“What’s wrong with my skin?”
“Your pores are huge,” she says, eyes wide. “And look at those blackheads,” she adds, pointing at my nose.
I don’t get to sleep until about two in the morning, and five hours later I’m awakened by the sound of metal clattering outside my window. It’s the caterer’s assistant, who has dropped a box of silverware. There’s a small army of people in Vivien’s backyard: caterers, florists, tent arrangers. Tables and chairs are being set up under the tent, as well as giant floral topiaries.
In the kitchen, Grandpa and Grandma Taylor are having their favorite breakfast: cigarettes and cans of Budweiser.
I take my toast outside for some fresh air and barely take one bite before my cell phone rings again. I am getting really tired of “Cowboy Take Me Away.” I wish someone would take me away from my cell phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Bob shouts at me right off.
“I’m in Dixieland,” I say. “I’m home for my cousin’s wedding. Remember?”
“No matter, I need you back tonight.”
“Bob, I can’t come back tonight. I’m in my cousin’s wed-ding.”
“I’ve got the weekend producer out sick, and your assistant—what’s her name?”
“Anne.”
“Right, she says she can’t get a babysitter, and I need someone to do the ten o’clock news tonight.”
“Bob, there’s no way I could get back in time.”
“Look, you have to make your own decisions,” Bob says. “But if you want that promotion, you’d better find a replacement, or find a way to get back here by seven thirty.”
I hang up and call Anne, who tells me the same thing Bob told me. She’s stuck with the kids and her husband is out of town and she simply can’t find a single person to watch them. Anne is close to tears, and I tell her not to worry. I’ll figure something out.
The wedding is at one. I do some quick calculations. If I skip the reception, drive like hell to the airport, and make a midafternoon flight, I might, might be able to be at the studio by seven. That’s if there’s no traffic, and the cab drives eighty miles an hour from the airport.
“Trouble at work?” comes Riley’s voice from behind me. He’s sitting on my parents’ porch swing.
“Hey,” I say to him, suddenly very glad to see him. “That seat taken?”
Riley looks up at me, and then back down. “I was hoping Jennifer Lopez would wander by, but until she gets here, I suppose you could warm the seat.”
“Thanks.”
I sit down. “You mad at me?”
He shrugs.
“Bob wants me to go back tonight.”
“And are you?”
“You’re so good at reading my mind, I figured you’d know already.”
“If this were an episode of Dallas, there’d be dramatic music and a close-up on my face,” Riley says.
“And then maybe I could wake up and find that none of the past three days ever happened.”
“Would you want that?” Riley asks, suddenly serious.
I give him a look. “The only thing I want to take back is last night and that scene with Kevin,” I say.
Riley considers this, a smile creeping across his face.
“Done,” he says. “It was all a dream. Does this mean I have to go get in the shower like Patrick Duffy?”
Inside the house, Lucy starts screaming that Aunt Teri didn’t properly transport her veil from Lulu’s Bridal, because it is now wrinkled. So much for our heart-to-heart talk last night, I think.
“Ya-shee!” Vivien cries, throwing up her hands and coming out on the porch. “Bette is looking for you. She needs to do your hair. She’s just got done with Lucy.”
“Do I have to?” I ask Vivien.
“This is my cue to go get dressed,” Riley says, getting up and leaving me alone with Vivien.
“No back talk, young lady. I’ve already gotten plenty from Kimberly this morning, and I don’t need any more from you.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Being her usual self,” Vivien says. “She is just like her father, I swear. Bubba is as stubborn as an elephant.”
“Mule,” I correct.
Kimberly comes out on the porch then. “You had better not be talking about me,” she snaps.
Vivien and I turn to look at Kimberly, who is all decked out in the bright pink bridesmaid’s dress. Kimberly in pink anything would be funny. But pink ruffles? She looks ridiculous. Her tattoo of Buddha and her nose ring do not go with the pink frills. She looks about as happy as a cat that just fell into a tub of water.
“If either one of you even DARES to laugh, I swear, I’ll take this damn thing off and be on the next plane to Califor-nia,” Kimberly fumes.
“You look very nice,” Vivien says, but even she can’t quite keep a straight face.
“BUBBA!” Kimberly shouts, stomping back into the house.
My cell phone rings.
“Don’t be too long,” Vivien warns me.
I expect to talk to Bob. Instead, I find Kevin Peterson on the line.
“I got your cell phone number from Lucy,” he tells me. “She thinks I’m trying to set you up with one of my grooms-men.”
“And that’s not why you’re calling me?”
“No. Well, yes and no. I’ve been thinking, Jen. Last night, I don’t think it was a fluke. Seeing you again has brought up all kinds of feelings.”
“I don’t think this is the best time to talk about this.” I sigh, trying to keep my voice low as I walk out to my mother’s porch.
“When would be a better time? I’m getting married in three hours and I’m not sure I should be.”
“You’re just nervous,” I say. “It’s not really me you care for.”
“Jen, I’ve been in love with you since I was ten years old,” he says. “You can’t just walk away from a feeling like that.”
I sigh.
This is the exact thing I would’ve wanted to hear at age thirteen. Now, it all seems a bit ridiculous. There’s no way I would ever be able to date Kevin Peterson now. Even if he weren’t engaged to my cousin, he’s your typical small-town boy. He’s never been anywhere, and never plans to go anywhere.
I imagine introducing him to friends like Jason in Chicago. The minute he started talking about his state football championship, I’d be so mortified, I probably wouldn’t be able to leave the house again. I try to imagine Kevin Peterson and me together, and I just can’t.
“You don’t even really know me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You only think you know me. You’re in love with the idea of me, not me.”
I know all about this, I think. My whole life I’ve been chasing the dream of a guy instead of real guys. It’s just like Riley said. I love to love ideals. Real men rarely stack up.
“I don’t think I understand you,” Kevin drawls. “Why do you have to talk circles around me, darlin’? You been away from the South so long that you can’t speak plainly?”
“I’m not the same Jen I was fifteen years ago.”
“You’re right,” Kevin says. “You’ve gotten even prettier since then.”
“That is no good reason to run off with somebody,” I say. “I have to go.”
I never would have guessed in a million years that I would be trying to hurry Kevin Peterson off the phone. It reminds me of some fortune cookie wisdom Aunt Teri often quotes: The only thing worse than not getting what you want in life is getting it.
By noon the entire wedding party is waiting at the First Baptist Church, the site of Grandma Saddie’s rebirth into the Christian faith, and where Lucy has been attending bible study since she was four.
Aunt Teri, stubborn in her Chinese superstitions, is busy putting little mirrors on the windowsills to “ward off bad luck.” But no sooner does she place them than Grandma Sad-die picks them up again claiming superstitions are “the Devil’s work.”
Aunt Teri is decked out in a pink kimono and ha
s her blond hair swept up on her head and held in place with pearl pink chopsticks. She causes more of a stir when she tries to stick Confucius sayings into the wedding programs, including one that reads “A man with one chopstick will go hungry.”
Riley is sitting in a back pew of the church arguing with Bubba about who is tougher, a rugby player or a Nascar driver. He looks particularly handsome in his dark suit, and he seems so at home with Bubba. Few of my past boyfriends made it to the chit-chat stage with Bubba. Bubba’s size and the intensity at which he talks about Nascar usually scares off guys. But not Riley.
I can’t help but wonder what will happen when we’re back in Chicago. I wonder if his “break” with Tiffany will be permanent, and this makes me think again that maybe I should help that break along by telling him about what I saw between her and Paul.
Riley, sensing me looking at him, glances over at me. He sends me a cautious smile. I take a step toward him, but my forward momentum is stopped by the sudden appearance of Kevin Peterson. He’s wearing his groom’s tux, and I have to admit he does look handsome.
“Can we talk?” Kevin asks me. He looks miserable, as if he’s attending a funeral instead of his own wedding.
“No.”
“Give me five minutes,” he pleads. “Just five minutes.”
Kevin pulls me into a small room where bible study is normally held on Sundays, and takes a deep breath.
“I can’t fight these feelings I have for you,” Kevin says, sounding like he’s quoting REO Speedwagon. “And I can’t stop thinking about you,” he adds. “Do you think there is any chance we could be together? I’m about to make a big decision here today, and I need to know how you feel about me.”
The thirteen-year-old in me is definitely flattered. But the near-thirty-year-old is losing patience. He’s about to get married and he’s thinking about running off with me? What is Lucy? His backup plan?
“Kevin, I don’t even know you, and you don’t know me,” I say.
“Just tell me this one thing. You think you would ever move back to Dixieland? You think you could see yourself as a farmer’s wife?”
I sigh and shake my head. “Kevin, I’ve got a life in Chicago. Before long, I’ll probably be living in New York. I’m not going to move back to Dixieland.”
“Oh,” Kevin says, looking down at his feet.
“Whatever decision you have to make,” I tell him, “you have to make without thinking about me.”
“I see.”
The door to the bible study opens then and Kimberly bursts in.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Kimberly asks. “It’s time for the groom to go up to the altar.”
I hear the processional music starting from the church. I look at Kevin. He looks at me and then the door.
“I’m leaving,” I say.
I walk out of the room and Kimberly follows me.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“It’s a long story.”
In the hall we run into Vivien, who is speaking to former glue eater Billy Connor, dressed in his Arkansas State Trooper uniform.
“There you are, ya-shee, we’ve been looking all over for you,” Vivien scolds me. “You remember Billy?”
Billy has grown since the last time I saw him and is probably four sizes bigger. He still has the look of a slightly gullible boy who would eat anything if someone dared him to do so.
“Hey, Jen,” Billy says, distracted. “You seen Lucy?”
“I’m sure she’s getting dressed.”
“You and Billy used to play naked in the blow-up pool in the summer when you were babies,” Vivien says.
Both Billy and I turn bright red.
“You missed the train on this one, Billy,” Vivien says. “Jen is practically engaged now.”
“Mom!” I exclaim.
“Um,” Billy says, staring at the Arkansas State Trooper hat in his hands. “You seen Lucy?” he asks again.
“You’ll see her soon enough,” Vivien says.
He looks from right to left. “I think I’ll go look for her,” Billy Connor says, then wanders off.
“I told you he was strange,” I tell Vivien.
“He’s very nice,” Vivien counters. “He rescued Aunt Teri’s cat just last week. Climbed up in the tree himself to do it. Besides, he’s a very nice fellow. You’re just too picky!”
Vivien takes a look at Kimberly and me and then barks at us.
“What are y’all doing standing around? You’re supposed to be with Lucy.”
Kimberly and I wander back to the rehearsal room, where Lucy is in full wedding regalia and shouting at the top of her lungs to her bridesmaids. Of her eighteen bridesmaids, only Kimberly and I are blood relatives. The rest are “friends” of Lucy—a combination of former Miss Arkansas competitors and former teammates on the Dixieland High School Drill Team.
“I need Visine. My eyes are red!” she cries to her maid of honor, former Miss Bass County, who came in fourth behind Lucy in the Miss Arkansas Pageant.
“Calm down, I’ve got it,” Miss Bass County says, looking around in the trunk-size cosmetic case that used to follow Lucy around to all her beauty pageants.
“Now I see who these dresses were made for,” I say, looking at the four nearly six-foot-tall, rail-thin beauty contestants. They look like Barbies. I look like a Weeble Wobble.
We’re given our flowers—bunches of pale pink roses—as well as drill-sergeant-like orders from Lucy that we are not—under any circumstances—to break with the stutter step down the aisle (right foot forward, then feet together, then left foot forward!). There’s no sign of the doubting girl of last night. Lucy is barking commands left and right and is tackling her wedding day with the same steely determination she used to attack her flaming baton in the talent competition of Miss Arkansas.
All the while I know that I can’t really let this wedding happen. Lucy has a right to know about Kevin, and I really should be the one to tell her. Or should I? Just what am I supposed to tell her? That her fiancé, the love of her life, made a pass at me in front of the Catfish Parlour? That despite her sincere hope that in the contest of marriage she’ll come in first place, she’s actually only Mrs. Peterson, First Runner-Up?
I keep thinking Don’t go through with this, sending Lucy silent signals in the hope that there really is something to Naka-mura Telepathy.
During a rare quiet moment, I try to approach Lucy. “Lucy,” I say, trying to get her away from the other four former Miss Arkansas contestants. “Do you remember what we talked about last night?”
“Jen—please don’t talk to me now, I’m trying to concentrate,” Lucy says. “I’m visualizing the win. I mean, the ceremony.”
“But you mentioned that maybe …” I can feel the eyes of the other bridesmaids following my trail of conversation with interest. “That …”
Kimberly sends me a look that says, “What are you doing?”
“Jen—please, I’m in my winner’s zone,” Lucy says, brushing me off.
“Girls! It’s time,” cries Aunt Bette.
The processional music goes on for what seems like forever. The church organ player, Mrs. Bradford, who is pushing seventy, starts to look fatigued by the procession of Bridesmaid number ten. I am third-to-last to go, sandwiched in between two former beauty pageant contestants and looking like their ill-formed, dwarf sister.
Stubbornly, I do not look in Kevin’s direction. I wonder what I should say during the “Speak now or forever hold your peace part,” since my conscience is starting to buzz in my ears like a rabid bee.
I train my eyes on Pastor Miller, who is in his late fifties and was the one who baptized me when I was a baby. He gives me a fatherly smile, and I feel even worse. How can I be a part of a wedding that I know is a sham?
I make it to the front of the church, where I turn and see the last two bridesmaids trailing behind me, and then Bubba escorting Lucy down the aisle. She’s got laserlike focus on Kevin, and before
I know it, they’re standing in front of Pastor Miller.
“We are gathered here today to witness the union of this man and this woman,” he begins.
Here it comes. I swallow, hard.
“If anyone knows of a reason why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
—Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid
Bonzaiii!
1988—BEYOND THUNDERDOME
By the summer after eighth grade, I knew I had no hope of winning Kevin Peterson. Even while old couples reunited (Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, for instance), I had no chance with KP. I had braces, glasses, and was never going to be a cheerleader. It was also rumored, thanks to Peter Peed, that I had funny-tasting spit.
I sank into a deep depression (what Vivien called “being a moody teenager”); I slept until noon every day and refused to use sentences longer than a few words. That’s the summer that Grandpa Taylor bought the RV and took Grandma Taylor on an eight-state tour of America’s Finest Sights, including the world’s largest ball of string.
That was also the summer that Aunt Bette, who had flunked out of junior college, tried her hand at beauty school. She told me that what I needed to cure my depression was a perm. I agreed to let her give me one.
The fact that for most of the late eighties Aunt Bette spent three hours a day painstakingly curling and hair-spraying herself to look like all of the fans in the Hair Band videos didn’t seem like a particularly serious warning sign.
Aunt Bette wore her hair sprayed high, ratted, and teased, along with skin-tight, acid-washed ripped jeans. She spent most of her time going to Def Leppard, Poison, and Guns N’ Roses concerts.
“Trust me, you will look bad ass,” she tells me, looking at me through her heavy makeup.
The idea for my makeover, according to Aunt Bette, was to first cut layers into my bangs, then set them with a perm, which would be almost hassle-free. It would require only an hour of blow-drying with a diffuser, some strategic curling-iron use, followed by mild back-combing, and finished off with some tease and spray. Simple, Aunt Bette said. I could do it in my sleep, she said, which would be handy, since I’d have to wake up at 5:00 A.M. every day before school in order to complete this complicated beauty regimen.
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