Page 20 of The Frog Prince
And my mother, bless her, looked that small-town saleslady in the eye. “My daughter.”
I really think, in my mother’s heart of hearts, she wanted me to be a princess and marry Prince Charming and have the happily-ever, because she didn’t. But she and I should have also realized that not everyone in our small town would feel that way. After all, we’re not Trumps, Hiltons, or Rockefellers. In Visalia we’re Johnsons and Smiths, Morses, Winns, Woodses, and Humpals, but you’d never know it by the gifts Jean-Marc and I received. It was almost as if the entire town wanted the fairy tale, too, because instead of sturdy, practical beige and brown bath towels from Sears, we received theentireset of Rosenthal.
I hadn’t ever imagined we’d get the entire set of fine china, but that’s what happened. We didn’t get pots and pans; we got hardly any bath towels; we didn’t get ice cream machines or coffee-bean grinders; but we did get all our Waterford (which Jean-Marc took, except for the eight white-wine goblets). I took the complete set of china.
That’s how I started my new life: poor in spirit but rich in extravagant table settings. A girl has to know her priorities.
I never knew mine.
And having been married—for, oh, just about 320 days—I’m going to break the code of silence and tell you all the secret stuff the permanently marrieds would never tell you.
First, be suspicious of anything that is surrounded by the word “shower.” The moment the word “shower” is attached to a function, i.e., baby shower, wedding shower, be careful. Really careful.
A bridal shower is usually given by a close friend or family member of the bride, and who attends? All the older women. Mom, Grandma Betty, Aunt Claire, Aunt Carol, Godmother Eileen, plus Mom’s bridge group, the friends from Symphony League, PEO, Pi Beta Phi alums, and so on and so on until the young, nubile bride is surrounded by a sea of gray and bottle-brown and blonde fifty-, sixty-, and seventy-year-olds, and what do they do? They shower the bride with presents and pretty cards and lots of enthusiasm when really, on the inside, they’re thinking,Oh, is she in for a big surprise.
That’s right. They know. They know that marriage is a rotten arrangement for women. They know that the young bride will soon be an exhausted new mother and then a frazzled parent and then a stressed-out middle-ager, and, bam, menopause hits, kids are gone, husband is taking cholesterol meds and Viagra, and you know, it’s just not a lot of fun anymore.
Thus, the gifts. The gifts are to sweeten the pot, make it all a little more bearable, and while we’re toasting your soon-to-be entrapment, we’re going to feed you some cake, too.
Good God, this is what we want little girls to grow up looking forward to? Bridal magazines and filmy veils and lavish flowers and so much pretty-pretty before utter bewilderment?
I say, let’s just call a spade a spade and show the young bride what’s really happening. A death of fantasy, fairy tales, and imagination.
Wait, I’m getting off track. Let’s pause for a moment, forget the roomful of old women secretly gloating that another fresh-faced young woman is about to bite the dust. (Come on, you’ve got to know by now that women never stop being hard on each other!) Let’s pull back from the boxes of domestic conveniences, of dish towels and king-size sheets with a 240-thread count.
Let’s get away from the nice bows and the silly tradition of how many ribbons broken equals how many babies you’ll have, because guess what? You don’t have to get married to get presents. You can buy all the stuff yourself.
Let me say that again: you can save yourself a great deal of stress and strife if you just opt out of the wedding and head for Bergdorf Goodman and buy all the plates, the silver, the crystal, the linens your little heart desires. Never mind “his.” “His” doesn’t really care about all that stuff, and if he cares a lot, run. Run really fast, because most straight guys don’t give a flying fig for towels and mugs.
And speaking of towels and mugs, I suddenly think of all the household items Jean-Marc and I selected together. He seemed interested at the time, looked at all the displays with me, and my gaze settles on the shelf of eight handsome white-wine goblets.
Why did Jean-Marc let me order Waterford instead of Baccarat?
*
The next morningby the time I arrive at work, Olivia knows about my date with Tom before I even hang my coat up and adjust my turtleneck sweater.
Immediately summoning me into her office, Olivia gestures to the protein bars on the corner of her desk—I pass—and tells me to pull up a chair. “Good for you, Holly. You’re smart to get back out there.”
I feel like a Bactor in a spaghetti Western. “I’m not getting back out anywhere.”
“You’re right to start dating. You’ve got to. You can’t let what’s happened ruin your life. You’re only twenty-five. You’re still so young.”
You’d think Olivia had thirty years on me. And then I remember Tom mentioning my divorce last night. “How did Tom know I’d been married?”
“Aimee must have said something.”
No duh.I try to find a nice way to say this. “It’s not something I’m comfortable discussing with people I don’t know.”
“Lots of people get divorced.”
But I’m not lots of people. It happened to my mom, and it nearly broke her. It sure as hell wasn’t going to happen to me.
For a moment a cavern opens up inside me, and my whole life seems to be rushing at me: the childhood that seemed relatively normal until Dad abruptly disappeared, the teen years trying to get used to the fact that Mom was never going to be the same Mom she was before Dad left, and the fierce determination that my future would be so much different from (which translated to so much better than) my past.
Wrong.
The cavern opens wider, and I can almost taste the champagne and my white-chocolate wedding cake again, and isn’t it horrible how the best night of your life can be someone else’s worst nightmare?