Mom opens up the organized, collated stack of color-coded paper. The first page is pink and filled with all the phone numbers: my home, my cell, Mom’s, etc., and, of course, Marion’s office and cell. The next page is a green page with a detailed schedule of the wedding day: when I’ll be at Capella having hair and makeup done, when I should arrive at The Plaza, exactly what time I will be putting on my dress, etc. The entire day is mapped out for me. A wave of sadness washes over me as I read down to the parts that outline Justin’s schedule, on lavender paper, and the ceremony schedule, on yellow paper, because I know it won’t be going down like that.
Honestly, this is getting much, much harder than I’d imagined it. I thought that concocting the lie would be the hard part, but now, as the big day gets closer and closer, like a speeding train, I realize that surviving June 30 is going to be the hardest part. Suddenly, it’s really starting to occur to me what I am doing. I know you’re thinking it’s about time. I was only thinking about myself and how I would deal when the big day actually arrived and I was not getting married ... but now, as I look at my unknowingly excited mother and sister, I realize how many people are about to get crushed. I push my food away. Believe it or not, I cannot eat.
I sit through the meal and try to act normal while Mom and Jamie go through the information in the itinerary and chat excitedly about the big day. I pretty much feel like the meal cannot get worse when I catch something out of the corner of my eye. The something is actually a someone ... Claire Reilly. She’s having lunch with someone I can only assume is her wedding planner, Bliss, based on Brad’s descriptions of the psycho planner. Of course, Claire isn’t polite enough to get off her ass and say hello to any of us, but I know she knows we are here. I can feel her staring at our table.
Not being known for my maturity, I sink to her level and ignore her the same way she is ignoring me. I have every intention of doing this until I am freed from this painful lunch, but, of course, things don’t work out that easily.
My mother catches sight of Claire, and instead of getting in on the icy game of cold shoulder, Mom warmly calls out and waves to Claire. I feel like I’m twelve and caught in the mall with my mom by the group of popular girls ... utterly humiliated. My kind and warm mother actually gets up and walks over to the queen snot’s table to greet her. Not wanting to send my own mother alone to face the ice princess, I jump up and follow along.
“Hello, Mrs. Harrigan, this is my wedding coordinator, Bliss Engel,” Claire says coolly.
“Oh my, your wedding coordinator!” my mother exclaims like a country schoolgirl.
“Yes, not everyone’s mother has the time to plan her daughter’s wedding,” Claire says in her usual bitchy tone.
“I guess I’m just lucky,” I say, jumping in to defend my mother. And, I must say, I really am glad to be planning my wedding with my own loving mom and not some wedding robot with a stupid name.
“Whatever,” is Claire’s response.
We make the necessary good-bye, nice to see you, pleasure to meet you, remarks and then head back to our own table where I can’t help but notice that Jamie seems to have eaten all of the avocado off my unfinished salad. The avocado is my favorite ... how dare she?
“That poor girl,” is the first thing Mom says when she sits down, and for a split second I think she’s referring to poor, avocadoless me, until I realize she is gazing toward Claire’s table.
“What?!?” Jamie and I command in unison.
“So sad that her own mother won’t take the time to do these things with her.”
“Her mother probably doesn’t want to be around her!” Jamie offers, a perfectly acceptable explanation in my mind and probably the minds of most third-and fourth-graders ... maybe second and third.
“Or her mother is as evil as she is and so they can’t be in the same room together or their evil will destroy the world,” I offer, going one step lower than Jamie.
“Please, girls, it’s sad that she has to plan her wedding with that Bliss woman.”
Jamie and I grumble in defeat. See what I mean about my mother being a kind soul? She never sees the bad in anyone. Feeling sorry for Claire Reilly should prove that to you once and for all.
We finish our lunch and leave Barney’s; Jamie and I make obvious efforts to avoid looking at Claire, but of course, Mom goes over to give her one last good-bye and actually offers to help Claire with any wedding stuff if she needs it. Once Mom walks away, do you know what that bitch says?
“Whatever.”
Part of me hopes that Mom hears so that she will finally see how awful Claire is; the other part hopes she doesn’t, because it might hurt her feelings and she does not deserve that. Jamie and I just turn and give her the stink eye, although I’m not sure she notices, until we are out of sight.
49
One Week to Go
The first thing on Martha’s “One-Week-Ahead” checklist is to finalize the seating plan. This is why Justin and I spend most of our free time arranging little Post-its with guests’ names around cut-out cardboard circle “tables.” This sounds like a pretty simple task, but it’s really not. It’s like putting together a puzzle.
Actually, it’s harder because with a puzzle at least you know there is a correct place for every piece. In this puzzle, you can have eight pieces perfectly placed together and then you remember that piece number four’s date slept with piece number two’s current boyfriend three years ago and the whole thing gets scrapped.
I’m kind of surprised that Martha leaves this grueling task until the end ... I guess it’s because that’s when you have all your guest responses, but still ... this is impossible! And in our case it’s even harder because there is a whole section of guests that we need to keep totally separate in case, God forbid, they decide to stay for the reception and think that they can share their thoughts on the “play” openly.
To make a hard week harder, I get a call from Brad. It’s Wednesday night and Justin, Logan, and I are huddled around the coffee table looking at seat assignments and eating huge deli sandwiches when the phone rings. I assume it’s Mom with more guidance on where her friends and family members should be seated, so I answer the cordless without taking my eyes off table six.
I’m surprised when it’s a man’s voice ... Brad’s ... on the other end.
“Oh, hey, Brad,” I say in the friendly manner we’ve been able to uphold since our last post-blowup talk after the post-office incident.
“Molly,” he says numbly, “we need to talk.”
“Okay, sure,” I tell him, not realizing there is any problem. I cover the phone with my hand and tell Justin and Logan that I will be right back as I head toward my bedroom. “What’s going on?” I ask as I stretch my sore back on my comfortable bed.
“Claire told me that you and your sister were very rude to her at Barney’s last week,” he almost shouts accusingly through the phone.
You’ve gotta be shitting me.
“You’re kidding, right?” I clean up my sentiment a tad.
“I am not kidding, Molly. I thought we’d been over all this. I thought you understood that I am going to marry Claire and you were gonna deal with it.”
“I do and I am!” I retort defensively.
“Really? Well, it seems like you don’t. Don’t you understand how important it is for you to keep peace with Claire if you really want to be friends with me?”
Am I getting this right? I have to suck up to Claire so that she will allow Brad to be my friend? No way!
“That’s ridiculous,” I reply, getting angry. “If anyone was rude to anyone, it was your bitchy little fiancée being rude to my mother!”
Perhaps adding the “bitchy” description wasn’t 100% necessary, but I feel it is accurate.
“How do you figure?” Brad snaps.
“She insulted my mother by saying that she had nothing better to do than plan my wedding.”
“That’s a lie!”
“No, it’s not!!”
“Yes it
is, and I know it is because I talked to your mother this morning when she called to be sure I’d be at your rehearsal dinner and she said how lovely it was to run into Claire.”
Damn my mother for being the sweetest person in the world.
“My mother is just too sweet to tell you what a two-faced bitch you are marrying,” I say with a superior tone.
“Yeah, right. This is it ... I can’t do this anymore. You are a different person and not someone that I like.”
“You are the different one, Brad!” I yell as I feel tears start to fall.
“Whatever you want to believe in your little Molly fantasy land. I’ll be at your rehearsal and your wedding because I wouldn’t hurt your family who has been so wonderful to me, but that is it ... we are finished!”
“FINE!” I yell.
“FINE!!” he yells back and slams down his phone.
Since I’m on a cordless I have nothing to slam it down on, so I press the “off” button really hard and then throw the phone at the wall as I burst into sobs.
Justin and Logan are at my door in a flash. I tell them the entire story, starting with seeing Claire at Barney’s last week. Unlike the last time I came to them with a story about the awful Bradley Lawson, this time they completely agree with me.
“What has gone wrong with him?” Logan asks, and I shrug miserably.
The boys console me, but the truth is that I am just plain exhausted. Exhausted from wedding stuff, exhausted from Brad stuff, just exhausted from everything. I slip into a hot bubble bath kindly drawn up by Justin and then get into my bed while my wonderful brother and fake, gay fiancé finish the table assignments for me.
50
Another Apology
Brad may be in the process of having his soul sucked out by the human she-devil, but down at the core he is still a good person ... and still a shadow of the person I knew and loved. And that person has always been very up-front ... when he’s wrong he says it; when he’s right he fights for it. I am greatly relieved when he shows up at my door Thursday morning with an apology ... because that’s the right thing and the thing that I would have counted on the old Brad to do.
Logan and Justin are both working today and so I have the apartment to myself and some downtime to try and relax and not think about all the insanity that is going to happen over the next couple days. The ladies of The View are doing a good job distracting me with a fashion show of “butt-buster” denim as I enjoy a bowl of Apple Jacks. When the buzzer rings, my heart falls because I am certain that someone or something outside my door is going to destroy the serenity I have been able to create this morning.
I am both nervous and surprised when the voice coming through the intercom is Brad’s and he’s asking to come up. In the few seconds it takes him to climb the staircase, I straighten up what I can in the room—it’s still an overly cluttered disaster, an unavoidable problem in a small apartment with three occupants.
“Hey, Mol,” he says when I open the door. “We need to talk.”
My first thought is a defensive one—what have I done to upset him now? But then I notice that he seems sad and invite him in and offer him a cup of coffee, which he declines.
“What’s going on?” I ask, when we are seated on my couch. We’re sitting side by side, but we both have a leg curled underneath so that we can face each other.
“I’m sorry about the way I attacked you the other day.”
I can’t help but smile—this is the good old Brad. He knew he was wrong and he is admitting it and apologizing.
“We’re all under a lot of pressure right now,” I say, giving him an easy out.
“I guess that must be it.”
It seems like he’s gotten off his chest what he came to say, yet he still seems sad and a little distant and distracted.
“Is there anything else?” I gently coax him.
He hesitates for a moment. “I really miss you, Molly ... we’ve been like a roller coaster the past few months and it’s hard for me to deal with. I hate not having you in my life.”
Relief pours over me like floodwater ... that’s exactly how I feel.
“Me, too! I’ve been miserable.”
I look deeply into his sparkling blue eyes that don’t seem to sparkle quite as much anymore, and I feel him looking into mine ... if I were a cheesy person, I’d tell you I could feel our souls connect. I do feel something, though ... it’s like we’re caught in a trance.
“I need you in my life,” I almost whisper, our eyes still locked.
I’ve continually tried to deny how much my life sucks without Brad, but the truth is that I do need him and was crushed by the feeling that he didn’t need, or want, me anymore. Brad opens his arms and I lean across the couch and snuggle into them. It has always amazed me how we fit together like a puzzle ... it’s like we were made to be best friends.
“Me, too,” he answers in the same whisper.
When I pull back from the hug, I look into Brad’s eyes and something is different. I feel a tingle, or a twinge ... and an overwhelming feeling of anticipation. With our eyes locked, my breath is taken away. I lean a little closer to him and close my eyes slowly. Before I open them again, I feel his lips on mine. They are warm and soft and I can’t help thinking how ironic it is that our lips fit together like puzzle pieces, too.
Then it hits me ... our lips fit together like puzzle pieces! And I think it hits him at the same time, because we both jump back slightly and stare at each other, wide-eyed. We hold the stare for a split second before mutually grabbing each other and kissing again, this time harder and deeper. It feels amazing ... but then I remember that these are Brad Lawson’s lips that are sending sparks through my body. We jump back again at the exact same time.
“How dare you?!?” Brad accuses me, his voice full of terror.
How dare I what? I was most definitely the one being kissed.
“You kissed me!” I answer in my own defense.
“Why did you do that?” he questions in a panicked voice.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Damn it, Molly! I thought being friends could work ... but obviously it can’t,” he says as he jumps off the couch and moves farther away from me as fast as he can, stumbling over all the stuff filling the apartment since Justin and Logan showed up.
Still in a fog of confusion, I try to replay in my head what happened so that maybe I can gain some understanding. I’m not gaining anything but more confusion, though.
“I gotta get outta here!” Brad yells as he clumsily makes his way to the door.
I stand, but before I can get another word out, he is out the door and heading down the hall. He gets halfway to the stairwell before turning and literally running back to me. His lips on my lips stop him from getting through the door and we have another amazing but confusing kiss. When we pull apart, I see that the twinkle has returned to his eyes.
“Why do I keep doing that?!?” he exclaims. “I’ve gotta get outta here!”
He heads down the hall again, this time not turning back. Once he is out of my view, I close the door and sink to the floor in front of it. I sit on my floor, my hand on my lips, bewildered and confused ... what just happened here? The strange thing is that it’s almost identical to how our infamous junior-year kiss went down ... and I let him run off down my hall then, too.
51
The Rehearsal
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I don’t have much time to think about Brad or his visit or the kiss (okay, kisses), because the day before the wedding day is a busy day if you do everything on Martha’s list. It’s an even busier day if you also have to plan how to be left at the altar gracefully, which for me includes learning how to act. It is darn near impossible to accomplish any of these things when you are paralyzed with fear.
Martha’s list includes: confirming everything with every single vendor, getting a manicure and pedicure (I know that’s enjoyable, but it still takes time and effort), having the rehearsal, attendin
g the rehearsal dinner, getting everything together for the next day ... it’s a lot of stuff. With Justin and Logan’s help, I think we are going to manage to get it all done ... I think. It’s funny how in the beginning they were unsure about my plan, but I was positive and gung-ho; now that the time has finally arrived, they are relaxed and ready for “showtime,” as Justin keeps calling it (I think he might actually be starting to believe we are in a play), and I am a complete nervous wreck.
Logan and Justin make all the confirmation calls for me while I sit on the couch with my knees bundled up at my chest, rocking back and forth. At least I’ve been so swamped and stressed with wedding details that I haven’t even had time to be swamped and stressed with the Brad thing ... I’m trying to look on the bright side here.
All the vendors are good to go on wedding day ... I’m not sure if that is a blessing or a curse. Once all the calls are made, the boys gently unfold me and take me out to get my nails done. We must be quite a sight ... two gay men flanking a paranoid girl in the whirlpool footbaths. People probably think we escaped from some sort of institution; ironically, the belief that I should be committed isn’t completely inaccurate. I must admit, though, that when we walk out of the nail salon we have the thirty most gorgeous toes and fingers in the city ... and the relaxing spoilage by the manicurist does help to calm my nerves a bit—plus, my nails could not look more adorable. My fingers have a perfect French manicure ... the manicurist said it is the most popular for brides. On my toes, I did something a bit more fun. They are pale pink with little white flowers to match the ones in my bouquet. Since my dress is long, nobody will really see them, but I will know they are there and, I must admit, they do cheer me up a bit.
Of course, as soon as we get home and I hear the message from my mother on the answering machine with yet another “last minute” list, my shoulders dart right back up to my ears. Logan takes care of calling her back and explains that I am just a little stressed right now. Mom, of course, freaks out, but Logan smooths things out nicely.
Not Quite A Bride Page 22