Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  It doesn’t make sense since I would have no trouble staying impartial in a fight between Sarah and Ethan, choosing neither and both at the same time. I could listen to them talk about the other without feeling disloyal to either. Maybe that is the advantage to having all been raised in the same house: if I didn’t choose them, I can’t unchoose them. They will always be my siblings, regardless of whether they play an active or passive role in my life. But if I chose Arianna, made her part of my family, it means that I can unchoose her. She can unchoose me. Like a husband and wife, we can decide to part ways. A friendship divorce.

  It makes my stomach clench just to think about it.

  “Please,” I try again. “I’m going to listen without judgment. Tell me what’s going on with Ethan. I won’t try to convince you of anything. You’re holding my wedding dress. You can shred it if I’m lying.”

  “Shred an original Shoshana. A seamstress shredding an original Shoshana. That’s like a painter torching Warhols.”

  “But you know how serious I am. That dress is the only thing standing between me being clothed or naked as I walk down the aisle at Pâturage.”

  Arianna rolls her eyes, either at my joke or the fact that I’m saying it while crying. “It’s actually pretty simple. I don’t know if I really believe that there is one person out there that we’re supposed to remain with forever. I think there are people we should be with at different stages in our life, and maybe those stages stretch on for fifty years, or maybe they’re over in few months. But not knowing how long you’ll be compatible with that person, something as permanent as marriage seems like a dangerous choice. And with Beckett in the picture, it makes things ten times more complicated because divorce would affect him too. So that’s why I don’t want to get married. It has nothing to do with Ethan and everything to do with me and Beckett. I’ve told your brother this, but he seems to think that he can convince me otherwise.”

  I nod my head to encourage her to continue, but she’s done talking. As she crosses her arms, the laptop gives a small cough and sighs as it moves into sleep mode inside the case. I stare at her, wondering why Arianna should get everything she wants while the rest of us have to compromise. My brother has to compromise, and I certainly feel the weight of my compromise. Why should she get exactly what she wants?

  “Listen, I plan to stay with Ethan for a very long time, maybe even forever. But I want to stay with him on my own terms. Just . . . unmarried until death do us part.”

  She picks up the gown and crosses into the living room, placing my wedding dress back on its hanger. She takes a moment to smooth it out, being careful as her hand passes over the straight pins, and zips up the garment bag until it’s hidden from sight. We both jump when we hear Ethan’s key in the lock, see his brown hair coming through the door. He startles when he sees us too, as if he was expecting an empty apartment. As if he knows that we were just talking about him.

  “Hey, Rach,” he says, setting his bag down on the table. “Is everything okay?”

  I know he’s referring to the fact that it’s clear that I’ve been crying. I point to the garment bag. “Ari is going to do some alterations on my dress.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” he says. “Did you want me to pick up Beckett?”

  I expect to see some tension between them, some deep-rooted unhappiness like the kind that invaded all aspects of her relationship with Ben, but there are none of those types of weeds choking the words between them. He crosses the room and gives her a light kiss, bringing his hand over her hair as she tilts her head back to gaze at him.

  “I’ll go with you,” Arianna says quickly. She disappears into her room to wash up and grab a pair of shoes. I shout out to her that I’ll give her a call tonight and hug my brother goodbye as I slip out of their apartment, feeling unsettled from the lack of closure. I want to text her immediately and ask if we’re okay, but I think better of it, realizing that she could just as easily ask me the same question but isn’t.

  I push open the front door to their building, walk past the deli, and forgo the subway to walk the rest of the way to my apartment. The walking burns off the fuel of thoughts churning through my head.

  I cross the street, my muscles moving from memory, the well-worn route between our two apartments. Maybe Ethan doesn’t need protecting. He is an adult and can look out for himself. He can make a choice whether to stay or go without my input. Without trying to guide things one way or the other.

  Arianna has said in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t plan to break up with him, that she could see herself with him in unmarried bliss for years to come. At the end of the day, Arianna needs my support just as much as he does. So I vow to go back to trusting her. That’s what best friends do.

  I send the text, just a brief two words “we’re okay” ending with a question mark. And a few seconds later, she returns the message, question mark exchanged for a period.

  IN THE DAYS that follow, my friendship with Arianna feels as if it has been glued back together with the shards still clearly visible despite the relationship being whole again. We speak to each other in the politest voices. She asks me about the wedding. I ask her about Noah, effusively complimenting every episode of the Nightly. We avoid saying anything too real, almost as if we’re scared to test the strength of the glue.

  I half expect to see Arianna as I step into the Garment District Volt to meet Lisbeth, who is sitting with a café mocha and an unmarked box which I know holds my invitations. But neither my best friend nor Noah—or my biggest fear: my best friend and Noah—are in the café. Out of habit, my eyes stray to the scoreboard. West Side location: 489. Out here in the Garment District: 496. Someone has taped a scrap of paper with the words “don’t count us out” scrawled across it under the words “West Side.”

  “Do you care about that whole stupid Vouple thing?” Lisbeth asks as I pull out a seat.

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s sort of interesting how all these people keep meeting in the same two coffeehouses and then marrying off.”

  “They’re doing it because they were told they would meet someone great at Volt and marry off,” Lisbeth points out. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Single people flock to Volt because they’re told that’s where they’ll meet someone, and by default that everyone single in Manhattan is frequenting the same coffee house, they end up meeting each other. Look around the room here. We’re like the only two people not desperately trying to attract someone toward us.”

  I glance around the room, noticing the inordinate amount of solo people sitting with a coffee in front of them, casually checking out the other solo people in the room, their eyes instinctively passing over our table as if the mere fact that both seats are taken makes us uninteresting to consider.

  “Okay, but what about the first wave of couples, the ones before people started coming to Volt because they were told that people met their spouse at Volt?”

  “If you asked every couple in Manhattan where they met, I’m sure you could find lots of patterns. The same amount of people have probably met at Starbucks or the New York Public Library or the 92Y. People meet in all sorts of places. The dry cleaner. People start talking in line at the dry cleaners and end up falling into bed together, even though dry cleaners in New York aren’t hanging up signs saying, “people meet here.”

  I snort a mouthful of my latte up my nose and start to choke, spraying milk into my napkin. She gets up and pats my back, as if one needs to dislodge coffee. My hand gropes for the box of invitations to move the conversation away from more images of post-dry cleaner sex, but Lisbeth slams her hand down to stop me as she takes her seat.

  “Wait, before you look, I just want to remind you that you gave me free range to design what I wanted.”

  “Okay,” I say. I wasn’t particularly nervous before she started speaking, but her opening isn’t doing anyth
ing for my anxiety. My mind instantly wanders to an old sacrilegious etching Lisbeth did back in college of thousands of worms surrounding a solitary worm pinned to a child’s stubby school pencil. My heart starts pounding as I think about our guests opening their mailboxes and finding a Jesus worm announcing our second go at nuptials. “Can I see it, Lis?”

  “The thing is,” Lisbeth continues. “It’s really hard to just . . . design something for someone. To make art that is entirely for someone else. I mean, this is what I thought you two would want. But maybe it’s not what you want at all.”

  “Lis, will you please just show it to me and stop talking about it.”

  I can feel myself cringing as she works the lid off the box, but nestled inside is an exquisite, square-shaped invitation on creamy thick paper. The edges are softened from where the larger strip of paper has been neatly hand-torn into identical pieces, a throwback to traditional printmaking. The font is squat and serifed, spaced widely apart so the opening words unfurl inside my head in a drawl. Adam Goldman and Rachel Goldman invite you to Pâturage on November 18th to celebrate their second trip down the aisle to each other, older and wiser.

  Above the words, adorning the top of the invitation like a crown is a tiny, intaglio book transforming into a ring—a Lisbethian touch, whimsical and precise, tricking the eye into believing two truths at once.

  “I wanted to bring in Adam’s love of books and how he teaches English. And your book that will be coming out soon. But a ring . . . because it’s a wedding. I panicked coming in here, suddenly thinking about how your book is about divorce and maybe you don’t want that on your wedding invitation.”

  “Lis, this is perfect. This is so completely us. And really, so completely you. I’m just stunned by how perfect it is. I love it.”

  And I do love it. I could have never designed a better invitation, and I doubt Papillon or Mrs. John L. Strong have something this unique. And to have it made by my sister-in-law-to-be-again makes it even more precious. I just wish that I didn’t have to send them out, have response cards returned to me, take one step closer to this wedding. I am reaching too many no-going-back points; date set, dress altered, invitations mailed. Soon, the only thing sealing the deal will be walking down the aisle, and do I have the strength to pull the plug on marriage in front of all our friends and family? I don’t even have the strength to do it now, quietly, with only a handful of people staring at me in disbelief.

  And yet I also know that this is what you get with this marriage: a sister-in-law like Lisbeth who is willing to stop her own work in order to provide us with a gorgeous set of invitations.

  “You do? You’re not just saying that? Not that we have time for me to do it over if you’re not thrilled. But I really want you to love your invitation. I have this too.” Lisbeth leans down and rustles through her bag until she finds a small stack of papers. They’re larger sketches of the book ring, each one getting closer to the design on the invitation until the final sheet is indistinguishable from its smaller counterpart. “I didn’t know if you’d want to frame them.”

  “Of course I want to frame them. Maybe a series of five frames that can run down the hallway wall.”

  Lisbeth jumps up from her seat and runs to the other side of the table to give me an impromptu hug. “Can I just tell you how happy I am that you’re marrying my brother again? That you didn’t become all bitter and jaded about love. You two have the most romantic story that I know.” She’s speaking at a normal volume, but in the noise of the coffee house, it comes out like a cell phone call moving in and out of reception.

  I smile wanly, glad to know that I’m a better actress than I thought. “I guess we should address these, right?”

  “You have the guest list,” Lisbeth says, slipping back into her seat.

  I take a thick wad of folded papers out of my purse and hand the top half to Lisbeth where I’ve compiled most of her side of the family. She scans down the sheets as if she’s expecting a surprise between entries for her Aunt Julie and cousin Lori. “Jared Marcus!” she exclaims, just as I set my pen against an envelope to write Arianna Quinn and Ethan Katz.

  “I’ve sort of become friendly with him through that cooking class. Do you think it’s weird for me to invite him?”

  “No, do it so Emily and I have someone to talk to when Uncle Rob gets drunk and starts groping all the guests. You know that he used to date Judd. Judd, as in the guy who got you the dress.”

  “I remember Judd,” I exclaim happily. “I wondered if that was who got me the dress. I need to thank him.”

  “I already did,” Lisbeth tells me as she draws a flourish on the final H in Judah, as if her thank you is enough for both of us. She looks up at me. “I deleted some photos I had of him that he wanted to disappear in exchange.”

  I don’t want to imagine the contents of those pictures. I finish writing Arianna’s address from memory and go on to my sister’s family on a new envelope. “I have a wedding question for you since it feels like things might have changed a bit since I last got married. Are you inviting single people with a guest?”

  “Considering that by mainstream standards almost all of our gay friends are technically single, yes,” Lisbeth drawls, sliding another envelope into the done pile. “We are inviting all unmarried people with a guest, mostly because we know how much it sucks to go to a wedding alone.”

  I nod in agreement, but then pause again with my pen over the envelope. “But what about cost? Or having a bunch of people there who not only don’t know you but don’t really care about you. I mean, shouldn’t the guests at a wedding all be people who are going to be part of your married life after the ceremony?”

  “They’re important to people who are important to you.”

  “Not always. I mean, if I invite Jared with a guest, he’s going to bring his latest . . . boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Whatever. What I mean is that he may not choose someone important to him. He may just bring whoever he’s dating at the time, and then they could break up the following week. Shouldn’t the bride and groom be able to identify all the people in their wedding pictures a few years down the road?”

  “But weddings are about love. About sharing love. I mean, you should get this as a writer: it’s sort of the difference between a journal and a blog. A journal is just for yourself, and you don’t share it with anyone. And a blog is a journal that is shared with everyone, and in turn, they get to comment on your thoughts and make it a conversation. Something much more panoramic. Weddings are like blog posts. You’re sharing your love with everyone you invite, and they’re feeding off your love and sending back their own. Don’t you think it’s a little cruel to ask someone to come to witness your love and make them stand there, without any outlet for all the love they start feeling in the moment? For someone to dance with and talk to and maybe even make out with by the bathrooms? Not inviting someone with a guest is like writing something really juicy and then closing the comment box so no one can respond.”

  I’m not sure the analogy totally holds together, but I add an “and guest” after my cousin’s name. “Anyway, think about what you would have wanted back when you were single last year,” Lisbeth points out.

  “I didn’t want to go to weddings at all,” I tell her, thinking to the one wedding I attended while divorced which was a complete disaster.

  “Then be kind and don’t invite anyone single,” Lisbeth suggests unhelpfully. “Do you know what the whole problem is, Rach? You’re stressing over all these wedding details and not really doing the fun parts of wedding planning. We should have a shower.”

  “It’s too late for a shower, and I already had a shower with the first wedding,” I say. “Our friends and family are probably annoyed enough that they need to attend our wedding for a second time. I can’t also go begging them for presents.”

  “Well, I want a shower. A ladies tea in a garden where
everyone wears vintage dresses,” Lisbeth hints. “Okay, so what about a bachelorette party?”

  “I’m not really the bachelorette party type,” I tell her. “I’m not a penis cake sort of person.”

  “We don’t have to have a penis cake. We could go do something fun. Go out to Coney Island.”

  “Are you high? Celebrate my wedding by riding the Wonder Wheel and eating a hot dog? I’m not going out to Coney Island.”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking, but never mind. We can do it right here in Manhattan. Girls night out, no penis cake, no strippers, in bed by eleven o’clock.”

  As much as I trusted Lisbeth to make the invitations, I’m not sure I trust her to plan a night out, but she crosses the T on her envelope with such a decisive swipe that I’m not sure my protests will do much good.

  “Fine,” I say weakly. “Something small. Here, in Manhattan. Just drinks or something like that.”

  Lisbeth smiles sweetly and places her final envelope on the done stack, just as the score changes on the board behind me from 489 to 490.

  Chapter Twelve

  SARAH PROMISES me that Arianna has kept her word and is working to get them bridesmaid dresses. Not that I was particularly afraid that Arianna would flake since she always follows through with her offers, but she did make the promise to help me clothe the wedding party before I picked my fight about Noah, so it would have been in her right to back off the wedding plans. I wonder if that means something to her: if she’s doing it out of habit or because she is trying to make amends, and then I realize that I’ll never know without asking her. And I am not going to poke our incredibly fragile friendship by actually asking for an update on the status of our incredibly fragile friendship.

  Which means the only person still needing something to wear on my to-do list is Penelope.