Toss the Bride

by Jennifer Manske Fenske

  Jessica stands up straight and in a soft voice says, “And I will honor, love, and cherish you, knowing that when I fell in love with you, I found a love for the rest of my life.”

  The reverend has the couple exchange rings and promise to forsake all others. As the sun drops by gentle segments into the sea, the quartet plays an arrangement of Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan.” I cry, something I never do when I am working. But this feels different, like I am doing this for a friend. Even though I have only known Jessica five days, it seems as if we have been friends for a long time.

  “Do you want to come with us to dinner to celebrate?” Kevin asks as we walk toward the parking lot. A brisk wind whips at our clothes. Jessica’s veil twirls behind her.

  Avery and I look at each other. “That’s sweet,” I say, “But you should be alone. This is your honeymoon, after all.”

  Kissing Kevin, Jessica tosses her bouquet in my direction. “You’re next. I don’t need this anymore!”

  I clutch the bunch of fresh flowers. They smell sweet and clean. I am suddenly happy with every small thing about life. Avery catches my eye and offers his hand to Kevin. I hug Jessica again and whisper, “Be happy.”

  “We will.”

  Avery and I walk back toward our rental car. The lot is deserted, our only company a stray cat hopping in and out of the trash cans in the corner.

  He puts the car in gear and we head for the condo a few miles away. “Well, it certainly was awesome that Jessica ran into you,” Avery says. “You will be in all of their stories from now on: ‘And there we were, depressed and unmarried, when Jessica struck up a conversation in the ladies’ room at the Atlanta airport with a pretty wedding coordinator who ended up saving the day.’ Yep, I can hear the dinner table conversation now.

  “You were great with them, Macie,” Avery continues, turning his face toward me in the car. “I was really proud of you.”

  I am quiet, the flowers in my lap. I think about the last four days. First, there was the engagement and all of the excitement surrounding the trip. After Avery proposed, we walked on the beach for two hours until we were exhausted. We dropped into a little seafood shack off the beach and discovered the world’s best she-crab soup. When our waitress found out about our engagement, she brought us slices of key lime pie on the house.

  I called my parents, and Avery called his. No one was very surprised. That was when I found out Avery had driven down to Cutter to ask my parents for my hand. His own folks knew what he was up to this weekend, and they seemed genuinely happy for us. I immediately wondered what I should call his parents once we were married. Dad? Mom? Mr. L.? Babs? The whole thing gave me a headache, so I decided to worry about it later. Maybe when I got home I could find a book about being a daughter-in-law at the library. I also called Iris, of course, and Maurice. He did not pick up his cell phone, so I left a message.

  “What are you thinking about?” Avery asks, pulling me back to the present. We’re getting pretty close to the condo.

  “Oh, just how wonderful it is to have an entire life stretched out in front of you. And to be in love at the same time.”

  “You haven’t mentioned any of the planning or when you want to have the wedding, Mace. That surprises me,” Avery says.

  We reach the condo and head up the wooden steps. I am suddenly tired and long to fall asleep to the sound of the rambunctious waves outside the window. I stifle a yawn. “Can we talk about this some other time?”

  Avery gives me a funny look. “Okay, whatever you want to do. I just figured you would be hopping on that right away. You know, get Maurice all involved. Although, honestly, I don’t know if my parents can afford him.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t you think my parents can pay for my wedding?” I put my hands on my hips as Avery fumbles with the key.

  He turns, surprised, and holds out his hands. “Whoa, easy, tiger. I just meant, well, Maurice is expensive. You know, he’s the all-star wedding planner. I know your parents can pay for your wedding, but if my parents have their way, I’m sure we’ll need everyone’s pennies.”

  “Have their way? So, this is your mother’s wedding now?”

  “No! I mean, I’m sure she will have input. Everyone will. But it’s our wedding. You and me.” Avery tries to nudge me inside the condo, but I pull away.

  The ocean rolls close by in the darkness. Our condo neighbors have their windows open, the sounds of a television game show tinny in the air. I wonder if the neighbors are a married couple, bored of the beach and its distractions. Or they could be a young, newly engaged couple like us, enjoying a few brainless moments in front of the tube.

  “Mace, what’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “It’s nothing. I guess I was just cross for a minute.” We walk inside, something between us in the air. I go into the bedroom and kick off my sandals. My sundress is wrinkled and needs ironing if I want to wear it again this week. I notice for the first time how Avery’s suitcase takes up half of the floor space near the bathroom door. Is this how rich kids grow up, with all of their stuff spread out everywhere?

  Avery walks into the room, unbuttoning the cuffs on his dress shirt. “You want to order dinner in or go out?”

  I turn to face him. “You know, other people need the floor, too. You can’t just hog every bit of carpet.”

  “Macie, what is wrong with you? You aren’t acting like yourself.”

  For an answer, I collapse on the edge of the bed, cramming my face into the white pillows. Adding a few more wrinkles to my dress, I scrunch up my legs and try to scoot under the covers. I feel Avery sit down on the narrow slice of bed beside me. Unable to stop myself, I roll toward him on the soft mattress until my hip touches his leg.

  “Don’t try to make me feel better,” I say.

  “If I knew what was wrong, I would try. But you’re not telling me anything,” Avery says with a tight voice. “You always do this. You make me guess what is bothering you. It’s not fair.”

  “No one asked you to save the day.” I roll over on my back. My feet are gritty from the sand drifts on the pier.

  Avery stands up, pitching me back toward the middle of the bed. “Fine. Pout if you want to. When you’re done, I’ll be ready to go for dinner. I’m starving.”

  Food is the last thing on my mind. The television in the living room starts up, and the sounds of a newscast float down the hallway. I sigh loudly, just in case Avery is interested in what I am doing. Then I sigh again for effect. A few moments later, the balcony door opens to the sound of wind and ocean. I hear a gentle click as the door closes again.

  Curious, I crawl over the bed to peer out of the bedroom window, but the balcony is dark and in shadow. I quickly pull off my sundress and tug on a T-shirt and yoga pants. My ring flashes in the mirror as I run a brush through my hair. I feel a pang of angst. We have only been engaged for four days and this is our first fight. And to be honest, I do not know what we are fighting about, really. Sure, I am being mean, but why?

  This night feels like another time when I played the part of a first-class jerk. It was the day of Girl Power Club sign-ups in the fifth grade. I had been a part of Girl Power since the first grade, and knew all the campfire songs, had earned my GP pins, and even gone to sleep-away camp one summer. But as the sign-up day approached that September, I dragged my feet. I wanted to try the singing club or the camping club, but Girl Power took up a lot of time. If I did GP, I would not have any free time after school to try something else. The problem was I did not know how to tell my best friend, Madalyn.

  She loved GP and had warned me not to be late for sign-ups because the last girl on the list had to lead the Girl Power motivation song. I dawdled at my locker, applied clear lip gloss—the only makeup I was allowed to wear—and retied my purple tennis shoes seven or eight times. Finally, Madalyn spotted me in the deserted hallway. She wore her Girl Power headband and clutched the GP handbook.

  “You’re not coming, are you?” Madalyn cried, wiping
her nose on her hand. “You don’t like me anymore!”

  “No, no, that’s not it,” I said, glancing down the hall. The singing club was warming up, treble voices running through the scale.

  “Yes, yes it is. And I checked, your name isn’t on the sign-up list. You know how much I love GP, and how much it matters to me. I talked about it all summer. You should have said you weren’t going to do it.”

  I tried to think of a way to tell Madalyn that I was bored with GP and wanted to try something different. I was tired of chanting the GP motto: “Girl Power, Girl Power, all that I can be. Girl Power, Girl Power, watch me fly so free!” If I joined the singing club, I had a chance at the Florida beach trip they took each year. But I didn’t know how to tell Madalyn all of this. So I leaned against my locker and heard awful words coming from my mouth.

  “The truth is that Girl Power is for babies. I hate it, and I hate everyone in it,” I said, wondering who was making me say these things. Poor Madalyn stood there, her GP headband stretched crookedly across her face, trying to stop crying. But I wasn’t finished.

  “You are embarrassing. Why do you want to sit around and do service projects when everyone else who matters is having fun? Girl Power sucks,” I said.

  That day and the mean things I said to Avery wash over me in a shameful rush. I had lost Madalyn’s friendship. I am not going to lose any part of Avery. I walk outside to the balcony. He sits in the hammock, one foot stretched down to the floor. The air is warm outside, and the nearby ocean rages in front of us like a nature sound track.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Come out here to beat up on me?”

  I reach out to tap his bare foot with mine. “Nope. Just wanted to apologize. I was nasty, and I am sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. But you still owe me something.” Avery moves over in the hammock, making room for me.

  “What’s that?” I ask, leaning against his shoulder.

  “You have to right now, right here in this hammock, tell me what it is that is bothering you.”

  “I don’t know, I just got cranky,” I offer.

  Avery rubs my hand, and kisses the tips of my fingers. “I think there is more to it than that. When I asked you about planning the wedding, you turned into this other person. Why?”

  I think of all of the things I could say: I was tired, grumpy, and overly emotional from the last few days. But I do not buy those reasons, and neither would Avery. I suddenly remember Jessica’s wedding. While I was busy with her, I did not have time to think much about my own upcoming day of marital bliss. But then Avery brought it up and I got upset. Bingo! Problem solved.

  I explain it to Avery. “I guess I am overwhelmed by thinking about being a bride. You know, planning the whole shindig and everything. I know I do it for a living, but making a wedding your own, really planning it, well, that’s something else.”

  If Avery is unconvinced, he doesn’t let on. “Just don’t take everything on at once. Let me and Maurice and Iris help you out. Give us lots of things to do.”

  We snuggle in the hammock, my arm draped across Avery’s chest. “Speaking of Maurice, he never called me back. I left a voice mail telling him we were officially engaged. I expected him to call by now.”

  “Maybe he’s just busy with the bride du jour.”

  I lean back into the taut cotton of the hammock. “I guess so. You’d think he’d ring, though. Maybe I’ll give him another call.”

  “How about we eat dinner first? Just a suggestion.”

  “So, we’re okay now?” I stand up and offer Avery a hand out of the hammock.

  “Yep.”

  We stroll that night to a small bistro near our condo. It is the kind of place open only during the season, which gives me a wistful feeling. The owner, a large woman in her fifties with curly red hair, walks from table to table chatting with guests. When she discovers we are newly engaged, she dramatically clasps her hands, saying, “Young love! Is anything more beautiful?”

  Avery chatters on, talking about the yummy fish and the frozen drinks. I listen as attentively as I can, but part of me is still stuck in our little fight. There will be more to come in our years together, of course. What nags at me is that part of my mind knows I did not tell Avery the entire truth.

  I do not feel like a radiant, content bride-to-be standing on the edge of a new life. Instead, I am still that fifth-grader, slouching against the locker, saying hurtful things to a friend. I will soon be a bride, and after that, a wife. Even though it scares me, I must learn to move about in this new world, one where I do not know all of the rules. As the ocean rolls outside the bistro, I put those thoughts aside. Tonight is a time for happiness, seated with dinner and a fiancé, on a trip by the sea.

  11

  The Celebrity Bride

  Getting fired was not as bad as I thought it would be. I had this idea that getting canned involved some sort of dressing down or screaming match. It was actually not that traumatic. There was simply a message on my machine when we returned home to Atlanta. Avery was downstairs, retrieving the mail when I pressed the red flashing button on my answering machine.

  “Macie, this is Tika. Since I can’t reach your sorry boss, Maurice, I will tell you I have chosen to go with another wedding planner. I really just never saw eye-to-eye with your style of planning a large event. You didn’t seem to grasp the importance of my wedding. You have your deposit, of course. Good-bye.”

  And that was it. I stood there for a minute as the tape rewound. Maurice was fired? Brides stood in line to get a date in his book. How dare she? But then I remembered how snotty she was to both of us, and I clearly recalled her out-of-control greed. I knew I was better off without her, but I wondered how Maurice would take it.

  From her message, it sounded like Tika was having no luck getting ahold of Maurice, either. That in itself was very strange. He was extremely punctual about returning phone calls.

  The first week I worked for him, I forgot to call two brides who were waiting on dress appointments. When they tattled, he chewed me out for making them wait. “These women pay a lot of money to have us at their disposal any time of day!” Maurice blustered, throwing his hands into the air. “If you are out to dinner with your friends or playing a game of tennis, you are reachable. That’s how I run my business. If you can’t do that, then you need to think about finding another job.”

  I learned pretty quickly. To this day, I try to return phone calls within the hour if at all possible. It calms the brides and makes them feel like we are on top of things. Even if I am with another client who is trying on twenty pairs of white shoes, I make the bride on the phone feel as if I am only thinking about her blessed event. Even if I can’t remember her wedding date or what she looks like. Believe me, attending about fifty weddings a year starts to look like one white blur.

  “Tika fired us,” I say to Avery, who has returned to the apartment.

  Avery’s face is blank. “Is she the bride who wants her golden retriever to be the best man?”

  “No, this is the greediest bride ever. The one who wanted ten bridal showers?”

  Avery nods. “Oh, her. Well, lucky for you, wouldn’t you say?”

  I pace back and forth across the living room. “Me, yes. Maurice, no. He depends on these girls to love him and recommend him to other brides. You know that.”

  “I don’t see why anyone needs a wedding planner at all,” Avery says, plopping down on the futon couch. “What’s so hard about getting married? You pick out a dress, order up some sandwiches, find a church and there you go.”

  Rolling my eyes, I pick up my new suitcase and carry it to my bedroom. “It’s a little more complicated than that, and you know it.”

  When I walk back into the living room, Avery is poring over the real-estate section of the newspaper he picked up at the airport.

  “What are you looking at?” I ask.

  “Houses,” Avery says, his head down.

  “Houses? Why?”

 
; Avery lowers the paper and looks at me. “Why? Because I am about to acquire a wife. Something tells me we can’t move in with my parents.”

  I stand still and breathe deeply. Of course, we will need somewhere to live. I had not thought about that yet. My cute and dumpy apartment would have to go. There was no way we could live here. And Avery was right, moving into Chez Leland was not an option.

  “Isn’t a house a kind of big step?” I fiddle with my necklace, a silver shell charm Avery gave me on Abigail Island.

  “You would prefer a tent or wigwam?” Avery sighs, dropping the paper to the floor.

  “No, I mean, what about an apartment? Bigger than this one, but still an apartment. Or we could rent a house.”

  Avery shakes his head. “Macie, renting is just throwing money away. If we buy a house, we will pay ourselves, not a landlord. Come on, this is basic stuff. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing. It’s just a big shock, I think,” I say, ducking into the kitchen to pour a glass of water. I never thought about owning a house. It seemed years away to me last week, and now, I am practically looking at kitchen appliances. White? Stainless steel? We’ll have to buy a lawn mower, look at paint chips, comparison shop toaster ovens. I know I love Avery, but there is so much stuff that comes with marrying him. Not to mention how much money we will need, which I don’t want to even think about right now.

  “Where are we supposed to get the down payment for a house? That’s a lot of money.” I cannot help myself.

  Avery picks up the real-estate section again, a small smile on his lips. “I think I may have a little bit saved for something like this.”

  A surge of worry runs through me. If Avery’s money is going to save the day, where does my little salary come in? I need to feel I contribute, too. I have always worked, ever since the Holiday Hams job I had when I was sixteen. Paying my way seems like the most natural thing.

  “Do you want to stay in Virginia-Highlands or do you want to live in Midtown?” Avery asks, flipping a page.