Up at the front of the room, Nick was now singing, mostly very badly, the song by Sam Cooke about the wonderful world and all the classes he failed in high school. Clara came up to join him, not speaking, just smiling in a docile way, impossibly absorbed in his light.
—
Jess and Adam were to stay in the apartment above the garage, cozy with a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette. It was a generous arrangement, seeing as Clara’s grandmother was sleeping on a pull-out couch, and Clara’s cousins were all in tents on the lawn. A pair of portable toilets had been delivered, and Jess was glad to have nothing to do with them. But there was still one complication: Clara wanted Jess to bunk with her the night before the wedding.
“You can do it if you want,” said Adam, mostly because he didn’t believe Jess would go through with it, leaving him alone for a whole night with their six-week-old baby.
“You’re really sure?” he asked her once they were up in the room, their stuff unpacked. Bella was tucked in her swing, which played a tinny version of “Frère Jacques.” The plastic toucan swung back and forth like a pendulum.
“It’s important to Clara,” Jess emphasized, because she didn’t want to tell him how much she wanted it too, a break from motherhood, an extension of the intimacy of those moments in the stairwell, the chance to be so close to Clara again with the world locked out.
Adam would be fine. Bella could take a bottle, and Jess had pumped and frozen more than enough milk, which they’d brought along in a cooler. Adam was as capable of caring for the baby as she was, if not more so, and she’d be just across the driveway. It was just one single night.
She came back to the house as Clara and Nick were hugging goodbye on the porch. He was heading into town to stay at a motel, and they wouldn’t see each other until the ceremony the following afternoon, a plan Jess found surprising: since when was Clara a traditionalist? Jess remembered waking up on her wedding day with Adam beside her, bursting with joy that this would be the rest of her life. But she was beginning to see that Clara was approaching her wedding as she approached everything: all or nothing, the very same intensity with which she’d found Jess all those years ago. Maybe Nick was also an uncanny mirror, she considered, which was why he made Jess uncomfortable; he was a reflection of her most avid and earnest self.
Right now, however, Jess could also admire the way Nick was holding Clara, the way he kissed her hair. They didn’t even know Jess was watching until she stepped on the creaking porch stair. Nick pulled away from Clara slightly, raising his hand in a half-hearted wave.
“Well, this is it then,” he said.
“I’m getting married in the morning,” Clara sang.
“Why doesn’t he just stay?” Jess murmured as she watched them struggle to detach, hands held until the last second and Nick made his way to the car. Clara’s arm was still extended and she was waggling her fingers. “If it’s going to be that hard.”
“It’s not hard,” said Clara, waving with more fervour. Nick was in the car now, looking at her through the window. He blew a kiss as he pulled out of the driveway. “But since we got together, we’ve barely spent a night apart.”
“Really?”
“Eleven months ago,” said Clara.
Barely a blip in the grand scheme of things, Jess thought. She’d known Clara for almost a decade, and she was still an enigma. What can you know about anyone in just eleven months?
“But it’s not like it sounds,” Clara said. “Everything just clicked from the start.” She grabbed Jess’s arm. “Let’s go in now.” They passed Clara’s sisters in the kitchen, where they were clearing away the dinner and getting ready for the wedding the next day.
“Having your slumber party?” asked Diane.
“We would have thrown her a bachelorette,” Julie told Jess, “But she said she didn’t want any of that if you weren’t going to be here.”
“I didn’t want it anyway,” said Clara.
Clara’s mom said, “Don’t stay up late tonight.” She turned to Jess. “She wouldn’t let anyone come do her makeup.”
“I can do my own makeup,” said Clara.
Her mom said, “There’ll be shadows under her eyes.”
“There won’t be,” said Clara.
“What about me?” asked Jess. “Who’s going to cover up mine?” She had a six-week-old baby. Maybe she could wear a bag over her head.
“You look fine,” said Clara’s mom. “The baby’s gorgeous. I know everybody says it and I always do, but I even mean it. She’s lovely.” And Jess said thank you, even though such comments were always weird, and it seemed strange to take credit.
“We’re going up,” Clara called, pulling the door to the staircase shut behind them. Then it was dark, but they knew where they were going, one step at a time to the top.
They went down the hall to Clara’s room and closed the door, which had a white dress hanging from a hook on the back. “This is it?” Jess asked. It was cotton, sleeveless, an A-line with a scooped neck. Orange and yellow flowers were embroidered up one side of the skirt, which was full and cut just below the knee. “It’s really beautiful.” Jess ran her finger along the flowers. She hadn’t been expecting this. She hadn’t been expecting Nick, or any of it, the way everything between him and Clara seemed so real and so heady. Jess had never seen Clara in love, she realized. She’d always assumed besottedness was something Clara didn’t do, something she would spurn the way she did fast food and reality television.
“I bought it off the rack,” said Clara. “Seriously, this whole thing has been just like that. I dreamed it, and there it was. On clearance. “It even fit. You know what I’m saying? How rare is it to find a beautiful dress that’s also comfortable? Anyway.” She shrugged. “I thought it was a sign.”
“And so you decided to get married.”
