Jen is standing as straight as she can, sucking in that sad post-partum sack that once housed six-pack-abs, while Marita kneels on the plush eggplant carpet and struggles with the zipper, pinching uncomfortably close to her bare bottom. The far wall looks like an explosion of a Barbie glamour trunk; wall-to-wall taffeta, crinoline, sequined shimmering sheaths. Svelte mannequins put on airs near the far end of the shop window, veils and tiaras a glitter, empire waists and A-lines suggesting a romantic deus ex sewing machina.
Jen meant to wear underwear. Jen meant to be thinner.
“You suppose to lose belly after baby, not get bigger belly,” Marita warbles through the fan of pins in her mouth. “Ughn, take deep breath” she grunts, while trying to tug the fuschia bodice to a close. It just isn’t happening.
It’s not that Jen’s really horrifically fat. It’s just that she lied when she told Alby what size to order; that Marita already had her measurements on file. She’d had it in her head she would be down 10 pounds in a month. But somehow between Jace’s silent treatment and her surreptitious days contemplating Saint’s journal and the ensuing cravings for sweets to beat the ennui these readings produce, she’s added five more pounds to her personal larder of woe. Succulent wild woman indeed. In pink. Taffeta. With rhinestones.
Jen had forgotten just how antagonistic a seamstress Marita could be. She’d been the one who recommended Marita to Alby for the wedding. Marita is accustomed to clothing a thinner and swankier version of Jen. In truth, lying to Alby about her dress size was more about saving face with Marita than any real desire to forfeit her indulgence in the chocolate covered cashews or key lime pie that seemed to be her new sex surrogate. Somehow in a single season she’d alienated both a lover and a husband and replaced them with a reckless yearning for treats. She was beginning to dread what fresh hell autumn might bring.
Rosemary is playing a game of peekaboo with Chris, and he seems to find it uproariously funny. Ack, he squawks in mock surprise, and feigns to waddle away until she swoops down and swings him up into the air. Eeeeeee, he squeals. The morning sunlight glints off his soft blond curls through the huge plate glass window that lets curious passersby witness Jen’s dilemma and Chris’s delight. Jen can smell Marita starting to sweat, a gentle waft of baby powder mixed on a deeper tone of Shalimar, with just a hint of ‘not fresh.’
“Hokay. I haft let dress out. Is no good.”
“No good,” Jen echoes.
“Go,” she says, waving her hand and wiping her brow and giving a dramatically sad sigh. “Go change.”
Indeed, were it that easy, Jen thinks.
Just as she is slinking back to her suffocating curtained corner, Alby peeks out of her much more spacious and elegantly appointed dressing room. Jen realizes she is suffering Bride envy, but really, everything about this wedding makes her feel like her ship has already sailed – and sunk.
“Pssst. Are you ready?” Alby asks them, revealing a nude and gartered thigh against a backdrop of gathered crinoline.
Marita makes a beeline for her and tugs the dress down, nearly pulling her from the dressing room. The shimmering champagne sateen catches the light and they all breathe it in. Alby, chest pushed up in a diving sweetheart neckline, glows like a hot fairy godmother in a renaissance movie.
“Beautiful! Beautiful! No one can see you haf baby! Look, a perfect hiding line,” Marita flourishes, sweeping her hands in an arc to present them with the pregnant-but-you-can’t-tell bride as if it’s her signature artwork.
At just that moment, Chris, in his newfound, unsteady gait, takes a tumble and whacks his head against the corner of the cashier counter. Like a siren ramping up for a three alarm fire, he wails with increasing intensity. Holding the unzipped dress bodice to her chest, Jen rushes over to pick him up, bending forward, then worries her butt is almost bare to the window. Rosemary sees the problem and sweeps Chris up into her arms. Exposure for naught.
“There there, shhhh,” she coos. She turns to Jen as Chris reaches for Jen. “You go change because I have a hunch I just won’t do.”
Jen now has one hand holding the fabric to her chest and one hand holding the lower part of the zipper closed. She wants to let go and hold Chris because she can see a red welt forming on the side of his upper cheek, perilously close to his right eye. Marita waves her off and she wades back to the dressing room. Chris wails even louder as she fumbles out of her constricting dress and pulls up her jeans, as if he can feel Jen’s own heart breaking.
When she returns, he fairly leaps for her from Rosemary’s arms, twisting out of her control. They always want you when the chips are down, Jen thinks as his little body shudders with sobs, his head nestled into the crook of her increasingly wet neck. She murmurs comfort noises into his silky hair, now damp from the heat and exertion of his crying.
Alby is making commiserating sounds and is moving toward Chris, whose face is now snot-laden and tear stained. I see Marita tense as Alby moves closer.
“No no, the dress, wait til baby done crying,” she mutters, thrusting out her hand as if to protect Alby from imminent contamination.
Alby pecks Chris on the forehead and he settles down to a whimper. She stays frozen, slightly bent over, for just a beat too long.
“Hey Jen, who’s that guy staring at you,” she says, looking beyond her out the plate glass window.
“No, don’t turn around!” says Rosemary, who’s already turned.
But it’s too late, Jen turns, and blanches. It’s Robert. Robert in a wheel chair. Robert, to whom until last month and Saint’s journal, Jen had barely given a thought to in seven years. Jen makes her way to the door but he wheels away with demon speed. The bells on the door jingle as she open them, Chris still in her arms, and shouts after him. He weaves around surprised pedestrians on the sidewalk in front of the quaint, turn-of-the-century reclaimed shops that line the street. He turns a corner and is gone. This city is lousy with ghosts, Jen thinks.
She turns to Rosemary. “How the hell did YOU know who that was?” she asks, half whispering because she doesn’t want to upset Chris, who has now moved into the last stages of his grief – sporadic deep sighs.
“Story for another time,” Rosemary says rather abruptly.
“I think now’s a good time,” Jen says. She’s livid. Rosemary has been her confidant for years. She knows all the guilt Jen used to tote around over Robert. She knows how Jen has wondered and wondered what became of him. Never once did she give Jen the slightest clue she had any idea who he was.
“Let’s talk about it over lunch, when Alby’s done here,” Rosemary says, glaring at Jen.
Right. Here’s Alby at her one dress fitting, one of those moments that is supposed to be some kind of sisterhood milestone, and here Jen is, infusing her moment with a bruised baby, a full-size lie and the ghost of broken lovers past. She accepts the glare with a nod and drops the subject.
They turn to Alby and simultaneously start to gush.
But they don’t talk about it at lunch, because by lunch time, Chris’s welt looks swollen and Jen feels like he’s had enough adventure for the day, and she just wants to go home and get him fed and have some quiet time to herself. So Rosemary offers to drive her home while Alby runs some errands and the two of them agree to meet up for the tastings at the caterer after she’s dropped Jen off. Jen feels bad on two fronts, the first being that she could not convince Jace to give her the car this morning, so now she’s messed up the day; the second being she knows Alby wanted her to do the tastings with them, since she knows her way around a canapé. But she just can’t concentrate on these things when Chris is with her – it’s like she doesn’t have the attention span to divide her focus.
Rosemary hates driving, so Jen’s mindful of the fact that it would not be wise to start an argument while she’s taking them home. Jen waits until she pulls into the lane.
“Okay, I’m sorry, but I really have to know how you know Robert.”
Rosemary sighs and turns off the engine. She chews her lip a little, then turns toward Jen.
“I can’t stay and talk this out. You and I are all Alby’s really got in this marriage deal, you know. George has been conspicuously absent,” Rosemary says.
“I know. Just the short strokes. Please,” Jen says.
“We hired him to teach theatre arts two years ago when Lynda left,” she said.
“He lost his job at Central? Because of the accident?”
“Not exactly. He was on disability for a while, but eventually went back. I think he had some run-ins with the new principal. When Lynda’s job opened, he put in for it.”
“And what, you hired him out of some kind of misguided sympathy?”
Rosemary flushes and clenches her jaw. Jen can almost hear her count to ten.
“No Jen, I recommended him for hire because he had the most seniority and he’s the best director a high school drama club can get, even if he’s slightly nuts. Unlike Lynda, he can also actually TEACH English. I also have a boatload of affluent parents in my district whose precious little snowflakes have designs on Broadway, you know. We have the best-funded drama club in the county. The department needed someone with Robert’s cache.”
“So, why didn’t you tell me,” Jen says, although as soon as the words are out of her mouth she realizes it’s a stupid question. She wouldn’t have told her either.
“You weren’t even living here when it happened. I just decided you didn’t need to worry about it and I didn’t need to be a go between. It’s just business. I’m his department head. I need to keep the relationship professional. He doesn’t even know I know you. At least, he didn’t until today.”
“So the wheelchair…They had said he’d likely recover…”
“He did recover. But he’d scheduled surgery as soon as the school year ended, for a spinal fusion and disc replacement. He’s had a lot of back problems and finally decided to do it. He’s hoping to be back in September, but that will depend on how his rehab goes. I suspect that’s why he’s using the chair. They gave him a 50/50 chance for improvement. At least, he hasn’t told me any differently. Listen, can we not talk about this for right now?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” Jen says, though she feels like crying. She gets Chris out of the car and heads for the house, increasingly her cocoon, her refuge, her hideaway. But her river haven is peopled with the same ghosts. They flow from Saint’s journal just like the river flows past her house, sparkling blue jewels on top, turbid undertow below.