by Sam Westland
"Issue?" I repeated. "What issue?"
"Well, this was actually one of the places on your mother's short list - I guess that she remembered it fondly," Sally commented. "So I've been in contact with them. Unfortunately, they only have one weekend open in the next year or so - you'd either have to take this slot, and take it right away, or find another location."
"Only one open weekend? When?"
Sally flipped the picture over and ran her finger down the lines of neat writing on the back of the card. "At the end of July," she said. "And that spot will be gone soon."
I reached out, taking the photo back from Sally and staring at it. "Give me a moment," I said apologetically to Sally, who nodded as I dashed out of the room, still holding the picture.
Sliding around on the hardwood floors in my socks, I skidded into our bedroom. Alex glanced up from his seat on our bed, his laptop perched on his lap. His hands slid from the number pad and mouse pad over to the rest of the keyboard, and he looked up at me with guilt clearly splashed all over his face. "Hey, honey," he stammered. "Um, I was just taking a quick break-"
"Last weekend in July," I cut in. "You, me, this church, marriage. You in?"
Alex's eyes were wide - he clearly wasn't expecting this, but he bought himself a couple of seconds by taking the photograph and looking it over. "I, um, I don't think that I have any conflicts with the end of July," he managed to get out. "But isn't July a little soon?"
"It is," I agreed, "but this might be our only shot. And I really like this place! Should we go for it?"
After one last glance at the picture, Alex looked up at me. "Okay," he said at length. "Let's do it."
I let out a slight squeal of glee. "Yes! Thank you, thank you thank you thank you!" Leaning forward, I wrapped my arms around my bemused fiance, his computer sliding off his lap onto the bedspread. After I planted a kiss on his cheek, I snatched the photograph back from Alex's hands and dashed back out of the bedroom, around the corner and into the dining room.
"Yes," I told Sally, my eyes shining with excitement. "End of July. Sacred Father Church. Let's plan it!"
Sally also jumped up from her seat, giving me a quick, excited hug as I jumped up and down. "Wonderful!" she enthused. "Let's start planning! And you'd better start thinking about bridesmaids!"
I sat down at the table with Sally, and we started looking through the large stack of pictures of flowers, centerpieces, invitations, and other wedding-related paraphernalia. As I took a seat, one last, oddly foreboding thought popped into my head. "No turning back now..."
Rick & Blossom's Visit
*
The day after Sally's visit, I woke up feeling happy. My wedding plans were in motion! Even lying in bed, warm in my blankets and with the comforting weight of Alex still asleep next to me, I was looking forward to a productive day. A day, I felt, that could just as easily be started in another half hour. I closed my eyes, snuggling into my pillow and pressing up against the sleeping form of my fiance.
A minute later, however, I heard the jarring, pestering buzzing noise of my phone, ringing on the bedside table beside me. I tried to ignore it, but I knew that it was hopeless by the tenth ring. I pulled myself groggily up on my elbows and reached out for the phone, trying to keep as much of myself as possible tucked beneath the comforting warmth of the sheets.
My questing fingertips managed to finally grab the edge of my phone, and I pulled it into my little cocoon. "Hello?" I said, my voice hoarse.
"Danielle, dear, is that you?" At the sound of the voice on the other end, I immediately sat bolt upright, any trace of sleep immediately purging itself from my system. I hadn't heard that voice since Christmas.
"Dad?" I said, pulling the blankets up around myself to cover my now-upright form. Beside me, Alex stirred slightly as I tugged on the sheets that were tucked beneath his arm. "Why are you calling me?"
"I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be in town today," my father informed me. "Are you and Alex going to be free? We would love to find time to sit down, maybe for lunch."
"Yeah, sure," I said, trying to get my thoughts together. I reached over and shook Alex's shoulder, but he merely murmured something about "pizza pockets" and turned over in his sleep.
"Great, great," my father replied. Strangely, he did not sound very appeased by this. "How about we meet you in a couple hours at that cafe by the mall, where we met up last time we had brunch together?"
It took me a minute to remember which place my father was talking about. The image of a rather shabby diner swam shakily into my memory. "Yes, we can meet you there," I agreed, mainly so that I could get my father off the line and go back to sleep.
"Great," my dad said again. "We will see you there soon."
As the click of my father hanging up rang in my ear, I suddenly realized what had been bothering me about his request. "Wait a minute," I said. "We? What do you mean, 'we'?" But it was too late - my father had already severed the connection.
As I set the phone back on my bedside table, I raised one elbow, slamming it into the side of my lazy fiance. "Ugh," he groaned as I poked him viciously. "Honey, what are you doing?"
"Waking you up," I told him, not bothering to disguise the grumpiness in my voice. "We're going to go and meet my father this morning for brunch, apparently. He just called. Time to get up so we won't be late."
Alex groaned again. "Do we have to?"
I stood up, cringing slightly as my bare feet landed on the frigid wooden floor. "He's going to be your father-in-law pretty soon," I commented, grabbing my bathrobe from its hook on the back of my bedroom door. I shrugged into the robe. "If I were you, I wouldn't want to get on his bad side."
*
When we got to the restaurant, we walked in. At the front of the diner, the teenage hostess standing behind the faux-wooden counter started to greet us, but behind her, I could see my father, half-standing as he leaned out of the booth and waved at us.
As we made our way through the narrow spaces between tables towards the booth, however, I was able to see that my father was not alone in the booth. Sitting on the inside beside him was a woman, wearing some sort of fuzzy jacket over an unevenly dyed, multi-colored tee shirt. Her reddish hair was forward, obscuring her face in a messy tangle. She appeared to be poring over some sort of menu, doing something with her hand.
"Do you recognize that woman?" Alex whispered to me as we approached the table.
I shook my head. I had never seen this woman before in my life. However, as my father sank back into the booth alongside her as we drew closer, I had a sneaking suspicion about who she might be.
Reaching the booth, we slid into the opposite bench, Alex taking the inner seat. I gave my dad a brief hug before moving in next to him. "Hi, Dad," I said. I turned my attention to the woman sitting next to him. "Who's this?"
At first, we all looked at the woman, waiting for her to introduce herself, or at least look up and realize that she had company at the table. However, she remained totally engrossed in her work. Peering a little closer, I realized that the woman was holding a bright orange crayon in her hand and was intently coloring in a children's paper menu. Through the shock of hair, I could see the tip of her tongue hanging out as she shaded in the mane of a lion.
"Um, Danielle, Alex, this is Blossom," my dad said, after a solid, uncomfortable minute of silence. "She really wanted to meet you and congratulate you on getting married."
Once again, we all turned to the woman, and watched as she set down the orange crayon, swapping it for the green one, which she began applying carefully to the grass around the lion's paws. Finally, my father tapped her with a finger, and she finally looked up. When she realized that two warm bodies were now sitting across from her, she jumped slightly, the crayon dropping from her fingertips.
"Oh! Hello!" Blossom said, reaching up and shoving her hair back out of her face. After she ran her hands through her bird's nest of hair, it stuck straight up like the world's worst mohawk.
She extended one hand towards us; I was the first to take it, but she didn't tighten her grip, her fingers sitting limply on my palm. After a few uncomfortable seconds of me holding onto her fingers, feeling like a fool, I released my hold. She then slid the hand over to Alex, directly across from her, who made the smarter choice of politely ignoring the invitation.
Before the moment of awkward silence could continue much longer, we were fortunately interrupted by the arrival of the waitress, who laconically jotted down our order. My fiance and I both ordered the continental breakfast, while my dad requested a BLT with extra bacon. When she got around to Blossom, the woman gazed happily up at the waitress for a moment, her mouth slowly opening and closing.
"Do you... do you have any pancakes?" Blossom finally said, smiling up at the lady.
The waitress sneered down at us. "No, darlin'," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Diners like this don't serve pancakes."
"Oh, okay then. I'll have those." I couldn't tell whether Blossom was ignoring the sarcasm, or if she just wasn't even listening to what the waitress was saying. In any case, the woman blinked a couple times in confusion, but eventually jotted something down on her pad and wandered off.
"Anyway," my dad chimed in, trying fervently to pick up the thread of the conversation once again, "we wanted to congratulate the two of you on getting married-"
"Marriage?" Blossom suddenly spoke up. "Are we getting married?"
We all looked at Blossom. She peered back at us, eyes wide but innocent. "Not us, dear," my father finally said, patting her on the shoulder. She smiled, nodded, and resumed her coloring again.
"-we wanted to congratulate you on getting married," my dad resumed, "but we're a little concerned about the finances."
Alex and I glanced at each other. "What about the finances?" I asked. "Isn't Mom paying for things?" As Sally had told me, my mom had been the one writing all of the checks for the wedding reservations.
My father looked nonplussed for an instant, but his face suddenly tightened in anger. "That witch!" he cursed, slamming his hand down sharply on the table and making the rest of us jump.
As we stared, my dad forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to remain calm. Even Blossom was staring at him by this point, not sure how to react. "Look, now that your mother and I are getting divorced, we decided that it would be best to split the bank accounts," my father said, his teeth gritted. "Apparently, even though I took your mother off of my account, she's somehow still got access - and she's been using my money to pay for everything for your wedding!"
I thought back to all of the checks that Sally had been juggling; paying for the venue and reservations, ordering the invitations, flowers, food, centerpieces, music, and more. Now that I added up the numbers, I finally began to realize just how expensive this wedding total would be. "So do we need to cancel things?" I asked, feeling a pit open up in the bottom of my stomach.
For an instant longer, my dad's face remained angry and hard, but then his features softened as he gazed at me. "No, darling, of course not," he said, reaching out with one hand and patting my shoulder, his touch surprisingly tender. "But as you're moving forward with your wedding plans, I would greatly appreciate it if you could keep an eye on the budget. I really don't have a ton to spare, but I'll do my best."
Before we could say any more, the waitress arrived, dropping our plates of food in front of us. Interestingly, Blossom had managed to get her stack of pancakes, and she dug in with gusto. For a little while, conversation was replaced by the sounds of consumption, as we all dug into our meals.
"So," I finally said, setting down my fork and knife on the remains of my breakfast, "this is Blossom. The, um, infamous Blossom." Staring at the woman across the table, I still wasn't quite sure how to feel about her. On one hand, she had inserted herself as the wedge into my parents' marriage, leading to the divorce, and was now sleeping with my father. I knew that I should hate her. Yet despite all of that, I also knew that my parents' marriage had been on the rocks for a long time, now, and that they most likely would have fallen apart sooner or later, even without Blossom's presence.
Sitting across from the woman, I couldn't quite tell whether the woman was all there. She seemed attractive enough, with her slim figure, even buried beneath the ragged, tie-dyed clothes she was wearing, and her long hair was alluring even in its bird's nest state, but she still seemed curiously childlike, innocent.
"Yes, it is," my father agreed. Neither of us really wanted to address the elephant in the room - I knew that my father had been sleeping with her before the divorce, and I was certain that he knew that I knew.
Blossom, on the other hand, didn't seem to be aware of any of the subtext surrounding this. "Those were good pancakes," she commented, dropping her fork down onto her empty plate with a clatter as it landed in a small puddle of maple syrup. She glanced up at us, looking back and forth between our faces. "What should we do next?"
"I think that it's time for us to leave," Alex spoke up unexpectedly, his hand on my shoulder and easing me up out of the booth. He also scooted out, his movements strangely rapid. "Thank you for having us for brunch," Alex told my father, grabbing and shaking his hand. "We'll try and take it easy on the budget. Have a good day!"
With that speech concluded, I felt my fiance's hand on my back, guiding me away and towards the door. I was confused, and tried to resist, standing in place and opening my mouth, but Alex didn't let up. "I'll explain in a moment!" he hissed at me, walking me towards the diner's exit.
Behind me, just before we were out of earshot, I heard Blossom's voice. "Ooh, we should go back to my place and smoke! I just got a fresh bag!" Somehow, I didn't think that she was talking about tobacco.
Once we had left the diner, as we headed back towards our car, I glared at Alex. "Why were you so insistent on getting out of there?" I demanded, crossing my arms at him.
"Honey, I love you, but that new woman that your father's dating is crazy," Alex said. "Throughout the whole meal, something was rubbing on my leg. I thought it was you up until the end of the meal, when I glanced down under the table - it was Blossom! When her foot made it up to my inner thigh, I made the judgment call that it was time for us to leave."
I stared back over my shoulder, eyes wide, at the diner. Perhaps 'innocent' wasn't the best word to describe my father's new girlfriend, I thought to myself. 'Simple-minded', or even 'single-minded', might be a better term.
Bridesmaids' Brunch
*
By a week later, plans for the wedding were flying along at a breakneck pace. With Sally's help, Alex and I had put down a deposit on the church, and with the date set, we had placed an order for the invitations to be printed up. Alex and I were each working on finalizing our guest lists, assembling one giant spreadsheet of addresses.
Unfortunately, even after Sally had started helping me, she had continued receiving complaints and queries from my mother, demanding updates and trying to submit changes about the wedding plans. I had told Sally to ignore these, but I still got flustered calls from her asking whether I had requested these changes - the answer to which was always "no." Nothing else had come from my sister's front since her wild, ranting phone call, but I didn't doubt that something was still brewing there as well. Before investigating, however, I had a whole new wedding-related challenge to tackle - picking my bridesmaids.
Fortunately, the first choice was an easy one. Halfway through my work week, I arranged to take an extra-long lunch, heading out to a local deli joint I had been excited to try - and Claire, my best friend, was going to meet me there.
I pulled into the parking lot a few minutes late, muttering a curse to the lunch hour traffic. Claire had already sat down at a table when I walked inside, and she waved me over with a big grin. "How are the wedding plans going?" she asked me jovially as I slid into the booth across from her.
"Great!" I replied. "Things are finally starting to come together! In fact, that's the reason that I
asked you to join me for lunch." I considered waiting until after we had ordered our lunches, but there didn't see to be any reason for me to wait any longer. "Claire, will you be my maid of honor?"
For a moment, my best friend's face was a perfect picture of surprise, her wide eyes and open mouth almost looking like a bowling ball. "Of course!" she squealed, hopping up out of her seat in delight. She rushed around the table to hug me, in her excitement knocking over one of the glasses of water on the table - right into the lap of the waiter who was just approaching our table to take our order.
For a few seconds, everything was utter confusion, as Claire tried to wrap her arms around me, the waiter tried to grab a napkin to soak up the water now soaking through his bib and black pants, and I tried to keep the pair of them from colliding again and causing any more property damage. After a couple of moments, fortunately, we all managed to move to our new places without any further breakage.
Claire pulled me tight into a hug, the pressure of her arms squeezing the last vestiges of air from my lungs. "Oh my god, we have so much that we have to talk about!" she exclaimed into my ear as she hugged me. "We have to talk about your bachelorette party!"
"I actually had something else in mind," I wheezed, as she finally released me and we sank back into the booth. "Claire, I really don't want to have a bachelorette party at all."
"What?" she gasped. "No bachelorette party? But how will you know what you're going to be missing out on when you marry Alex? You won't get to spend one last night out with all your friends, getting drunk and stuffing dollar bills into the tiny, tight little shorts on chiseled male strippers!"
"Because that is totally what every girl dreams about," I retorted. "No, look. At every wedding I've been a part of, the bachelor and bachelorette parties have been nothing but trouble. Alex and I have talked about it, and we both are going to try and avoid all the chaos."