Despertar

the summons of doom, jury duty

In middle school, my brother dated this awful girl, gorgeous but a total redneck, no manners, ran into my mother and me at a Friendly's one day and didn't even say hello. Pretended she didn't see us and told my brother, later, "I don't think your family likes me."

The next time she came to my house, my mother cornered her in the basement and said, "[Girlfriend's name], obviously no one has ever taught you this, so I'm going to tell you now. If you see someone you know in a public place, you smile politely and say hello. You do not duck your head and pretend not to notice them. You only do that if you have no hometraining." Then, as an afterthought, "And take your shoes off if you're going to walk on my carpet."

I don't think she ever set foot in our house again. They broke up a little while later, she started dating some other guy, got pregnant, had an abortion, called my brother in tears, drove to our house and parked out front, honked the horn till he went outside to comfort her. But wouldn't come to our front door because of that confrontation from months earlier. Chad, instead of telling her he was sorry about her abortion, said, "My family's inside. If you're going to park out here, you should come in and say hello first." She opted not to, peeled off instead. Never came back. And Chad never called her again, either.

So, you know, I worry.

*

Needlessly, though. His parents are adorable. Which, so am I, to parents and other authority figures. So it tends to work out.

The dress: gold, A-line, layered detailing over a sort of mesh underneath, hard to explain. It looked one way on the mannequin, another way entirely on me, because mannequins are pencil-thin and they cinch the waistlines with safety pins. It was still pretty, though. I had the halter neck tightened so I didn't have to stuff the built-in bra. Accessories-wise, there were strappy gold sandals with little gold beads (which sounds kind of trashy but really wasn't), a short, delicate gold chain around my neck, my mother's gold cuff bracelet from the Philippines.

Justin liked it, but he didn't say so till the very end, after I had complimented his summery suit and perfect posture. I was constantly amazed, throughout the day, at how straight and tall he stands, which I hadn't noticed before. He thrusts his hips forward and his shoulders backward when he walks, kind of swaybacked; it's very commanding and he gets it, I learned, from his dad, who is built exactly like Justin, from the waist down.

So, the wedding was nice. Very traditional, which generally bores me to tears, but I think I'm back in that vulnerable place where everything Justin does absolutely electrifies me; there's no way to be bored in a church for just under an hour when I'm spending all that time thinking about the way he breathes. Comparing his face to his parents', his brother's.

*

And then, the reception. Open bar. Stoli Razz with cranberry, Stoli Razz with cranberry, Amaretto sour, champagne for the toast, sporadic sips of Justin's rum and diet, strawberry daiquiri. In that order. Halfway through the daiquiri, I got the idea that I should go mingle with the parents, who were sitting at another table, antisocializing over their glasses of white wine. Somehow, even as drunk as I was, I didn't singlehandedly sabotage myself with that conversation. It went surprisingly well, they warmed up immediately, they gave me smiles you could tell were genuine.

Justin kept glancing over, possibly weirded out by the fact that we were talking, alone, apart from him, but he had nothing to worry about.

*

And then, the pool party. He pushed me in, brand-new wedding hairdo and all. I could have murdered him, but then I realized I haven't been in a pool in at least six years, for reasons that are purely hair-related, and that it was freeing, in a stressed-out WTF-am-I-going-to-do-now kind of way, to swim around in a backyard pool, under a light drizzle, and to watch him saunter around up top from my perfect underwater vantage point.

*

And then, afterward. One more glass of wine and some Maxwell.

And then my stupid period started and I bled into his basketball shorts. But he didn't notice and I didn't tell him. I threw them away when I got home.

Everything up to that point was fantastic.