Wedding Season

by Darcy Cosper

  I suppose I should have seen this as a bad sign. But I pushed on through that term to the bitter end, and bitter it was, though amusing, in retrospect. The professor of my trial advocacy class set up a mock courtroom situation as our final exam. Each of us was assigned a hypothetical case that we had to win twice—first as the prosecution and then as the defense—in order to get a passing grade. For a week in the last humid days of May, I sat by day on the jury, watching my classmates shift sides with the effortless flexibility of Chinese acrobats, and by night at my window, staring out past my haggard reflection at the parades of drunk, more or less innocent undergraduates rollicking down the street toward one another’s narrow dormitory beds. I was sleep-deprived and ill-prepared when my number came up, and went to class that day looking only slightly less miserable than I felt. And there, mere minutes into my trial, I paused, looked around at the woman who was acting as my client; at my professor, who was presiding as judge; at the jury of my peers—and fainted onto the floor of the classroom.

  I thought it ranked pretty high in the annals of courtroom drama. But after meetings with various advisers and teachers, and a significantly less than stellar report card, the heads of my department suggested, reasonably enough, that it might be inadvisable for me to forge ahead toward a law career. So I fled from the halls of truth and justice. My mother threw fits and claimed a broken heart; I think it was something more along the lines of profound humiliation, but either way I could do nothing to remedy the situation.

  Back in the real world, without the maternal legacy or familial expectation to guide me, I wandered vaguely for a couple of months, a shade in the American purgatory of the unemployed, trying to find some professional direction. Henry got me what was supposed to be temporary employment while I uncovered my true calling: I took a position writing headlines, photo captions, blurbs, and such at the magazine where she and Joan worked at the time. But the path of least resistance has a gravitational pull of its own, and down that path I continued as circumstance became habit, habit became experience, and experience became profession. And here I am.

  “JOY.” MYRNA’S HEAD appears around the door frame. “May I have a word?”

  “Just one?” I wave her in.

  “Hector wants us to woo his mistress. This is not good business.”

  “No?”

  “Doesn’t it seem rather shady to you?”

  “Compared to what? Helping crisis management firms do spin control on felonious movie stars? Writing naughty letters for porno magazines? How about those politicians you write speeches for? Not exactly spotless little lambs.”

  “There’s something about the individual versus the institution that seems more dubious to me this morning.” Myrna wraps a strand of hair around her finger.

  “Persuading the anonymous masses is more comfortable, of course.” I push the assignment book around on the desk. “Look. We’re in business, Myrna. We don’t represent our clients, per se. We don’t speak for them. All we’re doing is giving them more eloquent ways of saying what they’re going to say anyhow.”

  “But shouldn’t we attempt to maintain some modicum of personal integrity?” Myrna starts on another strand of hair, twisting it so tightly around her fingers that the tips turn purple.

  “Sure. You think that infidelity is wrong. So don’t do it. You can’t take on the sins of every philanderer in the city. And Hector will be cheating on his wife whether or not we write the letter.”

  “Aiding and abetting. Knowledge of a crime. You attended law school.” One section of Myrna’s hair is now standing nearly on end.

  “Dropped out of law school. We’re not really in criminal territory here. The stakes aren’t quite as high as you’re making them out to be.”

  “For whom, exactly, are they not high?” Myrna looks out the window and sighs. “Don’t you have a personal philosophy about lying?”

  “Yes, I do, about not making promises that I can’t keep, not misrepresenting myself, not deceiving people in that way. But it’s personal. I certainly can’t impose it on my clients. The entire advertising industry would become obsolete.” I wait for a laugh. I don’t get one. “It’s not like we’re condoning what they’re doing, or participating in it. We’re just hack writers. Says so right on the front door.”

  “I suspect this conversation is in vain.” Myrna releases her hair and spreads her arms wide, martyred. “You’re determined to take the assignment, aren’t you, Joy?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.” I let out a sigh. “If we turned away every job that seemed morally questionable to one of you, we’d be out of business.”

  “Very well.” Myrna gets up and heads for the door. “I have registered my opinion.”

  “Duly noted.” I watch as she stomps out. “Thanks. Myrna?” I make a screaming Munch face at the place where she was standing and pick up the phone, which is ringing again. It’s Charles, calling from a taxi.

  “We are going to make so much fucking money off of Modern Love,” his voice crackles through the cell phone. I think briefly of Myrna, and of my mother, and of the prostitutes who show up at dusk in the meatpacking district ten blocks or so from our office. “We are the proud producers of the Extreme Romance series, baby,” Charles laughs. “Love for a new generation of glamour slackers. An eco-tourism installment. Radical disc jockeys in Eastern Europe. A love affair on snowboards. The turbulent passions of a couple opening a trend-spotting company in Iceland.”

  “They’re only about ten years behind the curve,” I tell him. “It could be worse.”

  “Oh, fine. What would you propose? Something a little more timeless?”

  A story about a woman who has to attend seventeen weddings in six months, I think to myself. A bildungsroman. A picaresque. A comedy of errors. There are no original plots.

  AFTER THE USUAL postwork debriefing at our kitchen table, Gabe and I decide to have dinner at Café Paradiso, a restaurant on a little street off Washington Square Park. It’s one of our favorites, both for historical reasons (we had one of our early dates here) and because it’s nearly perfect: nice but not too nice, quiet but not too quiet, and the food is good, but not too good. I don’t have a particularly refined palate, and anything gourmet is pretty much wasted on me. Fine dining makes me feel guilty and skittish, and foodies—those people who get completely obsessed and collect olive oils infused with saffron and talk about heirloom tomatoes and moan ecstatically about the hints and tensions of this or that ingredient in what is, as far as I can ascertain, a tasty but ordinary entrée—suffice it to say that I don’t understand them. The first couple times we went out, Gabe took me to dinner at these incredible, multi-star-reviewed, celebrity-chef restaurants, and I was concerned that he might be one of the gourmet evangelists. In reality, he was just trying to be nice, and to impress me, I guess; after a few dates, he figured it out and brought me to Paradiso. I think that was the night I really fell for him.

  Tonight Gio, a rotund waiter who has developed a slightly proprietary relation to us, seats us at a table in a bay window overlooking the street; we order and watch him wobble back to the kitchen.

  “Mom called today,” Gabe tells me. “She wants to know if we’ve decided about spending Labor Day with them. Are you up for it? They’d really like to spend some more time with you.”

  “Labor Day? It’s not even Memorial Day yet.” Somehow I doubt very much that Gabe’s family wants to spend more time with me. Or if they do, it’s probably just to confirm their suspicions that I am not the girl for their beloved only son, and to demonstrate as much to him.

  “You know my mother,” Gabe says. “She’s big on advance planning.”

  “Will we be on the boat again?”

  “Nope. Maine. My uncle’s place. I think it’ll be nice.”

  “Ah.” Funny how the way Gabe says it, his uncle’s place sounds like some sweet little ramshackle cabin, when it is, in fact, a compound that occupies an entire island. I mean, a small island, but still. I really hav
e to get over my Winslow phobia, sooner rather than later. As Gabe’s spousal equivalent, it’s likely I’ll be seeing quite a lot of them; although he resists certain of their values and demands, Gabe is deeply, surprisingly family-oriented.

  “Hey.” Gabe snaps his fingers. “Speaking of schedules. When you have a second, could you get me the dates and details for all these weddings? Is it really seventeen?”

  “It really is. Three this month, four in May, four in June—one of those I’m going as arm candy with Charles and you don’t have to come. But Max and Miel. And my brother’s wedding. And your sister’s wedding.”

  “Little Mo. I still can’t believe it.” Gabe’s youngest sister, Maureen, goes by Mo; the other, Christina, a tall, lumpen young woman who shares her father’s tendency to speak without moving his lips, is known to the family as Teeny.

  “Believe it,” I tell him. “Then three in July, two in August. And Henry in September, if we’re still alive.”

  “Don’t worry, Red. Maybe some of them will get jitters and pick fights and call the ceremonies off.”

  “God, are you ever romantic. One of the many things I love about you.”

  “It’s the Connubial Summer Tour, USA. We should have roadies.” Gabe laughs. The little oil-burning candle on our table flickers and goes out. Gio, noticing, waddles tableside.

  “Look,” he tells us. “This candle has gone out.”

  We exchange glances and nod at him.

  “Oh, no,” Gio says. “You do not understand. Look, all this oil, it is gone. The candle has burned here for eleven years. No candle has ever finished since I have been working in this place.” He gives us an important smile. “Tonight I will light a new candle for the first time. This is an occasion. Marco, look! A candle has gone out.”

  “A candle has gone out,” I tell Gabe. Marco, the elderly host, comes to our table. Together he and Gio examine the candle as reverently as if it were a holy relic.

  “We light a new candle for you, my friends.” Marco regards us with a benevolent smile as Gio waddles away. “You must celebrate with us. I bring you wine.” He leaves, and returns with two brimming glasses. Gio waddles back, cradling a new candle in his hands, sets it gently on the table, and pulls a book of matches from his pocket.

  “Raise your glasses,” Marco exhorts, and we obey. Gio strikes a match and touches it to the new wick. It sparks, crackles, and then the flame steadies and rises.

  “To those things that burn long!” Marco makes a triumphant sort of flourish. Gabe and I toast him. Marco claps a hand to each of our shoulders and returns to the bar.

  “What was that all about?” I ask Gabe, when the Italians are out of earshot. “Vatican nostalgia?”

  “Longing,” he says. “Mortality, maybe. The comfort of continuity.”

  “What do you want to be doing in eleven years?” I whisk my finger back and forth through the candle’s flame.

  “I don’t know.” He gives me a lazy smile, and puts his hand over mine to stop me from fidgeting. “This. Something like this.”

  “I’ll pencil you in,” I tell him.

  Saturday, April 7, 200—

  THE DAY OF ERICA’S WEDDING, I loll around the apartment, trying to pretend I have nothing more strenuous in store for me than reviewing the outline for “Mountain of Desire,” the snowboarding installment of the Extreme Romance series. Gabe comes and goes industriously, picking up his suit from the cleaner’s, getting a shoe shine. He pauses in the apartment between errands and watches me shuffle from room to room.

  At noon Henry calls. She is in a spitefully good mood. When I answer the phone she is singing “Going to the Chapel” at full volume and off-key.

  “Henry, stop or I’ll hang up.”

  “Come on, my little bridesmaid!” Henry drawls. “All the Veuve Clicquot in the world awaits your ruby lips, and all you have to do to earn it is take a little teeny walk down a little teeny aisle. You’re still in your pajamas, aren’t you, Joy?”

  “Um.” I stalk toward the bathroom, shedding pajamas as I go, the cordless phone cradled between my shoulder and cheek. “No.”

  “Good. Because I’m about to walk out the door and hail a cab. I’ll be outside your building in five minutes.” She hangs up.

  I stand naked before the bathroom mirror and take inventory: item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two gray eyes with lids on them. One jaw line, squarish; one forehead of average height and width. Hair: by virtue of my apathy, medium length; by the dictates of my father’s DNA, wildly curling and of a very dark rust color known in polite society as auburn. Physique: on the tall side, angular to bony, no cleavage to speak of, knees still knobby, elbows still lightly scarred from excessive tomboy activity in my callow youth; overall pale and very freckled. Nothing new. Not much to brag about, but not much to complain about, either.

  Calculating for Henry Standard Time, I estimate that I have fifteen minutes to spare. I get into the shower, where I remain, thinking of nothing and humming advertising jingles to get “Going to the Chapel” out of my head. At last, I hear the front door shut. Gabe calls my name, and I turn off the water, cursing quietly. I dress at a leisurely pace, collect the garment bag that holds my bridesmaid’s dress, and shuffle into the living room, where Gabe lolls on the sofa with the dog, reading the newspaper.

  “There was a message from Henry on the machine.” He looks up. “I think her exact words were ’Stop dawdling in the goddamn shower or you’re going to make us late.’”

  “Thank you.” I sit down next to Gabe. He puts an arm around me and continues to read. Francis licks sympathetically at my hand. “This is going to be a shameless orgy of conventionality,” I tell them.

  “Don’t you start, Red.” Gabe gives me a little push off the sofa. “I’ll see you at the church at four.”

  Gabe may be on my side when it comes to marriage, but in other ways he can be quite traditional. His adherence to social customs, and his occasional impatience with my critiques of and resistance to same, is largely a function of his upbringing—his breeding, as his mother might say.

  Growing up in New York, I had wealthy friends, but I didn’t believe in the existence of people like Gabe’s family until I went to college and met some of my friends’ families: America’s version of the aristocracy, the Pips and Serenas and Edmunds, with their summers abroad and colonial winters in the tropics, their stables and tennis courts and marinas, family jewels and heirloom china and New England estates. The Winslows are of that variety, the rich who are different from you and me. His mother, a Mayflower-family descendant, has never held a job. His father, following in the footsteps of his father before him, was president of some bank before retiring at the age of forty-five. Gabe’s youngest sister is getting married this summer, at the age of twenty-three, to a banker. Her marriage announcement will read something like: “Until recently, Mrs. So and So was an executive assistant at the Ladies’ Aid Society,” which means that she will not malign her husband’s ability to provide by continuing on in the workforce.

  The Winslows are regular attendees of charity balls and society teas. They are museum donors and country club members. They are Episcopalians. Several generations of Harvard men were grossly affronted when Gabe chose Yale instead; aunts and cousins were shocked, shocked, when he didn’t pledge a fraternity. And most devastating of all, he dropped his poly-sci major to study photography. The family might never recover from this blow.

  I think Gabe’s parents are a little horrified by me, though of course they’re much too well-mannered to ever let on, at least in any direct sort of way. I just have a hunch. My background must seem terribly “bohemian” to them. Both of my parents come from working-class backgrounds; both are first-generation college graduates. As I mentioned before, my mother is a divorce lawyer, twice-divorced. My father is in academe, which has some redeeming dignity to it, but he doesn’t really treat it as a gentleman’s profession, the way a gentleman should. I don’t know how much of this Gabe’s family actually
knows, but sometimes it seems they just sense it. Their radar identifies me as other, not quite nice, not ladylike—Not Our Kind, Dear.

  That’s the family, though, not Gabe. As far as I can tell, he’s his own man—as much as anyone can be. He seems to like me despite my inappropriateness. For all I know, he could like me because of it; he’s never smoked, he doesn’t have any tattoos, and while Yale may not be Harvard, it’s not the Hell’s Angels, either. It may be, then, that I am Gabe’s rebellion, which I find funny and weirdly gratifying. Compared to my flamboyant, fantastic friends, I know I seem quite average, so the idea that to Gabe I appear eccentric, offbeat, attractively odd, is flattering. Gabe makes me feel unique, and (ironically) who doesn’t like that?

  I WAIT ON the sidewalk for fully five minutes before Henry pulls up in a taxi. She is wearing a black T-shirt with red lettering that reads Come to Where the Flavor Is. I climb in next to her, and no sooner have I closed the car door than she begins to sing “Going to the Chapel” again.