Читать книгу Escape From Bridezillia - Jacqueline deMontravel - Страница 7

I made a pact with myself ages before I even had a boyfriend. That if some higher being from above did intend on my living with someone other than dogs or misfit family members and actually making this solemn in-sickness-and-in-health promise—whatever that meant—I made this internal pact that I would not become one of those “Wedding Girls.” Turn into the dreaded “Bridezilla.” The bride that floated past the sundial movements of flowered heads toward a groom who successfully fulfilled his given task by showing up.

I wouldn’t be that girl that bought all of the bridal magazines minutes after the proposal. (Though I did buy a few, seven actually, this morning. Just a day after Henry proposed and that was only because it was a Monday, newsstand day, so naturally I just had to pick them up. Quite standard really—precisely the same thing as buying a Fodor book before a trip. Though I’ve never been one for travel books, as that’s too touristy.)

I’d never turn into the Bridezilla that plunged her freshly ringed finger into her bag for her mobile, speed-dialing all of her friends and family, sharing the news while her future husband drummed his utensils on the linen-clothed table. (I didn’t have my cell and the table was Formica.)

I wouldn’t obsess over the date. (Mentally set for the weekend after Labor Day, as I have been tracking the weather patterns for the weekend after Labor Day for the past six years and every Saturday has been positively perfect. There was one rainy day, but it was just for a few twilight hours where the drops fell from the most glorious lavender sky feathered with brushes of rose. And why had I been tracking weather patterns for the past six years for this particular weekend? Perhaps we should consider the peculiar people who went to such extremes as installing computer chips in the back of a bird’s neck.)

I wouldn’t obsess in searching for distinctive party favors and bubbles in sterling containers with a baby blue toile ribbon. And I absolutely would not become completely manic over my dress. My cousin Anne Briggs-Whitten had that covered, since we were related and I had insider intelligence for her penchant for matching polyester Izod outfits and how she never swam in the deep end with excuses of delicate eardrums. Anne married for professional reasons, and this was her area.

In some ways, I could look to her services as a comparable exchange for my introducing her to Jason, her husband most likely chosen for his high earning factor by working in the financial sector. The added bonus, to Anne’s delighted discovery, was the hidden fortune generated from a wallpaper design Jason had created when fulfilling his service in his father’s home distribution company.

The wallpaper pattern, a pale blue ticking stripe bordered with a beaded edging like sugar dollops on a wedding cake, used to add flair to antiseptic rooms seen in hospital corridors and the reception nook of a nationwide tax office. Each order of his paper earned him the kind of royalties more associated with failed musicians who write pull-the-trigger tunes played when a baseball player hits a home run.

They met through me, though I would never do something as irresponsible as intentionally match my cousin with another human, especially someone as warm and good-natured as Jason—destined to be the kind of man who calls boys who aren’t related to him “son.” Introduced at one of New York’s benefits that bring out all the professional husband hunters, their courtship progressed into marriage with the easy process of buying presents with computerized shopping carts.

She now lavishes expertly, a self-described sybarite. (Anne practices new words like a boy with a new golf club.) I’ve seen her go through caviar like sandwich spread. She puts together Botox parties with friends like it’s a lunch at Pastis. Her most recent addition to this sybaritic lifestyle being the Palm Beach home, so massive you have to drop crackers to find your way around. And though they’ve yet to even spend a night there, HG already shot their gardens with a year exclusive to feature their pond brimming with human-sized lily pads that guide you over exotic fish that swim to the water’s surface at the brush of your hand and suck on your finger like a baby’s lips on a pacifier.

Anne had already made appointments for Vera Wang, Badgley & Mischka and Valentino—and Bergdorf’s, of course. Had to remember to call Anne and make sure that we had an appointment at Bergdorf’s, as they carried the most beautiful Carolina Herrera georgette silk, drop waisted, cap-sleeved gown that I found while glancing at one of my bridal magazines.

The location was the easy part—to be held at my childhood summer home in Bridgehampton.

“Bridgehampton is out,” barked my mother, sticking out her cheek to interrupt me from the mental lists I had been composing while waiting in her kitchen.

Did she just say that Bridgehampton was out? Okay. I am not one of those Wedding Girls, I said like a mantra.

“What the hell do you mean Bridgehampton is out? It’s not the Plaza for God’s sake.”

“Oh yes. The Plaza. I have a date secured for the second Saturday in November, which makes perfect sense. Seven months to plan a wedding is purely preposterous. And I do think it is far more elegant to have an autumn city wedding.”

Why doesn’t she just rent a supermodel daughter and have her perform the wedding to her specifications, as she had essentially been autopiloting her parenting of me for the past thirty years.

Mother took the seat next to mine and reached for a magazine from her stack of bridal publications and books. Flipping through the magazines with that these-pages-are-so-privileged-to-be-graced-by-her-touch manner of hers, Mom started in, “I’m afraid that the house will still be rented through the end of October.”

My family—the all-American 2.4-kid kind with a father, mother, and brother who happened to be more than twenty years younger than me—had just returned to the city after spending a year in Prague, where my father had expanded his company. They kept their East Eighty-fourth Street townhouse and rented out the Bridgehampton home, which had been of no inconvenience to me since I had to spend most of last summer in L.A. working on a film Henry and I created based on our cartoon alter egos.

Henry is a cartoonist and I am an illustrator. Or, more precisely, was an illustrator. After a year working in Hollywood, I had taken an early retirement from my drawing career to focus strictly on my painting. I am more about my art than the art of furthering my career through shallow measures, now allowing for Henry—the now provider, which I think I will enjoy immensely—to maintain this high earning necessity to keep our family robust. He also works the Hollywood hustle brilliantly, his I-won’t-drop-to-their-level unintentional game plan playing to his advantage. I will now be much happier as a result, my happiness being the contribution to our family.

I peered at my mother, amazed by how beautiful she could remain despite her persnickety demeanor. She was the kind of woman that would look natural sipping in smoke from a sterling cigarette holder. (Though she quit smoking in ’86 for fear of yellowing her teeth.)

Her classic sense of style and devotion to exercises that come with a spiritual philosophy like it’s a gift bag after a great party have prevented her from having a consultation with a surgeon who makes line drawings on your face. She had the refined bone structure of a doe without that stretched like Silly Putty skin, which had always amazed me because I didn’t know if I was the little kid calling the emperor on his new, nonexistent clothes, as these women really do look like a Batman villain.

Catching something of interest to her in one of the bridal magazines, she reached for a pair of heavy rimmed circular glasses that looked like two black condoms secured with a curved piece of wire. With her crisp cotton shirt, cashmere cardigan, and gray flannel pants, she was either dressing for a Harry Potter party or recently took fashion inspiration from FDR.

“Apparently your father stands to make a substantial return just by extending the rental for the month of September. And there’s another caveat you should know. The house is on the market.”

She has got to be kidding me.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“No love, I’m afraid I’m not. We don’t use the house anymore, now that we spend summers in Europe.”

She says this like she’s fired her longtime florist because they stopped using frosted vases.

“Don’t look so expired.”

“This is beyond tragic. I’m devastated. What a bad day. Michael Jackson at his sentencing bad day.”

“Stop being so melodramatic. We have great options, and I’ve already secured Maidstone, Wolffer Vineyards and, as mentioned, there’s always the Plaza.”

“But I don’t want to get married on some herringbone parquet floor where guests get real psyched to do the electric slide or get my dress dusted from saying my vows in the middle of a grape field. I don’t even like wine—I’m more of a vodka girl. I want to get married in my house. What’s the point of having a childhood home if it won’t be properly commemorated, sold just before I get married?”

I thought of Jackie (Jacqueline Bouvier, more specifically).

“Like Hammersmith.”

“We need to hammer what?”

“Hammersmith! Where Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy were married.”

“You are such the dreamer.”

My mother just then patted me on the head. Like a dog. Which happened to come yapping into the kitchen. A pug with an alarming nasal infection moved toward me with the waddle of a fair-skinned tourist after their first day in the Galapagos and missed patch of sunblock behind his knees.

This pug approached me or, more precisely, my foot and fell instantly in lust.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, toeing it off me unsuccessfully.

“That’s Mao, part of Oliver’s package to return back to New York.”

Package? Oliver, my younger brother, had the life of a GE CEO before the days of Enron.

“And don’t get too attached, darling. I am just testing Mao out.”

“Testing him out? He’s not an espresso machine.”

Just then, Mao took a break from violating my leg to give a few sneezes and a burp.

“Then again, he certainly sounds like an espresso machine,” I said, watching him return to his conquest.

“Mom, can you please tell Mao to ease up on the PDA. What’s he on? Doggie Viagra? Can’t you get him some dog dildo?”

“Emily. You know fine and well that an animal of ours would never display PDA,” she said, enunciating key words. She then tried shooing him with little flutters of her hand not strong enough to whisk away a dusty gnat.

“Besides,” she started in with that matter-of-fact way of hers, “you’re entirely not his type. Completely wrong for him.”

“Right. Of course. Possibly because I’ve had my allergy shots this season.” I extended my legs to create a slingshot, clamped Mao and centered him, deeming him a pellet that I thrust across the room, successfully splattering this blobby pug against the prewar concrete wall. His skinny legs extended from his paunchy belly like a shocked Humpty Dumpty just as he was about to fall.

This made me laugh.

“Oh, Emily!” Mom scolded. “Oh, Mao!” she cried. Mother ran over to Mao, tending to him like he was her slain war hero. The image made for an unusual picture of one of those Fabio-covered romance novels, painted by the same velvet canvas artist who brought you the dogs smoking cigars while playing pool.

She was stroking his fur and whispering soothing words into his ear, so now the dog and younger brother in this family had garnered more of my mother’s maternal instinct than her firstborn. I’ve entertained the idea of being illegitimate, searching for the man that delivered our mail in the early seventies to seek a paternity test.

“This is ridiculous,” I huffed. “And why not get a real dog, the kind that doesn’t come with hidden costs from the thousand-dollar carrier cases and jeweled chokers? You’re not getting all Auntie Peg on me.”

Auntie Peg was the great-auntie who will never cease to exist. Darkening the festive mood of a holiday gathering with the obligatory ten-minute chitchat, trying to remain composed by her automated reply of “as long as you like it, dear.” Seated in her mobile armchair, a tartan blanket draped on her lap and a swarm of pugs that nipped about the tassels of her blanket like misbehaved children.

“Please don’t compare me to Auntie Peg, darling, that’s extremely inconsiderate.”

I found it interesting that Auntie Peg had the power to penetrate the hierarchical rungs set in my mother’s self-absorption.

“I’m off to the museum,” I snipped.

“The museum?”

“Yes. A public institution exhibiting paintings and other works of art.”

“Why, Emily, you couldn’t very well go to the museum dressed like that.”

I looked down to evaluate my appearance in a chiffon blouse with a cross wrap, gray pants with camel pinstripes, and a suede coat with fur trim.

“Um?”

“Emily, just look at your shoes,” she said, saying “shoes” like it was the name of the scandalous gossip target of the day.

I peered down at my just-violated toe, which had on a brown suede Puma with an orange stripe.

“I’m not going to the Costume Institute ball. I’m just getting in a bit of the arts. Since when did the museum have a dress code?”

But this was useless. I was speaking to a woman who still wore a navy blazer, ballroom gloves and Ferragamo bowed shoes every time she traveled on a commercial flight. She honored a past time when manners showed your status better than the limited edition LV bag bought after your name was crossed from a waiting list. Mom, skilled in bar car-chatter, versed in the kind of social skills where the hostess mingled with her guests while holding a tray of stuffed artichokes.

“And, Emily, we must discuss the wedding. The wedding!”

With that said, I lifted myself from my chair, gave Mao an apologetic scratch behind his ear where he returned the affection with a lick to my face (the animal was truly infatuated), a peck to my mother’s cheek as she gets kissed, never kisses, and walked out of the house with no regard to her curious rumbles that trailed me.

Feeling insecure about my sneakers, I decided to forego the Met for a little window indulging. I walked along Madison, passing the display booth boutiques with storefronts peddling clothes propped on invisible silhouettes in the same positions featured in the shopping pages of the fashion magazines. I zigzagged through other walkers in congested midtown. Looked up as the buildings stretched to the sky while we clambered at their base.

I passed the imperious lions that guard the New York Public Library, walked under the shadowed gleams of the Chrysler. Chose the left breach imposed by the Flatiron and stopped to buy an apple at the farmer’s market in Union Square. With the sustenance gained from chomping on a picked-from-Amish-hands piece of fruit, feeling quite wholesome and cleansed with proletarian ethics, I finished off the last leg of my city walk to Henry’s apartment, which I’ve casually pitched as my primary residence for the past few months—living in the proverbial sin before giving my housing situation the loaded “living together” label.

Walking down East Twelfth, and if you ever assumed that a pigeon pecking in the middle of a street would be able to fly to safety from a mad city cab driver, you haven’t lived in New York, where cabbies literally pencil in road kills on that chit you assumed recorded passenger fares. I had to quickly look away when I saw that this particular fatality had trampled more than a few feathers.

Slowing my pace, Tide-scented air puffed from the basement grates of an apartment complex, slapping my ankles with that unbalanced wave of humidity you feel after stepping outside an overly air-conditioned office building. As I approached my favorite townhouse, I became exhilarated, faintly making out the owner exiting the red-painted door like a diver swimming to surface. She closed the door too quickly for me to look inside. Her dog, more appropriate for the Moors with a few ducks stuffed in its mouth, poked his muzzle in sensitive areas until she snapped a few commands in Italian. He retreated, sat and looked at her obediently until she shouted the name of a pasta sauce to switch him back on. The dog clearly understood Italian. I didn’t know Italian. In some ways, this dog was more intelligent than me.

Reaching the apartment, I had somehow forgotten about the paper trail of torn magazine pages I had left in the kitchen. Henry’s nose focused on the page that had been given the highest honor, fridge door placement. It was a picture of the most perfect butt, an extreme close-up shot barely clad in boy-cut Eres turquoise bottoms and a few specks of sand.

“Let me guess,” mused Henry. “This is your way of telling me that you’re a lesbian.”

I walked over to the refrigerator door to give the picture a closer inspection. It was truly the most spectacular piece of butt I had ever seen. A woman’s body, when perfect, blew away a male physique of rock star Rolling Stone cover proportions.

“Possibly,” I said easily. “In a repressed kind of way. But the original idea was to achieve that butt, causing guilt of extreme portions every time I opened that door for an unnecessary scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Lowfat.”

Henry opened the freezer door so it gave a lip-smacking suction, pulling out the very container of ice cream I had been trying to avoid—it was frozen yogurt, to be specific, but I had my suspicions of the labeling as semantic marketing.

“I love your butt,” he said, slapping my butt. “Now get two teaspoons and let’s polish this thing off.”

Which seemed a great idea in theory, but I was surprised that Henry had not been aware that the container was considerably light, absent in its contents aside from a teaspoonful left (a ploy one uses so you could soothe yourself by saying you were not a fully grown, oinking pig because you didn’t actually finish the entire pint), having been devoured after a night of looking at magazines, feeling inadequate with myself and resorting to the comfort of Ben & Jerry’s.

Henry peeled off the lid, his lips breaking into a supercilious smirk as he must have made a mental visual of my actions last night.

“Hmm.” I poked my head in the container. “The maid did it.”

“Maid my ass, or, truthfully, it’s your ass that’s in question here.”

I gave Henry a wounded princess look.

“And speaking of this ass,” he said, scrutinizing the picture on the fridge. “I think I know her.”

“Know her? Right. Of course. People are now recognized by their butt cheeks.”

“No. Really!” he laughed. “That’s Carmenia’s butt. You remember Carmenia, she’s that Brazilian, or is it Argentinean? That model that dated Gil Stephens.”

Gil Stephens was one of the FOX producers whom Henry and I, now strictly Henry, worked with.

“You see that raisin-shaped mole?” Henry pointed to a mole, indeed the size and shape of a raisin, just under the fold of her right cheek. My fiancé was touching a woman’s butt—the most perfect butt on the planet. The boy was basically committing adultery before my eyes.

“Henry!” I scolded, swatting his index finger away from Carmenia’s butt. “This is wrong on so many levels. First, I don’t like you ass-picking Carmenia so brazenly before me, and then why? How could you identify this glorified freckle? You must have been doing some hard-core poolside scanning to pick up that blemish.”

“Oh, Emily.”

I’ve clocked in a lot of “Oh, Emilys” today.

“Carmenia’s mole is to butt like Cindy’s mole is to upper lip,” Henry said as if reading from a legal document. “She had it surgically attached so she could ‘make her mark’ in the butt modeling business, so to speak.”

I then swiped Carmenia’s butt off the fridge and threw it into the garbage.

“She’s trash,” I said, feeling like the last unwanted squished cupcake at the end of a bake sale.

Henry opened up his arms. I had the vague impression that my body was meant to be folded into the vee he created. But I am completely uninterested in being all sweet and cuddly based on my current agitated state. His stare acted as beams, magnetizing me into his outstretched arms.

“Listen, Emily. We need to discuss our living arrangements.”

“But. But. But.”

“But what? Emily, you really must get your mind out of the trash—though Carmenia’s butt does have that effect.”

Oh, for God’s sake—enough with Carmenia’s butt, which had about as much artificial padding as my first bra (I was a late bloomer, very self-conscious back then).

“Seriously Em, now that you’re painting and with us doing the big marriage thing, it’s time we stopped living like VW Vanagon drifters. L.A. one month, my post-grad apartment a few months. We need to put down our roots. Get a warm, sunny place that we can grow with.”

“You sound like a tour guide at the Botanical Gardens.”

“I was thinking SoHo or TriBeCa—a loft perhaps. So I’ve made some appointments for us, tomorrow at four.”

“Four?”

“Four.”

I began to think of the day I had planned—buying new canvases, brushes, and supplies with no place to put them. The calls to potential wedding locations, planners, and did I want ecru invitations with a Palatino typeface or white with Caslon Open face? Should I get a personal trainer or just do an added workout from my Buns of Steel tape?

“Emily—no buts. And no butts!”

But?