Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? (17 page)

“You have to grow up someday, Emmett,” I said. “How about now that you’ve got a baby on the way?”

He stiffened. “With a sister like you, it’s no wonder I gravitate toward women who don’t get on my case and challenge me about my basic personality. Charla likes me the way I am. If you don’t, hey, oh well.”

I’d tried
Oh well
for an entire year and it hadn’t worked for me. But neither did Emmett in his current form.

So should Emmett be allowed to be Emmett? Run away when he liked? Never commit? Have love pass him by because he was too emotionally immature and unwilling to do anything about it?

And news flash, Emmett: Charla does challenge you. She just understands you so well that you don’t realize it
.

Which meant Charla was my greatest ally at the moment.

“I’m not going to say it, Emmett, but you know what I’m thinking.”

“I don’t read minds, Eloise.”

I rolled down the window, despite the cold air. “Our father left because he didn’t want to commit. Didn’t want the responsibility of a family. Didn’t give a shit. That’s who you want to emulate?”

“First of all, you don’t know why he left,” he shouted. “And second of all, Miss Judgmental, don’t compare me to him. How dare you?”

The truth hurts, doesn’t it?

“Why do you think he left, then?” I asked.

“Maybe he thought we’d be better off without him,” he said in such a low voice I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

I turned around to face him. “Emmett, is that what you’re thinking? That Charla and the baby would be better off without you?”

“I’m not gonna win father of the year,” he said. “I don’t even have a job.”

“You can get a job. You can make a million dollars an hour smiling into a camera lens. And you have a Yale degree. You can do whatever you want.”

He leaned his head back and let out a deep breath. “I think about getting married, I think about a baby in a crib or a stroller, and I get totally claustrophobic. I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“That’s how I feel about getting married,” I admitted.

“So why do it?” he asked. “Maybe it’s not the right time. Not the right time, not the right guy. Your gut is trying to tell you something.”

“Or I’m just chickenshit, Emmett.”

He glanced at me, then out the window. “Yeah, me too.”

“But I think we’re supposed to be,” I told him. “I think that means good stuff is happening in our brains.”

“Then why is the gas tank on E?” he asked, pointing at the tank indicator.

Oops.

The three of us took a vote and unanimously decided to head home. We agreed to make the trip to Scranton next weekend; Charla had even volunteered to Internet research the various city newspapers for addresses and potentially employees. Emmett and I didn’t know whether to thank her or glare at her.

A half hour later, Charla announced that she had to pee yet again and had a craving for a strawberry milk shake, so we stopped at the McDonald’s on the other side of the highway.

I pointed at an empty table. “Let’s eat in here. I’m sick of the car. And it’s beginning to smell like hamburger.”

Charla wolfed down a McVeggie burger and unwrapped a fish-filet sandwich. I ate the pickles Emmett had taken off his cheeseburger; he swiped my fries when he finished his own. We slurped our shakes in companionable silence.

I slid the invitation to my wedding onto the table. “So what do you guys think of this?” I asked.

“‘Eloise Manfred and Guest’?” Emmett said. “Your fiancé could be
anyone?
If I were Noah, I’d be pissed as hell.”

“He hasn’t seen it,” I said. “Anyway, I’m sure the ‘guest’ is just for the mock version. I’m sure the real envelope will be properly addressed.”

“‘Properly addressed’ sounds very traditional to me,” Charla said with a wink.

I hoped she wasn’t right.

“What’s Fifth Avenue Fantasy?” Charla asked. “It sounds like a reality TV show.”

“It’s a company that transforms spaces into whatever you want, like a submarine or a jungle,” I explained. “They own the penthouse of a midtown skyscraper and rent it
out for ‘ultimate fantasy’ parties. They’re trying to get into the wedding biz.”

“So what’s your fantasy wedding?” Charla asked, also swiping my fries.

Philippa’s,
I thought out of nowhere.
A beautiful, traditional white wedding, with flowers and real prime rib and a gown that isn’t yellow. Invitations on heavy stock paper with lovely calligraphy. A ceremony and not a pairing union
.

Philippa, of course, had loved the leather invitations. A week ago, during our
Wow
trip to Invitations By Pauline, she’d run to the display case with the heart-shaped leather invitations. “Omigod, these are so cool!” she’d trilled. “I want these—ooh, I can’t decide which I like better, the red or the purple.”

All the
Wow Weddings
staff members in attendance had said in unison, “Does that look like a classic wedding invitation to you, Philippa?”

Philippa sighed and put the leather invitation back on the display. She turned to the table across the aisle. “Oh look, there’s a really
boring
invitation. I’m sure that’s the one I ‘picked,’ though—right?”

Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Philippa, your attitude does not reflect the attitude of Today’s Classic Bride. If you cannot work on your attitude, I’d be happy to replace you with a stand-in.”

Philippa beamed at the boring invitation. “The gold foil on the envelope is really lovely!”

Astrid’s thin red lips curled into a smug smile. “I couldn’t agree more, Philippa. That is why I selected that exact invitation for Today’s Classic Bride.”

The moment Astrid turned her back, Philippa stuck her finger down her throat and gagged.

“The invitations will be going out in two weeks,” As
trid announced. “I’ll need your final guest lists no later than Monday.”

“You’re not—” Philippa began to say, then clamped her mouth shut and eyed me.

Inviting yourself to our weddings, are you?
I mentally finished.
Please, no!

“You may each invite fifty people, including guests,” Astrid said. “Your other guests will include advertisers and staff.”

So my wedding table might be me, Noah and the caterer’s ad salesman and his date—and Astrid. Not that she would deign to sit with a lowly staffer, even if said staffer
was
the bride.

“Earth to Eloise. Eloise Manfred, please come in.”

Startled, I glanced up to find Charla staring at me as she sucked her strawberry milk shake. Emmett was smearing a French fry with ketchup on his hamburger wrapper.

“So, will Emmett and I be invited?” Charla asked.

I wasn’t even sure
I
would be going.

Ba-dum-pa.

“Of course,” I told her. “In fact, Noah is going to ask Emmett to be an usher. You guys, Grams, a few friends and a hundred strangers who footed the bill.”

Emmett shook his head. “The whole thing sounds nutso. Whose wedding is it anyway?”

Good question, baby brother.

“It’s just very modern,” Charla offered in defense.

“And free,” I added.

Emmett snorted. “There’s no such thing as a free wedding. Any idiot knows that.”

W
oman #1: “He’s too good-looking for you. No one at the reunion will believe he’s really your boyfriend.”

Woman #2: “Well, I’m not paying two hundred bucks an hour for an average Joe.”

This was the conversation going on around Jane and Amanda and me in the reception area of Perfect People on Monday afternoon as two women flipped through the books of models’ photographs. At least I wasn’t the only one hiring a stand-in today.

One fake father to go, please.

“Eloise, check out this one,” Amanda said, holding up the celebrity look-alike book to an eight-by-ten glossy of a handsome fifty-something. “Harrison Fordsley. Wow, he’s a dead ringer!”

I shook my head. “Harrison Ford’s too rugged for ‘hip and cool.’ I need someone more Pierce Brosnan. Billy Bob Thornton. Or Bruce Willis, with hair.”

Amanda and Jane continued flipping. “Ta-da!” Jane held up a photo of Pierce McBrosnan.

“Not bad,” I said, checking out the model, whose real name, according to the vital stats on the back of the photo, was Howie Schwineman. “But forget the look-alike book—I need a regular Joe. Someone who looks like me, just twenty-five years older.”

They tilted their heads and studied me.

“Someone who looks like…this,” I said, holding up a picture of Theo Manfred.

“That’s your dad?” Amanda asked.

I nodded around the lump in my throat. That
was
my father. Once.

“It’s like the last pictures I have of my father,” Jane said, examining the wallet-size photo. “He’s so young and handsome. It’s hard to imagine this man as a fifty-or sixty-year-old man.”

That was true. In my mind, Theo Manfred would always be twenty-something, wearing Levi’s and a white button-down shirt and a skinny red tie. He would never age, get ill.

Amanda sat back down and flipped through the look-alike book. “I know who we need to find—Kevin Costnerberg. He could definitely be your dad.”

I laughed. “You guys pick him. I can’t bear it.”

Jane peered at me. “Are you all right, Eloise? You don’t have to do this, you know. You can tell your boss that your father is ‘unavailable’ and that you don’t want to hire a stand-in. You don’t have to explain anything to her.”

“I know,” I said. “But—”

But what? I didn’t even know what the
but
was.

No, that wasn’t true. I
did
know what the but was.

I wanted a father. For a picture, for a day, for an hour, I
wanted a father. I wanted my father to say all the things Philippa’s fake father had said the day he’d visited the
Wow Weddings
offices.

I’d have to ask her how much extra she’d slipped him for that.

“Omigod,” Amanda yelped, triumphantly holding up an eight-by-ten glossy. “Here he is—Kevin Costnerly!” She flipped over the photo and laughed. “His real name is Gunther.”

I glanced at the photo. “Put him in a black suede trench, and he’s my metrosexual dad.”

“Let’s watch
Field of Dreams
tonight to pay homage,” Jane suggested.

“No—
Dances With Wolves,
” Amanda said. She stood up very straight and shouted, “I will find you! No matter what, I will find you!”

Jane laughed. “That was
Last of the Mohicans.
”

“Oh,” Amanda said.

“Hey, how about
Waterworld,
” I joked, and they both shook their heads. “Okay, I’ve got it.
Bull Durham.
”

“Now you’re talking,” Jane said. “I’ll bring the Jiffy Pop.”

Ten minutes later, Kevin Costnerly was mine on next Monday for two hundred fifty an hour. The extra fifty was for the special instructions: hair gel, a black leather jacket and ten minutes, minimum, of a gushing-dad routine.

“Is this a tantrum?” Emmett asked, eyeing Summer, who was crying hysterically while trying to reach my chocolate Santa collection on a high shelf.

“No, honey,” Charla said. “That’s just wanting chocolate.”

“So it gets worse?” Emmett asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “A lot worse.”

And then I remembered that we’d arranged this little baby-sitting gig to show Emmett the joys of parenthood, not some of the less manageable realities. Since we’d returned from Pennsylvania on Saturday, Emmett had been staying with Charla again. She’d been careful to keep all pregnancy magazines out of sight.

Natasha was on a date, Noah was
Hot News
ing with Call Me Ash, Jane and Ethan were taking Kickboxing for Couples at their health club and Amanda and Jeff were what she called “TTC,” which I soon learned was Internet shorthand for “trying to conceive.” In other words, they were having lots of sex.

And I had one cranky two-year-old, one hormonally challenged new friend and one freaked-out younger brother to contend with.

Summer was reaching an arm up to Charla and saying, “Me. Me!”

“Does she want to be picked up?” Emmett asked.

“I think she wants to touch my pigtails,” Charla said, sitting down on the rug next to Summer.

Charla was right. For the next minutes, Summer examined, tried to mouth and flung the little sparkly red balls on Charla’s rubber bands. “Me, me!” Summer said, pointing at the pigtails and stomping her feet. Charla complied, twisting Summer’s wildly curly almost-shoulder-length red hair into pigtails, and Summer spent an additional ten minutes staring at herself in the mirror and smiling.

“So what do we do?” Emmett asked.

“About what?” I asked.

“Baby-sitting,” he said.

“We’re doing it.”

“This is it?”

I nodded. “We play with Summer, give her dinner, give her a bath, play a little more, have milk and cookies, and off she goes to bed.”

“At, like, eleven o’clock?” he asked.

I laughed. “At, like, eight.”

“Da-da,” Summer said, pointing at Emmett.

Emmett paled. “Why is she saying that?”

“Don’t worry, Em,” I told him. “She’s not accusing you. Babies tend to categorize all men as ‘Daddy.’ It just means they know you’re a man and not a woman.”

He relaxed. “Oh. Where is her father, anyway?”

“Where ours is,” I told him.

He looked at me, surprised, then at Summer. I could see him taking in that information. That this adorable little creature, not yet two years old, just three feet of sweetness and innocence and bursting with life, already had baggage.

Glum, Emmett watched Summer play with Hokey Pokey Elmo. While Elmo turned himself around and Summer squealed with delight, Emmett started to cry.

Charla and I stared at him for a moment. Was Emmett actually
crying?

Charla put her arm around him. “Emmett, honey? Are you all right?”

“I’m such a fuckup,” he said and then glanced at Summer. “Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to curse in front of the baby.”

Charla cupped his face with her hands. “Emmett, you’re dealing with a lot.”

“I have to go, okay?” Emmett said.

Charla closed her eyes for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

And Emmett was gone.

Charla let out a deep breath. “I’ll bet you anything that he doesn’t come home tonight.”

Unfortunately, the odds were in her favor.

Charla called at midnight with the news that Emmett hadn’t come home.

“He’s gone for good. I know it,” she said. “Part of me wants to scream, ‘Good riddance, and grow the hell up while you’re gone.’ But the other part, most of me, wants him too much.”

I was trying to think of something comforting to say, when my apartment buzzer rang.

It was Emmett.

I ran back to the telephone. “Charla, he just showed up here. Let me talk to him, okay? I think everything’s going to be all right.”

“’Kay,” she said in a shaky voice and hung up.

I opened the apartment door and watched Emmett trudge up the stairs. It figured he took the stairs instead of the elevator. We lived on the ninth floor, and walking up was doable if you absolutely had to (as I’d been annoyed to learn during a recent blackout), but there was an elevator for a reason.

“What am I going to do?” he asked me as he came inside, his cheeks red from the cold.

“You’re going to do what you want to do, Emmett.”

“Meaning?” he asked.

“Meaning, it would be really great if you wanted to be a father to your child,” I said.

“No ‘You should do this, you should do that’?” he asked. “That’s what I expected from you.”

What good is it if you don’t want to?
I thought.

If you didn’t want to be a father, how could you
be
a father? You could do it out of a sense of duty, and you could rise to the occasion—and maybe you’d be rewarded in ways you never imagined.

I wondered if it worked liked that. If you could do something out of duty and end up happy, like in Hallmark Hall of Fame movies on television. Last night, I watched a cable-TV movie about a mean, lonely grandmother whose grown children had run from her the minute they could, and whose abandoned grandchildren were desperate for a home. She took them in out of duty and struggled against loving them, and then tried sticking them on a bus to some other relative—only to let the bus go by when it came.

Maybe it would be like that for Emmett.

Maybe he’d take one look at his baby and fall in love.

There’s intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation,
my grandmother had said.
Your father didn’t seem to have either.

“Am I like Dad?” Emmett asked in a small voice. “Is that who I’m going to be? That son of a bitch?”

“That’s up to you, Em.”

He looked at me and dropped his face in his hands.

“I hired a model to be my father for the photo shoot on Monday,” I told him. “I thought you should know.”

“That’s pretty pathetic,” he said. “A fake father?”

“Two weeks ago, I hired a fake brother just in case you didn’t show up.”

He stared at me. “Well, I did.”

“Well, our father’s not going to show up, is he?”

“Why don’t you tell your boss to go to hell?” he asked.

“Because that’s not what you do in the real world, Emmett. As much as I would like to, she’s my boss. I need my job. I need to pay my rent and bills. And I really like my job. I might not like Astrid, but I like my job. You can’t go around telling people, especially people who pay you, to go to hell just because you don’t like them.”

“I don’t need a lecture,” he said.

“Actually, little brother, you do.”

He rolled his eyes. “Are you ever going to get off my case?”

“No.”

“Great. You’re going to be a lot of fun to be around.”

“Someone’s got to set you straight, Emmett.”

“The baby’s going to do that,” he said, and I could tell he was surprised it had come out of his own mouth. He lay down on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “Can I crash here tonight?”

“You can,” I told him, “but go home, Emmett. Someone’s waiting for you.” And with that, I went into my bedroom.