Michelle tried to read on the train ride, but she kept staring out the window.  Her eyes watched the landscape as it flew past, but her mind wandered to images of her father, and how she would react when she saw him again, how she would smile knowing how nearly every night she danced for men his age who looked and moved like he did.

Her father had always caused the hair on her neck to bristle.  He stopped touching her when she reached puberty, and she could never shake the feeling that he was always leering at her every time her back was turned.  She was never sure if this was a valid concern or one stemming from her own insecure imagination, but if she were honest with herself, she probably would have concluded that it was some combination of the two. 

She arrived.  She picked up her luggage.  She greeted her father.  He asked how her trip was.  He lifted her bags.  He drove her home.  So far, so good.

At home, she greeted Tiger, then her mother.  Her mother was even rounder and redder than she remembered from Christmas.  Her mom said, “You look tired.”

Michelle did her best to weave some of what was actually happening in her life into the fantasy that she was still working at the bar.  She tried to ascribe characteristics of Abe and Claudia to Geraldine.  She told her mother about her neighbor Samantha, who was also a bartender, and the other girls, Julie, Angela, Laura, and… Wendy (Princess – Michelle not knowing her real name).  She toned the drama to family appropriate levels.  Instead of screwing the customers, Princess was a shameless flirt.  Instead of cocaine, the other girls had drinking problems.  Julie was easy.  She could stay a bitch.

“And you talked to your boss, Geraldine, about changing your hours?” asked her mother, her mouth shiny with chicken fat.

“Um, yeah.”

“That’s good,” said her mother.  “You look so tired.  That’s horrible, making a young girl like you work late into the night.  You never know what kind of people lurk outside those places just waiting for a pretty young thing like you to wander out in the middle of the night.”  Her father dropped his spoon and, picking it up, grunted.

“I’m fine, Mom.  The bar’s safe.  We have a buddy system.”

Mrs. Browne’s red face looked both condescending and dubious.  “Well, I don’t know how trustworthy those other girls are.  From what you’ve said, I wouldn’t trust one of them.”

“Sam’s alright,” said Michelle.

Her mother snorted.  “Twenty-eight and still working in a dive bar.  That doesn’t sound all right to me.  Did she go to college?”

“I think she dropped out.”

Mrs. Browne made a satisfied gesture, nodding with her lower lip stiffened, pointing with her spoon.  “There now, how are you supposed to get a nine-to-five without a degree, working in a bar for ten years?  You need a nine-to-five.”  She took a slurp of chicken soup.  “Unless you’re going to be a famous ballerina.  Then you don’t need a nine-to-five, of course.”  She smiled at her daughter.  “Have you had any auditions recently?”

Michelle dropped her eyes.  “A few weeks ago I had one that looked promising.” 

“But you haven’t heard anything?”

Michelle shook her head.  Her soup was tepid, the steam had stopped rising.  She still hadn’t touched it.

Her mother sighed and rolled her eyes.  “Honey, why don’t I come back with you when you leave?  I’ll call the company people and schedule some appointments.  I can cook for you and take care of the apartment a little bit.  Have you been vacuuming? I read the other day about dust mites and fly larvae, and they’ve had a bedbug problem in LA.  They say it could spread anywhere, even here.  Bedbugs, in this day and age.  It just shows how important it is to clean properly.  Organisms everywhere.” 

“Stop!” Michelle shouted.  Her father dropped his spoon again.  Both parents stared at her, then resumed eating.

“Rachel is coming tomorrow to help me plan some things.  She’s going to come with us to the fitting,” her mother said.  The clicking of the spoons against the bowls was the only background noise.  Occasionally, there was a slurp. 

“Is Jake coming?”

“No.”

Michelle sucked in a spoonful of cold, flavorless soup.  “Great.  I can’t wait to meet her.”

Rachel was not gorgeous, not perfect, really not remarkable in any way.  She had limp, brown hair and hazel eyes.  She was an average height, average weight.  She was not particularly funny; Michelle could discern no incisive wit or intellect.  When the two met, she said, “So nice to finally meet you,” and shook Michelle’s hand in a manner that was neither strong nor weak.  Her smile was sincere, but boring.

Michelle had an intense hatred worked up that was ready to be thrust upon this woman, but now that she met her, applying this severe a force to something so innocuous seemed tantamount to using a full nuclear artillery to attack a stubborn grass stain.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Michelle said, shaking Rachel’s hand.  It was breakfast time.  Rachel had flown in on the red-eye to help with the dress fitting and to go over the specifics of the wedding with Mrs. Browne.

They all had a breakfast of whole grain pancakes and sugar-free syrup made with love and care by Mrs. Browne.  Then Michelle showered, and the three women were off to the bridal boutique to try on the lovely sea-foam green dress specifically selected by Rachel to flatter every figure.  Two out of her five bridesmaids were on the heavy side, and two bordered on anorexic, leaving Michelle a happy medium, and the only one who didn’t need to be flattered by the dress.  Consequently, the dress did not flatter her at all, and hung like a taffeta potato sack off her perfect 34C’s. 

“You look wonderful!” shouted Rachel as Michelle made her grand exit out of the dressing room.  She looked at her mother.  She was beaming. 

“I think maybe it needs to be taken in a bit here,” she said, pinching the dress at the waist to accentuate her hourglass. 

“No, no,” said Rachel, pulling on various parts of the dress until she was satisfied.  “This is exactly how it’s supposed to look.  It’s the fashion.  It flatters every figure.”

The women made cooing noises.  After enough time had passed, Michelle said, “Okay, well, I guess I’ll change back now.”  She was turning back to the dressing room when her mother caught her arm.

“Oh, dear, honey!  Where did you get that awful bruise?”  Michelle glanced down at an expansive purple and green bruise on her ribcage beneath her left arm.  It proudly peeked its way over the top of the strapless dress.

“I don’t know,” Michelle said, lamely.

Her mother looked at her, her eyes narrowed.  “Are you… seeing someone?” 

Michelle tried to regulate the tone and tempo of her voice.  “No.  I slipped on some ice a couple days ago.  I caught a banister under my arm.  That must be what it was from.” 

“You said you didn’t remember.”

“Didn’t really think about it.”  She tried very hard to look her mother in the eye.  As she went back into the dressing room, she saw Rachel glancing from side to side, searching for a safe place to rest her gaze.

That night the Brownes took their soon-to-be new member out to dinner at a seafood restaurant.  Michelle ate with relish blackened rainbow trout and steamed vegetables, and guiltily but grandly ordered a flourless chocolate cake for desert, at which time her mother at her subtly glared.

“Michelle, why don’t you show Rachel around the town this evening?” said Mrs. Browne, pouring sparkling crystalline artificial sweetener into her after-dinner coffee. 

In her head, Michelle was saying, No!  No!  No!  but her mouth said, “Um, doesn’t she have to fly back in the morning?”

“Not till three o’clock in the afternoon,” said Rachel, pleasantly enough.

“There now, you see,” said Mrs. Browne.  “She can certainly go out and have a drink somewhere.  Why don’t you take her to that new bar – the one with all the art on the walls.  You know the one.  What’s it called?”

“Corrigan’s,” coughed Mr. Browne.  “Corrigan’s Tavern.”

“That’s the one,” continued Michelle’s mother.  “That place seems so nice.  I always see all the young people going in and out of there.  Not the ones with all the metal in their faces or tattoos everywhere who like angry art.  Nice ones.  Ones you’d be friends with.  It seems like such a nice place.  Why don’t you take her there?”

Michelle glanced back and forth between her parents and her future sister-in-law.  Rachel smiled. 

“All right,” she said.  “Let’s go have a drink.”

The walls of Corrigan’s Tavern were filled with expensive and underwhelming paintings by local artists, and the crowd was quite obviously the twentysomething, businessperson-in-the-making, I’ve-got-something-to-prove set that had been annoying when Michelle was in college, and seemed even more annoying now that she had to make a living grinding on their brethren’s laps five nights a week.

Michelle wore a black tank top embedded with rhinestones, tight jeans, and black high heels.  Rachel, predictably, had brought nothing of the sort, and walked into Corrigan’s in a beige, matronly sweater and faded, unfitted jeans.  Michelle ordered a scotch on the rocks, Rachel, a glass of white zinfandel.

“So,” said Rachel, after a brief rest in icy silence.  “You’re a bartender?”

Rage.  So much rage. 

“No,” answered Michelle.  “Actually, I’m a dancer.”

Rachel blinked.  “Oh, that’s right.  Ballet.  Your brother told me.  He told me you’re very talented.”

Rage dissipated just a little.

“He did?”

Rachel took a pristine sip of her pink wine.  “He did.  He said your family all knew you were headed for the pros, or whatever you call the pros in the ballet world.”

Rage turned to dejection.  “Well, I don’t know how well that’s working out.”

Rachel nodded automatically.  “Yeah, you’re going through the starving artist stage, huh?  Jake went through that.  You artists have it tough.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Michelle.

Rachel laughed.  “I’m lucky.  There’s not a lot of starving involved in being a communications director.”

Or dancing on poles, thought Michelle.  She wished she really was starving.  Then maybe she could get a job at a company. 

She finished her scotch, hoping to instill courage for what she wanted to say next.  It wasn’t working.  She said it anyway.  “So, are you happy to be getting married?”

Rachel looked puzzled and sipped her wine.  “You mean do I get cold feet?  Of course I do.”

Michelle ordered another scotch.  “No.  I mean, you and my brother.  You get along and stuff, right?”

“Sure we do,” she said.  “Why else would we get married?”

Michelle’s scotch came.  She sipped it.  Didn’t Rachel see how this was supposed to go?  Pt. 1: She asks Rachel these questions.  Pt. 2:  Rachel breaks down and confesses that no, she doesn’t really love Jake, and yes, she’s only marrying him for security.  Pt. 3:  She flies away, leaves her brother and none of them ever hear from her again.  The script was flawless, practically airtight and above all, classic.  Why did Rachel have to fight the natural flow and order of things?  Making up her own lines on the spot, as if she’s so original, in command of the universe and her life.

“Sorry,” said Michelle.  “I didn’t mean anything.  It’s just… getting married just seems so far away from me.”

Rachel nodded.  “Sure it does,” she said earnestly.  “You’re so young.  How old are you?  Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Oh.  I thought – well, that’s still young.”

Michelle nodded and finished her drink, letting it slide down the gullet in one gulp. 

Rachel flew away the next day, but the Brownes would see her again.  After all, one of them was about to marry her.

Filed under: Jake, Marriage, Michelle, Michelle's family, clothes, wedding by Jade