Aftermath of Dreaming(76)

“It’s not finished!” Suzanne suddenly yells from my studio. “Yvette, come in here, there are whole blotches of nothing, and what’s with all the pearls? What in Christ’s name have you been doing all this time?”

Thinking about Andrew and wishing I’d never told you that I’d make the goddamn thing. I wisely choose not to share that with her, and instead slowly walk myself down the hall to the studio. I feel as if I am going to the dentist, but one where not only will I have all the pain, but will do all the work, too.

“Okay, well,” I say, summoning my best soothing-an-irritated-customer tone. Not that I’ve had any irritated customers for my jewelry, frankly, but pretending my sister is one suddenly helps. “I was just waiting for this fitting to see how it played against your face.” Suzanne darts her eyes at me from the mirror, about to question the “played against your face” line, which doesn’t surprise me because I’m not even sure what that means, it just sounded designy, but thank God, she decides to accept it. “Because now I can fill in with beading here, and lift the netting up there with a little stiffening so it won’t be flat, and…” My hands are dancing around Suzanne’s head, lightly pinpointing spots on the headpiece, arranging netting, giving her lots of sisterly, maid-of-honor attention, which maybe was the whole point of all this stuff, I realize, so that the bride isn’t ever alone with her real fears, but is constantly with someone else who has to be worried about the superficial things that she is, too.

Suzanne starts to say something, then is quiet and looks back in the mirror. I can see her imagining her dress and the flowers and the church and the music and the attendants and the priest and the guests and, most importantly, Matt, waiting for her at the end of the aisle to carry her into a new and perfect life.

“You’re going to be a beautiful bride. You already are.”

She lets out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, sweetie. I think I just needed to see it, to make sure it was real.” She gazes at her reflection one more time, as if confirming the veil is there. “It’s going to be great. I’m so glad you’re making it. The ones in the stores were beautiful, but none were exactly how I always envisioned it.”

I look in the mirror at my sister, who is completely transformed by a few yards of silk netting and a peau-de-soie headpiece with gems and pearls, as if the object with magical powers that we longed for as small girls is finally in her life.

“But now you are going to fix this part, aren’t you?” Suzanne says with a small frown, pointing to a section of the veil.



Reggie has convinced me to play hooky by seeing a movie at eleven A.M. I do have some hours to kill before I pick up the order Dipen promised he’d have ready this afternoon, though I could be home working on commissions, getting invoices done, organizing new press kits, or, mainly, finishing Suzanne’s veil, particularly since she had the fitting for it only a few days ago, but the idea of escaping from what I should be doing in a dark room in the middle of Wednesday sounds heavenly. And reminds me of what it’s like seeing Michael, a little bit, really.

Reggie and I have reached a truce about Michael. I talk about him in a sanitized way, and he says very little, as if waiting for what he is thinking to appear in my brain. It already has; I’m just thinking that future events will prove him wrong. Though Reggie knows that it’s already in my brain, so a long silent conversation occurs between us after just a few spoken sentences about Michael.



I am going to a dinner party tonight with Michael. Which actually I was really looking forward to because the last few dates with Michael—the baby shower practically doesn’t count because that was more him providing security for me, emotionally at least, or me hoping he would—have all ended rather abruptly with him going home to sleep alone, so since it’s a Friday, I feel sure he’ll stay this time. I think. He called just a few minutes before he was supposed to pick me up to say that he was running late, could I drive myself and meet him there? Considering that he met me at the baby shower, it would have been churlish to say no, but when he gave me the Hollywood Hills address, what I wanted to say was, “Oops, actually, I can’t. In fact, I never would have said yes at all if I had known that the evening included me, alone, on a hill, with my truck.” But I didn’t. I said, “Yeah, no, that’s fine,” and jotted down the address.

You see, I don’t believe in emergency brakes. I know they exist, I use the one in my truck, but I’m just not convinced that they have any effect at all. I have a very hard time believing that one little lift of my hand on a Fisher Price toy–sounding lever is actually sufficient to keep my truck from careening all the way down a hill and dragging everything else along with it.

Of course, I do make the sign of the cross every time I pass a Catholic church, which is another little lift of my hand, but that actually does prevent my soul from crashing down to hell, so it makes sense. But this—this emergency brake. Even the name cancels itself out; how can it be an emergency, if you’re able to use a brake?

But I continue to use it anyway, particularly when I have to visit people up in the hills, which I am supposed to find just charming as hell, but to be totally honest, the two words that instill terror and dread in my heart are “Hollywood Hills,” where I am now sitting in my to-a-terrifying-degree-incline-parked truck, hoping it doesn’t roll downhill.