The Bride Wore Size 12

“Why?” I demand flatly. “I’m tired. I have watermelon in my hair. I want to try on my wedding dress and then go have a nice lunch with my friends, like a normal person. I don’t want to listen to any more bullshit excuses from anyone, Dad, especially Mom. Honestly, I can’t take it anymore.”

“Darling, I know,” my mother says, moving toward me. She’s wearing a long dove-gray tunic over soft, draping gray trousers and enough silver jewelry to choke a horse. Every time she moves, the chains around her neck and bangles at her wrists tinkle musically, exactly as they had the night she’d invited herself over to Cooper’s brownstone. “I’m so, so sorry about what happened to Cooper—not to mention what I understand you went through this morning. But what happened with Cooper . . . that was my fault, and I couldn’t be more sorry.”

My eyes fill with tears—and ridiculously, almost more than anything else today, this is what enrages me the most. Why do I feel like crying over something this stupid woman has said?

“You’re sorry for that?” I demand. “Not that you shouldn’t be . . . you should. But out of everything, that’s what you’re sorry for? You aren’t even responsible for that. Ricardo did that, not you.”

“Yes, yes,” my mother says. “But I should have known better than to think he wouldn’t find me here, even if I did try to keep a low profile. You don’t need this on top of all the other stresses you have.”

By “this” she appears to mean Cooper’s injuries. She gestures toward him as she says it, the bangles on her wrists tinkling.

I stare at her. I’m not the only one. All of my bridesmaids, and Cooper and his friends, are staring at her, too.

The urge to weep has left me.

“What stresses?” I ask my mother. “You mean wedding stresses?”

“Well, those,” she says, “and everything else your father’s told me about. I mean, my God, Heather, giving up your music? Working in a dorm? Do you think this is the life I’d hoped you’d have? Of course not.”

I feel as if the ground beneath me is moving—like a subway train is passing beneath us. But there’s no subway station nearby. What I’m feeling is a seismic shift in my emotions. A therapist would probably call it a breakthrough.

“What’s so wrong with my life?” I demand. “I’m surrounded here in this shop with people who love me.”

Well, except for Patty. Where is she? On the other hand, dancers are notoriously late for everything, and pregnant dancers are even worse.

“I do something I love for a living,” I go on, “that helps others and gives me meaning in my life. I’m also going to school and studying to get a degree in something I believe in, something that I hope will make a difference in the world someday. I’m marrying the man I love, who loves me back—”

I throw a smile at Cooper, who smiles back so encouragingly as he leans on his crutches between his two sisters that I can feel his love radiating through me. It more than makes up for the love this woman has withheld from me.

“We’re going to start a life together,” I say to my mother. “It may not be the kind of life you’d want, Mom, but it’s exactly what I want. So why exactly did you have to come here now and try to mess it up?”

My mother blinks back at me, as well as at all my friends, who are glaring at her with what I can only call extreme hostility. Magda looks ready to grab the nearest champagne bottle and smash it over Mom’s head, and I can’t help noticing that Hal has one hand inside his duffel bag, which of course he’s brought with him, sitting at his feet. Even Jessica has folded her rail-thin arms across her chest and narrowed her heavily lined eyes at my mother, like she’s waiting for the signal for the bitch slapping to begin, and Nicole has both her plump hands squeezed into indignant fists. Sammy the Schnozz has actually looked up from his cell phone, shocked into paying attention to something other than falling gold prices.

In the ensuing silence, Lizzie Nichols, has come back into the waiting area.

“Well,” she says brightly. “Everything’s ready if you’d like to try on your dress now, Heath . . .”

Her voice trails off as she senses the tension in the room.

“Or maybe,” she says, slowly backing away, as if from a coiled rattlesnake, “you and your family need a few more minutes. Why don’t I come back later?”

She gives a bright smile and hurries away as quickly as her stylish, but extremely narrow, pencil skirt will allow.

My father breaks the silence.

“I think what Heather is looking for,” he says to my mother, “is an apology. Not only for what happened to Cooper, but for . . . well, everything.”

My mother nods. Now she’s the one who appears resigned.

“I can see that,” she says with a sigh. “I do have a way of mucking things up, don’t I? But contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t come here to try to mess up your life, Heather. Not on purpose, anyway.” She walks toward the coffee table Hal is sitting beside and removes one of her jangly silver bracelets, dropping it onto the glass table cover. “I actually came here with the intention of trying to set things right between us.” Another bracelet joins the first. “But as usual, what I wanted to say to you didn’t come out the right way. I’ve always had problems expressing myself—unlike you. And then, of course, there’s what happened to Cooper. I know you don’t want anything more to do with me. That’s probably better for everyone concerned. Ricardo will be making bail soon, and I wouldn’t want to put any of you in danger by letting you know where you can find me, in case he asks.”

She scoops off a few of the silver necklaces and drops them beside the bracelets. They make a surprisingly solid thunk on the glass.

“So trust me,” Mom goes on. “I won’t bother you again, Heather. The truth is, I never did get the hang of this mothering thing. Not everyone has the maternal instinct, you know. I read in a magazine once that some female mammals abandon their young in the wild. They simply can’t be bothered. It’s not the fault of the offspring. It’s a faulty gene in the mother. The mothering gene, it’s called. They lack it. I think I do too. In other words, Heather—” She pulls out both her long, sparkly chandelier earrings and lays them beside the rest of her jewelry on the coffee table. “It was never you, darling. It was me.”