Читать книгу It's My Wedding Too - Sharon Naylor - Страница 7

Normally, Anthony and I disagree about the term “fashionably late.” He thinks it’s fine to show up to any event a half hour later than promised, while I think of that as inconsiderate of others and just generally bad taste. But tonight he’s switched over to my side of the coin. I’ve never seen him dress and groom and grab his coat and keys so quickly. I’ve never seen him look with such wide eyes at his watch, then at the clock on the wall, as if expecting one of them to give us fifteen minutes extra. So shifty. So nervous. Dropping things. Imploring me with a raised eyebrow to hurry up and get that last earring in so we can go. I had to suppress a smile, because this was no time to get into that argument again. Especially because I knew exactly why he’d thrown his previous position out the window and now resembled me urging him to get a move on so we can make the 9:15 movie.

“Ready yet?” he asks again, probably thinking I’m deliberately fumbling with my necklace clasp now just to annoy him.

“Just about,” I sing, a little too happy and casual for his tastes tonight.

“Come on, Emilie. I don’t want them there without us,” he pleads, sounding like a little boy. It’s so rare to hear him like this, I actually think it’s adorable. This is a man who bosses multinational corporations around and scares the living daylights out of CEOs with just a glance and the readying of his pen. This is a man who commands the best tables at restaurants on the power of his name alone. And here he is whining like a six-year-old boy who doesn’t want to miss the ice cream truck.

“I know,” I lower my voice and now make more of an effort to hurry through spraying my perfume in the air and walking through the mist, during which I, of course, forget to close my eyes and cost us a valuable ten seconds of time while I wave both my hands furiously in front of my face, hoping the slight whiff of air will keep the tears from forming. It doesn’t. Even with my head tilted back, as if that would help, my eyes immediately fill with protective droplets. Now I have to touch up my makeup again.

“Em, come on,” he pleads again. We have a long ride to my mother’s house, and I am half blind and tearing like I’ve just cut onions as I stumble out to the car, arms outstretched and feeling for the door handle.

When we arrive, the cars are all in line in Delilah’s circular cobblestone driveway. Candles are lit in each window, which gives the house some appearance of warmth and charm in the darkness (otherwise it quite resembles a haunted mansion with its dramatic stone cuts and gables, the gargoyles on the corner eaves like a classic Old World New York City hotel). Anthony skids the car into an available spot while the red-jacketed valet looks on in stunned and insulted silence. He hurries forward and for a minute forgets that I am with him.

“Are they here?” I call out from still inside the car, with the door swung open, trying to arrange my skirt so that I don’t flash the valets as a little compensation for us speeding right by them. I stand finally, tottering on my heels on the cobblestone surface of the driveway.

“I don’t…I don’t see it…” Anthony is tall, but he’s rising on his toes to try to spot the Mazda among the Lexuses (Lexi?), Mercedes and, inexplicably, minivans.

“Good,” I release my shoulders down a half inch and breathe fully for the first time in an hour. Anthony has driven like a—

“Oh God!” Anthony deflates, physically sinks to what looks like two inches shorter than usual, then turns to me with a white face and dull eyes. “It’s here.”

“They’re here?” Now I’m stricken and white with anxiety, the blood sound rushing in my ears as I’m sure his was as well. Pure panic. His parents are like him, never on time to anything. And now we were out here in the driveway and they were inside my mother’s house, at my mother’s party, having probably met her already. Without us. That could not be good. Worst case scenario.

“Disaster,” whispers Anthony and after a split second to lock eyes in mutual silent planning, together we run for the front door. Running in stilettos is never pretty, but try it on a cobblestone driveway. You need ankles of steel. I must have looked like I was running over hot coals, all flailing and awkward-legged, moving forward and trying to stay upright, not being able to focus on much but seeing the back flaps of Anthony’s jacket waving at me as a fashion taunt. And did I mention that it’s hard to come to a stop while wearing stilettos and running? I’m sure the guests inside heard the thud when I hit the door, and only much, much later, when perspective allows you to look back and laugh at a moment of pure mortification, did Anthony admit that he thought I was actually trying to break the door down with my shoulder.

Locked.

We ring the bell, and the door magically slides open by no one in particular that we could make eye contact with, because the moment we were inside we snapped into reconnaissance mode. Scanning the crowd for his parents and my mother, marching forward with dead-serious purpose, we wove around anything in our path to find them. Time was moving in an off-kilter pace, with edges blurred and no sound seeming to come from any of the partygoers’ mouths. Adrenaline apparently makes you deaf too. People smiled at us, and in our fierce tunnel vision, we looked right through them, ignored them. We really know how to make an entrance.

It was our engagement party. We were the guests of honor, and we all but plowed through groups of our well-wishers, elbowed away gushing and smothering great-aunts, snubbed adorably dressed little girls with bows in their hair and a starstruck look in their eyes, twirled tuxedo-clad waiters in our wake as they pirouetted to save their trays of champagne and salmon crudité from our forceful and focused path. We were actually running now. Anthony pulled me by the hand through any open pathway, slaloming around groupings of chairs, turning corners around marble columns, and scanning the crowd with osprey vision for any sign of two somewhat short Italians undoubtedly hovering in the corner in an overwhelmed daze.

Room to room the search went on, with us blowing through in fast-forward with the sound off. And just before we took the stairs two at a time to search the bathrooms and bedrooms upstairs, I saw it happen. My eyes stopped in mid-scan and locked on the scene, zooming in with the clearest of precision. It was, of course, the first thing I saw clearly all night.

At the doorway to the kitchen (where else would Carmela be?), there she stood.

I could only see her upswept twist of a hairdo, home-done and with some flyaways poking out of her hair clip, and the red-flushed side of her face, her mouth open, slack in disbelief. She wore a black dress with a white cameo pin at the neck, which explains the confusion. She was looking down at her hands, at the fur coat she now held loosely in them. And her face rose blankly when Delilah’s publisher, Roger, dropped his hat in her hands and kept walking toward the bar, deep in conversation with Delilah’s publicist. From the side, another guest draped a fur over Carmela’s now full hands, and Carmela’s head turned again in a slow, dumbstruck way as it all started to add up…

They think she’s the maid.

“Anthony!” I pulled him by the back of his jacket, depending on his old soccer days’ agility to keep from tumbling backward into a certain head injury on the marble floor, and pushed my way through more guests to reach her. Anthony was paper white when he arrived behind me.

“Carmela!” I hugged her while Anthony deftly slid the jackets out of her hands. The hat he let drop to the floor. “Sorry we’re late, we had a terrible time with traffic, and we tried to call you but you’d already left…” My plan of diversion was just to keep talking nonstop. Confuse her so she doesn’t remember that she’s just been mistaken for the help.

“Some museum this is!” Anthony’s father, Vic, appeared from the kitchen, chewing on a biscotti that he’d stolen from the not-yet-ready-to-be-served dessert trays. “Jesus! Look at this place!”

“Dad,” Anthony warned and with a stiff shake of their hands and a silent male reminder through the eyes, the men were behaving and calm and ready to get drinks at one of the three bars spread throughout the downstairs of the house.

“You grew up here?” Carmela asked with her deep brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly, like she didn’t even want to hear the answer.

“No,” I said with an enormous smile, showing her that I was glad not to have grown up in splendor. “We lived in Nutley before this.”

The magic word. Nutley. Carmela softened. I was back to size with her again.

“This is quite a…” Carmela couldn’t find the words.

“Yes, it is,” I stopped her, not even knowing what I’d answered. Anthony formed the international signal for do you want a drink? and I held up four fingers. And keep them coming.

Carmela stood with her back to the wall, fingering the leaves on a potted ficus tree, and pulling her hand back slightly when she figured out by touch that it was real. The edges of her mouth lowered slightly, and she looked at the china cabinet. Nothing fake there either. I heard her sigh, then wondered what level of hell this evening was going to sink to.

Quite the thought for a bride-to-be at her engagement party. What level of hell will this evening sink to? And right on cue, there was Delilah. She stood still when she saw us, didn’t rush forward for a hug. She wore an off-white, tailored suit dress with clear Swarovski crystal beading on each lapel, an off-white rose corsage with pearl accents, quadruple-strand pearl necklace, bracelet and drop earrings of pearl and diamond. Her hair was pulled up expertly and flyaway-free in a tight chignon with pearl pin accents at the gathering, and she looked young and fresh and radiant…like a bride herself. No one could keep their eyes off her, and I heard three “Delilah, you look fabulous!’s” as she made her way over.

She stopped four feet away, close enough only for a handshake, and she was looking down. I followed her gaze, which is hard to do from the side, and focused first on Carmela’s hand. No big rings on it, not a big deal. Maybe she’s looking at her manicure. Home-done, again no big deal, and Delilah wouldn’t stare unblinkingly in shock at a rather benign manicure. What was she looking at so intently?

My eye traveled down and my stomach lurched.

White shoes.

Carmela had on white shoes. After Labor Day.

Where the hell is Anthony with my drink?

Carmela had her eye on something too. The quadruple strand of pearls? The smooth Botox work on Delilah’s forehead? Delilah’s nuclear-white teeth? Carmela was narrowing her eyes, trying to see something without her glasses, and Delilah instinctively brought her hand up to her mouth. Was it her breath? Lipstick on her teeth? Parsley caught there?

Carmela would tell me much later that she hadn’t been looking at anything in particular. She just wanted Delilah to feel self-conscious about something. Who is this woman? I remember thinking when the truth came out. Mother Earth has an insidious side.

“Mother,” I started the official introductions after the showdown at the Insecurity Corral had ended. “This is Anthony’s mother, Carmela Cantano. Carmela, this is my mother, Delilah Winchester.”

The women shook hands icily, broke out the no-teeth smiles, and simultaneously tilted their heads while chirping out hellos.

“This is a lovely party, Dinah,” Carmela complimented, nodding over her shoulder at the vast display of grandiosity she saw. Crystal, china, small and classy servings of butternut squash risotto presented on individual silver spoons.

“It’s Delilah,” my mother purred, deflecting the shot and rising further above. “And thank you. It’s the least I could do for the kids.”

The least I could do. Even I winced at that one.

“Well, it certainly is grand,” Carmela said quickly. “So…Emilie tells us you write romance novels?”

Delilah lifted her chin. “Not romance novels, darling…romance epics.”

Anthony arrived with our drinks just in time. How am I going to find some common ground between them? I wondered, draining my pomegranate-colored champagne in two swallows. The only thing these two women have in common are that they both have their original sets of ovaries and they both hate Mayor Bloomberg for being a poor imitation of Mayor Giuliani, like he’s just filling in for the real one.

“Mother,” I tried again, silently pushing away any talk of ovaries and premenopause. “Carmela volunteers at the hospital. She cradles the preemies, to give them human contact.”

Delilah immediately turned to barrel-chested Vic, who had sidled up at the wrong moment. “Well, that must make you feel secure,” she said, and I think we were all stunned. “That she spends her time with infants…you know where she is all the time.”

God, Mother, stop.

Blank stares only pushed her on, and I heard the champagne’s effect on her tongue. “Because sometimes you don’t know…”

Was she flirting with Anthony’s father? Could that slurred nonsense be called flirting?

“Right,” Anthony said. “Anyway…”

“Mother,” I started to try again, thinking something gardening would work. But Anthony nudged me, the international sign for give it up, babe.

“Yes, darling?” Delilah sparkled, her eyes flat.

“Um…” Nothing. I had nothing. “This is a lovely party.”

For the rest of the night, I was the Jane Goodall of my own engagement party, always tracking, observing, keeping a keen eye on the interactions between the two females of the species, noticing the dominance displays, the avoidance. As Carmela circled through the living room, touching and eyeing everything from the ornate molding of the mirrors to the gold bookends that held Delilah’s library (and she is the Tom Clancy of romance novelists…each book is more than 500 pages), I always knew where Delilah was in relation to her. I tried to see this ballroom of a living room through her eyes, wondering what she was thinking about the artwork, the sculptures, the photos of my mother with the actresses who have played her roles in TV movies.

And I watched Delilah, getting more drunk by the minute, running her hand over the collar and bicep of every man she spoke to, even the waiters. Tucking a fallen curl behind her ear and laughing like a teenager. I hadn’t seen her eat anything all night.

“Korean duck?” Anthony appeared out of nowhere, with a plate full of Asian eats and aromatic noodles.

“No thanks,” I sighed. “I’m skipping the main courses and going right for the dessert.”

“Ahh…it’s a chocolate ganache moment,” he teased and kissed me on the ear. I melted slightly, leaned against him, untensed for a moment to smile at yet another guest I didn’t know wishing us well. At least this one got our names right. I’ve been Amy, Allison, Emmeline, and Emsy all night. Twice I’ve had my cheek pinched, twice the other kind of cheek pinched, three times hugged until breathing was difficult, and about six times told what Viagra can do for our sex life and a happy marriage in the future. All I knew was that there were entirely too many smiling elderly gentlemen in the room. Made me want to hide the tray of oysters…and my mother.

“They’re not clicking,” Anthony said, and for a moment I associated the comment with these old men’s false teeth. Ah, pomegranate champagne, deliver me from reason.

“Huh?” I stepped back onto my other heel.

“The mothers.”

“Ah, yes…the mothers.”

The mothers of all evil, the mother hens, the mother—

“So what is it, do you think?”

“What is what?” I blinked a few times and tried to focus on the love of my life, who with a reassuring hand on my shoulder told me he knew I was tipped.

“What is it that’s making them act this way? So hostile. Some kind of class warfare?”

I looked up at him, to see if that was a joke, or if he was serious. He was serious.

And before I could open my mouth, his mother approached us with a thin smile and her husband yawning behind her. “So…Emilie…”

I created a smile for her. “Yes?”

Cautiously, with an eyebrow raised, she said, “You don’t have fur coats too, do you?”

How blessedly perfect a moment, right then, for the chefs to light the bananas flambé, sending giant lines of orange flame in dramatic, balletic curls to the top of the room. Perfect. Just perfect.