Bride & Groom

assumed that UPS or FedEx was delivering a wedding present, and I tiptoed around the ink and kicked off my shoes. Two gifts had already arrived, both sent by friends of my family even before they’d received invitations. One was a food processor that sat in its carton on the kitchen counter, and the other was a beautiful set of five thin but strong white leather leashes for the dogs to wear at the wedding. They, too, were on the counter.
    The person at my front door, however, was Elspeth Jantzen, whose existence I had managed to forget. She was delivering the manuscript of her book for me to read and blurb. As soon as I opened the door, took in her usual violent redness of hair, face, and clothing, and invited her in, I warned her about the mess in the kitchen. Incredibly, she waited until she actually saw it to ask, “Is this a bad time for you?”
    Without actually answering the question, I said, “Everything’s hectic these days. Why don’t you drag a chair away from the ink, and I’ll clean up and make some coffee.” Indeed, my mother raised me right. In other words, she taught me to be a fool.
    Had Elspeth’s mother raised her right, she’d have dropped off the damned manuscript and departed. As it was, she accepted my invitation and sat patiently as I scrubbed, rinsed, and dried Rowdy’s foot, crated him, mopped the floor, and made coffee. As I did so, Elspeth took an inventory of my kitchen and narrated her observations. “Wedding presents! Well, I suppose a food processor is the last thing you need. I hope it’s returnable. The leashes must be for the wedding. Aren’t you going to get special collars?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Flowered collars. Or we’re going to try. Rowdy and Sammy may eat theirs.”
    “I love the pictures!” She’d noticed the ones on the refrigerator, large photos taken with Steve’s digital camera that I’d printed out on my computer. They showed Rita, Leah, and me having the hems of our dresses taken up. I’d seen no need to tinker with my perfect dress, but Mrs. Dennehy, Kevin’s mother, had offered to do alterations, and Rita had insisted that my dress was an inch too long. “Are you going to wear a veil?”
    "Flowers,” I said. “Some sort of small headpiece.”
    “To match your dogs. That’s beautiful. If I ever get married, my dogs are going to be part of the wedding, too. An essential part.” Elspeth had two Irish terriers. Very nice dogs. Not pests. “And look at all your lists! You’re so organized!”
    “Steve is. He put up that bulletin board. He’s much neater than I am.” Tacked on the bulletin boards were drafts of the menu and various checklists, including one for presents received and thank-you notes written. Also displayed Was a favorable review of my book that had just appeared in a major dog magazine. My kitchen could’ve been set up to announce that I was a published author who was about to be married.
    “Is Mac coming to your wedding?” Elspeth asked.
    “Yes.” I resisted both her implicit plea for an invitation and my impulse to extend one.
    “And his wife?”
    “We wouldn’t ask Mac and not Judith.”
    I served the coffee. Loading hers with four teaspoonfuls of sugar and a big slug of milk, Elspeth said, “Well, Mac does a lot of things without his wife. A lot of interesting things.”
    I said nothing.
    “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just... what I am, actually, is pissed off at him. Not that Mac and I made any promises to each other or anything like that, except that honest to God, would it be too much to expect him to remember my name? To show the slightest little bitty sign that he remembered me at all?”
    If I’d wanted to give a truthful yes-or-no answer, I wouldn’t have known what to say. As it was, I didn’t want to participate in the conversation at all.
    Continuing it without my help, Elspeth fortified herself with a sip of coffee before saying, “Misspelling my name would be one thing. That I could understand. Or getting it wrong. Elsbeth with a b. I get that all the time. And no one ever spells Jantzen right. Or hardly anyone does. But he totally forgot me!" Although Elspeth’s face was redder than ever, she looked far more sad than angry. “Like we’d never been close! And Mac and I were close. We were about as close as two people can be. And not all that long ago. I mean, eight years ago? It’s not like it was in some other lifetime.”
    I reminded myself that I hadn’t invited this