When Charlene said she wanted bridesmaids I thought she was joking. “Bridesmaids?” I said. “Like to hold your train?”
“I want you to be my bridesmaid,” she said. “Please.”
“I always figured you guys would just elope,” I said.
“Why? Do you think it’s not a real wedding or something?”
“No,” I said, “I just didn’t picture you as one to go in for all that ribbony—I don’t know.”
“Ribbony what?” she said. “I hope you weren’t just going to say ‘bullshit.’”
I laughed. “No way. I’ll be in your wedding. It’s no big thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know,” she said, “just because this is a little hurried doesn’t mean I don’t deserve some respect.”
“I respect you,” I said. “I’m even happy for you.”
“Dan still thinks you don’t like him.”
“Well that’s because he’s paranoid.”
“Really?” she said. “Really?”
“No,” I said, “calm down. He’s not paranoid. He’s a prince among men.”
“Okay,” she said, and I could tell she was tired of me already. I gripped the phone as if holding it would make her stay on the other line a little longer. “Lucy, I’m only asking because you’re my best friend.”
“I just want you to be happy.” I was tearing up, and I was glad this was a phone conversation and not in person.
“Okay,” she said, even toned. “Well I’m going to give your email to Gina and the other girls. Try to be nice, okay? I’m even going to let you pick your dress.”
“Okay,” I said. I almost said ‘I love you’ when I hung up the phone, but I didn’t want to sound like my mother.
I knew she was going to tell Dan what a jerk I was being, so it only seemed fair to tell Steve. It was Friday and he’d brought a pizza over, which is what we do every Friday night, and then we watch horror movies.
“I can’t believe she’d going to do it,” I said. “He’s such an asshole.”
“Oh, he’s an okay guy.” Steve was eating just the cheese off his slice of pizza. “I’m sure she says that about me, too.”
“But you’re not,” I said, “and it’s not like we’re getting married.”
“We could be.”
“If we were crazy,” I said.
“If you were pregnant, you might not think that.”
“You know what she should do,” I said, “is spend the wedding money on some birth control.”
The thing I like about Steve is no matter how mean I am, he doesn’t act surprised. He licked his fingers, sat sat back on the sofa, and closed his eyes. “You’re jealous,” he said, “turn the movie on.”
“Jealous of a pregnant religious lunatic?”
“Not of her. That she’s finally got someone besides you.”
“I’m dizzy with happiness for her,” I said. “Dan in a prince among men.”
“Red button,” he said. “On.”
The movie began bloodily. As I watched the zombie sink its teeth into the first victim’s neck, I imagined the many hours we’d spent driving around town as teenagers, listening to music that we thought was badass. “Friend” is such a detached word. It felt more like “sister,” what I was losing. I took another slice of pizza and settled into Steve’s warm shoulder.
When we were kids I used to braid her hair. I’d had a lot of practice on my sisters, so I could even do the fancy styles; french knots, twists, side-buns like Princess Leia. Her hair was thick as chocolate. She would sit on the floor and I would sit on the bed with the Laura Ashley flowers and we would talk about our favorite rock star who had killed himself. I would fold the ropes of hair, end over end over end, while she stared up at his face on her wall.
That was fifteen years ago. Just the other day I read how his daughter is all grown up and singing in some musicals, how she isn’t into rock music at all. And now Charlene is pregnant, and worse, getting married. I am nothing and getting nothing, and though I ought to be ashamed I feel only relief.
We shared a room all four years of college. We were the same height, the same size, and our hair was almost the same color. People we didn’t know got us mixed up, but most of our friends knew that she was pre-med and and too good for the boys at our school, while I was psychology and sleeping with a guy who wouldn’t even let me call him my boyfriend.
I had this revolving door of boys that came and went and always, always I would tell her everything about them. Not just what they did in bed, but their patterns of speech, their gestures, their way of walking. And she would turn it into a joke on them, and we would laugh. I was a bad girlfriend and I was always getting dumped or cheated on, but each new guy that came along was a new chance to share stories with Charlene. She never had any stories to tell me because she never really dated. She wasn’t able to take anyone seriously enough.
Not until Dan. I don’t know what it was about him. After their first dinner, after he’d picked her up and dropped her back off at the place we shared, she had asked, “What do you think?”
“What was with those camo pants?” I said. “Does he think he’s gonna kill some Iraqis in that outfit?”
She didn’t laugh. She looked down at her shoes and took a deep breath, and I knew right then that it was all over.
A few days after she asked me to be in the wedding, I met up with her sister Gina and the other two bridesmaids over lunch. Gina had emailed us to say that as bridesmaids, we were responsible for the shower and bachelorette party. This would be even more important than usual, she reminded us, since it was a baby and bridal shower rolled into one and as such came with its own special set of challenges. How did we all want to contribute, she asked.
Gina was in her early thirties and had never been married. She worked at an ad agency in the city, and from her car and her clothes appeared to make a lot of money. She and Charlene had never gotten along very well, but I guess weddings are great for bringing families together.
The other bridesmaids were Tammy, Dan’s sister, and Mariska, Charlene’s Italian by way of Ukrainian cousin. Everyone seemed more excited than me.
“Okay,” said Gina, “So Tammy’s on for the place favors—Jordan almonds, napkin rings, and the shot glass with their names on it.”
“I still think the shot glass is a bad idea,” I said. “I mean really, the bride is pregnant.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Gina, “but I don’t think it’s tacky, I think it’s fun. My sister and Dan are young. This is going to be a fun wedding, and the decorations should celebrate that.”
I rolled my eyes, and she caught me.
“Lucy,” she said, “I don’t have you down for anything.”
“How about linens,” I said.
“Those are taken care of by the caterer.”
“Music?”
Gina looked at me like she knew what I was thinking, and no. “How about the ribbon bouquet,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You have to stand next to her while she opens the presents, and then take all the bows and trimmings and make a bouquet out of them. Them, at the rehearsal, she carries that down the aisle.”
“Did you make that up?” I wasn’t trying to sneer. My face just isn’t good at looking kind.
“It’s a tradition,” said Gina, looking to Mariska and Tammy for help. “Everybody does it.”
“Is true,” said Mariska. “Even in Ukraine.”
“If you do it right it can look really cool,” Tammy offered. “And you’re so creative, Lucy.”
“Okay,” I said, “put me down for that.”
I tried to imagine standing next to Charlene while she opened boxes of baby cloths and kitchenware. Would she act excited? I wondered. Would she be excited?
By the day of the shower, Charlene was already starting to show a bump. Her face was filling out and her skin looked different—brighter. I went to pick her up at Dan’s house. “I need you to come with me,” I said. “it’s a horrible emergency.”
“What? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Please come with me. We’re going to the hospital.”
She got in the car. “Lucy, is it your mom? What is it?”
I shook my head and a single tear slid down my cheek. She bundled me up in her arms and held me, and I tried to imagine up a good reason for crying.
I thought maybe she’d be mad when we drove up to the restaurant, but she seemed to have known all along. As we got out of the car she said, “It’s nice that they’re going to give your mom a last good meal.” We giggled. And then I made her close her eyes and we entered through the front door and I told her to open them, and the lights came on. The guests leaped up out of their chairs in a single motion. Surprise.
After lunch, they sat her in a bridal throne made out of wicker and fake flowers. Gina stacked the gifts to her left and then handed them over, one by one. Mariska wrote down every item along with the name of the person who gave it, and made sure the cards stayed with the gifts. “So she knows who to thank for what,” said Gina.
I remember the first gift. It looked like a silver wand with a sieve at one end. “Garlic presser—Aunt Ramie” wrote Mariska. Then came some attachments for a food processor, and a knife holder, and a thing to slice hard boiled eggs. Then I lost track. The baby clothes I could recognize, but the kitchen gadgets all looked like small aliens. Good thing it wasn’t me charged with identifying their bizarre species.
Each gift came with its own small party dress of ribbons and bows. I collected these and wove them together, leaving a twisted handle in the back. It was hard because I couldn’t tell what gift Gina would hand her next, and I couldn’t plan a space for the next bow. Most of them were stick-on anyway, so I had to pull the sticky piece off and then pull a string through the bow’s looped end. The bouquet grew, ungainly as an animal.
With some plain yarn from Gram’s gift, I wove a little braid around the edges of the bouquet. I teased the long pieces into a cascade. When all the gifts were opened and the old ladies were snoring at the back of the room, I handed it to Charlene.
She took my arm and walked me towards the door, where the boxes and bags had been stacked neatly. “I just want to say thanks,” she said. “you were a good sport, Lu.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I said. “You know there’s still time to walk out on him. We could go to Mexico.”
She laughed. “What about you and Steve?”
“Steve who?”
“C’mere,” she said, and she hugged me again for the millionth time. I laid my head down on her shoulder and imagined the dress I would wear to her wedding. It would definitely be bean-sprout green.
“You know I’m not moving to the other side of the world or anything,” she said as she stroked my hair. “I’ll be right here. I won’t even be working, for a while.”
My nose was in her hair and for a second I didn’t think I would be able to let her go. But I sucked in my breath and my stomach and I took a step back and I said, “Listen. Steve, forget it—you just say the word. I’m there.” Then we each took a box—I think mine contained diapers, but I can’t really be sure—and we carried them to the car.
After the shower I started going to the gym so I could get in shape for my dress. Crunches, climbing steps, pushups, I did it all. I watched in the mirror from day to day as my body shifted shape. I told Steve no more pizza, and to my surprise he said okay and joined me at the gym. His new muscles look nice on him.
The dress I chose was green of course, and the other girls followed my lead. In the photos we look like a small vegetable garden attending the ivory turnip of the bride. If you press your nose close you can almost smell the loamy soil.
In an alternate reality, we went to Mexico. Just us two. We went to Cabo San Lucas and spent our last nickels on drinks named after desserts. We rented a palm hut on stilts over a lagoon, and we stayed up all night every night laughing about Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey in Newlyweds (now she’s banging football players and the joke’s on everyone else). When that got old, we talked about how I once saw an albino gorilla in the zoo. Had I ever seen an albino cat? she wanted to know. What about an albino rhino? We ate several pizzas. She swore to never leave me. We fell asleep on our palm mats like babies, holding hands across the floor.
