by Laura Wolf
Mr. Stewart arrived half an hour late, with Tom, Misty, and April—a cousin of Stephen’s who’s enrolled at NYU and had chosen not to go home to California for the holidays. A palpable chill went through the room, although we all tried to act normal. As Stephen informed me AFTER the party, it was the first time the Brocktons had seen Mr. Stewart since he left Mrs. Stewart. And it was the first time Mrs. Stewart had seen Misty since she and Tom graduated high school together. This he neglects to mention?
Accustomed to manipulating the attention of large groups, my mother the schoolteacher made quick introductions, then immediately announced dinner. Overwhelmed by the sudden need for comfort and security, people ran to the buffet table like deer during hunting season. Soon we were all face-deep in plates piled high with food. Except for Mrs. Stewart, who ate just enough to be polite to my parents without giving Misty the satisfaction of knowing that she had ruined her appetite. Although I doubt Misty noticed. She was far too busy chatting with Chet. Apparently she had been a C.I.T. at his sleep-away camp.
Since Gram was already seated with Nicole, I chose a seat next to Stephen and the Brocktons. After fifty-six years of marriage, the Brocktons, who still hold hands, can finish each other’s sentences and practically read each other’s minds. Simultaneously they both began to tell me about their wedding. Mr. Brockton deferred to Mrs. Brockton, who went on to recount their wedding ceremony in the back of her mother’s house in Philadelphia. She sewed her own dress, and each of her twenty guests made food for the reception. Mr. Brockton had surprised her that morning with a bouquet of roses to carry down the aisle. For her part, Mrs. Brockton was eternally grateful that her husband had remembered to remove the thorns. It was an incredibly romantic story, and as she finished telling it Mrs. Brockton gave Mr. Brockton a kiss. “He still buys me roses.”
The Brocktons are truly wonderful. “So, when are you two going to have kids?” And pushy. I thought for sure the ink on our marriage license would dry before the push toward procreation came. Hell, as far as the Brocktons are concerned we still haven’t had sex. Keeping his grandparents blissfully ignorant of our rabid premarital sex life is one of the reasons Stephen and I never lived together. But Mrs. Brockton wouldn’t let it rest. “You know, back in our day people got married to have babies.”
Regretfully Misty chose that moment to join in our conversation. “That’s just a euphemism. Back then people got married to have sex. These days people don’t wait for a license. They’re much more liberated. Aren’t they?” And she turned to look at ME.
A tortured, gurgling noise erupted at the base of my throat. It was the sound of my innocent façade—drowning.
The Brocktons fell silent, Stephen changed the topic to his mother’s new hairdo, and I swiftly escorted Misty across the room to Mr. Stewart’s side. She knew she’d screwed up. “Oh my God, Amy. I’m so sorry! It never occurred to me that they didn’t know you and Stephen were sleeping together. After all, you’re adults.”
Yes, yes, I’m a wimpy hypocrite who cowers in the face of octogenarian expectations. Sue me.
I ran to the bar for a glass of wine.
My grandmother no longer considers me her little girl, my future grandparents-in-law think I’m a tramp, and from where I stood, it looked like Tom was putting the moves on Nicole. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to run and hide in my childhood bedroom.
Desperate, I turned my attention to Stephen’s cousin April. When Mr. Stewart asked if he could bring April he neglected to mention that she’d be dressed like a refugee from a Kiss concert. Wearing black from head to toe, including her eyeliner, her lipstick, and her nail polish, April was the type of person who made you want to bathe. It was something about her nose ring. But since she was Stephen’s cousin and just barely a freshman at college I struggled to find some compassion for her naïveté. Someday she’d look back at pictures of herself and feel appropriately ashamed. We all did.
Besides, April is a student at NYU Film School and has agreed to videotape our wedding for free with the school’s equipment. I was duty bound to be patient with her. “How’s school, April?”
April adjusted her nose ring. “Pretty cool. I’m minoring in Women’s Studies.” Oh, please. How can you minor in Women’s Studies? It’s a lifelong field of inquiry to any woman. “So why’d you and Stevie decide to get married?” Stevie? “Because we’re in love.” “So what? That doesn’t mean you need a piece of paper from the government.” Great. The last thing I need is some brash college freshman doing her Gloria Steinem impression at my engagement party. “Stephen and I want to celebrate our joy.” April shrugged. “Well, you don’t need the State for that.”
This is where I SNAPPED.
“True, but you do need them for the medical benefits and the bequeathment rights. Now, don’t think I’m not happy that you just completed your first semester of Women’s Studies. But reading a few Erica Jong books and mastering that Martina Navratilova hairdo of yours hardly qualify you as an authority on female liberation, let alone a spokeswoman for everyone with a vagina. So why don’t you relax and soak up some holiday cheer before I kick your P.C. ass into the street. Okeydokey?”
April was stunned. “Jesus Christ, I’m gonna be your cousin. You can’t get all aggressive with me.” And as she scurried across the room in search of a friendly face, I realized she was right. This Goth-attired, pain-in-the-ass, amateur feminist would soon be part of my family.
I looked around the room at all these people talking, eating, sharing, laughing, avoiding one another, and realized that in only five months and twenty-nine days we would all be related. We would all be next of kin, able to verify one another’s identity in the morgue, ride in each other’s ambulance, turn off life support.
All these people had come to celebrate our engagement. To celebrate us. How outrageously gracious and kind!
Just then my mother brought out my Sacher torte. “And here’s a little something Amy made for the occasion.” Everyone “oohed” and “aahed.” Turns out Sacher torte is the Brocktons’ favorite cake. I began to relax. I was being ridiculous. I was overreacting. I was becoming a “Mandy.”
As my mother walked around serving the torte my father raised his beer and offered a toast. “I’d like to welcome you all to our house and to our family. Terry and I are very happy that Amy and Stephen found each other. Stephen’s a wonderful man. Any father would be thrilled to have him marry their daughter. And Amy has grown from a little girl who used to teach her sister cusswords to a wonderful, intelligent…” It was a heartwarming speech. And as Stephen and I basked in the limelight of family love, it happened.
“Good Lord, how long did this torte bake? It’s like a rock! I think I broke my bridge!” And there was Gram, hunched over and clutching her jaw in pain.
Suddenly everyone was converging upon her, running for ice, offering amateur dental assistance, setting aside their Sacher torte. My father’s speech forever left unfinished as Gram soaked up all the attention.
That’s when it hit me. Every time we start to celebrate my wedding Gram mysteriously injures herself. Tripping over the electrical cable when I first announced my engagement, choking on the turkey fat at Thanksgiving, and now this. The old woman was sticking it to me!
christmas day
After the excitement and chaos of yesterday Stephen and I decided to spend today cuddled in bed. We rented some movies (Stage Door for me, North Dallas Forty for him) and ordered in Chinese food.
We also exchanged Christmas gifts. I gave him a twelve-pack of toilet paper. Each roll had the entire history of basketball printed on it—statistics and all. He LOVED it so much, he practically unfurled a whole roll just reading it. Then he gave me a silver bracelet with a single charm. He said that every Christmas for the rest of our lives he’s going to add a charm to the bracelet. The first one, a heart with a key.
It was the most romantic gesture. I cried straight through my wonton soup and well into my egg roll.
december
27th
I’ve got to do something about Gram. The more I think about her outrageous behavior the more I realize that my once-beloved grandmother is plotting a hostile takeover of my wedding glory.
• She tripped over the television cable when I announced my engagement.
• She insists my engagement ring symbolizes wantonness.
• She squealed to Barry about my cut-rate marriage proposal.
• She choked on turkey fat the minute my parents got sentimental about the wedding.
• She force-fed me divorce statistics.
• She maintains that my fiancé looks like Dan Quayle.
• And she humiliated me in front of my entire family, old and new, by claiming to have chipped her tooth on my Sacher torte!
Stephen thinks I’m overreacting. Anita thinks Gram’s brilliant. Mandy suggested we institutionalize Gram until after the ceremony: “I told you families get nuts around weddings.” And my mother says I’m paranoid: “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s an old woman.”
Well, I’ve got this old woman’s number! 666!
december 29th
Lucy’s back home from the hospital. I called to thank her for the blue enamel barrette she sent me as an engagement gift. It’s belonged to Lucy since she was a child. She figured by June 22nd I’d have plenty of things that were old, new, and borrowed but that I might have difficulty finding something blue. I was amazed that despite her illness she’d found time to send me a gift, let alone something so thoughtful.
And for the record, it was the ONLY engagement gift we got. All those freeloaders at the engagement party came empty-handed. Don’t they know “no gifts” is just a euphemism for “We know it’s tacky to ask but bring something anyway”?
I’d been fantasizing about Lucy flying out for the party, but I knew it was unrealistic. Between the cost and her health it just wasn’t going to happen. But since Lucy loves gossip (she subscribes to The National Enquirer, Star, and People magazine), I did my best to give her the gory details—Misty, the Brocktons, the Sacher torte, and most of all, Gram.
Lucy loved hearing every high and low point of the event. And she backed me up completely on the “Gram Is an Attention Stealing Octogenarian” theory. She said Gram’s been a junkie for public adoration ever since 1956 when she appeared on the Queen for a Day show. Well, Gram will just have to face facts—
There’s a new queen in town.
december 30th
At 1 P.M. this afternoon Stephen suddenly suggested we go sledding. Except there was no snow in the city and we didn’t have a sled.
Stephen didn’t bat an eye.
We ran to Grand Central Station, hopped a train, went to his mother’s house, searched the attic, found his childhood sled, and spent the next four hours jockeying for the best runs with the local preteen set at the neighborhood park. It was a blast.
If only he’d apply that same sense of mission to planning our wedding.
new year’s eve—9 P.M.
This is the last New Year’s Eve that I will ever be single. Exciting, yet somehow extremely unnerving.
january 1st
New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Be a better person.
2. Lose ten pounds.
3. Remember how lucky I am to have met Stephen.
4. Enjoy the wedding plans (don’t become a “Mandy”).
5. Stop making fun of Mandy.
6. Call Lucy twice a month.
7. Work harder at the magazine.
8. Be a more tolerant boss to Kate.
9. Resolve difficulties with Gram.
10. Keep my New Year’s resolutions.
january 4th
Kate came back from the holidays in a major snit.
Apparently she “evaluated the situation” and doesn’t like the way my wedding “has imposed upon her work environment.” Where does a twenty-one-year-old with a secretarial degree come up with this crap?
Too much Oprah. Or Barry.
And to think I gave her a real Kate Spade handbag for Christmas. Maybe I should have given her that designer peanut brittle and kept the handbag for myself. Lord knows I could use a new handbag—
WAIT! It’s only four days into the new year and I’ll be damned if I abandon my resolutions so soon. Number eight—Be a more tolerant boss to Kate. Tolerance.
Maybe Kate’s having trouble at home. Maybe Barry scolded her for not placing his story ideas at the top of the distribution packet. Or maybe she’s just cranky because that mangy Backstreet Boy still hasn’t answered her fan letters. Who knows. But whatever it is I must try to understand her position and respect her feelings. Besides, what if my wedding really has become a burden to her?
january 5th
I couldn’t sleep last night. At 4:39 A.M. I broke down and called the Psychic Phone Line. A woman with an oddly calm voice advised me to abandon all romantic plans. Apparently Venus has descended into the House of Aquarius, where she’s been shackled and held captive. Does anyone else find this alarming, or is it just me?
On a lighter note, my lucky numbers are 2 and 36.
january 6th
Face #2, Murray Coleman, New York’s “Bagel King,” has refused to be profiled in our annual issue.
Stephen tripped in a pothole on his way to work. After falling face-first onto the sidewalk he was taken to St. Luke’s hospital, where he received thirty-six stitches above his left eye.
I will never call the Psychic Phone Line again.
january 7th
Mandy reached into her bag of tricks (a.k.a. her bottomless pit of well-informed wannabe-chic women) and located a dress shop known for its reasonably priced copies of famous designer wedding gowns. After a cab ride down to the Bowery then a harrowing walk into a neighborhood generally reserved for drug dealers and Mafias of various ethnicities, we finally reached an old tenement building. In the basement window a hand-written sign read:
DRESES
Okay. I’m not a snob. And I certainly don’t consider myself easily flustered. But the minute I caught sight of that misspelled sign through a dirty glass window in the bowels of a dilapidated tenement building in the middle of a neighborhood that clearly God and the agents of gentrification had chosen to forget, I had only one thing to say—“TAXI!”
I was certain Mandy was already on her cell phone calling a cab.
But no. This was Superhero Mandy—able to go where no bride has gone before. She was marching down the basement stairs. Unwilling to be outbraved by Mandy, I anxiously followed behind.
The basement store was filled with racks of wedding gowns covered in plastic. Five young women sat hunched over sewing machines, and before you could say “sweatshop,” a burly middle-aged woman with a thick neck and hairy forearms brusquely introduced herself as Gayle. She wore a Yankees T-shirt and culottes. I hadn’t seen a pair of culottes since fifth grade. With anxiety constricting my esophagus Mandy took it upon herself to inform Gayle that I was looking for a wedding dress, preferably a Carolina Herrera or Vera Wang knockoff.
Gayle blanched. Then bellowed, “Knockoff?! I don’t have any knockoffs. Only high-quality merchandise. All original!” A quick glance around the shop revealed bins filled with clothing labels marked “Escada,” “Armani,” “Vera Wang.”
As the seamstresses frantically debated whether or not we were Immigration, Gayle continued to protest and wave her arms in the air. I gasped, certain I’d seen a pistol stuffed into the waistband of her culottes. Gayle was packing heat! Mandy rebuttoned her Anne Klein jacket and stood her ground. “Originals, designer imposters, whatever you like to call them, Gayle, is fine with us. But I think we both know what we’re talking about. So how about showing us something nice in a cream silk satin with a princess neckline.”
But Gayle was having none of it. “What are you two, anyway? Cops? Well, forget it, Charlie’s Angels. We’re closed.”
Charlie’s Angels? God, I hope I’m not Sabrina.
Mandy impatiently tapped her heel. “Look
, Gayle, I didn’t come down here after a long day’s work just to be sent home.”
Did I mention that Mandy sells residential real estate? In Manhattan. She does not take negotiations lightly. “Now, my friend would like to see some dresses, wouldn’t you, Amy?”
Quick! Which is more important—finding the dress of my dreams or living to see my wedding day? Luckily Gayle made the choice for me. “Like I said, we’re closed.” She threw open the front door. And when Mandy strutted toward the exit, hissing, “I canceled an aromatherapy session to come here,” Gayle just stared blankly.
During the cab ride home Mandy carped about the lack of professionalism in the garment industry while I thought wistfully about the chiffon dress with the Basque waistline hanging in the back of Gayle’s shop.
Wasn’t this supposed to be fun?
january 8th
If you can get past the whole “staples in your face” thing, Stephen actually looks pretty handsome with his stitches.
Sort of a young Charles Bronson.
Official THINGS TO DO List
1. Choose wedding date
2. Tell boss wedding date
3. Vacation time for honeymoon
4. Decide on honeymoon
5. Get minister
6. Choose reception venue
7. Make guest list
8. Choose maid of honor