way. I don’t blame her for being cynical right now. She’s twenty-five and she got blown right out of being trusting and innocent into questioning everything anyone says, studying body language books to see if someone is lying, and watching a hell of a lot of Dr. Phil. I’d be the same way if I were her. It could take years for her to get back to normal. If she ever does. That part of her from before…it’s been killed. “How was your mother’s party?”
“We could have used some of your good luck charms,” I laughed.
“Or two crosses and some garlic,” Anthony laughed.
“That bad, huh?” Leah bounced onto the couch, crossed her legs, and pulled the soft gold-colored throw over her. Gold is for protection, apparently. Or riches. Or fertility. Who knows?
“Worse than bad,” I said, then swigged out of my iced tea bottle. “His family met my family.”
“Oh, you had a Delilah moment?” she asked, then leaned back into the cushions.
“Several,” Anthony said, and I was a bit pinched on that. Hey, your mother wasn’t exactly the model of restraint and cordiality, buddy! And what about your Dad stealing all the food?
“They clashed?”
“We need the U.N.”
Yes, we need the U.N. As in UN-invite them to the wedding. That’s the only way.
“Delilah was drunk?”
“Pickled.”
“And the food, how was that?”
As Anthony and Leah discussed the finer details of the quail eggs, endive leaves with goat cheese and caviar, pistachio sorbet, and venison medallions with Madeira sauce, I checked out of the Food Network review and looked hard at Leah. She was invited to the party but opted out. Said she had a date. She obviously didn’t. She could have gone.
“We would have brought you back some,” Anthony was saying, sweet as he is to her. “But we just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“Thanks,” Leah smiled. “But I ate. I’m all set.”
I looked to the side table, at the Korean marriage dove sculptures, the red candle, the aromatherapy oil burner with the sandalwood vial standing at the ready, the feather sitting next to it to signify how love can float into your life at any time. I think she got that one from Forrest Gump and not Lao Tzu, but hey, it gives her hope.
“Well,” I said, clapping my hands a few times. “It’s been a long night, very tiring…”
“Yes, very tiring,” Anthony said not so subtly—at least not subtly enough to slide the reference of our pit-stop tryst by my very intelligent roommate.
“Long ride?” she asked the loaded question, and I loved seeing that tiny glimpse of the old her again. The girl who could be playful and light.
“Night, Leah,” I said and gave her a smile.
“Night, Em, night, A,” she said and grabbed a magazine to drift off to.
“Is Leah okay?” Anthony’s voice was quiet, drifty, on his way to sleep. He cradled my head in his arm as I lay across his bare, smooth chest. My leg wrapped automatically over his, and I could hear his heart beating slowly, calmly, rhythmically. My favorite sound on earth.
“Yeah, she’s okay. She just needs some time…it hasn’t been that long.”
“Isn’t all this feng shui stuff a little weird?” he asked with full disclosure that the answer should be Yes.
“She’s immersed herself in something that helps her,” I shrugged. “It’s harmless.”
“You think her keeping a picture of us on her altar is normal?”
“We’re her model of the ideal relationship,” I shrugged again. “How sad for her,” I laughed, and he did too.
Anthony drifted off again, with deep breathing, those little quakes of his nervous system in his arms and legs that once frightened me (“Oh, he’s got Tourette’s!”) but now just a shaking signal that he’s letting go of tension. As he drifted away into a dreamland where there’s no wind chimes in the corners of rooms, no dueling mothers, no work stress, no competitiveness with the boys, and no worry about his quickly thinning hair, I lay awake wondering two things: will Leah ever get back to normal? And can I plan a wedding with Delilah and Carmela, the two mythical beasts of wedding planning lore? And a third thing: Remember to ask Leah if there’s a “protect me from my mother” corner in feng shui, or some talisman like a little statue of a mother figure with open arms.
I only had to look to my own nightstand to answer the last one. It’s a little white, two-inch statue of the Virgin Mother, my own talisman. We all have our good luck charms, our icons, so I wasn’t going to begrudge Leah hers. It was only temporary, after all.
“Em?” Anthony whispered. “Don’t worry, hon. It’s all going to be fine.”
And he kissed me on the top of my head.
Heaven.
Chapter 6
The doorbell ringing at 6 A.M. on Saturday morning can only mean two things: either the building is on fire, or some Jehovah’s Witnesses really want to save my soul. Preferring the former, I pulled my leaden legs out from under our down comforter, pulled down my nightshirt from where it had bunched at my waist, and padded in a slump to the door.
“Good morning!” At the sight of Delilah, I wished for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Almost for the fire.
She breezed past me in a too-heavily-applied cloud of citrusy perfume (perfect for morning-appropriate events, she’d say), arms filled with a stack of folders and papers and a box of some sort. Decked out in designer black pants, a black-and-brown striped sleeveless shirt and a string of black pearls, with her hair pulled tight in a chignon, Delilah must have started her beauty ritual at 4 A.M., probably waking her makeup artist at 3.
“Mom, it’s early,” I whined, wishing for some percentage of coffee in my system.
She made some sound like air escaping from a tire, which was a dismissal signal she’d picked up from her foreign rights agent in London. I just tried to blink my puffy eyes and pushed my hair back behind my ears.
“I picked up a few things at the bookstore,” Delilah sang, fanning out a pile of bridal magazines like an expert card dealer in Vegas. The house always wins, some small voice whispered to me in my head. I twisted my engagement ring around my finger, which I’ve done so often in the past twenty-four hours that I have diamond-burn on the inside of my other finger.
“You want to do this now?” I gestured toward the clock shaming us with 6:07 in bright red numerals.
“What better time?”
“Umm…afternoon? A week from now?”
“Don’t be petulant.” And again with the sound of the tire leaking air. “Let me show you what I’ve found…” She flipped open several of the Bridal Guides, Modern Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, and the fat, heavy coffee table book of Vera Wang’s. All with pages flagged with bright pink Post-it arrows, notes scratched on some of them in silver swirly handwriting. Was she up all night? Lay off the amphetamines, Mother.
“You’ve picked out wedding gowns for me?” I smoothed my hand over the glossy magazine pages, looking at six-foot brides with pouty, miserable expressions, holding their bouquets limply at their sides like hypnotism victims at their arranged weddings.
“Just a few ideas,” chirped Delilah in her media voice, as if Katie Couric was sitting here miked for sound and a camera rolled this “bridal segment” to the television viewing community. She never turned it off, that media voice. That fake voice.
I flipped one after the other closed, the pages slapping shut. Delilah looked up at me, shocked.