“Pretty,” I say tersely. Even in mauve taffeta, the bridesmaid was stunning.
“Blonds are not my thing,” he says.
“What about the woman at the party?” I ask.
“What woman at the party?” Gael asks, genuinely confused. He opens one of the cases and shifts around two lenses.
“The blond. By the window.”
“Carly?” he questions, as if I’d know her name. “I know her from a wedding. I shot her sister’s wedding in the fall.”
“Oh,” I say, suddenly relieved. “Oh.”
“Apparently the marriage is already over.”
“Divorce is en vogue,” I comment wryly.
He looks up at me and shrugs. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Are you upset to be at a wedding?”
“No, no, really, no.”
Except that I am.
“I didn’t want to shoot this one,” he admits. “I had no choice, I needed the money, but I dated the bride.”
“Recently?” I ask, hoping that I’ve kept the gasp mostly out of my voice. “Does the groom know?”
“It was years ago. And I didn’t remember her, actually. She wanted my brother-in-law to photograph her wedding, but he wasn’t available today, so he set up an appointment with me. Midway through the meeting, she starts asking about
Madrid
and reminiscing about this crazy day in
Central Park
, and the groom says, ‘I think we have something in common.’” Gael repeats the groom’s words in a perfect replica of a
New York
accent. “I am not excited to be here either. Let’s just endure and toast ourselves afterwards.”
I manage a weak smile and hoist two of the bags onto my shoulder, following him up the stairwell to the lobby outside the main sanctuary. A few bridesmaids are milling around, fixing each other’s make-up and hair. One gives a startled glance when she sees Gael and gives him a small, awkward wave. He gives a terse wave in reply and we duck into the sanctuary, almost knocking into the wedding director overseeing the finishing touches on the
chuppah
.
“Did you date her, too?” I hiss.
“She’s a friend of the bride. I think we had dinner together one night. With the bride, Rachel, with the bride.”
I am itching to ask him a dozen questions, everything from how many girlfriends has he had in
New York
to how long he dated the bride, who is due to show up in the lobby within the next ten minutes for family portraits. But he is busy walking around the room, checking the lighting from all angles. I sit down on one of the chairs and watch the florist twist a final rose around one of the poles holding up the
chuppah
.
At this point in my own wedding, I was sitting with Arianna and my sister and Adam’s sister in the bridal room, changing the polish color on my nails. I had gotten a manicure the day before, and the color was still bothering me. Arianna told me to fix it; it was easy to switch the color and have it be perfect. I remember holding my hands flat on the table between us. I thought the nail polish color was important back then. No one probably noticed it.
One of the bridesmaids opens the sanctuary door to peek inside. “Hey Gael,” she calls out. “Amanda is down here now, if you’re ready to get started.”
He gives me the smallest glance and mouths the word “endure,” though it looks as if he is just puckering his lips. I follow him out into the hallway and help him arrange the various formations of family and friends, the bridesmaids giggling through the whole exercise, the bride radiant in the center of each picture.
She is small and blond—so much for his lack of interest in blonds—with thin lips and hairless arms and blond eyebrows waxed into a look of perpetual surprise. She looks like she could still be in high school, except that her mother keeps referring to her as Doctor Flaum to anyone who will listen. I try to picture her with a stethoscope draped around her neck, but Gael whispers that she has a doctorate in literature. I try not to laugh and drop the flash the next time I hear her mother address her.
“Hey Rachel,” a voice drawls, and I turn around, half expecting to see Adam sporting a new voice—almost like the monster that keeps jumping out at the heroine in the horror film—except that it’s Polar Pete of dinner party fame. He takes my hand limply, shaking it as if he’s rattling a piggy bank. His skin is still cold and strangely white. “Funny seeing you here.”
He is obviously one of the groomsmen, formally attired in the same tux and cummerbund combination as four other men. He tells me that he has known the groom forever. He looks bored by the friendship. “How do you know Amanda?”
“I don’t,” I admit, wondering when
New York
got so small that you could bump into Polar Pete and your current boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend all at the same affair. “I’m here with Gael, helping with the photographs.”
“Oh, so you finally decided on a career,” he says. “Photography.”
“No, this is a one time deal. Just filling it for his usual person.”
“I thought you had followed your brother’s footsteps into photography.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” I say.
And then I realize that I have nothing more to say to Polar Pete. We both stand there awkwardly, waiting for Gael to call the groomsmen into the shot. I examine the stained glass windows depicting various Bible scenes, and try not to be blinded by the bride’s dazzling smile. I busy myself with reading through one of the cream-colored programs that outlines the ceremony, including a final addition: “And after the kiss, Mr. and Dr. Flaum-Ravelstein are husband and wife!”
The bridal party disappears into a back room, and the groom and his men walk in the opposite direction to what appears to be a small coat closet off the sanctuary. The lobby begins filling with people who spill into the sanctuary, taking their seats on either side of the satin runner. I follow Gael up towards the
chuppah
and turn around, holding the lens firmly in my hands. With no bride to watch, all the eyes are on me, and I shift uncomfortably until the ceremony begins.
The music starts up and the groom walks down the aisle, flanked by his parents. He kisses them at the
chuppah
, his mother leaving a smudge of lipstick on his cheek that I’d desperately like to run forward and rub off. The groomsmen walk down the aisle, each with a bridesmaid on his arm. A flower girl tosses huge clumps of rose petals, finishing off the basket several yards ahead of the
chuppah
. A woman runs forward, scooping up a particularly large batch on the satin runner, and tosses them towards the groom’s feet.
And then the music changes.
The doors open for a final time, and the tiny bride begins the walk towards her groom, and my vision blurs. This is the happiest moment of her life on the happiest day of her life. She is walking for the last time as a single woman. We all believe, when we take those steps down the aisle, that it will be our last time as a single woman. After all, if we thought otherwise, why would we ever take that leap of faith?
When I took that walk down the aisle I felt lucky. I felt like my chest was going to burst open from all of the pride bubbling around like a newly opened bottle of seltzer. Now I feel queasy watching the bride beam at the guests, turning her head from side to side to smile at friends and relatives, her gaze always returning to the groom waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
The groom, waiting.
Not the bride.
That day was the last time I wasn’t waiting for Adam; that he was waiting for
me
.
I whisper an apology to Gael, set the lens on the floor and slip discreetly out a half-open door next to the ark. I am in some type of darkened chamber that holds a desk, two chairs, and a few books on a mostly empty shelf. The only light coming into the room streams in through the window, but it’s almost dark outside. Winter in
Manhattan
.
I cry as quietly as possible, even though I had the forethought to close the door lightly behind me as I slipped out of the ceremony. I am now stuck in this room until the wedding is over. I can hear the dull murmur of the rabbi intoning the blessings, and honored friends reading passages in English. I put my hands over my face as if I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m silently sobbing, and when I move them away, they carry with them two identical streams of black eye make-up. So much for streak-free mascara. I can only imagine what I look like.
I hear the shattering of the glass marking the end of the ceremony, the cry of joy from the audience and then wild Klezmer music accentuating a long kiss. I am waiting to hear the buzz of guests exiting out the sanctuary, when a quiet but urgent knock comes on the door. I expect to see the rabbi’s bald head telling me that I’ve defiled the holiness of this chamber, but it is only Gael.
“I have to work the cocktail hour now, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“You probably think I’m crazy,” I blurt out.
“Not crazy,” Gael says fondly, giving me a quick kiss on my forehead. “A mess with make-up all over your face, but not crazy. Remember—
endure
. I need you in the cocktail room
, mi amor
.”
I nod, indicating that I’m about to pull myself together. “I’ll be in there in a second. I’m just going to slip into the bathroom.”
The bride has set up baskets in the bathroom containing everything a person could possibly need at a wedding, from tampons to a new pair of stockings, and, thankfully, small tubes of make-up remover. I scrub my face clean and pat it dry with one of the hand towels. I toss the towel into the laundry basket, feeling badly that I had stained it with remnants of my make-up. One of the bridesmaids is reapplying her own make-up and watches me in the mirror.
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” I ask. “I’m fine. I just don’t do well with weddings.”
“Sucks that you’re a wedding photographer,” she says.
“I’m not. I’m just helping the photographer today.”
She points out that there are little tubes of lip gloss in the basket. I take out one and apply it with a Q-tip.
“I don’t do well with weddings either,” she confides. Bathrooms have a way of starting conversations like this. There is something about bathroom tile that brings out a woman’s darkest secrets. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Seriously,
never
the bride. And I’m going to be thirty-five.”
“I was married,” I admit. “Now divorced. And now my ex-husband is dating a friend of mine, can you believe that?”
“I’m so sorry,” she says and hands me a Kleenex, as if she expects me to start crying again. I tell her the whole story, acutely aware that Gael is probably struggling under the weight of the camera bags and juggling lenses as we speak. I finish my story with seeing Adam at the party and how I couldn’t speak coherently around him. She clicks her tongue sympathetically in all the right places. She squeezes my hand, and we both exit the bathroom, the nameless bridesmaid to pretend to be happy for her friend while I hunt down Gael, who is snapping pictures of guests.
“Where have you been?” he questions, handing me one of the bags.
“Cleaning up. It takes time to get all that make-up off my face.”
I snap a grapefruit martini off of a passing platter, and Gael gives a sigh, shaking his head slightly as if he doesn’t know what to do with me.
He takes dozens of pictures, sometimes asking for equipment out of the bag. Most of the time, it’s faster for me to simply open the top, and let him poke around to find it. As he moves through the room, making sure to photograph every guest, I watch the bride. She is radiant, with her veil casually pushed back from her top of her head and her tiny stick arms flailing in the air as she hugs everyone who enters her path. She is so happy that it seems as if the happiness should linger around for hundreds of years to come, almost like an echo in a cavernous room, continuing to bounce off the walls.
I drink way too many martinis watching her and end up sitting on a bench in the hallway, the room tipping a bit from side to side.
After the wedding, Gael packs up the van and then tells me that we can leave it in the lot for a bit. We walk down the street until we hit a bar, a forgettable sort of place with round tables and movie posters on the wall and a clichéd dart board in the corner. The people drinking there look like the antithesis of the bride, drunk on depression.
Gael orders a beer for himself and a soda for me and returns to the table. I have kicked off my heels and placed my feet on one of the empty seats.
“Talk to me,” he says.
And I guess that’s the point; I can talk to Gael. I can tell him what’s on my mind, meet his open expression with my own. He may not be perfect, but his face doesn’t make me swallow everything I’m thinking. The words tumble out of my mouth, an old story that I’ve never told anyone beyond Arianna.
“I didn’t know I was going to leave him the night we separated. And I’m aware that this is going to sound really stupid; not a good reason at all,” I say, taking a sip of my soda.
I deeply regret the grapefruit martinis. “But there was a cockroach in the bathroom. The super had sprayed roach stuff the day before, and now the cockroaches were coming out to die. Most of the time when you see one, they run so quickly that it’s hard to kill them. But these were lingering around, strolling across the counter as if they had all the time in the world. And one was sort of hanging on the wall, close to the ceiling.”