C.B. Heinemann

The Wedding Shop

 

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After six swirling months that culminated in the frothing fountain that was their wedding, Ashley and Josh finally made it to Rehoboth Beach to relax for a couple of days. The wedding was beautiful, the reception an exuberant party that nobody lucky enough to be invited would ever forget. Five bands, kegs of beer from around the world, crates of champagne, crab cakes, roasted pork and turkey sandwiches, cakes, pies, salads, treats, and no sit-down dinner. Their reception was a lively celebration rather than an excuse for overdressed acquaintances to overeat.

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So as they got out of the car and joined the crowds of vacationers enjoying the sun and salt breezes, they had every reason to feel that they could finally exhale. It was all over now―a treasured memory―and all paid for.

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“Josh, look! A bridal shop. I haven’t seen this here before.”

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“It’s the last thing I want to see for a long, long time,” muttered Josh and he locked the doors. “I’ll wait until our daughter, if we have one, gets married.”

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“Come on, let’s look. I just want to see what they have, how much things cost. Now that the pressure is off I can enjoy looking for a change.”

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Josh sighed. As they entered he noticed that it was actually a bridal and “intimate apparel” shop, and wondered if Ashley might develop an interest in wearing special lingerie. He had never put much thought into teddies or negligees before—

Ashley would look hot in a potato sack as far as he was concerned—but maybe, now that they were married . . .

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“Oh Josh, here’s one that’s almost exactly like mine, can you believe it? And I made mine from scratch! Look how much it costs.”

 

Led by his enthusiastic new bride, Josh glanced at the wedding gowns that Ashley pulled out while showing off her newfound expertise on the stitching, fabric, patterns, and beading. “That’s nice Ashley, but why are we looking at wedding dresses? Haven’t we done enough of that? Are we going to have to get married again?”

 

“Of course not, silly. I’m just interested, that’s all. I made my own and I want to see how other dresses are made.”

 

“Why don’t we go look at some of that, you know, other stuff on the other side of the store?”

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“What other stuff, honey?”

 

“You know, that lingerie stuff. Some people get into that.”

 

She turned, faced him fully, and whispered. “You mean that slutty underwear?”

 

“Hey, you dragged me in here. I’m just saying . . .”

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“Are you already so tired of me that you need to dress me up like a whore?”

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“What?” Josh felt like he’d stepped into a mound of enraged fire ants. “No, no, not at all. I mean, you dragged me in here and, I don’t know, I just wondered if it was something we might, you know, try out. Or something.”

 

“Try out? And are you going to want to ‘try out’ living in a trailer park, too?”

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“May I help you?”

 

An older woman with red lipstick and dark hair pulled back into a tight bun hovered with a professional smile stretching her face. With her dark eyes and heavy eyebrows, Josh thought she was Hispanic or perhaps from the Middle East. Unlike everyone else within miles, she was dressed impeccably in a dark blue dress and jacket. She stood more than six feet tall in her heels. 

 

“No,” Josh muttered, noting that the woman smelled like lavender. “We just got married so we’re just looking.”

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“I love this dress.” Ashley held up the white silk sleeve of one of the dresses on the rack. “Are these beads plastic or real?”

 

“Oh, those are cultured pearls.” The woman spoke with a slight accent. “So you are just married? Are you here on honeymoon?”

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Ashley’s eyes remained on the shimmering white sleeves. “Yes, we were married on Friday. We just came for a little getaway after the wedding. Just a couple of days, you know, to unwind. We go on our honeymoon to Paris next week and we’ll have to pack and get ready for that, too. It’s nice to get away from everybody for a day or two.”

 

“Ah, Paris. I was once there years ago. Not for honeymoon.” The woman drew closer and her eyes scanned the shop as she lowered her voice. “So you would not mind making a little extra money, perhaps?”

 

“Well, sure,” said Ashley. “What do you mean?”

 

The woman took the lower section of the dress and drew it out. The beading and lacework were done in an intricate Celtic pattern. “Perhaps you would not mind wearing this dress for a short time? I was thinking when you came in that, with your beautiful long red hair, you would be perfect.”

 

“Perfect for what?”

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The woman led Josh and Ashley to the rear of the store near the fitting rooms. Josh felt hot and uncomfortable. “You see, I was trying to think of a way to bring some publicity to my little shop and I thought it might be nice to dress someone up as bride and groom and they can walk down the boardwalk together. It is wonderful that you are really newlyweds. You would look so beautiful! And you can have a little sign announcing my shop. I would pay you and you can stay in a room in my rental house for free. I don’t stay there myself, but I rent out rooms with their own bath, and breakfast in the downstairs breakfast room. I’m sure that after all the expense of a wedding you could use some money. How do you like the idea?”

 

“I don’t know,” Josh began. “I’d feel a little strange.”

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“I think it would be fun,” said Ashley, darting a look at her husband. “We can get dressed up for a little while and get a free place to stay. What could be easier?”

 

“But I’d feel like an idiot parading around in a monkey suit, especially in this heat. We’d sweat all over the clothes.”

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“You let me worry about that,” said the woman. “The sea breezes on the boardwalk are very cooling and it isn’t hot today. You’ll be fine.”

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“And think of the money,” Ashley added.

 

So it was that with the same force of inevitability he felt when he became engaged, Josh found himself walking down the boardwalk in a powder blue tuxedo among families in shorts licking ice cream cones, little kids wrapped in towels―their hair dripping with salt water―and clots of laughing teenagers. Ashley couldn’t stop laughing either, but Josh was mortified.

Everyone within eyeshot stared at them as though they were space aliens who had suddenly landed on earth. It didn’t help matters that Josh wore a sign for the dress store clipped to his back.

 

“Come on Josh, get into the spirit of the thing,” Ashley urged. “It’s only for a little while.”

 

“But people are laughing at us.”

 

“Why not? We should be laughing, too. I know I am.”

 

Josh clamped his mouth shut while Ashley waved back at a group of elderly Japanese men sitting on white benches on the edge of the boardwalk. Several shirtless boys of about twelve appeared and walked beside Josh staring into his face. He knew they were up to some game or dare they had made up. “Haven’t we gone far enough yet? Maybe we can hide out somewhere before going back to the shop for our money and room key. This is killing me.”

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Why can’t you just have fun with this?” Ashley continued to smile but her voice was shot through with irritation “I’m not going to cheat that nice lady at the wedding shop. She asked us to go up and down the boardwalk a few times, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

 

“But I said I didn’t want to do it. You’re the one who said you were into it, not me. Why should I have to do this?”

 

“Because it would look stupid to have a bride walking around by herself. Everyone would wonder, ‘What happened to the groom? Did he leave her at the altar? Did he just bail on her?’”

 

“Honey, it isn’t real. Everybody knows we’re advertising something.”

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Ashley stopped. A group of five overweight women wearing huge sunglasses slowed to eavesdrop. “Josh, it is real. We are just married. I am a bride and you are a groom. So act like one.”

 

Josh noticed an odd gurgling in his system and his head felt tight. “You want me to act like a groom? I don’t have to act like a groom—I am a groom. And a husband. And as a husband I’m not going to be jerked around into doing things I don’t want to do.”

          

“What about what I want to do? What about the money? In case you’ve forgotten, you got laid off your job right before our wedding. We’re locked into that honeymoon, we need money, and this will help. Making money is what a husband does.”

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“Is that what I am to you? A money-making machine?” Josh felt something inside come loose. “A money-making machine that only takes orders from his wife, never gives them? A machine that’s expected to go out and slave for some idiotic boss all his life to support his bride, and then slave away for children demanding that daddy do this, daddy buy that . . .”

 

“That’s a good one. Some moneymaking machine you are. If that’s your job you’re not doing much of one, are you? I know what kind of ‘orders’ you’d like to give me. You’d have me prancing around in those infantile little under-things you were gawking at.”

 

“Yeah, and what would be so bad about that?”

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Ashley noticed that she and Josh had drawn a small circle of observers who loitered nearby, not quite bold enough to stand and stare, but not making much of an effort to move on. “Okay, you want some kind of obedient little wifey? Then go find yourself some negligee-wearing trailer-trash bimbo who likes taking orders from an unemployed dolt! I'm done with you. I'm going home."

 

As Josh stood watching his bride stalk stiffly back down the boardwalk and saw Ashley’s borrowed bridal veil flip and twist like a gauzy kite caught on a nail in the wind, he felt his expectations draining out of him through his legs covered in pressed tuxedo trousers, down through the gleaming black shoes, and into the hot boardwalk. A few kids stood laughing. An older woman in sunglasses walking her dog shook her head as she passed. An older man in huge sunglasses paused with a smile.

"Welcome to married life, buddy. Get used to it."

 

Later that summer the woman running the shop decided that a wedding shop wasn’t doing much business, so she converted it back into what it had been—another beach shop selling sunscreen, flip-flops, stick-on tattoos, t-shirts sporting vulgar expressions, and lamps made of sea shells. Although she had dreamed all her life of having her own wedding shop, the beach shop was more profitable and much calmer. She had never imagined that bridal clothes and intimate apparel could ignite negative emotions in so many people, especially that couple she tried to help out earlier in the summer whose brand new marriage exploded right there in her shop. The beach was a place for people to relax, and after all she had been through in her life—growing up under an intolerant dictatorship, sharing a three-room apartment with two families, watching her father and brother taken away in the middle of the night by the Secret Police, emigrating to a strange country―she didn’t need the stress. If people wanted lacquered seashells and iron-on pictures of American flags, she would provide them. But she had no more plans for getting tangled up in the wedding business. 

  

 

A graduate of the University of Maryland, C.B. Heinemann's stories have appeared in Berkeley Review, Florida English, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Press, Outside In Magazine, Danse Macabre, Rathalla Literary Review, Mountain Tales Press, Cigale Literary Review, Writers Who Rock, Biostories, Write Place At the Right Time,  Ascent, Storyteller,  The Battered Suitcase, Spilt Infinitives, Whistling Shade, Lowestoft Chronicles, Outside In Review, One Million Stories, and Fate. He has also written for The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer,  and Car & Travel. He has also written two novels, The Last Buskers of Summer, and Ghosts Behind Walls, both with Furka Press.

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