Page 49 of Best Woman
“Despite all that, my little shithead brother managed to grow up to be a pretty great guy, which I know because he’s sitting next to an amazing woman who is now my sister.” Aiden is smiling at me, a real smile, the kind he used to give me when we were little and I was his hero. Humiliatingly, my throat gets a bit tight and my eyes burn with tears. I shake it off with a laugh. “So I guess I can forgive him for the turtle.”
I raise my glass.
“Congratulations, Aiden and Rachel. I’m so happy you found each other. Cheers!” The room fills with applause and I can’t help but seek out the person I wish were sitting next to meholding my hand the way Rachel is holding Aiden’s. Kim is sipping her champagne and looking right at me, soft and serious.
Rachel’s dad is next, and he grunts out some well-meaning words about how beautiful his daughter is and how Aiden better treat her right or he’ll wind up in the Everglades being mauled by alligators. I’m pretty zoned out, still struck by the depth of my own emotion. I’ve been dreading this wedding for months,years,and now that I’m here, despite how uncomfortable certain parts of it have been, I’m starting to feel like…maybe it will be fine? I’m surrounded by people who love me, however imperfectly, and Kim is across the room looking so sexy I could cry, and I know that when this is over she’ll take me back to her hotel and peel me out of this dress and do wonderful, evil things to my body. Maybe I don’t even need to tell her about my little white lie. She and Rachel aren’tactuallyclose, so there’s little worry she’ll learn the truth there. We’ll go back to our real lives in New York and leave Florida behind us, go to her dumb party next week and have our first real date, for once not surrounded by people related to me. She’ll spend the night at my apartment, I’ll make her coffee in the morning and take her out for bagels. She’ll meet my friends and probably develop a huge crush on at least one of them. We’ll keep dating, and I can start dropping hints that the wedding was so healing that, miracle of miracles, my family has started to be totally cool about my womanhood. By the time we visit again for Passover next year, there will be no lie left between us. Kim will still judge my mom a little, sure, butRacheljudges my mom too, and she’s her mother-in-law!
Maybe, one day, Mom could beKim’smother-in-law too…
The crowd is applauding again as Rachel’s dad hands my mother the microphone.
“Thank you all so much for being here,” she says. “And please bear with me if I get emotional. It’s not every day a mother gets to see her son get married.” I can count the times I’ve seen Mom cry on one hand, but sure. “I won’t take up too much of your time, because even though I was assured there would be Diet Coke on tap, they only have canned and that always goes right through me.”
I giggle, because my mother is very silly but in a totally predictable and endearing way.
“As much as I love my son, I wanted to take a moment today to talk about Rachel.” She looks down at the woman in question, who has a confused little smile on her face. “Sweetie, the first time Aiden brought you home to meet me, I pulled him aside and told him, ‘You better marry that girl one day or you are the stupidest man on the planet.’ ” This ishilariouslyuntrue because MomloathedRachel for almost a year after she and Aiden started dating. “And here we are! My son has a beautiful, intelligent, driven, supportive wife who I know is going to take care of him, stand beside him, and”—she dabs at her eyes, although I don’t see any tears—“be a wonderful mother to his children.”
Across the room, Kim rolls her eyes at me. I hide a laugh behind my champagne.
“Rachel, you are an amazing woman, and I’m so proud to welcome you into our family.” She reaches across the table to lay a hand on Rachel’s. “I’ve always wanted a daughter, and now I finally have one.”
There’s a strange moment of quiet, like the entire room ishesitating. It stretches longer than it should, and that’s what clues me in and makes me realize what’s just happened. Because that was obviously the end of Mom’s speech, the moment where there should have beenawwwwsand applause. But there’s only quiet, and the rustling sound of heads turning.
Turning toward me.
Across the table,Rachel’s eyes are wide. Mom is still gripping her hand, clearly waiting for some reciprocation for the tender sentiment she just shared with 150 of our friends and family and perfect strangers. But Rachel just turns to look at me, and in her wake, so does everyone else.
I always thought it was bullshit in books when the main character said they could feel someone’s eyes on them. That’s not athing,you can’tfeelsomeone looking at you unless maybe the book you’re in isLord of the Ringsand the eye belongs to Sauron.
I guess that makes me fucking Frodo because I can feel every single eye in this room boring into me.
I’m shutting down, locking up. I’m a computer that has been left idle for too long and my screen saver is loading, a warning that in a few moments, the screen will go fully blank.
“Oh.” Mom looks at me, and then very quickly away. “Anotherdaughter. I…uh. Well.” She lifts her champagne glass, and Isee sweat beading on her brow. Since she started menopause any minor shift in temperature can bring on a hot flash, and the room is buzzing with the kind of energy that makes heat rise. “To Aiden and Rachel,” she says, plastering on a smile. The crowd echoes her, though with less enthusiasm than they’d given Rachel’s dad and me.
It’s taking everything I have not to stand up and flee the room because honestly, that would only make things worse. Then this would go from being an uncomfortable slipup for people to gossip about back in their hotel rooms later to the kind of scene we’ll still be talking about at the bris for Aiden and Rachel’s firstborn son. Although I’m pretty sure I’m morally opposed to ritualized religious genital mutilation.
I know things are bad if I’m imagining a hypothetical circumcision rather than dealing with what just happened.
“Sweetie,” Mom says from across the table, but I ignore her. Grandpa has the mic now and has launched into a story about a safari he and Grandma went on in the eighties—it’s getting fewer laughs than it did at my bar mitzvah, that’s cancel culture for you. But he’s a good storyteller, and the room seems to have moved on. Theywantto move on, no one wants to dwell on my mother making it clear that in her mind, she doesn’t have a daughter.
Because that’s what happened. Caught up in the moment, Mom forgot to pretend. In that one moment of thoughtless honesty, she revealed the truth: no matter what she’s said, no matter how supportive she’s been, no matter how many times she’s called me Julia or reminded me to wear a bra, I’m not her daughter. She might understand that I’ve decided I’m a woman, but in her eyes, I’ll never reallybeone.
“Jules,” Aiden says. He looks as horrified as Rachel, as shocked and upset as I know I should feel. But instead, I’m calm, because if I’m going to be honest, I’m not surprised. I’ve been waiting for this moment for four years. It was all too good to be true. The other shoe has finally dropped and it’s one of those beige heels Mom forced on me at Bloomingdale’s, one of the few they even carried insuch a large size. Mom has spent four years pleading with me to wear lipstick and perfume and get blowouts because, to her,thatis the closest I’ll come to being her daughter, at least on the surface, in a way she can understand. If I look the part, it’ll be easier for her to pretend, to say the right things, to placate me.
Now Grandpa has the audience laughing, but our table is still silent. Mom looks mortified, but I know that won’t last. She’s never been able to admit she’s wrong, and somehow she’ll find a way to make this someone else’s fault,myfault for misunderstanding, for making something out of nothing.Of course I didn’t mean it like that,she’ll say,how could you even think that?
My jaw is clenched so hard I’m going to crack a tooth. I have to get out of here.
“Julia,” my mom says, exasperated, whatever shame she might have felt already starting to turn. I ignore her and stand on stiff legs, ducking my head to avoid the heads that swivel my way. I wish I wasn’t wearing such an obnoxious dress, wish I was in jeans and combat boots with greasy hair so eyes would slide off me. Rachel starts to stand but I shake my head, sharp enough to make the headache building behind my eyes throb. I weave through the tables, head down, watching my stupid expensive shoes clomp awkwardly across the marble floor, the heels far too loud. I know I’m making a scene, I should have just stayed atthe table and pretended everything was fine. But I can’t be here right now, and I don’t understand how I ever thought I could be here at all. These people have known me for too long, known a version of me I never really wanted to be and they’re never going to let me fucking forget it.
There’s a patio behind the ballroom that looks out on the country club’s golf course and it’s blessedly empty, and even the muggy Florida heat is a relief after the way what my mother said sucked all the air out of that room, punched it right out of my lungs. I suck in a deep gasping breath and am horrified when it comes back out as a sob. My eyes are burning with tears. I’m going to ruin my makeup—Daytona would be furious. Andthat’swhat I need, to talk to someone who knows me, who knowsJulia,but then I realize I’ve left my bag and phone back at the table and I almost scream.
“Julia?”
It’s Kim.
“Please don’t ask me if I’m OK,” I say, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.
