The Wedding People

by Alison Espach

Wedding people are much louder than regular people.

“Is each room a decade?” Phoebe asks. She pictures each room having its own hairstyle. Its own war. Its own set of stock market triumphs and failures. Its own definition of feminism.

There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.

Every time she opened her dissertation on the computer, it felt like sitting down for coffee with an old boyfriend she couldn’t imagine ever loving again.

His intelligence was one of the reasons that she fell in love with him. But it was annoying to see young women worship it, because nobody worshipped hers. People were either surprised by it or disapproving of it. Not even Bob was a fan anymore.

“Why do I expect you to be more than a cat when all I want is for you to just be a cat?” Phoebe asked Harry, like he was a psychiatrist sitting between them, and often that’s what Harry looked like—so dignified, with one little paw crossed over the other like he was patiently waiting his turn to say something wise. “Harry is not our family,” Phoebe reminded him. “He’s our psychiatrist.”

“I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it’s written.” “That’s true,” Matt said. “But you’re not at the end.”

“My father owned landfills. Gary is a gastroenterologist. Totally different jobs, but my mother is just like, Like I said, they’re both in waste management. Two men, on a mission to help the country deal with their shit.”

“My mother is like, We all knew on some level that your father was going to die. And I’m like, Well yeah, I’ve always known that someday my father will die. But maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that Gary and I love each other? I mean, why does everything have to be about my father one day dying? And my mother is like, I didn’t make the rules, sweetheart. Take it up with Freud.”

“I don’t know,” the bride says. “That’s what he said. It made no sense. It was just … silence … and then Herbbballlllll Essences! And I was like, Okay, Dad. What about Herbal Essences? But he hung up. And then he died. And those were literally my father’s last words to me.”

“Don’t you want to know if they get married?” she asked, when Matt suggested they turn it off. But Matt did not need to know. Matt said, “This is a terrible movie. Of course they’re going to get married.” And Matt could do that—turn off the TV, quit a marriage—right in the middle of the climactic scene.

It’s three a.m. The grief hour, according to Phoebe’s therapist. The demon hour, according to medieval peasants. The hour that you wake up when you have excess cortisol in your body, according to a doctor Phoebe once saw.

So I think I convinced myself that I functionally had no parents, yet was still bound by the rules of my father.” “An orphan without all the perks.” “Lonely with no street cred.”

“I’ll be sure to put that on my tombstone. Phoebe Stone: the only acceptable rando.”

Phoebe imagines they could probably listen to it a thousand times the way that her father could watch Vietnam War movies over and over again. Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night’s sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary’s love.

Phoebe is starting to wonder if this is why she is here, to fill the silences between the wedding people that they don’t know how to fill, to ask the questions nobody can bring themselves to ask. Phoebe has nothing to lose here. She is not part of this family. She is not part of anything anymore. She is free in a way none of them are, so she kneels down and looks directly at the girl, as if it’s her from many years ago.

Lila sits perched on the boat like she’s sitting in her own living room—upright, poised, with the confidence of a woman who has systematically removed all of her body hair. Nothing bad can happen to a woman like that during her wedding week, not even in the middle of the ocean.

“Before that, we were always drinking stolen church wine,” Suz says. “You stole sacramental wine?” Jim asks, looking at Lila like he’s both surprised and proud. “For the record, I was never comfortable with it,” Lila says. “Well, you certainly drank enough of it to get sick,” Nat says. “It was … not award-winning wine,” Lila says. Jim pretends to be a parishioner pausing before the Eucharist. “Excuse me, Father, is this a pinot?”

There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak. She hasn’t met a person like this in a long time, not since she met her husband, which was why it was so painful when she started to forget how to speak to her husband.

Dad watches it at least once a year and then immediately calls us to say that Roy is the only true hero in the family,” Gary says. “I mean, I went to law school for you, Dad!” Marla says. “I thought you went to be a feminist?” Gary’s father asks. She elbows him. “That, too,” Marla says. “But honestly, what was the point of going to law school if your dad doesn’t respect it?”

Jim has the energy of someone who should be an investment banker or a car dealer or a wedding singer, someone who is out there in the world, but this is probably because Phoebe is a reader, always expecting people’s careers to match their personalities exactly. In real life, Jim is an engineer.

“Good point,” Juice says. “Though to be honest, I could never love anyone named Albert.” “Alberts are people, too,” Phoebe says. Juice cracks up. She repeats the line to herself, “Alberts are people, too.”

It’s arousing to see someone passionately take care of all the problems.

Phoebe hates the word fun. Phoebe thinks that if people could just stop using the word fun, stop expecting everything to be fun, everything could be fun again.

“How do you know things about the sleeping habits of ravens?” Gary asks. “At some point, every lit professor has to spend a full day researching ravens,” Phoebe says. “They’re everywhere. Writers can’t resist a raven. You know, symbols of death and grief and the underworld and all that jazz.” “Oh, yeah, love that jazz,” Gary says. “Poe, right? That was the raven poem?” “Nevermore, nevermore.”

“My students tend to love characters who sentence themselves to never-ending grief,” Phoebe says. “It seems noble to young people, I think.”

Whereas Phoebe was trained in the depressive school of her father, and then the snark of graduate school, taught to poke holes in everyone’s arguments, to see the fatal flaws in papers, and it had been exciting for a short period of time.

It is nice the way everyone here keeps asking this, even if it’s just their job. Each time feels like another chance to practice asking for what she needs, something that used to be so difficult for Phoebe.

“Ever since I arrived here, I’ve had this feeling that we’re just pretending to still be friends. Reenacting the friendship the way it used to be, when we were actually close,” Lila says. That was how Phoebe felt at the end of her marriage. They reenacted the beginning—went on date nights, invited each other to things.

To be stuck inside her house was to be stuck inside herself and all the choices she made over the years.

If the problem is loneliness, then in this way, and maybe in only this way, Mrs. Dalloway is the hero for giving everybody a place to be.

But Wharton hadn’t published any of her books while she lived in this house. At Land’s End, she had been unknown, an unhappy married woman. She had not yet become the real Edith Wharton. Not yet divorced. Not yet a novelist. Not yet a war correspondent in France. She wonders how terrifying it felt, not to know any of this about herself, to sit out on this big lawn, looking at the sea, feeling like she was at the very end of it all. She wonders what it was that made her realize there was somewhere else to go.

She is suddenly curious about what she has not yet become, and is proud of herself when she returns to the Forty Steps.

“Good luck,” he says. “I still have trouble saying ‘my dead wife.’” “There have to be better options.” “Nothing else sounds much better,” he says. “My deceased wife?” “Too formal,” Phoebe says. “My late wife?” “Too old-fashioned.” “My first wife.” “Asshole.” “My departed spouse.” “Okay, now you just sound like you murdered her. You’re right. I see your problem.”

So did Juice, who said “Wendy” even before she said “Mama,” maybe something to do with how many times Juice watched Peter Pan, he wasn’t sure. “Wendy was disappointed by it, she was like, what am I, her co-worker?” Gary says. “But after she died, I was glad that from the very beginning she could see her mother as a person.”

“Technically, they’re called retrievals. But they should be called Eggstractions, right? I mean, come on. It’s just sitting right there.”

“You just got sugar everywhere.” “It’s fine,” Juice says. “I’ll lick it up like I’m a priest.” “I’m sorry,” Phoebe says. “You’re going to have to explain that one.” “Grandma said that when the priest spills the wine, he has to lick it off the floor,” Juice says. “Because it’s literally Jesus. And if you don’t, then Jesus will just sit there on the linoleum for the rest of time.”

“Boots don’t reveal your toes.” “Yeah, because my toes are actually kind of private.” “Not for much longer, I’m afraid,” Phoebe says. “At this wedding, there are public toes only.”

You always need the shoes that the bride wants you to have.” “But why? I’m tired of doing everything she wants.” “It’s just one of those rules.” “One of what rules?” “Like, nobody can make fun of your father but you. Don’t eat a giant cake before running. And always buy the shoes that the bride wants you to buy.” Juice looks impressed. “What other rules do you know?”

“A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself,” Phoebe says. “It’s a line from an Edith Wharton novel.” A line that struck Phoebe as very true, even though her students always thought it sounded shallow.

The younger woman never has a chance. She’s always doomed to worship, right from the start.”

“My daughter doesn’t fully love people yet,” Patricia says. “Not the way she will.” “What do you mean?” Phoebe asks. “I mean she loves Gary the way that I love this cocktail. The way that I have come to love a foam body pillow. The way I loved Henry at the start, when I thought love was about getting something from people. I fell in love with what Henry gave me. And he gave me so much. He truly did. But loving someone like that doesn’t make you a better woman. Only losing them does.”

When Patricia realized that’s exactly how she would feel when she was ninety—that she was too young and beautiful at sixty not to have been naked all of the time—she reached out to the artist. “It had been decades,” Patricia says. “But I just called William like no time had passed and said, I’m ready to pose for you. God, that’s what impresses me now the most. How I just did that. It felt like the boldest thing I had ever done, somehow scarier than even getting married.

“I didn’t want to be saved from myself. Nobody does! All we want is permission to stand there naked and be our damned selves.” This sounds true to Phoebe.

“Gary’s mother cornered me for the third time this morning and asked why God has not yet made an appearance at this wedding,” Lila whispers as soon as she gets in. “I was like, Oh no, I completely forgot to invite him.”

“You can be married and be very alone,” Phoebe says. “More alone than you are when you’re, well, alone. Trust me.” Lila doesn’t say anything but looks at Phoebe, waiting for her to go on. “Your husband is not going to take care of you the way you think,” Phoebe says. “Nobody can take care of you the way you need to take care of yourself. It’s your job to take care of yourself like that.”

“She was just this whirlwind of a person,” he says. “We met in college. She was an art student, and I was premed. I used to walk by the open studios on my way back from the hospital. That’s the first time I saw her, standing in front of this painting that was entirely red, and it was like she knew I didn’t get it. ‘It’s thirty shades of red,’ she said, and still I couldn’t see it. Not until she started pointing them out to me. And I fucking loved this about her. She could always see things I couldn’t. Seriously, all I could see was one giant blob of red. But then, a few days later, I saw all these different colors. And it was amazing.” “I think that might be the best description of falling in love that I’ve ever heard,” Phoebe says.

“Well, I think it’s amazing,” Gary says. “How much work we’ll do just to feel something. I don’t think there is anything more human than that.”

She loves deep, winding conversations that go up and down, especially in the dead of night when everyone should be sleeping.

They get up and walk out the door. This is, Phoebe realizes, the one problem with falling in love with strangers. You don’t get to keep them. She watches them spread out in their own directions as soon as they reach the parking lot.