Beautiful Day(19)

Jenna returned Margot’s smile, and Margot saw her gratitude and relief. She kissed Margot on the cheek and said, “Thank you for understanding. I’m not feeling very fun, either. I just want Stuart to get here.”

“Okay,” Margot said. Jenna and Finn left, and a second later the waiter approached with the seltzer and a rag, and Margot blotted the stains on her dress until she looked like a watercolor canvas. It was not okay, of course, not okay that the evening she had planned for months had been sabotaged by Scott Walker, of all people. In fact, if Margot looked back on the last six hours, nothing had been okay. If Margot let herself think about it another second, she might break down in tears and go home.

But no, she wouldn’t capitulate. She was the maid of honor, and that word, honor, meant something. She wasn’t sure just what, but she knew it didn’t mean going home. She had an evening to salvage.

She turned to Autumn and Rhonda. “So,” she said.

They decided to move to the bar. This was Autumn’s idea, and it was brilliant. Instead of the three of them sitting forlornly at a table set for five, they had their wine and food moved to three stools at the zinc bar. It was a fresh start. Margot sat in the middle, with Rhonda to her right and Autumn to her left. Rhonda ordered dinner, and Autumn finished her chowder, and Margot managed to eat her crab cake, then she and Autumn split Finn’s untouched foie gras. Margot began to feel a little more like a human being. She was hosting a bachelorette party without a bachelorette, but that wasn’t true because both Autumn and Rhonda were bachelorettes, and for that matter, so was Margot.

Autumn and Rhonda had never met, which turned out to be a good thing because Rhonda, once she had gotten a glass of wine and taken a few deep breaths, did something Margot had never seen before: she turned on the charm.

She said, “I can’t believe Jenna asked me to be a bridesmaid. I am so thrilled.”

“Thrilled?” Autumn said. “Really? I agreed because I love that girl to pieces, but I wouldn’t call myself thrilled.”

“No,” Margot said. “Me either.”

“I’ve been a bridesmaid eleven times,” Autumn said.

“How many of those couples are still married?” Margot wondered aloud.

“Eight couples still married, two divorced, one separated,” Autumn said.

“More will fall,” Margot predicted.

“I’ve never been a bridesmaid before,” Rhonda said.

“You’re kidding!” Autumn said. “How’d you manage to escape?”

Rhonda shrugged. “No one ever asked me.”

Autumn sat with that a moment, and Margot thought, No one ever asked you because up until ten minutes ago you presented yourself to the world as a miserable bitch. Right? Rhonda was the same woman who had refused to eat anything other than celery sticks at Thanksgiving dinner because she was newly vegan—although she hadn’t bothered to inform her mother—and then she picked a fight with Margot’s sister-in-law, Beanie, about what being a vegan actually entailed, and the whole time she had pronounced the word “veg-an,” with a short “e,” so that it rhymed with “Megan.” Rhonda was the same woman who had gotten a flat tire in the Bronx and had called Doug in the middle of the night, begging him to come help her change it, then screamed at him for taking so long to get there, saying he was lucky she hadn’t been gang-raped. Rhonda was the same woman who announced unsolicited that her body fat was a mere 4 percent, then asked Margot to feel her biceps, then pulled up her shirt so that Margot could view her six-pack abs. Rhonda openly admitted that her favorite show was Jersey Shore and that she had a celebrity crush on Mike “The Situation.”

Margot said, “Well, I’m glad you’re thrilled. It’s going to be a lovely wedding.”

Rhonda said, “I love the dress.”

“Ha!” Autumn said. “You’re kidding!”

Rhonda said, “I’m not kidding. I love it.”

“Grasshopper green,” Autumn said. “I’m sorry, but those two words spoken together are fingernails down a chalkboard.”

Margot pressed her lips together. On the one hand, she agreed with Autumn. The color did not thrill Margot. Nor, really, did anything else about the dress. The dress was, undeniably, a bridesmaid dress—silk shantung in a reptilian green, off-the-shoulder, cinched-at-the-waist sheath skirt to the knee. To Margot, the dress felt dated. These days, everyone got bridesmaid dresses at J.Crew or Ann Taylor, or women were given a color and then they were free to find their own dresses, ones they might actually wear again. But on the other hand, Margot was grateful that Rhonda liked the dress. The suggestion of this green had come from the Notebook. It was their mother’s idea, because their mother’s vision was one of an elegant woodland, all green and white. The green should be “the color of new leaves,” the Notebook stated, but it had ended up as a shade the woman at the bridal salon called “grasshopper.” Reminiscent of classroom lizards and sour-apple Jolly Ranchers. Their mother had also suggested dyed-to-match pumps and opera-length pearls—and Jenna had fully subscribed to both of these things, even though Margot had advised rethinking both. Dyed-to-match pumps and pearls were fine a decade ago—maybe—but not any longer.