I never heard from Travis again, and Todd and I didn’t see each other but a handful of times before the wedding. I tried to get together with him, but he just kept looking so disappointedly at me that it became too much to take. I felt the loss of Todd—deeply—but I didn’t know why. Everything was happening at such a lightning-fast pace that I didn’t have time to explore it.
It was go, go, go, from the wedding cake place (double-chocolate blackout cake with chocolate mousse filling and white buttercream frosting) to picking out the wedding band (and making the do-not-play list: no “Mony Mony,” “Celebration,” “Brick House,” “YMCA,” or “Hot Hot Hot”) to color schemes, centerpieces, wedding favors, and reception plans (my mom and Walter’s backyard decorated to the nines). I opted out of a bachelorette party because the lack of familiarity and wealth of relatives in my bridal party made it seem like it might be more uncomfortable than fun.
All the while, Walter looked concerned. I’d thought it was the certainty that his lawn would be wrecked just as it was getting its spring legs, but he was very accommodating to every request. It simply didn’t seem to make him very happy—not any part of it. I assumed he was having trouble deciding what his role was supposed to be as stepfather, because he seemed always to be about to say something to me yet never did.
Before I knew it, April showers had given way to May flowers and it was the night before my wedding.
* * * * *
My mother was frantic. But to whatever extent I’d come to know her over the previous few months, it seemed like a good frantic. A thriving frantic. She was alive—more alive than I’d seen her in my short time since the accident—and even when little mishaps occurred along the way, things she’d deem a crisis, I’d always notice a hint of a smile when she dealt with them. And deal with them she would, making everything turn out the way she’d envisioned.
She’d really gone above and beyond. I actually wondered what she was going to do with herself once this day was over, because for the three months leading up to the wedding it was all she ate, breathed, and slept. And it showed. The church was breathtaking. She’d left no stained-glass windowpane unturned.
* * * * *
Cat, Danielle, and Samantha were visions in pewter. Their dresses were—dare I say—stunning. My mother had gone out of her way and had them custom-made, and they were decidedly more like couture, red-carpet fare than bridesmaid gowns. Cat had that pregnant celebrity look that had been all the rage during recent award seasons.
“You look so pretty,” I said to them.
“We do,” Cat agreed. “I never thought I’d see a non-hideous bridal party, let alone be a member of one. Someone should take a picture.”
“Oh, I am,” my mother said, camera blocking half her face and then blinding flash after flash.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Cat said, choking back tears of wonder at the moment, “you look stunning.”
“So . . .” Samantha said. “Is it time to do this?”
I raised my eyebrows wondering what this was, but when they all started reaching for wrapped boxes I realized it was the hoary yet indispensable tradition. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
“Do mine first,” Sam ordered.
I took the package from her and pulled at the ribbon, untying the bow. I peeked in the box and saw a hint of blue. I could tell what it was without even moving the tissue paper—a baby blue garter.
“From the bottom of my heart to the top of my thigh, thank you,” I said, holding it up to show the girls. “Is this something new and something blue?”
“Just something blue,” my mother said, tipping me off that the “something new” was coming from her. I pulled up my dress to slip on the garter and wondered if there was a right leg and a wrong one. But, already feeling self-conscious about the whole thing, I didn’t bring it up.
“Wrong leg,” Cat pointed out.
“I’m a lefty, and if anyone notices, we’ve got bigger problems than a little lapse of wedding tradition,” I said.
“Open this,” she said, clapping her hands gleefully.
I did as instructed and pulled out the most beautiful, delicate, pearl and diamond necklace I’d ever seen. Although . . . had I seen it? There was something familiar about it, like I was staring at a photograph—yet there it was in my hands. Cat helped me put it on and then pulled me to the mirror to look at myself.
I ran my fingertips over the stones and spheres. “It’s so beautiful.”
“It’s something borrowed,” Cat said. “And something old. It’s my mom’s.”
“It looks good enough to eat,” I said, and Cat took in a quick short breath.
“That’s the exact same thing you said last time!” she exclaimed, as she pulled out a picture. “You actually put it in your mouth for a second, and if my mother had seen, I don’t think we’d be here today.” The photo showed me at age seven—marrying Todd in the backyard. I’d worn her mother’s necklace that day too. I reached up to my neck to touch it. I knew she’d shown me the picture when I was in the hospital to jog my memory, so I couldn’t be sure if I was remembering it from then or from when we were children. But I felt something. Like my brain was itching.
“My turn,” my mom said. “Something new.”
She handed me a small box, wrapped in silver paper. I carefully opened it, trying unsuccessfully not to tear the pretty wrapping, and pulled out a black velvet box. Inside were diamond stud earrings.
“Wow,” I said. “They’re gorgeous.”
“I thought so. And every girl should have a pair,” she said with an air of authority.
“Thank you,” I said, although I’d started to feel almost like I was having an out-of-Jordan experience. Something strange was going on inside me, a mild combination of dizziness, nausea, headache, and anxiety. It came and went. I wanted to sit, then stand, then sit, then haul ass out of there and swing from a tree I saw that wasn’t there. Wedding jitters, no doubt. I looked at the mirror and went to put the earrings on, but the little back slipped and fell out of my gloved hand. And as Sam grabbed it up and offered to help, I had a moment of intense fear that she was going to stick my lobe hard with the post.
“Jordan, hold still!” she scolded. “It’s your day. I wouldn’t hurt you if someone paid me—and I haven’t had a decent offer yet. Besides,” she said, cinching the molar-sized rock in place, “I’m way over that trick.” That trick? I stared at her and stared, then rubbed my lobes a few times and turned my head to give her access.
My mother, Cat, and Danielle left the room to do last-minute checks, leaving Samantha and me alone in the room.
“So,” Sam said, and kind of bobbed her head uncomfortably.
“So . . .” I said back.
“This is probably the part where I say some sisterly stuff and we get all weepy,” she said.
“Okay . . .” I said and waited. There was an awkward pause as Sam kicked her left foot up and then swiped it back and forth a few more times.
Finally she spoke up. “Yeah, it’s hard to know what to say, that isn’t, you know, insulting.” She pinched the top of her dress nervously.
Then a godsend—a knock at the door.
“Come in,” we nearly shouted.
The door opened and there stood Dirk, looking very handsome in his tux, and . . . looking.
“Hey!” I said, suddenly aware of the implications. “You’re not supposed to see me until I walk down the aisle! It’s bad luck!”
“I’ll leave you two,” Sam said and slipped out of the room.
“Come here,” Dirk said, and pulled me toward him. “This is for good luck.” And he kissed me softly. Then his lips grazed my cheek, and my neck, finally settling on my ear. He started tonguing my ear like a starved dog lapping up the last of his dinner after not having eaten for a week. The soft kisses had given way to amateur hour at the ear canal. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but it was disgusting.
And as I reflexively pushed a
gainst his arm and straightened slightly, I felt as though I’d been here before. The two of us in close quarters, my head turned sideways to him, eyes wide. I didn’t know if it was déjà vu or if I was having an actual memory, but Dirk’s tongue snaking around in my ear was an extremely unpleasant sensation that I was almost certain I’d experienced before. I pulled away and looked at him. I concentrated hard. Hard as I possibly could. Was I remembering something? Dirk winked as he said, “See you at the altar, baby.” And then he was gone.
I stood in the same position in the middle of the room for what must have been a good ten minutes, trying to recall that moment, that other moment—something before the few handfuls of moments I was about to carry into that ceremony, down that aisle, into our life together. I had felt something just then. Something other than “now.”
Walter opened the door and Cat leaned into the room, waving me forward with a trembling smile. I gathered my bouquet and stood amid the rustling of my bridal gown.
Then a phrase flashed in my mind, but it wasn’t about Dirk. It was about ears. “Wise beyond your ears.” As a child I’d misheard the phrase “wise beyond your years.” I couldn’t place the when or where, but it was a hazy memory that seemed to be floating in and out of my consciousness. I could hear my mother laughing and correcting me, but it still didn’t make sense to me.
I didn’t want to move. I got superstitious about standing in that very spot—since I thought the memories were finding me there—so I stayed for another few minutes, I don’t even know how many, waiting for my memory, or even another word or a phrase or an image, to come back. Nothing came. Only the “Wedding March.” I took it as a sign and readied myself for the biggest event of my life—and certainly of the life I remembered.
Cat, Danielle, and Samantha scrambled to the entrance, to pair up with Dirk’s groomsmen for the promenade down the aisle. My mom went next, and I laced my arm into the crook of Walter’s, suddenly feeling all my muscles seize into knots—not knowing if I was going to scream bloody murder, faint, laugh, cry, or all of the above, though not necessarily in that order.
I had the distinct impression I was standing beside myself, a few feet away, wearing jeans and an old Dr Pepper T-shirt, watching a bride about to be given away, and I didn’t know her, though she was me. Maybe at that colossal moment, with the vows lying in wait just a short walk away, every first-time bride and groom falls into a split second or two of shallow madness, shoved there by the stultifying awareness that life is about to change irreversibly. I’m not sure how many console themselves with the possible reversal that a divorce represents, but I certainly didn’t. My mind drifted across a spotty landscape, partly barren, partly crowded with faces I’d known and places I’d been, abuzz with voices I couldn’t understand and music that sounded as though it were being broadcast underwater. I felt half tempted to leave, but the bride stood still, next to a stepfather she barely knew, about to walk down the aisle and commit the rest of her life to a man that half her friends swore she hated.
We stood at the entrance, and Walter put something small into my right hand. A single orange jelly bean. “For luck,” he said. I popped the bean in my mouth and chewed and swallowed. Then everybody rose in unison and turned to watch me leap.
“You ready, Jordy Belly?” he asked, and everything stopped. The voices, the thick chords of Mendelssohn careening off the high walls, the visual chatter of images riffling by like a crack-injected music video. The dreamlike haze I’d been drifting in for the previous half hour started to dissipate. All the near-miss memories connected, one after the next, the trickle becoming a tidal wave. All clear now. Blessing in disguise, with diamonds. Wise beyond her ears. Sam’s adolescent assault on my freshly pierced lobes, improvising new piercings in a lifelong tradition of torment. Awfully wedded wife.
And Jordy Belly. I knew that. And I knew how I knew it. The tangerine jelly bean. I was born under the sign of Reagan, when Jelly Belly candies became all the rage, and in his love for the candies, the otherwise apolitical Walter had found something in common with the Great Communicator. From the supply he’d kept close by his desk in the home office, he’d always set aside the tangerines, for me, his Jordy Belly. I remembered.
Walter gave me a little tug and we started to walk down the aisle. I looked to both sides at the pews and recognized faces, not all but most. It was almost like a field with flowers popping up every other step—each flower the recognizable figure of someone in my life. Mrs. Winchell, the neighbor whom nobody liked but who always brought a fruitcake to our house every Christmas—which my mom would promptly re-gift to the Children’s Hospital. Mrs. Redding, my piano teacher. I hadn’t practiced in fifteen years, and there wasn’t a shot in hell I’d remember how to play “Edelweiss” but I did remember her. Dirty Uncle Ritchie. He wasn’t actually related to us, but he was Walter’s best friend. He used to sneak me sips of beer, and when I came home from school one day and asked him what sixty-nine was—he told me but made me promise not to tell where I’d heard. And I’d wondered, how on earth could anyone hold a kiss for sixty-nine seconds?
And Dirk. There he was . . . looking as handsome as ever in his tux—the motherfucker.
Bad memories of our life together rained down—one sorry, sordid image after the next. I remembered the various girls he’d ogled, flirted with, cheated with. The forgotten birthday. Waking up in the hospital the first time—everybody dissecting me like a lab rat. And then waking up in the hospital for the second time. And Dirk pretending that we were still together even though I was completely, unequivocally, 200 percent over him. Memory after memory after memory . . . up until minutes before the wedding—Dirk sticking his disgusting cow tongue in my ear. The patented Michael Dirkston ear extravaganza. It all rushed back, borne on a raging river of saliva.
How did this happen? I thought. He caught my narrowed eyes and winked. I walked up the steps and found myself at the center of my wedding. It was totally surreal.
The priest nodded to us, to say It’s time, and I took a deep breath. I didn’t know when I was supposed to break the news that there would be no wedding. When would be the appropriate time to raise my hand?
“We are gathered here today to join Jordan Landau and Michael Dirkston in their blessed union,” the priest said.
Right then, I decided. The second I heard the words “blessed union” in the same sentence as my and Dirk’s names, the tragicomic farce had to be stopped.
“Father.” I cleared my throat and raised my hand.
“Yes?” the priest said.
“I object,” I said.
There was audible shifting in seats and a more than a few murmurs among the crowd. I turned to face them.
“Hi,” I said to everyone. And I looked out into the church at everybody that was there for my wedding. My wedding. To Dirk. Repulsive.
“Hi?” a few confused guests answered back.
“It’s me. Jordan. I mean—I know you know it’s me, but I mean it’s me me. I’m back. I got my memory back. Just now, and it’s still coming back to me, but I REMEMBER!”
There were oohs and aahs and how wonderfuls abounding, smiles everywhere—except on Dirk’s face. He looked eight shades of nervous.
“Dirk, I’m missing something. Where’s my journal?”
“Your journal?” he said, in his best who-me? voice.
“My journal,” I repeated. “It was under my bed. If you cleaned the place, you would have found it. And if you looked through it, you would have found this: You forgot my birthday last year. Or that time in July when you said I looked like the creature from the black lagoon when I was coming out of the water. Or when you cheated on me—the first time, and I cried so hard my tears soaked the page, and I circled the spot of dried wrinkled paper to note my tears.”
Dirk looked out at our audience and smiled nervously. I looked out at the faces, recognizing so many of them.
“I remember you all!” I shouted. “Hi, Mrs. Dunlap,” I called out to the woman wear
ing a straw bonnet with a big satin ribbon in the third row. “I remember you used to make us broccoli casserole. It was awful, but I didn’t say anything. Nice to see you.”
I felt manic. I’d gone from white-hot anger to soaring happiness. “I remember! I remember everything!” I started pointing at people. “I remember you, and I remember you and you—” And then I spotted Todd, who looked like he was holding his breath. I walked down the steps, back up the aisle toward where he sat. “And I most certainly remember you.”
“You do?” he said.
“How could I forget my first husband?” He smiled and looked like he was about to cry. The priest, however, wasn’t too pleased to hear of my previous nuptials. “We were seven years old,” I said to the priest, who just sort of frowned.
“Hussy!” said some old woman in the front row that I didn’t even recognize. I looked back at Todd.
“How could you let me almost marry this creep?” I asked.
“I already objected,” he said. “But you weren’t buying, so I was just sitting here, holding my peace, praying you’d wake up.”
“I’m sorry for what I put you through—and not believing you,” I said and then looked at Cat, who was looking back at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something to her.
“And of course I remember my best girl!” Cat ran up and hugged me.
“You’re back,” she said. “I tried to stop you . . .”
“I know,” I said.
A sudden movement distracted me. It was Lydia standing up and looking like she’d like to be anywhere but there. What the hell was she doing trying to sneak out of the fifth row?
“Lydia?” I said in a high-pitched squeal. “You stole the ideas for KidCo from me. And you’re sleeping with someone fifteen years younger than you.”
“Ouch,” someone said. I looked out to see who it was and realized it was a room full of nobody I cared about. And, more important, nobody who cared about me.
Then I spotted Esperanza, who had accused me of throwing poop! I knew I wasn’t one to talk about rewriting history, but that wasn’t me. “And, Esperanza,” I said as I wagged my finger at her, “it was Sam who threw her poop, not me! Sam.”
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