A Storybook Wedding

Prologue Cecily

“And they lived happily ever after.”

I close the storybook, satisfied at the sound of the hardcover as it claps shut. From my itty-bitty plastic purple chair, I look up and meet the eyes of the dozen children and single dog who are seated on the fluffy round area rug before me in the laps of tired mommies and weary caregivers. Earlier, I was informed by my director that the canine companion—a low to the ground but otherwise charming young beagle named Tinkerbell—is allowed to be here in spite of the library’s strict no pets policy, since she is technically an emotional support animal for Joshie, a rambunctious toddler who’s currently trying to shove one of our rice shakers into his mouth. More accurately, I suspect, Tinkerbell is here to support Joshie’s mother, a grade-A Karen best known for complaining about everything from our restroom-key policies to the timing of our parent-child yoga class, from which she absolutely could benefit.

Despite my aggravation at having to monitor the noticeably squirmy pup, I cannot help but be transported by the story—or, more specifically, the line, its syllables exploding with the lofty weight of expectation. The very same words were the theme song of my childhood. Such an innocent phrase. Blissful, ignorant optimism.

Happily ever after.

My memory, clear as day, brings me back to the high school classroom where it all began—or ended, I suppose one could argue—with those same words printed on page 73 of the crisp May issue of Seventeen magazine nestled in the lap of Ms. Brown, my beloved English teacher. She was careful not to fold down the binding or crease the thin pages with her fingers by accident, as it was my personal copy, mailed directly from the Hearst Corporation in a large yellow envelope. Ms. Brown knew its value far surpassed the newsstand price on the cover. She gingerly set it down on her desk and looked right at me.

Her smile conveyed more joy than any words my young mind could think of.

“You did it,” she said, beaming. Her teeth were so white, they illuminated the space between us, like a flashlight under the covers lights up a hidden paperback after bedtime. “You, my dear, are officially a published author.”

Pride made my heart swell up like an allergic reaction to a bee sting.

The short story, titled “Malled,” was a modern-day fairy-tale retelling of what happened when Rapunzel, struck with agoraphobia from being locked up her whole life, escaped her tower and got lost in a shopping center. Not only did it win me bragging rights in my ninth grade advanced English class, but it also came with the handsome prize of $500. Yet the real excitement was in this moment, lodged in my mind eternally—the moment that produced the next six words uttered from Ms. Brown’s mouth.

“I’m so proud of you, Cecily.”

I basked in the blinding glow of her praise. Ms. Brown was an author. She minimized it, calling it her “side hustle,” but she’d privately divulged to a select few students—me included—that her dream was to write middle-grade fiction for a living. She shared all kinds of interesting stories about “the industry” with us—publishing—throwing around words like agent, editor, and release, words that intoxicated my wildly ambitious adolescent psyche. And in my memory, hearing her use my name in the same breath as the phrase published author, well. I was…dumbfounded. Until the next six words came.

“So what did your parents say?”

I could feel my cheeks drop from their rounded positions flanking my grin. Gravity tugged them back into place, reminding me that despite our life in New York City—the metropolis of the world—I was silently expected to walk a different path. Never mind the fact that even Alicia Keys promised my hometown to be a “concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” Well, okay, fine, maybe not my exact suburban outer-borough neighborhood of Bayside, Queens, but you get what I’m saying. People with aspirations like mine came here to grow, to learn, to immerse themselves in the culture and the thrumming rhythm of constant striving that exists around every corner. (Again, not so much in Bayside, where around the corner sat a squat sushi take-out joint and a wash-n-fold, but just a quick thirty-five-minute ride on the Long Island Railroad could transport one to the mecca of inspired, metamorphosis-inducing, glorious Manhattan, the publishing capital of the world.)

“Um,” I stammered. “They’re happy for me.”

“This is a huge deal,” she exclaimed.

I forced my cheeks to stay where they were, fake smiling my way around the truth, which was that my news was promptly overshadowed by a phone call from my aunt announcing that she was going to become a grandmother (again—her fourth grandchild in as many years). Not to say that I wasn’t excited to hear that my cousin’s womb was as fertile as the soil on an organic sustainable farm. I was.

I am.

“That’s really something.” My mom regarded my big news with a nod. The response notably lacked the squealing she emitted when my sister Melanie found the perfect prom dress, or the clapping that accompanied Jamie’s first boy-girl dance invitation, or the happy tears that ensued immediately following Anna’s engagement announcement. I quietly measured it against the screeching joy she doused me with when I was invited out for pizza with a boy from the tutoring center just weeks prior. Being published was, sadly, in a far distant second place. Still, I imagined my mother was proud of me in her own way, even if she lacked the gushing enthusiasm that Ms. Brown generously showered me with in my memory.

Ironically, it is a different type of shower that yanks me from this private moment in the recesses of my mind.

I feel it first, the sudden splash of something warm that dots, then soaks the ankle of my khaki pants.

I smell it next, wafting up from the new puddle that grazes against my fluffy story time slippers.

Then I hear it, the “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” that erupts at the exact same time as my own gasp.

Fucking Tinkerbell peed on my foot.

“She gets excited,” the suddenly flustered Karen explains, “and sometimes, she piddles when that happens.” Karen collects Joshie, who is laughing maniacally at the scene unfolding, up into her free arm and goes on. “I better take her outside, you know, so it doesn’t happen again.” She blushes, grabs her coat off a chairback, and hustles Tinkerbell out of the children’s section, leaving me aghast, a human toilet amid eleven remaining bite-size sets of gigantic, curious eyes.

“Welp,” I finally say, “I’m sorry, friends. I’m afraid we’ll have to save the remainder of story time for next week.”

Understanding if sad maternal nods bob up and down, and parents yearning for just a few more minutes of somebody else entertaining their kids begin gathering jackets, hats, and other assorted winter items to head back out and brave the cold January morning. I, meanwhile, kick off my slippers, remove my ankle socks, and begin to roll up the fluffy area rug from the far edge. As the patrons walk out, Ramona walks in.

“What happened in here?” she wonders.

“Don’t ask.”

“What is that smell?”

I look up from the ground. “You know Joshie? The blondie with the beagle?”

“Did he pee himself?”

“Worse. His puppy mistook me for a fire hydrant.”

“Oh my God, seriously? Someone’s having a Monday,” Ramona giggles.

“And, to add insult to injury, I’m pretty sure he stole one of my brand-new rice shakers.”

“Aggravated assault and robbery?”

I drop the rug, having rolled up most of it, and grab the hand sanitizer off the shelf behind me. “You have no idea what it’s like over here. It’s pure mayhem.”

“Please. Plenty of nonsense goes on in the adult section. Remember, I had to deal with the flasher?”

“Ew, yes. But you had actual police assistance. This is not a real 911 kind of emergency.”

“True. My point is you’re not the only one,” she says. Then she extends her hand to offer me an envelope. “Anyway, this came for you.”

I take it from her.

“I’ll go ask Jeff to bring you a mop and a garbage bag. But that looks important,” she continues. “Maybe like something you’ve been waiting for,” she sings.

Ramona winks at me and hightails it out of there. I examine the business-size envelope. It’s from the Northeast Library Association. I set the rug down so I have two free hands available to open it.

Dear Ms. Allerton,it reads. Congratulations! After careful consideration, your application has been selected to receive an award from the Northeast Library Association’s Future Leaders Scholarship Fund. We are pleased to offer you a one-time grant of $20,000 toward your pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing.

Holy shit.

I got the scholarship.

I look around. Shelves of colorful children’s books smile at me, delivering silent praise. After all these years, laden with scores of weddings and babies and more weddings and more babies, I know better than to expect that my parents will get excited at the prospect of me going back to school. I sometimes imagine the utter chagrin my poor family must face on a daily basis, knowing that I have grown into a twenty-nine-year-old spinster who reads storybooks aloud to neighborhood kiddos on Monday mornings at the Forest Hills branch of the Queens Public Library. Month after month, I recklessly allow my menstrual cycle to fall short of my mother’s aspirations for my womb. Surely, a scholarship for $20,000 as I approach my thirtieth birthday will mean just as little to her as the $500 prize I won half a lifetime ago.

I force myself to ignore my knee-jerk reaction to call her and share this exciting news.

After all, this is the beginning of my happily-ever-after, not hers.