October 2007
“Right.” Here comes Lauren with her clipboard, turning my wedding day into network entertainment. “Now that you’re here, we can start shooting.” I can tell she’s trying to keep her irritation in check. I may be late, but after all, I am the bride.
Jen raises a brow at me, but I’ve locked up entirely. I can’t let Lauren know I’m having cold feet. Even if I’m hypothermic, I need Lauren to think that I’m fine.
“It’s all right,” I mumble. “We’ll talk later.” Celia practices her camera-ready smile.
“You don’t mind being in your”—Lauren waves a hand at our various states of undress—“do you.” It’s not a question. I’m sure we’ve all signed something that waives our right to clothing.
While Lauren mumbles into her walkie-talkie, I scan the breakfast buffet, anxious to fill myself up before anyone starts filming me.
Icing-piped Danishes that no one expects me to eat, a bowl of fruit with all the raspberries conspicuously picked out of it.
I can’t remember ever having less of an appetite, but I grab a cluster of grapes. They are still cold and hurt my teeth.
“Makeup’s due in ten minutes.” A random young guy in a headset sticks his neck into the suite.
I picture the heavy door closing on him and wonder if he realizes that Lauren would guillotine him gladly if she thought it would get her in good with the network.
That is, after all, why she’s here. The network; her Honeymoon Stage tie-in that will prove once and for all she is more competent than Dan.
Dan, who could show up in gym shorts and still get the promotion.
“Dan the Man,” Vinnie had called him. Today, Dan has not been invited.
I try Gabe’s phone again, but it rings through. I could call one of the groomsmen, but I don’t want to make more of a scene.
“Have you made up your mind?” Lauren sidles up to me as I eke the final drops of coffee from the generic white carafe.
She’s back in her usual uniform of slacks and a plain blouse, yesterday’s glamour abandoned.
My hand jolts, splashing coffee on the cuff of my robe.
How does she know? A good producer knows everything.
But Lauren isn’t asking about whether or not I’m going to get married.
She wants to know about the show, Real-Life Lovers, that she’s working on with Dan, the show she wants this wedding special to get eyes on.
Everyday people falling in love had been her pitch to me, as if I, an everyday person, would immediately understand.
I, the most everyday of everyday people, the perfect coproducer to come in and have her back against Dan.
I’m pretty sure I’ve made up my mind there.
I’ll get Lauren to give me a reference, but no way am I returning to their obvious toxicity.
Working with Lauren and Dan is like being a child of a messy divorce.
No amount of money or career revitalization is worth being their go-between.
Or so I’d thought yesterday, when my future seemed laid out for me.
You can’t tell anyone. I remember Gabe’s words, and all at once, I am back on that bench, reconceiving the man I thought I knew. I can feel my heart hardening, my body steeling itself for devastation. I can also feel that small flutter of hope.
I need to know what actually happened four and a half years ago. I need to talk to Maggie. She should be down soon to get ready with us, and then the crew will film her talking head pieces soon after. I’ll have to find a way to get her alone.
“Cass, what is with you?” Celia approaches under the guise of helping me clean up my spilled coffee. “You don’t seem happy. Aren’t you happy? What were you about to say?” She seems not to remember our time out in the garden last night.
Before I can answer her, the crew bustles in. As expected, they did most of their setup before I came down, so it’s only a few seconds before I’m pulled away from Celia without answering her. She follows me to the makeup chair. “If you don’t want to do this, you do not have to do this.”
The makeup girl begins to plaster on my foundation.
I remember Sally Ann and Maggie giggling in the living room of the Calabasas house, flicking a fake eyelash as if it were a bug. Jason watering the lawn, turning to point the hose right at them so it blasted the glass door. My back against the washing machine. The scuffs on my Keds.
The rain begins in earnest while I’m having my eyebrows filled in, and despite the popular song, I know immediately that irony is not rain on my wedding day.
It’s not the black fly in my wine, the good advice I ignored, all those spoons.
Irony is me prepping to be on TV. Irony is being in love and still not knowing if I’ll say yes at the altar.
Irony is that I have my eyes closed when the door opens and, for the first time in years, I’m face to face with Maggie McKee.