ALL DRESSED UP
December 2011

Chapter One

“Emma, I’m not doing this.” Charlie’s voice shook with anger. He pulled the airplane mask up to the top of his forehead and glared at her. No man should glare at his bride-to-be like that. “I’m not wearing this stupid mask. It’s too much. It’s crazy.”

It wasn’t crazy. It made perfect sense. She needed to check that she and Charlie would fit side by side in the narrow church aisle, tomorrow, when they came down it as man and wife. When better to do this than immediately following the wedding rehearsal? How better to ensure that Charlie didn’t see the dress ahead of time than by making him wear a mask?

Emma wanted to scream at him. But some part of her knew that his removing the airplane mask and looking directly at her wedding gown twenty-two hours too soon wasn’t what was really wrong.

The gown was not even comfortable. It never had been, from the first time she’d tried it on in late December to the final fitting three weeks ago. She’d never said a word, not about the way its weight dragged, not about the stiff boning needed to keep the strapless bodice in place on her non-curvy frame, not about the scratch of the seams. It was the dress she’d wanted, and comfort took second place.

Of course she’d never said a word.

Not one word.

She was so good at that by now.

It was the right dress, the perfect dress, gorgeous and huge and eye-catching, fitting the kind of wedding she expected of herself down to the massive price tag and the last elaborate detail of feathery trim. And now, for some reason, the dress was what broke her.

No, okay, she was broken already.

But it was the dress that demanded she do something about it.

“I’m sorry.” She looked at Charlie, her groom, the love of her life, six feet away in the church aisle. The airplane mask was farcical, perched on his square forehead, but in everything else he was such a beautiful specimen of manhood, fit and intelligent and strong. His skin was dark as a pirate's against his white shirt, and dark pants outlined his runner’s legs. His black eyes were narrowed and angry, showing his impatience about her flawed humanity when he was so perfect himself. Usually he was even perfect enough not to mind her flaws, but today she’d pushed him to breaking point.

“Emma?” he said.

“You won’t say it, Charlie, but I have to.” Her voice was so hard, it hurt in her throat. All of this hurt. “Maybe you did say it, actually. I’m not doing this,” she mimicked. “Well, I’m not doing it, either.”

“Oh crap,” Charlie said.

Oh crap, for sure. Sarah saw her sister’s hands go to the side zipper of the dress and knew what was happening. When the bride-to-be takes off the fifteen-thousand dollar wedding gown in the middle of the church aisle less than twenty-four hours before the scheduled ceremony, any chief bridesmaid worthy of the name grasps the gravity of the situation pretty fast.

It means the wedding is off.

A kind of train-wreck-in-slow-motion sensation sank into her bones like the fall-out from an atomic bomb. Of course the wedding was off.

“I can’t go through with it,” Emma said. Announced. Mainly to Charlie. “I don’t think you even want me to.”

Poor Emma.

Poor difficult, beautiful Emma, with her lush brown hair blow-dried loose and gleaming down to her shoulder-blades, her skin pampered ready for the wedding, her lip-gloss dewy and fresh, her green eyes fringed with mascara that separated every lash, her nails manicured like little shells.

She was shaking so much now that she could hardly work her fingers. The dress refused to cooperate. It was a prima donna, just like its owner. Wedding planning guides did not advise wearing the wedding gown to the wedding rehearsal, but that hadn’t stopped her. The church aisle was narrow, the pews were old with possible splinters, the dress was wide and delicate, and the bride was out of her mind.

Only Emma would cancel her wedding this way, Sarah decided. In the church, wearing the dress on the wrong day. Normal people had crises of such a nature at a more convenient time, in the privacy of their own bedrooms, while casually dressed.

Charlie faked a need for clarification, with anger radiating from his bones. “Go through with rehearsing the dress coming down the aisle, or through with the actual wedding?” He’d been getting more and more tense about Emma’s preparations in recent weeks, more and more rigid, more and more provocatively determined to do the right thing by his over-the-top fiancée if it killed him.

Emma spared him a glance and a shaky, sarcastic smile. “What do you think?”

He didn’t answer, and fortunately didn’t know how ridiculous he looked, with that mask. In so many ways, none of this was about the wedding at all. Did Charlie know that?

He didn’t, Sarah decided. He didn’t at all.

She was shocked. Shocked at herself, too, for being a part of the conspiracy. How had this happened?

Charlie didn’t know, but it wasn’t Sarah’s place to tell him.

“I am so angry with you.” Emma’s eyes flashed their green sparks at her fiance. “I have done everything for this wedding. Do you have any idea of the work and time that’s gone into it?”

“Just a bit. I carried your nine-hundred page planning binder to the car yesterday,” Charlie said, “So you can’t say I don’t know how much the wedding weighs.” He bit down on the sarcasm as if it was an orthodontic plate. Sarah could hear the grinding.

“Don’t you dare imply that you’ve shouldered it all!” Emma’s voice rose, vinegar sharp. “I have tried so hard. I have done so much. Forever! For a hundred years. For Mom. For Billy. For everyone. Since London. Sarah, help me, I can’t stay in this dress.” She sounded panicky as she swung around. “I can’t stay in it. I need it off.”

Jolted by the helplessness in Emma’s appeal and by the mention of London and Billy, Sarah stepped forward. So did the other two bridesmaids – Emma’s college roommate Amber, and Brooke, the courtesy bridesmaid from Charlie’s side of the family, whom Emma hadn’t wanted in the bridal party at all.

Sarah got there first. She saw Brooke look at Charlie – the two of them were second cousins, though she was blonde and fair-skinned and they didn’t look anything alike – but he had retreated to some other mental place, unnaturally calm, distantly well-behaved.

“The feathers… the zipper,” Emma said, her hands still fluttering over the delicate fabric. It was the most gorgeous dress, and Emma would have matched it as a bride, but she was such a mess.

“Don’t twist around, Em, just hold still and lift your arms.” Sarah lowered her voice, tried to gentle Emma’s rising hysteria with her tone. “How about we go back to the vestry and – ?” She stopped as Emma pressed a clammy hand to her mouth and shook her head. “Okay, okay, we’ll take it off here…” She began to tease the zipper down.

The parting teeth made a sound like fingernails running over a comb. Emma had lost more weight since her final dress fitting. She’d almost gone beyond slender and reached skinny. When she hunched her shoulders and sucked her stomach in, the strapless gown seemed too big for her. It fell and sighed around her feet with the zipper only half undone.

She stepped out of it as if afraid it might burn her. Beneath it she wore bronze Capri pants, a strapless white bridal bra and her six hundred dollar beaded shoes, carefully encased in protective plastic bags. It really wasn’t clear to anyone why she’d needed to rehearse the shoes. Sarah wanted to take her to a mirror and tell her, “Look at you, Emma! Can you really call this attention to detail? Get over yourself, okay?”

Once upon a time, Emma herself would have been the one to laugh at how she looked. She would have thrown out a funny, cynical line. But nobody had seen that side of Emma for a while. “Is Mom still here?” she asked.

“No, they left around ten minutes ago, her and Dad and Billy, while you were in the back room getting into the dress.”

Light spilled through the space where the church door had slowly begun to close. Charlie’s mother, Lainie, and tomorrow’s officiating minister, the Reverend “Mac” McLintock, stood just inside. They’d been sent out to the porch some minutes ago, so as not to glimpse the dress. They’d been having a very pleasant conversation out there in the mushy Adirondack summer rain. Sarah had caught the sound of laughter more than once. She’d decided that Charlie’s mom had the loveliest laugh, warm and thick as chocolate syrup. She had the impression Mac McLintock liked it, too. They were both strong-boned, ruddy in coloring, fifty-ish. They looked good together.

But they seemed remorseful and alarmed about the picture Emma and Charlie presented. The Reverend and Lainie had missed the big moment, and now they didn’t know whether to intervene. Charlie seemed too calm, at this point. He was being patient with Emma in the way he might have been patient with a beetle crawling its way across his shirt. Lainie’s cheeks had flushed an almost bridal pink. Somebody had to make a move, save poor Emma from herself.

Sarah bent to gather up the dress. “Em, let’s go back and – ”

“Leave it!” Emma ordered. She glanced down at the dress with a look of loathing, as if it was her best friend who’d gotten plastered at the hen night and betrayed her with the groom. It reposed like a giant, feathery mushroom on the carpeted church floor, pleased with itself, playing Scarlett O’Hara in the movie, after the really good sex with Rhett.

“You know what I hate?” Emma said brightly, fixing her gaze on the altar, not on the people around her. “That I’m the bad guy, you know? That I’m the one who has worked so hard for this wedding… for my medical career… to do the right thing… for everything… ten years or more… not saying a word… and I’m still the bad guy.” She looked at Sarah, so that Sarah would know that she made Emma into the bad guy, too.

Which hurt.

Even though it was probably true.

“You have been tightening this around me for months, Charlie.” Emma stepped toward him, looking small against his ideal male height. He could have played a doctor on TV, instead of being a real one – a neurosurgery resident this year. “It’s a strait jacket and you’ve tightened it and I’ve accepted it, that this was just the way it had to be and now I’m the bad guy… I’m the witch… and I’m not going to get married as the witch. The bitch. I’m not. I’m not. I – have – to – fix – things – first.”

She was crying – great heaving, gut-wrenching sobs that stopped her words or made them squeak. It took her endless seconds to get out her final sentence. Charlie stayed patient, distant. Humans were odd creatures, he seemed to be thinking.

Sarah was shaking almost as hard as Emma, now. She wished Mom and Dad and Billy were still here, because she knew with a fresh, painful clarity that this was more about them – about the entire Dean family – than it was about the wedding or Charlie.

They all needed to fix things, not just Emma. They were such a good, nice family. They loved each other. And yet something wasn't right.

“Emma?” Brooke-the-courtesy-bridesmaid was the one who spoke gently, who put her arms around the fragile bridal shoulders first, who had just the right perfect touch. Which was somewhat ironic, because Emma had been complaining about Brooke’s imperfect attitude to the wedding for months. “Let’s just splash your face a little and get you dressed and take you home, honey, okay?”

Sarah found a tissue for Emma, and Amber followed them a few steps behind, making mince-meat out of her lower lip.