Page 36 of Sister of the Bride

That information? That’s the extent of what I’ve learned from our conversation in the five minutes we’ve been sitting here. I have eaten half my burger and damn near all my fries in an effort to distract myself from the crushing silence that is our table. I’m going to have to go back for seconds if this continues. I can see Polly starting to fidget, and I know if I don’t make serious headway soon, whatever goodwill I garnered with my apology will fade away.

“So Mackenzie, did you go to Harvard too?” I ask. I hate myself for going straight to the oldwhere did you go to collegequestion like this is some kind of job interview. But I’m desperate, and also not ready to listen to a bunch of technical jargon while Mackenzie tries to explain her job to me. I need more caffeine for that. Or maybe some alcohol.

“No, I went to MIT to study computer science and engineering. I did my MBA at Harvard, though,” she says.

And then the conversation dies a quick death again.

I glance at the table next to us, where there’s a couple who is almost certainly breaking up. She keeps dabbing at her eyes with a greasy napkin, and he keeps sighing. And I’m fuckingjealousof them and their level of social interaction. That’s how awkward our table is right now. Then I glance at Polly, who is definitely not yet feeling kindly enough toward me to rescue me from this conversational abyss. And I don’t blame her. I told her Dad would be ashamed of her while she was wearing her future wedding dress.

Jesus, I’m such an asshole.

But then I remember the dress, and I grab at the idea like a lifeline.

“Hey, I’m sure Polly told you, but she picked out a killer dress. It looks incredible on her. Have you picked one out yet?”

Polly lights up, and even Mackenzie seems to brighten, which surprises me, since I wouldn’t have taken her for a fashion girlie. But then again, she is always impeccably put together.

“I did, actually! My mom and I went over the weekend. It was the first thing I tried on, which was surprising, because I’ve seen enough episodes ofSay Yes to the Dressto think it was going to take a really long time,” she says. Which, okay, she watchesSYTTD.That’sdefinitely a surprise. Mackenzie strikes me as the kind of person who refers to reality television as “trash,” but this is a good sign. What’snota good sign is that she’s pulling out her phone and flipping through her camera roll, a flash of white appearing on the screen.

“Hey hey hey!” I cry, flinging my hands over the screen. “You can’t show off the dress before the wedding! It’s bad luck!”

Mackenzie shoots me a look, which she then turns on Polly, who’s covering her entire face lest she catch a glimpse of said dress.

“Are you two serious? You can’t possibly be that superstitious,” Mackenzie says.

“We’re Italian, are you kidding?” Polly says. “Dresses stay secret until the wedding! I’m not starting this marriage cursed!”

Mackenzie rolls her eyes, a semi-spicy reaction I appreciate even though we’re disagreeing with her. At least it seems like this lunch is showing me a slightly looser side of my future sister-in-law. An eye roll and aSay Yes to the Dressname-drop? Maybe she doesn’t actually plug in at night to recharge her batteries. Maybe she actuallyisa human woman. I’m still curious what Polly sees in her, but there’s a blurry little wave of recognition there.

“Speaking of the wedding, I thought we could use this opportunity to go over a few of the bigger details. Knock some items off the old I-To-Do list.” I pull out my phone and open the app and the email Toby forwarded me on Saturday. “Toby sent me the master checklist and budget spreadsheet Turner used when she got married last year. I thought we could use it as a bit of a guide.”

“Didn’t Turner have a full Catholic mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross? And a reception at the Boston Public Library?” Polly asks.

“Yes, but we can obviously scale down all her stuff for our own use,” I say.Waydown, because even with Polly’s trust money, there’s no way we could approach what I’m pretty sure was a mid-six-figure wedding. The Sullivans do not fuck around when it comes to ceremony. Toby’s eighth-grade graduation party was held at the JFK Library, and that wasn’t even that much of an achievement.

“Who’s Toby? And Turner?” Mackenzie asks.

“Toby is Pippin’s best friend since they were kids, and Turner is his older sister,” Polly says. “Well, one of them. Doesn’t he have, like, five?”

“Four,” I say. “Siobhan, Rowan, Riley, and Turner, and Toby’s the baby of the family.”

“The Sullivans arerich. Like, Mayflower rich,” Polly says. “They have this enormous brick town house on Louisburg Square that’s been in their family for generations. Toby’s dad is a federal judge, and his mother is a tenured professor of biochemistry at MIT with, like, a dozen patents, and all the kids are genius overachievers.”

Polly’s not wrong. Siobhan, the oldest, is a partner at a ritzy New York law firm; Rowan is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley; Riley followed in her mother’s footsteps and is a medical researcher at Cornell; and Turner is a speechwriter for the First Lady. As in, the First Lady of the United States of America. I’ve spotted her in the background of four different events on CNN.

“Oh, I’ve heard of Dr. Sullivan,” Mackenzie says. “But I avoided biochem at all costs. I can do computers all day, but as soon as nature enters the picture, I’m lost.”

“Hard same,” Polly says, which makes me laugh, because while Polly is being truthful about hating the natural sciences, I’m pretty sure she’s also grossed out by computers. She actually wrote the first draft her dissertation longhand on legal pads and kept her research on index cards. She’s still carrying around her old iPhone 7, and when I asked her if she was ever going to upgrade, she replied, “Why? It still makes calls.”

“So Toby isjustyour friend?” Mackenzie asks.

“Ugh, not you too! Come on, you don’t have women friends you have zero interest in sleeping with?” I ask.

Mackenzie shrugs. “I’m bisexual, but I guess I get it. It just seems less common between women and men. Friendship without attraction, I mean.”

I ignore the fact that there has been, well,a little bitof attraction lately and instead just let out a big, dramatic sigh. “Youreallyneed to watchWhen Harry Met Sally. It seems right up your alley.”

We spend the rest of the meal going over wedding details as college kids and tourists stream past us on the sidewalk. Because the wedding is so close, we opt to skip the save the dates and go straight to invitations. Which means we have to set times for the ceremony and reception so I can start getting proofs together. I show Polly and Mackenzie an Instagram account of one of our former sous chefs who left to start a catering business. I know Belinda will give us a good deal, and her partner runs a bartending business, so that’s taken care of. We agree on an open bar, because there has never been a fun wedding in the history of the universe that didn’t have an open bar. (I keep saying “we” as if I’m going to have any part in this marriage…but let’s be honest, as the keeper of the I-To-Do checklist, I’m definitely a key player in this collaboration.)

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