It is as if some heavenly goddess has let herself float gently into our midst in this humble ladies room of the church. Her hair is spun of gold, crowning a graceful body flowing with layers of the purest silk and satin. The glass beads sewn delicately along the edges of her gown make it so that she could have been a spring fairy, just having passed through a field of fresh dew, her flushed cheeks indicating the rays of morning sunlight. All four of us, Charlotte, Britney, Charissa, and I gaze with the unmistakable awe, basking in her divine radiance, our only desire to be her on this glorious day. Suddenly I feel dreadfully casual in my knee-length black skirt and lilac cardigan.
She looks herself over in the mirrors carefully, fluffing up one of her shoulder-length strands here, straightening a wrinkle of material there, three bridesmaids trying desperately to keep her never-ending train from soiling itself along the pink checkered tile. Her slender hand reaches up to fan out her dark lashes, the breathtakingly elegant diamond, gleaming beneath the ceiling lamps soon will be climaxed with a lovely golden band.
My mind traces back several years, to no night in particular, when Emory would show up at my house with her black back pack, her hair usually thrown up into some sort of pony tail. My parents would tell her to make sure we went to sleep at eight, and then hurry out the door to some cocktail party or other. Then Emory would be ours. She would play endlessly with us, dressing our dolls, finding us almost concealed in the showers when engaging in hide-and-go seek, letting us stay up just a half hour later to watch television. Her high school yearbooks would be piled in a stack on the marble of the coffee table, and while she brushed our hair she would point out pictures at our request of boys she liked, and boys she had gone out with. As children Olivia and I spent hours together, discussing how we were both going to be just like Emory when we were sixteen.
“Was his picture ever shown to us?” I wonder, suddenly forgetting his name.
“Is Press here yet?” “Preston Smith, of course!” I think to myself. She spins around suddenly, wrenching the snow-white folds from her friends clutches as she faces them. I know she is trying to sound uninterested for the response, but I can’t help but notice her voice has a touch of excitement added to it.
Lauren, one of her college room mates, smiles warmly. “I’ll go check.” She snatches her airy, rose hued, shawl, and after hurriedly draping it around her back and down her bronze shoulders, disappears behind the door, her heels click-clacking behind her. Two other women follow, having to attend to other duties, leaving my friends and I alone with Patsy’s sister, the smooth trail of white quickly handed over to us.
“I think you need more lipstick.” Britney immediately starts in, looking the figure before us up and down critically from where she still clutches her share of the silky fabric. Patsy soon appears with a silver tube, turning its edges to reveal a tower of carnation pink. She outlines with precision her older sister’s protruding lips, making them shine with an almost natural brilliance. Then Patsy turns to her own reflection, adjusting her own bridesmaid gown the color of the faintest pink, setting off the deep color of the skin she has been preparing at Totally Tan for weeks.
“I think you look absolutely breathtaking, Em.” Charissa assures her sincerely, leaning slowly against the door of the nearest pale pink stall, her chocolatey brown hair tumbling down the shoulders of her soft scarlet cashmere sweater.
She smiles weakly and then frowns. Throwing her soft hands into the air, she begins to pace so that each of us has to shift our places in the bathroom to keep up with her. “I just want to see him!” She tells us in frustration, her eyes looking up at the ceiling. “I hate all of these formal traditions, half an hour seems like an eternity. I just want to know what he’s thinking, what he’s doing right now. This is the most important day of our lives and I am stuck hiding from him down here for hours.” She folds her arms together, letting her thumb toy with the ring upon her fourth finger. She looks over at Patsy. “Where is Mother”
My friend shrugs her shoulders. “The last time I saw her, she was popping an Alka-Seltzer.” She replies unenthusiastically.
My friends and I glance at each other, our hearts melting at the thought of the intensity of the love she has for him and our minds helpless to know what to say to the bride in distress. The exquisite material brushing against my fingers causes me to ponder about my own wedding day. “Will I look so enchanting? Will I have the ceremony in a small church or in front of the stunning ocean of Martha’s Vineyard where my husband could stand next to me in crisp khakis and a blue blazer? What will my fiancée be like? Will he be blonde and outgoing or dark and mysterious?” I think. It’s hard to even imagine being engaged to a member of the opposite sex when right now most boys seem almost hopelessly evil.
“How did you meet him?” I ask her earnestly, yearning for a flicker of hope to assure me that in the years to come, more guys will somehow learn to make a relationship meaningful. As we gaze intently into her sparkling brown eyes, my best friends and I listen to her recount the past two years of their affinity. She describes the sunny afternoon where they first met, Emory appearing at the door of his dorm at the University, having continually received his mail for Smith since her last name appears so similar as Smythe and vice versa. Time seems to stop entirely as we lose ourselves amid the perfect love story of Emory Smythe and Preston Smith, two individuals destined for each other and in moments about to become man and wife.
The door creaks open with out warning, the face of Patsy’s worried mother appearing in front of its opening. Her light hair is patted into place flawlessly, a salmon hued gown encircling her figure, an elegant collection of pearls adorning her thin neck. “What have you been doing, Emory? You have to enter in five minutes and you don’t even have your veil on yet!” Suddenly the mature woman we have just listened to has become the innocent young daughter once again, as her mother shoos us all out so that she can quickly prepare the finishing touches on her angelic bride.
We slide into a dark wooden pew collectively, all bursting with excitement and happiness. The entire chapel is filled with friends and family of the Smith and Smythe family, candles lit on every side of the room, vibrant flowers decorating every surface. Following the clumsy toddler tossing fistfuls of petals behind her, and the graceful entrances of the four bridesmaids clothed in a light pink, everyone stands in awe to witness the exquisite sight of the bride herself who cannot have appeared more stunning. Arm in arm with her father, she meets up with Preston. Beaming, she holds his firm hands in hers with relief. Together they can not appear to love each other more. I glance across the room briefly at Jeff Water’s face that seems to show no signs of appreciation for the beauty of the ceremony but still gazing intently at the couple in the front of the room. “Maybe some day, that will be me up there,” I think to myself, “Maybe.”
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