Or, as we Americans call it, light beer.
“Oh, hi!” Marie says to Hamish, squinting. “Are you the stripper we called about? That woman who owns the company said she’d send over a nice, tall redhead, but...”
“Remember Hamish? My cousin?” Declan says pointedly.
Marie puts on her glasses. “Oh, yes. Hamish! You look so much like one of the male strippers I tried out for Shannon’s bachelorette party that I didn’t recognize you.”
Let’s unpack that sentence, shall we? Because it contains so many whoppers in such a brief stretch of words.
“Stripper you tried out?” howls Jason from across the room, where one of Mr. MacNevin’s assistants flails in an attempt not to poke himself in the eyeball with Jason’s kilt pin.
“You’re planning my bachelorette party?” Shannon yells, turning in such a way that her dress falls in a puddle beneath her, revealing a strange combination of a red UMass t-shirt and a tartan garter.
“Garters,” Declan says, drooling.
“I didn’t literally try him out,” Marie titters.
“If it’s the same guy from O,” I counter, “then drinking that shot of white Russian out of his navel while he massaged lavender oil into your—
“MARIE!”
“MOM!”
“I was working!” Marie argues back. She pointedly walks to the kitchen table and shuffles more papers, mumbling something to herself about the tents and the weather forecast.
“Garters,” Declan says, still drooling.
Shannon walks over to him and presses up on his chin, rolling her eyes.
Mr. MacNevin looks to Hamish with a conspirator’s stare. “Are they all like this?”
“Like what?”
“So...American.”
“Aye.”
The two sigh and make a weird grumpy sound in the back of their throats.
A warm flush starts at the hollow of my throat, and not because the seamstress has moved on to me. She hands me my dress and I go into the changing room with her at my heels. We’re trying everything on, so I have to add the many layers of underclothes, the corset, and finally the dress and sash.
“Amanda,” the seamstress, Holly, says, huffing and puffing as she tightens the corset. “You have more cleavage than Dolly Parton.”
I look down. I don’t have to look far, because my chin brushes against the top of my boobs.
“Can you loosen it?”
“The corset, yes.” Holly is not much older than me, with slim, surgeon’s hands that move fast. “Are you fine with that? Most American women hate not wearing a bra, even a strapless one.”
“No problem.”
“But your dress buttons won’t budge. They’re as far out as can go.”
I take a deep breath and nearly smother myself with these airbags that double as breasts.
“I will pass out before the ceremony starts.”
She tugs on her long, brown braid, looking at me from various angles. “We could try Velcro.”
“Velcro?”
Holly’s eyes dart about the room like were talking about meth. Marie won’t be happy with Velcro. “Yeah. Velcro. Just don’t say a word to the crazy wench, and—”
“Is that your name for Marie?”
She snorts. “MacNevin’s name for her is far, far worse.” She gets back to the matter at hand, touching this and tugging that. “I can buy you another inch or two with some well-placed buttons and a few changes. Can hide it so no one else notices. What do you say?”
“It’s Velcro or death by asphyxiation.”
She stares at me like that’s not an answer.
“Um, Velcro, of course. There’s no other choice.”
“No. There is. You’d be surprised how many mothers of the bride insist on possible asphyxiation as a perfectly acceptable plan.”
And with that, she helps me out of the entire contraption, giving me privacy to change back into my street clothes, then wander back into the main room. Holly guides me back to our spot, where she makes some small adjustments with a sash over my shoulder.
Marie is the queen at court.
“Amanda, did you order extra chairs and those shade sails for the sides of the seating areas? With a thousand guests outdoors, it’s going to be—”
Andrew interrupts Marie with a sharp word. “Outdoors?”
Either she ignores him, or doesn’t hear him. You can never tell the difference with Marie. “—a logistical nightmare making sure everything is—”
Without caring that he’s upended the poor tailor’s assistant by moving swiftly across the room to get in Marie’s face, Andrew bends down in a curled stature, towering over Marie, who slowly tips her head up like she’s realizing she’s in danger from a beast she hasn’t noticed before.
“Yes?” she squeaks.
“Did you say the wedding is outdoors?”
“Yes?” Her voice goes up like a question.
“I thought the actual wedding was at the same church where Mom and Dad married. Where we practiced.” His nostrils flare and his face goes blank in a manner that makes my skin start to crawl. “And then an outdoor, evening reception.”
Marie’s eyes dart to Shannon, who is watching the exchange while chewing on her thumbnail. Declan is in a small room, off to the side, being fitted for some part of the garment that requires privacy.
“Um, we moved it?” Marie’s entire face lifts up, like she’s asking permission. “There is some parade and festival in that part of the city, and when we looked at the calendar and—”
“No one told me.” Andrew’s words silence the room. I’m not about to open my mouth right now and mention that if he’d paid a smidge of attention at the rehearsal, he’d have known.
Just then, Declan walks in. An uncharacteristic expression of panic flitters across his face like a ghost.
“What’s going on?”
“Outdoor wedding?” Andrew snaps.
Declan’s eyebrows drop and those green eyes turn dark as he looks at Marie. “You didn’t tell him?”
“You didn’t tell him?” she cries back. She turns to Andrew. “But you were at the rehearsal! We were talking about the outdoor logistics, and—”
“No one told me!” Andrew roars. He reaches down and tries to unbuckle the complex series of straps and fabric that is cinched about his waist. I see a pin fall and he flinches, a streak of blood on his arm. He then finally rips the entire thing off in a spectacular display of physical self-abuse, revealing bicycle shorts underneath. Gasping with anger, he stands there wearing a white, molded t-shirt, black shorts, and a look of outrage so clear it feels like he’s a different person.
He looks at Terry, who is watching the display with the kind of dispassionate observation only an older sibling can have, and says coldly, “You can be best man. I’m done.”
Thick woolen stockings and dress shoes still on, he storms out of the apartment and, instead of using the elevator, appears to take the steps.
We look at each other in stunned silence.
“Andrew got Mom’s temper,” Terry murmurs.
I want to ask what that means, but Marie is falling to pieces before my eyes.
“Oh, my God, Shannon, is he serious? Why would he refuse to be in the wedding? What on earth is going on?”
I race out of the room, managing to make it about ten feet before I hear a gut-wrenching sound of torn fabric, then feel something yank me backwards just enough to make me gag.
The seamstress’s cry is one of surprise, not pain. “Amanda!” she says. “I’m so sorry! I was standing on your sash!”
I untangle my neck and run to the elevator, pushing the button over and over, as if that will make the machine move faster.
The chatter in the living room is a mix of sobs and anger, of surprise and accusations. All the voices in different timbres and tones form a sort of solid pain in my ears, and when the elevator doors open with a soft ding!, I am relieved to hear it fade in the background, like the receding
shock of an unexpected blow.
The ride down is glacial. At the rate Andrew was running, he may damn well beat me to the street, and if he does, he’ll climb into a limo and be gone.
Or will he?
It’s daylight outside. He won’t venture into the fresh air. That limits where I need to search. Declan and Shannon’s building has a fitness center, one that’s in the basement, and there’s a public pool attached to it. Spin bikes, treadmills, free weights.
I never exercise in there, but there’s a twelve-person hot tub we use frequently.
I quickly press the button for that floor and hope.
Finding him will be so much easier than knowing what to actually say to him. He can’t do this. He simply cannot pull out of the wedding. Andrew is Declan’s best friend in the world. You want your best friend there when you change from just a person to someone else’s person. You need someone who has seen you through all the different phases of yourself and watched you grow into who you are now stand before the world and claim that self.
Claim it via true love.
Of all the days for Andrew to set aside his fear, this wedding should be it. Twelve years is too long for him to hang on to this notion that he’s too fragile to be outside. There is something so irrational going on, so fueled by all the impulsive emotions we develop when trauma happens, that I feel a cool detachment forming even as my increasing love—yes, love—for Andrew clouds my judgment.
As the elevator doors open, I walk into the small hallway in front of the fitness center. I am in a lounge, with lean chairs covered in colorful leather, shaggy carpets in patterns like butterfly wings, and a series of coolers offering various electrolyte-infused waters.
You cannot access the fitness center without a special residents-only key, so I find a seat facing the stairs and wait.
And wait.
I wait just long enough to experience the dread of determining that I should go back upstairs when I see Andrew walk out of the door to the staircase. He is coated in sweat, his hair dripping with it, shirt like something from a spring break wet t-shirt contest.
His eyes are wild and he avoids looking at me until he can’t help himself.
“Did you know?”
“Does it matter?”
As his fist bangs into the doorway, I see twelve years of something he can’t even name leaking out of him.
“Fuck yes, it matters, Amanda!”
“If it helps, I thought you knew. You were right there during the rehearsal. I know you were busy with business issues and on your phone a lot, but I thought you had decided you were fine with it and willing to take the risk and...” I cut off my chatter with a sudden shrug, the look on his face like an emergency brake.
“I would be an incompetent fool at best, and a reckless jerk at worst, to spend an hour or more outside on a hot July day in a flower-filled wedding at Farmington Country Club’s enormous garden, with cakes and sweets and alcohol and pretty much every substance you can imagine drawing bees and wasps like a damn death magnet,” he says coldly.
At least he’s admitting why he’s upset about the wedding being outdoors. This is progress.
“You can bring EpiPens. The chance is so, so slim. And Marie has even arranged to have an ambulance and paramedic on hand for any medical emergency—”
“Listen to yourself!” he shouts. “Shannon is a fool! She’s going to break Declan’s heart!”
“What? No. She loves him so much, Andrew. So, so much. She would never—”
“My mother,” he says through gritted teeth, “never thought she would snap my father in two, either. But she did. And she broke Declan. Just...broke him.”
“What about you?”
“I wish she had broken me!” he rasps, his voice cracking at the end. I see his throat ripple, emotion in kinetic form. “I wish she’d just...”
“No,” I say fiercely. “No.”
“It would have been better than what happened that day! What happened after. Do you have any idea,” he says, his voice going low and taut, like a tightrope between twelve years ago and now, “what it is like to wake up in a hospital with a hollow brother with shell-shocked eyes, an enraged father, and a nurse kindly holding your hand as you’re informed your mother died because of—”
“No, no, Andrew, it wasn’t—”
“Because of me.”
He said it. The ragged savagery of his voice feels like my heart has been clawed out of its chest by a bear and rests on the ground between us, beating.
Right alongside his.
I have stayed in my seat, looking up at him, respecting his space, but instinct makes me leap up and go to him. Touch him. He is impossibly hot and icily cold all at once, heat pouring off clammy skin.
“Your mother did not die because of you!”
He makes a keening sound and begins to pace. At least he’s not leaving. At least there’s that.
“Your mother died because of a freak, one-in-a-million accident that was so unfair.”
“One that was preventable,” he spits out.
“How? How was it preventable? Your parents did everything they could. They tested you. No one knew you had the same allergy. Your mom and dad and you and Declan did everything right—”
“Even when you do everything right people still leave you. You of all people should understand that.”
I am struck dumb.
“When people pick me, their lives fall apart. They lose everyone they love,” Andrew continues, his voice soft and quiet, the unsophisticated tone of a teen. He drops into a chair and holds his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. The back of his neck is vulnerable. A tiny hint of sweat darkens the hairline, making the edge of his hair curl. It’s boyish. Childlike.
Remarkably innocent. I can see the teen he once was. The emergent man. If only I could unwind time. Time is the one thing I cannot fix.
He lets out a long sigh, like the past is being pushed out, like memory being born and crossing from one life to the next. Andrew stands, the movement so abrupt my eyes flit from his neck to his waist to shoe laces, like a series of still images scattered across a cinema screen in rapid-fire sequence.
As I scramble to meet him, he turns away. His shoulders are squared, the fabric tight across the wide upper back. My eyes take in the white cotton cloth, how it hugs his ribs and waist, tucked in and rumpled, the flat lines of wrinkles at odd angles, as if the cloth forgot how to listen and behave.
And then he looks at me with eyes so wounded and ragged it’s as if they’ve been torn.
“Don’t pick me, Amanda. Don’t pick me.”
“What?” Suddenly, this conversation has nothing to do with the wedding. Not one bit.
“You heard me. Don’t pick me.”
“I—” With numb legs, I move toward him. So many words fill my mind. I want to reach up and wipe the crease of worry from his brow. I want to heal those eyes, to reach back in time and cradle his soul to my heart and let it find my rhythm. I want to breathe for him, just long enough so he can rest.
I want to make him know that my world will fall apart if I pick him, but not for the reasons he thinks.
And I’m ready to fall right along with it.
“Andrew, oh, Andrew, I’m falling for you and I don’t care about the wasps or the risks or—”
He steps back and shakes his head, eyes clear in the way that can only come from a deep abyss of despair.
His voice is full of regret and longing. “I won’t let you pick me.”
And with that he turns, long, determined strides taking him down the hallway, out of my sight, and out of my heart.
Leaving me out of my mind.
26
“The problem with having so many women all working together on this wedding is that we are spending a ton of time together. Too much time. So much time that our cycles suddenly, painfully, align themselves,” I lie to Marie, who has just arrived at Amy’s apartment to get ready to caravan over to the party Marie scheduled.
> Remember how Marie tried to take over the bachelorette soirée and we found a fix?
Well. Here we go.
“Poor Shannon! My baby!” Marie descends on morose, aching Shannon with a level of motherly sympathy that triggers a massive guilt complex in me. I don’t like to lie. But if it fixes a problem...
“I am an entire week early!” Shannon screams as we ply her with ice cream and salt-n-vinegar potato chips and ibuprofen and heating wraps filled with lavender and aerosolized Xanax.
(Kidding about that last one, but wouldn’t that be awesome if it existed?)
“Amy, Shannon, Carol and I all have our periods. Everyone started today. We’re like lemmings, only instead of jumping off cliffs, we’re using tampons,” I say to Marie, whose face is scrunched in sympathy, eyes impossibly framed by lashes that could only be created by a penis-enlargement-device maker.
They’re that long.
“How could this happen?” Marie moans. “It seems so bizarre.” My mom is behind her, at the front door, and shoots me a look so skeptical she might as well rename herself Sherlock Holmes. Even Spritzy, dangling from her forearm, rolls his eyes.
Chuckles makes a hiss of warning at Spritzy, who starts to quiver in his bag and hunkers down.
“Yeah,” my mom says. “Statistically impossible, in fact.”
Uh oh.
Never try to pull one over an on actuary. I hadn’t counted on my mother being part of a drinking sexfest.
She comes over to me, gives me a longer-than-usual hug, and whispers, “What are you all up to?” in my ear.
As I pull back I play the innocent, wide eyes and all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I get a cocked eyebrow in return.
Huh. She looks just like me right now.
“See?” Marie crows as we sit around Amy’s apartment looking like a bunch of post-roller-derby players, curled into fetal positions with various cold and hot packs on our body parts, groaning in pain. “Finally, that stupid menopause comes in handy!” She glances at my mother and they share a look that makes me want to rip out my uterus and beat them with it.
“I can’t eat any of this!” Shannon cries out, then shoves another mouthful of caramel chunk ice cream between her teeth. “I’ll never fit into my wedding dress.”
Vote Then Read: Volume III Page 195