Marriage Can Be Murder -- Every Wife Has A Story (A Carol and Jim Andrews Baby Boomer Mystery) (9 page)

“But she said she could handle it, Mom,” Jenny said, putting her hand over Mark’s. “And we both want to be married on Nantucket during the Stroll weekend. Right, Mark?”

He nodded vigorously. “Whatever you want, Jenny.”

“Ok,” I continued in my best take-charge voice, “Tiffani wants us to go to Nantucket this coming weekend and settle some logistics.” I looked at Mark over my bifocals. “Will that work for you?”

“I already put in for three days off,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

Jenny beamed at him. Ah, young love.

“Tiffani e-mailed me later today, Mom. She went ahead and made reservations for us to stay at the Grey Gull Inn. It’s right in the center of town, and one of the locations that might work for the wedding. She thought that if we all stayed there for a few days, we could get the feel of the place and meet the staff. But we’d look at other places, too. I really want to check out the Whaling Museum. That’s our number one venue choice.”

I made a note to check out the Grey Gull Inn webpage. I was sure Jim would want to know their rates in advance. And if they were running any specials.

“What about Mike and Marlee?” Jim asked. “They’re part of this wedding, too. Are they coming to Nantucket with us?”

“I’m sure they’ll want to join us,” I said. “Let’s call them right now.” I was getting excited. The chance to be on Nantucket – one of my favorite places in all the world – with my favorite people, planning a dream wedding was, well, a dream come true for me. And I don’t care if that sounds hokey. Or redundant.

Jenny took the phone out of my hand. “It’s all set, Mom,” she told me. “I forwarded Tiffani’s e-mail to them as soon as I got it and asked them to come. Mike responded immediately that they’d be there. He said Marlee was really looking forward to getting to know all of us better. Isn’t that terrific?”

“Terrific,” I said, ignoring the fact that I wanted to be the one to invite them.

Grow up, Carol. The kids are running this show, remember?

I allowed myself a dainty sip of white wine before getting to the next item on my agenda. But Jim beat me to the punch.

“Just how many people are you planning on inviting to the wedding?” he asked Mark and Jenny.

I chimed in. Well, it was the next item on
my
agenda. “I know you’ve both said you wanted a small wedding, but have you given any thought at all to a guest list? I mean, there are some people that absolutely have to be invited.” I didn’t want to state the obvious ones: Nancy, Claire and Larry, and Mary Alice. (Not Bob, of course. He’d be, ahem, busy with the wedding planner.) But they were, after all,
my
friends. (Jim’s too, of course.) Maybe the kids wouldn’t want them there. Despite the fact that they’d all changed Jenny’s diapers back in the day.

Jenny looked at Mark who, on cue, handed her a piece of paper. “We’ve gone round and round about this. We’ve decided to limit our guests to the immediate family. I have no idea about Mike and Marlee’s list, though.” She shoved the list toward me.

Jim moved his chair close to me so he could peer at the list over my shoulder. It was a short list. Jim, me, and the two bridal couples. Mark’s father. That was it.

“There are lots of other people who should be invited,” Jim said. “Tom Freemont, the editor of
The Fairport News
, and his wife Pat, for instance.”

“And what about all our neighbors, Jenny?” I asked. “Most of them have known you since you were a toddler. And Nancy, and Mary Alice, and Claire and Larry? How can we not include them?”

Jenny fixed me with a stare that reminded me of my own. “That’s exactly the point, Mom. Our wedding is not about people who
should
be invited. It’s about being surrounded by the people we really care about. And who really care about us.”

I wanted to remind Jenny about how much she and Mike had relied on my friends over the years. How they’d been like additional parents. And that they all really cared about her and her brother.

But I didn’t. I kept my big mouth shut and reminded myself for the umpteenth time that this was the kids’ wedding. They were calling the shots.

If you don’t think that was hard for me, think again.

“I can tell by your face that you’re not happy about this, Mom,” Jenny said.

“We could always have a family party here after the wedding, Carol, and invite all our friends to come and celebrate the happy couples,” Jim suggested in an attempt to restore harmony.

I had to admit, that was a good idea. Plus, we could combine it with our annual Christmas party.

I’d mull that idea over later. After I came to terms with how little Jim and I (ok, I) had to say about this wedding.

“Mom,” Jenny pleaded, “please don’t be upset that we want to keep the wedding so small. Maybe if I tell you what happened to me at a wedding I went to with my old boyfriend, Jeff, in California two years ago, you’ll understand why I…I mean, we...feel so strongly about this. It may even make you laugh.”

I smiled a little. “Go ahead, Jenny. I could use a laugh right now.” Jenny relaxed in her chair. “Well, you and Dad both remember what a control freak Jeff was, right?” she asked us. She shot a quick glance at her fiancé. “I hope you don’t mind my talking about my old boyfriend, Mark.”

Mark grinned. “I don’t mind at all. Talking about him makes me look even better to you.”

“Jeff was a junior associate in his law firm then,” Jenny continued, “and he really wanted a promotion. So when the senior partner’s daughter was getting married, he wangled us an invitation. I was so nervous. We went to this posh hotel with all these bigwigs from the firm and their ultra-rich wives. I didn’t know a soul, but I tried to make the best of it. Jeff had given me strict instructions to mingle, and talk to as many people as possible. Especially about him. What a jerk.”

My maternal instinct immediately kicked in. “Honey, what a terrible situation for Jeff to put you in.”

Jim echoed me. “I never liked him,” he said. That wasn’t the way I remembered things, but in the interest of family harmony, I let his remark pass without one of my usual snappy comebacks.

“Anyway, I walked around the room a few times, smiled at a few people, said hi, and made a real effort. But I was very uncomfortable. I decided that holding a glass of wine would give me something to do with my hands and make me feel less self-conscious, so I went outside to the bar to get a drink. I came back to the reception by a different entrance. There was an empty chair at a table near the door, so I sat down and introduced myself. I was amazed at how friendly the people at this table were to me, compared to the ones I’d met before.”

She paused dramatically. “Here comes the punch line now. Jeff came to find me about half an hour later, and it turned out I was at the wrong wedding. The wedding I was supposed to be at was in the next room. And most of the guests were a bunch of stuffy people who had absolutely no connection with the bride and groom. They were business associates and clients of the bride’s father.

“I made up my mind right then that if I ever got married, I didn’t want my wedding to be like that. The only people who’d share in this special day were the ones who meant the most to me.”

She looked at Mark. “To us.”

To his credit, Mark jumped in to support his bride. “Keeping the wedding small is just as important to me as it is to Jenny,” he said. “It’s hard for me to talk about this, but the last time I was engaged,” he grimaced a little at the memory, “Patti’s mom was way over the top with the planning. It was a huge event, with no expense spared. Kind of like what you’d see on a reality television show. The guest list was more than four hundred people. Patti and I didn’t even know most of them. And when I wanted to invite a few of my college buddies, her mom and dad said they couldn’t afford to include any more people.

“I should have stood up for myself right then and there, but I didn’t.” Jenny covered his hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Then, the night before the wedding, Patti didn’t show up for the rehearsal. At first, I thought she was just late. She never was on time for anything. We all stood around the church for an hour waiting for her. Finally, a messenger arrived with a note for me saying she couldn’t go through with the wedding. That she was sorry, but it wasn’t going to work. I never felt so stupid in my life.”

Wow. I knew Mark had been through a bad experience, but he’d never shared the details with Jim and me before.

After hearing what Jenny and Mark had gone through, I felt petty. Small-minded. Selfish. Controlling.

I vowed to be the most supportive parent any wedding couple could ask for. From that moment on.

No matter what.

Chapter 12

You’ll always be my best friend. You know too much about me.

I admit it. Sometimes my mouth has a mind of its own. If you’ve been hanging out with me a while, this will make perfect sense to you. If you haven’t, well, stick around for a few more chapters and you’ll figure it out.

Jim and I had agreed – it was his idea, but I knew he was right, darn it – that we should not get sucked into Nancy and Bob Green’s marital problems. Which meant that I was not, under any circumstances, to tell Nancy that the wedding planner she was so impressed with was also the home wrecker who had destroyed her marriage.

If you think this was easy, think again. Nancy and I had been very best friends since we sat side by side in Sister Mary Dolores’s third grade class at St. Basil’s Grammar School. If you do the math – not that I’m suggesting you do – that comes out to more than 40 years of inseparable friendship.

And there is no way I’m telling you what “more than 40 years” means. Nancy and I have shared just about everything with each other. Even boyfriends. (Not at the same time, though.) And I bet she knows more about me than even Jim does. Plus, she can read my face like an open book. (Not large print, either.)

So I knew that the only way I could keep my mouth shut about Tiffani was to avoid Nancy as much as possible. Which would just about kill me.

And I had to make it very clear the next time we spoke – though I knew her feelings would be hurt – that planning Jenny’s wedding did not include her. Period. No discussion.

So I didn’t call Nancy the following morning to gab about the wedding show. And to fill her in on our trip to Nantucket this coming weekend.

I didn’t call Claire or Mary Alice either, as I didn’t trust myself – that is, my big fat mouth – to not slip and say that I’d actually met the woman who was breaking up Nancy’s marriage. I wasn’t sure what their reaction would be if they found out Tiffani was Jenny and Mark’s wedding planner, and I wasn’t taking any chances that they’d use that good old Catholic guilt to encourage me to tell Nancy the truth.

Fortunately, there were many household chores available to divert me. And if all else failed, I could come up with a few new “suggestions” for our Honey-Don’t list, the brilliant idea I came up with a few months ago when we were in the middle of our moving crisis. The Honey-Don’t list is the direct opposite of all those lists wives have made for their husbands for years – rake the leaves, clean out the gutters, etc. etc. The Honey-Don’t list is composed of things we
don’t
want our life partner to do.

To be fair, Jim and I each contribute to the list, then pick a random thing from each other’s list that we want the other one to refrain from on a particular day. Works like a charm.

You should try it yourself sometime. And the rewards for good behavior can be well worth the effort.

I congratulated myself (silently) that I’d gotten through all of Sunday without spilling the beans about Tiffani. Now, if I could just keep it going till we left for Nantucket on Friday morning, I’d give myself a gold star.

Maybe, a 14k gold star. On a 14k gold necklace. That kind of incentive always motivates me.

You should try that sometime, too.