Borrow-A-Bridesmaid

by Anne Wagener

  It won’t be long before Lena’s drama seismometer picks up on Mark’s arrival. She’s almost finished with her reverse aisle walk, giving regal waves and doling out bite-size bits of schmooze. Gaining on us. Her heels hit the marble floor of the lobby. She spots Sam and gives him the signal to seat Tiny Grandmother, who’s emerging from the bathroom and fiddling with a flower arrangement secured to her pearlized silver walker.

  “Lena, three o’clock,” I say to Mark. “We’ve got to move.”

  We slip through the door that leads to the basement—I close it silently behind me—and bolt down the basement stairs in seconds. He joins me on the small landing as I tap on the nursery door, pressing my lips to the crack between the door and the jamb. “Holly! Open up! Are you decent?”

  She rustles to the door, the folds of her fabric whispering with each step. “Who’s that?”

  “Piper—and—” I pause. Am I supposed to announce him? May I present . . . your long-lost father!

  But Mark takes the lead, gently nudging me aside. “Hollypop?” He puts a callused hand against the door, right on top of a finger painting of the infant Moses in a basket. “Baby, it’s me.”

  Her dress stops whispering.

  The doorknob gives a little shudder, but she doesn’t turn it. As if she’s feeling for the warmth of a fire on the other side.

  I glance behind us, terrified that Lena might be in pursuit. I’d love nothing more than to let this father-daughter reunion unfold naturally, but if Lena sees Mark, I can imagine it ending only one way: Lena sinking her teeth into his neck and sucking out his soul. “Holly, Lena’s coming—”

  Holly turns the doorknob, and Mark steps back so she can push open the door. I creep around him to catch her reaction; when she sees him, the line of her mouth contracts into a little O of shock.

  “Daddy?” Holly freezes, a makeupped icicle. I resist the urge to steamroll them both into the room.

  “Holly.” A note of warmth in his voice seems to melt her, and in one fluid motion she’s taking his hand and pulling him into the nursery.

  A skeleton key rests in the lock on the outside of the door—I pluck it out, slip into the nursery behind Mark, and pull the door closed with an exasperated but quiet thwomp. Once inside, I look for a latch to secure the door but find only another keyhole. I turn the skeleton key until the lock snaps into place, and set the key on the counter next to a gargantuan box of Goldfish. Only then do I exhale. I’m sure Lena can smell mutiny, but she can’t materialize through a locked door—can she?

  Father and daughter evaluate each other.

  Unsure what to do, I hover by the door and watch them gaze at each other from across a distance years wide.

  “Daddy.”

  He nods. His arms stay unmoving, sort of twitchy, like he badly wants but doesn’t expect a hug.

  Rachel finally catches on. She swivels from the mirror and gapes at him. One of her eyelids is layered with the navy and silver wedding colors; the other eyelid is nude. “Dad? What the flying f—”

  “Girls,” Mark starts, then stops again, rubbing the fingers of his left hand across his brow. “I know it’s—”

  Holly flies into him, pressing her face into his suit lapels. He looks stunned, then wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head and closing his eyes.

  Rachel glares at him. “Two graduations. Five boyfriends. Three new jobs. And you only come back because of Holly. Figures.” She squints at him. “Is that flower from the church garden? You always were a cheap bastard.”

  Holly seems oblivious. Her eyes are closed and leaking as she wraps her arms around her father.

  Rachel tosses the eye shadow palette aside. The little ovals of various colors look like so many painted eyelids closed against the scene taking place above them. “Where the hell have you been?” Each word is an entity in and of itself and duly punctuated: Where. The. Hell! Have. You. Been?

  “I wanted to come back when I had my sh—when I got myself straightened out.”

  “Is that supposed to be some sort of excuse?” Rachel starts, but Holly pulls away and stares Rachel down, silencing her with the sort of look only a sister can give.

  The creaking of footsteps in the stairwell freezes all of us.

  The handle rattles. Lena. It has to be Lena.

  It rattles again, as if she’s in utter disbelief that any doors would be barred against her august personage. Or maybe she senses people are having an emotional moment in here. She’s like a zombie that feeds on feelings.

  I crouch down and put my lips to the keyhole. “Lena?”

  A gray eye appears on the other side.

  “We have half an hour until the ceremony,” she says, her voice at six-inch volume. “I need to make sure Holly’s ready.”

  Photo-ready.

  I swallow, trying to improvise but failing under the intensity of Lena’s gaze. Her eye casts out a hook that fishes in my organs for weakness. “You can’t come in right now” is all I can come up with.

  “Excuse me?” Her voice is bullet-train monotone.

  “If you come in, I’ll—”

  Lena cocks an eyebrow.

  “I’ll scream.”

  The eyebrow cocks higher.

  “At the top of my lungs. I’ll scream. I’ll poop. I’ll make a scene.”

  The gray eye hovers. God bless him, Sam has caught on. I hear the door at the top of the steps open, and then Sam’s voice echoes down the stairwell. “Senator Collinsworth, there’s someone from the media you’ll want to meet.”

  The gray eye disappears, and I exhale. When I turn around, three pairs of eyes stare at me.

  “Is that Mom?” Rachel starts toward the door. “I bet she’d like to know we have an unexpected guest.” I position myself in front of the door, guarding it.

  “Stop! Wait!” Holly catches Rachel’s wrist. “I invited him,” she says, the phrase a key that locks Rachel’s lips.

  Rachel crosses her arms over her chest and clenches her jaw. Obscenities are implied in her widening pupils, but she’s silent.

  Holly turns back to her father. “I want you to walk me down the aisle. I’ve always wanted you to.” Her voice starts out firm and begins to waver. “I want to show you something.” She holds her right hand toward Mark. I didn’t notice before, but a gold chain-link bracelet encircles her tiny wrist. Well, “gold” is a stretch. The links have tarnished, leaving a few green smudges on her skin. A single charm dangles from the bracelet: a gold unicorn, its horn twisted with coral pink and white. Holly looks at the charm the way you’d look at a newborn puppy or a teacup pig. Rachel hovers nearby, silent and pale. “My something old,” Holly says, her voice breaking.

  Her father blinks, reaches into his suit-coat pocket, and extends a closed palm toward her. She takes his rough hand and begins peeling back the fingers one by one, starting with his pinkie and working her way toward his index finger. I get the feeling his palm was closed around Holly’s heart all this time.

  Several more charms in various stages of tarnish are revealed on the surface of his cracked hand. A wise owl looks with unblinking eyes at a smiling starfish. One of the starfish’s arms brushes against a graduation cap tasseled with tiny pearls. “One for each year,” he says.

  “You remembered.” She picks up each charm in turn, holding one longer than the others. “The dancing princess—”

  “For your sweet sixteen.” He attaches the princess charm to her bracelet.

  Rachel lets out a huff. “Nothing for me, huh? What a steaming load of bullshit.”

  His palm closes around the rest of the charms. “I owe you girls an explanation, but now isn’t the time. I’m here to walk your sister down the aisle.”

  Rachel turns to Holly. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t have him kicked out.” She slides her fingers under Holly’s bracelet, pullin
g it closer to her eyes. A bit of green tarnish rubs off on Rachel’s skin, and she looks up at Holly as if to say, See, it’s all a sham.

  “I want him here! It’s my wedding!” Holly wipes her cheeks. “And he’s our father.” Her voice sharpens into the voice I recognize. Fierce.

  Rachel steps back, her eyes boring into her father’s. “You want to stay? Now you want to stay. Why not then?”

  Holly blinks up at him, fingering her bracelet, her eyelashes beaded with droplets.

  He looks from one daughter to the other, clears his throat. His eyes seem to be asking, You’re really gonna make me do this? Now? Holly nods.

  “Look, baby—look at me. I was never gonna be a politician’s husband. Your mother wanted a cardboard cutout, not a partner. I tried to be what she wanted, but it was never gonna work. Not in the long run. I got . . . tired.”

  “Among other things.” Rachel rolls her eyes.

  Mark ignores Rachel, speaking now to Holly alone. “Even on my wedding day, my gut was trying to tell me.” He takes her tiny hand in his. “Part of why I came is to hear from you that this is right. That this man’s gonna treat you right. That you can picture yourself having a family together and all that.”

  I hold my breath. It looks like Holly is holding hers, too.

  “That’s why we got engaged. Because we thought we’d be . . . starting a family,” she says, so quietly I can barely hear her from a few feet away. Her eyes close. Mascara tributaries make their way down her cheeks.

  Mark’s lips part. “You’re—”

  “Oh, Daddy. I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Hollypop.” He puts his arm around her shoulders.

  Rachel gapes at her sister. “Holy shit, Hol, a shotgun wedding? When were you planning to let me in on your little secret? Holy shit,” she says again, but it comes out as a sardonic laugh. “This is priceless. Does Mom know?”

  Holly looks down at her hands and nods.

  Rachel snorts. “Of course. No wonder she approved of you marrying that freak. A grandchild out of wedlock isn’t exactly a campaign endorsement.” She smiles to herself, then begins applying eye shadow to her other lid. “Classic.”

  I turn to glare at Rachel as the picture of Holly’s childhood fills out more completely: a cruel sister. A narcissistic, manipulative mother. I still don’t plan to forgive Holly for cheating. But her quest for male attention—any attention, really—is beginning to make a lot of sense. If there were a glass of mango lassi here, I’d pour it over Rachel’s chignon.

  Holly erupts, her mouth downturned like a wilting flower. She slips out of her father’s grip and collapses in on herself, her skirt billowing around her as she weeps. A melting ice-cream cake of a girl. She hugs herself, rocking back and forth. Her father hovers nearby, looking lost. After a moment, he crouches down and pats her shoulder.

  Rachel pauses her makeup application to glare at his reflection. “First day back on father duty, and it’s a doozy. Tough stuff. Thirsty yet?”

  Mark focuses on Holly, peeling saturated strands of hair off her cheeks.

  Susan’s words come back to me. There’s still a chance to stop this. I crouch in front of Holly, wincing in case she lashes out. But she only seems to be folding farther in on herself, trying to hold herself together as her emotional fissure deepens and widens.

  “Holly,” I whisper.

  She doesn’t seem to hear.

  “I know you haven’t been completely honest with Charlie. I think you should tell him the truth.”

  This gets her attention.

  “You can’t start this marriage off with a lie.”

  Her face has gone as white as her dress. “What?”

  I raise an eyebrow. I think of her and Blaine saying hi to each other over and over again at the shower. “I don’t think you hid it as well as you thought.”

  Her mouth drops open. “How could you know that?”

  I take a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth. Telling Charlie the truth.”

  “My mom doesn’t even know.”

  Why would her mom know about her affair? I shake my head. Must stay focused. “Look, whatever motives you had don’t matter now. This lie will be like the princess and the pea. Always there, lurking beneath the mattress, making you feel awkward and lumpy and . . . miserable!” Not my best speech ever, but I’m running out of time.

  “How did you know?” She presses her fingers against her temples. “There’s no way you could know!”

  She really thinks she was that subtle? I sigh. “It wasn’t hard to figure it out; I know, Susan knows. Even Anna.”

  Holly lets out a half-gasp, half-sob. “Anna knows?”

  I nod.

  She covers her face with her hands. “Mom’s going to kill me.”

  I frown. “It’s not about her. It’s about you and Charlie.” I lower my voice. “Please. Tell him the truth.”

  Rachel flips her makeup case shut with a snap. “I have no idea what either of you are talking about, but you’re boring me to death.” She gestures at her sister. “You’re pregnant. Secret’s out! God! What are you going on about now?”

  I stand to my feet and put my hands on my hips. I’m tired of subtlety. “She cheated on Charlie. With the veg—with Blaine. The preppy neighbor guy.”

  Holly’s hands drop from her face. She’s looking at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about. She thinks she can hide it even now. Unbelievable.

  Mark reaches for Holly’s hand. “Is it true?”

  “No!” Holly shakes him off and whirls on me. “You don’t know anything! About anything!”

  Undeterred, Mark reaches for Holly again. “If you two are going to start a family—”

  Rachel is laughing. “Always something up your sleeve. You’ll do anything for attention—”

  “Shut up!” Holly’s shoulders rise to her ears, and she puts both fists against her forehead. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” The fists hit her forehead with each incantation.

  Rachel, Mark, and I fall silent and move a bit farther from her.

  “None of you knows anything! About anything! You want to know the big secret? Fine. Fine!”

  She’s quaking. Pressure seems to be building inside her, moving from her ankles slowly up to her ears, gathering momentum. And then from the rumbling volcano bride comes the exploding lava revelation.

  “There’s no baby! Happy?”

  The floor seems to dislodge under us, and then we’re plummeting.

  Thirty-Two

  My jaw opens and closes a few times. I feel like a mini-golf obstacle, a giant head whose mechanical mouth waits to deflect golf balls. Holly’s golf ball of truth bounces off my teeth a few times before rolling into my throat and sticking. It hurts. I can’t swallow, and no words can get past the obstruction.

  Holly’s not moving, either. She looks part relieved and part terrified.

  A movement from the other side of the room jolts Holly and me out of our mutual trance. Rachel is doubled over, her torso shaking violently. I step toward her in an unthinking urge to comfort, but she tips up her face to reveal unadulterated glee. “This is too much,” she says between bursts of laughter.

  Mark shakes his head, breaking his own trance. He crouches next to Holly and puts a hand on her bare shoulder. Neither of them speaks. He drops to his knees and opens his arms. She collapses into him, her cheek landing on his pilfered boutonniere. One of her tears drips between the rumpled petals. To the soundtrack of Rachel’s manic laughter, Mark rocks Holly back and forth, making low soothing noises.

  Outside the door, Lena says to an unidentified party, “Yes, yes. Hurry up!”

  I could escape from this whole scene. When Lena breaks in and sees Mark, she’ll go apeshit. I could slip through the nursery door unnoticed and out into the sunny August day.


  It’s the thought of Charlie, waiting at the end of the aisle for the supposed mother of his child, that drives me to pose in supplication at Holly’s feet. Part of me wants to wallop her for this lie—and all the times she’s hurt him—but her expression tells me that her internal whipping boy is already enduring a beating.

  Holly tightens her grip on Mark. She looks like she wants to say something, but the words condense into tears. The dancing princess charm trembles along in a frenzied pirouette.

  “You need to tell him,” Mark says. Tay-ull him.

  His words startle her, and she puts her hands over her eyes, sobbing harder. “I can’t, Daddy. So many people.”

  Lena is deep in Holly’s brain, nestled between layers of gray matter as if between armrests of an inflated pool floatie, sipping a martini. Letting years of brainwashing do their work.

  But Lin is nestled deep in mine. I pluck him from the folds of my own gray matter, where he’s shaking his head at stacks of disheveled memories in my hippocampus (“Might we scrapbook these?”). I hand him a dossier on the current sitch, and his eyebrows lift. “Isn’t it clear? You have to go get Charlie—just not the way you might have hoped.”

  Peering up at Holly, I tug ever so lightly on one of the beaded dress folds. She peers back at me between her index and middle fingers. One watery blue eye.

  “Just sit tight,” I say. “Take some deep breaths, and I’ll go get him.” I don’t have a plan, per se, but let’s cross that crevasse when we come to it.

  “Try a different key!” Lena’s voice is so clear, it sounds like she’s already in the room. “Oh, hell—give me that!”

  Holly drops her hands and stares at the rattling doorknob. Definitely a fire on the other side.

  Mark pats her back, nodding encouragingly. “It’ll be okay, Hollypop.”

  She starts rocking back and forth, her dress rustling rhythmically as she recites her mantras: “You don’t understand. I can’t. Charlie will kill me. Mom will kill me.”