I'm a toppler.You know, down the stairs in my mother's high heels. Head over heels off my first bike. You get the picture. I've always been right there taking the next step without looking to see if there's a place for me to land. Of course, I don't intentionally topple down stairs or fall into trouble. Sometimes things just happen.
Like now. Here I am in the middle of a typical Julie White moment. If you could see me, you would think everything is fine. There are enough men in tuxedos walking around this hotel ballroom to make Cousin Elaine's engagement party look like the Academy Awards. And I fit right in. This rented gown sweeps low across my back and, I must say, it looks good, especially with the black–tie man on my arm.
It might be Elaine's party, but I know people—aka the aunts—will be looking at me, too. The aunts have measured me against Elaine all my life and I am tired of coming up second–best. That's why I wanted to make a good showing tonight at her engagement party. Since I wasn't sure until a few days ago that I had either the dress or the man to make any kind of a showing, I should be feeling pretty good.
Instead, I'm standing here with my mouth halfopen and my fingers locked in a death grip on the handle of my crystal punch cup.
I've got a problem.
Here's the deal. My date—the black–tie guy—has followed orders and has been holding his elbow out to me like a gentleman for the past two hours. The reason I asked him to do this was because my aunts notice those kinds of things in the same way they notice if a collar needs starching or a cuticle needs fixing. The elbow was my extra insurance for tonight.
Of course, all of that elbow holding looks rather odd now that my date is standing here in front of Aunt Ruth giving me The Speech. You know the one—how he's not ready for commitment and…it's not me, it's him.
Of course, it's him.
I try clearing my throat to bring Doug back to reality, but he doesn't pause in his recitation. He's so into his role, he's forgotten something important. He's a pretend date; he's not the real thing. When we walk out the door, we both fly free. He goes back to the coffee shop where my best friend, Cassie, met him and I go back to my no–date, but okay life. There is no commitment to be feared. We're not a couple on the verge of anything. We're barely past the name tag stage.
Unfortunately, I can't say any of that to Doug because Aunt Ruth is right here listening.
You may have figured out by now that most of the people here tonight might be under the impression that Doug is quite taken with me, or at least knows me much better than he really does. As I said, Doug and his elbow were my extra little bit of insurance for tonight and we sort of got carried away putting on a show for everyone.
Even Aunt Ruth, who has been distracted since the party started, has apparently surfaced from her worries long enough to make the assumption that Doug is very interested in me. Which was what I wanted, except that I never thoughtAunt Ruth would come over and ask me when I was getting engaged like her dear daughter, my cousin, Elaine, the perfect one. The fact that Aunt Ruth then turned to Doug and said he looked like a fine young man shouldn't have set his teeth to rattling, but it did.
Right now, Doug has his eyes firmly focused on Aunt Ruth and is telling her all of the reasons why he isn't ready for a commitment like that.
Aunt Ruth has clearly scared away any common sense Doug has. I know she does that to people so he's not completely to blame. I look at him closer. She might have upset his breathing, too. He hasn't inhaled once since he started explaining himself to her.
It's a Sunday evening and all Doug was supposed to do was smile at people, do the elbow thing and occasionally look down at me adoringly. It didn't seem that hard when we first talked about it on Friday. He wasn't even going to say very much to people.
Now, however, Doug has an earnest expression on his face and there's no way to stop his flow of words. I take a deep breath and try to relax so Aunt Ruth doesn't think I'm having a problem listening to Doug say he's not ready for a committed relationship. Maybe if I stay calm she won't realize that he is dumping me right here in the middle of Elaine's engagement party, even though that is what he is clearly doing or would be doing if there were anything between us to dump.
Aunt Ruth has a distracted look on her face and I'm hoping she's still thinking about the lead in the punch cups. You heard that right. At the last minute, Aunt Ruth demanded the hotel replace the punch cups because they were not made of twenty–four percent lead crystal. Aunt Ruth knows her crystal and mere glass wasn't good enough for Elaine, the princess. Of course, it wasn't good enough for Elaine's fiancé, either, but that's another story.
I wave my cup at Aunt Ruth just in case it catches her eye and reminds her that there might be something else the hotel is doing wrong that she needs to correct. There's got to be something in a place this size that should make her want to go talk to the manager one more time tonight. If Aunt Ruth will just step away from Doug, I can whisper a few basic truths in his ear that will stop all of this madness.
I keep my smile stretched across my teeth and try to relax. Aunt Ruth's gaze is firmly settled on Doug so the cup distraction did not work. I remind myself, however, that Aunt Ruth is confused enough about the way people date today that she just might think that this no–commitment talk is actually a prelude to something involving an engagement ring instead of a postlude to almost everything else.
Wouldn't that be nice?
And it might work. After all, Aunt Ruth did think Elaine was playing hard to get when she broke up with her fiancé last month. As for me, I thought Elaine was finally seeing the light, or at least seeing that this fiancé of hers was in serious need of a little more personality to go with his very proper, buttoned–up East Coast ways.
Gary—that's Elaine's fiancé—is from some Connecticut family that Elaine says has tons of old money. She always says it that way, too, with the emphasis on the old instead of just the money, the way anyone else would say it.
Money is money in my book, but Aunt Ruth and Elaine are both impressed by a family that has been rich for generations. I've already seen Gary's parents at the party tonight and they look like old money, too. They don't have any glitter to them, but they have a faded, pressed look that says they should be in some mansion somewhere with a butler who offers them a tissue on a silver tray every time either one of them happens to blink a little too hard. I'm sure that's why Aunt Ruth ordered so many waiters in tuxedos for the party tonight. She wants Gary and his parents to think that our family is in the same social class as they are.
Good luck with that.
The fact that all of the males in our family had to rent their tuxedos for tonight should speak for itself. The fact that they had to drive two hundred miles to Palm Springs to pick them up should speak even louder. Aunt Ruth is very particular about which tuxedos are rented for all of Elaine's wedding events.
Nothing in the small town of Blythe is good enough for Aunt Ruth any longer. Of course, she still lives there, as do all the aunts and cousins except for me. But she no longer claims it as her hometown. If anyone asks her where she lives, she says she lives adjacent to Palm Springs. There's nothing Palm Springs adjacent about Blythe. She might as well say she lives adjacent to Beverly Hills. Or the moon.
Not that I blame Aunt Ruth for wishing she lived someplace else. There are entire months in the heat of the summer when the whole population of the town wishes they were living someplace else. The deal is, however, that I've never believed it does a body any good to pretend to be something they're not. If you live in Blythe, you're a Blythite not a Palm Springer and no amount of tuxedos will change that fact.
Of course, I may be biased, because disaster always follows any futile attempt on my part to be something I'm not. You might have noticed that from what is happening right now. The only good thing I can say about now is that the huge disco ball spinning over our heads is distracting so many people that not everyone here is staring at me. I think the hotel is charging extra for the disco ball and, right about now, it's worth every penny Aunt Ruth is paying.
Aunt Ruth is very proud that she is hosting this party in the Petite Ballroom of the Grand Carlton Hotel, one of Palm Springs' finest hotels—she even included "finest hotel" on the embossed invitations she sent out. I suspect she only sent out invitations to what is mostly a family party because she wants the aunts to put those invitations in their scrapbooks so that everyone in the family will remember until the absolute end of time that Elaine's party was held in one of Palm Springs' finest hotels, a hotel that was so busy the party took months to schedule.
You can see why I needed a date. Without one, every time the story of Elaine's engagement party is told—and, believe me, once it's in the scrapbooks, it will be told—someone would say "and poor Julie didn't even have a date." Of course, unless I work fast, it will be worse than that now. The story will end with "and wasn't that the night when poor Julie's date dumped her right there in front of Aunt Ruth?" And won't I, poor Julie, sound pathetic if I try to explain that he wasn't really a date to begin with?
By now Aunt Ruth is listening to Doug as if he's making sense.
This has got to be one of my most embarrassing topples ever. Aunt Ruth's eyes are darting back and forth between me and Doug and her mouth is forming a little "O." She's finally getting it.
Even if I had to...
