Toss the Bride (24 page)

“If I leave it up to Kathleen, she'll have my dress ordered before I know it. My manager would rather I not get married because it takes me out of circulation for two weeks. The director of my next film wants me in Milan the day after I say ‘I do.'” Baker trains her eyes on me. “I just need someone on my side who will let me enjoy the fun of getting married. I don't want a bloated Hollywood wedding. I want something simple and very elegant.”

I tell Baker that I am the wedding planner for her. She looks so happy, I feet embarrassed. By the time Kathleen returns with vegetable sandwiches and yogurt smoothies, we have made plans to fly in a couture designer from New York who has promised to make Baker's wedding gown. After that task is crossed off, we'll select crystal and china. Apparently, movie stars want a china pattern just like the rest of us girls.

The familiar rhythms of wedding planning start to come back to me as I take notes in my folder labeled “Land, Baker.” I still cannot believe I am helping this celebrity get married. It seems impossible, but here I am.

“So, when is your date, Macie?” Baker asks me. She takes a long sip of her smoothie and nods toward my left hand.

“Ah, well, I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

Blushing, I think of how to change the subject. But Baker Land is used to getting her way and I don't think she will budge. “We just got engaged last week,” I finally squeak out.

“Congratulations! That is so fabulous,” Baker says. “I'll bet you will have the best wedding. You know all the secrets.”

I think about that for a minute. Do I know all the wedding secrets? I can tape down errant breasts with duct tape, sober up a drunken groom with Mexican hot chocolate, arrange peonies like a pro, and pinch a size-twelve gown down to a four with the help of a few well-placed plastic clamps.

“Yeah, I guess I have learned a few things,” I say, not mentioning my one tragic flaw: When it comes right down to it, I don't really seem to know how to pull off my own wedding. Iris's list haunts me like a bad horror movie. I see the words scrolling across my forehead. I am such a phony. Baker can probably see right through me.

Right after high school, when most of my classmates marched off to dorm rooms and undeclared majors, I took a job as a knife saleswoman. After about four days of classes about the product, I was set free to unleash the magic of Turbo Knives. It was supposed to be fairly easy: Call on those stay-at-home moms who had made the mistake of noting on a survey they were interested in possibly purchasing a new knife set.

I quickly found out that knives are something people forget about until they need to whip up a four-course meal for the boss and his wife, which for these housewives, consigned to sweat suits covered in jelly and Cheerios, was never. I had doors slammed in my face, lies told badly to get me off the porch, and just plain indifference delivered almost every day.

I think I was the most unsuccessful saleswoman in Turbo Knives's history. I left that job and never took a sales job again. Sitting in Baker Land's office, I finally piece it together. I was a lousy knife seller because people could see through me like I was plastic wrap. I did not believe in the product—I did not even like it. I never cooked, so I wasn't exactly a friend of knives. Besides, the Turbo Knives were kind of cheap and flimsy.

Maybe Baker sees through my false happiness. She has checked me over for honesty and found me lacking.
This wedding planner sure doesn't look like she's in love. In fact, I think she's going to barf on my crisp sisal rug. Her face is flushed and she has a clammy sheen to her skin. How sad. They sent someone who is a bad, bad fiancée. I should have never called Maurice.

“Macie, are you listening?” Baker looks annoyed. “I was saying that we should get one of the big magazines to cover my wedding. But only one. They'll call it an ‘exclusive,' like the mag is great friends with me or something. Let me tell you: They are not friends and don't ever think that they will be.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to snap out of my weird mood. “Magazines bad.”

Baker looks thoughtful and reaches for a strawberry on her plate. “No, not always. That's where it gets confusing. When they put you on a list, you know, like the most famous or most handsome, then you adore them. Most of the time, though, I just deal with it. Publicity comes with the job.”

I think, for ten million dollars a movie, I could put up with a lot. Shaking my head, I gather up my folders. I want to be gone before Kathleen comes back. If I play my cards right, I can be back on the highway in twenty minutes. Too late, the door opens and Kathleen walks into the room.

“Baker, you have a fitting for your charity-ball gown after your meeting with Zip, who is still waiting. If there are any things to tie up, I am sure Macie and I can take care of it.” Kathleen's eyes rest on me as if I am an unsavory leftover.

Baker stands and stretches. “Macie, I'll see you later on this week. And I'll tell Kathleen about our plans so she cuts you some slack.”

I smile weakly, knowing that people like Kathleen love power, even more than they love keeping their well-paid jobs baby-sitting celebrities. This is going to be a long journey to the altar. Baker may say she wants one thing, but I will have to get around Ms. K.

Sure enough, as soon as Baker leaves the office, Kathleen peers down at me. “Baker is to be managed like one would handle a rare, priceless piece of art glass. One bump too hard and there will be irreparable damage to her reputation and her value.”

I nod, not knowing what else to do. Kathleen then gives me a crash course in Baker's box-office worth, and the difference between good press and bad press. I end up with more notes and a bad headache.

Finally, Kathleen tires of hearing her voice and I excuse myself. Luckily, I have Baker's private cell phone number, so I will contact her later about our plans. On the walk to the car, I think of every bride whom I have worked with and come to the conclusion that Kathleen is the perfect combination of them all. She is demanding, exacting, unreasonable, drunk with power, rude, unfriendly, and conniving. I could go on with the list, but something stops me. My mind switches tracks, back and forth from Kathleen to the list I made for Iris.

Kathleen is not the bride in this situation. If I really think about it, Baker is the bride. But Kathleen is taking on the role of the brides whom I am used to working with and so I have lumped her into the bride category. I like Baker. I don't want her to be the bad guy, to be one of my bad brides. Maybe she won't turn out like all the rest.

I have tossed more brides without knowing the answer to the eternal question: How does a ring turn certain women mean and spiteful? I have not figured out the answer, I just know that I desperately do not want to wake up as one of them.

I start the car, turn on the air-conditioning and laugh out loud. The answer is almost too simple. I need to call Iris or Avery. It took me a visit with a celebrity and her guard-dog assistant to recognize what was staring me in the face. Behind the white lace of a wedding, around the corner from the flowers, and before musicians ever set up to play, I have discovered what scares me the most is becoming that which I have learned to despise and fear. I am afraid—of all things in this crazy world—of being a bride.

12

The Child Bride

When I was a little girl, I had a favorite doll with long, blond hair that poked up out of her head. A round wheel on the doll's back turned the blond hair in and out, making a dolly with short or long hair at the whim of her owner. I spent hours yanking her hair out, brushing it, and then turning the plastic wheel to roll the hair back up into her head. Had my parents given me more construction toys, I probably would have built bridges with Legos and engineered planes from balsa wood. Instead, I can imagine possible hairstyles from all sorts of angles, both long and short. Sometimes, with a sigh, I realize there was probably more I could have learned along life's path.

Kimmie sits in the hairdresser's chair, chirping like a happy, excited schoolgirl. Then I remember, Kimmie
is
a happy, excited schoolgirl. Today, I feel like I have zoomed into the future and found myself the owner of my very own real dolly. Kimmie's hair is the same color of my old plaything. The only detail missing is the plastic knob jutting from her back. I lean forward from my chair near Kimmie's to peer at the back of the girl's pink tank top. With the weird week I have been having, a knob might not be out of the question.

“So, up or down? What do you think?” Kimmie asks, dramatically lowering her hair with one hand and then scrunching it up and piling it on top of her head. “Macie, Macie, help me fix my hair,” she sings in a whiny voice. For a fleeting moment I think of my old doll and how I could yank her hair out without fear of punishment.

“What I think is that we have taken far too much of Leif's time,” I say sternly, nodding to the exhausted stylist. He shoots me a look of thanks, drops his brush, and hightails it into the back room.

“Where is he going?” Kimmie asks, clearly put out that Leif does not get the chance to try a tenth hairstyle on her shimmering blond locks. “I haven't selected my 'do yet.”

“I think numbers three and seven were lovely,” I say, collecting my files and Kimmie's veil. “Do you want to see the digital pictures again to help you decide?”

“Nope, I'll think about it later,” the bride says, and swings out of her chair.

I hurry to keep up with her lanky frame. Kimmie has the body of the lacrosse champion that she is and the energy of a kindergartner. I have to work to keep pace with this eighteen-year-old. Our working hours are limited to afternoons, once she is dismissed from her private high school, but before homework begins.

Normally, I would be against tossing such a young bride. It seems odd, or worse, unseemly. Last time I checked, Maurice was not into marrying off the young chickies. But Kimmie's father is a family friend of Evelyn's, so Maurice is trying to make everyone happy in the hopes of scoring points with his estranged wife. He told me so a few days ago.

Maurice called me up—the first time I had heard from him in person since the Elise scandal—and asked for a meeting. For the past ten days, he has lain low, leaving voice mails with instructions or brides' phone numbers. For our meeting, he suggested the coffee shop near my apartment, a definite step down for Maurice. The only other time he went there, he informed me it was dirty (he used the word “squalid”) and that the coffee beans were roasted far too long.

Upon entering the coffee shop, I spied Maurice in a rear booth, his back to the door. He was actually wearing sunglasses inside. Poor Maurice, I thought. He was hiding out in plain sight.

“Hey, Maurice.”

“Macie.” He stood and offered the bench seat in the booth as if it were a gilded armchair in a Buckhead mansion. That's Maurice—always loads of style.

“How are you doing? I mean, I'm not trying to pry, but I know things have been rough for you.”

Maurice lowered his shades and looked down at his espresso. “They have, but it's my own fault. I'm trying to take responsibility for what I did. Evelyn says that's the first thing I have to do to win her back.”

I try to picture tiny, composed Evelyn lecturing Maurice, maybe with a few self-help books by her side like
Loving When Hating Feels Good
and
Bad Husbands, Better Wives.
Everyone has a different relationship, of course, but taking back a cheating spouse? I don't think I could do it.

“Of course, it's still early and she could always change her mind,” Maurice said. “I wouldn't blame her. And we'll have to find a top-notch counselor. But I want to save our marriage. Unfortunately, I think Evelyn could go either way.”

I thought of Elise and wondered what she was doing. It was morning, so she was probably sleeping off a late night at the café. I pictured her in a very Parisian apartment, maybe with a few of those large theater posters framed on the plaster walls. Of course, maybe that was just how Americans thought the French decorated.

“Macie, are you drifting?”

I nodded. “Sorry. I've been working so much that my mind is pretty fried.”

“Ah, about that. I regret that my personal problems have prevented me from taking an active role in my business. You will be paid well, I assure you.”

“That's not what I want, Maurice. You and Evelyn should take all the time you need. I have been doing fine, really.” I twist my engagement ring over and over on my finger.

Maurice looked a little stricken, like he was truly sorry for sticking me with all of the work over the past ten days. It had been a wild ride, too, with attending to Baker Land and a few other brides coming up on the calendar. When Maurice called and told me about Kimmie, the child bride, I knew I was close to cracking. To make matters worse, Avery and I were still having problems. Right after I had my big breakthrough, he left town for a Chattahoochee Chocolates business trip with Ted to the All-American Confection Convention in St. Louis. That was followed by a week with his father checking out some property they owned in the Virgin Islands.

“Sure, I'll miss you, Macie. But maybe this time will give you space to figure out why every time I bring up the future, you still get a little crazy,” Avery said before he left for the airport with his father. As much as I missed him, I knew he was right.

That left me with Maurice, who was coming back onto the scene, battered and guilty, but still sort of functioning. We quickly got down to work at the coffeehouse and he handed me the child bride's folder.

“Good grief, Maurice. She's only eighteen.”

“A hundred years ago, she would have had three kids on the farm by now. No one would have cared,” Maurice said, waving his hand in the air.

“Well, that was a hundred years ago. This is today. What are her wacky parents thinking? And is this legal?”