Someone Else's Life

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  She did get to sleep on the lavish canopy bed. After what had taken place between her and Jillian, she didn’t know if she’d be able to sleep or not, but sleep like a baby, she did. At one point when she woke up, she lay there and spoke with her friend, who was also awake.

  Jillian just said “Hello,” in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Hi,” Suella replied. While they lay there looking at each other for a few minutes, she felt compelled to add something. “I never thought we’d end up like this.”

  Jillian laughed playfully and sensuously. It was the kind of laugh that a satisfied female emits while basking in a sexual afterglow. “Never?” she challenged.

  “No.”

  “Well, how do you feel?”

  She let out a thick, snorting kind of laugh. “Good. Too good.”

  Jillian reached over to touch Suella’s blond hair, pushing a few strands of it out of her face. “One can never feel too good. Hadn’t you ever been with a girl before?”

  Suella briefly thought about Amy, who nicknamed herself “Belle,” who, while pretty, looked more like a point guard for the WNBA than the sweet, drawling little lass her name implied. She and Belle had had a bit of fun back in college. “Years ago, when I was like, nineteen or twenty. But lots of girls experimented back then. We would practice kissing with each other so that we’d know how to be good for our boyfriends.”

  “So did I,” Jillian admitted.

  They lay there silently for awhile and the reality of what they’d done occurred to her. A look of concerned must have flashed across Suella’s face in the moonlight.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Suella shrugged, and tried to force a smile. “Well I can’t help but feel…you know…kind of guilty.”

  That brought another laugh from Jillian’s lips. “Why? Because I’m getting married in a couple of days? Because we sullied the marriage bed?”

  “You’re both going to live…here?” Suella pointed downward, at the bed they were sharing.

  “Yes. Steve sold his condo a couple of weeks ago. He’s been staying with one of his buddies.

  Suella let out a short, nervous laugh. “Now I really feel weird.”

  “Honey, right now he’s probably still at his bachelor party. I made him schedule it for tonight so he’d be less likely to be hung over on Saturday. There could be some bimbo lowering herself down onto his face as we speak.”

  “Wow.” She remembered back to her wedding, how everyone was so busy, with so many people flying in from all over the country, that Nathan probably hadn’t had the time for a traditional bachelor party. Of course, he and Toni may have stolen away to have some fun the way they continued after she and Nathan had taken their vows.

  She wanted to say more but suddenly she felt very tired. Her eyelids felt heavy and she pulled up the sheets and comforter and nestled herself into the glorious supple bed that cradled her.

  The next thing she knew, rays of sunlight sliced through the wispy curtains on the other side of the room. She was alone. Jillian had made her side of the bed, stacking decorative pillows that formed a fluffy wall when Suella turned toward it. Yet she could hear stirring in the kitchen. How would she find her dressed when she walked in there? Suella was still naked. She dressed quickly in a nightgown and a wrap and ventured out the bedroom door toward the kitchen.

  “Well hey, sleepyhead!” Jillian said with a bright smile. She wore satin shorty pajamas with matching lavender furry slippers. A couple of pots bubbled and boiled on her range top. “We’re having a traditional British breakfast,” she announced.

  Suella saw oatmeal cooking and tea brewing and knew that Jillian was baking a few scones in her oven. “I hear they have beans for breakfast over there,” she said.

  “Not this girl,” Jillian replied as she put on an oven mitt and retrieved an oven pan with golden scones on it, filling the kitchen with the scent of fresh breaded goodness.

  Soon she was sitting at the breakfast nook sipping on her tea while biting into the soft warmth of a scone. “So you’re going to honor that wedding tradition, right? Is it that the bride’s not supposed to see the groom the day of the wedding, or the day before?”

  “It’s the day of, silly,” she said. “But Steve has to work and take care of some last minute things today, so he’s leaving it up to us to have a girls’ day together. Especially since he had his bachelor party last night.”

  Jillian had rented the roadster for a whole week. Once they finished breakfast and washed the dishes together, they dressed in their best cute casual clothes and thundered out of the condo’s parking garage in the sleek, fast car. They’d had a cool, rainy spring in the place she’d called home at one time. She was able to slide the moon roof open a short way, just enough to let the scent of fresh bloom from the hillsides in without making it too windy.

  The lush greenery on the roadsides and hillsides made her remember that after decades on the west coast, she still missed the colors of changing seasons and the healthy forest greens of the Midwestern countryside in early summer. When they tooled along an ancient, one hundred year old highway bordering the Ohio river, she laughed when she remembered the pathetic dribbles that qualified as “rivers” out west.

  Throughout the morning and early afternoon, they bounced from shop to shop, store to store, and neighborhood to neighborhood. At a wine store near College Park they met Jillian’s younger sister Marjorie, who had the same, straight, no-fuss, no muss hairstyle and minimalist makeup sense as her older sister. Yet there was something endearing and charming about the way she wore her store apron and answered store patron’s questions about wine vintages. “Marjorie’s going to stand with me at the wedding tomorrow,” Jillian said, standing behind her and holding her by the shoulders as if she was displaying an expensive blouse from Sak’s.

  “Jill’s told me so much about you,” Marjorie said, when she had a break from customers. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  After they left the wine store, Jillian continued to play tour guide with Suella for the rest of that afternoon. She showed her where old neighborhoods had been rehabbed and repackaged for successful young suburbanites, how old shopping malls had been imploded in favor of “town square” style shopping centers. And when they parked downtown, they also rode the people movers that had been installed on the Skywalk, to get them from one impossibly ritzy and chic shopping destination to the next. They never bought anything, instead choosing to laugh at blouses scanned at over three hundred units and costume jewelry that masqueraded as if it had been made of gold.

  If her life had been a movie, Suella reflected, their whirlwind shopping tour on the day before Jillian’s wedding would have made for a fifteen minute montage scene with happy, frenetic music playing. Finally they slowed down as they rode an escalator at one of the grand old refurbished downtown department stores. “I’m hungry,” Suella said.

  “Me too,” Jillian replied. “And we’re right near one of the best Indian style eateries I know.”

  When they walked through the door of the place, Suella saw tapestries and a hostess wearing a flowing, floral suri, with sitar music playing and she expected that they would be led to a place to sit on the floor. However, once they passed a divider, she saw that the restaurant had traditional tables and chairs, though they had been fashioned out of bamboo fronds, the seat areas upholstered with satin fabric.

  Suella had never dined in an Indian restaurant before, but no matter. Jillian translated the various menu items for her and made her recommendations. As they ate and made small talk together it occurred to her that Jillian had packed the morning and afternoon with lots of activity on purpose. It distracted her from thinking too much about what had happened the night before.

  Friday afternoons were not rush time for an Indian restaurant apparently, as there was only one other table with peop
le sitting at it: a couple in late middle-age. Though the coziness of the restaurant and their slowed-down pace favored it, Suella decided against starting a conversation about their intimacies the night before.

  There was time for that later, anyway. From the word “go,” Jillian had talked her out of reserving a hotel room and she had assumed she would be staying on some sort of a guest bed on her condo. After what had happened the night before, however, she would not be staying on a guest bed that evening. The prospect made her nervous, she realized, even as she engaged in light-hearted social dinner conversation with Jillian. Maybe Jillian felt it, too, and that was the reason she’d purchased an expensive bottle of wine.

  During the latter part of the afternoon, they still had to go to the seamstress shop for a final fitting on her wedding dress. Once again she surprised her. Suella had expected that the dress would be a white, somewhat traditional gown, though maybe not floor length. In her early, more bohemian period, she might have gladly married someone wearing a tie-dyed frock with a headpiece wreath but since she was so more successful now, she might want to celebrate it with some finery.

  At the seamstress shop, the plain, Asian owner wearing pulled-back hair and a shapeless tunic, brought out a shimmering, satiny sculpted dress with padded shoulders that looked like it belonged on a screen siren from a 1940’s era film noir movie. The basic color was creamy mauve but the lapels had been accented with shining silvery taupe striped edges. Jillian accepted the hanger from the shop owner and held the dress up proudly. “Isn’t it great? What do you think?”

  . “It’s beautiful,” Suella replied. “But what’s Steve going to wear? A bugle boy outfit?”

  “No, he’s going to be in just a traditional pin-striped suit,” she said. “But Marjorie’s going to be in a dress like this, too. We found hers at a consignment shop. She looks like a doll in it. And we’re going all the way, too. Tomorrow we’re getting our hair done in one of those cool styles like they had back then, you know with all the braiding and the drama.”

  “I’ll take pictures,” Suella replied.

  Indian food, she learned, can be quite filling, with the rice and sauces and the curry. As they returned to Jillian’s condo with her wedding dress in tow plus several different odds and ends both of them had picked up, it was time for the evening meal. They settled on a simple salad, with organic lettuce, vegetables and herbs along with a light vinagrette dressing.

  While they sat across from each other at the same table where they had taken tea the day before, an urban drama played on Jillian’s holodeck. She had the newer version, where a character could be isolated and blown-up life-sized. “Yeah the actors have to work out more and get more cosmetic surgery than ever before,” Jillian reflected, as they watched a tall, granite-jawed actor raise his weapon and flit about her living room, dissolving into walls and furniture.

  The day had been long, and Suella’s eyelids grew heavy. “I’m tired,” she announced.

  Jillian had moved beside her, onto the sectional by then, close but not touching. She shrugged. “Well there’s no law that says you have to watch the rest of the movie. If you want to turn in, go ahead. Make yourself at home.”

  Suella undressed and put on the gown and wrap, wondering if they would come off later that night. Jillian said she needed to stay up for awhile and get things set up for the next day. When she eased herself between the sheets and turned out the light, she could hear her best friend puttering about in the living room and den.

  She had been tired and expected to fall asleep quickly but she couldn’t. Instead, she lay on her side in the stillness so quiet she could hear gentle traffic noise on the highway far down the hill. Eventually, Jillian would join her. What then?

  So wide-awake was she that it felt unnatural to close her eyes, when less than an hour before, she was sure she was ready to lay down and start sawing some serious wood. The noises from the living room and kitchen became less and less. Suella’s heart pounded as she realized she could hear Jillian walk toward the bedroom.

  The door opened and she felt it was best to roll over and keep her eyes opened. In the dark she smiled at Jillian as she cracked open the door and moved gingerly across the room to the master bath. Suella could hear the sounds of slacks whooshing off and a blouse coming up over her head. She hoped against hope that Jillian wouldn’t put her on the spot by coming out naked.

  When the master bathroom door opened, it splashed light inside the bedroom and silhouetted Jillian, who was wearing a long t-shirt meant for slumbering. Suella lay there and watched her, with her eyes wide open. Jillian took languid strides toward the bed, gazing down at her. She crawled on top and leaned over to kiss her on the lips, quickly but somehow sensually. “Good night, Susie Q,” she said. “See you in the morning.”

  Jillian eased down next to her and rolled over onto her side, to sleep. Suella let every muscle in her body relax. She realized that she’d been wound up more tightly than a swiss watch spring. Her best friend was close enough that she could feel the warmth of her body emanating from between the sheets, though, and this had the effect of calming her down. Within a few minutes the sounds of their breathing synchronized and acted as a lullaby for her. She drifted off smoothly to sleep.

  The next thing she knew, morning came, with the familiar rays of sun slicing through the windows. Suella felt surprised that Jillian still lay in the bed beside her, with her eyes closed. While she had assumed that her best friend was sleeping, Jillian’s eyes opened after Suella had been watching her for a few moments. “Well hey there,” she said, her voice still thick with sleep. “Are you ready?”

  Suella smirked inside. “The question of the day is, are you ready?”

  She had assumed that they would have another nice, English style breakfast as they’d had the day before, but Jillian had other ideas. “Wear your cute frilly blouse and those skinny jeans,” she said. “We’re going to have some fun.” They started at an Italian restaurant on the hill, with waiters wearing white shirts and ties and white linen on the tables. The cappuccino Suella ordered arrived with cinnamon peppered onto the saucer and her stuffed French toast was sinfully decadent. Jillian ate a light fruit plate and a scone with her tea; she had a wedding dress to fit into later.

  “So where are we going now?” Suella said as they both lowered down into the Tesla roadster.

  “It’s a secret,” Jillian said, her nose crinkling. “My little gift to you for helping me with my wedding.”

  They drove along the same ancient highway with the lush greenery dangling over it, until she turned left and drove over an old-style concrete bridge with ornate archways. Suella remembered the neighborhood they were entering, with its rehabbed row house buildings, a jazz club, another art gallery and a mellow vibe: O’Bryonville. She parked the car around the back of a building, in a lot adjoining a beauty salon.

  When they entered through the back, the noise of women laughing assaulted them as stylists washed peoples hair in the wash bins or spun them around on chairs to cut and style their hair. Saturday mornings at beauty salons were always crazy, Suella remembered, which was why she always set her hair appointments for Wednesdays or Thursdays or other slow times.

  Jillian checked in at the desk up front, where a pleasantly matronly woman with salt and pepper hair gushed and sighed and opened her arms for a hug from her. “Congratulations! Your day is here at last! We’re going to make you look so good!”

  “Sylvia this is my friend I told you about, Suella,” Jillian said, turning aside to introduce her.

  Suella extended her hand for a handshake, but Sylvia opened her arms and rose up to hug her the same way she had hugged Jillian. “Welcome!” she sang. “Jillie has told us so much about you.”

  Jillian groaned and let her eyes roll. “Oh gawd, I hate that nickname!”

  Sylvia ignored her and got down to the business at hand. “So Beth’s going
to be ready for you, and we’re going to have to new girl, Toni, do Suella. How does that sound?”

  Suella was confused. She’d assumed she would sit and watch their screen or read through a few e-zines while Jillian was primped and pampered. Before she could say anything, Jillian patted her on the wrist. “It’s my treat. They’re going to do hair, makeup and a manicure for you, too.”

  “How nice,” Suella replied, and in the next moment a small, pixiesh girl with spiky hair tinged with lavender die met her at the counter.

  She was a talkative little thing, going on and on about how she had cousins in San Diego while she shampooed Suella’s hair and massaged her scalp. Suella told her about the beach house. “Oh I hate you,” Toni said, while she applied conditioner and massaged it in. “I love the beach. Cincinnati would be a great place to live if there was a beach nearby and it didn’t get so unking cold in January and February.”

  Toni couldn’t have been much older than Natalie, Suella reasoned, and it was only a matter of time before she uttered a word that made no sense. Maybe unking was a new synonym for “freaking.”

  Once she sat in the stylist chair, amid rows of other chairs with other women in various stages of beauty treatments, Toni turned her toward the mirror and lowered herself down. She must have wanted to be on her same level when she said “So, what do we want to do today?”

  In her mind, Suella ran through the cornucopia of images of hairstyles she’d worn over the years. She knew she wanted to avoid a forties hairstyle like Jillian was getting. There were so many stylists, so many chairs, and so much commotion that Jillian and her stylist conversed at the other side of the large room and Suella could barely see her. “I usually get a layered cut, and she flips the ends up nicely. You’re the stylist, you could probably guess that, right?”

  “Wow, such a deliberate thinker!” Toni’s fingers alighted on random strands of Suella’s wet hair like butterflies while she examined it. “What do you do for work?”

  “I’m a system security consultant,” she replied.

  Toni giggled. “I would have said lawyer. There’s one lady I work on who is a lawyer. When I ask her a question I can see those little itty bitty wheels turn in there. Just like you!” She reached for her gleaming shears.

  “Listen, I know it’s on Jillian’s dime, but I’m not looking for a major makeover today. Please don’t cut too much. Just a little trim on the ends, clean it up, you know.”

  Toni froze and gazed at her, with her lips parting to form an amused smile. “On Jillian’s dime…on Jillian’s dime…my grandmother says that!”

  Lovely, Suella thought. Just to be sure, she kept her eyes locked on Toni as she swept locks of her hair between her fingers and snipped at them. She was ready to pounce if the girl grabbed more than an inch to slice at. After awhile she relaxed and even laughed a little as she heard two women in nearby chairs talk about the fiasco of a prom night for one of their daughters. Wistfully, she realized that Natalie had been denied the simple pleasures of youth like that, and sporting events, and house parties.

  “All done!” Toni announced as she stepped away for a moment.

  Suella looked around at the plastic robe and the floor and saw one-inch bits of her blond hair lying there. She nodded in approval.

  Toni reached for the blow dryer and the large bore brushes as she began to roll Suella’s hair and dry it at the same time. She had to steady herself in the chair and hold onto the armrests to keep her head from lifting; wow, the girl was strong, she thought. Halfway through she spritzed some thick spray and followed it up with a powdery substance. “It’s good stuff,” she said. “It gives really good volume.”

  By the end, Suella looked into the mirror and saw a nice feathering to her hair along the sides, a poof bump to her crown and nice flips at the smoothed edges. Toni had done as good a job as stylists she’d visited in L.A. who’d worked on her for years. “That’s great,” she said. “Now are you going to do the makeup, too?” Hair was one thing, but she wanted to avoid a heavily dramatic, “gothic” look.

  “Oh no,” Toni said, waving a hand dismissively. “Kaitlyn does all that. I can’t draw a straight line.”

  Suella went in for makeup first, since Jillian’s hairstyle was much more delicate and complex and her stylist Beth was still braiding side sections of her hair. The makeup stylist Kaitlyn wore her hair back and looked more like a bohemian artist like Jillian than a professional in the beauty business. In her little cubicle, she wielded a sturdy silver box with interlocking palettes springing up out of it. “It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Worthy,” she said. “You definitely have beautiful skin. Do you have any concerns I need to be aware of?”

  Suella suddenly felt as if she were speaking with a doctor instead of a makeup artist. “No, I’ve been lucky that way. I just dislike heavy foundations. They make me feel as if my face is dirty.”

  “Not a problem. Now I understand you’re going to a wedding? Do you have a makeup style that you like?”

  Suella had always gotten by well on muted pastel shadows and crisp liner to go with her carefully arched eyebrows, and she told Kaitlyn.

  “That’s fine,” the woman said, reassuringly. “I know exactly what to do.”

  Oddly, Kaitlyn’s little corner of the salon featured walls with calendars and art on them instead of a big mirror. She kept several hand mirrors, though. For several minutes she daubed and dabbed on Suella’s face and presented a lip gloss shade that seemed several tones removed from what she ordinarily liked, but she gave in. When she was done, Kaitlyn smiled and passed Suella one of the hand mirrors. Staring back at her was a reflection of herself that, along with the fresh hairstyle, made her look several years younger and somehow icier. Maybe it was the frosted lip gloss.

  “I like it,” she said.

  By the time Jillian finished and they both looked at themselves in the mirror, Suella said “Wow Jill, you’re beautiful! Steve’s going to be thrilled.”

  “So are you,” Jillian replied.

  When she put on the wedding dress, Suella realized, her friend was going to look like an ultra glamorous 1940’s era torch singer.

  They immediately whisked back to her condo for the dress and from there they could almost walk to the gallery where the wedding would take place. Jillian’s mother and father arrived at the condo just after they did, and Suella met them for the first time. Her mother was small and delicate, with hands that moved a lot and garishly dyed hair that did not. Her father had been a machinist who’d been forced to retire after the Fiscal Cliff. He wore a suit that he struggled with but the both of them stood awestruck when they saw their daughter in their wedding dress. Her mother clapped her hands together and rejoiced “I’ve been dreaming about this day since you were a little girl!”

  “Who’s hot rod is that, parked in the garage?” her father wanted to know. He turned to Suella and asked “Is it yours?”

  Suella laughed. “No, it’s not.”

  Jillian intervened. “I rented the car for a week, daddy.”

  Her father said “Vroom, vroom. It’s going to look funny with shoes tied to it and covered with confetti.”

  Everyone laughed. They all knew it was not going to be that kind of a wedding.

  It was the most unusual wedding Suella had ever seen, but then it fit right in with Jillian, who was content to march to the beat of her own drummer. She helped her slip into the wedding dress, since it fit snugly and closed at the neckline with a couple of hook and eye closures. Suella simply wore her floral, fitted bodice dress, with the pleated skirt that had gotten her many compliments through the years.

  When the time came for them to go up the hill for the ceremony, the condo rang with several clashing, arguing voices. “It’s so close, just right at the other side of the hill and it’s such a nice day,” Jillian had said. “Why don’t we all just walk there?”

  Her father
cut in with “Oh no, no, no. The weatherman said there might be showers later. Do you want that slick looking dress to get rained on and your hair mussed up?”

  Jillian’s mother followed with “He’s right, dear. For a bride to walk to the church or wherever the wedding ceremony’s being performed, well that’s just not right.”

  “Okay then,” Jillian said. “You all can follow us in the roadster.”

  Suella had been to the gallery many times, back when she’d lived in the neighborhood. The art in there was fine; she’d spent many a day getting absorbed in some of the landscapes and the impressionistic city scenes. Yet she’d always found the stark white walls and bright light inside made for a sterile air in the building. It still made a good choice for a place where Jillian would get married, since she was in her element around various types of art.

  Jillian carried a bouquet and her father opened the door for her. Suella noticed a small crowd gathered near one of the exhibits. She recognized Steve from pictures Jillian had shown her. In person he looked like a smiling, teddy bear kind of guy who would have looked at home in a country and western bar. “Darling,” he said when he saw Jillian, his eyes lighting up as he leaned forward to hug her delicately.

  A small, thin man with hair pressed into place, wearing wire rim glasses and smiling with a weak, receding chin stood among them. He wore a white tie, which seemed strange to Suella until she realized that he must be the Justice of the Peace.

  For about a half hour the wedding reminded Suella of a cocktail hour as everyone went around introducing themselves. She met a man who looked just like Steve except beefier and he wore the same type of pin-striped suit. It was his brother Scott. He smiled warmly for Suella, who politely conversed with him, taking care to flash her wedding ring and drop Nathan’s name into the conversation at certain points.

  Jillian was right: it was a small wedding, with not more than thirty people gathered in the center of the art gallery. There was no wedding march or even music in the gallery. When she’d asked about that years ago, the gallery owner said that music would detract from the experience of the art on display.

  “Okay, everyone,” Steve said, standing on tiptoe to make sure his voice carried and everyone could hear him. “Mr. J.P. says it’s time to start.”

  The family members and friends all formed a circle around the justice of the peace and the four people in the wedding party: Steve, Jillian, Scott, and Marjorie. When the Justice started to read the preliminaries from a book, Suella noticed that people still milled about in the gallery, eying them with curiousity.

  It was over in a flash, as all Justice of the Peace weddings usually were. At the other end of the scale, Suella remembered attending catholic weddings for various baseball players and their wives. Those seemed to go on forever, with the sitting, standing, and kneeling, and the communion procession.

  Newlywed Steve and Jillian simply stood, in an impromptu receiving line, while all of the parents and the smattering of friends attending all passed through a line to give them their congratulations. When that part of the proceedings ended, Suella realized that she didn’t even know where the reception was being held. “Oh, we’re just having dinner at the Westin downtown,” Jillian said. She and Steve were going to stay there tonight, and leave the next morning for their honeymoon.

  After the nice dinner, and more socializing, Jillian’s parents offered to bring Suella back to Jillian’s condo. The next morning Jillian and Steve would ride the roadster to the airport, where she would turn it in. That left Suella alone in the large condo with the high ceilings, to reflect on what had happened over the past few days. It was an eye-opener, to be sure.

  Her flight would leave early the next afternoon, but Suella went to bed early, sleeping on the sectional, and the next morning she used a cab an the train to arrive at the airport a couple of hours early.

  She was anxious to get back to see Natalie.