My best friend’s wedding

“My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise my love, my fair one and come away.” – Song of Solomon 2: 10-13

Liz and I have had two fights in the last seven years. The first was due to my disappearance for an entire weekend with nary a phone call to check in. Upon my return she was furious. She looked at me, shook her head and said sternly, “We’ll talk about this later” then walked away. Later in the evening after I was shunned from our usual dinner group she approached me in the quad to say, “I don’t know what kind of friends you have at home but here? You can’t just do that…you can’t just leave without telling anyone.” It was in that moment of genuine concern and fear for my safety when I knew that she was a real friend. I mean that last statement not to be so cliched but it came on the heels of high school; a time in which you have spent almost almost 13 years forced into friendship with people. In the event that you do not get along with said hormonal teenagers, you are then forced to see them everyday for the next several years until graduation when you are free. I spent a good portion of middle and high school dodging people I disliked not because they actually disliked me but because at 14 pretty much everyone hates each other. Then again, I could be wrong.

So there was that time and the second time was joyful (she says with sarcasm) and something I brought up to the bride during her rehearsal dinner and her face turned beet red. “I’d forgotten all about that….” her voice trailed off as she slowly backed away and put her head down, embarrassed by something that occurred six years prior. I smiled. A perfect example of how funny something will be in the future.

I had let Liz and her then boyfriend borrow my car for a week while I was in Las Vegas. I returned to a broken hood and a non-functioning transmission. And where was Elizabeth? She was packing and heading off to South Africa. I chased her down on campus and it wasn’t that I was furious it was more like “What the fucking fuck happened?” To this day I don’t remember her response but she left and enjoyed Africa. I enjoyed spending $3,000 on a transmission.

We were even.

*******

One summer I decided to have the girls up to my mother’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. Three of us drove up while Liz stayed behind and flew up the next morning. As we drove across the Bourne bridge she phoned to tell us about a boy. A boy named Michael. As she sat at her kitchen table eating her cheerios, she wanted to detail her previous evening. Her conversation with Michael, how great and charming and cute he was. “That’s nice, Liz. Get to the airport! We’ll discuss this later!”

We discussed Michael while sitting on the beach in the Inkwell. She gushed. Five minutes later she was stung by a bee. She teared up because it hurt. We went back to the house.

*******

Michael was hipster before there was hipster. He had a handkerchief in his pocket. We met on $10 bucket of beer night (Thursdays for those not in the know) at Front Page. He was there with his girlfriend who Liz coyly pointed out. I stared. “Don’t STARE!” she hissed. Michael had a beard and crazy hair. He was serious. But she was right, he was charming.

******

A few weeks ago I lost my wallet. With no cards or cash or identification I had nothing. It’s funny how much less hopeless you feel when you have a best friend to call. Liz was on her way to work. “Call Michael”, she said “He’ll take care of you”. I called him and he said “Sure! How much?” I gave him an amount and because Michael is Michael he dug into me. “Are you sure?…I mean, doesn’t it cost that much just in tolls?” He fretted. I, the one without money or a license, shushed him. “I’ll be fine”. I made it from DC to Albany with $26 dollars to spare.

He’s a good man.

******

Saturday was the perfect day. Insert your version of picteresque landscape and sunlight here.

It was late in the afternoon on the way to the cathedral that I could feel this knot in my stomach as if something wasn’t right and my body was gearing up for panic. I swallowed to make a lump in my throat disappear. Was I on my way to a panic attack on the front lawn of a church? In front of JESUS? Each time I tried to swallow harder to get the lump to go away it wouldn’t budge.

I sat at the end of my pew waving hello to friends I hadn’t seen in months but still with this odd feeling. That feeling of uneasiness like something was about to happen. As the families were ushered down the aisle I thought about things that had to be done on Monday and how open of an open bar there would be that night. Slowly my mind wandered to the first night that Liz and I met, on her 21st birthday at a bar in Bethesda. In Da Club was played and it snowed, those heavy, fat flakes well into the night.

Then the day after I returned from Spain just one day before graduation. Our parents met for the first time and we had dinner at Zola.

The day she got back from Brussels and we met her at BWI.

I had a key to her first apartment.

She let me share her bed in the days before my departure abroad.

My 21st birthday. I threw up on our friend Brad’s car after leaving McFadden’s. She thought I was going to die.

The evening I lost my shit and called her the following morning from the mall, sitting outside of an Old Navy before it opened.

The day she got her appendectomy and called me from the hospital.

The shooting.

It was a deluge of memories. A movie montage of sorts. All of these things that had happened and composed this thread of our friendship. Which, at first glance, probably seems tumultuous but I have always had the most fun with her. And Michael always folded right in. Her parents adored me and mine her. I’m tearing up while writing this because it is the type of relationship that many of us crave. The kind where weeks can go by and we pick up right where we left off. We look for companionship and those who would help us move a body.

Then she walked down the aisle and that lump? The one that would not and could not go away pushed up and broke the dam. I cried. I have never understood people who cry at weddings. Ladies who keep hankies neatly folded in their pocketbook only to wind up crumpled from being gripped in a hand. Smudged with black mascara. You never remember to purchase the waterproof kind until it’s too late.

******

There are these moments where everything comes together. The light hits at the perfect angle, you make all of your flights, there’s the perfect amount of vodka in your Bloody Mary, your manicure doesn’t chip, your empire waist dress doesn’t make you look pregnant, your hair doesn’t eat your face, your best friend cries while saying her vows, two people who are meant to be walk down the aisle hand-in-hand. These are the moments that give me hope. Things can go horribly awry, we get wary of this whole life thing. But if you can look back at the specks of good amidst the messiness? Well…I don’t know about you but that, right there, is what keeps me going. Knowing that somewhere, out there, it is possible for something so wonderful to exist.