“Phew. Definitely Abba.”
“Hey, if you didn’t see the package, how did you know about Pretty Horizons?”
“Huh?” I try to hop out of bed but I get tangled up in the sheets. “Uh, I’m going to make eggs. Want some?”
“Sure. But not so fast.” Gabe grabs my foot and tortures me with tickles. I barely hear him over my cries for mercy: “So, I have to tell you something,” he says. I hold my breath, scared. “Maxim asked me to write an article.”
“Maxim?” I say, exhaling, confused at Gabe’s solemn tone. “That magazine still exists?”
“They’ve got two million readers.”
“What’s the topic—five ways to annoy your fiancée? First, tickle her till she screams.” I grin and bat my eyes at Gabe, feeling a little loopy from having been up all night. “No, first, write a 300-page ode to your ex.”
“Actually, there’s a working title.” Gabe mumbles it so low that I have to ask him to repeat it. “Um, ‘Ten signs your girlfriend is a psychopath.’”
A heaviness descends upon my chest. Just so I won’t scream, I arch an eyebrow and attempt to remain lighthearted: “So I was right, it is a listicle.” The term “listicle” is so dumb. The subject is so dumb, too, and it makes Gabe seem dumb to be writing it. I think of the first time I met Gabe, when he was too principled to take a job convincing people that they needed more stuff. I think of his belief that writing is his fate, the little speech he delivered with such conviction. This Maxim article can’t be what he meant. Then again, I guess, good for Gabe for getting his name in front of two million readers, even if they’re all—to borrow Sam’s phrase—misogynistic frat boys. It’s probably important for Gabe to write this kind of thing to promote his book. I try to believe this.
And yet … Ten signs your girlfriend is a psychopath. Dahlia is flighty and irresponsible and aggravating, sure, but a psychopath? It seems harsh. And what about Talia? For the first time, it occurs to me that maybe she won’t find it flattering to have her past relationship memorialized in fiction from her ex-boyfriend’s point-of-view. Maybe Talia’s been trying to reach Gabe to vent her anger and, dare I dream, to stand up for me and my anger, too. It must feel infuriating for her to be ignored by Gabe. And how will she feel when she finds out Gabe is implying she’s a psychopath in the pages of a magazine with two million readers? “You know, maybe you really should get together with Talia,” I say.
“You think so?” Gabe eyes me warily, searching for a hidden agenda.
“It just seems like the right thing to do.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, I’m starving.”
As I stand at the stove whisking together yolks and whites, listening to the ocean sounds streaming from the web site dedicated to Gabe’s and my wedding, I’m satisfied with my new sympathy for the person who until now has felt like my number-one rival. I stir and stir, watching the eggs fluff up velvety and bright—a perfect specimen of an omelet—then I add a generous swirl of Sriracha, and plate it. I eat with relish, delighting in each bite, as somewhere in the back of my head I hear that old adage, about keeping your friends close…
Chapter 16
CONFIDENCE CARRIES ME through the next couple of weeks, even spilling over into wedding planning. It’s fun to tally up the people in our lives and imagine them all in a room together mingling and getting tipsy. Gabe and I divide and conquer: He stuffs envelopes with save-the-dates, and I address them and affix starfish stamps. As the two of us release them into the mailbox, I feel a welling up of excitement.
I even decide I’ll have a bridal party. I invite Sam to dinner to pop the big question: “I know it’s a silly tradition,” I say, “but I’d love to have you by my side at the altar. Will you be my maid-of-honor?” (I’ll include Kirsten, too, but I wouldn’t be able to handle her intensity in the top gig.)
Sam tears up, a shocking sight. “Sorry, hormones. Everything makes me cry these days.”
“It’s pretty fun to see the least sentimental person I know get weepy over wedding rituals.”
Sam rolls her misty eyes and groans. “Anyway, yes, obviously I’ll do it. And speaking of things that make me bawl …” She swipes to an image on her phone, a swirl of black and white and a misshapen suggestion of a head. “I know, it looks like every ultrasound you’ve ever seen. But it’s mine, which makes it rad.”
“Totally.” I’m thrilled for Sam. But then I catch sight of the due date stamped at the top. “Wait, May 27th? Is that a joke?”
“No, dodo. That’s how long it takes to cook up a human baby in a womb.”
I brought a save-the-date to deliver in person to Sam—I hand it to her now. Hovering among the cartoon-y clouds, in a font I now decide is all wrong, is my wedding date: May 27th. I point to it. “What? No.” Sam starts sniffling again. “Well, maybe the baby will come early, so I can make it, all bloated and leaky.”
“Sure,” I say half-heartedly, thinking, why gather a hundred people together for us if Sam won’t be among them? “Why didn’t we realize this before?” But I remember: Back when I sent out the email with the date, I was preoccupied with Gabe’s book write-up, and Sam was probably preoccupied with trying to dismiss the reality of this baby.
The mix-up feels sinister, like I’m being punished for having let down my guard and taken pleasure in something as silly as party planning.
This suspicion deepens over the course of the next week. The RSVP tally on our web site remains at zero. The page views are in the single digits. I would’ve predicted several hundred from my mother alone. “Something’s wrong,” I say to Gabe.
“Yeah, I thought we’d have at least 10k siphoned into our bank accounts by now. I guess I need to work on my subliminal messaging skills.” He smiles, but I’m genuinely concerned.
The answer comes to me via a calendar from Gabe’s parents, mailed cross-country thanks to six forever stamps, each one featuring a different pose from the sun salutation yoga sequence. The Dovers are militant in their refusal to switch over to a digital schedule, and dedicated in their recruitment to the resistance.
“We needed more postage,” I say. Gabe looks confused, so I clarify: “On the save-the-dates. That heavy card stock. We were short on stamps.”
“Ah, Lady MacGyver cracks the case! The cards are probably stuck in post office purgatory.” Gabe looks amused, but I feel the opposite. I picture the starfish-dotted envelopes languishing in a broken bin in some musty back room, fraternizing with mislabeled credit card offers and blacklisted hate mail. It gives me the chills. I think of Gabe’s belief in fate: Is this a sign from the universe that our wedding date will not in fact be saved? My best friend will be howling through labor contractions, and the rest of our loved ones will be brunching or erranding or cleaning their bathrooms, or whatever. I start whimpering, which makes me feel stupid on top of the stupid I already feel for the thing that’s caused me to whimper in the first place.
“Oh, Molly-moo.” Gabe pulls me onto his lap, and I whimper even more.
For some reason, my mind goes to my annoying coworker Melinda: “She’s engaged too, and she was blabbing about her homemade save-the-dates.” I can hear myself whining, giving in to my misery. “Each one has a little string, and when you open the fold it ties into a knot. Cuz they’re tying the knot—get it? One of her socialite friends tipped off Papyrus, and now she’s in talks to design a line of cards for them.”
“Come on,” soothes Gabe, “what does that have to do with us? We emailed the date to most people anyway. We’ll just write to them again with a link to the site.”
“Yeah.” I start paging idly through the calendar from Barb and Joe. I’m horrified to learn that each month is dedicated to a different humanitarian crisis: January for Syrian refugees, February for child brides in India, March for gun violence fatalities. Meanwhile, here I am bereft about lost party invitations; my self-respect nosedives farther.
My mother’s call feels inevitable, and when I pick up, she opens with, “M
olly, I need answers from you yesterday on the caterer and the florist and the band.” I vaguely recall a flurry of unopened emails, which I planned to deal with later. “If we don’t secure the vendors right away, all the best options will get snatched up by other spring brides.”
Everything about this irritates me—my mom’s strident tone, her use of the word “vendors,” her implicating my membership in a group called “spring brides.” So, I snap back: “God forbid we end up with appetizers that score under five stars on The Knot.” I hear myself morphing into the snotty teenage version of myself, but I feel powerless to stop it: “What will people say if our flowers aren’t the loveliest arrangements in the history of wedding bouquets? How will we ever live down the shame?”
My mother sighs. “Molly, do you want my help with this wedding or not?”
What I want is to demand that she stop pestering me. But I know I can’t trust what might come out of my mouth next, so I say I have to go. After I hang up, my gut is a tornado of regret and irritation.
From the other room, Gabe calls out, “Hey, I made plans with Talia, like you suggested.”
“What’s that?” I must’ve misheard.
“Talia. She pushed for drinks, but I held firm on coffee.”
“Okay,” I say brightly, feeling like an insane person. Did I really suggest this idea to Gabe? What was I possibly thinking? Why can’t I come up with the right reaction to any situation? I idly flip the calendar to May, our wedding month—the image is of Nepalese earthquake victims. I feel a kinship with them, their eyes wide with panic and fear. It makes me pulse with shame. Obviously Gabe meeting up with his ex does not qualify as a humanitarian crisis. Talia’s power wouldn’t even register on the Richter scale, or only just barely. And really, I try to reassure myself, what could possibly happen over a cup of coffee?
• • •
Gabe’s meet-up with Talia is scheduled for the following Saturday, and my corresponding plan is to stay occupied, to be so engaged in my own thing that I don’t even remember that my fiancé is off doing who-knows-what with his ex. Since Lana is now up and about with the help of a cane, I take her up on her offer to go wedding gown shopping at Bella So. She opens her apartment door wearing a velour sweat suit, her hair oily and her face bare, so I assume she’s running behind. But as I settle into the sofa, she says, “Ready?” and with much fumbling pulls on a coat. In the cab, my sister-in-law rolls her window all the way down. “Just a little lightheaded,” she explains, sticking her entire head outside, like a dog, the thirty-degree wind rushing in. Her hair soon resembles Einstein’s.
I start wondering if Lana is well enough to visit her place of employment—it’s her first time back since her accident. My unease deepens as we loiter outside (Bella So is a doorbell type of establishment). A woman who introduces herself to me as Ingrid lets us in. She’s wearing a chambray jumpsuit and stands a willowy six feet tall in ballet flats. I watch uncomfortably as Lana, all giggly waves, goes in for a full-body hug, in contrast to Ingrid, who waits a short beat before extracting herself from the embrace. She takes a step back, like Lana might be contagious. “How have you been?” Ingrid asks, expression neutral.
“Oh, just fine, thanks,” Lana says brightly. Ingrid barely nods, not even bothering to fake interest.
Equally as off-putting is the shop itself. The other customers seem to belong to an elite species, Homo supermodeliens. Their long, slender limbs are draped delicately in expensive, silky fabrics; their engagement rings are veritable rocks, visible from across the room. No one acknowledges our entrance. I’m reminded of high school, when I’d emerge from the bathroom stall to find myself an accidental crasher of a popular-girl meeting at the sinks. Not a girl would move aside to let me wash my hands; I’d try to meet my eyes in the tinny mirror, attempting to confirm that I did in fact exist.
But Lana doesn’t seem to register the other customers, or doesn’t care—after all, until she devolved into her current state of cripple, she herself was a member of this elite echelon. She walks me through the racks, stopping at each gown to orate on cut and material and style, the litany of jargon washing over me like a foreign language. I feel like I’m on a museum tour, like it’s forbidden to touch the displays.
Lana pushes a dress on me. I catch a glimpse of the price tag. Even with her fifty percent off, there’s just no way. Not to mention that I already have a dress. But I humor my sister-in-law by taking it into the dressing room. “Usually wedding sample sizes are eights,” Lana tells me through the curtain, “but our clients tend to be smaller, so we carry mostly fours and twos. Don’t worry, anything can be let out.”
The zipper stalls halfway up my back, and I can barely move my hips. There’s no mirror, so in order to see how I look, I’m made to leave the privacy of the stall and stand on a public platform. Lana has told me this setup is supposed to make clients feel like a figurine on a wedding cake, but I stand there feeling more like an exhibit in a freak show.
“Gorgeous!” squawks Lana. I have an absurd thought that “gorgeous” is one of those words that also means its opposite, like how “sanction” means both “approve” and “penalize,” and “left” means both “remaining” and “gone.” Because the truth is, I look like a marshmallow squeezed into an organza tube. Meanwhile, the woman on the platform beside me is the quintessential bride, the one featured on magazine covers and in venue brochures: tall and swan-like, her pale skin and auburn curls striking against the ivory damask cocooning her feminine curves. Lana is captivated—I can see the old Lana in her gaze, longing to go adjust the gown’s straps and smooth out the train. Of course, Ingrid steps forward to do these things.
Turning her attention back to me, Lana narrows her eyes. Then she goes to get another gown. “Try this one. Duponi will suit you better.” One more, I think, and then I’m out of here.
But Lana’s right. This one’s also too tight, but when I emerge to check myself out in the mirror, I can see why people spring for wedding gowns that cost several months’ paychecks. Now I feel like the cake figurine, like I fit in in this rarefied world, like I’m the person Gabe would want to marry, no matter how he’s spending his afternoon. Ingrid approaches the platform and pats me on the butt. “Cut out carbs for a few months, start hitting the gym, and this would be stunning on you.”
I watch myself blush in the mirror. I nearly trip stepping down from the platform. I can’t get the dress off fast enough. As I stand in my underwear in the dressing room, hearing giggles through the curtain, I scrutinize my body: the sloping curve of stomach, the thighs that rub, the slight jiggle under my arms. I think of Talia and her narrow, childlike form. I think of Dahlia and her generous self-admiration. It’s all mortifying. I pull on my jeans and sweater, eager to escape from my own sight and my own thoughts, and of course also the store.
But where’s Lana? I weave through rack after rack. I finally find her up front behind the register with Ingrid. Her back is to me, but I can sense her agitation. I ask if everything’s all right. She whips around, looking startled, her face red.
Ignoring me, Ingrid addresses Lana: “We’ll discuss it later. For now, you just focus on getting well.” Her voice is calm and firm.
I have to scurry to catch up with Lana’s exit—it feels like we’ve been banished. Lana doesn’t speak until we’re in a Lyft heading uptown. Her voice is a snarl: “That bitch won’t put me on next month’s schedule.”
“And it was pretty rude how she suggested I go on a diet, right?” I’m genuinely offended, but mostly hoping to distract Lana from her rage.
But she doesn’t seem to hear me. “We’ll go back another time. You can find your dress when I’m working. Next month.”
“I don’t know, Lana. I might go with something a little more low-key, less pricey.”
She shrugs, moody. “If that’s what you want.”
Since Sam is a no-go for the wedding, I planned to ask Lana to be my maid-of-honor; I was going to do it today. But she’s picking at her na
ils, and her eyes are bugged, and it makes me feel a little scared of her. She chugs half a bottle of water, then nearly chokes asking the driver to make a pit-stop at CVS. “I’ll just be a minute,” she tells me. When she returns, she’s chewing a big wad of gum.
Entering Lana’s apartment, I’m spooked by its shadowy stillness—all the curtains are drawn, and it’s freezing. As I crank up the heat and let in some light, I have an impulse to run around buck-wild speaking in tongues. “Where’s Leo?” I ask, realizing I haven’t seen my brother in weeks.
“Working, as usual.” My sister-in-law starts fiddling with her bracelet, and the little twangs echo through the quiet like alarms. I notice the smallness of Lana’s wrist attached to an arm so twiggy it looks like it might snap off. I decide to make her a sandwich. She ignores it. So, I set her up with a blanket on the couch, flip on a Friends rerun to give her some company, and then guiltily say I have to go. But Lana doesn’t even hear me; she’s already nodded off.
• • •
My edginess follows me home. Gabe is nowhere to be found. No texts or emails, either. How long can one conceivably stretch out a coffee meet-up? To comfort myself, I try on the decidedly un-Bella So sheath I bought to wear to my wedding. But after a month hibernating in the back of my closet, it seems like an entirely different dress. The asymmetrical cut looks haphazard instead of interesting, the thin fabric shoddy not sleek, and whereas before I appreciated its curve-hugging shape, now I picture Ingrid at my side pointing out how it pulls there, there, and especially there. Scrutinizing myself in the mirror, I can hardly stand how much space I’m taking up. I feel like a fraud, thinking I could pull off this look. Frantically, with shaky fingers, I wrest the thing off and fling it on the floor.
I’m still in my underwear when Gabe returns home, bringing with him the aromas of Thai takeout. It turns my stomach. I can’t remember if I’ve eaten today, but my lack of appetite feels like a physical presence. “So how did it go?” I ask, aiming for casual, although it’s belied by the anxious tremor in my voice.
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