appointments, helping Nina get dressed the day of, and making sure sheâs calm and happy. But your primary task is to arrange and host the bridal shower. All of this turns out to cost about infinity more money than you have. Youâve been waiting tables on the Upper West Side since your summer on Fire Island. The dress Nina has picked out for you (from among the choices her mother-in-law has presented from Bloomingdaleâs) is absolutely gorgeous, a full-skirted Ralph Lauren, which Nina insists on paying for, which seems like it might be a good thing, because you have a few thousand dollars of credit card debt as it is. But this kind of generosity, where you are concerned, anyway, only leads to weirdness and misunderstanding. You are relieved for about a minute not to have to generate more debt, only to move directly into resentment. She has more money than you. She didnât even do anything to get that money, and now sheâs marrying more of it. She has no idea how hard it is for you, it being everything. Youâve been waiting tables for a couple of years now. She doesnât understand that gifts like this make you feel uneven, like she doesnât really know you, or worse, that she feels sorry for you. (You have no issue with feeling sorry for yourself, but the idea that others might pity you is an unbearable conundrum.) You donât want to understand that maybe she does understand and just doesnât have any better ideas about how to make you happy. So you try to pick a fight, which you regret almost immediately, because you can hear, as it comes out of your mouth, what it sounds like when you say I appreciate it, I really do, but I donât think you get how shitty this makes me feel. Nina, bless her heart, is inclined to try to understand, where it might serve you both better if she just told you to fuck off.
You insist on hosting the shower at your apartment, asking Nina to politely relay to her mother-in-law that sheâd prefer a more intimate setting than the River Café. You still live in, and owe back rent on, your brownstone duplex, but itâs always been a good place for a party. (That one time that guy almost fell backward off the front of the building trying to catch thebeer he knocked off the roof, the one that accelerated like a missile and just missed hitting a pedestrian who turned out to be your downstairs neighbor: Classic .) Unfortunately, the mother-in-law insists on coming by to scope it out before the big event and gives you a list of things for the party that you didnât know you needed, like outdoor rugs for the roof garden and phone numbers for a desirable caterer and chair-and-table rental company. You should probably carpet these stairs, too , she says. Your indignation is growing, and as soon as she leaves, these numbers go right into the trash. You decorate the roof with your own Christmas lights and flowers from the deli and enlist me to help cook. Iâll make a pasta salad and a salmon mousse and youâll bake cupcakes. But the whole shebang still costs about four hundred dollars that you donât have. Nina has boots that cost more than that.
All things considered, the shower is ostensibly a success. Ninaâs guests compliment you on the party, and the only one grumbling is the mother-in-law, who does not care one bit for the spiral staircase that leads to the roof ( Werenât you going to do something about this? ), nor the tattered AstroTurf sheâd been hoping to cover with her fancy rugs ( What is this? ), nor the rusty folding chairs that were up there when you moved in ( Someone could cut themselves on this and get tetanus! ). Fortunately, one displeased person in a room is more than enough to confirm your inadequacy as a human, and even if the mother-in-lawâs face werenât betraying her at every turn, you have a sonar for that person, and a memory for nothing else.
That said, it turns out that sitting next to a
You insist on hosting the shower at your apartment, asking Nina to politely relay to her mother-in-law that sheâd prefer a more intimate setting than the River Café. You still live in, and owe back rent on, your brownstone duplex, but itâs always been a good place for a party. (That one time that guy almost fell backward off the front of the building trying to catch thebeer he knocked off the roof, the one that accelerated like a missile and just missed hitting a pedestrian who turned out to be your downstairs neighbor: Classic .) Unfortunately, the mother-in-law insists on coming by to scope it out before the big event and gives you a list of things for the party that you didnât know you needed, like outdoor rugs for the roof garden and phone numbers for a desirable caterer and chair-and-table rental company. You should probably carpet these stairs, too , she says. Your indignation is growing, and as soon as she leaves, these numbers go right into the trash. You decorate the roof with your own Christmas lights and flowers from the deli and enlist me to help cook. Iâll make a pasta salad and a salmon mousse and youâll bake cupcakes. But the whole shebang still costs about four hundred dollars that you donât have. Nina has boots that cost more than that.
All things considered, the shower is ostensibly a success. Ninaâs guests compliment you on the party, and the only one grumbling is the mother-in-law, who does not care one bit for the spiral staircase that leads to the roof ( Werenât you going to do something about this? ), nor the tattered AstroTurf sheâd been hoping to cover with her fancy rugs ( What is this? ), nor the rusty folding chairs that were up there when you moved in ( Someone could cut themselves on this and get tetanus! ). Fortunately, one displeased person in a room is more than enough to confirm your inadequacy as a human, and even if the mother-in-lawâs face werenât betraying her at every turn, you have a sonar for that person, and a memory for nothing else.
That said, it turns out that sitting next to a
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