Chapter 10 #2
“We don’t know anyone here, so it really doesn’t make sense for us to give it.
You’re welcome to organize something if you’d like, as they’re all your family and friends.
There are only three of us,” Prudence said, “so it’s only fair that you manage it.
” Eugenia fully understood that “manage” it meant pay for it.
Geoff had bragged repeatedly about all the people his parents would invite, and they had vanished into thin air.
The wedding was five days away and Eugenia had her hands full with hiring models and fitting the runway pieces of her new collection, and there would be no time for that after the wedding, or not enough.
Fashion Week was starting a week after the wedding.
She needed this week to take care of that too.
And she doubted that even her wedding planner could find a venue and organize dinner for nearly two hundred people in four days, not to mention the fact that she was already spending double the original budget, and they were breaking the sound barrier on that, at a time when she needed every penny for her business and family to survive.
She had gotten relief from disaster with Austin Wylie’s investment, but she had to be careful with it, for the business, and not spend it on her daughter’s wedding.
She had no idea what to do, and Prudence and Henry effectively dodged the issue until they left her apartment, after a brief and very tense visit with that piece of news.
Eugenia sat down in a chair in the living room after they left, wondering what the hell to do.
She called Pam at home, who was arguing with Izzie about what she was wearing to go to a movie with friends, and there were boys involved.
Eugenia didn’t envy her that. She had been there five times and would have cut her liver out with an ice pick rather than do it again.
Fourteen-year-old girls, and even boys, were not her favorite.
Even the nice ones lied like dogs, and managed to get drunk to the point of alcohol poisoning at least once in their lives, even with her watching like a hawk in their youth. Hers did it too. They all did.
“I’m up shit creek,” she said, sounding desperate as soon as Pam picked up the phone.
“What happened?” She knew that Eugenia was entertaining the Crawfords, and anything could have gone wrong. She could tell that something had, and she told Izzie to cool it for a minute, she was talking to her boss.
“The rehearsal dinner,” Eugenia said cryptically.
“What about it? Where are they doing it?” Pam asked her.
“They’re not. They just dropped it like a hot rock back in my lap, saying it’s all my family and friends, so it’s really up to me. There’s no way I can do a dinner that size or find a venue four days out. What the hell am I going to do?”
“Is killing them an option?”
“I wish. Shit. I’m screwed. I’m sure they didn’t want to pay for it, or can’t. They should have said so. At least no invitations have gone out, so people must think there is none by now. I thought she was taking care of it and just hadn’t bothered to clue me in.”
“What about family only, and maybe the people who’ve come from far away?
” That had been the original tradition, but nowadays anyone who could afford it invited all the guests to the rehearsal dinner.
And in typical style, Gloria had invited all her old school friends to the wedding, everyone she knew in college, anyone Geoff knew in New York, and all their acquaintances.
Gloria wanted as big a guest list as she could muster, at both events.
“You don’t need invitations,” Pam said. “I can call them, or invite them by email. And I can call around and see who has a room that size that’s open in spite of Covid.
Things are opening up again,” Pam offered, shocked at the news.
“I don’t really want to do something indoors with all that going on.” The whole wedding was being held outdoors at the club for that reason. It had been carefully planned with the Covid sanitary measures scrupulously taken into account.
“Maybe one of the restaurants has a big enough terrace space for thirty or forty people and would rent it out. I’ll find something,” Pam said confidently, and hoped she could.
“I can’t believe they did this to me, and she wasn’t even embarrassed. She gave me one of those mini boxes of chocolates hotels leave on your pillow, there are four chocolates in it and she acted like she was handing me the Hope Diamond.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Pam reassured her.
“Thank you, Pam,” Eugenia said earnestly, still flummoxed by the way the Crawfords had sidestepped the whole event and never told her.
She had assumed it was all in order, and they were holding up their end of the deal on the only part of the wedding they were responsible for.
She was fuming, and would have called Gloria in London to complain, but it was one in the morning for her, and probably smarter not to call when Eugenia was as angry as she was.
Why was everything her responsibility, and she was the fount of all bounty at any price?
She wanted to tell Gloria that her new in-laws were shits, but recognized it was better she didn’t.
If they couldn’t afford it why didn’t they just say so?
She couldn’t afford the wedding either, but wanted to keep her promise to her daughter.
Eugenia was still angry about it when she met Patrick for dinner at Fleming’s, which had a lovely outdoor space and delicious food, and was in walking distance from both their homes.
He had seen as soon as he picked her up to walk to dinner that she was annoyed. He kissed her, and she seemed stiff.
“Did something happen?” he asked her, hoping it was nothing he had done. He had never seen her angry before. She was polite but she looked upset.
“I’m sorry, Patrick. I just found out that the groom’s parents bagged on doing the rehearsal dinner but kept it a secret.
In the save-the-date, we said that there was one, location to be confirmed.
They never planned it, no invitations went out, and I stupidly stopped asking and just assumed they had it under control since I never heard from them about it, and thought they had forgotten to send me the invitation. ”
“They don’t sound like nice people,” Patrick said sympathetically.
He could see that she was genuinely troubled about it.
Even though she didn’t like Geoff, she wanted everything to be perfect for Gloria.
She was her hardest child to please, nothing was ever enough, and she expected everyone to prove their love by how much they did for her, and in her mother’s case, how much she paid for.
“Their son isn’t nice either,” Eugenia said, still annoyed, and sorry to burden Patrick with her displeasure. They sat down at the restaurant and ordered wine, and she started to relax in his company.
“What are you going to do?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. My assistant is scrambling to find a venue, preferably outdoors because of Covid, and I’ll do it for family and out-of-towners who have come a long way. If we can find a place. Otherwise, no rehearsal dinner. I don’t care, but Gloria will. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“It wasn’t your responsibility, it was theirs. They let her down, you didn’t.”
“She won’t see it that way. I’m the magician who always has to pull the rabbit out of the hat to prove how much I love her. The others are all much more reasonable, but she isn’t. She has used this whole wedding as a proving ground and a weapon.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” he said gently, and she smiled.
“It isn’t,” she said, taking a sip of the excellent white wine he had ordered, Chassagne-Montrachet.
“I have an idea,” he said, thinking of how he could help her and take some of the burden off her shoulders, with everything she had to do alone, which didn’t seem fair to him.
“I don’t think we could pull off dinner for two hundred people on short notice,” he said.
“Of course not. I didn’t expect you to. I just needed to vent.
” Men always thought they had to do something when you complained, when sometimes all women wanted was for someone to listen.
Eugenia was used to solving her own problems, although Patrick had been very helpful so far, with his suggestions about the deal with Austin Wylie.
“But if you’re only going to do a dinner for family and a few friends, we could easily handle a buffet for forty people, even fifty or sixty, on the boat, outdoors.
That’s no problem. My chef loves to show off, I have the staff and the location sitting right in the Hudson River.
People like events on boats, it feels special.
And I do meetings for that many people on the boat sometimes.
What do you think?” She stared at him as he said it, and tears filled her eyes, she was so touched.
“In fact, we can move the boat to the Hamptons and do it there, since most people will spend the whole weekend there.”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded and patted her hand on the table. “It’s not complicated. We’re all set up for that, and your guests might love it.”
“Are you kidding? They’d like it better than the wedding, and so would I. Oh my God, I hate to take advantage of you, Patrick. But that would be so perfect.”
“Then that’s it. You can talk to Jonathan, my chef, tomorrow, tell him what you want, and have your secretary email your guest list tomorrow.
” He was one man who suggested an action plan that really did solve her most pressing problems when she told him about them.
Her daughter was the luckiest person in the world, and so was she.
His plan was a thousand times better than some dusty old club, indoors on top of it.