Once and for All(34)

“I told her to shape up, remember who she was there for, and do her job.” He shook his head, annoyed. “We’re going to have to watch her at the reception. Five bucks says she inflicts bodily harm diving for the bouquet.”

“I bet she’s dying to get married,” I mused as, up front, Charlotte and her groom took each other’s hands. I couldn’t see Julie at all.

“And nobody will have her because she’s so obnoxious,” William said. “Always a bridesmaid, until nobody even asks you to do that anymore.”

I was so used to this kind of exchange, having it was like breathing. So I didn’t notice until we paused that Ambrose was watching us, his expression aghast. “You guys are horrible,” he said.

“Did I try to upstage a wedding just now?” I asked.

“Was I the one yelling loudly about a mint just seconds before my best friend walked down the aisle?” William said.

Ambrose just looked at us. I said, “He’s got super hearing, too.”

William pulled out his phone, glancing at the screen. “Your mom’s reporting a loud talker. I’ll be back.”

I stepped back, giving him room to slip around us and down the side aisle to a row close to the front, where he slid in on the end. A beat. Then a very pointed expression to a woman in a flowered dress a few people down from him: I got quiet and I wasn’t even saying anything.

“It’s so weird to me,” Ambrose said, as the vows began, “how you can be so cynical in this job. Aren’t weddings all about hope?”

“Marriages are about hope,” I said. “Weddings are pure logistics.”

“Is he married?” he asked, nodding at William, who was now studying the younger flower girl as she fidgeted, tugging at the zipper of her dress.

“Nope,” I said. “He’s never even gotten close. The last boyfriend was the dad of one of my friends, and that was all the way back in middle school.”

I had a flash of Mr. Bobkin, Elinor Bobkin’s dad, newly divorced, who had met William at one of my choral performances in seventh grade. They’d dated for about three months, Mr. Bobkin had started talking about shopping for furniture together, and William fled. Since then, there’d been no one except the occasional fling, usually on vacations he took with his friends. But I only got sparse details on those, via eavesdropping, and sadly, William could always hear me coming.

“What about your mom?” Ambrose asked.

“Same way. Dateless for years, no faith in the power of love and romance.” Realizing this sounded harsh even to me, I added, “Look, the wedding business jades a person. Clearly. This is only your first. By the end of the summer, you’ll probably be just as bad as we are.”

He was watching Charlotte as she said her vows, a smile on her face. “We? You feel that way, too?”

I shrugged. “I’m not totally cynical. But I don’t believe in the fairy tale, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“The fairy tale? What’s that?”

A ripple across the crowd as the groom laughed, the priest joining in. “The idea that everything will be perfect, forever.”

“Nobody really believes that, though.”

“They do, though,” I said. “These brides, they come in, with their new engagement rings all shiny on their fingers, and they want the ideal day. Flowers, food, venue, music, even napkins have to be perfect. And we do it, because that’s our job and we’re good at it. But the marriage: that’s up to them. And it takes a lot more than putting peonies in mason jars.”

Ambrose considered this as the priest spoke at the front of the church. “You know, if you really think about it, I should be the one who doesn’t believe in all this,” he said after a moment. “I’ve only been to three weddings, all my mother’s. I was in every one of them. Each ended in divorce.”

“This is the first wedding you’ve attended that you weren’t in?”

“Yep,” he replied. “It’s like seeing the man behind the curtain. And that man is scary.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“But that’s the thing,” he replied. “It’s okay. Because when I do get asked to another wedding, I won’t go into it thinking about everything that can go wrong. I’ll just enjoy the party and the moment.”

“Good for you. I wish I could,” I said.

“You can, though.”

“Nope. Too late.” I cleared my throat. “That ship has sailed. Once you see how things can go, you can’t unknow it.”

I felt him look at me, and realized this sounded harsh. But it was the truth. It took a lot to have hope in this world where so little evidence of it existed. We may all start in the same place, at a church, watching a couple begin a whole new life together. But what we glimpse beyond that is different for each of us, a funhouse mirror reflection of our own experience. Maybe if nothing bad had ever happened, you didn’t even consider those clouds and storms ahead. But for the rest of us, even the brightest sunshine carried a chance of rain. It was only a matter of time.




“Interloper at ten o’clock,” I said to Ambrose. “Want to take this one?”

“Sure,” he replied, moving over to intercept an older man making a beeline for the buffet despite our repeated reminders that we’d be going by tables. My mother hated a long, snaky line of hungry guests, but there were always the few who tried to circumvent the system. I watched, somewhat proud, as he politely redirected the man to his seat. When he flashed me a thumbs-up, though, I only nodded.