by Anne Wagener
Mark’s back straightens at the mention of his ex. “This is your life we’re talking about. Don’t let her make this about—” His voice softens. “I know better than anyone. You can’t start this thing off with a lie. Your life and your happiness are worth more than one damn campaign season.”
Holly looks up at him. “Not according to her.”
A key fumbles in the keyhole, and I take Holly’s hands. “This is insane. I’m going to get him.”
The key turns, and the door opens onto the landing. When her mother enters the room, Holly’s face transforms. A quick cast change: Holly’s timid understudy is instantly replaced. Her face hardens into a rictus of determination. She looks more like her mother than ever before. Mark seems to notice this, too—he gets to his feet.
Lena pulls the door closed behind her. Her calm, deliberate movements are blood-curdling. The movements of a sleeping beast just waking. Her eyes widen for a nanosecond before she narrows them at Mark dispassionately. The way you’d examine a petrified specimen under a microscope. An unsavory specimen from a different geologic era.
While Lena is distracted, I put my body between her and Holly. Mark stands nearby as a secondary shield.
Lena turns slowly from Mark to me, putting her right hand on her hip. How much did she hear? “I need to speak with Holly. Alone.” She says this in the same tone of voice she might use to dispatch an intern for a ream of paper or a cappuccino.
Everything about Lena is terrifying, including her height and alarming shoulder pads. I picture the shoulder pads buffeting me like boxing gloves. Cue the slow-mo shot of my skin rippling from a hit to the jaw, a trajectory of blood making a perfect rainbow arc onto Mark’s wrinkled lapels. It’s much easier to say no to her through a keyhole, but I will myself to say it now. “No.”
Lena perches her left hand on her other hip. Winding up.
She tries another tactic, looks past me to Holly: “Clean up your face. We’ve got ten minutes before you walk.” She says it like she’s referring to a plank, not an aisle.
I take a deep breath and put my hands on my hips, mimicking her power pose. For an interminable moment, we hold a statuary staring contest. Until Inner Lin looks up from his scrapbooking and jabs me with a pair of pattern-edged scissors. “She’s not walking,” I say. “She has something important to tell Charlie.”
Lena’s upper lip flares. If this were a bad kung-fu movie, someone would dub her with an overdramatic grunt. She locks her eyes on Holly; she appears to be reading the secret as if it’s spelled out in the lace patterns on Holly’s dress hem. And then she smiles at her daughter. A smile with a threat encased in it. A smile that says, I’ll deal with you later. Then she turns to me, cocking her head. I’m to be dealt with first. “There seems to be some confusion about why you’re here.”
“I’m a bridesmaid. I’m here to help Holly.” I need a better slogan. And nunchucks.
She smiles. “You’re a sad-faced little nobody. Do you even know what a bridesmaid is? The origin dates back to biblical times. Jacob’s wives brought their maids with them when they married. In those times, a maid meant a handmaiden. A servant. So, let’s sum up, shall we? You’re here to do whatever I tell you. If Holly needs help with her basic bodily functions, then that’s what you do.”
Lena assesses me with her eyes. This is a familiar look. A look that says, You are nothing, and you will always be nothing. It’s the look Billy gives me when I get his coffee order wrong. The look Sal gave me when the register was short five dollars. The look Holly’s Botoxed shower guests gave me when I ventured too close with my tray of fig tarts.
That’s when it hits me: Every conscious and subliminal message from bad bosses, bad boyfriends—they hurt all the more because I believed those messages. As if each offender stood in line over the past months, taking turns pressing their thumbs on an already deep and purpling bruise.
Tears well in my eyes. How easy it would be to listen to this message, too. To nod, to step aside, to take the path of most pain but least resistance.
But Inner Lin has relocated to a conference room, projecting a slide show of other messages I’ve received: Charlie telling me to write again. Alex saying the only good thing to come from her broken engagement was gaining me as a friend. Stacey’s tearful gratefulness when I reunited her with her mom. Maddie shouting, “You got this!” as Alex and I jabbed right, then hooked left.
I feel a levee beginning to break. Each time I swallowed, said “Yes, sir,” “It’ll never happen again,” or “I’m sorry, Sal”—each act of meek compliance was a sandbag lodged against an angry tide of gathering salt water. Lena’s glare stirs the water, tempting it to rise above the barrier.
Lena turns to Rachel. “Why don’t you take Piper outside for some fresh air?” Rachel smile-grimaces, stepping toward me.
A flood of biblical proportions breaks through the levee. “No! I will not be moved!”
Lena’s lip flares again. She looks unimpressed.
“You thrive on that, don’t you, Lena?” I feel like I’m talking to every boss who’s trampled on my soul this year. I conjure a big glass of metaphysical crotch lassi. “Putting people down. But you’ll never be truly successful, because you don’t really see people. You see how you can use them.” I gesture at Holly. “You don’t see that your daughter’s in some real pain. You’re ready to put her through an unhappy marriage because you don’t want to call off a ceremony in front of people who might donate to your campaign. Lady, congratulations: You’ve sold your soul. If you keep going down the path you’re on, you’re going to wind up in the gubernatorial mansion, old and alone, with no one to help with your basic bodily functions.”
I take a deep breath. The room comes back into focus—sharper than it’s ever been before. I don’t know what I’m expecting to happen next: Maybe she’ll fall to the ground in a faint. That’s what would happen if this were a nineteenth-century Gothic novel.
The delivery would have been better with nunchucks.
Lena checks her watch. “Clean up your face,” she says to Holly, turning away from me as if I merely sneezed rather than poured a boiling kettle of wrath on her head. When Holly doesn’t respond, Lena turns to Rachel. “Clean up your sister and get her ready.”
Rachel rolls her eyes but obliges.
“Holly!” I say, but she’s staring into the mirror as Rachel dabs at her cheeks with a wedge-shaped foundation applicator. “Holly.” I prepare to hold the wrath kettle above the bridal veil. It will spare no one today. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”
Holly’s eyes meet mine in the mirror. Despite the tears still fresh on her cheeks, her eyes have hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I look to Mark for help, but he just shrugs. He looks exhausted.
My heart plays racquetball inside my chest. All I can think about is Charlie, adjusting his tie, clearing his throat, smoothing his lapels. Sure, he’ll find out about the baby sooner or later, but by then it’ll be couched in lies. Who knows how she and Lena will spin it? This might be my one chance.
I make for the nursery door, hoping Lena will be too focused on Holly to see me slip out. But a moment later, I’m eye level with the shoulder pads.
Lena looks over my head. “Mark, do you want to walk my daughter down the aisle?”
I hear him exhale behind me.
“Do you want to walk my daughter down the aisle or not? I’ll keep it very simple for you. It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Mark sighs, and I hear decades of pain in that one breath. “This ain’t right.”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you want to walk her down the aisle. And if you do, you’ll help me take care of this.” She nods at me, then cocks an eyebrow at him. A long, dramatic eyebrow cocking, like the raising of a theater curtain.
I glance from one to the other, giving the rest of the room a quick inventory for alterna
te escape plans. I could go for the window, but it’s too high for me to reach, and I have this horrible image of Lena snatching my ankle and sinking her teeth into it as I’m about to escape. Anything I can think to do won’t work. Point out the window and say, “Oh my God, the Goodyear blimp”? Sucker-punch her in the gut?
“Mark? You’ve got about ten seconds to make up your mind.”
Rachel is frantically sweeping strands of Holly’s hair back into its chignon. Upstairs, the processional starts on the organ.
Mark glares at Lena. “You want me out, you’ll have to make me.” He takes Holly’s arm. “You sure about this?” She puts her hand into the crook of his elbow and pulls him toward the door. I try to follow them out, but Lena mirrors my every move, blocking my body with hers.
“Rachel!” Lena keeps her body pressed against mine and turns her head toward her oldest daughter. “The key.”
My arm shoots to the counter, but Lena and her shoulder pads contain me while Rachel snatches the key from its spot next to the Goldfish. I try faking left, then darting right, but Lena easily blocks me. She totally missed her calling as a linebacker.
In unspoken agreement, Rachel and Lena switch positions—Rachel body-checks me while Lena presses a button on a radio-like box affixed to the wall. As she does, the sanctuary mikes are amplified into the room in real time. “So you can follow along,” she says almost sweetly.
Lena slips through the door while Rachel shoves me backward hard enough to knock the wind out of my chest. I barrel toward her, gasping, but I’m not fast enough—as soon as I reach the door, it closes in my face. I grab for the handle only to hear the lock slide into place with a definitive click.
Thirty-Three
I switch off the intercom, squeeze my eyes shut, and shout. “Help! Somebody! For the love of Pete! For the love of Charlie!”
The organ swells upstairs, easily drowning me out. My scream tapers into a series of truncated coughs as I try to catch my breath and process what’s going on. A couple minutes ago, I was telling Lena to shove it. Now I’m locked in the basement. This is what I get for standing up for myself: The universe produced an equal and opposite reaction. Thank you, classical mechanics.
I daydream briefly of a media scandal. A nice front-page spread. Family Values: Lieutenant Governor Hopeful Goes Crazeballs at Daughter’s Wedding.
The processional morphs into the bridal march, snapping me right out of my self-pity-fest. I’ve got to get to Charlie.
No chance of making a phone call—Alex has my purse, and I don’t see a landline. Given that I’m in a nursery, there’s an obvious shortage of sharp objects for potential lock-picking. Unless I can devise a way to force open the door with a Tickle Me Elmo and ten Beanie Baby Jesuses, I’m fresh out of luck.
I examine the scattering of debris covering the floor. Rachel’s eye shadow palette. Holly’s silk bag with various pearlized cases spilling out: a makeup cornucopia. A stick of deodorant. A discarded foundation applicator. A few crumpled tissues. I think even MacGyver would be stumped.
In a panic, I switch the intercom back on, and the minister’s voice comes booming through the wall speaker: “Dearly beloved . . .”
It’s starting.
No way in Hades am I going gently into this good night. I slam my fist against the old wooden door until my hand aches. No one comes to my rescue. Time for a new tactic. I slip off my heels and toss them aside.
I scramble to the far corner of the room, kicking debris out of my path as I go. By the window, I jump up and down a few times to warm up, imagining Lin massaging my shoulders and giving me a pep talk. Something intense, like: “You were born to destroy!”
“I was born to destroy,” I tell the Jesuses before taking a sharp inhale and sprinting across the room. Visualizing the door giving way under my brute force. The impact sends me flailing backward, moaning as a throbbing pain stretches down the entire right side of my body. Should have taken more classes at Alex’s GirlPower Gym.
“The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation . . .”
I squint at the radio box. Does the broadcast go both ways? Could I interrupt the ceremony with a slew of amplified obscenities? Or maybe I could go for a different angle. “Attention, dimwits! Satan here. I’ve programmed this sanctuary to self-destruct in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
Nope. No way to make a return transmission. Of course—they wouldn’t want children interrupting the ceremony with crying or poop jokes. Foiled again.
“The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy . . .”
In the sanctuary, Holly and Charlie probably look about as joyful as if they were each nunchucked in the crotch. I’m sure Lena’s looking on, smiling smugly. Channeling my anger, I pace back across the room, pointing my index and middle fingers at the door, then back at my eyes. I can do this.
Bam! I collide with the door and subsequently collide with the floor, dizzy from impact.
“Jesus!” says a voice on the other side of the door.
“Hello?” I pop up from the floor. “Help!”
The door handle rattles. “Piper? Did you lock yourself in there to fester in self-pity?”
“Alex, no! I need your help!”
“Clearly. Let me in, I’ve got pomegranate vodka.” She singsongs “vod-ka.”
“I can’t! They locked me in! Holly lied about the baby!”
“Sweetie, I know this whole thing has been tough on you, but I do worry about your sanity.”
“No! It’s Holly who lost her mind. She had a breakdown and admitted— Oh, fig tart. Just let me out so I can stop the wedding!”
“Wait, what?”
“Holly lied about the baby and I have to tell Charlie!”
Pause. “Shit.” A zip and a rustling as she presumably rummages in her purse. She tries jabbing something in the lock, then sighs. “Listen, I’ll get you out, but I’m going to need more than a couple of bobby pins and a tampon. I’ll be right back.”
“What? Don’t leave me!”
Her heels click-clack across the landing and then go silent.
Meanwhile, the ceremony plows ahead. “I require and charge you both, here in the presence of God, that if either of you know any reason why you may not be united in marriage lawfully, and in accordance with God’s Word, you do now confess it.”
Silence.
I press both of my palms against the door. Come on, Holly. Confess, dammit!
“Holly Garbo, will you have this man to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
Pause.
“I will.”
I rattle the door handle in a panic. Deep breaths. It’s early on in the ceremony yet. Not the vows; those come after the homily. Not yet. Still time. I dash to the other side of the room and examine the window, but it’s definitely too high and looks painted shut. The tiny orange chairs aren’t tall enough to give me the right amount of boost.
I trust Alex to come back for me, but what if she’s too late? I should’ve told her to plow down the aisle and tackle Holly.
“And Charlie, will you have this woman to be your wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”
Longer pause.
“I will.”
I collapse onto the floor, wiping beads of sweat from my forehead.
“Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?”
“We will,” say a chorus of voices, though I can think of a few people who’d be notably silent.
“Let us pray.”
And I do. Sitting on the nursery floor next to Tickle Me Elmo, I pray for Charlie to realize this isn’t right for him. I put my face in my hands, transmitting that red octagon to him over and over. STOP!
I look up as I hear Alex’s heels on the landing, again.
“I’m back.” Alex sounds out of breath. “Hang in there, I’m busting you out.”
The speaker crackles with static as someone begins reading First Corinthians 13. “Love is patient, love is kind . . .”
On the other side of the door, something snaps, then pops.
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.”
A few seconds later, a loud tapping noise comes from the doorjamb at about calf height.
“What’s going on out there?” I ask as the tapping subsides. “Alex?”
“Sit tight. Trust me.” The tapping progresses higher up the doorjamb.
The minister launches into a homily about today being the first brick in the foundation of their marriage. “You can build a sparkling mansion—one with the most beautiful and elegant decorations—that isn’t really a home. Or you can build a solid structure, firm and true. Maybe it’s not always beautiful to look at, but it has real character and style.”
The vows. The vows are after the homily.
“Step back, girly.” Pow! The hinge side of the door shakes, then moves a few inches toward me. Then a few more inches. Alex shoves it again, and her manicured hand emerges from the gap between the wall and the door. “C’mon!”
As I squeeze through, I see a flush-faced Alex on the other side. On the floor in front of her are the door’s hinge pins, the Moses finger painting, her discarded purse, and an industrial-sized toolbox with “Property of Lakeville Episcopal” stamped on one side. Alex holds a hammer in her right hand and a screwdriver in her left. She’s officially the empress of badassery.
“Lord, make Charlie and Holly’s foundation a strong one, and bless their home together for as long as they both shall live. Amen.” The minister invites Charlie to take Holly’s hand. The vows.