Meet Me In The Hallway

Initial Descent

My heart is pounding like a thoroughbred dosed standing in the gate waiting for the bullet. I'm staring at the piece of lace that Maria Luisa had shown me months ago through a pixelated screen and it is all that I can see. That and the phone with my wing and a prayer text screen open. The scrap lays over my knee in stark color contrast to the bright ivory of my dress in its yellowing age. The tip of my thumb is also white where I clutch it and I'm sure my knuckles are too, but the edges outside my direct line of vision are blurry.

I'm sure it was meant to be a sweet gesture. Giving me the lace from her wedding dress. It's for luck. A first time lucky marriage, one that lasts, is supposed to be guaranteed by something old and borrowed, blue and new. Yet, this lace may mean the wedding never happens.

The color is off. The dress on my body looks like when someone turns on a light when you are at the edge of sleep in contrast. The lace patterns are different too. And though it took me much less time to find the dress I wear, not the day Harry and I really set our pasts and future aflame in the blinding light of my parents sunroom because I was too devastated by my betrayal to even get out of bed until days later. I found one though, my last day in Australia when I was determined, and finally able, it was the first dress I put on. It felt right.

Today it once again feels like the wrong choice. Or maybe this is the right dress but I'm the wrong bride. The teardrops of Maria Luisa's yellowing lace mock me. Surprisingly, there is no water leaking from my eyes at the moment. I think I am too distressed even to cry. I'd like to call for somebody to get me a paper bag to breath into, but my dress is so tight it's hindering my breath. I want to stand up, and see the reflection, the finished product that my small bridal party, consisting of my mother, Milo's mum, cousin Tricia and of course Kara, had cooed over. But I can't.

I'm sure I look stunning. I look better than I ever have. My hair is longer, but not quite the three promised inches, my waist is slimmer and tight from the spin gym I've exercised my demons at, and I've been very careful with my skin routine. It's much easier to catch Milo sleeping if I take forever to come out of the bathroom, and wedding prep is an excuse the brings smiles to his face and allays questions. In the last three months I have discovered something about myself. The more put together I look on the outside, the more mess I am covering up on the inside.

Makes me wonder about the days I threw on Harry's t shirts and jeans that hadn't seen the inside of a washer in months. I hadn't done much damage then, not even to myself. Less to hide.

There are chinks in the armor of course, if you are looking. They are easy to spackle over, like the toothpaste you shove into the tack holes you make on your walls when leaving a shared residence. But any closer look would reveal that my weight is down because food is less interesting, and my long time in the bathroom is born of not just skin care, but occasional choked breakdowns on the pink woven rug I love so much. Sometimes, the look on Harry's face when he caught the shape of my huge engagement ring keeps me in the cubicle until the wee hours. There isn't really a hallway in our Singapore sized apartment to torture myself in, though that would be more perfect.

Milo had caught the far off look in my eyes. Couldn't avoid it really. As he did from the beginning of the end, when I saw Harry in China 7 months ago. I think he wants to buy my excuses, the way I want to put a mortgage on them. Wedding planning is stressful, I'm traveling a lot, I'm fitting in workouts too now, and I'm constantly on the phone with a well meaning loved one. Usually Kara. My mother is strangely silent.

I think she is mad at me. She told me that morning to go after Harry, when he blazed outta my house like a bushfire.  "Melody, that boy has come for you three times now. He's made the gestures. Make one back." Shed lifted the most imperious arm I'd ever seen out of her and pointed it to the car that was idling at the curb. "Go after him, or you are a fool."