Toss the Bride (6 page)

“Okay, easy. I was just asking.” Avery flips his racket over in his hands, examining the strings. He's ready to play again. But I'm not. I go on.

“You'd think that one of these perfectly intelligent and rich women would take the time to notice that flowers called ‘autumnal joy' would not be sitting around their chichi florist in early May. It's just not going to happen!”

Backing away from the net, Avery stops turning his racket over. He glances toward the veranda, where his father is reading
The New Yorker.
He can't hear us because he's a good quarter of a mile away from the courts. I can make him out, just barely. He's a tiny speck wearing a V-necked sweater.

“So, that's what I get worked up about. Every day. And Maurice has ‘absolute confidence' in me because I can alphabetize folders while wearing a telephone watch. Believe me, when I get married, I will not be wearing this watch and I will not order flowers that don't exist naturally!”

A trickle of sweat runs down my chest and lodges in the band of my sports bra. Without looking at Avery, I know that I've gone too far. Avery hates conflict, and I don't really like it too much, either. My parents don't fight, and neither do his. Mom teaches thirty second-graders, so when she gets home, the last thing she wants is a noisy house. Dad delivers mail and is alone all day, riding the rural routes around Cutter. He is usually fairly quiet; I've heard him raise his voice maybe a dozen times in my life.

“Ah,” Avery starts to say.

“No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't take out my day on you.”

“Well, that's okay. I guess.” Avery's face is stretched tight with some sort of decision. I figure he wants to get back to the safety of the veranda, or, at the very least, away from me.

We walk toward the house, Mr. Leland, and some sort of awaiting cold plate. I'll find out later that it is smoked salmon, a dish I'd never had until I started dating Avery. I wonder, if we ever break up, will I like the taste of salmon ever again or will it just be a fish I knew once, a long time ago?

*   *   *

Maurice calls me in early on Saturday. Katie Anna, our bride, the one with the natural history museum reception, has cold feet. Maurice tells me loudly over the phone that she isn't sure she wants to be Mrs. So-and-So for the rest of her life. The parents of the bride are pressuring her to go through with it. The creamy engraved invitations alone set them back eight thousand dollars. The wedding is in seven hours.

I arrive at the museum, where the tables and candle globe centerpieces are being set up. Museumgoers wander along the perimeter of the Great Hall, looping around to tour an exhibit about ancient Syria. Mentally, I try to place the country on a map, but I draw a blank. I was never that great with geography.

“There she is,” Maurice whispers dramatically as I skirt the caterer's helper laden with white wooden chairs. “You've got to get on this, and I mean fast.”

Maurice is worked up. He reminds me constantly about referrals and reputation and publicity. If this bride bails—and from the look in her dazed and sobbed-out face, I think she's close—Maurice will be damaged. I'm usually sent in to save the day. I'm supposed to talk about babies and white wedding dresses. If that doesn't work, I'm to go for the you'll-be-lonely-until-you-die jugular. The sad thing is, I kind of believe in it all. The white dress, the honeymoon in Belize, the procession of infants in short pants. Standing in the Great Hall with that tiny-headed dinosaur towering over the entire show, I'm not sure how anyone can escape where they're going.

Katie Anna agrees to go for a walk with me. She is a pretty blonde with a thin nose and the peppy gait of a gym fanatic. Even though it's her wedding day, she looks sad and confused. I know immediately where to take her. We go to the Okefenokee Swamp. On the boardwalk, I point to the frozen thrushes and plastic water. Her blond hair, recently done up in a cascade of curls and twirly French knots, has become a bit unhinged. I touch one sprung curl and tuck it back into the rest. As the pink lights of morning come up on the swamp, Katie Anna lets me put one arm around her shoulder as she cries.

She tells me that her fiancé is really, well, she says apologetically, there's no other word for it, an ass. He works all day and then expects her to put on a black dress and entertain clients. He likes wrestling and drinks beer with every meal. She envisions a parade of expense-account dinners and low-brow weekend sports that never ends, yet she can't think of life going forward unless she marries him in six hours.

Katie Anna and I stand in the swamp for about a week of up and down lights, cooing birdcalls, and mating deep-voiced frogs. She cries a little bit, and I explain the wonders of the swamp I had never seen before last week, even though it's in my home state. I tell her about the trees knitting together and the sorry chance the swamp has to make it out alive. She stops crying and lifts her head just slightly, all the while working her two-carat ring off her left hand. When I get to the part about fire helping the swamp get back to what it's supposed to be, Katie Anna has the beginnings of a smile that no cypress tree, small-headed dinosaur, or ass-faced fiancé can take away.

And so we leave the swamp at sundown, but not before Katie Anna takes that ring and drops it into the water. Of course, it bounces right off the Plexiglas and rolls over to rest beside a dusty white heron, and her father will retrieve it later because he is mad and wants to cash it in to make his daughter pay for her treachery.

But for now, the only one wearing white is the heron, and as we leave the swamp, Katie Anna turns to blow her a kiss. I would have put the ring on the dead bird's beak, but I can tell that Katie Anna is the type of person who respects the
DO NOT TOUCH
signs posted here and there. My cell phone rings, and I know it is Maurice begging me to save the day. I know I did not.

Later, Maurice and I will make the calls that pull the plug on something as big as a fancy-schmancy wedding and reception. It's no easy feat. I could go on and on about all of the details: food, swan handlers, antique china rental, jewelry security. In the end, it really doesn't matter. The caterers throw out thousands of dollars of food, the heirloom tiara is returned to the safe, the bridal programs are discarded. Everyone has been paid, so they have a night off. I wander around the Great Hall, watching the men load up the white chairs and tables. Iris arrives with the wedding cake and then turns around to take it back to her studio. I'm busy on the phone canceling the honeymoon reservations, so all I can do is give Iris a weary look. “Come over later,” she whispers. “We'll eat cake.”

Maurice is still in his first outfit of the day. I wonder what he will do with his evening. He looks really down.

“One of our potential clients—Lila Stall—was going to come by tonight and check this place out for her wedding next year,” Maurice says with a weary note to his voice. He leans against a palm tree the florist has not yet removed.

“Oh, who's she marrying?” I sit on a folding chair. It strikes me that this is the first time I have ever sat down in a wedding rental chair. Usually, I'm working. It's not too bad, a little on the stiff side.

“Do we ever know their names, Macie?”

He's right. For most of the brides, it's all about the day. Come to think of it, Katie Anna never even mentioned her fiancé's name. I wonder what he'll do tonight. Probably watch wrestling. I get a quick chill, thinking of Katie Anna's narrow escape.

I really hope she will be all right. Katie Anna seems like the kind of woman who is on her way to figuring out what she wants. I like that. Maybe the swamp can work its magic on me, too. I say good-bye to Maurice and head back toward the Okefenokee exhibit. I think I will stand on the boardwalk and beg the water—that deep, black water with the power to conjure a swamp-saving fire—what in the world will happen to a girl like me.

4

The Pink-Haired Bride

I probably attend at least three weddings a month, and while that may sound like it's all party-party, it actually is not. Besides the behavior of the brides and their families, there is the inevitable same slate of songs, readings, and bridesmaid dresses I saw last week. At the reception, the chunky pork tenderloin is going to rub shoulders with the same Caesar salad. Once in a while, someone will really shake things up and order a fish topped with mango salsa, but for the most part, every wedding tends to feel or look depressingly, unavoidably, exactly the same.

I am hanging out in Iris's studio, watching her work on Gwendolyn's wedding cake—a cake that promises to be very different. I'm also swiping bits of cake she's trimmed and slapping on a little of her trademark butter-cream icing.

“This is amazing,” I say, my mouth full of cake and icing.

“Glad you like it,” Iris says, smiling. She never gets to see people enjoy her cake because she drops it off hours before the reception. Turning her attention back to an intricate design on the bottom layer, Iris gently pipes a feather-light line of icing on the curves of the cake round. Layers two through six are lined up behind her on a stainless-steel table waiting their turn.

Iris runs Cake Cake out of a studio filled with baking pans, cookbooks, and bins of flour. I should also mention it smells like heaven. She found the space in a converted factory that now houses hip tech businesses and restaurants. A scrappy ensemble theater operates next door, and sometimes actors come over and buy cupcakes or pies, whatever she has on hand. Iris will bake anything, anytime. She says baking is good for your heart, and I believe her. Her best customers found her for their weddings and they keep coming back. For these folks, Iris will do anything. I've been out with her at a bar, and at midnight she'll say, “Gotta go bake” because one of her favorites wants a fresh kuchen by noon.

Iris is having fun with Gwendolyn's cake. For starters, it's completely unlike the white, genteel, fondant icing cakes that most brides want. Not Gwen. For her, everything has to be different. She's a pink-haired, budding fashion designer who has her own ideas. Brainstorm number one: a pink cake. I even found a little punk-rock couple to go on top of the sixth layer. Gwendolyn loved it. She said, “It's so out, it's in.” I think I beamed a little bit.

“This color is really, really pink. It seems very Gwen,” Iris says, stepping back to examine her art.

I have to agree. The cake will be pink, the bride's hair is pink, and her wedding dress—well, that's as pink as can be. Gwen designed the dress herself and thinks it could be a big thing next year if her wedding gets a little press in one of the local magazines.

Gwendolyn's mother has a bit of a problem with all of the alternative wedding arrangements. I've seen her go after her daughter like a yippy dog, but so far, Gwendolyn has not backed down. I can see it's wearing on her, though. When her mother wanted to serve mimosas in crystal champagne flutes at her bridal luncheon, Gwen wearily said yes. And the bridesmaids—artists, musicians, and models, all—will be wearing bras under their dresses, thanks to Mom. I even had to order the strapless undergarments so no one could claim they had forgotten to pack them. Those were fun calls—asking complete strangers for their cup size.

“I think this wedding will actually be exciting,” I say to Iris. She's adding little black sugar dots in and around the pink icing curlicues. So far, the cake looks, as they say, good enough to eat. I am actually starting to look forward to the reception. Maurice is having a new Thai restaurant cater the sit-down dinner. Avery introduced me to Thai food, and now I'm a total snob about who has the best basil rolls in town. I've heard this new place is great.

“How's the bride's mother doing so far?”

I play with an empty icing bag. “She's coming around. Little bit by little bit.”

“I think it's sad how brides' mothers get in the way. I won't do that to my daughter when I have one,” Iris says.

“That's assuming you have a daughter. You could give birth to nothing but sons. And you would have to bake gorgeous cakes for their snippy, mean wives-to-be.”

Iris looks up from the bowl of pink icing. “Since when have you become so cynical, Mace? Not all brides are like the ones you and Maurice handle every week.”

I fall into a canvas director's chair near the counter. “Remind me again? How do normal brides get married?”

Iris resumes piping. “Well, let's see,” she says, a wicked smile coming over her face. “First, they set a budget.”

Feigning a yawn, I say, “What's that? I don't know what that is. It sounds common.”

“Well, a budget is something that tells a person what she can and cannot spend.”

“Hold on, Iris,” I drawl in my most southern accent. “My hand is hurting from the weight of my four-carat diamond.”

“Rest it on that shelf over there. You poor thing.”

I sigh dramatically. “Go on, you were saying something amusing about restricting my spending?”

Iris chokes back a laugh. “Yes, it's true. You will have to set a budget. There is a limit to what you can spend.”

“I would rather die.”

Iris looks at me and makes a funny face. I start laughing so hard that my stomach hurts. Or maybe it is all the cake I have been eating. Iris has to put down her icing spatula for the next layer because she can't keep her hand steady. She walks around the counter and sits down beside me.

“Sometimes I don't like what I do,” I tell her.

“I know, I know.”

“I envy you, Iris. You have a gift and you go and do it. I wish I knew what it is that I'm supposed to be doing,” I say softly. “Satisfying every spoiled bride's whim is not my idea of contributing to society.”

“You think I contribute to society?” she asks. “Please. Maybe people's waistlines. But not the building of government, the arts, or religion. I'm just a baker.” Iris gives a nod toward the counter with the cakes.