Otherwise Engaged: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Suzanne Finnamore

  Union Square, a few last-minute items.

  I walked down Powell Street, grinning like a fool. I can’t seem to stop.

  The fear has been ebbing the last few days, and now it’s almost completely gone.

  So, the ebullience comes back, two days before your wedding. The boomerang effect. Something else no one tells you about.

  They should parachute this information into the major cities.

  Grace let Phoebe come, at the last minute. Michael leapt when he found out. Picked her up at the airport in a limo, the same limo we’ll be renting for the wedding. There is a certain symmetry to this.

  Tonight was the rehearsal dinner. It was in the Tony Bennett Room at Fior d’Italia. Lana and Raul and Isabel and Beth and Lesli and Henry and Jill and Yvonne and Phoebe and Michael’s brother, David, and his wife, Ruth, and her mother and cousin and my brother, Mark, and my mother, Bea, and Don all gathered in a private room with dozens of framed pictures of Tony Bennett. A small grouchy Italian man in a tuxedo served us tricolored pasta and prawns and veal cutlets.

  Michael sat at the head of the long table. Phoebe sat to his right, and I sat to his left. Like Satan.

  Lana was right next to me. She wore black cashmere with a faux-fur collar, and I wore a new hat and the gold velveteen dress that Michael loves. Bea and Don gave us two heavy silver serving pieces with our initials engraved on the handle, along with the date of our wedding. 10.19.96.

  Tomorrow.

  I woke up and looked out the window. Sunny.

  I pick Lana up at the Capri Motel and we drive to the wedding site in my car, which I park near the grounds. A getaway vehicle, I can’t help but think. Should the need arise.

  In a small informal ceremony, we each knock back a Valium with orange juice. I give her the rest of the bottle, as a bridesmaid gift.

  The wedding site was almost empty, unperturbed. A two-story Victorian perched on the edge of the bay. We walk around the terrace, through the back door. The flowers had already arrived, and the cake. I wanted to stay and stare at them, but then within minutes the caterers were arriving and then my mother came and Mark, and the piano was being delivered. People were shouting that it was after eleven o’clock and I had to go upstairs and start getting ready, immediately.

  When I ran back downstairs for my purse, I saw a silver-haired man with familiar blue eyes. It was my uncle Wallace. He had come early. After we embraced, I realized I had been waiting for him. Because the moment we parted I thought, Now.

  I went upstairs with Yvonne and Lana and Beth and applied my makeup, very methodically, trying to get everything just right and not botch the liner on my lips so I look like a mime. And the minutes started speeding up and I couldn’t find my earrings or my hair spray. But Yvonne found the earrings and Beth lent me her hair spray. I barked orders at them and they didn’t get mad, they just said yes, yes and scurried about getting me things. When I suddenly became thirsty, Lana read my mind at that exact moment and brought me water.

  Then it was 11:55, and the photographer came in with an assistant and a huge round silver reflector board. She took pictures of me in the small upstairs bathroom, which was bathed in sun. And then Lana stepped in and took my hands and said, “You look so beautiful.”

  I choked and said, “Don’t make me cry.” “I won’t, I won’t,” she said, and she took me into her strong arms. The photographer is getting it all, hovering like a bee, finally flitting off downstairs to torture someone else.

  And then it is just Lana and me, because Yvonne and Beth have gone to hold the huppah poles.

  I can hear muffled confusion downstairs. No one knows when they are supposed to go down the aisle; they are audibly crashing around like Keystone Cops. I am whispering obscenities, wondering aloud why we had a rehearsal dinner if no one was going to pay attention. I am pacing and wringing my hands and Lana is saying, “Take deep breaths” and asking, “Are you all right?”

  And I lie and say that I am. My whole body is shaking and I seem to be standing next to myself, wondering why I am so afraid. It’s not like I have to do anything. Luckily Lana is still upstairs with me, because she is second to the last in the procession. My matron of honor.

  I look out the shuttered window at the top of the stairs and I see Yvonne and Beth and Jill struggling with the huppah, trying to untangle it. I would have laughed if it were someone else’s wedding. But the rabbi directed them and finally it was up; the huppah was in place.

  The rabbi explained the meanings of the seven blessings and the huppah to the wedding guests. How it was a house that could go anywhere. A house with no walls, able to invite everyone in.

  The music starts to play. My brother is playing Handel’s Largo. As in a dream, I recognize the melody. The processional is beginning.

  Lana has to go down. She is carrying her bouquet and wearing the same dress she married Raul in. I feel abandoned as I watch her rose-colored hat descend. Then it is just me, waiting at the top of the spindly spiral staircase. And for the first time, I realize that the bride is left alone to come last.

  I am fearful that Michael will see me before he is supposed to. And then the marriage will fail. It all hinges on me, on waiting long enough.

  I go down the stairs, pausing at each one, clutching the slim banister. When I get to the bottom, I turn the corner, and I see that it’s all right. I’ve done it right: Michael is just in front of the huppah, waiting for me.

  And the expression on his face. Let me memorize it. Let me never forget it.

  I grow aware of the others, the wedding guests. Standing in small rows in the sun, like wheat. They all turn around at once, to look at me. Their faces are hope. My immediate impulse is to burst into tears. I will myself not to.

  Something more than the music is in my ears, a humming that is my father and Leigh and Dusty, and I think, This is what it must be like to die. I smile, pressing my lips together to stop the trembling.

  I take a step. My veil lifts in the breeze. A sail.

  I take another step.

  When I reach Michael, he holds his arm out to me, as if we are about to dance.

  And what I do is, I take it.

  Acknowledgments

  Nothing happens without several people in New York. My agent, Kim Witherspoon, showed intrepid care in making sure the material found a home. Immense gratitude to Jordan Pavlin and everyone at Knopf; thank you Sonny for laughing. Appreciation is also owed to my newborn son, Pablo, a good sleeper. For various wildly disparate reasons I am indebted to Augusten Burroughs, Andrew Robinson, Jill Murray, Dee Alexich, Ken Woodard, my English professors at Berkeley, Gayle Finnamore, and the late Donnie Hunt; may there be Diet Dr Pepper in heaven, and may it be the old recipe.

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for

  permission to reprint previously published material:

  Sony/ATV Music Publishing: Excerpt from

  “Manifest/Outrow” by Lauryn Hill, Samuel Michel, and

  Nel Jean, copyright © 1995 by Sony/ATV Tunes LLC/Tete

  San Ko Publishing/Obverse Creation Music/Huss–Zwingli

  Publishing Inc. All rights administered by Sony/ATV

  Music Publishing. All rights reserved. Reprinted by

  permission of Sony/ATV Music Publishing,

  8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203.

  Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.: Excerpt from

  “Goldfinger” by Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley and John

  Barry. Copyright 1964 by United Artists Music Ltd. (UK).

  Copyright renewed 1992 by EMI Unart Catalog Inc. All

  rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros.

  Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

 

 

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