Read Online The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jennifer Weiner
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would be spending my last night as a single woman in the company of my brother and sister.
• • •
Three hours later, my mother-in-law-to-be, swathed in mocha silk, far skinnier and miles more elegant than a lifetime’s worth of cabbage soup could make me, tapped her champagne glass and beamed a little tipsily at the hundred guests assembled in the plush candlelit back room of her favorite French restaurant, where murals of springtime by the Seine decorated the walls and the appetizers started at twenty dollars. “I want to thank everyone for coming to David and Josie’s rehearsal dinner,”she said. I sipped from my own glass. Lillian’s waist was as tiny as a child’s, and the skin on her cheeks was stretched taut and shiny. I wondered, once again, just how much work she’d had done. “And I want to say how delighted I am to welcome Josie and her family . . .” She paused and worked up a smile for my mother (holding hands with a bearded, beaming, ponytailed Leon on my left side) and my siblings (whispering in front of the open bar, right by the kitchen door, the better to intercept the passed hors d’oeuvres as they came out) “. . . into ours. We are so happy to see David so happy!”
David smiled at Lillian and bent his head to whisper in my ear. Instead of I love you, I heard, We should keep your sister away from the champagne. I nodded my heartfelt agreement, squeezed his hand, and farted—quietly, I hoped—into my cushioned seat. David’s mother smiled graciously into the overheated, dimly lit room that smelled of a dozen competing perfumes and the lilies that made up the centerpieces. “Would anyone from Josie’s family care to say a few words?”
My mother and Leon were still huddled together, eyes locked, oblivious. Leon, I noticed, had fastened his ponytail with a bright green terry-cloth scrunchie that matched my mother’s jacket. Sweet. I lifted my eyebrows, but neither of them noticed. Jon, never much for public speaking, finally ducked his head and mumbled, “Congratulations, you guys.”
“Where’s her father?” I heard David’s great-uncle Lew whisper loudly. He was quickly shushed by cousin Daphne, who hauled him out to the lobby where, I was certain, she’d deliver into his tufted ear the thirty-second rundown on my less-than-conventional family (father bailed nine years ago, mother recently hooked up with a much younger man, brother on an ROTC scholarship, sister some kind of scandal although she certainly is a looker). I swallowed hard, feeling acid etcha burning trail up my esophagus. No more cabbage soup, I decided. In fact, no more anything until the vows were exchanged.
David squeezed my hand as his mother shuffled her feet, then sat down. I gave him a small shrug and a grateful smile. We’d announced our wedding in the Times . The item was supposed to run the following morning. David Henry Epstein and Josephine Anne Krystal are to be married this evening, at the Ritten-house Hotel in Philadelphia. David had sent in our information at his parents’ request. “You know my dad. All publicity is good publicity. Are you okay with it?” I told him, “Sure.” I’d worked hard for my degree. I might as well have the pleasure of seeing in print the words summa cum laude and the names of the Ivy League institutions I’d be paying for decades to come.
But there was more to it than that. Secretly, I thought of that announcement, with the black-and-white photograph of David and me, posing with our eyebrows exactly level, per the Times ’s request, the few lines of biography (“the bride and groom met in Philadelphia, where the bridegroom was pursuing a business degree at the Wharton School and the bride works as a stringer for the Associated Press”), as a flag. Sometimes it was a red flag, the one a matador snaps in front of a bull; sometimes a white flag, run up from a sinking ship, signaling surrender; but mostly it was the kind of flag you’d wave if you got
• • •
Three hours later, my mother-in-law-to-be, swathed in mocha silk, far skinnier and miles more elegant than a lifetime’s worth of cabbage soup could make me, tapped her champagne glass and beamed a little tipsily at the hundred guests assembled in the plush candlelit back room of her favorite French restaurant, where murals of springtime by the Seine decorated the walls and the appetizers started at twenty dollars. “I want to thank everyone for coming to David and Josie’s rehearsal dinner,”she said. I sipped from my own glass. Lillian’s waist was as tiny as a child’s, and the skin on her cheeks was stretched taut and shiny. I wondered, once again, just how much work she’d had done. “And I want to say how delighted I am to welcome Josie and her family . . .” She paused and worked up a smile for my mother (holding hands with a bearded, beaming, ponytailed Leon on my left side) and my siblings (whispering in front of the open bar, right by the kitchen door, the better to intercept the passed hors d’oeuvres as they came out) “. . . into ours. We are so happy to see David so happy!”
David smiled at Lillian and bent his head to whisper in my ear. Instead of I love you, I heard, We should keep your sister away from the champagne. I nodded my heartfelt agreement, squeezed his hand, and farted—quietly, I hoped—into my cushioned seat. David’s mother smiled graciously into the overheated, dimly lit room that smelled of a dozen competing perfumes and the lilies that made up the centerpieces. “Would anyone from Josie’s family care to say a few words?”
My mother and Leon were still huddled together, eyes locked, oblivious. Leon, I noticed, had fastened his ponytail with a bright green terry-cloth scrunchie that matched my mother’s jacket. Sweet. I lifted my eyebrows, but neither of them noticed. Jon, never much for public speaking, finally ducked his head and mumbled, “Congratulations, you guys.”
“Where’s her father?” I heard David’s great-uncle Lew whisper loudly. He was quickly shushed by cousin Daphne, who hauled him out to the lobby where, I was certain, she’d deliver into his tufted ear the thirty-second rundown on my less-than-conventional family (father bailed nine years ago, mother recently hooked up with a much younger man, brother on an ROTC scholarship, sister some kind of scandal although she certainly is a looker). I swallowed hard, feeling acid etcha burning trail up my esophagus. No more cabbage soup, I decided. In fact, no more anything until the vows were exchanged.
David squeezed my hand as his mother shuffled her feet, then sat down. I gave him a small shrug and a grateful smile. We’d announced our wedding in the Times . The item was supposed to run the following morning. David Henry Epstein and Josephine Anne Krystal are to be married this evening, at the Ritten-house Hotel in Philadelphia. David had sent in our information at his parents’ request. “You know my dad. All publicity is good publicity. Are you okay with it?” I told him, “Sure.” I’d worked hard for my degree. I might as well have the pleasure of seeing in print the words summa cum laude and the names of the Ivy League institutions I’d be paying for decades to come.
But there was more to it than that. Secretly, I thought of that announcement, with the black-and-white photograph of David and me, posing with our eyebrows exactly level, per the Times ’s request, the few lines of biography (“the bride and groom met in Philadelphia, where the bridegroom was pursuing a business degree at the Wharton School and the bride works as a stringer for the Associated Press”), as a flag. Sometimes it was a red flag, the one a matador snaps in front of a bull; sometimes a white flag, run up from a sinking ship, signaling surrender; but mostly it was the kind of flag you’d wave if you got
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