from the Velvet Underground, a secondhand store. The tuxedo itself came from Tuxedo and Sons Wholesale.
“I’ve been in the Tux industry a long time, and they don’t come small enough for you,” said the man who fit me. There were three men sitting in the back of the tux place when I walked in on a Saturday morning to buy the outfit. They looked like a retired group from the Mafia.
“Catering job?” asked the one with a bald head. He didn’t ask it unkindly, but it was clear he’d seen a line of people coming through his store to buy tuxes for work—not marriage.
My whole tuxedo outfit was makeshift, making me feel disheveled, inefficient and small. Small and fat. Not small and perky. A self-loathing of my body ran through everything I did: dance, work, sex. No, sometimes I lost myself when I opened my legs. Rarely. But sometimes.
Before beginning work, the freelance staff of South Street Seaport Catering had gathered for the nightly meeting. Probably none of the two dozen or more people assembled for their paying jobs as food servers, bartenders, coat check attendants, or doormen had enough money to consider being married at the Seaport. The lights across the Brooklyn Bridge shone into the room, making the whole wedding setting magical.
Still, South Street Seaport definitely would not be my first choice for a wedding location even if marriage looked like a promising part of my future, which it didn’t, and even if I could afford it, which I couldn’t. I wanted to say I probably couldn’t ever afford it, but that wasn’t part of my current emphasis on positive thinking. I’d been reading Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain and visualizing myself on the dance stage: perfect balance, no wobbles, perfect leg extension to my ear, perfect body, one-hundred pounds.
I found out about the catering company, which preferred employees who were actors, dancers, painters, or writers, through my friend Heather, who also studied at Graham. During my interview, as soon as I said I was a dancer, the manager Tom said, “You got the job. Get yourself a tux.”
Tom placed me in the bathroom. A bathroom attendant girl, I thought. My positive future had not included such jobs.
On my way to the bathroom earlier in the evening, I had run directly into the bride. I had quickly inclined my head downward the way English maids do on Masterpiece Theatre. Pretending to relay a message to the very thin and very petite bride, I used the third-person: “The bride will find the bridal changing room down this hall and to the right.”
A bridesmaid in a skin-tight peach-colored silk dress, showing bones, no curves, and no breasts waited as the bridal entourage, including four other flat-chested women wearing peach dresses, moved away down the hallway.
“Thank you,” said the bride’s friend. Her accent sounded Midwestern. Her voice was flat, but there was a slight twang that sounded out of place in an urban bridal party.
“You’re welcome. My pleasure,” I said, valiantly trying to maintain the veneer that I knew how to be a maidservant.
“Beth, hurry up,” called one of the bridesmaids.
Beth clicked away in peach-colored stilettos.
When I first entered the bathroom, my thick-soled black leather shoes had squeaked on the white-tiled floor. The room had vertical pink and white striped wallpaper three quarters of the way up the wall. A thin strip of flowered wallpaper, in a lilac color, separated the stripes from pink paint on the rest of the wall.
Although it was already clean, I wiped the mirror with Windex. I looked in each of the four toilet bowls. Checked the toilet paper. Checked the Kleenex boxes on the counter. Straightened the silver tray on one side of the counter. On the tray were individually wrapped combs in plastic, a can of hair spray, a tube of styling mousse, a small jar of clear nail polish, packages of aspirin and antacid tablets, and a glass jar of mints.
Someone, probably Tom’s efficient assistant Sheila, had shoved white lilies into a crystal vase and placed it between the two sinks. The petals were crushing each other.
Not a good way to begin a marriage, I thought. Crushing prevents the sweet scent.
The lilies had a faint smudge of pink through the center of the aromatic white petals. I pulled a few stalks higher than the others, filling the bathroom with a fresh, sticky smell, which reminded me of my friend Paula’s old-fashioned garden back in Montana. I used one of the linen hand towels to collect the yellow pollen from the pistils of the flowers, which had fallen on the counter. The pollen left yellow blotchy stains on the towel.
My cummerbund adjusted, I re-opened the door a crack. There were about a hundred people in the main room. The bridesmaids in their peach outfits stood at the front of the room. The bride was walking down the aisle. She held her head still. Directly in front of her white satin gown she held, equally still, a bouquet of white roses. There was an intricate lace pattern that scrolled around her tiny waist. Trails of lace with pearls at each end rested on top of the full-length satin gown. A veil of the same lace covered the bride’s face. There was no bridal train and no flower girl. The bride walked alone. Acting as stage floodlights, the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge lighted her way down the aisle. The whizzing headlights of the endless traffic racing through the early winter night were shooting stars.
I wish upon a star, I thought, but the thought trailed off. Where is the bride’s father?
The string quartet had stopped playing. I watched the bride’s back as she faced the altar. The groom did not touch his bride.
“We are gathered today,” said the minister, “for the wedding of Jonathan Atkins, the Third, and Abigail Lili Shepherd.”
I remembered my friend Paula’s wedding down the Bitterroot Valley in Montana just before I received the Montana Dance Arts Association scholarship to the Graham Summer Intensive. I had no idea then that I would audition for the two-year program at Graham and receive a scholarship and move permanently to New York City.
At Paula’s wedding, her father, proudly wearing his Stetson, had walked his daughter down the path by the Bitterroot River, past her old-fashioned garden of lilies, and up the meadow to an arbor covered in honeysuckle. The groom’s best men all wore cowboy hats, and the bridesmaids all had honeysuckle, a tender, delicate flower, woven through their hair. When the husband and wife kissed under the arbor, we had all whistled and clapped and hollered.
I saw a glint of gold, or maybe platinum, as this bride and groom exchanged rings.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” said the minister. He didn’t wear a collar and could just as likely have been a justice of the peace. He could have been a non-denominational something.
“You may kiss the bride,” he said.
The crowd was still and silent. The kiss, short and soundless.
The string quartet started playing Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto,” I wasn’t sure which one, and the couple turned to face their audience. The groom still appeared more suited to a board meeting than to his own wedding. The bride squeezed her lips together as if she had just applied lipstick.
As they walked down the aisle, the new husband and wife kept their eyes fixated on the back of the room. The groomsmen started shaking hands with the guests while the bridesmaids kissed the guests’ cheeks. I could smell the buffet in the adjacent dining room.
