The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  "We ordered tlie champagne," Mary Agnes continued, captivated by her captive audience. "Four whole cases! And we're having a photographer to take movies and stills, and a wedding cake with a bride and groom on top. And everybody's going to get some cake to take home to sleep on."

  "The man you dream about is supposed to be the man you marry, isn't it?" April said. "I never had the nerve."

  "Neither did I," said Caroline. "With the crumbs dribbling from under the pillow down my neck, I was afraid I would have a nightmare." They all laughed. Why is it, Caroline wondered, that every girl thinks her wedding plans are so fascinating to everyone else when they're exactly like every wedding that everyone else has ever been to?

  And then, at last, it was the day of the wedding. Caroline woke up LQ the morning with the sensation that it was a special day and she couldn't quite remember why. Then she remembered. The wedding was at foTU" o'clock, with a reception afterward and then a dinner.

  "Did you ever have the feeling," she said to Gregg, "that you've been waiting for something for so long that on the right day you're going to wake up and find you've slept right through it and missed the whole thing?"

  "You might be better oflF if you had," Gregg mumbled, rolled over, and Went back to sleep with the sheet over her head. She had not been invited, of course, because she hardly even remembered Mary Agnes, but she remembered her well enough to know that Mary Agnes was one of a vast group of girls she herself viewed with complete incomprehension. "The Happy Ones," Gregg called them, not knowing exactiy why they were happy and not wanting to join them, but sometimes going so far as to say that it was a shame she couldn't end up in such a bovine and contented way. She also called them "The Grapefruits," because she said if you were to slice one of them in half she would be revealed to be all partitioned oflF into nice little predictable segments, every one the same.

  Maybe I should have slept through the wedding, Caroline thought as she and April climbed up the steps of the church. Weddings always gave her mixed feelings: if it was the wedding of a very close

  friend she felt happy and excited and nostalgic and a little lonely because, without either of them wishing it, things would be different between them, and if it were a wedding of an acquaintance, like Mary Agnes, her feelings swung between boredom because weddings were always exactly the same and a kind of daydreaming because they were beautiful too. She and April paused for a moment in the vestibule, delaying, looking around. April wore a pale gray linen dress and a straw skimmer like a gondolier's hat with gray, yellow and white ribbons around it.

  "How nice you look!" Caroline said.

  "You too." Let s go m.

  They took each other's hands and tiptoed into the church. An organ was playing softly. Two ushers swooped down upon them, extending crooked black-sleeved arms terminating in spotless white gloves. "Bride's or Groom's?"

  "Bride's," Caroline whispered.

  They were led to an empty pew near the back. The front pews were by now half filled with relatives and close friends of the bride and groom, all dressed up, and in the second row a woman was already weeping into a handkerchief. Caroline looked around. She had never been in this church before—in fact, she had never been in the Bronx. The walls on both sides were lined with tall stained-glass windows in beautiful colors. The altar was bathed in shimmering golden light that drew the eye toward it. It always made her feel religious to be in this kind of atmosphere, it made her believe in a God who watched over her and knew she existed, and yet she never went. She hadn't even gone to Sunday school after the first protesting year. None of her friends went to their families* various places of worship oftener than once a year either, not even April, who had talked a great deal about churchgoing and religion when she had first come to New York but now seemed to have dropped the subject altogether. Whenever she was inside a church for someone's wedding Caroline would have the feeling that there was a kind of peace attainable for her somewhere, at least for a while, and that she should try. I could come here whenever I was lonely, she would think, and I could meditate even if I felt self-conscious trying to pray after so long. But when she was out on the street again in the air the feeling would evaporate and she would

  forget about it. It was like sitting at the ballet enraptured with the beauty of it and telling yourself you would take ballet lessons at night so you could be like those soaring dancers, and then having the rest of the things in your life push the thought out of yoiu- mind.

  Now, sitting in the pew, listening to the soft organ music and looking at the glow inundating the altar, she wondered whether this sort of addition to her life would be an answer. Being alone in a place like this for an hour wasn't the same as being alone in one's apartment, because you weren't really alone. There were people praying quietly, perhaps only one or two, and there were silent, robed figures moving in and out of your line of vision every now and then. There was a kind of hidden life in a church. And if you weren't really sure you believed in God in your apartment you could be more sure in a place that had been built for and dedicated to belief. Surely if God was anywhere He would be there, if only because so many people were looking for Him.

  Beside her April stirred, Caroline could hear her intake of breath. She could imagine she knew what April was thinking. If anybody was thinking about going to church more often at this moment it would be April.

  The music had changed, it was now suddenly the music everyone remembered. The pews had filled up with people, sitting up straight, looking to the side and to the back waiting for something to happen. An usher came down the aisle escorting a thin woman in violet lace—evidentiy Mary Agnes' mother. She wore a violet-strewn hat to match and she had black hair and a very white face. She was trying not to smile as she recognized certain people at the ends of each pew and she looked thrilled and happy. Where were the groom's parents? Caroline realized she must have missed them in the excitement. There were several new people sitting down front, and she supposed two of them were they. And now here were the groom and best man, nervous and practically ignored, walking fast. Then, in measured step, teetering a little on very high heels, the bridesmaids began to walk down the aisle. There were six of them of varying heights and sizes: a thin, dark girl who was Mary Agnes' younger unmarried sister, a bosomy blonde with pink cheeks who was her best friend from high school, a roimd-faced brunette who looked different from any of the other girls and was evidently a sister or cousin of the groom's. Mary Agnes' old^

  sister, who was married, was six months pregnant, and so she could not be a bridesmaid, and the other three bridesmaids were other friends of Mary Agnes' childhood. Caroline had heard the Hst described so often she could almost tell who was who. There was one thing they all had in common and that was that they were not particularly pretty. Caroline thought back and remembered that she had never been to a wedding where the bridesmaids were prettier than the bride. She wondered whether it was because the bride took special pains with her appearance on her wedding day or whether she always chose her attendants with this consideration in mind. Because it was June the bridesmaids were dressed in matching dresses of stiflF mauve-pink organdie with skirts that belled out over petticoats. They wore little wreaths of fresh flowers and carried tiny old-fashioned bouquets with streamers on them. Mary Agnes had chosen mauve because she liked it, but it happened to be a color that made the dark girls look sallow and the blonde look like a milkmaid. Caroline remembered the three bridesmaid dresses she herself had hanging in her closet, which she had never worn again, and she had to smile.

  The organ began playing the wedding march. Mary Agnes floated into sight from somewhere in the darkness of the back of the church, on the arm of her father. She was wearing the circlet of orange blossoms with its veil which Caroline had seen in the oflBce, and somehow it reassured Caroline that this was the same girl, because everything else was different. The veil made Mary Agnes' face look obscure and misty and unusually lovely for her. Her eyes were gleaming, her lips were moist and red
with new lipstick, her cheeks were flushed. She wore a floor-length white satin gown with a long train. There were circles of lace centered with pearls sewn at intervals all over the dress, and Caroline was sure it had cost over a hundred dollars. It had a high neckline and a tiny tight-fitting waist and long tight sleeves ending in points. But the surprise was Mary Agnes' curvaceous bosom, which had evidently come with the undergarments that were worn with this dress and was de rigueur for a bride on her public day, even though all her friends knew she had never had one.

  At the altar the groom moved forward and took the bride from her father in the age-old symbolic gesture. Mary Agnes and Bill knelt before the priest. Caroline leaned forward, straining her ears

  to hear the words, but as usual if you were sitting in the back of the church the answers of the emotion-filled young couple were completely inaudible. She had a moment of resentment. I come all the way up here to the Bronx to see the wedding and I can't hear a word. From the back the veiled white figure and the stocky dark-coated one could be anybody. The pageantry was the same, the ceremony was the same, and Caroline's thoughts began to drift. Everyone was so still, awed, listening, watching. Half an hour of words, of promises, and you were bound for a lifetime. Or, at least, you thought at the time it was for a lifetime. Mary Agnes knew it had to be. There was something frightening in knowing you could never get out of this pact, and yet, Caroline thought, there must be security in it too. Never to have to think of anything but how to make the best of the life you had chosen. But isn't that what we all do anyway, in our own way, until something goes wrong? And if it goes wrong, and you know you made a mistake, you try to find the good things again.

  She imagined herself for an instant standing at some altar marrying Paul. Bermuda Schwartz. Oh, God, she would flee, she would turn and say, I can't do it, I can't, at the last moment. When you were actually at a wedding and you realized how awesome it could be, you knew you couldn't toy with fantasies about marrying someone you didn't love, no matter how good he was to you and however much he cared for you. Because Paul Landis loved her. He had told her many times, in a veiled, half-joking way so that he would not be hurt if she showed that she did not return his feehngs. And she didn't. She was very fond of him, but marriage? Marriage belonged to the person your heart reached out to like arms, to someone like Eddie Harris.

  She had admitted it now, and it didn't hurt, strangely. She was suffused with remembered love for Eddie, a warm, yearning, tender love for him as he had been two years ago, and even as he must be now. That bride there, kneeling and probably faint with excitement, should be she. The groom should have been Eddie. How real all the words of the marriage ceremony would be suddenly, if they were for her and Eddie! I still love him, Caroline thought. Eddie, I will never, never stop loving you as long as I live.

  The priest had stopped speaking in Latin now and was saying something in English, clearly so that she could hear him. "These two

  young people," he said, "have entered into the bond of matrimony. They reahze that their promise is a promise to God. It is not to be undertaken hghtly. It is a promise that can never be broken as long as they are on this earth,"

  I could promise that, Caroline thought, if I were promising it about Eddie. I wouldn't have an instant's hesitation. Eddie would be my life.

  "Because they realize the seriousness of their promise to God, these two young people have given it careful thought. They know what they are doing."

  Did Eddie know what he was doing when he married Helen Lowe? Caroline thought. He was so young then, only a baby. What did he know about forever? What did he even know about love? Does he still love her, I wonder, does he still want to be with her for the rest of his life?

  The priest was speaking in Latin again, and Bill was slipping the ring on Mary Agnes' finger. Unconsciously Caroline flexed her ringless fingers, imagining Eddie was putting a wide gold band on hers. She would want a wide band, with a comfortable wide feeling, large and golden so that no one could miss seeing it. When she walked into a room with Eddie everyone would know very soon that she was his wife. It was not hard to pretend that this was not Mary Agnes' wedding after all, but her own to Eddie Harris. I do, she said to herself. Forever and ever, in sickness and health (and depression and joy), to have and to hold from this day forward. I, Caroline Bender, take thee, Eddie Harris . . . No one would be able to hear her voice either if they were sitting farther back than the first three rows, and now Caroline understood why. I'd be the only bride who ever cried at her own wedding.

  The organ burst out into the joyous music of "Here Comes the Bride," that corny old song that Caroline had never paid much attention to. But at this moment it made her want to laugh with happiness. Mary Agnes, her veil thrown back to reveal her beaming face, was half running back up the aisle hand in hand with Bill. Her friends were reaching out their hands to congratulate her, not even able to wait until the recessional was over. But no one seemed to mind. Everyone was radiant, the music seemed to be soaring up into the very vault of the room, and at the back Caroline could see the white form of Mary Agnes being embraced by one of her brides-

  maids. It's my wedding, Caroline thought, and I'm laughing and crying all at once and I can't take my eyes off Eddie long enough to let my relatives kiss me.

  People were standing up, starting to leave. It was over. Now the bride and groom would hurry to the hotel where the reception and dinner would take place. We'd better hurry too, Caroline thought reluctantly, or we'll never find the hotel by ourselves. She turned to April, who had been sitting forgotten by her side.

  "What the hell is Bill's last name?" Caroline whispered. "I never can remember." She stopped because April didn't even seem to know she was being spoken to. April was looking straight ahead at nothing, her lipstick worn off, her handkerchief wadded into a lacy ball in one fist. Her eyes were very shiny, but not with tears. Caroline realized then that she had not been the only one to pretend that the wedding which had just taken place was really happening to two other people.

  Outside the church there were two long, shiny black limousines for the bride and groom and their wedding party, and an assortment of much older automobiles belonging to some of the guests. Caroline and April managed to find a taxi, which established itself at the end of the train of cars, and so they made their way to the hotel. There was a little room with the receiving line in it, and a three-piece band playing love songs in the corner. Before she could even get on the end of the hne of people waiting to congratulate Mary Agnes and Bill, Caroline found herself with a glass of champagne in her hand threatening to overflow and dribble down her viTrist. She drank it to get rid of it, and it was immediately refilled by a waiter with a happy grin.

  "It's going to be that kind of party, is it?" she whispered to April.

  They crept along with the slowly moving well-wishers, Caroline gulping down her champagne and looking desperately for a place to stash the glass before she had to shake hands with all these strangers. April had removed her gondolier's hat and was holding it in front of her, hiding her glass of champagne behind it. She looked very ill at ease. But when they finally got to the groom he was holding a glass of champagne too, in two stubby fingers, looking pink cheeked and moist eyed, as if he'd already had his share. Caroline shook hands with him and then on impulse embraced Mary Agnes.

  "I'm so happy for you."

  "Thank you," Mary Agnes said. She lowered her voice con-spiratorially. "Is my hair mussed from the veil?"

  "No, you look lovely."

  She was rewarded with a fixed smile as Mary Agnes turned to greet the next guests on the line, who were already crowding to get to her. "What a beautiful bride!" a middle-aged woman cried, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. "What a beautiful wedding!"

  "Beautiful wedding!"

  "Adorable bride!"

  "Lovely wedding!"

  Caroline edged hurriedly through the crowd, holding April's wrist.

  "Whew!"

  "Did you catch t
he names of all those other relatives?" April asked.

  "No. Did you?"

  "Not one. Let's sit down." But there was no place to sit, and for the next half hour they stood near the perimeter of the crowd where there was some fresh air and listened to the babble of voices and the feeble strains of the band. Waiters hurried by with round trays covered with champagne glasses filled to the brim, balancing them as expertly as jugglers as they snaked tlieir way around the tight knots of excited, oblivious people. In their comer Caroline and April were ignored, for which Caroline was just as glad. The two glasses of champagne had made her feel warm, and it was close and hot in tlie room. Her feet hurt. "Please, please," someone said loudly, "when you're through the receiving line go into the other room. Lots of space in the next room." But no one seemed to pay any attention.

  "Come on." Caroline and April edged their way through the crowd again and finally found tliemselves in another, much larger room, which had a wooden dance floor in the center of it surrounded by round tables. At one end of the room was a raised dais, as for a banquet, with a long table set upon it. The flowers on this long table were much more ornate than those in the center of each of the round tables because it was set aside for the principals in the wedding. Caroline and April searched among the romid tables until they found one with their place cards on it. There were tliree people already seated at their table: Brenda and her husband the moose, and a thin young man in his mid-twenties with lank reddish hair, a protruding Adam's apple and thick eyeglasses. Caroline noticed to her regret that he was sitting between her and April.

  "Hi," Brenda called, waving airily. She was wearing a very tight, low-cut dress of pink cotton brocade, and a matched set of pink rhinestone necklace, a pink rhinestone bracelet and pink rhine-stone earrings. Caroline had never seen pink rhinestones before on a person, only in store windows. "This is my husband, Lenny. April and Caroline from the oflfice." She pronounced it aw-fice.