All Dressed Up
Authors: Lilian Darcy
Tags: #sisters, #weddings, #family secrets, #dancers, #brides, #adirondacks, #bridesmaids, #wedding gowns
“
Lilian
Darcy’s writing is wonderful, and the characterizations are rapier
sharp.” -
New York Times Bestelling author Mary Jo Putney.
“
...
it’s the writing that grabbed me
...
reading [Cafe du Jour] is like talking with a
friend.
” -
Jayne at dearauthor.com
Up
Darcy
For Hope and
Mackenzie and their siblings, remembering June 26 2010
First
Electronic Book Edition December 2011, Springvale Manuscript
Production
ALL DRESSED UP
Copyright 2011 by Lilian Darcy
ISBN
978-0-9870940-2-5
Smashwords
Edition
The moral
rights of the author have been asserted
Smashwords
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Contents
“Emma, I’m not
doing this.” Charlie’s voice shook with anger. He pulled the
airplane mask up to the top of his forehead and glared at her. No
man should glare at his bride-to-be like that. “I’m not wearing
this stupid mask. It’s too much. It’s crazy.”
It wasn’t
crazy. It made perfect sense. She needed to check that she and
Charlie would fit side by side in the narrow church aisle,
tomorrow, when they came down it as man and wife. When better to do
this than immediately following the wedding rehearsal? How better
to ensure that Charlie didn’t see the dress ahead of time than by
making him wear a mask?
Emma wanted to
scream at him. But some part of her knew that his removing the
airplane mask and looking directly at her wedding gown twenty-two
hours too soon wasn’t what was really wrong.
The gown was
not even comfortable. It never had been, from the first time she’d
tried it on in late December to the final fitting three weeks ago.
She’d never said a word, not about the way its weight dragged, not
about the stiff boning needed to keep the strapless bodice in place
on her non-curvy frame, not about the scratch of the seams. It was
the dress she’d wanted, and comfort took second place.
Of course
she’d never said a word.
Not one
word.
She was so
good at that by now.
It was the
right dress, the perfect dress, gorgeous and huge and eye-catching,
fitting the kind of wedding she expected of herself down to the
massive price tag and the last elaborate detail of feathery trim.
And now, for some reason, the dress was what broke her.
No, okay, she
was broken already.
But it was the
dress that demanded she do something about it.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at Charlie, her groom, the love of her life, six feet
away in the church aisle. The airplane mask was farcical, perched
on his square forehead, but in everything else he was such a
beautiful specimen of manhood, fit and intelligent and strong. His
skin was dark as a pirate's against his white shirt, and dark pants
outlined his runner’s legs. His black eyes were narrowed and angry,
showing his impatience about her flawed humanity when he was so
perfect himself. Usually he was even perfect enough not to mind her
flaws, but today she’d pushed him to breaking point.
“Emma?” he
said.
“You won’t say
it, Charlie, but I have to.” Her voice was so hard, it hurt in her
throat. All of this hurt. “Maybe you did say it, actually. I’m not
doing this,” she mimicked. “Well, I’m not doing it, either.”
“Oh crap,”
Charlie said.
Oh crap, for
sure. Sarah saw her sister’s hands go to the side zipper of the
dress and knew what was happening. When the bride-to-be takes off
the fifteen-thousand dollar wedding gown in the middle of the
church aisle less than twenty-four hours before the scheduled
ceremony, any chief bridesmaid worthy of the name grasps the
gravity of the situation pretty fast.
It means the
wedding is off.
A kind of
train-wreck-in-slow-motion sensation sank into her bones like the
fall-out from an atomic bomb. Of course the wedding was off.
“I can’t go
through with it,” Emma said. Announced. Mainly to Charlie. “I don’t
think you even want me to.”
Poor Emma.
Poor
difficult, beautiful Emma, with her lush brown hair blow-dried
loose and gleaming down to her shoulder-blades, her skin pampered
ready for the wedding, her lip-gloss dewy and fresh, her green eyes
fringed with mascara that separated every lash, her nails manicured
like little shells.
She was
shaking so much now that she could hardly work her fingers. The
dress refused to cooperate. It was a prima donna, just like its
owner. Wedding planning guides did not advise wearing the wedding
gown to the wedding rehearsal, but that hadn’t stopped her. The
church aisle was narrow, the pews were old with possible splinters,
the dress was wide and delicate, and the bride was out of her
mind.
Only Emma
would cancel her wedding this way, Sarah decided. In the church,
wearing the dress on the wrong day. Normal people had crises of
such a nature at a more convenient time, in the privacy of their
own bedrooms, while casually dressed.
Charlie faked
a need for clarification, with anger radiating from his bones. “Go
through with rehearsing the dress coming down the aisle, or through
with the actual wedding?” He’d been getting more and more tense
about Emma’s preparations in recent weeks, more and more rigid,
more and more provocatively determined to do the right thing by his
over-the-top fiancée if it killed him.
Emma spared
him a glance and a shaky, sarcastic smile. “What do you think?”
He didn’t
answer, and fortunately didn’t know how ridiculous he looked, with
that mask. In so many ways, none of this was about the wedding at
all. Did Charlie know that?
He didn’t,
Sarah decided. He didn’t at all.
She was
shocked. Shocked at herself, too, for being a part of the
conspiracy. How had this happened?
Charlie didn’t
know, but it wasn’t Sarah’s place to tell him.
“I am so angry
with you.” Emma’s eyes flashed their green sparks at her fiance. “I
have done everything for this wedding. Do you have any idea of the
work and time that’s gone into it?”
“Just a bit. I
carried your nine-hundred page planning binder to the car
yesterday,” Charlie said, “So you can’t say I don’t know how much
the wedding weighs.” He bit down on the sarcasm as if it was an
orthodontic plate. Sarah could hear the grinding.
“Don’t you
dare imply that you’ve shouldered it all!” Emma’s voice rose,
vinegar sharp. “I have tried so hard. I have done so much. Forever!
For a hundred years. For Mom. For Billy. For everyone. Since
London. Sarah, help me, I can’t stay in this dress.” She sounded
panicky as she swung around. “I can’t stay in it. I need it
off.”
Jolted by the
helplessness in Emma’s appeal and by the mention of London and
Billy, Sarah stepped forward. So did the other two bridesmaids –
Emma’s college roommate Amber, and Brooke, the courtesy bridesmaid
from Charlie’s side of the family, whom Emma hadn’t wanted in the
bridal party at all.
Sarah got
there first. She saw Brooke look at Charlie – the two of them were
second cousins, though she was blonde and fair-skinned and they
didn’t look anything alike – but he had retreated to some other
mental place, unnaturally calm, distantly well-behaved.
“The feathers…
the zipper,” Emma said, her hands still fluttering over the
delicate fabric. It was the most gorgeous dress, and Emma would
have matched it as a bride, but she was such a mess.
“Don’t twist
around, Em, just hold still and lift your arms.” Sarah lowered her
voice, tried to gentle Emma’s rising hysteria with her tone. “How
about we go back to the vestry and – ?” She stopped as Emma pressed
a clammy hand to her mouth and shook her head. “Okay, okay, we’ll
take it off here…” She began to tease the zipper down.
The parting
teeth made a sound like fingernails running over a comb. Emma had
lost more weight since her final dress fitting. She’d almost gone
beyond slender and reached skinny. When she hunched her shoulders
and sucked her stomach in, the strapless gown seemed too big for
her. It fell and sighed around her feet with the zipper only half
undone.
She stepped
out of it as if afraid it might burn her. Beneath it she wore
bronze Capri pants, a strapless white bridal bra and her six
hundred dollar beaded shoes, carefully encased in protective
plastic bags. It really wasn’t clear to anyone why she’d needed to
rehearse the shoes. Sarah wanted to take her to a mirror and tell
her, “Look at you, Emma! Can you really call this attention to
detail? Get over yourself, okay?”
Once upon a
time, Emma herself would have been the one to laugh at how she
looked. She would have thrown out a funny, cynical line. But nobody
had seen that side of Emma for a while. “Is Mom still here?” she
asked.
“No, they left
around ten minutes ago, her and Dad and Billy, while you were in
the back room getting into the dress.”
Light spilled
through the space where the church door had slowly begun to close.
Charlie’s mother, Lainie, and tomorrow’s officiating minister, the
Reverend “Mac” McLintock, stood just inside. They’d been sent out
to the porch some minutes ago, so as not to glimpse the dress.
They’d been having a very pleasant conversation out there in the
mushy Adirondack summer rain. Sarah had caught the sound of
laughter more than once. She’d decided that Charlie’s mom had the
loveliest laugh, warm and thick as chocolate syrup. She had the
impression Mac McLintock liked it, too. They were both
strong-boned, ruddy in coloring, fifty-ish. They looked good
together.
But they
seemed remorseful and alarmed about the picture Emma and Charlie
presented. The Reverend and Lainie had missed the big moment, and
now they didn’t know whether to intervene. Charlie seemed too calm,
at this point. He was being patient with Emma in the way he might
have been patient with a beetle crawling its way across his shirt.
Lainie’s cheeks had flushed an almost bridal pink. Somebody had to
make a move, save poor Emma from herself.
Sarah bent to
gather up the dress. “Em, let’s go back and – ”
“Leave it!”
Emma ordered. She glanced down at the dress with a look of
loathing, as if it was her best friend who’d gotten plastered at
the hen night and betrayed her with the groom. It reposed like a
giant, feathery mushroom on the carpeted church floor, pleased with
itself, playing Scarlett O’Hara in the movie, after the really good
sex with Rhett.