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

by Heather Muzik

  “I’m just so glad you like it,” she gushed, hands clasped in front of her heart. “And thank you for including me. I never had a real sister before and this really means so much.”

  Catherine’s eyes welled with tears. “Well, I haven’t had a sister in a long time and… I guess I was afraid to go there again…. I’m sorry. You being a part of this means a lot to me too.”

  Tara cut into the moment. “I’d just like to mention one little thing. The dress is doable but if we—”

  “Don’t!” Catherine commanded.

  “But you didn’t even let me—”

  “I’m serious, Tara.”

  “You don’t even know what—”

  “No!”

  “Jeez, on the rag much?”

  “It’s my wedding. My decision. That doesn’t make me hormonal; it’s simply a fact,” Catherine said haughtily. “Besides, I haven’t had my period in… I don’t even—”

  “How long exactly?” Georgia prodded, stepping toward her, concerned.

  She’d been too busy to notice such a paltry thing. “A while,” Catherine admitted, unable to do the required math on the fly what with thirty-day months and those with thirty-one and whatnot.

  “Sounds like perimenopause,” Tara announced clinically.

  “The first thing you say when I might have missed my period is menopause?”

  “Perimenopause—meaning preparatory or almost.”

  “Is that really what that means?” Lacey asked, but her question was lost in the matter at large.

  “Why would you assume it has anything to do with menopause at all! A miss means pregnancy, right?” Catherine turned to Lacey and Georgia, the resident experts in the matter.

  “Considering its unexpected appearance in recent months.” Tara eyed her knowingly—the only one privy to that particular medical history. “And now missing it completely…. Sounds classic if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Catherine groused.

  “What do you know about menopause anyway, Miss Twenty-something?” Georgia countered, joining her thirties’ alliance.

  “A lot actually. My cousin went through it at your age.”

  Georgia winced as if slapped.

  “Really?” Lacey was awestruck.

  “Don’t listen to her, she has a cousin for every occasion,” Catherine spat, although she too felt the words like a Mack truck.

  “When you say ‘your age’ what do you mean exactly? Like child-rearing-years-over menopause?” Georgia clarified.

  “Yup.”

  “Hello! Woman about to get married here!” Catherine exclaimed, pointing at herself. “She certainly doesn’t need to hear that she’s drying up and going sterile.”

  “I think you mean barren,” Georgia corrected.

  “Like a dry and dusty desert,” Tara asserted, in case the picture wasn’t clear enough.

  “I think you would make a wonderful matron of honor,” Catherine said, turning to Lacey over the sound of her eggs cracking into dust inside of her.

  “What did I do?” Georgia squealed.

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” Tara shrugged it off. “It was just a joke.”

  “A joke?” Catherine asked hopefully. “You mean your cousin didn’t go through menopause in her thirties?”

  “Oh no, she did.”

  “Then where exactly is the joke?”

  “Oh, it’s there. You just have to get that chip off your shoulder first to find it,” Tara jabbed.

  “But what if after all this I can’t produce?”

  “You mean reproduce,” Tara chortled.

  “Not helping,” Georgia said sternly, then turned to Catherine. “Don’t listen to her. Women have babies into their forties these days all the time. Drew is doing it as we speak. You aren’t drying up. You haven’t missed your chance. Heck, you said you missed your period, maybe you already are pregnant,” she offered.

  Catherine had never been more relieved by that prospect. Except… was she ready for a new husband, a new daughter, and a baby in quick succession? She needed to sit down.

  “What’s wrong now? You just turned white as a sheet,” Georgia noted.

  “What if I really am pregnant? I don’t want my parents to know—”

  “That you’re having sex at thirty-four?” Tara taunted.

  “That I got fucked up out of wedlock!”

  “Knocked up,” Georgia corrected sternly.

  “You might not even be pregnant at all,” Lacey offered.

  “Yeah, there’s always menopause,” Tara reminded her. Catching the evil eye from Georgia, she added, “or maybe it’s just stress… or hysterical menopause.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Georgia said.

  “Why not? There’s hysterical pregnancy. And my cousin was a hysterical kleptomaniac.”

  “Are you saying that he believed that he was stealing stuff when he wasn’t?” Lacey asked.

  “Not exactly. What he stole was ridiculous—pink flamingos, light switches, windshield wiper blades right off of people’s cars. Totally random shit. When they found his stash, the police were in hysterics—”

  “NOT helping,” Georgia growled.

  -58-

  “You guys get the pee sticks; I’ll get the Funyuns,” Tara announced loudly at the entrance to Target.

  “Funyuns?” Georgia asked. “What do they have to do with anything?”

  “Necessary provisions. Either way we’re going to need our strength for this,” Tara said gravely.

  “What’s this we business?” Catherine was feeling very much alone right now in spite of her posse.

  Tara gestured to encompass all four of them. “We are going to need some serious snack food,” she enunciated carefully. “Pregnant or menopau—”

  “You say it one more time and I swear I will beat you down right here,” Georgia said through gritted teeth, her calm diplomacy lost to her protective instincts.

  “Go,” Lacey said to Tara, shoving her off in the direction of the food, and then grabbing Catherine and Georgia each by an arm and propelling them toward the pharmacy.

  Pregnancy tests lined one side of the aisle and pain relievers lined the other. Catherine felt woozy just looking at the plethora of options, but Lacey and Georgia calmly and easily discussed the finer points of each test—Lacey who had gotten knocked up without even trying and Georgia who had tried and tried and tried again. But then their tittering started coming to her as if through a tunnel, fading out—

  “Oh my God, Cat!”

  “Catherine? Are you okay?”

  Panicked voices came at her from a distance, forcing her out of the blackness.

  “Do I smell onions?” she asked weakly. Is that my brain cooking? A stroke?

  “See, I told you we were going to need our strength,” Tara crunched.

  “Can we have a little help here?” Lacey begged.

  “Are you okay?” Georgia asked, motherly concern overwhelming her voice.

  Catherine fluttered her eyes, focusing slowly, staring up at everyone—her bridesmaids and several complete strangers dressed in red. “What the—” But the pain in her head stopped her from finishing the sentence. It felt like someone had clocked her from behind.

  “Let’s get her over to the bench,” Georgia commanded the red-shirted employees who were standing there uncertainly, never having responded to this type of spill before. Obviously they were more comfortable holding onto a mop than a girl.

  “But maybe we shouldn’t move her,” one of them said. “She could have a—”

  “She fainted,” Georgia snapped. “She just needs some air and space.”

  Three strange young men lifted her up, the makings for a sweet dream but for the acne-ridden complexions and sweaty palms and decidedly adolescent nature of them. After depositing her on one of the hard red benches next to the pharmacy checkout, they remained there awkwardly.

  “Thank you. We’ll take it from here,” Georgia assured them.

  Lacey f
anned Catherine with a pregnancy kit that advertised a two-for-one special.

  From her new position next to the blood pressure cuff, she took in the carnage in the aisle from which she’d come. Boxes were a jumble all around the floor—Motrin mixed with Midol and Bayer mixed with Tylenol and some Goody’s powders sprinkled on top for good measure. “Did I do that?” she asked, wincing from every small movement of her jaw that awakened another shout of pain from the back of her head.

  “Well, your head did that. I think you hit every shelf on the way down,” Lacey noted.

  “Ooh,” Tara winced in solidarity, still chomping away on her as-yet-unpaid-for bag of Funyuns.

  Suddenly a small older woman in a white coat approached with an aura of no-nonsense-ness about her. “Can I help you?” she asked brusquely, as if she didn’t like loiterers on her bench who were under the age of sixty.

  “We were just catching a breather,” Tara said between crunches.

  “Was that you?” She pointed toward the aisle of pain relievers with a tsk-tsk in her voice, like they were a bunch of hoodlums in her pharmacy.

  “She has a headache, ma’am, can’t you see?” Tara pointed to Catherine who was holding the back of her head like it would leak if she didn’t. “Can’t a girl buy some painkillers without being judged?”

  “It was an accident,” Lacey said quickly.

  The pharmacist eyed each of them carefully, silently noting the pregnancy test “fan” in Lacey’s hands. “Well, if you’re done shopping, please move along.”

  Tara mouthed mockingly at the pharmacist’s back as she walked away.

  “That was humiliating,” Catherine said.

  “You’d think this kind of thing would get easier to buy at this point,” Georgia noted. “It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are, though. Pregnancy tests, condoms, tampons—they all tell people way too much about what’s going on in your life and underneath your clothes.”

  “I don’t care what they think,” Tara asserted.

  “Obviously,” Georgia agreed.

  “Can we just get out of here?” Catherine asked, resigned.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Georgia asked uncertainly.

  “I’m fine.”

  “But fainting like that could be a sign of—”

  “What? Perimenopause?” Catherine jabbed, staring Tara down.

  “Blood pressure problems.” She nodded toward the cuff.

  Catherine rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, guys. I’m just not used to my diet yet.” She was careful not to divulge that she had also fainted the night Fynn had proposed—back on her normal food regimen. She was beginning to think she was a stress-fainter. Maybe it was a syndrome.

  *****

  At the checkout Catherine nonchalantly reached into Tara’s bag and grabbed a handful of Funyuns (just to steady herself from the aftereffects of the fall), shoving them all into her mouth at once before anyone could stop her. These were definitely not on the list of approved food items on her crash diet.

  “Catherine? Catherine Hemmings? Is that you? Oh my God, it is!” A bloodcurdling squeal.

  Catherine felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up in revolt. But she turned around anyway, believing this was her day—Funyun-filled face and all. Finally, after all these years, she was on top. Rachel Craig—cheerleader, overachiever, Miss Teen Pennsylvania, and all-around bitch—was going down. Maybe she’d been on top in grade school and middle school and high school and all the years since, but today she was a divorcée, living back home with her parents—her days as wife of the mayor of Bumfuck, Kansas behind her, as was her title as prom queen and her naturally blonde hair. And here Catherine Hemmings stood with the ring that proved she was a winner. For half a second she felt invincible, until she saw the mirror-ball-turned-reflective-hand-ornament on Rachel Craig’s bony finger. Engaged! Twice!

  She always one-upped you.

  Catherine crunched as delicately as possible, forcing the Funyuns down as quickly as she could. “Wow! Rachel! What are you doing here?” So far from Chesterton where I was purposely shopping to avoid people like you.

  “My fiancé lives here. He’s back in electronics. Ooh, I can’t wait for you to meet John—my fiancé!” she exclaimed, reaching for her cell phone and sending off a lightning-fast text message that probably said something like “get your ass to the checkout so I can rub this bitch’s nose in my life.”

  “Actually, Rachel, I would love to, but we’re kind of in a hurry.” Catherine motioned at her friends with her own reflective hand ornament.

  “My fiancé will be here in just a minute and you have to wait in line anyway to buy your… tests.” A vicious smile growing on her face.

  “Oh, those are mine,” Tara said, grabbing them and waving the pregnancy tests in the air. “I’ve been double-fisting Funyuns for weeks. Either I am super premenstrual or pregnant—guess I’ll find out soon enough. Wish me luck.” She crossed her fingers. “Oh, and tell your fiancé to wish me luck too. I need all the help I can get.”

  “Uh… good luck?” Rachel said, her face screwed up like she was talking to insanity itself, in the flesh.

  “I’m hoping it’s Tommy’s because if it’s Trent’s then me and Tommy are over, which would be a bummer because I was really thinking he was the one… but you must understand what with Jake being your one,” Tara said, bubbly and giggly and completely obnoxious.

  “It’s John,” Rachel corrected.

  Tara disregarded her. “By the way, have you ever used this brand before? I’m hoping it’s more accurate than last time. I was sure I was totally screwed—thought I was pregnant for weeks—and it turned out I just had an ulcer. Damn false positive.”

  “Well, listen, it was great catching up,” Rachel said quickly, looking ready to bolt. “We’ll have to do lunch sometime while you’re in town… but I have to get back to my fiancé; he’s lost without me.”

  “More like trying to lose you,” Tara said under her breath, watching her sashay away. “Why would you even know someone like that, let alone talk to her or her fiancé—did you know she has a fiancé? I wasn’t sure at first, but I think she mentioned it.”

  “She grew up in my town. What was I supposed to do?” Catherine asked.

  “Hire someone.” She gave her a knowing wink.

  “Tara!”

  “I’m just sayin’—I don’t suffer fools lightly, and that chick is a fool.”

  “A total bitch is more like it,” Lacey said definitively.

  Saturday, February 26th

  -59-

  It seems that best laid plans hardly ever came to fruition, at least not in her life. Catherine had planned to be on the road first thing Friday morning, at the helm of the U-Haul carrying her everything to Minnesota, but instead they hadn’t pulled away from the curb in front of what used to be her apartment until almost noon—thanks to Tara who’d pulled an all-nighter with the friendly brawn she’d asked to come over to help them pack the truck (his payment, she said, even though he hadn’t finished the job yet). Then seven hours into the trip, not even all the way through Pennsylvania, Catherine was nodding off and Tara was similarly useless, so they had to call it a day. Of course she’d planned not to stop until they were well into Ohio, maybe even knocking on Indiana’s door—

  But today was different. Things were looking up. A 4 a.m. wake-up call had gotten them back on the road well before the sun, which had since made its appearance and was steadily trying to outpace them on the trek west. Weather forecast: clear as far as the eye could see. Temperature: a balmy seventy thanks to the heater. Barring any roadwork or weekend traffic, they would be in Nekoyah by nightfall—only a few hours later than planned. Catherine was optimistic.

  “You know, I’ve never been much for road trips, but after the last few weeks this is like a vacation. I can finally just be still and swallow up long boring roads rather than run around between New York and Jersey and Philly and Chesterton like a chicken with my head cut off.” Betwe
en packing and planning and re-planning… and the Little Trager scare, Catherine didn’t need any more action and adventure. And surprises were overrated.

  Except for the surprise bridal shower—put together and hosted by Lacey. That was a surprise she’d been able to enjoy, especially after finding out not a half hour before that she was indeed alone in her own skin for the time being. Hallelujah! Mimosas all around—hold the OJ! It was everything a shower should be. Full of tittering women—her mother and aunts and friends and the overly ecstatic bride-to-be—and all the cutesy bridal games, and prizes, and gifts galore that were currently packed in the back of the truck.

  “I think I could get used to this truck driving thing. It makes me feel powerful. Maybe I could do this for a living,” Catherine mused.

  No answer from the peanut gallery that always had an answer or opinion or just something to share—like it or not. And this was a big career move she was floating. “Tara?” she prodded, sneaking a glance next to her where her copilot was sleeping, completely upright like a horse. Great company she was. And as luck would have it, the radio didn’t work. “Tara!”

  She jolted awake. “What? Did I miss an exit?”

  “You fell asleep. I thought you were here to keep me up, but between yesterday and today you’ve slept ninety percent of the time. You said it would be safer to travel together.”

  “Yeah, so someone can always catch a nap.”

  Catherine shook her head in disbelief.

  “You know, when I agreed to do this—”

  “Offered,” Catherine reminded her.

  “Whatever. I’m just sayin’ I had no idea how long this trip was going to be. And boring,” Tara groaned.