by Meg Cabot
“Yeah,” I say. “Time off meaning two weeks…three, maybe. But not the whole summer.”
“Lizzie.” Luke looks disappointed in me. “Don’t you know anything about the business world? Don’t let the Henris tell you how much vacation time you get. You tell them. If they really want to keep you, they’ll let you take off as much time as you want.”
“Luke,” I say, trying to figure out how I can put this without offending him. “I don’t want to take the whole summer off. And I definitely don’t want to spend it with you in Paris.”
But no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I realize that I’ve done it again. Put my foot in my mouth, I mean. God, no matter how hard I try to be tactful, I just never seem to be able to say the right thing around this guy.
“Th-that didn’t come out the right way,” I stammer.
Fortunately, Luke is chuckling.
“I guess I never have to worry about your not being honest with me,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I hurry to say. “What I meant was—”
“You don’t want to spend the summer in Paris,” he says. “And you don’t have to apologize. I understand. You love your job, and you want to be here for it. That’s okay. The thing is, Gerald’s offer is really too good for me to turn down. Especially with the wedding to pay for. Look, it’s all right. We can do the long-distance thing. We’re already going to be doing the separate-apartment thing”—he gives me a mischievous smile, because I’d already warned him, before I’d said yes to his proposal, that I wouldn’t be moving back in with him until after the wedding; it just seems like the wisest thing to do, under the circumstances—“so I guess living in separate countries for a couple of months over the summer shouldn’t be that big a deal.”
I chew my lower lip. Am I insane? I probably am. I’ve got this amazing guy who’s finally proposed to me, and in the past hour I’ve turned down an invitation not only to move back in with him but also to spend a summer in Paris with him.
“He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to hitch his wagon to a star. He still thinks he’s the star. And you can’t have two stars in one relationship. Somebody has to be willing to be the wagon…at least some of the time.”
Oh! I can’t believe it! Even a session of hot and heavy makeup sex didn’t succeed in exorcising Chaz’s voice from my head! What am I going to have to do to get that guy out of there?
“Come on,” I say, reaching for my cell phone. “Let’s call people and tell them now.”
Luke looks amused. “Oh, now you want to call your family?”
You’d better believe it. Anything to make the voice of Chaz stop talking inside my head.
“Come on,” I say, dialing. “It’ll be fun. I’ll call my parents first. Because I’m the bride, so you have to do what I say. Hello, Mom?”
“No,” a childish voice says. “It’s me, Maggie.”
“Oh, Maggie,” I say to my niece. “Hi, it’s your aunt Lizzie. Could you put your grandma on the phone, please?”
“Okay,” Maggie says, and I hear the phone thunk to the floor as she goes off in search of my mother. I can hear the voices of my sisters and their husbands in the background as they enjoy my parents’ traditional Nichols Family New Year’s Day Brunch. Although “enjoy” might be a strong word. Maybe “endure” is more like it. I can hear my sister Rose’s husband, Angelo, bleating something about how he no longer eats eggs because of the hormones in them, and my sister firing back that maybe he could use more hormones…especially in bed.
“Who’s this?” Gran picks up the phone and barks.
“Oh,” I say, disappointed. “Gran. Hi. It’s me, Lizzie. I was just trying to reach Mom—”
“She’s busy,” Gran says. Whoever was assigned to make sure she imbibes only nonalcoholic beer has apparently failed in his or her mission. Gran is, as always, three sheets to the wind. “Somebody’s gotta feed this crew. God forbid one of your sisters should offer to host one of these things and dirty up her house someday.”
“Huh,” I say, giving Luke a sunny smile to show him everything is going swimmingly. “Well, I’ve got some news. Maybe you could let everyone know.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gran says. “You’re knocked up. Lizzie, I told you. Always use a rubber. I know the boys don’t like them, but it’s like I always say: no rubber, no way.”
“Uh,” I say. “No, Gran, that’s not it. Luke and I are engaged.”
“Luke?” Gran sounds like she’s choking on whatever drink she’s just knocked back. “That no-good-nik? What did you go and agree to marry him for? I thought you booted that loser to the curb before Christmas.”
I cough and give Luke another reassuring smile.
“Are they excited?” he mouths.
I give him a thumbs-up.
“Um, I did, Gran,” I say. “But now we’re engaged. Can you get Mom, please?”
“No, I am not going to get your mother,” Gran says. “Trust me, I’m doing you a favor, Lizzie. She did an aquaerobics class and a scrapbooking class at the Y yesterday, plus all the shopping for this brunch, with no help whatsoever from those sisters of yours. This news could kill her.”
“Gran.” I smile at Luke again. “If you don’t put Mom on the phone, I’m going to call her on her cell and tell her you’ve been hitting the cooking sherry. And don’t try to deny it. Because I can tell.”
“You ingrate,” Gran snarls. “What do you want to go and get engaged for anyway, Lizzie? Husbands don’t do anything but cramp your style. Believe me, I was saddled with one for fifty-five years. I would know. Get out now, while you still can.”
“Gran,” I warn.
“I’m getting her,” Gran says. I hear her shuffling off.
I can’t help noticing that Luke isn’t smiling anymore. I say, “It’s okay. Gran’s just a little tipsy.”
Luke looks at his watch. “It’s noon.”
“It’s a holiday,” I point out. Jeesh. Some people can be so picky.
Mom’s reception of the news that I’m getting married is much warmer than Gran’s. She screams and cries and calls for Dad and asks to speak to Luke and welcomes him to the family and wants to know when she’s going to get to meet him. Which reminds me that it is a little weird Luke hasn’t met my family yet. I’ve met all of his.
But oh well. They’ll meet soon enough, I guess. Mom wants to throw an engagement party…and the wedding, which Mom immediately offers the family backyard for, a suggestion I gently brush off, saying, “Well, we’ll see.” I’m not sure how to break it to her that Luke’s already suggested we get married at his seventeenth-century familial estate in the south of France, an offer that’s pretty hard to turn down.
Except that my family’s never been to Europe before…they’ve never been to New York before.
This might actually pose a problem.
But Luke says all the right things to them on the phone, and is as charming and gracious as if my parents were a king and queen and not a professor at the University of Michigan cyclotron and a housewife. Everything, I think, as I watch him proudly, is going to be fine. Just fine.
“This is like watching a lamb being led to slaughter. Is getting married really that important to you? It’s just a goddamned piece of paper.”
Okay, well, it’s going to be fine after a few more phone calls. And more sex.
A lot more sex.
A HISTORY of WEDDINGS
The declaration of union between two people has long been considered by sociologists to be an important step in the development of human happiness. Societally speaking, a heterosexual male who has paired off with a heterosexual female is generally thought to be calmer and less prone to violence, and a wedded female equally less troublesome. Their offspring benefit from having both a father and a mother, and—in ancient times, at least—the entire tribe benefited from the goodwill generated from a happy union. In other words: weddings were a joyous occasion that brought about less fighting and unpleasantness all around.
I would just like to point out that none of these sociologists came to my sisters’ weddings. Obviously.
Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster
Is your future mother-or sister-in-law driving you insane as you plan your special day? There’s a simple way to get her off your back. Give her something to do! Allowing his family—especially the female members—to take part in the preparations for the big day will not only make them feel special but will also lift some of the burden off your shoulders.
Just make sure you don’t ask them to do anything too important. That way when they mess it up (as they in evitably will), it won’t matter.
LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™
• Chapter 3 •
Happy and thrice happy are those who enjoy an uninterrupted union, and whose love, unbroken by any sour complaints, shall not dissolve until the last day of their existence.
Horace (65 B.C.–8 B.C.), Roman lyric poet
Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
“Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
“Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”
“Hello, Chez Henri, how may I help you?”
“Yeah, is this Henri Bridal?” The woman on the other end of the phone has pronounced it Henry instead of the correct French pronunciation of my boss’s name, which is En-ree.
That I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is that she’s chewing gum. I can feel my toes curling. Of all the annoying personal habits a bride-to-be—or anyone, really—can have, gum-chewing is the one that aggravates me the most.
“Yes, it is,” I say, glaring at all the blinking lights on my phone. It’s a good thing I had all those months of reception work at the law offices of Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn. I can handle an overloaded switchboard like nobody’s business.
And the Monday morning after Jill Higgins’s New Year’s Eve wedding to wealthy socialite John MacDowell—at which Anna Wintour (yes, the Anna Wintour, longtime editor of Vogue) called my restoration of the ancestral MacDowell bridal gown “cunning”—the phones at Chez Henri are ringing off the hook.
Of all the mornings for Monsieur and Madame Henri to come in late from their home in suburban New Jersey, this would not have been the one I’d chosen. I’m just saying.
“I wanna make an appointment to see that chick,” the gum-chewer says.
“I beg your pardon?” I am taken aback. First gum-chewing, then a reference to me—and she can only be referring to me. I am the only employee at Chez Henri who can reasonably be referred to as a “chick,” Madame Henri being in her fifties—as a derogatory slang word for “young woman”?
“You know,” Gum-Chewer says. “The chick that designed that dress for Blubber.”
Blubber. The nickname the press dubbed poor Jill Higgins, because she happens to work in the seal enclosure at the Central Park Zoo. And because she’d deigned to fall in love with one of New York’s wealthiest bachelors, and she doesn’t happen to be a size two.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Gum-Chewer. “The chick to whom you are referring happens to dislike people who look down on others due to their weight.”
Gum-Chewer appears to have swallowed her gum. “But—”
“And furthermore, that chick happens to dislike being called a chick.”
“Um, excuse me.” Gum-Chewer snaps her gum. “But do you have any idea who I am? I’m—”
“No, and I don’t care to know. Good-bye,” I say, pressing the END CALL button. “Chez Henri, how may I help you?”
“Elizabeth? Is that you?” The woman on the other end of the line has a heavy French accent and sounds as if she’s speaking to me from inside a tunnel. No, it isn’t my future mother-in-law, who is from Texas. It’s Madame Henri.
“Madame, where are you?” I ask in French, the language I now routinely slip into when speaking to my employers, though I hid the fact that I could speak it—not perfectly, but well enough to understand (and be understood by) them—for months. “It’s crazy here. The phones are ringing off the hook.”
“Elizabeth, I’m so sorry. I meant to call earlier, but my cell phone doesn’t work here. I’ve been at the hospital.”
“The hospital?” The other lines continue to ring. Callers, impatient at being placed on hold, have hung up and are calling back. I turn away from the phone. “Is everything all right? I hope nothing happened to the boys—”
“No, the boys are fine. It’s Jean, actually.” Madame Henri’s voice sounds tiny. She’s a petite woman, but the one thing about her that’s never seemed small before is just that…her voice. She’s always had a commanding—even domineering—presence. But not now. “He didn’t feel well at breakfast yesterday morning. I thought it was just too much champagne from the night before. But then he said his arm hurt—”
I gasp. “Madame!”
“Yes.” Her voice sounds even smaller. “He had a heart attack. He is scheduled for emergency bypass surgery here at the hospital today. Quadruple.” Then, with a hint of her old asperity, she adds, “I told him he works too hard! I told him he needed to take more time off! Well, now he’s getting it…and look how he has to spend it! He could have taken it at our home in Provence. But no! Not him! This is what it has come to.”
“Oh, Madame.” I shake my head. “Well, I’m sure he’s in very good hands—”
“The best,” Madame Henri says simply. “But it will be weeks before he can return to work. And I as well, because who do you think will have to play nursemaid to him? His sons? Bah! They are worthless. Worse than garbage.”
I’m relieved to hear her bad-mouthing her children. That means the situation is nowhere near as dire as I’d first feared from the way she’d sounded. If she can trash-talk the kids—who, from what I’ve observed, pretty much are worthless—things are okay.
“And just as the shop is doing the best business it has ever done before,” Madame Henri goes on. “All thanks to you! And this is how we repay you. When he is well again,” she adds matter-of-factly, “I will kill him.”
“Don’t worry about the shop,” I say, keeping my face resolutely turned away from all the blinking lights on the phone. “I’ll be fine here.”
“Elizabeth,” Madame Henri says. “I am not a fool. I can hear the telephone ringing.”
“The phone,” I admit, “is a bit of a problem at the moment. But not one I can’t solve.”
“Do what you have to do,” Madame Henri says, with a sigh. “Even…even hire someone.”
I can’t help letting out a gasp. The Henris are almost insanely tightfisted. For good reason, of course. Until I started working for them, they barely made a profit. In fact, for the first four months I worked for them, I did it for free, just to prove I’d be worth the eventual investment of my thirty grand a year…and the rent-free apartment over the shop.
“Madame,” I say, hardly daring to believe what I’d just heard. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t see what choice we have,” Madame Henri says with a sigh. “You can’t do it all alone. Not the phones and the gowns. I’ll try to stop in when I can, but it won’t be often. You’re going to have to get some help. It’s Jean’s own fault,” she adds waspishly. “And I’ll tell him so if he dares to complain when he hears of it…after he’s out of the hospital, of course.”
“Don’t bother him about it, Madame,” I say. “And don’t you worry about it, either. Leave everything to me. I’ll take care of the shop. I’ll take care of everything.”
I have no earthly idea, of course, how I’m going to go about this. I just know that this is a crisis, and, well, I used to be a Girl Scout. Crises are what Girl Scouts are trained for. I’ll get through this somehow.
I tell her to let me know if there’s anything else I can do, and also to let me know the minute her husband is out of surgery. Then I hang up and stare at all the blinking lights on the phone and listen to the shrill ring of the unanswered line. I have every confidence that I can handle this. I really do.
It’s just that I don’t have th
e foggiest notion how I’m even going to begin.
“Hello, Chez Henri, can you hold?”
“Hello, Chez Henri, can you hold?”
“Hello, Chez Henri, can you—”
“Lizzie?” a familiar woman’s voice screams hoarsely in my ear, cutting me off. “Don’t you frigging put me on hold. It’s me, Tiffany.”
I pause just as my finger is about to hit the HOLD button.
“Tiffany Sawyer,” the hoarse voice continues impatiently. “From Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn? The office we both used to work in until you, like, got totally fired, remember? Which, by the way, was last week? God, what is the matter with you? Are you going to turn out to be one of those people who become famous and then, like, forget everybody they knew on the way up? Because if that’s the case, you totally suck.”
“Tiffany.” I glance at the Henris’ wall clock. It’s barely ten, which would account for the hoarseness in her voice. Tiffany, part-time model, part-time receptionist in Chaz’s father’s law offices, which is where I met her, rarely makes it up before noon, thanks to her hard-core partying with her married photographer boyfriend, Raoul. “What are you doing up so early?”
“Whatevs,” Tiffany says. “It’s, like, the day after New Year’s. The city was dead last night. But that’s not why I’m calling. Do you know—do you have any fucking idea—who made Page Six in the Post today?”
“Tiffany.” I can’t take my eyes off all the blinking hold lights. “I know this might seem hard to believe, but I’m actually working right now. My boss had a heart attack, and I’m the only one here, and I don’t have time for—”
“You. You did. There’s a huge story about you, and a photo of you and Jill Higgins at her wedding, and about how you’re the up-and-coming wedding gown designer to the stars, and how Anna Wintour—Anna fucking Wintour—said your gown for Jill Higgins was, and I quote, cunning. Do you have any idea what that means?”
The other line starts ringing. “I’m starting to get a pretty good idea,” I say.