Escape From Bridezillia. Jacqueline deMontravel
I’d hardly ever be there, with my life in L.A. and traveling. I’ll pay full price.”
“J3, what a fantastic idea. But, really? I mean I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“Obligated? Emily, I live in homes that come with room service and toiletries wrapped with hotel signage.”
And this was bad why?
“Aside from my place in L.A., essentially a locker, I have no place to put my bag down and stay for a while. This would be ideal for me.”
“But wouldn’t you at least want to see the place? Though it really is quite amazing—three floors, terrace, these vapors with therapeutic properties that shoot from the bathroom. Excellent for your pores. The windows and space—I mean it really is fabulous.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t have thought otherwise. Considering that you are Emily Briggs.”
Feeling embarrassed.
“Soon to be Philips,” I said, wiggling my taped finger. “And, speaking of which, I just need to clear it with Henry, but I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
At the corner of Seventy-ninth, the WALK sign blinked its warning to hurry it on up unless you wanted to suck in exhaust fumes for a few useless seconds. I began to step from the curb when J3 pulled on the back of my sweater lightly, not enough to stretch its shape, saving me from a renegade Chinese food delivery man. I would have been part of the one-out-of-ten-million statistics to make it on the local news for being rammed by the wire basket hood of a bicycle. Had I renewed my health insurance?
“Thanks,” I said in a trembling voice.
He smiled.
“No problem, just watching your back.”
“I’ll say.”
“So I’ll be at the Four Seasons till next Thursday, and hopefully I can get you two out to celebrate more than your engagement, considering that we all may be living together. You can just reach me there. And you? Are you at the same number?”
“Not really. And I’d give you my cell number, but I don’t give anyone that number. I never use it.”
“Of course, how could I forget, you find them to be very rude and discourteous. How John Singer Sargent of you. A fine correlation, as I know you will be this century’s answer to portraiture and then some.”
Smiling, completely reddened from all of this excitement and humility, I just spoke to conceal my discomfort.
“Okay. Right, then. I’ll be calling you.”
I straightened my pose, not because I had just been viewing Sargents and felt particularly self-conscious about my posture, but rather from feeling quite exhilarated. My shoulder blades went to places they’ve never been to before. I believe I appeared to be an exclamation point.
7
The kind of bliss you have when you get a check in the mail, having no idea where it came from but quickly cashing it anyway—this is how I felt while walking to Daphne’s. I needed this moment. And my time was due. I could also use a big check made out to me that I had no idea where it had come from. Aside from Henry asking me to marry him, J3 agreeing to move into the Reade Street loft had been the first bit of good news in some time.
A protester screamed her issues at the corner of Madison, her causes unknown with all of the counter-productive yelling. These protesters really should reassess their tactics if they wanted to utilize their time effectively. I tried to calculate how I could cut across the street without being accosted by scary protester person, but the traffic did not flow in my favor. As I approached her, she smiled, targeting me the way the man with the thankless job of giving out flyers to a gentleman’s club spots the pedestrian with the greased hair and gold chain.
“Hello!” I said, as friendly as possible to the activist who gets her haircut at a dog groomer’s.
The fact that I even acknowledged her so favorably appeared to have propelled her into a state of disbelief, as the corner of Seventieth and Madison just received the MUTE switch.
Taking the moment to scan her billboard and signage, the reason for her not getting a real job and spending her afternoons to take out some frustrations that may be better serviced in a therapist’s office, I saw she had been protesting about a woman’s right to choose.
And here she tried to target me, when back in one particularly promiscuous summer I bought pregnancy kits that came two to a pack—a staunch one-issue voter—a poor utilization of one’s time indeed. She needed to implement a Smythson business planner system. But, from the look of her, she may have been more of the Filofax type.
Once I moved away from the radius of her pitched space, it was as if my safety barrier had been broken. Her yelling resumed.
“You have a choice!” she called, to my back.
Punching in Daphne’s number on my cell, I spoke quietly, as I found it discourteous to chatter about in public. Then the world’s loudest bus approached. The world’s loudest bus then stopped, directly in front of me.
“Hello?” said a barely audible voice on the other end of the receiver.
“Hey. Emily?” I screeched, not to myself but my goddaughter. “Is your mom there?” I yelled over rude bus noise and waved about the air of exhaust that would need about a week’s worth of facials before clearing the grime to get back to my natural skin tone.
“Yeah, she’s here. Hold on. Hey, where are you? Mommy said you were coming over, and I wanted to show you my blue dress. I have shoes and gloves that match with a little bag because I am a real lady.”
The girl had become her godmother in training.
“Soon, love. I’m just approaching your building.”
“Yeah!” she wailed. I could picture her engulfing the receiver like a lion swallowing his trainer’s head.
Now that I was hearing-impaired, Daphne came on the phone.
“Emily? I thought you were coming by at two?”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “A little held up, but I’m outside your building right now.”
“Oh dear lord, speak up! No one is listening to your conversation. Speaking on cell phones is quite common these days, you know. See you soon,” she said, hanging up.
I walked into a small Frenchwoman, knocking her over actually. She scrambled to the ground somewhat melodramatically. I offered my cell phone hand, but she started swatting at me, yelling “Merde! Imbecile! Dans la lune!”
Using my high school level French to interpret, I knew this was bad. I tossed my phone in one of my bags to quickly rid myself of the evidence and dashed into Daphne’s building, because lawsuits didn’t fit into my budget right about now.
I loved Daphne’s house. I dubbed it my “Safe Place.” No harm could happen to you here, aside from a child swinging from the shower curtain after watching Tarzan (which is now banned from their household) or a tricycle slamming into a falling Christmas tree (caught on video but erased by a distraught Emily). Now that I think of it, it seemed quite surprising how few visits Daphne’s children had to Lenox Hill Hospital. But Daphne, dubbed the Madonna of Moms, had the kind of knowledge of whether Cheerios is better than Chex and can rattle on about glycemic and fiber indexes like traders following the yen.
The living room was painted in a shade of dove gray that sprouted from parquet herringbone floors and covered with art bid on from auction sales you read about in the next day’s papers. Recently coming into some money from a wealthy aunt with no children of her own—the best kind—Daphne used some of her inheritance to buy a few incredible works of art, complemented by a smattering of scooters, toys, and stuffed animals gobbled by the couch’s crease.
Always undergoing a constant state of transformation (not counting Emily and