I love weddings!
Doesn't everyone?
Um, apparently not. "Cripes, Tracey, I can't believe this
is how we're spending the last Saturday of the summer."
That's my live-in boyfriend, Jack, grumbling as he gazes
bleakly through the windshield of our rented sub-compact
car at the holiday-traffic-clogged Jersey Turn-pike. The
midday sun is glaring overhead and heat radiates in waves
off the asphalt, along with toxic black exhaust fumes.
Thank God for air-conditioning. I adjust the full-blast
passenger's-side vent to blow in the vicinity of my navel,
lest it muss my fancy upswept do.
It took me almost an hour and a half a can of Aussie
Freeze Spray to get my straight, bra-clasp-length brown
hair looking this supermodelish. It'll probably wilt the
second I get out of the car, but at least Jack got to
appreciate it. He was momentarily complimentary about my
hair and my slinky red cocktail dress before he went back
to grousing about the wedding.
It shouldn't bug me that he didn't mention anything about
how I was wearing a similar red dress the night we met.
It shouldn't, but it does.
I can't help it. For the first year or so that we were
together, he made a point of noticing details like that. I
guess he's gotten less romantic the last few months. Or
maybe I've gotten overly sensitive. I shouldn't go around
weighing every comment he makes — or noticing the ones he
doesn't make anymore.
I shouldn't, but lately, I do.
It's not that I think we've fallen out of love. If
anything, we've become closer, our lives interwoven. His
friends are my friends; his mother and his favorite
sister,Rachel,sometimes call just to talk to me. My
friends are his friends; my mother and sister — well,
forget about them. The point is, we're still a solid
couple. We laugh all the time; we know each other's most
intimate secrets; the sex is frequent and good, if I do
say so myself.
So what's the problem?
I want more,dammit.I deserve more.I'm finally over the
pesky feelings of unworthiness and insecurity that
festered in the wake of my arrogant ex-boyfriend, Will,
who callously blew me off two summers ago.
It's not as though I've come right out and asked Jack what
his intentions are — maybe because I'm afraid of the
answer. But lately,I've found myself wondering pretty
frequently — all right, constantly — whether Jack is ever
going to take the initiative to make our relationship
permanent.
Since he hasn't, I tend to secretly look for evidence that
he's got the opposite plan in mind. Or, at the very least,
that he's losing interest.
All right, maybe the ghost of unworthy, insecure Tracey
has come back to haunt me.But I really should stop
nitpicking — even if it's just mental
nitpicking.Really.Before I turn into one of those Bitter
Shrews.
Which Bitter Shrews, you might ask?
Oh, you know. The Bitter Shrews who nobody wants to marry.
The ones who eventually become joyless middle-aged
spinsters with mouths that have those vertical wrinkles in
the corners from wearing perpetually grim expressions.
Oblivious to the horrific visions careening beneath my
divine updo, Jack props his outstretched wrists on the top
curve of the steering wheel in frustration as he brakes to
yet another stop.
"We should have RSVP'd no, Tracey. This is ridiculous."
"How could we do that? Mike's one of your best friends.
Plus he's my boss."
"Soon-to-be ex-boss."
Right. Mike was fired a few weeks ago. Sort of. The
command came down from the formidable Adrian Smedly,
director of our account group, to Mike's supervisor, Carol
the Wimpy Management Rep. But she didn't have the balls —
or in her case, the heart — to come right out and ax a
soon-to-be groom. Instead, she called him into her office
and more or less told him to start looking for a new job
as soon as possible.
The thing about Mike is that he's incessantly upbeat in a
dopey, wide-eyed kind of way, like a big old happy pup. He
trots nonchalantly through life wearing an open,friendly
expression, heedless that his shirts are frequently
rumpled and his hair is always mussed. If Mike had a tail,
it would be perpetually wagging.
So when Carol told him in so many words that he doesn't
have a future at Blair Barnett Advertising, Mike seemed
pretty unfazed.In fact,from what I can tell,he hasn't
started cleaning out his office or even put together his
résumé. I should know. He's all but illiterate.
For the past almost three years I've been working at Blair
Barnett, my primary purpose in life is to proofread Mike's
stuff, both work related and personal. I've doctored his
memos, his presentations, even the supposedly impromptu
toast he gave at his engagement party. If he were doing a
résumé, I'd definitely know about it. I'd probably be
writing it.
Never mind that what I should be writing by now — what I
fully expected to be writing by now — is ad copy.
Last year I was promoted from my original entry-level
account management position, but not into the coveted
Creative Department, as promised. No, I was given the
title account coordinator on the McMurray-White packaged
goods account, which basically means I make a few thousand
dollars more per year to remain in my claustrophobic
cubicle and officially do administrative stuff while
unofficially assisting my incompetent boss with his own
duties. Oh, and I get all the freebie product I want,
which means I am pretty much stocked for life on Blossom
deodorant and Abate laxatives.
I'm supposedly still first in line for the next junior
copywriting position that opens up in the Creative
Department.
The trouble is, thanks to the lousy economy, Blair Barnett
has been routinely laying off employees, including junior
copywriters and account coordinators, for the past
eighteen months. Jack, who is a media supervisor at the
agency, keeps reminding me that we're both lucky we still
have jobs.
But I'm twenty-five years old. I don't want a job; I want
a career. And with Mike gone — which,presumably,he soon
will be — who's going to push for me to get another
promotion? Certainly not wimpy Carol.
"Aside from whether or not Mike's my boss, you still lived
with him for years," I point out to Jack, shoving aside
troubling thoughts of office politics."You can't just not
go to his wedding."
"Why not? I should be protesting his wedding."
"Protesting?" Amused, I imagine Jack picketing the church
in a sandwich board."On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that I loathe the bride."
"Yeah, well, who doesn't?"
Back when Jack was Mike's roommate and Dianne was Mike's
omnipresent girlfriend, Jack referred to Dianne as a one-
woman axis of evil.
I have to say, he wasn't necessarily exaggerating.
It's hard to remember that I actually kind of liked her
back when she was just a voice on the other end of the
phone whenever I answered Mike's line at the office. My
opinion changed rapidly when I found myself sharing
girlfriend privileges with her in Mike and Jack's tiny
Brooklyn apartment.
Miscellaneous things I hate about Dianne:
1) She's a catty, mean-spirited snob.
2) She talks to Mike in this cutesy-poo baby voice
whenever she isn't bitching at him.
3) She once called Jack an asshole behind his back and
probably to his face for all I know.
Oh, and 4) She's getting married.
Hell, yes, I'm jealous.
Don't you think it's unfair that she's getting married,
and I'm not?
Yeah, so do I.
Ironically, if it weren't for me, Dianne wouldn't be
walking down the aisle today. Or, most likely, ever. I
mean, who would want a one-woman axis of evil for a wife?
I guess Mike would.
Except that I don't think he really does.He's basically
getting married by default.
When Jack and I moved in together a year and a half ago,
Mike was left without a roommate. He halfheartedly tried
to find a new one for a while,then told Dianne maybe they
should live together. She said no way. Not without an
engagement ring on her finger and a wedding date on her
calendar.
Mike swore to me and Jack that there was no way he was
getting married. Not to Dianne, not yet, maybe not ever.
He supposedly looked for an affordable studio apartment
for a couple of weeks to no avail.
The next thing we knew, he had gone over to the dark side
and was shopping for diamond rings.
Rather, he was arranging a five-year payment plan with sky-
high interest for the rock Dianne had already picked out.
Wuss. "Are we almost at the exit?" Jack asks, lifting his
foot off the brake and creeping the tiny car forward a
whopping two or three feet before stopping again with a
colorful curse. It isn't the first time he's said that —
or worse — since we left Manhattan this morning.
The day started off on the wrong foot at the rental-car
place down First Avenue from our apartment on the Upper
East Side.
Our Apartment.
Funny how even after seventeen months of living with
somebody, you still get a little thrill over the mundane
daily reminders of domestic coupledom. At least, I still
do.
Anyway, we had reserved a midsize sedan, but for some
reason the counter agent couldn't quite express — either
because she didn't speak English or because she simply
didn't have a logical explanation why — we got stuck with
a car that's roughly the size of a toilet bowl, give or
take.
At least it doesn't smell like a toilet bowl, like the
rental car Jack and I had when we went to my friend Kate's
wedding in sweltering Alabama last summer.
Then again,the lemon-shaped air-freshener thingy hanging
from the rearview mirror in this car isn't much better. It
kind of reminds me of that bathroom spray that doesn't
really eliminate odors, merely infuses them with a fruity
aroma. My parents' bathroom frequently reeks of country-
apple-scented poop.
Jack and I keep good old-fashioned Lysol in our bathroom.
Our Bathroom.
In Our Apartment.
See? Little thrill.
After said thrill subsides,I consult the contents of the
engraved ivory-linen envelope in my lap: an invitation
with a tag line that reads Grow old along with me...the
best is yet to be...a reception card and a little
annotated road map of this particular corner of hell.
Er, Jersey. "I think we're about five miles away from the
exit," I tell Jack.
"That means at least another hour. Maybe we'll miss the
ceremony," he adds hopefully.
But we don't.We eventually find ourselves driving along a
strip mall-dotted highway with fifteen minutes to spare.
Unless we're lost.Which,come to think of it,we just might
be. I think I might have missed a turn a mile or so back,
when I was trying to dislodge my numb feet from the
cramped space between my purse and the glove compartment.
Jack's getting crankier by the second, I have to pee, and
we're both scanning the sides of the road as if any second
now we might see a picturesque white steeple poking up
amidst the concrete-block-and-plate-glass suburban
landscape.
"What's the name of the church again, Tracey?" he asks,
apparently thinking we might have somehow overlooked a
place of worship nestled in the shadow of Chuck E. Cheese.
Without checking the invitation again, I quip, to break
the tension,"Our Lady of Everlasting Misery."
Jack laughs."Really? I thought it was Our Lady of Eternal
Damnation."
I giggle."Or Our Lady of Imminent Sorrow." Then, the nice
Catholic girl in me adds, "We probably shouldn't be making
jokes like that."
"Sure we should. If Mike's asinine enough to get married,
we can make jokes about it."
Okay, here I go again.
But the thing is...
Jack didn't say, If Mike's asinine enough to get married
to Dianne.
He said, If Mike's asinine enough to get married.
Period.
Which makes me wonder if he thinks only the Asinine
exchange vows.
It's not as if he's ever said anything to the
contrary. "What's wrong?" he asks, looking over at me. "I
have to pee."
"Are you sure?"
I squirm and struggle to cross my legs beneath the skirt
of the slinky red cocktail dress he earlier admired but
callously didn't remember to relate to the slinky red
cocktail dress I was wearing the magical night we met at
the office Christmas party, lo, twenty months ago.
"Am I sure I have to pee?" I echo, irritated."Of course
I'm sure."
"I mean, is that all that's wrong?"
No. I have to pee and there's no room in this car for leg-
crossing and I'm doomed to bitter spinsterdom,thanks to
him.
My mother and sister were right. I should never have moved
in with Jack so quickly.