Вдова Хана. Ульяна Павловна Соболева

between, mostly due to the fact that I have been doing the relationship thing, avoiding all friends other than Jade and Alyssa, in favor of takeout and a video rental with Derrick. Though Rebecca had been with her boyfriend, Nash, for about as long as I was with Derrick, she always seemed to make time for friends, and never seemed to mind the occasional late-night crunch to make a special assignment deadline, even if good old Nash had made them dinner reservations. In fact, I think she prides herself on her ability to be both good friend to all and steady girlfriend to one, which makes me suspicious of her, and somewhat jealous, I’ll admit.

      “My mother is getting married again,” I announced, with some exasperation.

      “What fun,” Rebecca replied, peering up at me from a layout she had been reviewing, her eyebrows raised and a bright smile on her face.

      Something about her cheerful reaction to my news made me immediately put up my antennae. One of the things Rebecca and I had always shared, especially during our after-work-cocktail outings, was a healthy disdain for the perky little world of wedding planning that is Bridal Best. How else could we separate ourselves from an office of people who waxed poetic over everything from choosing the right place settings to the proper thickness of paper for invitations, except by mocking them? If I didn’t know Rebecca better, I might have thought she’d been bitten by the Bridal Best marriage zest after all. Because at Bridal Best, every marriage, even your mother’s third, is an event worth getting hysterical over.

      “Yeah, well, it’s hard for me to summon up any sort of enthusiasm for this wedding. I mean, my mother’s track record is a lesson in how not to find everlasting love.”

      Rebecca studied me for a moment, as if I were speaking in a foreign language. “You should be happy for your mother. It’s not every woman who can fall in love again after so many missteps. She has a lot of courage.”

      “Either that or she’s taking enough Prozac for it to not matter.” Ever since she lost Warren, my mother was a firm believer in the kind of happiness that was available in easy-to-swallow caplets.

      “What’s gotten into you? You seem more cynical than usual. Did you fight with Derrick this weekend?”

      Her question caused a minor panic inside me, as if my sudden state of stressful singledom had somehow become glaringly apparent. I stumbled around for a moment or two as I studied her careful blond bob and perfectly plucked brows, the neat way she had lined up her pencils on her desktop. Suddenly I was filled with distrust. Even the shiny eight-by-ten framed photo of Nash she kept in her cubicle seemed to glint evilly at me. There was no way I could tell her the truth.

      “No, no. Nothing happened with Derrick. Everything is fine. Great, in fact.”

      “Terrific,” Rebecca said, turning back to the layout before her. “Then that will give you a clear head to help your mom out with this wedding. Gosh, you could practically plan this thing yourself, if you had to.”

      “Sure, if I had to.” If I didn’t die of heartbreak first.

      Confession: Marriage suddenly seems like a social disease.

      Back at my desk, I was faced with my greatest challenge since The Breakup: attempting to muster enough perkiness to write a short to-do list for the bride-to-be that I had secretly titled, “How to Make Your Wedding Day Happen Without All Hell Breaking Loose.” As I struggled to come up with an opening paragraph, I started to feel some of that anger Alyssa had encouraged in me. What about us non-bride-to-be’s? I wondered. Even my own mother had put me to work in the service of her wedding day by asking me to start looking up cruise ships and “getaway” weddings on my handy little database. Worse, she had gleefully offered to take one of the many vacation days she’d accumulated during her twenty-year career at Bilbo to meet me for lunch the following week to see what I had come up with.

      Why was my job so convenient for everyone else? Why was it that everyone else had a burning need to pick my brain for suggestions on everything from romantic-honeymoons-that-don’t-require-a-tan to effortless-and-elegant hor d’oeuvres? Working in the warped little world of wedding planning had led me to one conclusion: If you don’t get married in this world, you get nothing. Once, in an editorial meeting, I jokingly suggested that a woman should get a bridal shower when she turns thirty, wedding or not. Everyone looked at me as if I were some kind of nut. I am thirty-one years old, am I not entitled to free Calphalon yet?

      The phone rang, saving me from starting the dreaded article.

      “Hey, Em,” came Jade’s voice over the line.

      “Jade. Thank God.”

      “Were you expecting someone else?”

      “I was hoping for anyone who is not getting married.”

      “No fear here. What’s going on?”

      “Nothing, nothing. You know, the usual. Deadline pressure high, motivation factor low. How did the date with Ted Terrific go?”

      “Terrific, of course. We did drinks, went to shoot some pool. Did I mention that he has the most beautiful forearms I’ve ever seen? Nice and thick and just the way I like ’em. He’s even got a couple of tattoos. And you know how I feel about a man with tattoos.”

      “Uh-oh. You’re finished.”

      “If I don’t sleep with him, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

      “Marry him?”

      “What’s gotten into you this morning?”

      “It’s my mother. She’s getting married again.”

      I held the phone away from my ear as Jade shrieked with joy. “That is so wonderful! She and Clark are too cute together. Oh, I have to call and congratulate her. I should probably pick up a card at lunch….”

      I should have figured Jade would be my mother’s biggest champion. After all, she’d known my mom since husband 1. “Jade, am I the only person in the world who’s not excited about this?”

      “Well, you should be,” she said, censure in her tone. “She’s your mother! Don’t you want her to be happy?”

      “Happy, yes. I’m just not too clear on the fact that marriage is the way to get happy. You do realize that this would be Husband 3, almost 4?”

      “Em, I think you need to get over that. Not everybody lives a cookie-cutter life. So what if your mother has spent a lot of her life searching? As long as she finds what she wants in the end.”

      “I suppose you’re right.” I let out a sigh. “Maybe I’m not looking forward to the Big Day, especially since she’s got the whole family cruising to the Caribbean together for the ceremony. And guess who will be the only guest in the single cabin? Of course, my mother doesn’t know that yet.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Derrick. I don’t know why…I just…couldn’t.”

      “You’re going to have to tell her eventually. When’s the wedding?”

      “She’s hoping to get something together by the end of September.”

      There was a silence, as if Jade was pondering. “That’s not much time, but who knows what could happen before then. You might be in love with someone else. Or you might find yourself a cute waiter on the cruise ship to share that single room with.”

      “Somehow I doubt it. But maybe I can dig up someone to take with me.”

      “Ah, yes. The old Boy Under the Bed.” This was our term for the ever-present male friend who was suitable to take to such events as weddings or office picnics, though for one reason or another not someone you had any sort of desire to truly date. Mine used to be Cal, who’d been a fellow waiter at Good Grub, the restaurant I waitressed at during grad school. Cal was a perfect Boy Under the Bed—a great dancer, tall enough so you didn’t tower over him in heels, and just unattractive enough not to cause any instances of drunken groping