We Could Be Beautiful (13 page)

William said, “Come,” and took my hand and led me toward the band. I was aware of everyone watching and smiled. We stood in front of the stage. Someone handed us fresh glasses of champagne.

William took the microphone. “First, thank you all for coming.” His voice was strong, firm, even. I thought I would faint. I couldn’t see my mother’s face. I could only see her hat. When I looked at the crowd, that white splotch was all I saw.

“We are gathered here today,” he said, and everyone laughed. “Catherine and I met only recently, but we have fallen very much in love.” He looked at me then, squinting. “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. Though Catherine is not difficult to look at”—more requisite laughter—“it is my heart that knows she is the one for me.” So poetic, especially when he repeated, “It is my heart that knows, darling.”

We kissed. I was so happy. I was also so self-conscious. My expression was caught between delight and disbelief. It was hard to know how to look, and hard to sustain these emotions in front of all these people for so long.

“And so a toast.”

“Toast!” someone yelled, raising a glass to catch the light.

“A toast to my fiancée, Catherine.”

We clinked, sipped, kissed again. I had no idea what was happening; my hands were just doing things.

“And now,” the bandleader said, “a special presentation by the talented Max and Stan.”

Max and Stan had somehow appeared onstage behind us with their violins. They stood on either side of a music stand. Max looked bored. Stan looked determined, and also sweaty as hell, poor kid.

They played “When You Say Nothing at All” by Alison Krauss. My first thought was, How cliché. My second thought was, Or maybe it’s perfect. “This is our song,” William whispered in my ear as we swayed together, watching the boys. It sounded like a pulsing heart. The pulsing started soft, and then rose and rose until I felt out of control and my body was moving without me. William guided me, our bodies pressed close. His salty breath, its touch of mint. With his face hot on my face, he whispered, like it was the only word he knew, “Catherine.”

•

People danced. Dusk fell. The sky turned a brilliant tangerine-pink and then settled into a blue glow that was almost too stunning to be real. Susan and Henry did silly moves like the fish and bait, Maya moved like an interpretive dancer—I imagined her inner dialogue was something like, “I am a tree, I am a burning bush, I am a whale”—and Dan slow-danced with Vera, who was obviously very happy about that. Spencer, Max, and Stan played leapfrog. Tonia enjoyed a big slice of cake. Caroline took off her heels, and Bob danced in spurts, stopping to make conversation; he must have talked to every single person at the party.

My mother, the white splotch, stayed on the bench. People went to talk to her there—Susan, then Caroline for a while. Eventually Evelyn came to tell me they had to leave in order to make it back in time for Mom’s shower.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” I said. “Good-bye. I’ll see you later.”

This was not good enough for Evelyn. She put her hands on her hips and looked at me like I was an asshole. “You going to say good-bye to your mother now, aren’t you?”

No, bitch, I wasn’t going to. After a pause—breathe, Catherine, breathe—the right words came out of my mouth. “Of course I was going to say good-bye. How can you ask me that?”

“Well then.”

“Well then, go get her,” I heard myself say.

Evelyn rolled her eyes and trudged off.

Meanwhile other people started to leave. I stood in the doorway, saying, Thank you for coming, thank you so much for coming, thank you for the card, thank you for the flowers. I was on autopilot, my attention concentrated on the approaching white splotch.

My mother looked cold, stiff. She had been sitting for too long. I was very proud of myself for making this correlation.

“Thanks for coming, Mom.” I kissed her cheek. And then, just to piss her off, I said, “I love you.”

Without hesitation she said, “Good-bye, Catherine,” and then—what?—she bowed at me, one hand on her back, the other on her chest, like a ballerina, a male ballerina, at the end of a show.

My mother was losing her mind. Nothing she did or said could be taken seriously.

“Let’s go,” Evelyn said, looking behind her at the procession. “People are waiting here, Mrs. West. Let’s go down these stairs now.”

•

Caroline and Bob stuck around for a while. We drank wine in the living room and picked at the leftover canapés. Spencer was downstairs watching a movie with Max and Stan, whose mothers had left to have dinner together and would be back soon to pick them up.

William and I sat on one couch, Caroline and Bob sat on the other. I took my heels off, finally conceding to the fact that they had been very uncomfortable, and leaned into William. “The music was wonderful,” he said, and kissed my forehead. “I forgot how much I love to dance.” I felt his rib cage expand and contract as he breathed. I felt his warmth. I might have been proud of how comfortable we appeared in this loving posture in front of Caroline and Bob.

As I smiled at them, I thought they looked like such a funny couple. She was a bird and he was a ferret. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, talking to William. He looked like a coach strategizing a play. And Caroline sat back, her lanky bird body, all angles, with one lazy foot that was basically in Bob’s armpit.

“So, Caroline, Catherine tells me you’re a painter,” William said. I remember thinking it was so sweet that he had remembered that. He was making a real effort to get to know my sister.

“I was,” Caroline said, a little sadly. “I haven’t painted for a while.”

“She’s great!” Bob said, squeezing Caroline’s knee. “So William, where did you sail in Europe?”

“Well,” William began, and the conversation turned back to boats. Bob and William got excited talking about a specific yacht on the Mediterranean—it was the oldest one, or the one with the most gold on it—and then there was a pause, and the movement of the caterers in the kitchen, putting things away, and Caroline said, “I can’t believe you’re engaged.”

“I know—isn’t it crazy?”

“That ring is crazy,” Caroline said. She looked at her ring, jokingly hit Bob. “It’s way bigger than mine.”

“Hey now,” Bob said.

“I think I’ll go check on the boys,” William said. “Who knows what they’re up to down there.”

“Good idea.” As he hoisted himself up to go do this kind thing no one had asked him to do, I knew that William was going to make a wonderful father.

•

A few minutes later we were talking about Evelyn—“I think she’s kind of mean to Mom,” Caroline said—when Stan’s mother called. She was on her way. “I’ll go down to let him know,” I said.

“Yep,” Bob said, scarfing a shrimp.

Tonia, whom I’d completely forgotten about, was sitting on the staircase, playing a game on her phone. “What’s up?” she said. I hoped they were paying her a lot. Unless you were still in high school, taking care of other people’s children was the most depressing job in the world.

The door to the den was a swinging door with a circular window at the top. It reminded me of a window on a ship. When I looked in, it was very dark. I could see Stan and Spencer lying on the carpet in front of the TV, their little heads propped on their fists, their faces illuminated in flashes by the changing light of the screen. William and Max were on the couch. I could see their faces light up, too, only less brightly because they were farther away.

When I pushed the door open, William said, “Hi, honey.”

“Hi,” I said, walking closer. “You look comfortable. Are you hiding in here?”

“I’m sorry. I suppose I might be hiding, yes. There’s been so much social interaction today, sweetheart. I feel overwhelmed.”

“Tell me about it. But now it’s just Bob and Caroline. They don’t count. We don’t need to impress them.” As I said this, I wondered if it was true.

“I know, my darling, but I do feel the need to impress them. Your sister is a big part of—”

“Shhh,” Stan said.

“I think this is the good part,” William whispered.

The music in the movie sounded like an epic conclusion. Long-haired people with too-big ears in New Zealand, or somewhere very green, drew swords and slowly brought them together until the points touched. Then a gold zap, and the screen was bleached in light.

11

P
lanning the wedding took over my life. I barely worked, I couldn’t sleep, I kept canceling lunch with Mom. My hair was falling out, and it was clogging the shower. Lucia showed me a clump of it one day. A dark gnarl in her bare palm, it looked like a wet nest. “This is no good,” she said. I tried to meditate twice, but I couldn’t stop checking my phone. So I gave up. Meditating just made me more anxious. I finally had Bob write me a Xanax prescription.

I don’t know why I thought I could do it myself. Pride, probably. And a need for change. I’d hired wedding planners with my first two fiancés, and I hadn’t liked either of those people. They were glorified salesmen, always trying to add on features you did not need. The problem was that once you had become aware of these features, you couldn’t possibly live without them.

In the beginning we said, Let’s have something small. Small, easy, local—maybe the Hamptons in September. This, I knew from experience, was how all weddings started. First you wanted just your closest friends and family, windswept and barefoot on a beach. Then you opened a bridal magazine and it was over.

This time I swore I would not get carried away. I had gotten very carried away planning the wedding with Fernando—Isle of Capri, a dress with a ten-foot-long train, hundreds of our closest friends and family and every person we had ever passed on the street—and then, well, Fernando had married his grandmother. Or somebody’s grandmother.

It might have been their announcement in the
Times
that set me off. (Of course I would make this connection only later.) The grandmother, Anabel, heiress to a nail-polish fortune, had actually managed to look a few years younger than she was, thanks to makeup, Photoshop, and the grainy low-resolution black-and-white newspaper-grade picture. Fernando looked like an imp. And excruciatingly content. I couldn’t believe they had gotten married in the Hamptons. “No,” I said out loud. So the Hamptons were out. I started thinking that their announcement was puny anyway. Simple, small, Hamptons—how boring, how cliché. It was that same afternoon that I mistakenly purchased the current issue of
Brides
at a newsstand, along with a pack of Mentos to angrily chew on while I whipped through the pages.

Talk about the tyranny of choice. There were so many choices. Hawaii, Aspen, the Keys? A ranch in Wyoming was an untapped resource for pastoral ceremonies? What about Mexico? Or fucking Alaska? Sleeveless, backless, endless. Everything was endless. An endless veil of lace, an endlessly flowing fondue fountain, a heart-shaped monogrammed key chain for the gift bag that would be endlessly meaningful to guests as they left the greatest celebration of their lives.

And then there was the food, and the silverware, and the color palette. The accommodations, the reception, the flowers. The extras—oh my God, the extras. Did we want a poet to write poems about hearts and roses on her antique typewriter, under the shade of a fake baobab tree, like Jackie from Chicago in
Brides
? Horses—did we want those? How about a bunch of cheese and a cheese expert? Oh, and music, there was that. And the bridal shower. And the bachelorette party. And the Mentos were gone and I needed a lobotomy. Since I couldn’t get a lobotomy—did people have those anymore?—I made an appointment for a facial instead.

•

When William got home, I said, “I think we’re going to end up getting married at a horse ranch in the Gulf of Mexico with edible confetti at the end.”

I expected him to laugh, but he barely smiled. He sat next to me on the couch, tired. A long day at work. Herman jumped onto him, licked his face. That dog licked everything; there was something wrong with it.

“Are you okay, babe?” I put my hand on his forearm.

“Yes, I’m okay, honey. Thank you for asking.” He took off his tie, rolled it up, put it in his pocket.

“Is there a lot going on at work?”

“There is.”

I waited for more. I wanted details. But I sensed now was not the time to ask for them. William had a tendency to pull away when he was stressed. He just got overtired—he worked so hard—and it made him quiet. Maybe that was okay. Some couples didn’t talk that much. It implied there was an unspoken understanding, a certain level of comfort. My image of this included a serene-looking couple in their nineties, reading the newspaper on a park bench, looking out at the pigeons every once in a while, and not speaking for hours. I was learning to accept the quiet, distant version of William, but it still made me nervous. What was he thinking?

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, scratching his temple. “I would like to get married in a church.” He turned to face me, and smiled. That made me happy. The thought that I had the power to make someone smile like that. It reassured me. This man loved me very much. “I should have mentioned it before, perhaps, but I didn’t want to scare you. Now that we are into the logistics, though, I have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about it, and getting married in a church is very important to me. My mother wanted me to be married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where I was baptized, and, well, I think it would be nice to do that, if it’s possible. What do you think?”

“I think…Well, I’m relieved you’re talking. I hate it when you’re quiet, honey. And yeah, the church thing. I mean, if it’s important to you, then it’s important to me.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

He touched my face, and brought my head to his chest. The smallest, safest, warmest room.

“Does it matter that I’m not Catholic?”

“It shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Good, because I don’t think they’d let me be Catholic. I’ve done bad things.”

“Have you? Like what?”

“I stole a shirt in high school. And I cheated on all my tests in high school. And college. And I’ve driven while under the influence way too many times in the Hamptons.”