Love the one you're with

twenty-four

On the short, muggy walk home that night, I wait for Andy to rush to my defense-or at least make cursory mention of the merlot episode. At which point, I plan to laugh it off, or perhaps chime in with a few choice comments about Ginny and Craig-her insipid chatter, his misplaced superiority, their relentless, almost comical, snobbishness.

But surprisingly and even more disappointingly, Andy doesn't say a word about them. In fact, he has so little to say that he comes across as uncharacteristically remote, almost aloof, and I start to feel he actually might be mad at me for causing a ruckus at Margot's so-called barbecue. As we near our driveway, I am tempted to come right out and ask the question, but refrain for fear that doing so would suggest guilt. And I don't feel that I've done anything wrong.

So instead I stubbornly avoid the subject altogether and keep things neutral, breezy. "Those were some great filets, weren't they?" I say.

"Yeah. They were pretty tasty," Andy says as he nods to a night jogger passing us in crazy, head-to-toe reflective clothing.

"No chance that guy's getting hit by anything," I say, chuckling.

Andy ignores my half-hearted joke and continues in a serious voice. "Margot's corn salad was really good, too."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. I'll be sure to get her recipe," I mumble, my tone coming off slightly more acerbic than I intended.

Andy shoots me a look that I can't read-some combination of doleful and defensive-before dropping my hand and reaching in his pocket for his keys. He fishes them out, then strides more quickly up the driveway to the front porch, where he unlocks the door and pauses to let me enter first. It is something he always does, but tonight the gesture registers as formal, almost tense.

"Why, thank you," I say, feeling stranded in that frustrating no man's land of both wanting to fight and wanting to be close.

Andy won't give me either. Instead, he steps around me as if I were a pair of tennis shoes left on the stairs and heads straight up to our room.

I reluctantly follow him and watch him start to undress, desperately wanting to define what's in the air between us but unwilling to make the first move.

"You going to bed?" I say, glancing at the clock on our bedroom mantel.

"Yeah. I'm beat," Andy says.

"It's only ten," I say, feeling both angry and sad. "Don't you want to watch TV?"

He shakes his head and says, "It's been a long week." Then he hesitates, as if he forgot what he was about to do, before reaching into his top dresser drawer to retrieve his best pair of fine, Egyptian-cotton pajamas. He pulls them out, and, looking surprised, says, "Did you iron these?"

I nod, as if it were nothing, when in fact I felt like a martyr as I pressed them yesterday morning, with starch and all. Spray, sigh, iron. Spray, sigh, iron.

"You didn't have to do that," he says, buttoning his shirt slowly, deliberately, while avoiding eye contact with me.

"I wanted to," I lie, focusing on the curve of his slender neck as he looks down at the top button, thinking that I have nothing better to do in Atlanta.

"It wasn't necessary… I don't mind wrinkles."

"In clothes or on my face?" I say wryly, hoping to break the ice-and then fight.

"Either," Andy says, still stone-faced.

"Good," I say flippantly. "Because, you know, I'm not really the BOTOX type."

Andy nods. "Yeah. I know."

"Ginny gets BOTOX," I say, feeling slightly foolish by my overt, clumsy attempt to divert the conversation to what's really on my mind, and even more so when Andy refuses my bait.

"Really?" he says disinterestedly.

"Yeah. Every couple months," I say, grasping at straws. As if the frequency of her cosmetic-surgery office visits will finally push him across some imaginary line and rally him to my cause.

"Well," he says, shrugging. "To each his own, I guess."

I inhale, now ready to goad him into a proper argument. But before I can say anything, he turns and disappears into the bathroom, leaving me sitting on the foot of our bed as if I'm the bad guy.

To add insult to injury, Andy falls right to sleep that night-which is about the most galling thing you can do after a fight, or in our case, a standoff. No tossing or turning or stewing beside me in the dark. Just cold indifference as he kissed me goodnight, followed by an easy, deep slumber. Of course this has the infuriating effect of keeping me wide awake, replaying the evening, then the past few weeks, and the few months before that. After all, there is nothing like a little argument-induced insomnia to shift you into a state of frenzied hyper-analysis and fury.

So when the grandfather clock in our foyer (incidentally a house-warming gift from Stella which I'm none too fond of, for both its foreboding appearance and sound) strikes three, I am in such a bad mental place that I transfer to the couch downstairs where I begin to think of our engagement-the last time I can recall feeling defensive about my background.

To be fair (which I'm not in the mood to be), our wedding planning was mostly smooth sailing. In part, I credit myself for being a relatively laidback bride, as I really only cared about the photography, our vows, and for some odd reason, the cake (Suzanne believes this was simply my excuse to sample lots of baked goods). In part, I think things went well because Margot had just gone through it all, and Andy and I weren't afraid to shamelessly copy her, using the same church, country club, florist, and band. Largely, though, I think it went well because we only had one mother in the picture, and I was perfectly happy to let her run the show.

Suzanne didn't get it-didn't understand how I could so easily surrender to Stella's strong opinions and traditional taste.

"Pink roses aren't you," she said, starting in on the Grahams one afternoon as we flipped through my CDs, looking for good first-dance song choices.

"I like pink roses just fine," I said, shrugging.

"Please. Even so… what about everything else?" Suzanne said, looking agitated.

"Like what?" I said.

"Like everything… it's as if they expect you to become one of them," she said, her voice rising.

"That's what a wedding is all about," I said calmly. "I'm becoming a Graham, so to speak."

"But it's supposed to be two families coming together… and this wedding feels like it's more theirs than yours. It's almost as if they're… trying to take you over… phase out your family."

"How do you figure?" I said.

"Let's see… You're on their turf, for one. Why the hell are you getting married in Atlanta anyway? Isn't the wedding supposed to be in the bride's hometown?"

"I guess so. Typically," I said. "But it just makes sense to have it in Atlanta since Stella's doing most of the work."

"And writing all the checks," Suzanne said, at which point I finally got defensive and said that she wasn't being fair.

Yet now, I wonder if finances weren't a factor, after all. I can say with unwavering certainty that I didn't marry Andy for his money, and that I wasn't, as Suzanne seemed to be implying, bought. But on some level I guess I did feel indebted to the Grahams and therefore complicit when it came to the details.

Beyond the money, there was something else at play, too-some dark thing I never wanted to look at too closely, until now, in the middle of the night, on the couch. It was a feeling of inadequacy-a worry that, on some level, maybe I wasn't good enough. Maybe I didn't quite measure up to Andy and his family. I was never ashamed of my hometown, my roots, or my family, but the more I became entrenched in the Graham family, the way they lived, and their traditions and customs, I couldn't help but start to see my own background in a new light. And it was this concern-perhaps only subconscious at the time-that gave me a tremendous sense of relief when Stella suggested that she plan our wedding in Atlanta.

At the time, I justified my feelings. I told myself that I had left Pittsburgh for a reason. I wanted a different kind of life for myself-not a better life-just a different one. And included in that was a different sort of wedding. I didn't want to get married at my drafty Catholic church, eat stuffed cabbage from tinfoil chafing dishes, and boogie down to the Chicken Dance at the VFW Hall. I didn't want to have wedding cake smashed in my face, a blue-lace garter removed by my groom's teeth, and my bouquet caught by a nine-year-old because virtually every other female guest is already married with kids. And I didn't want to get pelted with rice by my husband's friends-the few who had yet to pass out-then cruise off in a black stretch limo with empty Iron City cans tied to the back bumper all the way to the Days Inn where we'd spend the night before flying to Cancun for our package honeymoon. It's not that I turned up my nose to any of that-I just had a different concept of the "dream wedding."

Now I see that it wasn't only a question of what I wanted for myself-it was also what I feared the Grahams and their friends would think of me. I never tried to hide how I grew up, but I didn't want them observing too closely for fear that someone might come to that horrifying conclusion that I wasn't good enough for Andy. And it was this emotion, this fear, that crystallized and manifested itself in the purchase of my wedding gown.

It all started when Andy asked my father for my hand in marriage, actually flying to Pittsburgh so that he could take my dad to Bravo Franco, his favorite downtown restaurant, and ask for permission, face to face. The gesture won big points with my dad, who sounded so happy and proud when he told the story that for a long time I joked he was worried he could never marry me off (a joke I stopped telling once it became apparent that this might be Suzanne's fate). In any event, during the course of their lunch, after my dad gave his jubilant blessing, he became earnest as he told Andy about the wedding fund he and my mother had long ago set up for their girls-a savings of seven thousand dollars to be used any way we wished. In addition, he told Andy that he wanted to buy my gown, as it was something my mother had always talked of doing with her daughters, one of her symbolic big regrets during her final days.

So after Andy and I got engaged, he passed along these details to me, expressing his gratitude for my dad's generosity, telling me how much he really liked my old man, and how much he wished he could have taken my mother to lunch, too. Meanwhile, though, Andy and I both knew without saying it that seven thousand dollars would not make a dent in the cost of our lavish wedding-and that the Grahams were going to make up the rather significant shortfall. And I was okay with this. I was okay playing the role of gracious daughter-in-law, and I knew I wouldn't have to hurt my dad's feelings by telling him that his contribution would barely cover the cost of all those pink roses.

The problem was the dress. At some point, my dad insisted that he wanted me to send him the bill directly. This left me with two unpalatable choices-buy an inexpensive dress, or choose something my father could not afford. So with this conundrum in mind, off I went, uneasily dress shopping with Stella, Margot, and Suzanne, constantly trying to check the price tags and find something for less than five hundred dollars. Which simply doesn't exist in Manhattan, at least not at the couture Madison and Fifth Avenue stores where Margot had booked our appointments. Looking back, I know I could have confided all of this in Margot, and that she would have tailored our search accordingly, finding us a boutique in Brooklyn that fit my dad's budget.

Instead I had to go and fall in love with a ridiculously expensive Badgley Mischka gown at Bergdorf Goodman. It was the dream dress I didn't know I had to have until I saw it-a simple but lush ivory crepe sheath gown with a beaded netting overlay. Stella and Margot clasped their hands and insisted that I just had to get it, and even Suzanne got a little weepy as I spun around on my toes in front of the three-way mirror.

When it came time to pay, Stella whipped out her Amex Black card, insisting that she really, really wanted to do this. I hesitated and then accepted her generous offer, shamelessly pushing aside my dad-and, even worse, my mother-and filling my head with rationalizations of every kind. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. I won't have my mother at my wedding-at least I can have my dream dress. She'd want me to have this.

The next day, after much thought and angst, I came up with the perfect strategy to cover my tracks and keep my dad's pride intact. I went back to Bergdorf, selected a five-hundred-dollar veil, and told the clerk that my father wanted to buy it and would be calling with his credit card details. I also hinted rather directly that I wanted him to think the charge covered my dress, too. The clerk, a thin-lipped, fine-boned woman named Bonnie whose affected Upper East Side accent I will never forget, winked as if she understood, called me dear, and conspiratorially said she'd handle it, no problem whatsoever.

But of course ole Bonnie screwed everything up, sending my father the receipt and the veil. And although he never said a word about it, the look on his face when he handed me that veil in Atlanta said it all. I knew how much I had hurt his feelings, and we both knew why I had done it. It was the most ashamed I have been in my life.

I never told Andy the story-never told anyone the story-so great was my desire to forget it all. But I think those emotions resurfaced at Margot's dinner table tonight, and now again, in the middle of the night, as I am filled with shame all over again. Shame that makes me wish I could turn back time and wear a different dress on my wedding day. Wish I could take back that look on my father's face. Which obviously I can't do.

But I can stand up to the Ginnys of the world. And I can let her-and anyone else-know that I'm proud of where I come from, proud of who I am. And, by God, I can sleep on the couch in protest if my own husband doesn't get it.