2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series)

by Heather Muzik

  “I love you too,” she said sadly, wanting to drop everything and step through the phone and into his arms.

  “Then why do you want to fight with me?” he prodded playfully.

  “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “I just wanted you to be there for me and when you didn’t react—when you weren’t mad at Georgia too—”

  “You want me to whack her? Or have her whacked?” He was obviously still stuck in the mafia portion of the conversation.

  “I want you to be mad at things when I’m mad at them. I want you to support me. To feel what I’m feeling. I want us to share—”

  “A brain?”

  “Everything,” she said breathily. “Inside and out.”

  “Sounds hot.”

  “You would go there.”

  Tuesday, January 18th

  -32-

  Catherine hurried to her desk, clutching the thick, creamy white envelopes tight to her chest. The plans and directions to her future as Mrs. Trager were sealed safely inside, just awaiting addresses and stamps to be on their way. Easier said than done, though. She’d already had three close calls with her precious cargo on the way here. First, when the canvas bag she’d been carrying them in fell apart—ripped wide open on the sidewalk. No one stopped to help her. No one cared that her destiny depended on it. Insensitive to a bride in need, they trampled her pristine envelopes. Damn New Yorkers. Damn bag.

  The tote bag had been a free gift she’d gotten when she bought a magazine subscription to Glamour. Now she had another reason to hate that she’d ever subscribed. She’d certainly never gotten any more glamorous in those twelve months and she’d spent enough money on products from their pages to know what she was talking about. Obviously the bag was constructed out of subpar materials—any decent canvas tote could handle a tiny tear like the one from the counter at the coffee shop where she’d stopped for a coffee and that blueberry muffin she’d been eating when her bag fell apart in front of God and everybody.

  I guess you get what you pay for.

  At least at that point she had thought to head to the nearest mailbox and mail the ten completed invitations, tread marks and all, saving them from any more trauma. Then she headed to the nearest trashcan and tossed the mutinous tote inside. In hindsight, she should have thrown out her coffee right then and there as well. But she was a slave to the vicious brew that now stained several of the remaining envelopes and her favorite wool coat—that curb came out of nowhere. She’d walked the rest of the way to work in her sheer blouse and camisole, her proper outer-coating balled up in a plastic bag she’d begged off a bum in the street—exchanging it for her muffin, so now she was starving too (not that she should be eating pastry of any sort, what with that wedding dress she still had to find, fit, and wear in less than seven weeks).

  Not to worry, though, she had some extra envelopes from the printer that could replace the coffee’d ones—Vinnie was nothing if not professional in his printing endeavors—and she was certain she could fix everything once she got to work, which was exactly what she had been thinking as she looked through the invitations to see how many envelopes she would need. Admittedly her eyes were on the stationary and not on where she was going… but five dogs? That right there was what was wrong with New York. Dog packs. An epidemic. How many dogs can anybody really walk at once? It seemed like someone was always testing that theory on the streets. She was mere feet from the safety of her office building when she was accosted, wrapped in a puzzle of leashes and tongues and fur. She got goosed several times and took more than a few kisses to the cheeks and mouth—basically a better work-over than she’d had in weeks. And all the while she fought to juggle the invitations, losing a few in the battle, but keeping a firm hold on the bag that held her coat safely out of the dogs’ reach. Maybe she should have thought the whole thing through a little better—put the invitations in the safety of protective plastic and worn the coffee-covered coat to keep herself protected in the dead of a New York City winter…. There was that hindsight thing again.

  But she was here now. Safe at work. No frostbite of which to speak…. And doggie footprints could be an endearing ornament to a wedding invite—her parents’ neighbors, Miss Kitty’s owners, would certainly love it. And there had to be a few more dog owners on the guest list.

  Look at me, making lemonade! A lesser bride would have read all kinds of awfulness into this. She would have given up. Called things off. Deemed the wedding a failure before it even got off the ground, believing the universe was against her. But not me. I am strong. I am capable. I can make this happen.

  “What happened to you?” Tara asked, coming into their cubicle with a coffee in hand.

  “Step away,” she growled, gesturing at the coffee and shielding the invitations nervously.

  “You look like hell.”

  Catherine glimpsed her reflection in the small mirror she kept on her pin board to catch errant food between her teeth and other minor appearance emergencies. She smoothed at the rat’s nest where a gently waved coif had last been, and then rubbed at the dark smudges under her eyes were her mascara had migrated since she’d left her apartment.

  “Have you been crying?”

  “No,” she said quickly, wondering if she had—her commute had been cry-worthy, that was for sure. “No…” she said less certainly this time. “Maybe it was all the kisses,” she offered questioningly.

  “Who were you kissing?” Tara asked, intrigued.

  “They were kissing me. The dogs.”

  “Dogs?”

  “I ran into a pack of dogs out on the sidewalk. Got a little tangled. They got frisky,” she chuckled. She was so calm and relaxed about the whole thing. Unflappable.

  “If that’s what you’re into, who am I to judge?” Tara shrugged.

  Catherine waved her off and turned back to her invitations. Never before had she ever had anything so completely amazingly important to share with people. Something that took rich and luxurious paper to announce. Too bad her penmanship was neither here nor there, so the outside would be significantly less impressive than what lay within, but she’d already made her bed with her print order.

  “Are those the invitations?”

  “Ya think?” Catherine asked snarkily, looking up at Tara who was leaning over her desk nosily, coffee precariously poised in her hand.

  “What’s that?” Tara pointed to the brown stained envelopes, her lips curled in distaste.

  “That is the reason you need to get out of here with the coffee,” Catherine snapped.

  “Can I at least have my invitation first?”

  “I was going to mail it.”

  “Save a stamp,” she said, her hand out.

  And the addressing, Catherine realized, tossing her one of the blank stained ones. “Here.” That was one less damaged envelope to replace. After a cursory check she had five left with coffee stains, four with paw prints, and another several with partial prints from a variety of shoes. Eight extra envelopes wasn’t going to do it, but if she used the paw prints on pet lovers and gave some of the partial prints to people she was closest to who would understand that shit happens, then she could replace the worst of them with fresh envelopes—

  “You’re getting married at Penis Grove?” Tara asked. “Sounds like my kind of place.”

  “It’s not Penis Grove. It’s Pettis Grove,” Catherine barked, wondering if Tara’s grade-school sense of humor would ever catch up to her real age.

  “No, that’s a penis if I ever saw one,” she noted. “And I’ve seen all kinds in my lifetime.”

  “Do you ever stop?” Catherine challenged, snatching the card from her hand and reading it to her because obviously she was too immature to do it herself. “Joel Fynn Trager and Catherine Marie Hemmings cordially invite you to join them….” But as she read, her eyes skipped to the crux of the matter. “… Penis Grove.” She breathed the words out and had a hard time sucki
ng her next breath back in—her heart pounding madly.

  “Just like I said,” Tara gloated.

  Catherine rubbed at the word with her thumb, hoping it was a fluke. Maybe it was erasable, fixable, or perhaps not even there at all. A trick of the mind because she hadn’t had enough sleep last night or any night in the past two weeks. Maybe she hadn’t just sent ten invitations out to her parents and their friends—and God, Aunt Judy—with “Penis” on them. Maybe it was just this one invitation that fittingly ended up in Tara’s hands. Maybe the rest are totally fine—

  She picked up another envelope and ripped it open wide, her eyes latching onto the word quickly, too quickly—Penis. So she grabbed another envelope and then another, ripping through them pell-mell, certain this had to be an isolated typo. But there it was. Penis—over and over again.

  “Oh, look, it’s on the directions too,” Tara pointed out in genuine surprise.

  “What?” Catherine exclaimed. She’d been the one to make the directions. She’d been the one who sent in the copy for the invitations. “Did I really do that?” she mumbled, talking to herself.

  But Tara the philosopher answered anyway. “If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess abstinence makes the mind go in the gutter.”

  Thursday, January 20th

  -33-

  Catherine looked at her phone, not that she had to see the screen to know her mother was calling, what with the good old-fashioned phone ringtone telling her loud and clear. She’d been waiting for this moment. Expecting it.

  “Hello?” she said quickly, trying to sound busy on her end and maybe prompting her mother to move in quickly for the kill and be done with it.

  “Catherine? We just got the wedding invitation in the mail. It’s beautiful,” Elizabeth Hemmings said breezily.

  Is this some kind of trap? she wondered.

  “I really like the deep purple band along the side and then repeated on the interior of the envelopes. A stunning choice.”

  Are you serious, Mother?

  “And the font is perfect. Did you choose that?”

  “I did,” Catherine choked out, bowled over, still awaiting the judgment that was sure to come.

  “It’s just lovely.”

  That’s it, she couldn’t take anymore. “You don’t think it highlighted the Penis too much?” Catherine snapped. She could hear her mother chuckling on the other end. “Laughing? You’re laughing, Mom? Really?” she challenged. She’d expected as much from Fynn when she told him. And he hadn’t let her down—didn’t even have the decency to stop when she blamed him for the error because he had left it all up to her in the first place, just like everything else regarding the wedding. Just kept laughing it off; no help at all. So she’d blasted him even further, simply for being the reason she had penises on the brain—at least his penis that she hadn’t seen in… forever. But her mother found this funny? A cheap laugh? She thought Elizabeth Hemmings had standards.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. It was just such a—”

  “Horrible, awful, ridiculous mistake,” she elaborated for her.

  “It was funny, Catherine.”

  “You wouldn’t laugh if you’d sent out invitations like this. Hell, you would—”

  “The word is heck, Catherine Marie.”

  “No, it’s hell, Mom. I’m in hell right now.”

  “Did they all go out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did all the invitations go out before you noticed?”

  “Well… no.”

  “So how many people are going to Penis Grove to see your wedding?” her mother asked practically. She couldn’t believe how simply and easily the word penis was escaping her mother’s mouth.

  “Ten, including you. Eleven actually, but Tara wants to go there,” Catherine groused.

  “So hardly anybody then.”

  “It’s a sixth of them,” Catherine stressed.

  “Exactly. A mere fraction,” Elizabeth said plainly.

  “But it’s Penis, Mom.”

  “Who’s going to even notice? You didn’t.”

  “But I’m a total basket case,” she admitted.

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I wanted everything to be perfect.”

  “Nothing is ever going to be perfect,” her mother assured her.

  “Says the woman who bleeds perfect.”

  “Life is real, not ideal, Catherine. I’m not perfect and nobody else is. This could have happened to anyone.”

  “Tell that to Connor,” she moped, thinking of his kind words as he laughed her right off the phone when he got his. “He’s having a field day. He’s probably posted it on Facebook for all his friends to see—and their friends—and the friends of their friends—”

  “I’ll handle your brother…. Did you handle the printer? Or do you need—”

  “The new invitations should be ready to go out early next week.”

  “Good. It sounds like you have it all under control. Are they being done in New York?”

  “No, I have to pick them up in Philly.”

  “Tell me where and when, and give me your guest list. I’ll have them addressed and out in no time.”

  Catherine felt a prickling in her nose and her vision blurred with tears. “You don’t have to do that—”

  “I want to. Besides, you have other things to do.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I could really use the help.”

  “We’ll have you married off in no time.” Not a blip of concern or worry to be found. Sometimes Elizabeth Hemmings’ calm and practical certainty wrapped around her like a warm hug and made everything all right again.

  “I just wish that I hadn’t sent one to Aunt Judy,” Catherine admitted with chagrin.

  “Judy?” The slightest falter in her mother’s voice. “Any of those other typos go out to people here in town?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Uh… a few, I think.”

  She heard her mother shift the phone. “William, grab our coats. We’re going out!” she hollered.

  “What are you doing?” Catherine asked, startled.

  “We’re going to get those invitations back.”

  “You can’t steal things out of people’s mailboxes, Mom. It’s a federal offense.”

  “I’m glad I taught you well, Catherine Marie, but some things are more important.”

  After she hung up the phone, she stared at it for a while. So this is where I get it from. She’d believed that she was nothing at all like her mother, and here Elizabeth Hemmings was en route to burgling the mailboxes of family and friends to protect her daughter. I guess it’s genetic.

  Monday, January 24th

  -34-

  “I know you’re there, Cat. Pick up the phone,” Georgia said, her voice broadcasting throughout the apartment.

  Catherine sat on the couch, eyeing the answering machine like Georgia herself might suddenly materialize in the room and catch her avoiding her. Not that she didn’t have the right and reason to do so, what with Georgia’s utter lack of remorse for sharing sensitive information with Lacey Stemple. She’d spoken with her most recently departed friend exactly once since finding out Lacey knew every nuance of her wedding by heart, and that was to tell her to Fuck off! That was days ago. That was all that needed to be said.

  “I know you wouldn’t be anywhere else but in front of the TV right now, so pick up or I’ll just keep talking.”

  Like she knows me. But Georgia did know her. Monday night was her usual night to clean up her DVR by watching all the things she’d missed the week before. Like clockwork.

  “I let you have your mad. I left you alone all weekend even…. Now pick up. I’m not beyond using Nell to get you to talk to me. Oh wait, I think I hear her crying. Maybe I’ll just take the phone in with me to comfort her—”

  “What?” Catherine demanded into the phone, grabbing and speaking in one forceful movement.

  “I knew it!” she squealed triumphantly.

>   “What do you want, Georgia?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “And why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, I know you got the invitations but I haven’t gotten one in the mail yet, so either something terrible happened to you or I’m off the guest list.”

  “How do you even know about the invitations?”

  “Cat—”

  “Lacey,” she growled, realizing she’d been usurped yet again.

  “Yes Lacey. Big friggin’ deal. Lacey told me she got your invitation.”

  But it was a big deal. Just another reminder that her best friend had a new best friend she gabbed with all the time, to hell with her oldest one.

  “So what else did she tell you?” Catherine challenged, waiting for the rest of it—how she and Lacey both used reputable printers for their wedding invitations and didn’t have a single misspelling let alone a body part printed on theirs.

  “Are you really going to hold a grudge over the fact that your mother overheard a conversation Lacey had with you?”

  “That’s not why I’m holding a grudge,” she said—that was only part of it. If Georgia didn’t understand that then maybe she should find a new maid of honor—an actual maid this time.

  “So you are holding a grudge then?”

  “I just can’t believe that you talk about me with Lacey. She’s my—”

  “Archenemy?” Georgia snarfed. Literally, it was a snarf—part snide laughter and part ridiculing disbelief. Very unbecoming and rude.

  Catherine was silent on the other end, protesting her friend’s dismissal of her very real feelings. Lacey was her archenemy, her nemesis… in fact, she was completely evil.

  “So that’s it then? Friendship over? You want nothing more to do with me?” Georgia asked; her tone downgraded to simple disbelief now.

  “You told her about the—she knows about the purple for Josey,” Catherine said, her voice choked with emotion.