she said, tilting her head. Perhaps a petulant five-year-old would quake for fear of a time-out, but I just mirrored her tilt and looked amused.
“Mother?”
Having lost the battle of the bridal magazines—for now—Delilah turned and in one quick motion flipped open her laptop and set the button to whir its gears and display a bright blue screen. A picture of my mother with Oprah Winfrey was her screen saver. Some quick, lightning-fast clicks of her nails on the keyboard, and the screen lit up with a NASAesque collection of boxes, spreadsheets, and some kind of stock market-like chart with three different colors of indicators tracing the rising and falling status of something.
“What the hell is this?” I laughed.
“Emilie!” Air escapes tire.
“No, seriously,” I laughed. “What is this?”
Anthony came out of the bedroom, with lines from his pillow etched into his cheek, bare-chested, his boxers riding low. “Jesus!” he jumped when he saw her, and disappeared back into the bedroom. I could hear him grumbling from behind the door, but couldn’t make out the words. Although I distinctly heard the word “crazy.” He’d better be talking about her.
“I’ve set up a system,” Delilah beamed. “You’re busy, I’m busy, time is of the essence. Who has time for the grand production, and we both know we’re not hiring a wedding coordinator to have all the fun.”
And this is the woman who has Colin Cowie on her speed dial for tea parties.
“Good morning, Delilah,” Anthony emerged again, this time in a gray T-shirt and actual shorts. He’d smoothed his hair over to hide what he imagines are balding indentations on his scalp. Questioning me with a raised eyebrow, and getting my closed-eye “you don’t want to know” shake of my head, he went to the kitchen to put the coffee on. As always, I had to watch him walk. I never missed an opportunity to see those shoulders and those thighs moving across my living room.
“Planning a wedding is a formula, my dear,” Delilah continued, oblivious to Anthony’s form and the shoe-melting effect he still had on me after all these years. “Just like a book…you just key in the minor details.”
Ah, so gowns, flowers, cakes, vows, rings, and lifetime commitments are minor details.
“Look,” she clicked one button, and an offset pile of formally printed letters appeared. “Here are our letters of interest to send out to a dozen or so of the top caterers in the New York area. I have them all coded and formatted, and with just this one…click…” she hit the button and clapped her hands in delight. “There!”
“You’ve erased them?” I humored her.
“No, they’ve all just been auto-faxed out! Done! Cross that off the list!” Delilah has turned efficiency into an art form. Two dozen caterers have just been alerted to the great romance writer’s daughter’s wedding, and any moment now her cell phone would start ringing with a chorus of “Darling!” and “fabulous!”
“Stop that,” I tried to shut her laptop, but a shrieking alarm went off.
“That’s my system,” Delilah said, shielding her laptop from my encroaching fingers. “I’ve had it set so that it can’t be accidentally closed.”
She should install such a system for her mind.
“Mom, this is…” The look stopped me. “Mother, this is crazy.”
I heard Anthony drop something in the kitchen and curse loudly. Delilah pursed her lips. Only she could find him distasteful for being a real person. Donna Penks would have loved him.
“You have all the letters of interest for all your florist and catering friends ready to go,” I summed up. “And you’re standing here now in front of me, showing me how techno-smart you are by e-mailing experts for my wedding day.”
She saw no insult in there.
“And you’re telling me that you have my wedding gown selections narrowed down…”
“And categorized by whether it’s a New York City or international designer…” She flipped through layers of screens, showing me an itinerary for several weeks’ worth of gown shopping at the big New York salons, Vera Wang, Michelle Roth. “I had this made up, too…to save time.”
Of course, Anthony has to come into the room and look over my shoulder as Delilah clicks one of her magical buttons to show a 3-D rotating figure of me, with my exact measurements keyed in to show almost a perfect digital likeness of me with arms held slightly out, my hair up, and a blank expression on my face. I was wearing a white strapless bra and panties, bare feet, and I spun around on a platter waiting to be virtually dressed.
Anthony laughed out loud. And I admit, I had to suppress a smile too. She’d made me into the dress-up Barbie CD-ROM. One click, I imagined, and I’m an airline pilot. Another, and I’m in haute couture with a feather boa and big, dark, Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. Virtual Emilie, the home game.
“Are you making one of those action figures out of Em?” Anthony teased. “Like they do with the professional wrestlers and the Star Wars figures?”
Delilah looked back over her shoulder without making eye contact with him. “It figures you’d make such references.”
Anthony pretended to quake with fear and looked back with a smirk at Delilah’s video arcade of wedding exhibitionism, featuring me. I spun on a platter! Turn me sideways, and it’s Rotisserie Emilie! Ready for the basting.
“Watch,” Delilah literally rubbed her hands together and clicked a series of buttons that now had me in five-second increments of display in a selection of different wedding gowns and veils. There! I’m marshmallow puff bride! Slinky sexpot bride! Vegas-wouldn’t-have-me bride! Princess Diana bride! Big train, super-big train, no train. Beaded bodices, square-neck tops, lace sleeves. A-line beelines right into a sheath. I am a puppet show, a dress-up Internet doll.
There is just something so wrong with this picture.
Alarm or not, I snapped the laptop shut.
“Emilie!” Delilah cried and caressed her beloved laptop like it was a prizewinning poodle at Westminster. “I went to a lot of trouble…”
“A lot of trouble is definitely the right phrasing,” I lifted my chin a little. Anthony rubbed my lower back, as if my spine could use a little help from him. “This is ridiculous, Mother! We’re not turning my wedding into a computer-generated virtual playroom with every wedding expert faxed and e-mailed within three seconds! This isn’t how it’s done!”
“This isn’t how you do it, you mean,” Delilah said and then caught herself. Better change tacks. No leg to stand on here.
“How did you get that model of Em made?” Anthony, of course, focused on the technical design aspects, missing the larger picture.
“Stop,” I looked right into her aqua-colored-lens eyes. “Just stop.”
And she packed up her laptop and tossed her head, forgetting that her hair was in a chignon so the usual effect wasn’t there. And she marched out of our house carrying the nerve center of our wedding plans. All tucked under her arm.
“Unbelievable,” I collapsed into a chair and flipped through some of the bridal magazines. Why do all these brides look so miserable? They’re all pouting and standing in positions that only scoliosis sufferers know as a comfort zone, or collapsed onto couches with their shoes half-dangling off their feet. The very picture of a post-mugging or post-traumatic stress syndrome. Dead eyes. Limp arms.
“Yes, she is,” Anthony rubbed my shoulders, which came down about two inches from top tension position, and I realized that I too had a bit of that post-mugging gray shade about me. I was slumped in my chair, and yes, my fuzzy slipper was half-dangling from my foot. “But that action figure of you is going to be amazing,” he joked, and the gray was gone with one appreciative smile and one more