2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (32 page)

Wednesday, February 23
^rd

“Aren’t we going to lunch uptown?” Catherine asked,
suddenly feeling like perhaps she’d been conned, a little girl beckoned into a
car with the offer of candy. They were heading straight for the bridge to
Jersey.

“Lunch,” Tara chuckled wickedly.

“Where are we going then? Is it a surprise wedding
shower?” Catherine asked, rubbing her hands together deliciously, thinking of
tiny finger sandwiches and petit fours and all kinds of other showery types of
foods that she would just
have
to eat as the polite bride of honor—which
was fine because everyone knew that tiny things hold fewer calories and
therefore little harm. 

Tara said nothing.

“Don’t worry, I’ll act really surprised.”

“I’m sure you will,” she said under her breath.

Catherine watched her at the wheel, feeling slightly
possessive of the old sedan that had done her well for years. But it was just
one more thing to muck up the move when Fynn had two trucks and a motorcycle
waiting in Minnesota for them to share. The old girl belonged in New York anyway,
fighting to the end against traffic and battling it out for parking spaces, so
she’d bequeathed it to Tara and was now at her mercy to get around if it was
beyond public transport.

Signs for the Jersey Turnpike appeared up ahead and she
cried out, “Wait, are we going all the way to Philly? … But I need to finish
packing!”

“It’s only a couple hours out of the way. Don’t be so
melodramatic.”

But that’s what I’m good at,
she thought. “I
mean it, Tara. I don’t have time for detours. I want to be on the road first
thing Friday—nothing left behind.”

“Except your youth,” Tara pointed out.

“Lmao,” Catherine growled.

“I’ll help you pack when we get back.”

“Whatever.”

“Hey, do you want some company on the ride to
Minnesota?”

“I’ve heard there’s a radio in the truck.” Catherine jabbed.

“I’m serious. I’ll come with you if you want.”

“How do you even have the time, working girl?”

“I quit.” Tara shrugged.

“You quit?”

“It just isn’t fun without you there.”

“Aw, isn’t that sweet.” And Catherine meant it. “But
remember, you’re subletting my apartment until the lease is up. You better be
able to pay your rent or I’m in deep shit.”

“Oh, I can pay the rent.”

“What are you going to do, turn tricks at night?”

“I have money, bee-atch. Plenty of dough.”

*****

“Wait, I thought we were doing something
fun,
”
Catherine stressed, as they pulled into the parking lot of a bridal dress shop where
Lacey and Georgia were already waiting for them. “This isn’t another
intervention….” She could feel the dainty finger foods she’d had on the brain
for two hours slipping out of her imaginary grasp. “Is this where you guys say
that I’m never going to fit my dress and I need to face up to it now before I
end up doing
The
Emperor’s New Clothes
bit down the aisle?” She’d
really hoped her friends would have more faith in her. She’d been starving
herself for days, down to just two sensible meals and a seven-M&M chaser
after each of those, and she was starting to believe she just might be able to squeeze
into the dress by the 4
^th
. Especially if she only had to wear it
down the aisle and for pictures, and she didn’t have to twist or bend or
breathe too much. She could always change for the reception part.

“You think I want to be here either?” Tara asked
plainly. “They made me do it.”

Georgia opened Catherine’s car door with a chauffer’s flourish
and Lacey pulled her up out of her seat. “We picked out the
perfect
bridesmaid
dresses,” they said in unison, absolutely beaming.

Tara rolled her eyes practically right out of her head
at the thought that they could pick out
anything
perfect
for her
.

Catherine breathed a sigh of relief. At least this was
Tara’s hell that she was visiting and not her own. She didn’t have the money
for a new dress. Or the patience for finding one. And she was really rather
attached to the one that she already had, seeing as how it was her constant
apartment companion, more of a roommate really, gently reminding her what she
was shooting for. And after she was married she could put it in storage or sell
it or donate it, and gorge herself on fried things and baked things and frosted
things and fatty-fat-fatso things.

She followed Lacey and Georgia into the shop with Tara
lagging behind. As she waited on the couch to be
wowed
, she noticed a
dish of Jordan almonds perched next to her on the end table. Such boring candy!
Why they were so intrinsically attached to weddings was a mystery hardly worth
considering. What was worth considering, as her mind wandered to where her
stomach was, was how many of them she could fit in her mouth at one time… and
her purse… and her pockets for the ride home, too.

“Ta-da!” Tara announced with a dramatic B-rate flourish,
twirling around in front of her.

“
That’s
the dress?” Catherine gazed upon her in
awe.

“What? You don’t like it?” Georgia asked, rushing out
from behind curtain number three, half-zipped; followed by Lacey from number
two, panic in her eyes.

“No, not at all.”

“You don’t?” Lacey eked out, crestfallen.

“No, I mean it’s so… perfect.” Everything else had
been such a nightmare so far that she had only imagined that the bridesmaid
dresses would be just as awful—a horrible compromise dress no one liked or
looked good in that was purely chosen because it was halfway between too many buckles
and peekaboo cutouts on the one end, and too stuffy and conservative on the
other.

“Lacey actually found them,” Georgia noted charitably.

“Wow, Lacey,” Catherine breathed, “you have great
taste.” The deep purple would be striking against her just-off-white gown. The
tiniest cap sleeves, square neckline, and princess seaming and waistline, made
them elegant and beautiful in an old-world style that conjured European castles
and royalty. The formfitting silk bustline gave way to a chiffon skirt that
would flow softly and lightly even over Drew’s burgeoning body. The overall
effect was a subtle two-tone as the purples in each material were offset the
slightest in texture alone.

“I’m just so glad you like it,” she gushed, hands
clasped in front of her heart. “And thank you for including me. I never had a real
sister before and this really means so much.”  

Catherine’s eyes welled with tears. “Well, I haven’t
had a sister in a long time and… I guess I was afraid to go there again…. I’m
sorry. You being a part of this means a lot to me too.”

Tara cut into the moment. “I’d just like to mention
one little thing. The dress is doable but if we—”

“Don’t!” Catherine commanded.

“But you didn’t even let me—”

“I’m serious, Tara.”

“You don’t even know what—”

“No!”

“Jeez, on the rag much?”

“It’s my wedding. My decision. That doesn’t make me
hormonal; it’s simply a fact,” Catherine said haughtily. “Besides, I haven’t
had my period in… I don’t even—”

“How long exactly?” Georgia prodded, stepping toward
her, concerned.

She’d been too busy to notice such a paltry thing. “A
while,” Catherine admitted, unable to do the required math on the fly what with
thirty-day months and those with thirty-one and whatnot.

“Sounds like perimenopause,” Tara announced
clinically.

“The first thing you say when I might have missed my
period is
menopause
?”

“
Peri
menopause—meaning preparatory or almost.”

“Is that really what that means?” Lacey asked, but her
question was lost in the matter at large.

“Why would you assume it has anything to do with
menopause at all! A miss means pregnancy, right?” Catherine turned to Lacey and
Georgia, the resident experts in the matter.

“Considering its unexpected appearance in recent
months.” Tara eyed her knowingly—the only one privy to
that
particular
medical history. “And now missing it completely…. Sounds classic if you ask me.”
 

“Nobody asked you,” Catherine groused.

“What do you know about menopause anyway, Miss Twenty-something?”
Georgia countered, joining her thirties’ alliance.

“A lot actually. My cousin went through it at your age.”

Georgia winced as if slapped.

“Really?” Lacey was awestruck.

“Don’t listen to her, she has a cousin for every
occasion,” Catherine spat, although she too felt the words like a Mack truck.

“When you say ‘your age’ what do you mean exactly?
Like child-rearing-years-over menopause?” Georgia clarified.

“Yup.”

“Hello! Woman about to get married here!” Catherine exclaimed,
pointing at herself. “She certainly doesn’t need to hear that she’s drying up
and going sterile.”

“I think you mean barren,” Georgia corrected.

“Like a dry and dusty desert,” Tara asserted, in case
the picture wasn’t clear enough.

“I think you would make a wonderful matron of honor,” Catherine
said, turning to Lacey over the sound of her eggs cracking into dust inside of
her.

“What did I do?” Georgia squealed.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Tara shrugged it off. “It was just
a joke.”

“A joke?” Catherine asked hopefully. “You mean your
cousin didn’t go through menopause in her thirties?”

“Oh no, she did.”

“Then where exactly is the joke?”

“Oh, it’s there. You just have to get that chip off
your shoulder first to find it,” Tara jabbed.

“But what if after all this I can’t produce?”

“You mean reproduce,” Tara chortled.

“Not helping,” Georgia said sternly, then turned to
Catherine. “Don’t listen to her. Women have babies into their forties these
days all the time. Drew is doing it as we speak. You aren’t drying up. You haven’t
missed your chance. Heck, you said you missed your period, maybe you already
are
pregnant,” she offered.

Catherine had never been more relieved by that
prospect. Except… was she ready for a new husband, a new daughter,
and
a
baby in quick succession? She needed to sit down.

“What’s wrong now? You just turned white as a sheet,”
Georgia noted.

“What if I really am pregnant? I don’t want my parents
to know—”

“That you’re having sex at thirty-four?” Tara taunted.

“That I got fucked up out of wedlock!”

“Knocked up,” Georgia corrected sternly.

“You might not even be pregnant at all,” Lacey
offered.

“Yeah, there’s always menopause,” Tara reminded her. Catching
the evil eye from Georgia, she added, “or maybe it’s just stress… or hysterical
menopause.”

“There’s no such thing,” Georgia said.

“Why not? There’s hysterical pregnancy. And my cousin
was a hysterical kleptomaniac.”

“Are you saying that he
believed
that he was
stealing stuff when he wasn’t?” Lacey asked.

“Not exactly. What he stole was ridiculous—pink flamingos,
light switches, windshield wiper blades right off of people’s cars. Totally
random shit. When they found his stash, the police were in hysterics—”

“NOT helping,” Georgia growled.

“You guys get the pee sticks; I’ll get the Funyuns,”
Tara announced loudly at the entrance to Target.

“Funyuns?” Georgia asked. “What do they have to do
with anything?”

“Necessary provisions. Either way we’re going to need
our strength for this,” Tara said gravely.

“What’s this
we
business?” Catherine was
feeling very much alone right now in spite of her posse.

Tara gestured to encompass all four of them. “We are
going to need some serious snack food,” she enunciated carefully. “Pregnant or
menopau—”

“You say it one more time and I swear I will beat you
down right here,” Georgia said through gritted teeth, her calm diplomacy lost
to her protective instincts.

“Go,” Lacey said to Tara, shoving her off in the
direction of the food, and then grabbing Catherine and Georgia each by an arm
and propelling them toward the pharmacy.

Pregnancy tests lined one side of the aisle and pain
relievers lined the other. Catherine felt woozy just looking at the plethora of
options, but Lacey and Georgia calmly and easily discussed the finer points of
each test—Lacey who had gotten knocked up without even trying and Georgia who
had tried and tried and tried again. But then their tittering started coming to
her as if through a tunnel, fading out—

“Oh my God, Cat!”

“Catherine? Are you okay?”

Panicked voices came at her from a distance, forcing her
out of the blackness.

“Do I smell onions?” she asked weakly.
Is that my
brain cooking? A stroke?

“See, I told you we were going to need our strength,”
Tara crunched.

“Can we have a little help here?” Lacey begged.

“Are you okay?” Georgia asked, motherly concern
overwhelming her voice.

Catherine fluttered her eyes, focusing slowly, staring
up at everyone—her bridesmaids and several complete strangers dressed in red. “What
the—” But the pain in her head stopped her from finishing the sentence. It felt
like someone had clocked her from behind.

“Let’s get her over to the bench,” Georgia commanded
the red-shirted employees who were standing there uncertainly, never having
responded to this type of spill before. Obviously they were more comfortable
holding onto a mop than a girl.

“But maybe we shouldn’t move her,” one of them said.
“She could have a—”

“She fainted,” Georgia snapped. “She just needs some
air and space.”

Three strange young men lifted her up, the makings for
a sweet dream but for the acne-ridden complexions and sweaty palms and
decidedly adolescent nature of them. After depositing her on one of the hard red
benches next to the pharmacy checkout, they remained there awkwardly.

“Thank you. We’ll take it from here,” Georgia assured
them.

Lacey fanned Catherine with a pregnancy kit that
advertised a two-for-one special.

From her new position next to the blood pressure cuff,
she took in the carnage in the aisle from which she’d come. Boxes were a jumble
all around the floor—Motrin mixed with Midol and Bayer mixed with Tylenol and
some Goody’s powders sprinkled on top for good measure. “Did I do that?” she
asked, wincing from every small movement of her jaw that awakened another shout
of pain from the back of her head.

“Well, your head did that. I think you hit every shelf
on the way down,” Lacey noted.

“Ooh,” Tara winced in solidarity, still chomping away
on her as-yet-unpaid-for bag of Funyuns.

Suddenly a small older woman in a white coat approached
with an aura of no-nonsense-ness about her. “Can I help you?” she asked
brusquely, as if she didn’t like loiterers on her bench who were under the age
of sixty.

“We were just catching a breather,” Tara said between
crunches.

“Was that you?” She pointed toward the aisle of pain
relievers with a tsk-tsk in her voice, like they were a bunch of hoodlums in
her pharmacy.

“She has a headache, ma’am, can’t you see?” Tara pointed
to Catherine who was holding the back of her head like it would leak if she
didn’t. “Can’t a girl buy some painkillers without being judged?”    

“It was an accident,” Lacey said quickly.

The pharmacist eyed each of them carefully, silently
noting the pregnancy test “fan” in Lacey’s hands. “Well, if you’re done shopping,
please move along.”

Tara mouthed mockingly at the pharmacist’s back as she
walked away.

“
That
was humiliating,” Catherine said.

“You’d think this kind of thing would get easier to
buy at this point,” Georgia noted. “It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are,
though. Pregnancy tests, condoms, tampons—they all tell people way too much
about what’s going on in your life and underneath your clothes.”

“I don’t care what they think,” Tara asserted.

“Obviously,” Georgia agreed.

“Can we just get out of here?” Catherine asked,
resigned.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Georgia asked uncertainly.

“I’m fine.”

“But fainting like that could be a sign of—”

“What? Perimenopause?” Catherine jabbed, staring Tara
down.

“Blood pressure problems.” She nodded toward the cuff.

Catherine rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, guys. I’m just
not used to my diet yet.” She was careful not to divulge that she had also fainted
the night Fynn had proposed—back on her normal food regimen. She was beginning
to think she was a stress-fainter. Maybe it was a syndrome.

*****

At the checkout Catherine nonchalantly reached into
Tara’s bag and grabbed a handful of Funyuns (just to steady herself from the
aftereffects of the fall), shoving them all into her mouth at once before
anyone could stop her. These were definitely not on the list of approved food
items on her crash diet.

“Catherine? Catherine Hemmings? Is that you?
Oh my
God
, it is!” A bloodcurdling squeal.

Catherine felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck
stand up in revolt. But she turned around anyway, believing this was her
day—Funyun-filled face and all. Finally, after all these years, she was on top.
Rachel Craig—cheerleader, overachiever, Miss Teen Pennsylvania, and all-around
bitch—was going down. Maybe she’d been on top in grade school and middle school
and high school and all the years since, but today she was a divorcée, living
back home with her parents—her days as wife of the mayor of Bumfuck, Kansas
behind her, as was her title as prom queen and her naturally blonde hair. And here
Catherine Hemmings stood with
the ring
that proved she was a winner. For
half a second she felt invincible, until she saw the mirror-ball-turned-reflective-hand-ornament
on Rachel Craig’s bony finger. Engaged! Twice!

She always one-upped you.

Catherine crunched as delicately as possible, forcing the
Funyuns down as quickly as she could. “Wow! Rachel! What are you doing here?”
So
far from Chesterton where I was purposely shopping to avoid people like you.

“My
fiancé
lives here. He’s back in
electronics. Ooh, I can’t wait for you to meet John—my
fiancé
!” she
exclaimed, reaching for her cell phone and sending off a lightning-fast text message
that probably said something like “get your ass to the checkout so I can rub
this bitch’s nose in my life.”

“Actually, Rachel, I would love to, but we’re kind of
in a hurry.” Catherine motioned at her friends with her own reflective hand
ornament.

“My
fiancé
will be here in just a minute and you
have to wait in line anyway to buy your… tests.” A vicious smile growing on her
face.

“Oh, those are mine,” Tara said, grabbing them and
waving the pregnancy tests in the air. “I’ve been double-fisting Funyuns for
weeks. Either I am
super
premenstrual or pregnant—guess I’ll find out
soon enough. Wish me luck.” She crossed her fingers. “Oh, and tell your fiancé
to wish me luck too. I need all the help I can get.”

“Uh… good luck?” Rachel said, her face screwed up like
she was talking to insanity itself, in the flesh.

“I’m hoping it’s Tommy’s because if it’s Trent’s then
me and Tommy are
over
,
which would be a bummer because I was
really thinking he was the one… but you must understand what with Jake being
your
one,” Tara said, bubbly and giggly and completely obnoxious.

“It’s
John
,” Rachel corrected.

Tara disregarded her. “By the way, have you ever used
this brand before? I’m hoping it’s more accurate than last time. I was sure I
was totally screwed—thought I was pregnant for weeks—and it turned out I just
had an ulcer. Damn false positive.”

“Well, listen, it was great catching up,” Rachel said
quickly, looking ready to bolt. “We’ll have to do lunch sometime while you’re
in town… but I have to get back to my
fiancé
; he’s
lost
without
me.”

“More like trying to lose you,” Tara said under her
breath, watching her sashay away. “Why would you even
know
someone like
that, let alone talk to her
or
her fiancé—did you know she has a fiancé?
I wasn’t sure at first, but I think she mentioned it.”      

“She grew up in my town. What was I supposed to do?”
Catherine asked.

“Hire someone.” She gave her a knowing wink.

“Tara!”

“I’m just sayin’—I don’t suffer fools lightly, and
that chick is a fool.”

“A total bitch is more like it,” Lacey said
definitively.