Bride & Groom

supposedly popular, and he and I both thought of pizza as something to order at a pizzeria, not as something to whip up at home using a pizza set. An object known as a “tart pan” hit me as a wildly inappropriate wedding present. Brides weren’t necessarily virginal these days, but tart was going a bit far. A Wüsthof cutlery set—knives stuck into a wooden storage block—seemed like a practical choice for couples who looked forward to years of marital discord and wanted to be sure to have sharp weapons handy when they moved beyond harsh words.
    When we’d finished completing my nuptial entry blank at the Bloomingdale’s Kennel Club, I thought we were done. Rita thought otherwise. Rowdy and Kimi, I realized, must have the same sensation when forced to return to the show ring for further judging: We just did that! Rita did not, however, lead me into another store with a registry for wedding presents. Rather, she caught sight of a display of black undies and exclaimed, “Victoria’s Secret!”
    “Don’t be foolish,” I said.
    "Do you intend to get married in the old underwear you have on when you wash the dogs? There’s nothing foolish about a trousseau.”
    “A trousseau. Isn’t that something men wear for hernias?”
    “This is going to be my treat,” Rita said. “A romantic negligee.”
    "Everything in the window is black,” I said.
    So was most of the lingerie in the shop itself. Furthermore, most items were more suggestive of a brothel than of an altar, which is to say, very suggestive. As if to confirm my opinion that this wasn’t exactly a bridal shop, Rita informed me that an especially provocative style of undergarment was known as a “merry widow.”
    “If I tried to breathe in that thing,” I said, “Steve would be a widower. I’m not wearing something that squishes my rib cage. And one thing’s settled about my wedding gown, and that’s that it won’t require a strapless bra. I’m not getting married with some damned choke collar around my midriff.”
    “Your dress.” Rita sighed. “Mine. Leah’s. There’s so much to do!”
    Rita had agreed to be my maid of honor. My cousin Leah would be the only bridesmaid, unless you counted Kimi, India, and Lady, as I certainly did.
    I said, “Not to mention a place to get married and someone to marry us and—”
    I was interrupted by a woman who came up to Rita, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. Although in certain ways the newcomer was quite attractive, with fine, delicate, pale skin and silky shoulder-length dark hair, something about the combination of that dark hair and her full cheeks reminded me of a character called Little Lulu who had starred in a series of old comic books that my mother had once bought for me at a used book store. Little Lulu, however, had had a round face. This woman’s was elongated. Furthermore, it seemed to me that Little Lulu’s hair had been parted in the middle, while the woman’s was parted on the left. What the woman shared with Little Lulu, I suppose, was frumpiness. In any case, both she and Little Lulu seemed equally unlikely candidates for black lace merry widows, one of which the woman clutched in her hand.
    “Holly,” Rita said, “this is Francie Julong. Holly Winter. Francie is a birder.”
    Rita’s participation in birding had destroyed my stereotype of birdwatchers as weird creatures who skulked in shrubbery and emerged only to aim binoculars at feathered creatures with stupid names. Artie Spicer, Rita’s birding mentor, was a good-looking and normal-acting guy. When the four of us got together, Artie and Steve talked about birds, among other things, but there was nothing in the least bit laughable or freakish about Artie. If there had been, he’d never have gotten so much as a first date with Rita. Although I no longer clung to the stereotype of birders, I was nonetheless surprised to hear that Francie Julong and Rita knew each other from the avian world; from the gushy way she’d greeted Rita, I’d assumed that she, too, was a Cambridge psychotherapist.
    “Rita is a much better birder than I am,” Francie said. “I just plod along misidentifying everything.”
    “Not so. We’re both out of our league with some of those people at Mount Auburn.”
    The birding group where Rita had met Artie Spicer flocked together in Cambridge at Mount Auburn Cemetery, a spot as famous for attracting dedicated and knowledgeable observers of birds as for attracting the birds