She spilled white wine on the floor, white wine on the skirt of her dress.
Ok ok ok. It was only a wet patch, it would dry. Thank the lord or whoever she hadn't gone with Merlot.
She poured herself a fresh glass to the brim, sipped some, a bit more, and then refilled. Went back to her baking.
She should have began earlier in the morning, this she knew, but baking was a meticulous art not to be rushed and how would she have managed to do her sugary best undressed, rushed, and undercaffeinated?
She checked the diamond time piece in her apron pocket which told her it was time to take the last pan from the oven.
She set it, steaming, on the gleaming countertop with the others. The other six.
It would appear at first that she had 7, separate, and differently sized cakes before her. But she went to work quickly, extracting, placing.. just so, frosting, decorating and in a small time she had one perfect, seven tier white chocolate cake covered with lovely blonde frosted roses.
She heaved the thing from the counter and placed it in a deep freezer to set.
The process had felt quick as well practiced tasks do but time had elapsed and the spot on her dress was still damp, dripping. A dark spot on her future.
She rushed, barefoot up the set of stairs that led from her well lit kitchen to the upper level of her 3 bedroom home, elegant like the back of her legs as she padded up the steps.
Upstairs she found her bedroom – the master – and with that the master bath. She plugged her hair dryer into the wall socket and pushed the small machine to on, directed its heat towards the damp area.
It worked but not well and it probably could have done more with time but she was quick to switch the dryer off for the loud sound of it made her anxious as if she couldn't really think properly or breathe. With the large humming gone she could hear the phone ringing from a distant part of the house and wondered how long it had been doing so.
She rushed to it, looking first in the wrong place and then finding it just as the person had hung up and had time to be calling again.
"Hullo."
"Hullo dear." It was mom and mom's voice was soothing and calming and honestly a bit tiring.
"I just wanted you to know Dad and I are just about to leave the house! We'll be there to whisk you off in no time! And we're very excited."
She couldn't help feeling the excitement herself, threaded deep into her mother's voice but still she said. "I told you, I'd call a cab. Meet you there. Go, take your seats."
"Now now, darlin'.."
She could admit to herself that she from Georgia, born and raised in Savannah, but her mother was so deeply southern and any sentence beginning as such was sure to be a lecture and oh a lecture it would be.
"Ok." She resolved, "come get me. I'll see ya'll soon."
And it would be soon indeed. A new level of hurriedness came over her, a level quite resembling panic. She ran through a list of things in her head as she ran literally through her house. Makeup; she spent several minutes retouching her already painted face. Jacket and umbrella; for rain had been told (though rain would be strongly frowned upon and so hopefully avoided.) Her vows; scratched onto lacy notecards in the foyer. She slipped the small stack of paper into her apron pocket and then remembered herself and the fact that she needn't be wearing her apron.
She checked her face one more time in the hallway mirror but still she was forgetting something.
Forgetting something.
The startling beep of her parent's efficient hatchback.
The cake!
She took the kitchen exit to the garage and retrieved her largest cake carrier from the back of her delivery van.
The best she could do and the cake didn't quite fit. A few of the top layer's flowers were ruined and that was the day's first tragedy.
They loaded the dented cake into the car's back and then piled in themselves. The day was bright but sunless. They light seemed to come from a place past the clouds, white, and startling, and pure.
When the car began to roll, her mother began to gush, knowing fully right that she had her daughter trapped, and unable to flee from even the worst of the complimenting.
"Oh my word, my baby girl, so lovely. The very picture of loveliness. And this day."
Though this day someone could easily say resembled very closely pigeon droppings.
She tuned her attention towards the car's window and beyond. Anywhere but inside the car with the stench of her mother's lake of perfume and the deep sweat of awkward father who was probably questioning his prosthetic legs ability to support even himself down and isle of petals.
White or not the day was pure and heated and happy. Outside she noticed an unusual amount of happy though most of it was probably figmented.
Do you notice tragedy on the way to a funeral?
They passed the Ducatel Sugar Mill on the way into the right part of town and she took an appreciation of it. Her father had spent most of his working life at this mill until the accident and the settlement and the loss for the need to continue working. Tragic or not her father believed the accident was a blessing. He had hated every day of working with a heated passion and now he could sit comfortable in his home and sit around with his lush bank account and his thousands of television channels.
Initially she had presented – ridiculous or not - that the wedding be held at the mill. In her own mind all of the world's sweetness came from this mill and so what better a place to form a union? From this matrimony she anticipated whole hordes of sweetness.
But her husband to be was as traditional as they come and had petitioned for a nice church wedding. This was out of the question as she was about as religious as a frog but they had found a solution, common ground at the park they had shared their first kiss where a beautiful reception was set up with a gazebo and white tents and live musicians.
They arrived actually a few minutes late which was partially her fault but blamed entirely on father's driving. He let the two ladies out and went to find parking. The mom had extracted the multicomplex of a cake from the trunk and was balancing precariously on the sidewalk in her spikey inappropriate shoes. Little bulges of feet fat fought against the straps.
It was then she realized she wasn't wearing any shoes.
She went over mentally the list of tasks she had completed at home before flying out the door and it was blatantly obvious she hadn't even thougth once of the borrowed baby blue satin flats that sat in front of the mirror that hung on her closet door. All dressed up with no where to go.
She felt sad for the shoes for a moment searching the sky for the sun that wasn't there but then she made the conscious decision that shoes were just shoes and anyway her dress covered her feet and then some.
Then she noticed the violins. Or maybe it was an entire ensemble of many stringed instruments she could never tell by ear.
She had wanted live music for the ambiance, nothing can perfect without ambiance. Thus was the reason for the flowers. The entirety of the park was flowers, the grass had been turned to petals, the trees were hung with pale yellow buds and the path was lined with peonies. Even the air smelled flowers.
They followed the lined path and it took them to a great mess of people.
Both the bride and groom led plentiful lives and knew plenty of people who would want to come and witness their well-liked union. Probably over a hundred guests sat comfortably in a sea of white fold out chairs.
There was happiness on her face. More happiness than she had expected.
Her mother went off to find the place to put the cake and a flutter of bridesmaids came to guide her to the place where she would wait until the wedding song played.
But it didn't play.
Her best friend – her maid of honor – had adapted a worried sort of face and the rest of them looked full of secrets.
She was partially oblivious just because everything seemed so perfect. Had worked out so perfectly on this perfect morning but eventually she started to catch on.
She rose from the chair she had been placed in to be further fussed over. To have to her sun white hair further puffed, her cheeked further pinked, her dress further dried.
But the song never started to play. It didn't start to play and she had been late..
She tried to leave the tent but her friends held her back, they held her back and continued to smile and whispered a familiar tune in her ear.
And the bridesmaids may have succeeded only in slowing her down but eventually she made it out of the tent into better view. She could see the entire affair. The audience, her friends and family, and coworkers and distant acquiescences of the groom. She saw the area with the tents set up and the cake and the appetizers and the place where the violinists stood and the bass they plugged into, and the water where they would set off on their honeymoon. 2 days on a boat and 1 week in a resort on one of those islands where the people are just a bit more brown and speak more quickly.
But she didn't see a groom.
There was her bridesmaid's husbands, the best man and his entire group of high school pervs turned barely managing doctors and CEOs but her Hunter was not there.
He was not there.
She sank to the floor and suddenly her mom was there, rushing towards her, arms outstretched to embrace and console. But there was no reaching her.
She was frozen in that place, a stone of sadness and she wept.
And she wept.
