another parking lot. And then, after the reception, be loaded up once again and walked around the Hampton Inn parking lot. I thought it was an NSPCA violation, but the horse trainer assured me that “Sugar,” the horse, did this kind of gig all the time. Apparently, the horse needed the money as well, backing up my growing skepticism that the wedding industry defies morality and ethics if the pay is good enough. I was taking a head count of all seven brides and seven brothers when bridesmaid six let out a shout.

  “This can’t be labor, right?” I pleaded with Rachel.

  “No, my due date is not until next week,” she assured me.

  “Next week? Seriously?” I couldn’t believe what I had heard.

  “I’m fine, these little pains happen all the time. I’ll be fine,” she tried to assure me.

  I believed her. What other choice did I have? The only thing I knew less about than weddings was childbirth. In the meantime, the creative cameraman interviewed each bridesmaid. He took his job a bit too seriously, as he asked each girl how they met and what their hopes and dreams were for the bride. And then off camera, he asked them if they were single and if they had ever done any other kind of film work. I noticed this and, while I thought it was weird, I let it go. I could only handle the top-level crisis at that point.

  When he got to interview the cousin, she let out a holler and screamed, “Oh shit, the baby is here,” just as Emily and her father entered the church. An enraged bride yelled, “Get yourself together, this is my day, not your day.” And as if by divine intervention, the labor pains immediately subsided. “False alarm!” smiled Rachel. Somehow, Emily had scared that baby back into the womb. Who could blame him?

  On the groom’s side, Maggie, who opted for a tuxedo rather than a dress for the wedding, had become the leader of the pack, something she had only dreamed about. She had no easy time with the groom, as the ushers continued to feed Brendan a combination of Gatorade and Ricola cough drops. Maggie organized the boys for their interviews. On the side, I asked the priest what to do about the vows if Brendan was still speechless. He joked that this would be good training for marriage, right? I didn’t smile; I had no time. He offered me his guarantee that it would all be fine. He had a plan. Meanwhile, on camera one was Pierce, who shared his euphoria about being back in New Jersey.

  “I‘ve never left the state for more than two weeks, ever, and that’s counting vacations. I always take one week.” He described his two-week business trip to Omaha as “scary.” “I mean, don’t you think that New Jersey is just getting better than ever? The roads look great. The beaches look great. It’s just even better than I remember it.” It was as if he had just done two tours in Afghanistan and was back from years suppressing the rebel forces rather than being put up in a Comfort Inn in an office park to be trained on special banking software. He also knew that he, too, would turn into a pumpkin in just a matter of hours. His flight back to Omaha boarded at 9 o’clock the next morning. With that ringing endorsement of the Garden State, the videographer moved to the groom, who had doused himself in the baptismal fountain in order to keep himself awake and refreshed. He stood and gave the cameraman a weak thumbs-up as he shook out the water from his head, like an Irish setter after a bath might.

  As the guests arrived, they were supposed to be treated to a stunning rendition of musical selections, but the church was quiet, the singer nowhere to be found. That mystery was solved quickly when I received a text from the aspiring singer letting me know that she’d gotten a big break in an off-Broadway musical. She had been called to replace “the girl” in the matinee of The Fantastiks. I had to find a quick substitute, and then I remembered that Daniel’s partner, Patrick, was a theater director. He could stand in. Patrick quickly found the lyrics on his iPad and up they went to the balcony to rehearse.

  Just as soon as I remedied that musical crisis, another was on the horizon and came in the form of Jimmy Fleming, the bagpiper, who embodied the modern day cliché. He was drunk beyond recognition when he had arrived at the church. He was to play the exit music of “Danny Boy” as everyone got into his or her respective cars to go to the reception and he would also perform a rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis that he had been practicing. Since he had about an hour before his performance, I put him to nap in one of the confessionals and assigned Daniel to help with waking him and getting him coffee before he had to straighten out and pipe right.

  Meanwhile, inside the church, another storm brewed. Two ushers ran into some difficulty as they attempted to seat the mother of the bride. When she got to the front of the church, someone was already seated in her seat. Deidre had taken the seat next to her husband. They both wanted to sit in the front row, but Emily’s mother would not have that “gold digging tramp” sitting next to her. Emily’s mother squeezed in between the pew and Deidre, causing a wrestling match between the two. They scrambled to get the front seat and each knocked their bottoms together as they tried to squeeze into the front aisle. The priest finally had to come to the front and separate the two. Emily’s mother won out and ousted the trophy wife to the end of the aisle, where she would sit next to the bridesmaids, who would be fanned in front of the altar and asked to stand throughout the entire mass. Deidre looked like a bridesmaid understudy instead of the respected position of wife of the bride’s father that she so desperately wanted to be. But she was luckier than the bridesmaids; at least she got a seat. The bridal party was asked to stand for the entire mass facing the audience, even the sitting and genuflecting portions of the mass. The bride and groom would also face the congregation, a late change that Emily had insisted upon.

  “I don’t want everyone to just see my back!” Emily added.

  The wedding was set to begin. The processional cued. Emily and her father walked down the rose petal-lined aisle with her cathedral-length train, two videographers hitting the floor in front of her commando
-style to get interesting footage of the bride. The pink bridesmaids were in waiting. The Princess escorted down the aisle by her dashing father into the arms of her gallant Prince Charming. This, of course, was how it was supposed to play out. But when Emily hit the white runway, her eyes darted around her, taking a mental inventory of all the things that looked off. The flower girls were too slow and were making a mess of the rose petals, the singer sounded like a boy not a girl, the best man was wearing more makeup than she was, and her Prince Charming was being propped up by a lectern, unable to stand on his own. Her bridal glow began to darken. She glared at me from under her veil and I knew that this would be the final revolution of my slow descent into madness.

  Emily’s bouquet, now weighed down by additional flowers and a solid silver flower holder, was just too heavy to carry. Upon reaching the altar, she was so aggravated by the terrible conditions of the church that instead of handing the flowers to her petite maid of honor and sorority sister, she flung them at her. Surprised, the petite attendee screamed and then flung the hot potato backwards, where it bounced off the head of Deidre, who had become accustomed to public humiliation. She held the bouquet and shook it with a little smile, becoming an unlikely seventh bridesmaid.

  The rose petals on the runway were plentiful as the bride had instructed but the result of the 3-year-old flower girl, who took an entire basket and emptied them at the end of the aisle, which proved to be a little too dense for the father of the groom. On his last step to hand the bride over to the groom, he lost his footing and knocked into Brendan, who was unable to steady himself, much less Emily’s father, and toppled over. The father of the bride landed squarely on his bottom before making his way to the nearest seat available. Emily’s mother, after fighting for that coveted seat, was once again abandoned by her husband.

  The priest was what you would call a progressive priest, one of those people who gives solid advice on topics he has no idea about, which, in this case, included holy matrimony. He compared the struggles of Jesus carrying a cross as a parallel to the kinds of hardships that a married couple would have to struggle through. He likened the doubt and betrayal that Jesus faced to be par for the course when you lived with someone day in and day out for the rest of your life. And then, to add levity to this monologue, he added, “Eternity and forever are a pretty long time, ya think?” I had seen this kind of priest before—at one moment he is damning you to the flames of hell if you miss confession, and then suddenly is your best friend, offering a funny, inappropriate quip to humanize himself.