There were two of them—white lace and chiffon gowns, veils, bouquets—the whole nine yards, as they say. Nothing wrong with that—we’ve always taught the girls that love is love. It was just that they were there by themselves, at the little winery out in Ramona we liked to take family and friends. From the patio we could see them drive up in their mini-Cooper, the trains of their gowns in one hand as they climbed out in their white satin heels and teetered over the gravel. One held a square white box, on which she’d rested her bouquet. They took the small table across from where we sprawled over patio furniture and Adirondack chairs, the girls playing a game of Jenga with their dad and Uncle Patrick. The younger of the brides opened the white box and set a one-tier wedding cake on the table as one of the sommeliers joined them with a bottle of sparkling rose brut and two glasses.
“There’s a guest.” I nudged Charlotte, my sister-in-law. She’d been showing me pictures of her and Patrick’s trip to Iceland on her phone when a man arrived, carrying a black nylon backpack.
“He’s just the photographer,” Charlotte said, pointing. “See, there’s the tripod.”
“Maybe the guests got delayed,” I said, sipping my sauvignon blanc. “Or they’re taking the weddings photos first.”
When Marc and I got married, almost twenty years ago, we’d done the traditional church ceremony, and Marc’s parents had two hundred people at their country club. I don’t even remember most of them, except for my maid of honor, Misty, who broke the strap on one of her heels and drunkenly pitched the shoe into the darkness of the back nine. I’ll ask for it at lost and found tomorrow, she’d joked, but I don’t think she ever did.
Ten or so more minutes passed, during which time Charlotte finished showing me vacation photos of Iceland, and I poured another glass of wine, when the photographer began to take pictures of the brides cutting the cake. The other bride was several years older than the younger one but attractive enough, with thick dark hair and sun freckles on the top of her hands, and the younger one was paler, smaller and delicate, like a red-haired doll. The older bride stroked the younger bride’s face between photographs, and they seemed so focused on each other, so relaxed and in love, that it wasn’t until they sat down and began to eat the cake, sipping their brut and whispering in each other’s ears, that I blurted out to Charlotte “surely they’re not here on their wedding day all alone?”
“Holly,” Marc said through his mouth without moving his lips.
“Are they?” I whispered. Unfortunately, I’d already piqued the attention of Katie, our oldest, and she stood up so quickly to get a better view that the Jenga blocks tumbled everywhere.
“Katie!” Our youngest, Lila, whose turn it was, stood up, too. One of the blocks had landed between our group and the brides’ table, and Katie slid over, an 11-year-old ninja in pink tights, to fetch it.
I watched the brides study her for a moment, feeling my legs fill with concrete as I waited for Katie to be as tactful as an 11-year-old could and ask them why they were alone, but she didn’t. The older bride spoke.
“Would you like a piece of cake?” She smiled at Katie with her teeth. I envied the shade of her lipstick, the curve of her thick lips. Katie nodded and then looked back at me, and I nodded.
“Say thank you,” I said and then watched Lila join Katie at the brides’ table.
“Thank you,” Marc called over to the younger bride on our children’s behalf. She nodded, and I waited for Marc to say something, since over the years he had assigned himself ambassador of our family, complaining that I was too loud, too personal, too tactless, and mostly these days I tried to correct those same traits out of the girls. But he didn’t, and the girls didn’t, either, merely returning to our area and eating cake while Patrick restacked the Jenga tower.
“It’s a shame they’re all alone,” I murmured to Charlotte, who’d taken to rubbing Patrick’s back. “Maybe their families are narrow-minded bigots.”
“Maybe they work together and had an affair that broke up both their marriages,” Patrick said. “Something like that happened last semester in the philosophy department.”
“I think it’s ballsy as hell, whatever it is,” I continued. And then I wanted to know. I wanted to be their friend. Or maybe we could be their wedding guests, their surrogate family. I mean, I wondered what the point of having a fancy vineyard wedding was if no one was there to witness it, to share it with you. Of course, like I said, two hundred people witnessed our nuptials and first dance and I barely remember it, I had so much champagne. I remember pressing my head against the cool glass of the limo’s window on the way to the hotel by the airport, wondering how we were going to fly out in the morning to Spain.
“Do you think we should dance, too?” I leaned over and looked at Marc at the other end of the low table. “So they don’t feel alone?”
“How about we give them their privacy?” He smiled at me. I was impulsive, impatient. Once during my morning run, I gave the finger to an entire parade of pro-lifers picketing in front of the local Planned Parenthood. Which is why I wanted the brides to know that we were on their side. We could be their mothers, their sisters, their friends. I could hear Marc say it, even though he hadn’t: they don’t need our approval.
But maybe that’s what bothered me most about it. It was like that one friend who was a digital nomad and you could never tag them in a photo on Facebook or Instagram. Those people who could live entirely inside their bodies, inside the moment. They didn’t need the things we needed. I needed.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, slipping my phone into my jacket. When I was done, I walked around the building so I could enter the patio from the other side, where my family wouldn’t be looking for me to re-emerge. There, camouflaging myself in front of the vineyard groves, I pulled out my camera and took some photos of the brides dancing. As I brought my phone down, I noticed the older bride looking at me over the younger bride’s shoulder, so I brought the camera back up and focused the lens on my family, then the grove flanking the other side of the patio, pretending to take more pictures, before heading back. I don’t know if I sold it, but I didn’t look back at her again to make sure.
I thought later about posting the photos on my social media, with a simple “Congrats to the beautiful couple!” But even though Marc didn’t check his social media unless I tagged him, I figured Charlotte would see it, and who knows what she’d think. I also thought about returning to the vineyard alone, showing the sommelier one of the photos and asking her about the women, explaining that I was an estranged sister who wanted to make amends, but I worried about her remembering me because we’d stayed the whole afternoon, bought two-hundred dollars of wine to take home with us, and made an epic four-foot Jenga tower constructed of single blocks one atop the other (mostly Marc and Patrick, as the girls’ attention had drifted off to watching something on Katie’s tablet).
I did go back to the vineyard by myself one afternoon, while Marc took the girls to Katie’s soccer game. I have ladies’ brunch, I’d explained, which happened often enough to ring true, but instead I drove the hour to Ramona, back to the winery. In my purse I had a picture of my own wedding, only I’d cut it in half so that Marc wasn’t in it. I put it on the table and studied myself, my deer-in-headlights stare, as I sipped a glass of sparkling rose brut. Then I set it next to the photo on my phone of the two brides. No other vineyard goers looked at me, or maybe they just wanted to respect my privacy. Either way, it made it easier. Easier to head over to the edge of the patio where the two brides had danced and dance there myself. I danced the way I danced alone, waiting for the soup to heat or the dryer to stop. The way you gave yourself to the moment before the moment was gone.