Mad Girls In Love

by Michael Lee West

  From up on the hill, beside the path, Jennifer waved to her father. She was wearing a pink shift dress and pointy-toed brown flats. I stared through the windshield. “That’s a sixteen-hundred-dollar Prada dress?”

  “It looks like a Kathie Lee from Wal-Mart,” Dorothy muttered. “And her shoes are straight out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

  “So? I look like a female impersonator.”

  “Yes, you do,” Dorothy said, “but a gorgeous one.”

  With my mother’s help, I managed to reach the hilltop without ruining my shoes. Several caterers rushed past us, holding cane-back chairs. Near the tent, three workmen were putting the finishing touches on a fountain. “It’s supposed to pump out champagne,” Dorothy said. “Jennifer told me that it’s modeled after a fountain in Disney World.”

  “Actually, the original is in Paris, in the Place de la Concorde,” I said. “They used to execute people there—death by guillotine.”

  “Well, don’t tell Jennifer,” warned Dorothy. “She’ll call you a party pooper.”

  Stacked all around the fountain were boxes with André on the sides. Dorothy gave the boxes a dubious glance. “How will they get all that champagne into the fountain?”

  “One bottle at a time?” I said.

  “Don’t be cute,” Dorothy replied.

  In the center of the tent, which was large enough for a circus, workmen were laying down black-and-white marble tiles, forming a checkerboard that was reminiscent of the one in Honora DeChavannes’s yard. All around the tent was an expanse of thick, cushy grass. It had been freshly cut, and the air was pungent with a sharp, sour smell. “It’s sod,” Dorothy explained. “Jennifer said the gardeners unrolled it like it was a Persian rug. You can still see the grids between each square.”

  As I approached the tent, a gasp rose from the guests. Miss Betty began whispering furiously into Chick’s ear. The bridesmaids, in their thin cotton dresses, twittered behind their hands. The dumpy blonde standing beside Claude lifted her chin and smiled in triumph at Jennifer. A middle-aged woman with a Martha Mitchell bow in her hair rushed over, holding a clipboard.

  “For those of you who don’t know, I’m the wedding planner,” she said. “Which one of you is the mother of the bride?”

  “I think it’s the lady in purple,” said a smiling young man with curly hair. He pointed to me.

  “Oh?” The wedding planner’s eyelids fluttered for an instant, then she extended her hand to me. “If you’ll just step over here, Mrs.—?”

  “Bitsy,” I said.

  “Well, I guess we’re ready,” said the planner. “First, let’s get the wedding party assembled.”

  Jennifer, refusing to look at either me or Dorothy, turned sharply and made her way to the ushers and bridesmaids, who resembled the cast of Falcon Crest. She was followed by the curly-haired boy who’d referred to me as the lady in purple. Like the other young men, he was wearing a white T-shirt and chinos. “The fiancé?” I wondered out loud, my eyes going to the man’s bare ankles, then up to his face. His thick, brown, curly hair fell past a pointed chin. His eyes were dark chestnut, almost black. And I could smell his cologne—Bvlgari Pour Homme—the same fragrance Louie had favored.

  Dorothy told me yes and that she’d seen him earlier in Wal-Mart wearing flash-mirrored sunglasses. This evening, the glasses were gone, and he kept winking at the maid of honor, a brunette with dangly earrings who appeared to be enjoying the attention.

  “Did you see that?” Dorothy whispered.

  “Yes. Don’t you wish we hadn’t?”

  The wedding planner lined up everyone in order, assigning ushers to me and Samantha, after making sure we were content to share the same row. Next, the woman paired ushers with Pierre’s mother, a chubby woman with a round, pretty face. She was wearing a lemon chiffon dress and lots of diamonds—apparently she’d gotten the assignment wrong, too. Finally the planner got to the grandmothers. Then she explained to everyone how they were to enter and exit their rows.

  Dorothy glanced up at the darkening sky and sniffed. “It looks like rain.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” said the wedding planner. “That would be horrid, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ghastly,” Dorothy agreed.

  The rehearsal took almost an hour. It was seven o’clock when we reached the country club and found Mack, who was standing under the canopy. Two bridesmaids came around the corner and almost bumped into Dorothy. One of the girls, a Heather Locklear look-alike, profusely apologized, then, eyeing Mack, said to her friend, “Gee, the clean-up crew is early.”

  The other girl, a dead ringer for Madonna, rolled her eyes and laughed. “Looks like the janitor’s got a gimp leg.”

  “He looks creepy,” warned Heather. “Hold on to your pocketbook.”

  “It’s a handbag,” Dorothy called out. “Not a pocketbook.”

  The girls turned and stared. “Excuse me?” said Heather.

  “Only sixteen-year-old girls carry pocketbooks.” Dorothy sniffed. “Don’t you read the fashion magazines?”

  The bridesmaids made faces at each other, then flounced off, leaving the McDougal clan alone on the sidewalk. Mack swept open the door and said, “Ladies first.”

  Dorothy stepped into the brightly lit lobby, but I hesitated. I hadn’t set foot in this country club since my own rehearsal dinner back in 1971.

  “Hey, Sis. You coming?”

  “Sorry.” I smiled at Mack and stepped through the door. We caught up with Dorothy outside the ballroom. Dorothy straightened Mack’s lapels, then brushed the sleeves of his jacket. “I had to force him to buy this navy suit,” she said. “But doesn’t he look handsome?”

  I said he did and kissed his cheek.

  “Wait’ll you see my tuxedo. It’s got one hell of an inseam.” He winked. “Now, where’s the bar?”

  “Take it easy, honey,” Dorothy warned.

  “Hell, I’m fucking middle-aged,” Mack said, laughing. “Leave me alone.”

  “Your liver is middle-aged, too,” said Dorothy, reaching up to brush lint from his shoulders. “Besides, it’s rude to guzzle up free liquor. Don’t you dare have more than two drinks. Your sister’s already made a fool of herself tonight wearing the wrong dress.”

  Mack looked me up and down. “She looks pretty damn good to me.” Then his forehead wrinkled. “Does Jennifer have something against purple?”

  “She has something against Bitsy,” said Dorothy.

  We entered the ballroom. The same twinkly strobe light still dangled from the domed ceiling, turning in a counterclockwise direction. While Mack went to fetch our drinks, Dorothy dragged a chair over to a corner and sat down. I began to wander through the crowd. I spotted Claude’s ex-wives standing on opposite sides of the bar—wife number two was glaring at wife number three, and number three was frowning at Samantha. Somehow they had managed to crack the dress code.

  Then I found Mr. and Mrs. Tournear—the hosts of the dinner. I had intended to speak to them at the rehearsal, but they had disappeared before I could get to them. They were not standing in a queue, greeting their guests, as I had expected, but were huddled against the wall, sipping their drinks. Pierre’s mother kept glancing from her yellow dress to the rest of the casually dressed women. Pierre’s father towered over his wife, and I idly wondered if he’d bought his black suit at the Big and Tall Man’s Store. I took a deep breath, walked over to them, and introduced myself.

  “Oh, yes, I saw you at the rehearsal,” said Mrs. Tournear. She looked up at her husband. “Didn’t we see her, honey?”

  Pierre’s father nodded but made no comment. Mrs. Tournear squeezed his arm and said, “I nearly ruined my shoes traipsing across that pasture. I wish Jennifer had warned me.”

  An awkward silence fell, until I desperately reached into my old storehouse of Southern platitudes. This kind of talk was a skill I had honed during the years with Louie, attending carnival clubs and receptions. At first was I worried. It was a language I hadn’t s
poken in years. Fortunately it came right back. It helped that Pierre’s mother knew the lingo, too, and in minutes we were discussing the versatility of toile. Soon Mrs. Tournear impulsively threw her arms around my neck, giving off heady gusts of bourbon and Escada perfume, begging me to call her Tonya.

  I returned the hug, and promised to visit Atlanta real soon. “You’re just delightful!” my new best friend gushed, and I was just a little sad that I now lived around the quietly understated British, with their passion for decorum. The only difficult moment came when Chick and Miss Betty stepped up to the Tournears. Chick’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. Miss Betty smiled, her lips cemented in the corners. Her eyes were tilted into oblivion, the skin taut from one too many lifts.

  “Well, isn’t this a nice party?” Miss Betty said, focusing somewhere above Mrs. Tournear’s head. She turned to me and in a thickened voice added, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “But this is Jennifer’s mother.” Tonya Tournear looked startled.

  “She was just teasing,” Chick said, squeezing his wife’s arm. “Weren’t you teasing, dear?”

  Miss Betty’s eyes rounded, then she tossed her head and turned in a queenly way, as if to acknowledge another guest, but bumped into a table. She steadied herself, teetering slightly, then descended upon the bridesmaids, saying, “Thank you all for coming.”

  Tonya Tournear grabbed my hand and said, “Can you believe that our children’ll be married in less than twenty-four hours?” She began to weep. Then she laughed and swept her fingers under both eyes. “Oh, I prom ised Pierre that I wouldn’t cry, and here I go. Tomorrow, I’ll have to take a Valium. Not that I’m upset or anything. Well, maybe a little. It is sort of stressful. You know what I mean, Bitsy?”

  “Yes.” I squeezed her hand. “I certainly do.”

  I joined Dorothy and Mack in the buffet line. Steam drifted over the stainless vessels of creamed chicken, whipped potatoes, shriveled green peas. At the far end of the table, wedges of pecan pie, still icy from the freezer, were lined up. The crowd closed in, gripping their plates like steering wheels.

  “It looks like leftovers from Rotary Club,” whispered Dorothy. “But I bet they jacked up the price for Pierre’s family.”

  Claude went by, refusing to make eye contact with any of us, but Samantha stopped in front of me. “Your dress is, wow, a real showstopper,” she said, arching her eyebrow. With one hand she reached out and grabbed Claude’s arm, yanking him back. He glanced at me, then turned his gaze on Samantha.

  “How sweet of you to notice.” I smiled.

  “She bought it in London,” Dorothy piped up.

  “Well, it’s just so eye-catching,” Samantha said. “Isn’t it, baby?”

  Claude muttered a terse, “Nice to see you.”

  Nice to see me? Was that all he could say after twenty-two years?

  Apparently so. His jaw tightened, then he put his hand on Samantha’s shoulder and said, “They need us at the head table, honey.”

  They crossed the room to take their seats at the table with Pierre’s parents and grandmother. We found our places at the far side of the room. I was seated between Mack and Dorothy. A middle-aged couple who introduced themselves as Samantha Cole-Jennings’s aunt and uncle were already sitting.

  Toward the end of the meal, the lights were dimmed and a waiter rolled out the large-screen TV from the bar. Claude walked up to a podium and grabbed the microphone. His eyes flat and shiny as he strutted back and forth holding up a video tape. I remembered the time he’d brought Jennifer to the Nashville airport so she could fly to England with me and Louie. Even though Jennifer hadn’t liked the UK, I would always be grateful to Claude for allowing her to come. “I’d like to direct your attention to the screen. I’ve put together a little video commiserating the lives of Jennifer and Pierre,” he said.

  Commiserating? Even Dorothy had picked up on the gaffe.

  “The boy is pie-eyed,” she whispered.

  After a bit of fumbling, the video was crammed into the VCR. Background music started up, Barbra Streisand singing “The Way We Were.” First, there was a photograph of a newborn Jennifer, then it faded into a photograph of a newborn Pierre. The pictures whizzed by, those misty memories of Pierre, Jennifer, Claude, Miss Betty, Chick, and Claude’s second and third wives. Not a single picture of the way Jennifer and I were. Not a single picture to show that Jennifer had a biological mother. Dorothy leaned over and pinched my arm. “What happened to all those snapshots that I loaned Jennifer?”

  “Shh,” hissed Samantha’s aunt, shaking her finger. When she turned, Dorothy stuck out her tongue.

  On the TV screen, Jennifer’s picture appeared. She looked to be five or six. Her small face was split into a smile, and she was holding up a fish. Everyone in the room said, “Awwww!” and someone shouted, “Daddy took his little girl fishing. How darling!”

  “That’s your fish, Mack,” Dorothy said, nudging him. “Quick, stand up and tell them.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” he said, reaching for his wineglass.

  “Shh,” hissed Samantha’s aunt.

  “Hush yourself,” Dorothy snapped. “They can’t reinvent history.”

  “They just have,” said Mack.

  The video ended with an engagement photo of the couple, then the toasts began. At first, they were lighthearted, and somewhat comical, but as the evening dragged on, they became increasingly long-winded and maudlin, fueled by endless bottles of house champagne and chablis, which kept materializing on the tables. At one point Miss Betty stood up, weaving slightly, and said, “I wish you all the love and happiness that Chick and I have had.” Then she reached behind her, groping for her chair, and sank down.

  Dorothy whispered, “That’s more like a curse.”

  Chick staggered to his feet and raised his glass. “Pierre, I’d like to offer the three rules of marriage: Never tell her she’s wrong, never call her frivolous, and never, absolutely never tell her she looks fat, even if she asks.”

  The audience laughed, and several paunchy older men stood up and clapped.

  Samantha rose from her chair, her right hand lingering on Claude’s shoulder, and began telling how she and Jennifer had met last year in a local boutique. “We fell in love with the same Gucci bag,” she explained.

  “Dior, not Gucci,” Jennifer called from her seat and lifted the satin clutch for all to see.

  In a halting voice, Claude advised Pierre to take good care of his Jennikins. “I didn’t always get it right in my life, but I tried,” he added, wiping his eyes.

  “What a shithead,” Mack said.

  Not to be outdone, Dorothy popped out of her chair before I could stop her. “I lift my glass in a toast to the groom, who is charming,” Dorothy said. “I lift my glass to the bride, my granddaughter, who is about to embark into marriage. And, Jennifer, marriage is tough. It’s just damn hard. All you can do is take it one day at a time. Sometimes one hour at a time.”

  She sat down with a flourish, then leaned over and asked, “How did I do?”

  “Perfect,” I told her, squeezing her hand.

  After the toasts, the guests began milling around the ballroom. My cell phone rang five times before I could locate my evening bag under the napkins, and several people from nearby tables glanced in my direction. After I clicked off, I located Mack and asked if he could take Dorothy home.

  “Sure, but…don’t tell me you picked up a fat-cat date tonight?”

  “I’ll fill you in,” Dorothy said, grabbing his arm.

  As I walked off, I heard her say, “I’m so proud of Bitsy. Why, she’s just like me.”

  When I stepped into the lobby of the Holiday Inn, Ian was standing next to a metal rack, perusing the colorful brochures. Rock City, Dollywood, White Water Rafting. He was wearing a beige shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, black wristwatch, tan trousers, and Doc Martens. His thick blond hair tumbled down his forehead. My heart sped up. I suddenly remembered once, during a l
ong, luxurious bubble bath in his narrow tub, wondering aloud if I’d been born in the wrong century. How lovely to have toured Cuba with Hemingway, I’d said, or to have lived in Tahiti with Gauguin. Now I thought to hell with artsy types and exotic locales. Nothing would thrill me more than one night in Crystal Falls with Ian Maitland.

  He glanced up, and his lips spread into that wonderful, crooked smile and I ran into his arms. He lifted me, and the Oscar de la Renta hiked up as I locked my legs around his waist. With a laugh, he swung me around. He smelled of tobacco and Acqua di Parma. I kissed his lips, his forehead, his chin until his entire face was marked with lipstick. Then I leaned back and sighed.

  “My love,” he said. One of his hands clutched my bottom, and the other was cupped behind my neck. Then we kissed slowly, luxuriously.

  When we broke apart, gasping for air, the night clerk coughed and held up a key. “Toss it here,” said Ian. He raised his hand and made a neat catch.

  “Your room is pool side.” The clerk grinned. “And please, no skinny dipping. It’s against hotel policy.”

  “We’ll bear that in mind,” Ian promised. He put me down but we were still kissing when we stepped into the Holidome, a glass bubble encasing the pool and hot tub. Reluctantly I broke away and took a breath. The warm, steamy air smelled faintly of chlorine. The pool area was empty except for an elderly couple sitting at a table and a man swimming laps. The water frothed around him. Dear God, it was Louie. The first time I saw him, he’d been swimming in a hotel pool. I wondered if this was a portent.

  Ian held up the key—202. “Shall we?” he said, then he fit the key between his teeth, and he lifted me into his arms again, the purple silk draping around us, falling over our limbs like water.

  The next morning, I awakened to the sounds of splashing water. I opened my eyes, confused for a moment. Then I remembered where I was and stretched my hand along the sheet. The bed was empty. I pulled up on one elbow, wondering if I’d dreamed my night with Ian.