Free Wedding Season by Darcy Cosper Page A

all look lovely,” he says to us. “We’ve got a full house, sweetheart. May I have the honor?” He offers her his arm, and Erica takes it; the organ music begins, and we move in our bridesmaidly regiment toward the doorway. Through the high, dark wood arch that stands at the entrance to the aisle, I can see hundreds of faces in the garlanded pews turn expectantly in our direction, and far up at the altar, Brian and his groomsmen are lined up like toy soldiers beside the priest. Erica’s eldest sister and the toddlers go first, and little murmuring cries rise up from the guests and echo in the church’s stony heights. Standing in front of me, Melody counts to ten, mouthing the numbers and nodding her head, then steps into the aisle. Watching her move away, I feel slightly ill. I stare at her retreating back until I feel Henry’s hands on my waist, giving me a little push forward, and I begin my long march down the aisle.
    There’s a cinematic trick that you see a lot in movies, which I think involves the camera rotating on some kind of rolling platform, so the actor seems to remain in place while the world spins around him. I guess it’s intended to communicate a sense of confusion, disbelief, shock. That’s how I feel now: disconnected, as if I’m floating down the aisle, the upturned faces passing away beside me. I’m a wolf in bridesmaid’s clothing, I think; I have no right to be here, acting as a representative of something I condemn. My head feels absurdly light, and for a moment it seems certain that I’m going to faint. Then I catch sight of Gabriel in the crowd,smiling at me, and remember a moment at my mother’s wedding to Bachelor Number Two. As she walked down the aisle, James turned and whispered to me, “If this is the happiest day of their lives, isn’t it all downhill from here?” I nearly laugh, and Gabe sees it and winks. The pews stop sliding around, and I nod at Brian and take my place on the bride’s side of the altar and watch Henry and her hair approach. She gives Brian a big, hammy wink and sashays up next to me. The remaining bridesmaids take their places. The music stops. There’s a moment of silence before the “Wedding March” begins, and everyone rises, rustling and whispering, for The Dress, The Bride.
    Erica and her father come down the aisle toward us like a dream, a dramatic reenactment of a wedding. Each step, every sideways glance and inclination of the head and glinting tear, seems perfectly matched to some Platonic ideal, a perfect correspondence to the gestures of every bride on her father’s arm, kissing him good-bye, taking the hand of her groom, throughout the ages, forever and ever, amen. The reverend begins his dearly beloveds.
    Traditions, I tell myself, keep us safely in the sweet embrace of the familiar; they are narrative touchstones that anchor us in the stories we’ve learned to tell about ourselves. Maybe I should be happy for my friends who find in these moments what they need to live, I think, as Brian fumbles to put the wedding band on Erica’s finger. Maybe I should be. But I’m not. I mean, I’m happy that they’re happy. But I want something more for them, something finer, newer, more visionary, broad and brave and pure. What that would be, though, I have absolutely no idea.
    “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the reverend says. “You may kiss the bride.”
    Brian lifts Erica’s veil. She is facing away from me, so I can’t see her expression, but I can imagine it: the happiestchina shepherdess in the whole world. They kiss, and everyone applauds, and the current of sound carries us from our places and back up the aisle. I take the arm of my groomsman, Gary, a solid, football-shoulders type who went to school with Brian in Virginia. Several paces in front of us, Henry and the blonde bouffant tower above her groomsman.
    “Hey, young lady,” Gary says to me. “You sure look pretty.” There are tears running down his face.
    “You