“My dear?” said Lady Veronica as the security team held the door open and lined the outer hallway so my journey to the altar would be undisturbed. Beneath my veil, I opened my mouth to say something, but what? “I’m not exactly sure who I am under all this lace, but hey, let’s give it a shot”?
With Lady Veronica and two of her undersecretaries holding my train aloft, we made our way to the rear of the cathedral and the center aisle. Tom Kelly was waiting because I’d asked him to serve as, maybe not my father, but as a close friend of my family, and to give me away. At the time, a month earlier, this had seemed not only a heartfelt but a necessary gesture, because without Tom’s magic I’d never have met Prince Gregory and I’d never be standing at the back of Westminster Abbey, drowning in white satin and white-knuckled fear. I searched Tom’s face for some hint of explanation or guidance. What was going on? Did he think I’d lied about loving Prince Gregory? And if that was the case why was he still participating in the wedding? Had he turned me back into Becky for only a few short seconds so I might say good-bye to my earlier self? Had he just wanted to remind me of where I’d come from and how much I owed him?
Or was Tom Kelly, as I’d secretly suspected, the devil himself? Jate Mallow had warned me that all great fame and success came with a price, so had Tom just presented me with an itemized bill for his services? Tom had created me and if he was Satan he would take his greatest delight in crushing me as well. Because that’s what the devil does, he demonstrates what’s possible and then, just as happiness seems within reach, he fiddles with the brake linings on the honeymoon car or wraps the umbilical cord around the unborn baby’s throat or he takes a nobody from nowhere and shazams her into Rebecca, or maybe not.
Tom’s expression was, of course, impenetrable. He was Dr. Frankenstein, urging his monster into the world just to see what might happen and who might get hurt. He offered me his arm and as two thousand guests, along with five billion other people from all over the world watching via TV and Internet hookups, turned to enjoy us, we began our deliberate, rhythmic march to the altar.
Back in East Trawley, I’d wanted a bigger life and now here I was, leading a life greater and more terrifying than anything I could have imagined. As Tom and I made our way down the aisle, I tried not to focus on the world-renowned faces and the mammoth jewels and the storybook’s worth of royal titles we were passing, on the pew after pew of international movie stars and beribboned viscounts and esteemed prime ministers and emperors, all of them looking at me, looking at Rebecca, with only Tom and Rocher aware of the potential catastrophe, the worldwide insanity that was only seconds away.
I’m fine, I’m fine, everything’s going to be fine, I started repeating to myself, as if all I needed was a new mantra, but my brain began shouting, NO IT’S NOT! NO IT’S NOT!
And now I saw, seated between a retired BBC commentator and, oh my God, the vice president of the United States, there was Dr. Barry, from the burn unit at the children’s hospital.
Dr. Barry was studying me with the same intense curiosity as when we were first introduced. Now, as she watched me barreling toward the altar she suddenly smiled, with the giddy satisfaction of a safecracker as the final tumblers click into place. WHAT DID YOU SEE? my brain howled at her, WHO DID YOU SEE?
We came even with the Royal Family in the very first pew. Prince Edgar, Gregory’s father, turned to watch me. He was slightly balding and even taller than his son and for the first time since I’d known him, he looked almost hopeful. Gregory had explained to me that his father had never really recovered from Alicia’s death, and about how his son’s engagement had reminded him that romance was still possible. “I’m sorry,” my brain whispered to him, “I’m so sorry! I’m a liar, I’m a lie, and I’m sorry!”
Right next to Prince Edgar were two armloads of jumbo, buttery yellow silk daisies on green satin stems, and beneath this raucous garden of a hat was the Queen. As I pulled up beside her, the Queen turned to me and her smile was so wide and benevolent that for a heartbeat, I froze, because how could I betray this woman who’d put so much faith in me and who was relying on me to continue her legacy? HATE ME! KILL ME! HELP ME!
Then the Queen faced forward, toward my future. Prince Gregory was standing at the altar, gazing at me with such unguarded joy that he almost didn’t seem English. Beside him was the Archbishop of Canterbury in his high, stiff white cope and his gaudy golden vestments.
Rocher was opposite the prince and Prince Jasper, Gregory’s younger brother, who was serving as best man. Jasper was a scrawnier, loopier, out-of-it version of Gregory and mixed with the altar’s incense, I smelled weed. While Gregory had forced Jasper to remove his earbuds for the ceremony, they were still visible, barely tucked behind his lapels and his hands were folded in front of him. I was later told that at precisely this moment he was tweeting “Big white dress, must be bride” to his millions of followers.
Tom Kelly brought me up the carpeted steps and placed me across from Prince Gregory. I stared frantically at Tom for any hint of either reassurance or gloating, even a wink would mean something. But he was serenely self-satisfied, as if whatever was about to happen was just what he’d had in mind all along.
As Rocher knelt and adroitly arranged my gown, I made a fatal mistake. I faced out and I took in the entire cathedral and the full congregation in a single wide shot. I gasped because, while I’d rehearsed the ceremony earlier, the pews had been empty and the lighting dim. Now I was trembling, encased in white and good intentions, before what was either the world’s wealthiest and most big-name fan club or what might quickly become the world’s wealthiest and most big-name lynch mob.
The archbishop nodded, which was the signal for me to delicately but decisively sweep the veil from my face so that the vows might begin. I was shaking uncontrollably but my gown was so massive, and its understructure so rigid, that no one could tell: My dress was holding me together and upright. Like anyone with their toes on the last inch of a cliff and trying not to look down at the knife-edged rocks and the churning sea and the circling sharks, I prayed, to God and the universe and to Tom Kelly’s better nature, if he had one, but most of all, I prayed to my mother. As the months had passed I’d begun to know her more completely. I still wasn’t certain about everything she’d been through or how she’d ended up on the couch in our trailer, but I knew what I’d always known — she had loved me. And she’d left Tom Kelly’s phone number for me to find. So whatever was about to happen, she’d wished it. Mom, I told her, I love you right back and no matter what happens next I always will and everyone’s watching and the archbishop is scowling impatiently and Prince Gregory looks trusting but a little unsure and even Jasper has half opened his eyes and picked up on my hesitation and if Rocher holds her breath for one more second she’s going to pass out, so here goes whatever and by whatever I mean here goes everything and by everything I mean my life.
Using both hands, as I’d practiced, I lifted my veil in a single graceful swoop, until the yards of lace fell away from my face and swept down my back. With my now unimpaired vision I saw Prince Gregory, as his features twisted into equal parts horror, confusion and terrible loss.
“Who … who are you?” he said, but he didn’t sound angry or disgusted. It was worse, because his voice had grown hollow, as all of his happiness evaporated, as if someone’s thumb and forefinger had snuffed out a candle.
Here was the harshest truth: If being beautiful meant being loved, then I wasn’t beautiful, not anymore. I was Becky, and I’d never felt so ugly.
Because I was facing away from the congregation, only Prince Gregory, the archbishop and Rocher were immediately aware of the catastrophic switch and Prince Jasper, of course, didn’t notice anything. Within seconds, Rocher leaped forward and jammed one foot onto my train and used both of her hands to rip away the yards of satin. She hissed, “Run!” and grabbed me by my waist and we both took off, high-jumping over the altar, sending a few altar boys sprawling to the floor and then w
e hurtled down a rear hallway. For a few brief moments we had shock and chaos on our side, so no one tackled or shot us and all we knew for sure was, don’t look back.
With Rocher in the lead we sprinted down the hallway, passing offices, choir rehearsal rooms and private chapels, shredding more of our Tom Kelly originals as we ran. We burst through a fire door and out into the alley behind the Abbey where we threw what was left of our gowns behind a Dumpster. Rocher had snatched two pairs of worn, stained custodial coveralls from hooks in the hall and we dove into them. Rocher howled “Taxi!” and we leaped aboard and sped off as we began to hear the police sirens, along with the news crews and the bewildered crowds in mounting uproar.
“Have you heard what happened?” our cab driver asked breathlessly. “It’s all over the radio! She’s gone! That girl, that American, she’s jilted our Greg!”
Before Rocher and I had even cleared the Abbey, first-responding entrepreneurs had registered the following domain names, among so many others: RebeccaTRUTH.com, Hardcoreweddingfacts.net and www.weknowwhathappened.org, where they promoted such theories as the Queen changing her mind about having such a bumpkin for a daughter-in-law and hocking her own grandmother’s best tiara to bribe Rebecca into taking a hike; Rebecca experiencing a disfiguring malfunction with her tanning mist on the morning of the wedding, leaving her unphotographably orange and splotchy; and Rebecca, at the last second, being summoned back to her home planet by the Venusian high command, in preparation for the full-scale draining of Earth’s water supply.
Later that day Prince Gregory and his family issued a brief statement apologizing to the nation and insisting that they held “no rancor toward Rebecca Randle, only a deep sympathy for her youthful turmoil.” The prince then asked for the entire matter to become “closed and respectfully private.”
This was, of course, impossible. Rebecca had not only abandoned Prince Gregory at the altar, she’d vanished. She’d left behind a Tom Kelly wardrobe and disappeared into the ether, along with her American bridesmaid with the odd first name, causing the chocolate company, Ferrero Rocher, to strenuously deny any connection to either of the young women, proclaiming in a commercial that “Ferrero Rocher is always in love.”
Because, prior to her almost wedding, so little had been known about Rebecca, the media now concentrated on her meteoric rise from total obscurity to top-selling Vogue cover girl and her equally stratospheric movie debut. By jilting a prince, she’d become even more improbable. It was as if on the happily-ever-after page of her fairy tale, Rebecca had spontaneously combusted in order to preserve her beauty forever at its dewiest, most adored and most scandalous peak.
Jate Mallow, naturally, was kept under round-the-clock surveillance, because so many people, with no other explanation at hand, decided that Rebecca had ditched Prince Gregory in favor of Hollywood royalty. Everyone enlisted in either Team Jate or Team Gregory and the online justifications included “Jate loved her more!” “Jate was going to attempt suicide!” and my personal favorite, “Right before the ceremony Rebecca found out that Prince Gregory is gay!” Jate did nothing to combat these rumors and he was sometimes photographed leaning pensively against his Harley, parked on a lonely Los Angeles hilltop, as if he were heartsick over Rebecca or maybe meeting her, heavily disguised, at 4:00 A.M. When he was asked about the woman who was now known as The Runaway Princess, The Outlaw Bride and The Invisible Girl, Jate would only comment, with a crack in his voice, “Wherever Rebecca is I just hope she’s happy.”
All of this international tabloid frenzy had only just ignited when, late on the evening of my canceled wedding, I sat beside Rocher on a hastily booked flight out of London, in coach. Since I was Becky, no one gave me a second glance and in the airport bathroom, Rocher had dyed her hair, along with her eyebrows, a thick, toneless black, so she resembled a goth Groucho Marx.
“Look at that,” Rocher murmured, nudging me as we watched the footage of ourselves leaping over the altar which was being endlessly replayed on every video screen and handheld device. “Those girls are crazy!” Rocher said loudly, for the benefit of our seatmates. “I bet they ran all the way to France!”
As I sat there in the 3:00 A.M. darkness, lit only by the reading bulbs of the few passengers who, like me, weren’t about to get any sleep, I tried not to think about anything at all, to erase Rebecca forever and to treat the entire episode as a psychotic break. But it wasn’t any use. First and foremost I blamed myself, because I’d said yes to Tom Kelly’s proposal and I’d worn the dresses, and even if I’d never trusted him, I’d done everything Tom had commanded. At first I’d told myself it was all meaningless because Tom was deluded and could never deliver on his absurd promises. But even back then, before my transformation, pre-Rebecca, I hadn’t just been humoring a nutcase, because like anyone who’s ever whooshed the fuzz off a dandelion or tossed a penny into a chlorinated water feature at the mall or shut their eyes and blown out the candles on a birthday cake in a single breath, I’d wanted the wish, Tom’s bargain, to come true. I’d wanted to become the most beautiful woman on earth, although back then, I hadn’t had the slightest idea of what that might feel like and lead to. I’d thought that being beautiful might be like getting a really terrific haircut or finding a well-fitting pair of jeans or just feeling less like the plainest, most forgettable, least-likely-to-be-kissed sort of person. But for me, becoming beautiful had been like waking up behind the wheel of a Ferrari that had just been dropped out of a plane somewhere over the Atlantic and trying to remember my name.
I tried to hate Tom Kelly, to curse him as he’d cursed me, to invent a punishment as bizarre as the one I was experiencing. But I couldn’t, because more than wanting to kill him as painfully and publicly as possible, I wanted to grill him, to finally get some answers. Why had he done it, all of it? Why had he made me so beautiful and encouraged my adventures and my marriage, only to trash everything? Did he hate me, did he hate beautiful women, or all women, or the possibility of love, or my mother? What had she done to him? Was I his revenge?
Every thought arrived at my mother. Why had she sent me to Tom? What had she hoped for? Had Tom perverted her deathbed dream of seeing her daughter gorgeous and happy and in love?
But none of these questions could ever be answered. My mother was gone, the Queen of England and her snarling corgis had every right to hate me and I prayed with all my heart that I would never see Tom Kelly again. I told myself that I’d been granted an impossible, supernatural opportunity and that it had been insane fun while it lasted and I’d seen the world and I’d fallen in love and you know what, Becky Randle from East Trawley, Missouri? You’re sitting in coach, where you belong and you’re lucky to be there. Get over it. Stop wallowing. You’re young, you’re healthy, you’re safe and nobody likes a whiner, especially a whiner whose most recent activities are preempting every top-rated sitcom, every major sporting event and the president’s State of the Union address.
I wasn’t beautiful, I wasn’t going to marry the guy I loved and I was never going to become the Queen of England; as Rocher liked to say, boo-fucking-hoo. I was torn between heartbroken sobs and giggling like an idiot, because I couldn’t believe that these were my problems. I was almost convinced that I’d be fine, but then I saw Prince Gregory’s face on the cell phone of someone two rows in front of me. Then I did something I had no right to do. I tried to stop and to sit up straight and to not let Rocher or anyone else see what was happening, but the tears began coursing down my face and onto my T-shirt and seat belt. I was crying because I loved Gregory so much and because no matter what might happen to me, for the rest of my life, I’d never be able to tell him about it and make him laugh and hear his wisecracks and feel his arms around me once he’d run out of wisecracks. Even when I’d been mad at him, if he was acting childish or crabby, I’d loved watching him. I’d loved the idea of the two of us, figuring out our lives together. And I’d loved having someone who’d loved me right back, even in my red camouflage-print jumpsuit. S
omeone who’d called me Becky.
But that wasn’t really why I was crying or it wasn’t the only reason. I’d probably never stop crying because I’d fallen in love with a great guy and I’d hurt him, maybe as deeply as anyone can hurt someone else. I’d lied to him and Rebecca had been the worst category of lie, because she, or it, had been so deliberate. And Gregory would never know that whoever I was, my love for him had never been part of the lie.
I knew that I was going to have to bury that love more deeply than any other memory of my year as Rebecca or I wouldn’t be able to take another breath. I began to understand my mother on a more visceral and grown-up level because whatever had happened to her, I knew exactly why she’d retreated and why she’d hidden herself away. Whoever my father was, she had loved him and he had left. And the only way she’d been able to deal with that had been to stay very still and very alone and to never answer any questions. And now I felt even worse, because I’d badgered her about my father. I hadn’t known what it meant to fall in love and then lose everything.
I knew that I couldn’t head back to East Trawley, because my mother’s trailer had been hauled away months ago and sold for scrap. The Super Shop-A-Lot had closed and as Rocher had said, “We’ve already been rejected and bummed out in Missouri.” So we spent two days in a motel near the New York airport, where we came across the previous guest’s nail parings and pubic hairs underneath our flat, slimy pillows. We went online and offered ourselves as roommates to a pair of girls who described themselves as “stars of tomorrow today” in their listing. The apartment was up five flights in a decrepit building in the part of Manhattan called Hell’s Kitchen. The building had started its life as a brownstone but the facade had been repeatedly resurfaced, as if some chugging machine had swallowed gallons of stucco and vomited all over it. There were rats scurrying across the stairwells and the hallways looked like they’d been scrubbed down with raw sewage.
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