Speechless Read online

  Speechless

  Yvonne Collins & Sandy Rideout

  Thanks to our families for their interest in our projects, right down to the smallest detail.

  Thanks also to our friends for their support—and for sharing their stories of workplace divas and bullies.

  A special thanks to Kathryn Lye for her role in bringing Libby to life.

  Last but not least, we are grateful to Dave for rescues great and small. Whether it’s resuscitating a laptop after an unfortunate collision with a cup of tea, researching obscure facts or indulging a craving for sushi, Dave always delivers.

  What’s more, he knows when to keep the champagne on ice and when to grab the schnauzer and run for cover.

  We appreciate his patience and encouragement.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  1

  I’m in the ladies’ room when my big moment arrives. It’s no coincidence. The event: Emma’s wedding. My mission: to avoid the ceremonial tossing of the bridal bouquet. I almost pull it off, too. As a bridesmaid (my seventh tour of duty), I’ve had access to the script, which states that the toss is to occur at 11:45 p.m. precisely. At 11:35, I skulk off to the last stall of the hotel’s fancy washroom, sit down on the toilet’s lid and haul my feet up onto the seat. It won’t take long for the search party to give up. In the meantime, I can lean against the cool marble bathroom wall and rest my eyes.

  “Found her! She’s asleep!” Emma’s six-year-old niece yells. She’s peering under the stall door, a wide grin on her annoying little face.

  “I was not asleep,” I say, opening the door to find two bridesmaids in buttercup yellow dresses identical to mine glaring at me. “I’ve got a migraine.”

  “You don’t get migraines,” Lola says, grabbing my arm with one hand and hitching up her special Maid-of-Honor chiffon cape with the other. “Cut the crap and let’s get this show on the road. The sooner it’s over, the sooner we’re back at the bar.”

  As they escort me to the dance floor, the delighted flower girl skips ahead, shouting, “I found Libby! She was asleep on the toilet!”

  I should have known better than to attempt escape with Lola in charge. She’s cranky because yellow makes her look sallow and worse, Emma made her promise not to smoke tonight. The honor of being chosen maid of honor is hardly compensation enough. In fact, no one is more oblivious to this sort of honor than Lola and no one is less willing to be on her best behavior. That’s why I expected the Maid-of-Honor nod myself, but Emma probably wanted to leave me free to enjoy my own brand of nuptial notoriety.

  For five minutes at every wedding, I am a bigger star than the bride. My role is to catch the bridal bouquet. It isn’t staged, it just happens. No matter how poorly the bride throws, nor how eager my competitors are, the bouquet is always mine. All I have to do is show up. I stand among the single women, hands at my sides and it flies straight at my face. At the last moment, I inevitably raise my hands in self-defence. Like I could afford twelve nose jobs on a government salary!

  Twelve bridal bouquets. Now, there’s a claim to fame. At six foot two (six-five in yellow satin bridesmaid pumps), I suppose I’m an easy mark. I prefer to blame my unlikely talent on my height than accept that Fate is playing a cruel joke on me. After all, everyone knows that the girl who catches the bridal bouquet will be next to marry—it’s a tradition. Yet, somehow, I remain single despite my twelve trophies.

  When I caught my first bouquet at age eight, I was thrilled. When I caught my third at age twenty, I was cautiously hopeful. When I caught my eighth at twenty-eight, I was mortified. And when I caught my tenth at thirty, well, I asked my friends to stop inviting me to their weddings. They didn’t, obviously. These days I get invites from people I barely know, just so that they can see me in action. I’ve become a party trick.

  Being a little superstitious, I held on to the bouquets long after I gave up all belief in the tradition. Lola found them hanging in my closet last year. “This is seriously weird,” she said, as if she’d stumbled upon Bluebeard’s wives. “I’ll destroy them to spare you from ridicule.” As if anyone who’s caught that many bridal bouquets is a stranger to ridicule! Still, I was relieved when she took responsibility for dumping them. Given my history with men, I can’t afford to be sending that kind of message out to the universe.

  When I agreed to be her bridesmaid, Emma promised to show some restraint. “Don’t worry, I won’t get all bridey,” she said moments before launching herself into a vortex of white lace and tulle. After that, it was Fairy-tale Wedding by the book. Pathetic optimist that I am, I even believed her when she told me she’d keep the bouquet toss simple. “Just the basics,” she said.

  Many have been less considerate. They embraced the variation on the tradition where the woman who catches the bouquet has to dance with the man who catches the garter because they’re destined to marry each other. People love seeing the look on my face as the garter-catcher—usually a single-for-good-reason guy in a bad suit—comes to claim his dance. It makes for great wedding video footage. Take the following scene from Emma’s, running unedited at nine minutes:

  Emma, resplendent in $2000 worth of strapless, beaded taffeta, is beaming from the podium as she prepares for the bouquet toss. The camera cuts to the crowd of single women, where my big, bushy head looms above the crowd. There’s a sullen expression on my face. Lola stands guard over me, a drink in one hand, a partially hidden smoke in the other. Two eager young women flank me. They’re sizing me up and, judging by their smirks, they don’t consider me much of a threat. Lola pretends to burn one of them in the butt with her cigarette and we both make faces behind them. We have forgotten the camera.

  Emma winds up for the pitch and the video slips into slow motion. The bouquet shoots out over the crowd. The camera captures my expression as I assess the bouquet’s trajectory. Closer…closer… The two youngsters jockey for position, elbowing me. I step backward to avoid them. Arms outstretched, they hurl themselves into the air. You can see the hope on my face: this time I am finally going to miss it! But no, the teens careen into each other. One stumbles off her platforms and into Lola, who “accidentally” spills red wine on the teen’s tight white dress (never wear white to a wedding). The bouquet travels like a missile over their perfectly coiffed heads, my hands go up and…yes! It’s a direct hit, ladies and gentlemen. Turning, I hold the bouquet high and curtsy for the crowd. The teens check out my butt and sneer, confirming my suspicion that there is no good angle in a yellow stretch-poly frock.

  I offer the photographer a big, fake smile before stepping to the sidelines to make way for the single men. The D.J. cues the stripper music and Bob, the groom, removes the garter from Emma’s leg and snaps it into the air. There’s a flash of blue as it streaks across the dance floor, the camera panning to follow its path. Over the heads of the single men it goes, until its flight is suddenly arrested…by my
forehead. It snaps my head back with its force, then drops into the bridal bouquet I’m still holding. Heads are swiveling. No one knows where the garter landed. The videographer speaks up: “Libby caught it!”

  Stunned, I pluck it from the bouquet and hold it aloft. The single guys turn as one and race toward me. There’s a brief struggle as they grab my arms, my waist, my legs and hoist me into the air. I stop resisting when I realize that the more I thrash, the less coverage my dress provides. The D.J. plays the Village People’s “Macho Man” and the guys pump me up and down to the beat. As the song ends, they deposit me—quite gently, really, when you consider the trays of tequila slammers they’ve consumed—before the bride and groom. I surrender the garter with a dizzy flourish. Bob snaps the garter again; this time a tall guy grabs it casually out of the air. Emma grins in my general direction before whispering something in the D.J.’s ear. He steps to the mike: “Would Libby McIssac please step forward again? Tim Kennedy will now place the garter on Libby’s leg and the two will share a special dance.”

  I look stricken, but Tim is smiling as he walks toward me and bows. He leads me to a chair in the center of the dance floor. I lift my own bridesmaid gown and place my foot on the chair. Tim slips the garter over my foot and slides it up my leg. The video does not capture the snag in my thirty-dollar stockings.

  “Let’s give Libby and Tim a hand, everyone,” the D.J. shouts. “We’ll see them united in wedded bliss sometime soon!” (I hate this guy.)

  The camera follows us briefly as we start dancing, then finally cuts back to the bride.

  “Well, Libby,” Tim says, “are you always this popular at weddings?”

  “I’m afraid so. I can’t help competing with the bride for attention,” I say. I’m starting to breathe again, but I can’t meet his eyes.

  “Very bad form.” He’s smiling and although I’m staring over his shoulder, I can’t help but notice it’s a nice smile.

  “Not as bad as beating a bride senseless with her own bouquet. She deserves it for this dress alone!”

  “Oh no, it’s very becoming,” he says, laughing. When I roll my eyes, he adds, “I’ve seen worse.”

  My blood pressure must be entering normal range, because it’s starting to register that Tim is quite handsome. He has that dark-haired, blue-eyed combination I can never resist. Eventually I summon the nerve to look right at him, and miracle of miracles, I’m staring into his forehead. Without these stupid yellow pumps, he’s got an inch on me. Maybe Fate isn’t heartless after all.

  “Let me get you a drink—and some ice for that welt on your forehead,” Tim offers as the song ends.

  He pulls a chair out for me before heading to the bar. He probably feels sorry for me, but hell, I can live with that. Besides, I need a few minutes to recover before joining the bridal party again. My left foot has begun to tingle; the damned garter is cutting off the circulation. I remove it with more uncharitable thoughts about Emma. I’m mad enough to march over there and swing her around by her veil. Instead, I take a few cleansing breaths and smile over at Tim in the bar line. He smiles back. That’s when it occurs to me that Bouquet 13 could be my lucky one. It’s a cut above any other I’ve landed, the rosebuds being a deep red and fully two inches long. At least Emma had the decency not to get a substandard minibouquet for tossing, as brides used to, before my fame grew and I started making demands. Now I tell them straight out, if you’re going to put me through this, I expect the real thing.

  My nose is buried in the bouquet when Tim returns carrying two highballs of bourbon and a bag of ice. I drop the flowers on the table, take the ice and hold it to my forehead.

  “Technically, this belongs to you,” I say, offering the garter to him.

  “Don’t you want to keep it as a memento? The bouquet won’t last forever, you know.”

  “I won’t have any trouble remembering this evening. Emma will torment me with the video for decades to come.”

  “What are friends for?”

  The adrenaline is draining away faster than I can replace it with bourbon. Tim takes the ice pack back and wraps it in a linen napkin. I hadn’t even noticed the water dripping down my arm and onto my five-hundred-dollar yellow dress. Spinning the garter on my finger and smiling as coyly as a girl with a bespattered décolletage can, I ask, “Your first?”

  “Yeah. Every guy dreams of this.” Uh-oh. He’s funny too.

  “All those years in Little League culminate in this one perfect moment.”

  “I imagine you train constantly yourself.”

  “Not at all, I’m a natural.”

  “Care to share your stats?”

  “A lady never reveals her age nor her bouquet quota,” I demur.

  “So what do you do between bridesmaid gigs?”

  It’s come to this so soon! I hate talking about my job. Tim is the cutest guy I’ve met in a year and I can’t bear to tell him I’m a government hack. It will suck the life out of the conversation and I’m having such fun. Maybe I can deflect his question with idle banter?

  “I’m writing a book,” I say.

  “Really? What’s the story?”

  “Well, it’s a combination of memoir and how-to, based on my extensive experience as a bridesmaid.”

  “I’ll put it on my Christmas list,” he says, smiling.

  “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry… And how about you?”

  “Yeah, I’m writing a book too, isn’t everyone? It’s about my career as a dog trainer.”

  I can tell he’s kidding, but I’m not sure if he knows that I am, too. “Breed of choice?”

  “Jack Russells—the toughest breed on the planet. The first chapter is about my technique for establishing I’m the alpha dog.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I can’t just give away my secrets. You’ll have to wait for the book.”

  “Does it have a title?”

  “The Man Who Listens to Terriers. Don’t laugh. Dog training is serious business in my family.” He’s leaning toward me now and, judging by the flickering candles in the table’s centerpiece, he’s releasing dangerous gusts of pheromones. “In fact, my father and I have broken off our relationship over it.”

  “Really? Tell me about it. I promise I’ll still buy the book.”

  “Well, okay,” he says, taking my hand and gazing into my eyes. “Two years ago, his best friend bought an Afghan hound and my dad fell in love—with the dog, that is. He gave up terriers to train Afghans exclusively.”

  “Ah, the blond bombshell of the dog world…” Our faces are inches apart and I am grinning like a fool.

  “Careful, Libby,” a woman’s voice cuts through the fog of love chemicals “—you can see right down your dress.” Lola has appeared from nowhere to ruin my good time. But she’s right: if Tim chose to look (and I certainly hope he did), he could see my navel. I clap my hand to my chest and glare at Lola. Tim smiles innocently and shrugs.

  The dreaded disc jockey steps up to the mike: “Time for the last dance, everyone. Emma and Bob want Tim and Libby—we see you hiding in the corner, you two!—to join them on the dance floor.”

  “Hold on a sec, Libby,” says Tim, reaching for a cocktail napkin. The ice pack has trickled water into my eye and he gently wipes mascara away. It drains the clever banter from my mouth.

  “Mop up the drool while you’re at it,” suggests Lola.

  “Lola!”

  “Forget it, it’s our big moment,” Tim says, leading me to the dance floor. Soon I am swaying in Tim’s arms, coasting effortlessly across the floor on a sea of pheromones. He quickly breaks the spell by asking, “So, how much truth is there in this garter tradition?”

  “Given my experience with bouquets, I think you need to reach a critical mass before the tradition kicks in. At a single garter, you’re probably pretty safe.”

  “That’ll be a relief for my girlfriend. She’s just accepted a job in Vancouver and it will be hard enough to keep our relationship going long-distance withou
t planning a wedding, too.”

  I’ve just wilted faster than a nosegay on a hot day, but somehow I manage a brave smile. “Try hanging the garter from your rearview mirror. It might work its magic long-distance.”

  Mercifully, Tim and I are soon swept up by the crowd of guests swarming the dance floor to hug Emma and Bob. Emma asks me to help her change into her going-away outfit and the night ends in a blur of duty and booze.

  I’m at home and in bed when I remember the wedding cake. “You’re hopeless,” I tell myself, but I get up and dig the piece of cake out of my purse and slip it under my pillow. Maybe I’ll dream of Tim. Maybe his girlfriend will dump him for some west-coast hippie in a VW van covered in flower decals. He deserves it. And as for Lola, I’m never speaking to her again.

  2

  It’s almost noon when I roll over to behold the bouquet on my dresser. Drooping already. So much for superior quality. The squashed wedding cake falls to the floor as I get out of bed, reminding me of a hazy dream about John Lennon. Figures, twenty years in the grave. I’d never last a round with Yoko, anyway.

  I shuffle to my tiny kitchen and put the kettle on. While the water heats up, I gulp chocolate milk out of the carton and rub my forehead where the garter struck me. The only thing I’d like more than a cup of strong coffee right now is to call Lola to discuss the wedding, but of course, I can’t, having written her off. Better to call Roxanne, although she missed the wedding and therefore won’t be fully able to share my lament over Tim. I’ll call her later, I decide, when the sour taste in my mouth has disappeared. I eat a blueberry Pop-Tart to speed the process along—my standard hangover therapy.