Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner Page B

that looked like C-FORM.
    I carried the form over to Raji, another cub reporter. “What’s this say?”
    He squinted at the purple. “C-FORM,” he read slowly. “Like MDOS, or something.”
    â€œFor a dress, though?”
    Raji shrugged. He’d grown up in New York City, then attended Columbia Journalism School. The ways of Central Pennsylvanians were strange to him. I headed back to my desk; Raji went back to his dread chore, typing in a week’s worth of school lunch menus. “Tater Tot,” I heard him sigh. “Always, the Tater Tot.”
    Which left me with C-FORM. Under “contact for questions” the bride had scribbled her home phone number. I picked up the phone and dialed.
    â€œHello?” answered a cheerful-sounding woman.
    â€œHello,” I said, “this is Candace Shapiro calling from the
Valley Times
. I’m trying to reach Sandra Garry. …”
    â€œThis is Sandy,” chirped the woman.
    â€œHi, Sandy. Listen, I do the wedding announcements here, and I’m reading your form and there’s a word …C-FORM?”
    â€œSeafoam,” she answered promptly. In the background I could hear a kid screaming, “Ma!” and what sounded like a soap opera on TV. “That’s the color of my dress.”
    â€œOh,” I said, “well, that’s what I needed to know, so thanks. …”
    â€œExcept, well, maybe …I mean, do you think people will know what seafoam is? Like, what do you think of when you think of seafoam?”
    â€œGreen?” I ventured. I really wanted to get off the phone. I had three baskets of laundry reposing in the trunk of my car. I wanted to get out of the office, go to the gym, wash my clothes, buy some milk. “Like a pale green, I guess.”
    Sandy sighed. “See, that’s not it,” she said. “It’s really more blue, I think. The girl at the Bridal Barn said the color’s called seafoam, but that’s really more of a green-sounding thing, I think.”
    â€œWe could say blue,” I said. Another sigh from Sandy. “Light blue?” I essayed.
    â€œSee, but it’s not really blue,” she said. “You say blue, and people think, you know, blue like the sky, or navy blue, and it’s not, like, dark or anything …”
    â€œPale blue?” I offered, running through my bridal announcement-gleaned gamut of synonyms. “Ice blue? Robin’s egg blue?”
    â€œI just don’t think any of those are quite right,” Sandy said primly.
    â€œHmm,” I said. “Well, if you want to think about it and call me back …”
    Which was when Sandy started to cry. I could hear her sobbing on the other end of the phone as the soap opera droned in the background and the child, who I imagined had sticky cheeks and possibly a stubbed toe, continued to whine, “Ma!”
    â€œI want it to be right,” she said between her sobs. “You know, I waited so long for this day …I want everything to be perfect … and I can’t even say what color my dress is. …”
    â€œOh, now,” I said, feeling ridiculously ineffectual. “Oh, listen, it’s not that bad. …”
    â€œMaybe you could come here,” she said, still crying. “You’re a reporter, right? Maybe you could look at the dress and say what’s right.”
    I thought of my laundry, my plans for the night.
    â€œPlease?” asked Sandy, in a tiny, pleading voice.
    I sighed. The laundry could wait, I supposed. And now I was curious. Who was this woman, and how did someone who couldn’t spell
seafoam
find love?
    I asked her for directions, mentally cursed myself for being such a softie, and told her I’d be there in an hour.
    To be perfectly honest, I was expecting a trailer park. Central Pennsylvania has plenty of those. But Sandy lived in an actual house, a small white Cape Cod with black shutters