10
i shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that there was a man three blocks away from the boarding house who specialized in bespoke wedding-cake toppers. It was Flax Hill, town of specialists. He had a storefront full of ready-made cake toppers available for sale. Clay ballerinas and baseball players and owls, numbers shaped out of wax, all of which were far less unsettling than the wedding-cake toppers. Each tiny bride and groom had this beseeching smile painted onto their face. The kind of smile that suggested dark magic was afoot, a switch had been made, the couple leading the first dance were not who they claimed to be, and wouldn’t someone please intervene? That’s what I’d think if I saw a pair of smiles like that on top of a wedding cake, anyway. But Webster had set her heart on having a pair of cake toppers made by this particular specialist. Something about his father having made her parents’ cake toppers, and his grandfather having made her grandparents’ . . . so I sat with her while she went through photographs of her and Ted together. Mr. Cake Topper Specialist wanted the photographs to work from, and she dismissed every photo I suggested. “Maybe we’ll have to take a new one,” she said.
I’d collected my bridesmaid’s dress from the seamstress’s store the day before and run into a couple of Webster’s other bridesmaids. We’d debated whether or not to tell her that if she didn’t end her diet now she wouldn’t look pretty on the day, just brittle. As her friend Jean put it: “She’s got no business getting this thin for a December wedding. If there’s snow, she’ll catch pneumonia so quick she won’t know what’s hit her.”
“Ted keeps saying, ‘Let’s just elope,’” Webster said, and gave me such a wicked grin that I didn’t have the heart to say anything about brittleness.
Brenda, Webster’s neighbor, knocked on the door. “You’ve got a gentleman caller, Novak. No, no, not Loverboy. Though it could be Loverboy Mark Two. He says it can’t wait.”
“Is he handsome?” Webster asked, following me to the staircase. Brenda shrugged. “I guess so. In a freckled kind of way. Some girls get all the luck.”
Webster and I took a peek over the banister. We saw a mop of light brown hair, then Charlie Vacic looked up and gave us the full winsome-puppy-dog treatment. I was already on my way down the stairs, so the push Webster gave me was wholly unnecessary, as was her crowing that she was going to tell Arturo on me, which brought seven of our fellow tenants out onto the landing to see who I was two-timing my fiancé with.
“Hi,” I said, pulling him into the front parlor and closing the door behind us. “What are you doing here?”
“How are you, Charlie, long time no see, how’s med school, was it a long bus ride, can I offer you something to drink?” Charlie said. He dropped into an armchair and closed his eyes. I sat down too, in the chair opposite his. My knees had turned to water.
“I’m well, thank you, Boy,” he supplied. “Yes, it has been a while. Med school’s fine, I’m not failing, and I’ve avoided hypochondria by deciding my time’s up when it’s up. The bus ride aged me by about ten years and a cold beverage would be the best thing that could happen to me right now.”
What could I do or say, other than bring him a glass of someone else’s root beer that I found in the icebox? He drained the glass without speaking, so I got him a refill. Then he was ready to talk.
“I got your letter. Are you really getting married?”
I looked into his eyes. He couldn’t return the gaze steadily, kept focusing on my left eye, then on my right. I could guess what he was thinking: that there were two of me, that was the explanation, that was why I was acting like this. I had applied this rationale to the rat catcher the first time he’d punched me. First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you’ve done wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn’t a reason, and it isn’t two people you’re dealing with, just one. The same one every time. Keep switching eyes all you want, Charlie. You’re going to hate the conclusion you reach.
I answered: “Yes, Charlie, it’s true.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
He loosened his collar, swallowed air. “Why?”
He smiled when I didn’t answer. Not an amused smile, a nervous one. The quirk at the left corner of his mouth when he smiled. For so long I’d wanted to kiss him just there. He was Charlie. Maybe I could tell him: Listen, there’s this little girl who makes herself laugh. You hear her from the other room, and when you try to get her to explain, she just says: “Don’t worry about it.” And maybe it’s the thief in me, but I think this girl is mine, and that when she and I are around each other, we’re giving each other something we’ve never had, or taking back something we’ve lost. Maybe Charlie would say: Let’s kidnap her, go to Europe, and raise her as our own. We’re young. Starting over won’t be so hard for us. But even if some madcap spirit did pick that moment to possess Charlie Vacic, what I felt for the girl wasn’t all that distinct from what I felt for her father.
“I wish you’d written to let me know you were coming,” I said. “Where are you staying?”
“I’ll find someplace. Take it easy, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Tomorrow, probably. Why are you doing this, Boy? Don’t you understand that I just want to take care of you any way I can? Or do you think I don’t know what I’m saying when I say things like that?”
“I love you,” I said, then sat there, appalled at what had just come out of my mouth.
He moved forward in his chair, rested his forehead against mine. “I know. So, please, Boy. I’m asking you, please. Don’t marry him.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of, Charlie. That’s not what I want.”
“How dare you write me a letter like that? You wanted me to come here and say this. Don’t marry him.”
Just one kiss, I thought. But then I couldn’t pull away.
Out in the hallway, Mia bawled: “Anyone seen Boy Novak? That girl owes me a pastrami sandwich.” That might have been her way of making a tactful entrance. We’d let go of each other by the time she tried the door handle. I introduced them, praying Mia wouldn’t say “That Charlie?” She didn’t.
Instead she said: “Come to lunch with us,” and looked up at him with a smile that made me want to stick a No Trespassing sign on him. Charlie excused himself on the grounds of having to find a room, but once Mia and I found a quiet booth at the diner, I had words with her about that smile she’d given him. Not straightforward words; I just asked a few questions about her love life, whether she was seeing anyone she liked, etc.
“No, not really—I’m just snacking right now.”
“Snacking, Mia?”
“That’s the only way I can think of to put it to you, my dear, innocent Boy. But about that Charlie . . . why did he say ‘Good-bye’ when he left? I mean, ‘Good-bye,’ not ‘See you later.’ Isn’t he in town to see you? Did you just break his heart? Don’t you know how to let ’em down easy?”
—
webster was all aglow at her wedding, and Ted was in awe.
(“I get to grow old with this woman? This woman right here?”
Arturo slung an arm around his neck and told him it was clearly a charity case.)
There was hardly a dry eye in the house. The miniature Ted and miniature Webster stood on top of the cake looking resigned, if not content. They realized that nobody was even going to think about rescuing them. We filled the reception room with paper flowers that each of us seven bridesmaids had spent a total of twenty-one hours folding—three hours a day for a week. It was gratifying that Webster sobbed over the flowers. She seemed to understand that we were trying to say good luck and trying to say that we were there just in case. Her official name might be Mrs. Ted Murray now, and she might have forsaken the Mamie Eisenhower haircut for long romantic waves that she flung to and fro like some kind of cape, but to me she was just the usual Veronica Webster.
Webster and Ted were on honeymoon when I married Arturo at Worcester City Hall. Olivia, Gerald, and Vivian were there. Mia too, and Snow. I hadn’t asked Mrs. Fletcher because she’d made it clear that she disapproved. I hadn’t asked Agnes because being Julia’s mother would have made the ceremony difficult for her. Mia gave me away, and I think Olivia was scandalized by that, but managed not to comment. I wore a plain dress that was somewhere between white and gray; its skirt was long and straight, and Snow said that when I stood still, I looked like a statue. Arturo wore a red bow tie and his hair slicked back. And his power doubled, maybe even tripled—that power he had of making me feel certain. The black of his hair, the red of his tie, the gold band I slipped onto his finger. Outside it snowed lightly, lifelessly, thousands of white butterflies falling to earth. Becoming Mrs. Whitman was a quiet affair that I didn’t have to diet for.