Forty-Three
In spite of her sister’s teenage taunts—“Always a Bridie, never a bride!”—Bridie didn’t really care about being a bride, only about finding a partner, falling in love, and falling in love with Dune had been the easiest part of her entire life.
Maybe the only easy thing in her life. She and Dune fit.
Hand in glove. Round peg, round hole. Whatever metaphor suited would suit.
Bridie and Dune liked the same things; they cared about the same things—about giving back and being of use and making their little corner of the world a bit better.
They both wanted a family and (maybe, probably) to stay in Rochester.
She’d never felt such ease with another person.
“You’re sure?” Nina asked, not even trying to hide her surprise and alarm during the weekend in February when Dune and Bridie disclosed all to their various family members in a series of back-to-back restaurant meals.
“So sure, Mom. I’ve never been this sure about anything in my life.”
“This feels very fast, Bridie.” Bridie didn’t like the note of concern in Nina’s voice and braced herself for what she knew would come next. “And Clara? How is Clara with all this?” Bridie had planned a response. She meant to toss off a casual lie, but it stuck in her throat.
“Bridie?”
“She knows we’ve been hanging out.”
“Bridget.”
“She doesn’t return my calls. You know what’s she like. I can’t get her on the phone.”
“Don’t let Clara hear this from someone else.”
“I know! I’ll take care of it.” But two months later she hadn’t taken care of it.
Instead, she’d stupidly mailed a wedding invitation and hastily written a dumb joke on the back of the envelope and had seriously considered driving to New York City to try to intercept the mail but continued to silently fret and stay frozen in place.
One night, early in their romance, Dune made the mistake of being honest about Clara.
“I’m scared of her,” he’d said, not understanding that Bridie would grab on to that one sentence and not let go.
“What do you mean?” she said, cheeks speedily flushing like a warning light for Dune: Proceed with caution.
“I mean, she’s scary. You said it first.” It was shortly after they’d told each other they were in love. Shortly after they started to talk about marriage, they hadn’t even needed a proposal, it was an easy assumption.
“But if you’re terrified of her that means you’re still somehow attached to her. Otherwise, why would you care? Why would you care if she’s mad at us or if she yells or makes a scene or disappears?”
Dune wasn’t terrified of Clara’s feelings, he elaborated to Bridie (not quite honestly) but afraid of how she might act out and intimidate Bridie. “That’s my concern,” he said as Bridie let her shoulders drop back into place, relieved. “I’m worried about you.”
She and Dune constantly told one another that it would be ludicrous for Clara to be mad.
Dune hadn’t really been Clara’s boyfriend.
They’d had a high school crush. They’d kissed, sure, but they’d never had sex!
Gosh, they were kids, teenagers. Nobody had even known before it was over, and also?
Clara had an exciting life in New York City.
Why would anything going on back in Rochester impact her in any meaningful way?
She would see how it was funny if you thought about it; actually, it was quite funny!
What was the opposite of star-crossed lovers?
Dune went to the Strasenburgh Planetarium and bought a bunch of glow-in-the-dark star decals to put on their bathroom ceiling.
They were star-fated lovers, he told her.
Meant to be. All the talk about how they’d done nothing wrong was true, but truth was not a rock-solid defense in matters of the heart.
If it were up to Bridie, they would have skipped all the planning and celebrating and had a small service and lunch somewhere.
She hated being the center of attention; she didn’t want to spend her carefully acquired money on something as ephemeral as a wedding celebration; she disliked bridal gowns and veils and the whole giving-away-a-daughter madness.
But Dune. Dune saw her celebratory reticence as, at worst, a reflection of her happiness and, at best, a parental hangover they needed to shake to survive.
“Did you get hold of Clara?” he would ask Bridie every Sunday night, and every Sunday night Bridie would say, “She didn’t pick up,” until Dune stopped asking.
Bridie knew Clara better than anyone. The secret would bother Clara more than the fact.
Maybe. Bridie realized Clara would see this as another betrayal in a long line of poor decisions involving the Larkins and the Finnegans.
She would be infuriated, and she would be certain that Bridie was making a mistake.
She’d be shocked and then she’d be angry.
Bridie loved and missed her sister, but she also saw her with perfect clarity: Clara needed everything to be about her, and when she learned that Bridie had won something she’d wanted and lost, well—
Dune wanted the church, the reception at the club, bridesmaids and groomsmen, centerpieces, and a live band and dance floor.
But all Bridie could think about when they talked about a wedding was the photos.
Not having the photos but taking the photos.
How would that work? How would she and Dune stand in the center with their fucked-up parental situation surrounding them?
Where would Finn and Nina stand? With each other?
On what side? What to do about Honey? And Clara?
For the life of her, Bridie couldn’t imagine the look on Clara’s face if she was forced to pose in their family wedding portrait.
And she was worried about the open bar and the flowing booze of the weekend.
Bridie was grateful that Dune was drinking less, but she could see, on certain occasions, that he was white-knuckling the whole endeavor, and she knew that approach rarely worked, or had staying power.
She’d memorized the statistics. But he tensed up whenever she brought up meetings or counseling or quitting completely.
Whenever Bridie was faced with a wedding decision—chicken or beef; shrimp or salmon; how many at a table; what kind of music—her brain froze.
Just thinking about a seating chart gave her heart palpitations.
She wanted Clara’s advice. She wanted Clara’s help.
She wanted her mother’s advice. She wanted her mother’s help.
But to choose one was to reject the other.
“I’ll help you,” Dune said over and over and over whenever he saw the frozen, overwhelmed look on her face.
“Please. Let me help.” She was grateful but she was also sad.
And angry. And tired. Those were Bridie’s phases of grief: sad, angry, tired, and she’d been cycling through them for so many years, they were almost comforting, the worn groove so familiar.
Inevitably, she’d descend into her favorite old wound, the lone time Clara visited her at Cornell.
Clara had donned a bemused attachment during the day.
So many people. So loud. Do all college girls have to wave and squeal at every single goddam person they see?
The hugging, why all the hugging? She and Clara laughed a lot as Bridie played tour guide on the campus she was just getting to know.
Then it was time to leave, and Clara hopped into her car and cheerily waved.
When Bridie got back to her second-floor room and opened the window to holler at Clara for one last good-bye, Clara was sitting stock still in the front seat, hands on the wheel, watching a group of young men and women horsing around on the sidewalk, heading to the campus bar, arms around one another singing “Maggie May,” at the top of their lungs.
Oh, it’s late September and I really should be back at school!
The only word to accurately describe Clara’s demeanor was stricken.
And then, to Bridie’s horror, Clara started to weep.
Not just cry but bitterly weep, face in hands, shoulders trembling.
Bridie stepped away from the window because the only thing that would have made that moment worse for Clara was to have been witnessed.
Yes, that was a memory she stoked on certain days.
“What’s wrong?” Dune said one morning, coming into the kitchen, looking sleepy and tousled and handsome and concerned.
“I need to get through to Clara,” she said plainly, “and I’m not sure how.”
He shoveled at least four teaspoons of sugar into his black coffee and then turned to her. “Let me help.”