Escape From Bridezillia. Jacqueline deMontravel
“But I don’t want to get married on some herringbone parquet floor where guests get real psyched to do the electric slide or get my dress dusted from saying my vows in the middle of a grape field. I don’t even like wine—I’m more of a vodka girl. I want to get married in my house. What’s the point of having a childhood home if it won’t be properly commemorated, sold just before I get married?”
I thought of Jackie (Jacqueline Bouvier, more specifically).
“Like Hammersmith.”
“We need to hammer what?”
“Hammersmith! Where Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy were married.”
“You are such the dreamer.”
My mother just then patted me on the head. Like a dog. Which happened to come yapping into the kitchen. A pug with an alarming nasal infection moved toward me with the waddle of a fair-skinned tourist after their first day in the Galapagos and missed patch of sunblock behind his knees.
This pug approached me or, more precisely, my foot and fell instantly in lust.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, toeing it off me unsuccessfully.
“That’s Mao, part of Oliver’s package to return back to New York.”
Package? Oliver, my younger brother, had the life of a GE CEO before the days of Enron.
“And don’t get too attached, darling. I am just testing Mao out.”
“Testing him out? He’s not an espresso machine.”
Just then, Mao took a break from violating my leg to give a few sneezes and a burp.
“Then again, he certainly sounds like an espresso machine,” I said, watching him return to his conquest.
“Mom, can you please tell Mao to ease up on the PDA. What’s he on? Doggie Viagra? Can’t you get him some dog dildo?”
“Emily. You know fine and well that an animal of ours would never display PDA,” she said, enunciating key words. She then tried shooing him with little flutters of her hand not strong enough to whisk away a dusty gnat.
“Besides,” she started in with that matter-of-fact way of hers, “you’re entirely not his type. Completely wrong for him.”
“Right. Of course. Possibly because I’ve had my allergy shots this season.” I extended my legs to create a slingshot, clamped Mao and centered him, deeming him a pellet that I thrust across the room, successfully splattering this blobby pug against the prewar concrete wall. His skinny legs extended from his paunchy belly like a shocked Humpty Dumpty just as he was about to fall.
This made me laugh.
“Oh, Emily!” Mom scolded. “Oh, Mao!” she cried. Mother ran over to Mao, tending to him like he was her slain war hero. The image made for an unusual picture of one of those Fabio-covered romance novels, painted by the same velvet canvas artist who brought you the dogs smoking cigars while playing pool.
She was stroking his fur and whispering soothing words into his ear, so now the dog and younger brother in this family had garnered more of my mother’s maternal instinct than her firstborn. I’ve entertained the idea of being illegitimate, searching for the man that delivered our mail in the early seventies to seek a paternity test.
“This is ridiculous,” I huffed. “And why not get a real dog, the kind that doesn’t come with hidden costs from the thousand-dollar carrier cases and jeweled chokers? You’re not getting all Auntie Peg on me.”
Auntie Peg was the great-auntie who will never cease to exist. Darkening the festive mood of a holiday gathering with the obligatory ten-minute chitchat, trying to remain composed by her automated reply of “as long as you like it, dear.” Seated in her mobile armchair, a tartan blanket draped on her lap and a swarm of pugs that nipped about the tassels of her blanket like misbehaved children.
“Please don’t compare me to Auntie Peg, darling, that’s extremely inconsiderate.”
I found it interesting that Auntie Peg had the power to penetrate the hierarchical rungs set in my mother’s self-absorption.
“I’m off to the museum,” I snipped.
“The museum?”
“Yes. A public institution exhibiting paintings and other works of art.”
“Why, Emily, you couldn’t very well go to the museum dressed like that.”
I looked down to evaluate my appearance in a chiffon blouse with a cross wrap, gray pants with camel pinstripes, and a suede coat with fur trim.
“Um?”
“Emily, just look at your shoes,” she said, saying “shoes” like it was the name of the scandalous gossip target of the day.
I peered down at my just-violated toe, which had on a brown suede Puma with an orange stripe.
“I’m not going to the Costume Institute ball. I’m just getting in a bit of the arts. Since when did the museum have a dress code?”
But this was useless. I was speaking to a woman who still wore a navy blazer, ballroom gloves and Ferragamo bowed shoes every time she traveled on a commercial flight. She honored a past time when manners showed your status better than the limited edition LV bag bought after your name was crossed from a waiting list. Mom, skilled in bar car-chatter, versed in the kind of social skills where the hostess mingled with her guests while holding a tray of stuffed artichokes.
“And, Emily, we must discuss the wedding. The wedding!”
With that said, I lifted myself from my chair, gave Mao an apologetic scratch behind his ear where he returned the affection with a lick to my face (the animal was truly infatuated), a peck to my mother’s cheek as she gets kissed, never kisses, and walked out of the house with no regard to her curious rumbles that trailed me.
Feeling insecure about my sneakers, I decided to forego the Met for a little window indulging. I walked along Madison, passing the display booth boutiques with storefronts peddling clothes propped on invisible silhouettes in the same positions featured in the shopping pages of the fashion magazines. I zigzagged through other walkers in congested midtown. Looked up as the buildings stretched to the sky while we clambered at their base.
I passed the imperious lions that guard the New York Public Library, walked under the shadowed gleams of the Chrysler. Chose the left breach imposed by the Flatiron and stopped to buy an apple at the farmer’s market in Union Square. With the sustenance gained from chomping on a picked-from-Amish-hands piece of fruit, feeling quite wholesome and cleansed with proletarian ethics, I finished off the last leg of my city walk to Henry’s apartment, which I’ve casually pitched as my primary residence for the past few months—living in the proverbial sin before giving my housing situation the loaded “living together” label.
Walking down East Twelfth, and if you ever assumed that a pigeon pecking in the middle of a street would be able to fly to safety from a mad city cab driver, you haven’t lived in New York, where cabbies literally pencil in road kills on that chit you assumed recorded passenger fares. I had to quickly look away when I saw that this particular fatality had trampled more than a few feathers.
Slowing my pace, Tide-scented air puffed from the basement grates of an apartment complex, slapping my ankles with that unbalanced wave of humidity you feel after stepping outside an overly air-conditioned office building. As I approached my favorite townhouse, I became exhilarated, faintly making out the owner exiting the red-painted door like a diver swimming to surface. She closed the door too quickly for me to look inside. Her dog, more appropriate for the Moors with a few ducks stuffed in its mouth, poked his muzzle in sensitive areas until she snapped a few commands in Italian. He retreated, sat and looked at her obediently until she shouted the name of a pasta sauce to switch him back on. The dog clearly understood Italian. I didn’t know Italian. In some ways, this dog was more intelligent than me.
Reaching