Chapter Eleven Maggie #2
As Maggie walked back to her bedroom/office, they heard her side of the conversation: “I’m sorry, Brittany, but these kinds of venues book out at least a year in advance.
So if you don’t want to make any compromises—which of course I understand, the goal is a perfect wedding—the one compromise you will have to make is the date. ...”
Jane cringed imagining the overwrought bride Maggie was trying to soothe.
“I feel so bad for Maggie,” Lindsey whispered.
“I know. But I also feel bad for us, because—what can we do here?”
Jane and Lindsey worked side by side most of the day, and Jane was grateful for the company. The house was so sterile; every surface felt lonely; the light pouring through all the vast windows was somehow chilling rather than warming.
Maggie was constantly on her phone, which she cradled to her ear, resisting the comfort and convenience of a headset or earbuds.
The conversations about the minutiae of events were relentless: seating assignments, photo booths, music, menus—salmon or sea bass, filet or rib eye?
What’s the vegetarian option? Lemon cake with raspberries or chocolate cake with vanilla icing and did there need to be a vegan cake or a gluten-free cake as well?
Maggie would occasionally dash over to a file and pull something out for reference, not skipping a beat.
Her tone was authoritative and reassuring, perfect for allaying all kinds of event-induced anxiety.
She might look disheveled, but she sounded unflappable.
Maggie did, in fact, have an uncanny knack for knowing where everything was, but this required her to be ever vigilant: she relied on memorization to know the exact physical location of each file.
Simply imagining living day after day like this made Jane weary, but perhaps this cathexis helped Maggie avoid thinking about other stuff.
Jane and Lindsey assured her they would put the files in a logical order—creating a system—so she would be able to find anything she needed easily.
They divided the files by type of event and sorted each category chronologically.
Maggie’s handwritten labels were practically impossible to decipher, so they needed to peek inside the folders to know how to identify them.
In doing so, they got a taste of some of the decadent parties she had planned.
An African Safari–themed Malibu wedding that required renting elephants, tigers, tents, and Jeeps and creating a pith helmet with a bridal veil.
A bar mitzvah in Dodger Stadium with hot dogs, peanuts, real live Dodgers lured by honorariums, and a photo booth customized to make playing cards of all the guests.
A sweet sixteen on a boat that had been turned into a floating spa with mani-pedis and waxing and a birth control bar.
Was a birth control bar a real thing? Jane tried to picture it: it would be a joyous reclamation of female desire, a bold celebra tion of #girlpower, strenuously fun and relentlessly pink.
It was a marvel that this woman who seemed so abstemious was the mastermind of all these over-the-top bacchanalia.
At lunchtime, Maggie said they could help themselves to whatever they wanted from her kitchen, although there wasn’t much of a selection: only cottage cheese, applesauce, and pureed vegetables.
Jane was curious about what could account for this diet—strange even by LA standards—but would never ask.
What if it was due to a colostomy? Lindsey, however, was intrepid.
“Oh wow, you have such a restricted diet.... That must be challenging.”
Lindsey was so good with indirect questions—she leavened them with empathy. Jane wondered if, unlike Lindsey, she hoarded empathy. Maybe she was saving it for herself. Was self-empathy a thing? Or just a synonym for narcissism?
“It’s not really restricted. With soft foods, I don’t waste time preparing meals and clients have no clue I’m eating while I take calls,” Maggie explained as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
“The pureed veggies have some fiber, and now there are all kinds of really tasty organic baby foods. And cottage cheese with raspberry jam and Gerber banana is so good, you should try it.”
It took Lindsey a minute to think of something to say.
“Well, that’s certainly efficient! I’m impressed.”
Jane and Lindsey drove to the Brentwood Country Mart for lunch, a rare opportunity to try to carve out a moment of enjoyment and camaraderie.
The restaurant they went to was meant to evoke a barn, with lots of reclaimed wood and picnic benches for seating.
The menu featured homespun-yet-gourmet food, all extravagantly priced and carefully sourced from the farms name-checked on the menu.
Lindsey was fixated on all the wedding plans they had just eyed.
“I had no idea you could go to one place for appetizers, another for the food, and then somewhere else for dessert? And all these trade outs the celebrities get?! Do they end up getting their weddings completely free? If I ever get married, I want something really chill and low-key, you know? I definitely do not want a wedding that compromises my mental health.”
“Agreed.”
“Of course, since I’m so into Jesús now, and then looking at all this wedding shit all day, I start thinking about what our wedding could be like and that is so cart-before-the-horse and also, like, Cinderella brainwashing!
But still, it’s sort of fun to think about.
” She paused, but she wasn’t done. “Can you imagine Maggie planning your wedding? She is so...”
“Joyless,” Jane said, finishing Lindsey’s thought.
“Yes! That’s the perfect word.”
“She’s not there to enjoy the party, she wants to control it.”
As she said this, Jane wondered if she was describing herself. She was going to a Christmas party with Teddy that very night, but there was, she surmised, a difference. Unlike Maggie, Jane did want to enjoy parties—even if she didn’t know how.
“Did you ever think about what your wedding would be like?” Lindsey asked wistfully.
“Well, yes,” Jane conceded. “I hate myself for it, but yes.”
“Don’t hate on yourself!”
“Self-hatred in moderation is actually a good thing.”
Lindsey looked horrified. “What?! You are joking, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you think people who love themselves too much become complacent? When you’re self-satisfied, there’s no motivation to strive for improvement.”
“Trust me, that’s not how it works. Don’t forget, I’m practically a licensed therapist. I mean, if I ever finish school, it’s a lot. Anyway, I’m here to tell you, you’re much too hard on yourself!”
Tell me something I don’t know, Jane thought.
“Like you said, it’s cart-before-horse, and really—what are the essentials of a wedding? Two people and an officiant. Anyway, I won’t have to worry about one anytime soon.”
“Are things okay with Teddy, though?”
Jane sprinkled some salt onto her twenty-five-dollar salad. “We’re getting through the holidays together, no pressure, no labels, just being with each other, and it’s been good. He’s still crashing with his friend Keith, we’re both seeing other people, so we have space to figure things out.”
“That’s great. I am sure you will end up in the right place.”
Lindsey might become an enabling therapist, but she would make her clients feel good, and that was something.
“Let’s hope.”
“I’m trying to avoid my bad habits with Jesús, you know, being the caretaker. But then, I like being the caretaker! Maybe that’s why I usually go for slightly broken guys.”
“What’s broken about Jesús?” Jane asked.
“He’s in recovery. It’s been almost two years sober and it’s hard for him, especially trying to be a musician and staying away from drugs and alcohol. He has a lot of strength, actually. But he also needs a lot of support.”
Everyone was broken in some way, Jane thought. She felt as if she’d been broken, shattered even.
She wondered if Teddy was broken and needed a lot of her support. And then she wondered if she ever had really given him any at all.
They finished lunch and returned to Maggie’s house. She was on the phone. It was, in fact, possible that she had been on the phone with the same client the entire time they were away. She was trying to explain the price of a buyout at the Four Seasons on the Big Island of Hawai‘i.
“If you want to keep the budget under two million dollars, we’ll need to look at other options.
... Listen, I like to think I can make any venue spectacular, any wedding unforgettable.
... Don’t worry, really, talk to your parents and see what they’re willing to do. It’s going to be great no matter what!”
Maggie finally hung up.
“Sometimes these billionaires are so cheap, it’s really something,” she remarked, then emitted the rueful laugh.
“Oh, we’ve seen that up close and personal,” Jane concurred.
“And entitled. They think throwing money at any problem will solve it. Well, sorry, but if the Four Seasons is booked up for two years, they aren’t going to drop someone to accommodate you, no matter who you are.”
“True that!” Lindsey chirped.
Jane was label-making at an unprecedented pace. She was terrified Maggie would implode if she couldn’t find a file. It was close to winter solstice, so the sun went down early, and the house felt like a giant refrigerator. Jane felt the chill in her bones.
They were working in Maggie’s inner sanctum, her bedroom/office, when she rushed in, looking somewhere between beleaguered and panicked.
“Hey, are you pretty much done? It’s fine if you leave early.”
“We’re making great progress—a little more to do, and then we still have an hour of time left,” Jane replied.
“Is everything okay?” Lindsey, boundary-free as ever, asked.
“It’s only—my son is coming over, and I haven’t seen him for a while, and he’s—he’s not very well right now. He just texted me out of the blue and said he’s in an Uber.”
As soon as she said this, the doorbell rang.
“Oh shit.”