Now that both Amy and Toni's mother were in the house, Toni felt skittish. If they saw Toni -- unadorned by makeup, out of her gauzy wedding dress -- well, that would be it for her. They would scoop her up, cover her in blush and hairspray, and she would be sequestered from the party proper. After all, the
The groom was not supposed to see the bride in her dress, though Jason could walk around in his suit as much as he pleased. No one wanted to hide him in a room and apply lipstick.
Toni would become a bride, which would require a walk down a hill and a few words before she became a wife. It was anticlimactic, even as she might want precisely that. Not a wife in general, but Jason's wife.
She envisioned Jason's joking sprint last night, chased a few paces by Nathaniel until he was caught, and admitted that he would never want to run from this. Of course he wanted to marry Toni -- to think otherwise would be insanity -- but who wouldn't feel the twitch of their legs when faced with a lifelong commitment, even a desirable one?
She slipped into the door that went to the basement, shutting it behind her so carefully that it barely creaked. She enjoyed feeling sneaky, though no one observing her would have seen it that way. She was the bride and could, unless called on it, do as she wished.
The basement, crowded with dusty exercise equipment and a ping-pong table in the corner, opened past sliding glass doors onto the lawn underneath the porch. Toni rested against an exercise bike, watching the people gathered. She felt voyeuristic. Toni didn't know how long she could manage to sit in this shadowy place before someone would come looking for her. She would not test this, but she enjoyed this thought as well.
Then she saw her father beside the grill. She could not remain an impartial observer, even for a minute longer, and cursed him under her breath.
Robert stayed on the edge of the party, cooking hamburgers, wearing cargo shorts, an already stained t-shirt, and an apron suggesting that people kiss the cook. This was not what he wore when he arrived by a wide margin, and she could not understand why he had changed and taken this duty upon himself. Not only did Robert not look like the father of the bride ought to -- in a suit, alternating relaxed and anxious, schmoozing about what a good job he had done contributing half of Toni's genetic code -- he did not look like himself. As long as she had known him, he had a pleasant indifference to most things that he could substitute for being composed. Even with the mess of the divorce, he appeared relaxed and on top of things. Anne reliably stated that this was because he only let himself consider slivers of the experience of his oldest daughter getting married. Acknowledging the immensity of what he was doing might have overwhelmed him.
It was as though he were now using hamburger grease as a disguise, though not well. Given that Toni wanted to do the same in a less conspicuous and unctuous way, it seemed accusatory.
"What are you doing, daddy?"
He scraped the spatula against the grill top. "This is safer," he said. "I think your uncle might still be sore about... you know, the divorce." The "divorce" was indeed the sort of thing one could be sore about. Her father had been spared any physical violence from Anne's side of the family mainly by moving hours away with Cathy as soon as the ink was dry on the divorce papers. Anne wouldn't have wanted the confrontation anyway, as much as her brother might have liked to have better made clear that Toni's father deserved at least as much physical pain as he had dealt out as emotional pain.
"He is under strict orders not to hit you if that helps any," said Toni. She said this as a joke, but Toni had heard her mother having the same conversation, using the same joke, and knew that it had needed saying.
"It doesn't really," her father said. "I will just engage in this way. Anyone who wants to interact with me knows where I am. If they don't, they can just do without hamburgers."
She didn't like this attitude, but she likewise didn't have the time to counsel him to be reasonable. If in his pouting grilling got done, that had to be for the good. She would accept it.
It barely seemed worth noting that this is not how a fairytale wedding would happen, that no Disney princess would be given away by a man who smelled of charcoal. (Though Toni would not let herself be given away by anyone. She was not livestock.)
Toni absconded with a glass of wine and returned to the basement to watch again.
No sooner was the wine poured than the power blew.
The twinkling fairy lights inside the tent were dark. However, the rest of the day was so bright that the guests didn't seem to notice yet.
She ran to Jason, explaining the problem. He was not yet in his suit, for which she was grateful. She was not clear on the superstition behind her seeing that. A man in a suit was sure to be of no use to her until she was standing before Rowan.
Jason's lips quirked. "Is this a job for your soldier?"
"Just figure out why we don't have electricity," she said. "I do not need brute force." She paused for a moment. "I need you not to be electrocuted before you sign the marriage certificate. You delegate the job to someone expendable and knowledgeable of electricity. Your job is to make memories, got it?"
He gave a stiff salute.
She did not want to marry a soldier, as helpful as she knew he thought he was being. She wanted Jason, her groom. Not her Prince Charming, but her man.
She felt a twinge of panic at this setback and examined if it was something about which she ought to worry. However, she suspected that most people at the wedding would be gone shortly after the cake was cut -- that was the way of weddings -- so she did not have to worry about what would happen when it grew dark.
Toni decided that she had enough of avoiding succumbing to being dolled up and turned back to the house. Now, though, Nathaniel stood between her and the door rigidly and uncomfortably. Toni knew, but no one who was less acquainted with him would notice.
"I didn't know you were coming," said Nathaniel, his tone cool and neutral, which couldn't have sounded more accusatory had he practiced.
Toni looked around for the object of this remark. She saw at once a woman who seemed almost practiced in being unremarkable in a green dress with purple flowers dyed erratically. Eleanor. Toni had met her only once, at Eleanor's wedding. It had been one of her first dates with Jason, the one where he decided that he needed to be in a relationship with her, not merely casual dating. In addition to being one of the few women Jason admitted to loving -- though he assured was always in a brotherly way -- Eleanor was Nathaniel's ex-girlfriend, the only one with any significance.
"Jason's getting married," said Eleanor. "Why wouldn't I be here?"
Eleanor didn't have time to respond before Charlotte was on her with an embrace that threatened to become permanent.
"Oh my golly," said Charlotte. "I haven't seen you in forever. I assumed you were busy fighting brown people to death."
"They are just blips on my screen," said Eleanor. "It's hardly a fight."
They wandered off to chat more, rekindling where their friendship had tapered off, which Toni could not regret. Nathaniel was her priority for this brief interruption.
"Understanding that it is my wedding day and interpersonal drama is forbidden until after the 'I do's,' that looked rough," Toni said.
Nathaniel sniffed, seeming more composed in the half-second it took. "I didn't expect to see her again."
"Ever?"
"You don't have any exes you never expect to see again?"
Toni had several. There was no venom behind it, simply that they could not be less relevant to her now. She hadn't even thought of them, though a few flittered through her mind before vanishing again. "No one I cared about."
He gathered his long hair in one hand and released it again. "I suppose one says at these moments that they don't care about their exes."
She shook her head. "I was at her wedding. Jason has given me the full dossier then."
"Right, of course. So, I cannot say that I do not care," Nathaniel said. "What I can say is that I did not expect to see her again, and I wouldn't have been sorry for that." He looked off to where Charlotte had dragged Eleanor, though the house obscured them. "I don't think he is here because she cares about Jason getting married."
"Do you think she is here for you, then?"
His brow furrowed as though her question might have been talking about the relative weights of unicorns. "No. She is here for some reason that I don't know. I wonder if she does."
"Mysterious," said Toni, wanting to say something. "But you are okay? Because you are due for best man duties, and we cannot have your loyalties divided, or you just know that Jason is going to run off into the woods again and get himself lost."
This made Nathaniel's discomfort break enough. "I couldn't have that happen."
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.