People I Want to Punch in the Throat (4 page)

I was going to put on my dress at the church, but I wanted to do my makeup (following directions I carefully copied down from a
Mademoiselle
magazine for “dramatic eyes”) under normal lights rather than the sickly fluorescents that church bathrooms are famous for. I also wanted to get together my last-minute “emergency kit” items (based on a list I carefully copied from
Bride
magazine), like Band-Aids (because you might cut yourself when you least expect it), drinking straws (so you won’t smudge your lipstick), and a needle and thread (seriously, though, if it gets to the point that I’m going to be forced to sew something, then we’ve got major problems and maybe we should just consider postponing the wedding rather than letting me sew anything).

The last thing on my list was my ring bearer’s pillow. A few months earlier I’d found a pattern for a really simple and elegant pillow. My aunt Ruby made the pillow for me and gave it to me at my bridal shower. It was so beautiful. It matched the patterned skirts that my bridesmaids wore, and I imagined it sitting on my (blissfully happy) marital bed for the rest of my life. I imagined my children someday resting their sweet little heads on my adorable pillow and asking me to tell them the story (again,
again!) of my romantic wedding, and how someday my daughter could use it at her wedding if she wanted. It would be an
heirloom
.

As I drove to my parents’ house I started to wonder where exactly that damn pillow was. I know, I know—a more organized bride might have thought about this pillow weeks ago, but I think by now we’ve established that organization is not a skill I possess. Not even on my wedding day. I realized I hadn’t seen the pillow since my bridal shower several months before. I was fairly certain it was in the shopping bag of assorted wedding odds and ends that I’d carted over to my parents’ house the night before.

I was staying with my parents because I’m old-fashioned like that. The Hubs and I had purchased a house together earlier in the month, but he was staying there with his family and I didn’t really want to be there taking care of them. I much preferred to stay with my parents and get spoiled a little bit.

When I got to my parents’ house I immediately started digging through the shopping bag. The closer I got to the bottom without finding my pillow the more frantic I became.

“What’s up?” my mom asked. “What are you looking for?”

“My ring bearer pillow. Have you seen it? I was sure I put it in this bag.”

“You didn’t. I was with you yesterday when you were packing that bag. You never grabbed the pillow.”

“I didn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm. Okay. Well, then it must be in the front hall closet at my house. Let me call Ebenezer and have him find it.”

“Okay. I can run over and get it. That way he won’t see you before this afternoon,” my mom offered.

“Great. Thanks.”

I grabbed the phone and dialed Ebenezer.

“Yup,” he answered. He always answers “yup,” and it drives me bonkers. How hard is it to say “Hello”? But there was no time to dwell on my betrothed’s annoying habits—I had important business.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Listen, we have a problem. I can’t find the ring bearer’s pillow.”

“Yup.”

“Stop saying ‘yup’!” I yelled. “This is important!”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked impatiently.

“I need you to look in the front hall closet. On the top shelf there is a plastic grocery bag. Look inside there and tell me if the pillow is in there.”

“I can’t do that right now,” he said. “I’m kind of busy.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Who tells his bride on her wedding day that he’s too busy to help her locate a very special and important item?

I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to fight on my wedding day—we had a lifetime for that. “Well,
when
do you think you can look?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“I dunno. In a couple of hours.”

“We have to be at the church in a couple of hours,” I whispered, working extremely hard to control my emotions. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. “I need you to look now, because if it isn’t there, I have some other ideas where it could be.”

“Why didn’t you bring it to your mom’s last night?” he asked.

“I thought I did. It didn’t make it into the bag. That’s why I need you to look.
Now
.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, I’m busy right now. It will have to wait awhile.”

“What the hell are you doing that is so important?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“I’m making my mother a sandwich,” he replied.

I held my breath and willed the blood vessel throbbing in my temple not to explode. I waited for him to tell me that his mother was in some kind of low-blood-sugar coma and needed a sandwich right away in order to live. I waited for him to tell me that in addition to her low-blood-sugar coma, she had fallen down the stairs and broken both of her arms and both of her legs and so she could not possibly make that lifesaving sandwich for herself.

“She’s hungry and she won’t be able to eat again until the reception later tonight. It’s a big day for her, too, and she needs some food before we leave for the church.”

“Mm-hmm,” was all I could manage before I hung up the phone and started screaming. “Motherfucker!”

My mother came running. “What’s wrong?”

“He is making his mother a sandwich,” I seethed, barely able to talk. “A fucking sandwich. I haven’t even had breakfast, but God forbid his
mother
misses a meal!”

“Okay, okay,” my mother soothed. “What did he say exactly?”

“He said he can’t look for my pillow because he’s too busy making his mother a sandwich!” I wailed. “He said it was a ‘big day for her, too.’ What am I doing? Who am I marrying? He’s choosing his mother over me!”

“Calm down.” My mom stroked my expensive hairdo. “Tell
me where you think the pillow is and I’ll go over there and look for it.”

I gave her a list of five or six potential spots where I shove important shit and then promptly forget about it.

“Jen, you know this is sort of your fault, too,” my mom said.

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, it’s the day of your wedding. You should have located this pillow long before now. You’re not even sure where it is, and you’re upset because Ebenezer won’t drop everything and go look for it.
You
didn’t keep track of your stuff.”

“Who cares?” I cried. “He won’t help me because he’s too busy helping his
mother
! I am going to be his
wife
after today. Aren’t you supposed to choose your wife over your mother?”

“Look, who knows what he’s thinking? I’m just telling you, this is your fault, too. Now, I will go over there and find the pillow. In the meantime, you’ll probably want to get out the flat iron. Your hair is a little … messed up.”

I looked in the mirror and saw that my hair was all jacked up and my veil was askew. “Son of a bitch. He’s going to ruin my pictures, too!”

“Fix your hair. I’ll get the pillow and I’ll meet you at the church.”

I can’t remember why my mom and dad were going to the church earlier than I was. Probably to set up something that I thought was very, very, very important and needed to be done before I got there. All I remember is they threw on their wedding clothes and headed over to my house to dig through my closets while my future husband made his mother a delicious ham and cheese sandwich.

After they’d been gone for a bit, my mother called me. “I’m
not finding it in any of the places you told me to look. Is there anyplace else you shove stuff?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

“I don’t think so. Did you look in the plastic bag in the hall closet?”

“Yes.”

“The hatbox in the storage room in the basement?”

“Yes.”

“The shelf in the garage where I keep extra toilet paper and paper towels?”

“Yes.”

“Under the guest room bed?”

“Yes.”

“The trunk of Ebenezer’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. I was sure it would be in one of those places! Those are all of my good spots. Where could it be?”

“I haven’t looked in the master bedroom closet yet.”

“No!”
Ebenezer and I both shouted at the same time.

The master bedroom closet is where we keep our … 
equipment
. It’s where I hide that naughty box of goodies that must be destroyed before my mother comes over to clean out my belongings if I’m ever hit by a bus.

“I’ll look there,” I heard Ebenezer say.

“Well,
that
certainly got him off his butt,” my mom said, surprised. “I haven’t seen him move that quick since I got here.”

I sighed. He
did
love me. Either that or he was terrified of what
his
mother would say when
my
mother passed out after finding our collection of “love enhancers.”

Ebenezer and my mother turned that house upside down and never did find that pillow. I cried for about an hour, ruining my
gorgeous
Mademoiselle
-inspired makeup. My dramatic eyes now looked like something the editors might call “homeless person chic.”

Aunt Ruby arrived to pick me up to take me to the church and was shocked to see me in such a mess.

“I lost your pillow!” I sobbed hysterically.

Aunt Ruby wiped the (obviously mislabeled) waterproof mascara from under my eyes and dried my tears. She jammed my veil back into my crispy hair and smoothed it down for me.

“Who cares?” she said. “It’s just a pillow. It’s no big deal.”

“He made his mother a sandwich,” I whispered.

“What?” Aunt Ruby asked.

“His mother. He made her a sandwich instead of looking for my pillow.”

“But you’re the one who lost it,” Aunt Ruby said.

“Yes, but—”

Aunt Ruby cut me off. “Today you are marrying your best friend and the love of your life. You need to let the sandwich thing go.”

“What about the pillow? What will the ring bearer carry?” I whined, pulling a tissue from my wedding emergency kit.

Aunt Ruby looked around. It was the end of October, and my mother takes holiday decorating very seriously. Christmas may be her favorite, but Halloween is a close second, and the house was brimming with fall decor. “What about this pumpkin?” she asked, plucking a small gray metal pumpkin with a handle from a sea of ghosts and goblins. “He’ll look adorable with a pumpkin. Everyone will love it!”

Aunt Ruby was right. Everyone thought the pumpkin bucket was the cutest thing they’d ever seen.

When I finally got a chance to be alone with Ebenezer, I
couldn’t resist letting him know how much it bothered me that he’d chosen his mother over me. “How was your mother’s sandwich?” I asked him later that night on the dance floor.

“I never got it made. I had to go and hide your naughty toy box from your mother.”

I wasn’t making a horrible mistake marrying him. He chose me and my vibrator over his mother and her sandwich.

I love my cleaning lady just a little bit more than I love the Hubs. No, that’s not true. I love her a lot more than I love the Hubs, and I’m not afraid to tell her, or him.

Neither the Hubs nor I is a terrific housekeeper, so our first six months of wedded bliss were not very blissful. We didn’t have much practice in the co-homeowning cleaning routine. We spent a stupid amount of time arguing over whose turn it was to sweep the kitchen or clean the toilets. After fighting for weeks and watching our house dive-bomb into a dusty death spiral, we knew we had to take action.

I decided to do what my mother did when I was a kid and didn’t want to clean the house. I made up a chore chart. I divided up all of the cleaning responsibilities, and every week each of us would have new jobs to do around the house. I tried to be fair. For instance, one week I’d clean the toilets and he’d mop the floors. The following week he’d clean the toilets and I’d mop the floors. I tried to spread the “good” jobs and the “bad” jobs around as evenly as possible.

The chart worked for the first week—the week I was the one
assigned to scrub the toilets. But, of course, when the next week came and it was his turn to polish the thrones, the Hubs announced he didn’t like my chart. He argued that he didn’t have much “experience” cleaning toilets or mopping floors (as if I’d put myself through college working as a janitor or something) and didn’t think he’d do a very good job. Rather than do a shitty job on the toilets twice a month, he thought
I
should clean the toilets and mop the floors every week while he focused on his natural talents: taking out the trash and running the vacuum on an as-needed basis.

As you might imagine, that conversation didn’t go very well. I think it ended with me saying to the love of my life something along the lines of: “Go fuck yourself, Hubs. I’m sorry you’re such a delicate flower, but I’m not built for domesticity any more than you are.”

After that lively debate, we decided the chore chart was never going to work. But we had to do something. The situation was becoming desperate. The floor of our bedroom was rapidly disappearing under piles of laundry, I found myself contemplating buying new dishes just to avoid washing the ones in the sink, and I had stopped using the master bathroom because the Hubs refused to take my advice to sit to pee.