My tires crunched asphalt
as I turned into the Hilton parking lot for the wedding expo. Sweat loosened my
grip on the wheel as I pulled into a spot. After a quick glance at the promise
that encircled my finger, I walked into the lobby. Greeters congratulated the
soon-to-be brides, invited them to enter a drawing. I bent to fill out the
entry slip. My hand shook as I wrote my name; my breath became labored.
“Are
you alright?” the attendant asked.
“A
bit under the weather.”
My nose and eyes burned
as blood rushed to the surface of my skin, moisture threatened to flow from
both. I crumpled the entry sheet, stuck it in my pocket, and hurried to a
restroom. A splash of water on my face.
A quick prayer that someone would rush in, stop me from doing what she I’d
promised to do.
As I reflected over the
past weeks, my inability to choose a caterer or a dress meant something plain now.
I stood in that lobby looking toward the ballroom. Women hustled past, maniacally
discussing gowns, bridesmaids, rings, and flowers. They had no problem filling
out a contest entry form.
I hurried back to my
car. It took twenty minutes for the ten-minute drive home.
I turned my key and
walked into the house. I could see through the sliding glass door that David
was sitting on the patio. I walked through the house, out to the patio, and
closed the slider behind me. Hard.
“I can’t do this,” I
said.
He looked up at me, his
blue eyes bloodshot and droopy from his best friend – weed. “What?” he asked.
“The wedding. I can’t do this. It’s stressing me out.
Can we just elope?”
Deposits are paid. Reservations are made. My fate is scheduled for the
morning of February 2, 2002 – 02/02/02— now in Jamaica. I look at the calendar
on our desk. October. I think about that thick envelope I mailed to the resort,
heavy in my hand as I dropped it in the mailbox—birth certificates, photocopies
of licenses, the signed application for the marriage I don’t want. My simple,
white, satin dress hangs in the closet. Thick, complex doubts hang in my mind.
My legs sweat atop the unbreathable fabric on the beige sofa. I sit
cross-legged, mind sick from spinning. The TV is on in front of me, but the
sounds and pictures fail to register in my brain. Absentmindedly, I twirl my
three-stone diamond and white gold engagement ring, look around the room at the
wallpaper David and I hung together when we moved in. The moss-colored oriental
paper more sophisticated than we are.
The sound of church bells pulls me from languor. My cognition reattaches itself
to my eyes, as a television commercial draws me in.
A man, anxious, sweat dripping from his brow, driving. Hurried. A woman in a
white silk and tulle gown being primped by four friends in champagne dresses.
He checks his watch. She twists and pulls at her ring as the smile fades from
her face. He overtakes a truck hauling an Airstream in his rush. She looks out
the window. He stops for a passing train. Screams. He pulls up to the church,
runs inside. The woman is at the altar with another man. He is there to stop
her.
This fifty-seven second ad for a Volkswagen baits me. I pray that will happen
at my wedding. Brando, the married Italian foreign national and father of two who
I've been having an affair with, is who I imagine bursting into my ceremony. I
don't love him, but I want him to love me, rescue me. I know he won't.
For days, I wait to see the commercial again; it's my only solace.
“Have you seen that Volkswagen commercial?” I ask Meghann, one of my
bridesmaids, over the phone.
“The wedding one?”
“Yeah.” Sigh. “I want that to happen to me,” I confess aloud for the first
time.
“You can't marry David.”
I know.
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