All Dressed Up (6 page)

As usual,
however, Mom electrified herself at the mention of tennis money.
“You are not using one penny of your tennis money to pay us back
for the wedding. It’s meant for something – ”

“Something
important,” Emma parroted. “You know, Mom, we are all three of us
going to die before we get to spend that money because nothing ever
counts as important enough for it.”

“Well, because
– ”

“One day, I
will need to get rescued by a team of helicopter paramedics from an
upturned sail-boat in the South Atlantic ocean on my solo
round-the-world voyage and you’ll say, ‘Let her row home in the
inflatable dinghy, don’t spend the tennis money on the chopper
crew, it’s for something important.’”

“Okay, Emma,
this isn’t what I want to talk about.”

“Here, I’ll
give you the paper doves. They’re the lightest. Sarah, can you take
the box of favors?” She was relentless. She would only talk about
the boxes, the itemized repayment, all of it in that same neat,
sharp, keep-your-distance-and-don’t-say-anything-important voice.
Even the joking about the tennis money held a dangerous edge.

At the car,
once they were done, Emma hugged both of them and said, “Well.
Thanks. Sorry this hasn’t gone the way we hoped.”

“Stop talking
like this, Emma,” Mom said.

“How should I
talk, then?”

“Let something
out. Express your anger.”

“All right.”
Emma raised her voice and yelled, “Will you use up those delectable
cans of herring in tomato sauce this summer instead of just
promising to for the seventeenth time? It drives me nuts that we
still have them after so long.”

“Something
real. God, I want to!”

“Well, you go
ahead then, Mom, but I don’t.”

“Okay, get me
a chainsaw,” Mom declaimed to the mosquito-plagued forest, letting
the words rise the same way Emma’s had. “I’ll cut off my arm and
that will bring Charlie back to you. If you want me to kidnap him
and make him marry you with a red-hot poker sticking in his back,
you only have to say so. I can sue him, slander him, castrate him,
mow him down with an automatic weapon, it’s yours for the asking.
Tell me you want to castrate him. You can’t be this controlled,
Emma!”

“Mom, it’s not
his fault.”

“I’m your
mother, not his. So of course it’s his fault.”

“I was the one
who canceled the wedding.”

“Only because
he didn’t get in there three seconds ahead of you and do it first.
We all knew it was a pre-emptive strike on your part.”

“It
wasn’t.”

“Are you
really this controlled?”

Emma froze by
the car door. “Of course I’m not,” she whispered, her voice
scraping out between razor blades, rusty ones. “God!”

“Okay. Okay.”
Mom raised her hands. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Please
do.”

Emma jumped
in, slammed the door, started the engine, and gunned the car away
up the unsealed track that led from the lakefront houses to the
road. As soon as she thought she was out of sight, she stopped it –
to scream? to shake? to cry? – but she wasn’t out of sight. Mom and
Sarah could both see the vehicle’s polished dark finish glinting
through the trees. They watched for ten minutes, muttering various
things to each other occasionally.

“What’s she
doing?”

“Should we go
up?”

Then they saw
a flicker of movement and heard the sound of the engine as Emma
drove away.

The flip-out
coming away from the lake-house was short, efficient and
meaningless.

“Okay, Mom,”
it went in Emma’s head. “You said you’d do anything, you’d cut off
your arm? Yes? So here’s what I want. Turn back time for me. Not
all the way. Ten years should do it. Even nine, at a pinch. I mean,
I don’t expect miracles. Oh, time turning is beyond your powers?
Sorry, my mistake. I’ll just keep going, then. No, no. It’s not
killing me. It doesn’t mean my whole relationship with Charlie is
built on a huge lie and a massive failure. I’m fine. Back on track.
Starting the engine. Off I go.”

Still, she
spilled great splodges of emotional blood like oil from a car with
a shot engine, up the lake track, along Grays Hill Road and south
on Route 9N. Parking outside the church at Steeple Point, she left
another pool of it in the lot. The church was empty and quiet. No
paper doves fluttering in the trees. No guests. No Reverend,
either.

He lived just
across the lane. She pealed the bell and he came around from the
back a few minutes later, edging past the classic Norton motorcycle
parked on the gravel. He had wet hands and garden dirt around the
beds of his fingernails, and wore grass-stained trousers. Had an
unexpected break from work on a sunny Saturday afternoon in bridal
June. Thought he’d get some weeding in, instead of wedding.

Nice for
some.

Emma might
have felt less affronted by his opportunistic use of time once
slated officially as hers if he’d appeared three sheets to the
wind. She couldn’t even say hello. “I left my dress behind in the
church yesterday,” she began bluntly. “Do you know what happened to
it?”

“It’s okay,”
said the Reverend Mac. “Nothing to worry about. Charlie took
it.”

“Charlie.” Her
heart sank so fast it flattened her lungs on its way down. The Rev
Mac was supposed to say, Yes, I have it right here for you. How
come nobody but her ever seemed to know their lines? She felt sick
to her stomach about Charlie taking the dress, because she couldn’t
think how to get it back. She couldn’t bear to see him or talk to
him. She didn’t even know why she had to have the dress, she just
knew that she did. When the wedding got canceled the bride ended up
with the dress.

Because I need
to know I don't hate it now? Because I’m its legal guardian, and
responsible? Because I want the control? Because I do hate it, and
if anyone’s going to shred it to ribbons, it’s going to be me?

“I’m sorry,”
the Reverend said. He looked sincerely troubled.

“It’s
okay.”

“Doesn’t seem
to be okay.” It was an invitational line. Spill, honey. I’m a man
of God. Even though she’d never actually seen him looking like one,
with the bike leather, gardening gear and jeans.

“Oh, shoot!”
she stormed at him. “You, too! Giving me openings, showing you’re
ready to listen. Like Mom. However she at least did offer to
castrate him for me. I sincerely appreciated that.”

“Castrations.
Same category as exorcisms. We don’t do ’em here. Nice line in home
visits and bake sales. No confession. Very few candles. We’re
Episcopalians. We’re boring.” His voice was deep and gruff and
jolly, and he had red-brown hair and a red-brown beard. He looked
like Santa’s renegade, heart-of-gold younger brother, not yet gone
gray, away from the Pole on summer vacation. He was around the same
age as Charlie’s mom, Emma thought.

“Could I take
a home visit, maybe?” She stepped toward his front door, wild with
the need for something, knowing this couldn’t be it – What? Tea in
his parlor? A quick spot of grief counseling on the fly? – but
seizing on it anyhow.

She was all
the way in the house before she realized that he was the one meant
to do the visiting, calling in at other people’s houses, not having
them come to his.

Too late.

“Come see my
flowers. I’ll pour us some lemonade and we’ll sit outside.”

The Reverend
Mac took her through to the garden, left her for a few minutes to
go into the house and returned with two tall glasses. The ice
sounded like wind chimes. It made the lemonade so cold Emma’s
temples ached. Like the hot water in the shower this morning, which
had left red marks on her skin, the ache almost helped. He talked
about his flowers, but she waved away his poetic comments. “Is all
this supposed to remind me that life is continually renewed, or
something?”

“No, they just
look nice. Although, okay, yes, if you want a deeper message, I
never appreciated nature until I learned to appreciate my Creator.
But, hey, enough about my major life crisis, tell me about
yours.”

“You suck at
this, Reverend Mac. You really suck at it.” She laughed a rusty
laugh and gulped, a kind of hiccup.

He frowned.
“Yeah, you see, I find it…” He paused and rocked his hand from side
to side. “…sleazy when priests are too good at it. Sometimes I am
helpless in the face of other people’s terrible pain and it’s an
insult to pretend otherwise. Could that be my excuse?”

“You’re
looking for an excuse?”

“Defending
myself when attacked by a demented wannabe bride. I’m sorry you
didn’t get to have the paper doves and the big dress and the very
decorative, studly groom, and on such a pretty day, too.” He
grinned, to make clear that he wasn’t seriously insulting her, but
– but –

“You have no
clue, Reverend Mac!” she said, and her voice hurt the way it had
hurt constantly since yesterday.

“So give me a
clue, Emma,” he suggested, just gently enough.

Out it came,
all of it, or as much of it as she understood, like someone having
their stomach pumped. Why? Why today? Because she’d never felt so
hurt and angry and defensive before?

She told him
all this stuff about fulfillment and redemption and reclaiming and
secrecy. Stuff about shame and denial and iron will. Stuff about
win-win situations that hadn’t turned out that way for her, but
that had turned out to offer her only this great big fake
unbearable unwanted life with a hole in the middle of it which
Charlie, old soul that he was, had picked up on, even though he
didn’t understand the reason for the hole. How could he? She hadn’t
told him.

And the harder
she’d tried to make everything perfect and okay in compensation,
the uglier she and Charlie had both become with each other, until
she couldn’t bear it any more. She couldn’t marry him until she’d
sorted out her life, and if her life was unsortable at this point,
then she would have to stay unwed.

She didn’t
care what words or little fatherly tut-tut noises Mac gave in
reply. A couple of times, she deliberately made herself sound like
an unforgivable bitch, because maybe she was one. Sarah often
seemed to think so.

She listened
to an anecdote from him about tearing up a whole carton of
cigarettes one by one when he gave up smoking, which she could sort
of relate to because she’d given up smoking once, too.

The idea of
cigarettes suddenly held a seductive appeal.

“Do you
despise me, Reverend Mac?”

“Of course I
don’t despise you.”

“Even though
you’re right, I only chose the church because it was pretty? I
hadn’t thought – I hadn’t been thinking – You’ve been a bonus I
hadn’t expected.”

“A lot of
brides only choose this church because it’s pretty. I’ve been known
to get miffed on God’s behalf.”

“Which is
presumptuous of you, don’t you think. Maybe He likes it that people
appreciate the beauty of His church.”

“Yeah,” he
drawled. “I’ve suspected for a while that God’s a lot less
mean-spirited than I am... Aha! You laughed,” he said, poking his
index finger toward her, like he’d caught her out cheating at a
kids’ card game.

“God!” she
said, meaning the profanity, not the divine being.

And she
laughed again, too, because in a strange way, yes, she found he was
right and it was better to have the Reverend Mac using his normal
voice and being slightly cruel and light-hearted about her grief
and remorse. It was better than if he’d gone gentle and
understanding – or if he’d let her off the hook completely like Mom
and Dad had when it all started eleven years ago in London, like
she’d wanted them to – because his lightness did suggest that maybe
the world wasn’t going to end after all.

“Would you
like me to liaise between you and Charlie about the dress?” he
offered in the end. “I could call Mrs Keogh…” He sounded hopeful
about doing that.

He hadn’t
offered anything about the other stuff she’d said. Not really. He’d
said to think about it. Give herself space. Don’t assume that there
was no way out. He’d said to come see him again or call any time.
He’d given her his priestly business card. In a weird way, it did
help that he had listened to her without pretending. She didn’t
want her medication sugared any more.

About the
dress, she said, “No, I’m fine,” but didn’t really mean it.

He said, “Are
you sure?” And she told him no again, sincerely this time.

She was
suddenly afraid that he might try to liaise her and Charlie back
together, while liaising about the dress. And she was afraid that
she would want him to succeed in the endeavor but Charlie
wouldn’t.

Then she got
in the car again – the Rev Mac walked her to it – and drove to
Jersey.

Chapter
Four

Was it bad luck
to eat a wedding cake when the wedding it was intended for had
never taken place?

Mom and Sarah
debated this question for most of the drive down to the Craigmore
Hotel. Now that Emma was safely out of the way of such a ghastly
errand, they needed to collect the boxes of individually crafted
centerpieces – individually crafted, of course, by the actual bride
– and hand over the payment.

And possibly
collect the cake.

“What will
they do with it if we don’t, though, Sarah? Throw it away? Eat it
in the kitchen? Or palm it off on another bride? Wouldn’t that kind
of karma be worse?”

“I just think
if Emma found out she wouldn’t be happy.” Sarah turned onto 9N. Dad
had gone ahead in the other car because they had so much to carry,
and he was already out of sight.

“But she’s
already not happy,” said Billy from the back seat.

“So you think
we should eat it, Billy?”

He needed
additional data to reach an informed decision. “What kind of cake
is it, again?”