Hanging by a Thread. Karen Templeton

remember. Cut that out!” He smacks at my hand, but the prize is already mine. “It’s not done yet.”

      “What’d she want?” I say around the sizzling hot, succulent piece of garlic-and-pepper seasoned chicken skin.

      “Something about her wedding dress. I think maybe she wants you to make it?”

      Uh-boy.

      chapter 6

      A week later, my living room is wall-to-wall big hair and Queensspeak. It seems that not only does Heather want me to do her dress, she wants me to come up with something that will work for twelve—at last count—bridesmaids, ranging in size from a 4 Petite to a Woman’s 24.

      I tried to talk her out of it, I really did. Not that (now that I’m used to the idea) I’d mind making Heather’s dress—with her curvy figure and those deep blue eyes and all that dark hair, she’s going to be a knockout in white. But a dozen bridesmaids? I think not. Besides, I pointed out, by the time she buys the fabric and pays me for my time—her sister and I weren’t that close, for pity’s sake—she’d do just as well, if not better, buying from Kleinfeld’s.

      “Right. Like I’m gonna find dresses that’ll work for everybody at Kleinfeld’s,” she said over the phone when I called back. “And everybody still talks about that dress you made for Tina, and that was five years ago. God, that was one fucking gorgeous wedding gown.”

      Hard to resist a compliment of that magnitude. Of course, she would bring up Tina, who remains amazingly elusive for somebody I used to talk to no less than three times a day.

      Anyway, not wanting to appear rude—and needing time for the head-swelling to subside from her praise—I told Heather we’d talk about it. The plan was, since I’ve yet to meet a newly engaged woman who doesn’t go “just looking” for bridal gowns within a week of getting the ring, that she’d find the gown of her dreams before she and I got together, and my involvement would become a nonissue.

      Next thing I know, she shows up at my house armed with twenty bridal magazines, her sister Joanne (who’s been married for four years and has three kids), her mother Sheila (who looks like an older, drier version of her daughters), her best friend Tiffany (there’s one in every bunch) and the worst case of wedding lust I have ever seen. And I’ve seen some pretty bad cases over the years, believe me.

      So. Here we all are, in my teensy living room. It’s like Fran Drescher night in Vegas. The clashing cheap perfumes alone are enough to knock me over, let alone the noise of—let me count—sixteen women all yakking at once. Unfortunately, Heather’s dress hasn’t yet “found” her, as she puts it. So she’s enlisted the help of the entire wedding party. Which, by the time she included her sister, her sisters-in-law-to-be, three cousins she couldn’t get out of including and five of her closest friends, swelled to the monstrous proportions you see here. Except for Tina, who’s supposed to be here but isn’t.

      The crowd is beginning to make hungry noises; grateful for the excuse to escape for a few minutes, I hustle out to the kitchen where Leo and Starr are hiding out, playing checkers.

      “Quick. I need mass quantities of food, here.”

      “I just bought chips and cookies,” Leo says, not bothering to look up from the board. “In the cupboard.”

      I grab bowls and plates, rip open bags and dump out treats, stealing a Chips Ahoy for myself. Also not looking up, Starr says, “What’re they gonna drink?”

      Good question. I open the fridge to half a bottle of probably flat root beer, a carton of Tropicana, a jug of ice water and a gallon of two-percent milk.

      “I could go to the store, pick up a few things,” Leo says.

      “Two twelve-packs of Diet Coke,” I say without missing a beat. “From the refrigerator case so they’re already cold.”

      From the coatrack by the back door, my grandfather grabs his parka, hands Starr her puffy coat. “You know,” he says as he opens the door, letting in a blast of frigid air, “that could be you one day, planning your wedding in our living room.”

      I find this a highly unlikely possibility, but this is not the time for a reality check. So all I say is, “Believe me, if I ever even think of having twelve bridesmaids, you have permission to shoot me.”

      I cart bowls of goodies back out, barely having time to set them on the coffee table and jump out of the way before the pack attacks. I do notice, however, that Heather’s begun to slip into the Fried Bride stage. Her lipstick’s gone, her hair is sagging and she’s got that desperate, panicked look in her eyes. “This one’s not bad,” she says for at least the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, she is pelted by a barrage of objections.

      “Oh, no, that’s way too plain, honey—”

      “It’ll squash your tits—”

      “You can’t be serious. Long sleeves in June?”

      “All those bows? What? You wanna look like you’re six?”

      “Don’t take this the wrong way, baby, but that’s made for somebody with a much smaller ass.”

      A word of advice—choosing a wedding dress by committee is a seriously bad idea.

      She looks up at me, tears glittering in her eyes.

      “Why don’t you give it a rest for a moment?” I say.

      “Yeah,” Joanne says, brushing cookie crumbs off her front. “Maybe we should talk about the bridesmaids’ dresses?”

      Panic streaks across Heather’s face. “We can’t do that! Tina’s not here!”

      Oh, yeah, like this poor woman needs one more opinion. “Heather?” I sit down beside her, put my arm around her shoulder and hand her a cookie. “You can do this, honey.” She takes the cookie and nibbles on it, but her brow is a mass of wrinkles. “Now, do you—you,” I repeat, “have any ideas?”

      “Well…not really. Except I know I want something the girls can wear again.”

      Naturally, that brings a chorus of “Yeah, that’s right,” along with the sporadic fire of bridesmaid-dresses-from-hell stories. However, unless she’s planning on putting the girls in halter tops and suede miniskirts, ain’t gonna happen. Like “Just relax, this won’t hurt a bit,” the concept of recyclable bridesmaids’ dresses is a myth.

      “That’s a great idea,” I say, because, really, who wants to know it’s gonna hurt, right? “What colors do you have in mind?”

      “Colors?”

      Oh, boy.

      A sane, solvent person would gently extricate herself right now. Since I am neither—and since Sheila Abruzzo has already given me a hefty check up front—I smile and start tossing out suggestions. By the time Leo gets back with the Diet Cokes—at which point we get a rerun of the swarming locust action—we’ve narrowed the choices down to yellow, magenta, lavender, dark green, mint-green, pearl-gray, or some shade of blue.

      “You know what?” I heft a Modern Bride off the teetering stack at her feet and lay it on her lap. “Maybe once you find your dress, the color scheme will come to you….”

      My attention is snagged by Leo’s psst-ing me from the kitchen. I excuse myself, threading my way through the sea of lush Mediterranean womanhood.

      “What?” I say when I get there.

      “It’s Tina.”

      “That’s weird, I didn’t even hear the phone ring—”

      “Not on the phone. Here. In the kitchen.”

      She’s sitting at the table, the green tinge to her skin clashing horribly with her mustard-colored sweater, letting Starr try on her necklace. Tina’s always been really sweet to my daughter, but her affection has always seemed…cautious,