Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (28 page)

“She says that it will look wonderful in the pictures.”

And that, I suppose, was all that mattered.

Cami excused herself to go work on thank-you notes. Annie and I watched as the workmen began to unroll the first tent. “I hear that you did just great the last month of school.”

“I guess so . . . yeah, I guess I did.”

The tent was big, and one of the workmen almost stepped on one of the rose bushes. Claudia and the landscaper went rushing over.

Annie spoke again. “Claudia and Jeremy’s dad . . . they aren’t engaged or anything, are they?”

It was a moment before I could answer.
Why are you asking? What have you heard? Tell me. Let’s gossip like two girls standing in front of our junior-high lockers.

But that would have been stupid. Gossiping about Claudia might have made me feel better for the moment, but if she and Mike did end up getting married, I had to figure out how we would go on being a family.

“You didn’t have anything to do with this rehearsal dinner, did you?” Annie asked.

I shook my head.

“I figured . . . because it’s totally bogus. It’s completely wrong . . . to get all dressed up on a Friday night. That’s not what people do around here. Rehearsal dinners should be clambakes on the beach. Nobody wears cocktail dresses on Friday night. Getting all dressed up like this is going to look so nouveau. I’m sure everyone’s going to think that we’re major wannabes.”

I looked at her. She didn’t have as much jewelry on as usual, but her eyelashes were heavily mascared, curving thickly up toward her eyebrows

She was right. It suddenly seemed obvious. After a week at work and the long fight with rush-hour traffic, the understated people, the ones who did this right, wouldn’t want to put on panty
hose and high heels. They would want to slip into their worn, beat-up Top-Siders and go to a clambake on the beach.

I’d never been to a clambake on the beach. It sounded like fun.

But Claudia was a “major wannabe.” She hungered for identity, for status and elegance. What could be a greater achievement, a clearer definition of a person, than a dinner in the Hamptons with pictures in a fashion magazine?

I didn’t have much to do over the next few days. The first niece arrived at six thirty in the morning, and although I was out of bed before then, all I had to do was plug in the coffee urn which the other niece had set up the night before. She had even unloaded the dishwasher before leaving.

Dad arrived on Tuesday and put himself in charge of Finney. The chef packed them corn-free picnics, and they would disappear for the day. They flew kites, played catch, dug holes on the beach, and perfected their four-in-hand knots.

For all his adult life my father had been a problem-solver. People had turned to him when they had an infected finger or a flat tire. He’d always had whatever anyone needed. Besides what had been in his medical bag, he’d had the pocketknife, the match, the right map. He’d been the indispensable Dr. Bowersett, but he was retired now, living in a duplex in a retirement community. No one needed matches there; too many residents were on oxygen to permit open flames. Nor did they need maps; even the ones still driving never went anywhere new. An experienced RN was on the premises at all times, and physicians specializing in geriatrics were on call. Dad was no longer indispensable, and although he did not complain, he felt as if he had lost a part of himself. Finney gave him a chance to be indispensable again.

But Dad wasn’t the only one who needed Finney. When Finney was around, everyone tried to hide the stress. Everyone spoke in bright, cheerful tones. On Monday, the day before Dad
arrived, we played crazy eights after lunch and, after the workmen left, freeze tag among the new flagstones and terraces. We did it for Finney, but everyone felt better for the distraction. But with Finney off flying kites on the beach, Rose and Cami could give in to stomach-clawing anxiety.

Each day the fantasy in the backyard became more elaborate. The ceilings of the tents were draped and swagged with hundreds of yards of billowing blush-colored silk and rose-pink tulle. Inside the house, everyone was feeling more burdened by the massive number of details. Gifts were piled unopened on the floor of the home theater; Cami was too overwhelmed to open any more.

I was dreading Thursday, picture-taking day. The photographer scheduled to shoot the wedding on Saturday was of the photojournalism school of wedding photography. His goal was to capture the spirit of the occasion through unposed moments. I had seen his portfolio; the pictures were fresh and creative.

But he did not do posed, perfect headshots. So a different photographer was coming on Thursday to take Cami’s formal portraits. I had seen his portfolio too; his pictures were detailed and exquisite.

Of course, such detailed, exquisite pictures would require the hair stylist and makeup artist, scheduled for Saturday, to come on Thursday as well. Guy then thought that as long as those people were coming for Cami, it made sense for Annie to get into her bridesmaid’s dress and have her hair and makeup done too. Then they would have formal portraits of the two sisters together.

Then Claudia asked if Cami and Annie could—just for a moment, it wouldn’t take long at all—slip into their rehearsal-dinner dresses. A few posed portraits would serve as supplements to the candid shots to be taken at the rehearsal dinner on Friday night. It would be so simple, Claudia assured Rose, that it wouldn’t take more than a few moments.

But nothing nothing
nothing
associated with this wedding was simple. There were too many different people with agendas that had nothing to do with Cami and Jeremy getting married.

Claudia’s Friday-night photographer was giving her a break on his rates because he wanted his work to appear in the fashion magazine. He wasn’t going to share credit with the more established Thursday-morning photographer. So if Claudia wanted posed pictures, he would come Thursday afternoon. She went to Rose again. As long as Claudia was having to go to this expense, then . . .

Each request Claudia made only added a little more inconvenience to the plan, so Rose had said yes to each one. But there’d been so many of those “little more’s” and “as long as’s” that we were now looking at a screaming nightmare. Cami, Annie, Rose, Claudia, and I, all five of us, were getting our hair and makeup done, putting on our rehearsal-dinner dresses, and transporting ourselves to the actual site of the rehearsal dinner where a dummy version of one of the tables would be set up. There we would all pose for “candid” shots.

Oh, and Finney and Zack were coming to provide the sense of a crowd.

Claudia was out of control. She didn’t look it; she was still her neat, trim self, wearing crisply ironed khakis and her newly purchased Top-Siders. She wasn’t eating too much, drinking too much, or talking too much. It was her own ideas that she was unable to resist. In her heart, she must have known that each of her requests would burden other people, but each new step seemed so useful that she couldn’t tell herself that she’d gone far enough.

Despite my misgivings, Thursday started well enough. The hair stylist and his assistant arrived on time. The makeup artist and her assistant were only fifteen minutes late. The bouquets actually arrived early.

Cami was upstairs when the flowers arrived. Annie lifted the
lid off the box. There were supposed to be two bouquets—a copy of the bridal bouquet and one of the bridesmaids’ bouquets. They were supposed to be camellias, roses, Queen Anne’s lace, and various foliage. There were indeed two bouquets with the camellias, the roses, and the various foliage. There was something that had bursts of little white flowers, but it wasn’t Queen Anne’s lace.

“This is not acceptable,” Rose snapped, flipping open her phone. “I swore I wasn’t going to be a monster about every little detail, but we are
not
leaving out your flowers, Annie.”

“It’s okay, Mom. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Rose said.

Rose spoke very patiently first to Pamela-the-floral-designer’s assistant, then to Pamela herself. A mistake had been made. It was small, but it was important to the family, and these two bouquets would need to be remade in the next hour. Rose listened and then muted her phone while Pamela went to check something. “This is
ammi majus,
what people use instead of Queen Anne’s lace. It’s even called false Queen Anne’s lace, but it’s really something called bishop’s lace.”

“Mom, it’s okay,” Annie said again. “Cami’s not going to notice.”

“You’re being sweet, Annie, but this woman cares more about what the garden club thinks of her than what we want.”

Another person with her own agenda.

Pamela came back on the line. Rose listened, then said, “We have some in the yard you can use if you send someone over who can remake the bouquets . . . forty-five minutes, yes, that will be great . . . yes, yes . . .” The call seemed to be ending when something occurred to Rose. “Wait a minute, how can you have no Queen Anne’s lace in your workroom when every single thing you’re doing for Saturday, every bouquet, every centerpiece, every little floral doodad has Queen Anne’s lace in it?”

Annie and I were quiet as Rose listened again. “You only ordered bishop’s lace? You were going to use it in everything? Didn’t the contract say Queen Anne’s? . . . Yes, I know the contract absolves you if something is completely unavailable, but you can’t declare it unavailable simple because you haven’t ordered it. . . . No, we discussed that over New Year’s . . .”

This conversation could go on forever. The florist wasn’t going to let up until Rose agreed to the bishop’s lace.

So let the florist try that with Mr. Roadkill. “Rose . . . Rose,” I hissed at her. “I’m going to go get Guy. Let him handle this.”

I hurried to the library, where Zack was helping Guy unpack the books that he had been meaning to unpack for the last twelve months.

“This could be fun,” he said after I explained the situation. “I don’t know why Rose doesn’t ask me to do more of this.” He took the phone from her. “This is Guy Zander-Brown.” His voice was entirely pleasant. “I hear that you’re trying to give me a bishop when I ordered a queen.”

Annie tried to protest that it didn’t matter, but Guy held up his hand, silencing her.

Ten minutes later, the makeup artist called out that Cami was coming downstairs. The rest of us hurried out to the front hall.

She looked extraordinary. Her dress was wonderful, perfect for a summer garden wedding. When she was standing still, it was simple and light, but when she moved, it was as if hundreds of little fairies were shimmering around the dress, making it sparkle and dance.

But Guy was not in the hall with us. Still negotiating with the florist, he’d retreated behind the closed door of the library so that Cami wouldn’t hear. That seemed a shame. Seeing their daughter come downstairs in her wedding dress was something for which Guy and Rose should have been together.

The makeup artist gave me a little net helmet that zipped closed over my face. I was to wear it when I got dressed. With this much makeup on, a person needed protective gear.

I have to admit that my rehearsal-dinner dress, even though it was in a Grandma Bowersett kind of color, fit like a dream. I slipped it on over the mesh helmet, and it fell right into place, nestling in the slight indentation that I call my waist. The back was low enough that I could easily zip it up myself, and all those complicated
straps did exactly what they were supposed to do without me having to tell them a thing.

I looked at myself in the mirror; Claudia had been right about the bust pads. I don’t like the weight or feel of a padded bra, but this padding was inserted between the lining and the interlining— whatever “interlining” might be. I had some curve to my shape without feeling as if I were wearing a pair of diapers on my chest.

We were on assistant overload. The photographer had an assistant, the makeup artist had one, and so did the hair stylist. Even the assistant floral designer who had come in to harvest some Queen Anne’s lace and remake the bouquets had had an assistant.

With so much assisting going on, we were running late. Claudia had gone to the restaurant some time earlier, and now she was calling to see where we were. Her photographer—and no doubt his assistant—were breathing down her neck, as was the manager of the restaurant. The restaurant had agreed to let Claudia have the photo session in the private room where the dinner would be, but there was another big party in the room this evening, and the manager wanted to get started on the setup for that event.