She looks at Lauren, seated before the mirror, postcards tucked into the frame at its perimeter. Sarah is far from the vanity, a mercy that she doesn’t have to study her own face, reflected back at her over Ines’s shoulder. She is pretty, Lauren, always has been. A mystery, how the alignment of your features determines so much. It’s an accident. Her brothers are not handsome; they’re unremarkable. Lauren has always been otherwise. When you are pretty, people notice it the first time they see you, so Sarah had seen it, been drawn to it, known immediately that she wanted to claim it, claim her friendship, and she had. She remembers it quite clearly. That the friendship endured turns out to be one of those things: unplanned for, but welcome. She needs her. She understands Lauren. She relishes knowing her, and if there have been times, times when they were younger, mostly, when she envied her—though, no, there haven’t been. It wasn’t envy so much as magic Sarah wished; she wanted to be Lauren, once, though she doesn’t any longer. Her prettiness hasn’t faded, has in fact grown, and Sarah takes a strange pride in this. She’s chosen wisely.
“Look at me, please,” Ines whispers, her voice intent yet somehow far away.
“Sorry,” Sarah says, shifting eyes forward.
“How are you doing over there?” Lauren asks.
“Holding up,” Sarah says. She hasn’t snapped at anyone or thrown a tantrum about anything, but still, everyone’s using a gentle, encouraging tone with her. She’s trying not to let it irritate her. They’re acting like she needs to be placated, which is making her want to act like a monster.
“Almost done,” Ines says.
“You look amazing!” Lauren’s stood, slipped away from Danielle, and is standing behind Ines.
Sarah opens her eyes. The two of them, Ines and Lauren, beaming down at her, like a child they’re proud of. “Do I?” She wants to know, she realizes as soon as she’s said it.
“You do,” Lauren says. Her smile takes over her face. She smiles with her mouth, but also her eyes, her voice, her being.
Danielle comes over to inspect Sarah. “Gorgeous,” she says.
“You guys are miracle workers,” Sarah says.
“Shhh,” Lauren says. “You always look great. You look like yourself. Your best self. Isn’t that what the magazines say you’re supposed to be?”
Sarah goes into the bathroom, brushes her teeth in one of the matching sinks—the left, she’s always preferred the left-hand one. Ines has brought a toothbrush, bright orange, still in its plastic package, and a miniature tube of toothpaste. Sarah hadn’t expected these women to be so thorough, but she’s grateful. She feels bad that she’s going to have to brush her teeth, muss her face, but whatever—Ines works for her, after all.
She finishes, tries and fails to dry her mouth without smudging the lips, stains the towel, even, but she doesn’t care. She cups nose and mouth with her palm, exhales, tries to breathe in her breath, gauge the smell, but of course, she can’t; this never works, though everyone tries it. There’s smoke in her hair, across her shoulders, a whisper of it, a suggestion, she’s sure of it. Does it matter? Downstairs, it’ll be warm—all those tuxedoed bodies, dancing, waiters weaving through the crowd with trays bearing a crisp white wine, which she thought would make it seem more like summer, a dark, heavy red, and waters, still and sparkling, the latter with pretty twists of lemon and lime. The room will smell like sweat and bodies, like flowers, like food—little shots of a creamy tomato soup in tiny glasses, mushrooms stuffed and topped with a sprinkling of bright green chive, a sweet little concoction of beet, salty goat cheese, and a single, candied pecan. No one will notice the touch of smoke lingering about Sarah’s body, certainly not her parents, who seemed never to notice the smoke or beer on her breath those years she and Lauren—and it was always with Lauren that she got up to such things—came back to this house stinking of both.
Of course, there’s Dan. He notices everything. No matter; he’s too logical to care. Even when it’s something that annoys him, he never gets impatient. To those things—not refilling the ice trays, say—he proposes a logical response—buying a new refrigerator, say, one with an icemaker built in. That’s Dan. On television and in movies, people who are getting married talk about wanting to spend the rest of their lives with someone. That doesn’t seem like something a normal person would say in reality. Sarah doesn’t think people are designed to think about the rest of their lives. If we had to grapple with that, we’d never get anything done.
She’s not marrying Dan because he’s the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, though she will, and that’s great, that’s fine, but in a way, it’s the added bonus. The reason she’s marrying him is because he, exasperated about her not refilling the ice cube trays, suggested that they buy a new fridge. This somehow seems to explain everything. Does she love him? Of course, what a stupid question. What do you do with that love but get married, and maintain it?
Sometimes Sarah thinks: What if this is something only the two of them have discovered, that only the two of them know about, and what if everyone else really is unhappily married? She’s glad they’re getting married. She can’t imagine her life without Dan, because this life they’ve started on is so good, and she believes it will only get better. She and Dan have never discussed this, not in these terms, this question of their love, their reasons for getting married, their expectations for that hopefully long arc of the rest of their lives. She assumes that it’s a condition of their being so well suited to each other that it’s redundant to even discuss it. She knows they share the same expectations, believe the same things. She knows because it’s always been this way.
Chapter 16