Girls In White Dresses (17 page)

“I’m just trying to avoid a phone call.”

“The stalker?” Isabella asked. “Why don’t you just look at the caller ID?”

“No. You don’t know this girl. She could be calling from any number.”

“I guess,” Isabella said. She chewed on her lip and looked concerned. “You know, I was thinking about the pigeons.”

“Really?” Cate asked.

“Yeah, I mean, you’re right. It could have been just some random man stealing them.”

“I know,” Cate said. “But why wouldn’t anyone have stopped him?”

Isabella shrugged. “Sometimes I think that if you do something with enough confidence in New York, you can get away with anything. If you pretend to have authority, people never question you.”

“I think you’re right.” Cate swallowed, looked back at her computer, and started typing.

Cate left work and stood on the corner waiting for the bus. A pigeon bobbed its head and walked toward her. She waited for it to stop and turn around, but it kept coming. Its beak was open, like it was going to bite her. She kicked her shoe at it and backed up, but it just flapped its wings at her. The people across the street watched her, giving her strange looks. The pigeon kept coming closer, and Cate wondered if it was a rabid pigeon. Was there such a thing? She kicked at it again and screamed, “Aughh!” Finally it turned to walk away. “Fuck you,” Cate said to its back. She could have sworn it turned around to look at her. “You better watch it,” she said. “There are people out there who can take you.” The man next to her moved two steps away.

Cate stopped on the way home to get a bottle of wine, and opened it as soon as she got into her apartment. She poured some into a glass and took a sip before she even took off her jacket. No matter how many times she’d tried to make sense of it, she couldn’t. “Bridget and Jim,” she repeated aloud. “Bridget and Jim.”

Finally, after a couple glasses of wine, she picked up the phone and called her friend Julia. “You won’t believe this,” Cate said. “I had lunch with Bridget today—I know, I know, she’s a crazy person. But listen to what she told me. She’s obsessed with Jim and totally stalking him. Yes, that Jim. I know, she’s nuts.” Cate took another sip of wine and smiled. “I think she’s breaking him down,” she said. “You know how she is. I know, I know. You almost feel sorry for him. Poor bastard.”

R
iding backwards on a train makes me sick,” Lauren said. Everyone ignored her. They were sitting in a four-person seat on the Long Island Rail Road, facing each other with their knees touching. “I’m serious, you guys, I might throw up. I always get motion sick when I ride backwards.”

“You feel sick because you drank about forty-five vodka tonics last night,” Mary said. She leaned forward and sniffed. “You smell like you just took a shot. I’m serious. I can smell liquor on your breath.”

“Please stop it,” Lauren said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat. “Could someone please just switch with me?”

“Fine, I will,” Isabella said.

They stood up and grasped elbows, turning until they were on opposite sides. Lauren knocked Mary’s coffee when she sat down and Mary swore at her. They were all annoyed. They were on their way to Long Island for a wedding shower and they were all annoyed.

“This isn’t helping,” Lauren said, and leaned forward to rest her head in her lap. “I hate Long Island.”

“No kidding,” Isabella said.

Their friend Kristi was engaged. They were all happy for her. They were all bridesmaids. They were all sick of celebrating it.

Kristi was really embracing her role as a bride-to-be. She never said things like “Let’s talk about something besides the wedding,” or, “You don’t have to buy me a present for every party.” She wanted all of the attention and she wanted all of the presents. This was her time, she kept reminding them, like it was something she’d earned.

This was Kristi’s sixth shower. First, her mother’s side of the family had thrown her a “Time of Day” shower. They were all given a time of day, and had to buy a present that went along with it. Isabella got two a.m. “What am I supposed to get them for two a.m.?” Isabella asked everyone. She agonized over it, ignored Lauren’s suggestion to buy them handcuffs, and finally bought sheets.

Kristi’s second shower was thrown by her father’s side of the family. (Her father’s side had been excluded from the first shower, because of some family drama that none of the bridesmaids cared about.) They traveled to Rhode Island to sit in a tiny living room and listen to Kristi’s aunt complain about not being invited to the other shower. “She could have had my invitation,” Mary whispered to Isabella.

Kristi’s third shower was thrown by her fiancé’s groomsmen. It was a couples’ shower to stock the bar, and everyone was supposed to bring a bottle of liquor and glasses. “What kind of groomsmen throw a shower?” Lauren asked. “Are they gay? I’ve never heard of such a thing. And you know what? I’m not going. I’m not in a couple, and I need the liquor more than she does.” Lauren ended up going to the party and drinking almost the whole bottle of liquor she’d brought. “I need it more,” she kept saying.

The fourth shower was thrown by Kristi’s friends from work, and she insisted that they all go. “I need my bridesmaids there,” she said. “Why?” Lauren asked. “To wipe her ass?” The fifth shower happened because Kristi kept saying, “No one can believe that my bridesmaids haven’t thrown me a shower.” They had a brunch at Mary’s apartment to shut her up. “Is it just bagels?” she asked when she saw the food. When she opened up the present they got her, she said, “Who is this from? Oh, all of you. Is there another part? No, just this? Okay.”

Now they were on their way to Long Island for Kristi’s sixth shower and their patience was wearing thin. “My mother’s bridge group wants to throw me a shower,” Kristi said when she told them about this shower. “I just couldn’t say no!”

The thing was, Kristi wasn’t their first friend to get married. They had stood up in weddings of friends from home, friends from college, friends from work. Every time they were sure that they were done, someone else got engaged. And all that meant was that they would continue to spend their weekends at wedding showers.

They were good bridesmaids at the showers. They trekked out to Long Island and the suburbs of New Jersey wearing pastel dresses and carrying presents. They cheered for stainless-steel pots and flowered serving trays. They gathered ribbons and crafted large bouquets out of paper plates, while taking notes on who gave the bride the toaster and who gave her
The Cupcake Cookbook
. They gasped in mock horror when ribbons were broken—“That’s six babies now,” they’d warn with smiles and raised eyebrows. When margarita glasses were unwrapped, one of them always said, “We’ll be over to put those to good use,” and the older women at the shower would laugh. They organized games to play, wound up timers, and put together quizzes titled “How Well Do You Know the Bride?”

As the weddings increased, it was harder to be pleasant. After they’d attended five showers, the novelty wore off. By the time it got to fifteen, they were tired of cleaning up wrapping paper. And when they had attended over twenty showers, they were flat-out exhausted. Who on earth needed an ice-cream maker? Why did anyone want a deep fryer? And where were the happy couples (who lived in tiny Manhattan apartments) going to store twenty-four wine glasses and a bread maker?

The train pulled into the station, and they all got up and left in silence. They stood in the sun for a moment. “It’s really nice out today,” Mary said. Lauren ran to a garbage can on the platform and threw up. “Yes,” Isabella said. “It’s beautiful out.”

As Kristi unwrapped mixers and place mats, Lauren and Isabella snuck out to the patio to have a cigarette. “I bet she gets pregnant right away,” Lauren said. She was sipping her third mimosa, and was in much better shape already.

“Why?” Isabella asked.

“Because then she’ll have a reason for everyone to give her more presents. We’ll have to throw her a baby shower too, and talk about her being pregnant, and then we’ll have to babysit the little fucker.”

“That’s lovely,” Isabella said. She peeked through the sliding glass doors to see if anyone missed them. Mary had been grabbed and chosen to write down all of the gifts, and she was looking around the room for them. She seemed pissed and Isabella felt bad, but better her than them. Their friend Abby was constructing a bouquet out of the ribbons Kristi threw at her as she tore into the packages. Abby worked with her head down, like a child in a sweatshop. Kristi had debated whether or not to even make Abby a bridesmaid in the first place. “I mean, I know she’d be honored,” Kristi said. “But maybe it would be too much, since she just called off her own wedding not long ago. I don’t want her to be a downer.” Abby had shown up at every shower and party, and been a good sport. And now, here she was threading ribbons through a paper plate. She glanced up and saw Isabella through the glass door. Her eyes looked wounded, like she believed that Kristi was getting married just to punish her. Abby gave Isabella a small smile and kept her fingers moving, twisting and tying to make that stupid ribbon hat. Isabella tried to smile back and then had to turn away.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Lauren said. She was cranky. “This is my fifth wedding this year. And I’m done with it. What I don’t get is why there have to be so many showers just for one person. And why do they have to have themes? Why? Just to make it more annoying than it already is?”

Isabella shushed her and then glanced inside to make sure no one had heard. The theme for this shower was “My Favorite Things.” They had all received invitations that read: “Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes! Please come and celebrate with our bride-to-be, Kristi Kearney. Bring her one of your favorite things!”

“I should have brought her cigarettes,” Lauren said thoughtfully. She took one more drag and then stamped her cigarette out on the ground. “They are one of my favorite things. Thank God I have them today. Kristi’s being a nightmare, huh?”

Isabella didn’t have anything to say. Kristi wasn’t a bad person, she didn’t think. But she was acting like one. “Maybe she’s just stressed,” Isabella said. They had been talking about Kristi for months now. If the wedding didn’t come soon, they were going to have to stop being friends with her.

On the eve of Kristi’s engagement party, Todd’s great-aunt died. There was talk of rescheduling, and Kristi came to see them, crying. “I’ve just really been looking forward to this,” she said. “How could they do this to me?”

“But someone died,” Lauren said.

“I just think we still could have it. I mean, it’s a party for me,” Kristi said. She put her head in her hands and they all looked at each other. Then they all kept drinking.

The party ended up happening. And later, Kristi would say that it was a shame that the aunt’s death had put such a damper on it. “I just felt like I couldn’t really be as happy as I wanted to be, you know? Like I had to dial it back to be appropriate. It was really unfair.”

“Do you think she needs to be on medication?” Mary asked later. No one laughed.

They kept waiting for it to stop, waiting for Kristi to realize that she was acting like a beast. But she never did. At her bachelorette party, she cried when one of their friends announced that she was pregnant. “I just really wanted this night to be about me,” she wailed.

When Lauren hired a woman to come to the party and sell sex toys, Kristi turned to her and said, “This seems like something you would want more than I would. I mean, I have Todd now and we’re getting married, so I don’t really need a vibrator. But it’s fun for the single girls, I guess.”

“Last night I added up all the money I spent on weddings this year,” Lauren said in a dreamy voice. “It was over five thousand dollars. I could have gone on a trip to Belize and then bought a new wardrobe.”

“I realized yesterday that my credit card bill is never going to be paid in full. Never,” Isabella said.

They weren’t really talking to each other. It was the same conversation they’d been having since the weddings started. They finished their cigarettes in silence.

“We should go back in there before Mary never forgives us,” Isabella said.

“Fine,” Lauren said, and drank the rest of her mimosa in one gulp.

The food at the showers was always the same: ladylike salads, teeny sandwiches, cut-up fruit, white wine and mimosas, mini cakes for dessert. Lauren piled an alarming amount of mini sandwiches on her plate. “I would kill you for a cheeseburger,” she whispered to Mary.

“I might just kill you for fun,” Mary said. “How could you leave me in there alone? I had to write down all the presents by myself. And they kept asking me if I was dating anyone. Then, one woman who was hard of hearing said, ‘What? Who are you dating?’ And I had to yell loudly across the room, ‘I’m not dating anyone!’ ”

“Shut up.”

“Swear to God, it happened.”

One of the bridge friends clinked her glass with a spoon until the room quieted down. “Welcome, everyone! I just wanted to say a few words about our lovely bride-to-be, Kristi!” Everyone in the room clapped.

“Why are they clapping for her?” Lauren asked. “She didn’t do anything.” Mary and Isabella both shushed her and she just rolled her eyes. The woman talked about Kristi and how she had watched her grow up. Lauren shoved a whole sandwich in her mouth and chewed while the bridge lady spoke. When Mary gave her a look, she swallowed and said, “What? I’m hungry.”

“Our theme for today is ‘My Favorite Things,’ ” the woman continued. “I hope that everyone is ready to explain the special meaning behind her gift for Kristi!” Then the woman started singing, “Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes,” and she raised her arms for everyone to join. All of the women in the room chimed in, “Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes!” They kept singing and started swaying back and forth. Abby was standing unfortunately close to the woman who’d started the singing, and the woman wrapped her arm around Abby’s shoulders, forced her to move in time with the music, and looked at her with an encouraging smile until Abby started to sing along with her. A few of the women were snapping their fingers. Lauren looked at Isabella and Mary and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?”