Hysterical Blondeness (20 page)

He
knew
she’d seen him.

Blah blah blah, the man in the white satin nightgown at the front of the church droned on. He might as well be speaking Klingon.
Wild oats
. His words rang in her ear. Patricia felt rage rush through her like a fever.

While the minister was talking, Patricia handed her bouquet to Pinky. She heard a little rustle of commentary, as it just
wasn’
t the right time to do that, but she couldn’t get her glove off properly if she had the damned camellias in her hand. She pulled the glove with her teeth and finally got the damned thing off.

It took more self-control than Paul had ever possessed to stand at the back of the church and wait for Patricia to remember who she was.

He couldn’t believe she’d gone all the way to the front of the church. Twice on the way down she’d stopped dead in her tracks. Her veil was sideways, her face looked like hell.

But Paul stayed planted like an oak tree in front of the double doors. The moment would come. He believed in her. He believed that whatever had possessed her was wearing off. With the loss of her blondeness came the fading of her confused alter ego and the revival of her true self. He loved that true self. He wanted to shout that out to the entire congregation. But not yet.

She handed Pinky the bouquet and struggled with her glove. He saw her begin to unravel. The Nordquist family shifted in their pews.

How he wished he could save her from this, but this was nature’s consequence, just like Pinky had said.

Her glove dropped to the floor. A rumble of thunder drowned out the minister, but then, faster than lightning, a sharp crack echoed throughout the church.

She pulled back her arm and let it fly, flat-handed, right in his busted jaw, right on his pale Nordic cheek.

Patricia felt the sting from the tip of her fingers to the top of her head. It was the best sting she’d ever felt. She saw a bright red welt exactly the shape of her hand form on Brett’s surprised face. From his expression she thought perhaps she’d just rebroken his jaw. What a pity. He’d have to be rewired.

The entire congregation sucked in a collective gasp. She twisted the ring off her finger and threw it on the floor at Brett’s feet.

And then, only then, did Patricia turn around. Her eyes sought his and when she saw him standing there she screamed out loud. “
Paul!
”

Brett grabbed her by the wrist. Pinky punched
Brett in the stomach with her best Brooklyn right hook. Brett let go fast and crumpled in a very pained pile of groom.

Paul strode forward and Patricia ran. She ran down the aisle, past the very rich Mrs. Nordquist, past evil Lizbeth and poor Eric, past her disapproving mother and father. Boy, wouldn’t she be the bad daughter now? She ripped off the stupid veil and flew like an angel, wings outstretched.

And Paul held out his arms and caught her. He spun her around one time as she covered his face with kisses.

He swept her up, kicked open the double doors, and carried her out of the church. As he ran down the stairs, he hear Pinky’s voice cheering, “
Waaaa-Hooooo!
”

“
Do it
,” she screamed. They were home now and she
had
to get out of this dress.

Paul carefully positioned Pinky’s sewing scissors at the bottom of Patricia’s hem and started cutting. He opened the dress from top to bottom in a long, shivering slice of silk.

When it was done, she grabbed both sides and ripped it off of her body, stamping her feet
and screaming like a crazy woman until it was a cut-up pile of silk on the floor. She stamped on it ten times. She counted. Then she took off her dreadful shoes and threw them across the room one at a time. Paul ducked.

“Now do
me
,” she screamed.

In less than a minute, Paul was down to his tight knit boxers. He took off his glasses and pulled her close. He reached around behind her and in one quick second he’d unzipped the crazy petticoat she had on. She stepped out of it like a reverse Cinderella. The less gown she had on, the better, she felt.

Underneath she had on her silk tap pants. Not anything Brett or Lizbeth had sent over, which no doubt Lizbeth had a matching set of, but a special set of vintage undies she and Pinky had collected.

Oddly she felt like she’d put them on for Paul this morning. She sure as hell hadn’t put them on for Brett.

“You are beautiful, Patricia. You are my beautiful brunette.” He smoothed his hands over her push-up-bra’d breasts and let his mouth trail behind. He continued down across her full waist with its little ripple of pudginess that
had recently returned, and knelt down to run his mouth across her silky tap pants, heating her to a boil with his hot breath. She trembled and held on to his hair, screaming every few seconds.

“Ow.” He came up laughing and pulled her against him. “Are you going to kick and scream all night?”

“All
night
,” she screamed. She needed to scream, she needed to let loose of all the horrible days and days of what she’d done.

“Okay, then scream away.” He kissed her and teased his tongue in her mouth gently and playfully. She screamed into his mouth and let him play in her mouth until her scream turned into a burn of desire for him.

“Now wash me off, Paul. Take me into the shower and wash off all my sins. Wash away all my stupidity and all my blondeness and all my elegance.
I don’t ever want to be elegant again
.” She’d started out soft, but she ended in another scream.

He picked her up and carried her from the living room to his bedroom and through to the master bathroom. She kissed his arm and bit
him a couple of times on the way. He kissed her twice in the hall and once as he set her down to turn on the shower.

While they waited, his fingers traveled her. He lightly moved across her breasts with his two index fingers and down each side, following the bottom edges of her tap pants, and then he slid his thumb across her hottest spot and made her weak. He pressed. She screamed and put her arms around his neck, pulling him to her, crushing her body into his.

He opened the shower with one hand and moved them inside, clothing and all. It was hot and good and she stood in the water until her whole face and hair and bra and tap pants were slippery wet.

She reached over to stroke the huge erection that Paul had now revealed as he stripped off his boxers. She’d never seen him in the light. He was a beautiful man. She pinned him back against the tiled wall of the shower and touched him everywhere. She explored and kissed and ran her mouth over him until he groaned and closed his eyes and couldn’t speak anymore.

She rose up and he unfastened the hooks of
her bra, throwing it over the shower door. Next he slid her tap pants off. He slid his mouth with the slippery streams of water until he found the perfect spot to stop with his tongue.

Patricia screamed as he moved his fingers into her and pressed his mouth against her. She loved screaming. She wanted to scream herself hoarse. He didn’t stop until she throbbed against him and screamed,
“Paul!”
a dozen times, pulling his hair as she called his name.

He rose up like a water god, full of passion and ready to give her whatever she needed. He kissed her over and over again, their wet mouths moving together like lovemaking.

“Patricia.” He whispered her name slowly against her ear and down her neck until he reached her breast and pulled her already hot and throbbing nipple into his mouth. He was savoring her, she could tell. He was taking her to slow sexual places she’d never been before. She didn’t even know what lovemaking was until Paul showed her. He had to make love to her like this a thousand more times.

She had no thought of preventing him from making her pregnant. She couldn’t think of
anything she would love more than to have his child.

“Come inside me,” she demanded, but not with a scream, just her mouth against his ear softly. He straightened to look at her fully, his eyes piercing through all the twisted crazy misplaced dreams she was having him wash away. He held her face in his hands for a full minute, reading her, kissing her, pausing.

Then his kisses increased in intensity, as if he had made up his mind. He drove her to the edge of reason with his kisses, then picked her up and held her perfectly, slowly, and moved himself into her. She leaned her head back and screamed, shaking her head, feeling her long brown hair against her own back, feeling him inside her.

He was strong and he moved with deliberate pleasure as she continued to scream whenever a wave of heat moved its way from her center to her throat and out into the air, emerging as a deep, animal scream. Her screams had changed and she clung to him hard and pushed against him till she felt a shudder climb through him that she devoured with her own body. “Oh,
Paul
,” she cried, and then she cried out again as
they both came together, his yell as he released at last, her screams and his mouth finding hers as they both trembled from the emotion.

“Marry me,” he whispered,

“Oh yes, oh yes, Paul, I love you, I love you, my best and most lovely Paul,” she answered. His very beautiful words wove around her and she started to cry.

He rocked her. He let her pour over him. She cried a brokenhearted cry, that she had betrayed his love and let him suffer so long. Every touch and move and word Paul gave her was a touch of love, a move of love, a word of love. How could he ever have waited for her? Her eyes could not stop crying and her heart could not stop hurting.

He shut off the water and, without letting her go, opened the door and pulled a towel from the hook. He wrapped her in the towel and carried her to his bed.

She had never cried this cry in her life of tears. It was a well so deep she wondered if she would cry this way forever. He held her close and stroked her wet hair for hours. The half-moon shone over the water outside and caught her like a fish in a golden net. Her tears slowed down.
She watched the shimmer of water reflect the moon through Paul’s window. She drifted, drifted somewhere. But now she knew that Paul would be there by her side forever, so she let herself drift away.

But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one…that she loves but me alone!

Shakespeare

“Don’t even speak of it.” Patricia
put her finger over her best friend Pinky’s lips for a moment. “You were the wisest and most faithful friend I will ever know, to keep this gown away from me on that day. Just think, I would have spoiled it for its true purpose by having it paid for by you-know-who.

“Did I tell you when I tried it on the very first time and closed my eyes and dreamed of my wedding—which, by the way, did not include a drunken harpist or an organ playing ‘Here
Comes the Bride’—that I saw Paul waiting for me in that vision? Even my visions were smarter than I was.”

Patricia looked down at her beautiful antique art deco ring. She brought it to her lips and kissed it. It had been on her finger since she awoke to find it there the morning after Paul saved her life. He had slipped it on her while she slept. And he had knelt beside the bed when her eyes fluttered open to the light of that new morning and asked her again to marry him, holding her hand with the ring that was his grandmother’s. The only other ring she needed now was a plain gold band.

He’d called her his amber-eyed, brown-haired girl and sang the Van Morrison song to her for the rest of that day. It was enough to make her shed her blue contacts forever and be content being quite a strudel in her new stylish glasses.

“Pinky, you are a vision.” Patricia looked at her friend standing beside her in the mirror.

Pinky turned around. “It suits me, doesn’t it? I’m glad I didn’t end up in the cocoa latte dress. Being a bride is always better than being a bridesmaid,” Pinky said. Patricia straightened
the lovely rolled collar on the jacket of Pinky’s pale beige silk wedding suit.

“The shoes are fabulous, aren’t they?” Patricia said. Pinky’s tiny feet were clad in completely beaded slides with a plump little heel in all the colors they loved, beige and green and amber and gold.

Patricia felt the necklace at her throat. “Look how Paul’s necklace matches this dress. I can’t believe it. It’s like a perfect match. It’s like he was there in a shop in New York and knew that someday he’d marry me and I’d wear a beaded gown that matched this necklace. He is definitely beyond Osgood.

“Life is good, my Pinkster. A double wedding, in our own home, to two wonderful men. Who would have even thought we’d be so happy at the same time? Now if we can just get the people next door to sell you and Dr. Jim their house, we’ll be all set.” Patricia took in a breath.

“We’re only ten minutes away, darling Patricia. Oh God, we’re just blathering.” Pinky moaned. “Can’t they just call us out there and get it over with?” Pinky sat down hard in the wooden chair next to Paul’s bed.

The sound of the little musical group with
their mandolin, violin, and concertina in the background actually soothed Patricia. She and Paul had found an old Italian folk song that his grandparents had loved as children.

A knock came at the door and scared both of them out of their wits. “Good grief, you’d think we were nervous!” Pinky got up quickly.

“Here, grab your orchids, let’s get married.”

“Can’t we take our Christmas Birken bags with us?” Pinky smiled. “Or my Christmas Barbie lunch box?”

“No, and no, they stay in the closet till later. Now march,” Patricia ordered.

“You are so bossy.” Pinky started toward the door.

“I’m recapturing my inner blonde.”

“Oh no, you don’t, as God is my witness, you’ll never go blonde again!” Pinky declared.

Patricia opened the door and pointed with her flowers. She let Pinky go first, then took a soft whiff of her Cattleya orchid bouquet.

Pinky’s Dr. Bender had definitely outdone himself when he’d found them these. They were most unusual, with their golden colors and intense fragrance. He was right. It was handy to have botanist friends.

She’d even forgiven him for letting her participate in the Feltzengraad study and becoming emotionally impaired along with her platinum transformation and weight loss. Paul promised he’d never let her near another scientific study as long as they both shall live.

Patricia had mixed the orchids up with forget-me-nots for vintage blue and pink cherry blossoms for spring and tied them in a little bundle with thin gold ribbons. She liked the one orchid in her pretty brown hair. No veils this time.

Suddenly Patricia wasn’t a bit nervous. She was here in Paul’s house, their house now, with the people who loved her. Paul, who loved her the best, and Pinky and Jim Bender, whose love had blossomed into a full-blown romance, were all here together.

She walked toward the living room and joined Pinky. Paul and Jim were waiting, looking very handsome in their suits. Asta the cat was on her mother’s lap sporting a gold bow. Her mother must be going nuts. Maybe Asta would bite her.

They’d moved all the furniture for the wedding and the boys had created a canopy of willow branches with their new leaves budding out. For a couple of guys, they’d done pretty well.
Pinky had woven in cherry blossom branches and forsythia and bellflowers.

Last night she’d heard Paul and his brothers hammering and swearing and laughing, and today his entire family had gathered to watch the wedding. There’d been a steady stream of great Italian food for at least a week.

Jim Bender’s parents were there and so were Patricia’s sisters and even both her parents, whom she’d told in no uncertain terms that if they had nothing good to say, they could cram it up last winter’s Christmas goose. She’d done her Charlotte Vale imitation.

She and Pinky walked down a little aisle of flowers and gold ribbons and as she looked around she saw Paul’s grandparents take each other’s hand. The four of them gathered in the bay window under the willow canopy.

Paul had to hand it to Pinky for altering that beautiful beaded wedding dress to fit around Patricia’s new roundness. It was about time he made an honest woman of her, and he would have married her months ago, but she was determined she should show as much as possible and be the most pregnant bride ever. She’d settled for
a spring wedding. His Patricia had definitely turned into a nonconforming rebel.

So here they were on a soft April evening surrounded with candles and flowers and family having the double wedding Patricia and Pinky dreamed up.

Actually they’d all dreamed it up that night that Jim Bender had spelled “Will you marry me Pinky” on the scrabble board. He’d gotten double points, too. It was a good thing Paul and Patricia had slipped him all the extra letters.

Paul still couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to keep his job after November’s drama. True, Patricia had lost her job at Nordquist’s forever according to that very creative pink slip handwritten by Brett just before they sent him away to open the new Alaska store.

But Paul had a feeling Henri Shreve reached out and pulled some strings with his old friend Lars Nordquist regarding Paul’s new position as head handbag buyer, complete with a raise.

Being unemployed had made his wife-to-be bloom as far as he could see, and her photographs had turned into a true artistic pursuit.

How lucky he was that she had turned around
and realized he was waiting for her. Since that moment she had never left his side or his bed.

And since they’d found out she was pregnant, she’d never stopped eating pickled cauliflower and cannoli with chocolate ricotta filling.

Pinky stepped next to Jim, and Patricia put her hand in Paul’s.

Patricia had never felt as much love in one room as when the four of them took their vows together.

For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people…. To love and to cherish; from this day forward.