Three Times A Bride, Never A Bridesmaid
By Tracy Schrader
Kristin was going to walk down the aisle and take her rightful place with an expression of rapture today. She had been getting ready, surrounded by friends, for hours. Her dark hair was curled in cascading ringlets and she was wearing a silky blue dress that reached the floor. Not white. Blue.
For the first time in her life, Kristin was a bridesmaid.
–
The first was Eric. Kristin met him at a work conference where he came over to her chair and told her she “looked very nice”. They went on a date that night, and Kristin was convinced she was in love. He sent roses to her desk at work and took her to dinner. They were married within six months.
Eric wasn’t a perfect husband, which probably meant he was a typical one. He woke up at 7:45, drank his coffee, changed, and left the house by 7:50. He took the subway to work even though it was only a two-minute walk from their apartment. When he got home, he enjoyed the six o’clock news, when he would kick his shoes off and shoo Kristin into the kitchen.
Kristin went to cosmetology school, even though Eric said it was a waste of time. She wore a hairspray-stained apron and a crisp white shirt to work every day. Her husband grumbled about the shedded clients’ hair scattered all over their apartment.
Soon, they had a child, a healthy, happy baby boy. Kristin wanted to name him Paul, after her grandfather, but Eric insisted on Nate. Not Nathan. Nate.
“Honey, I’ve always liked that name,” Eric said as they waited for a nurse to bring back their son to the hospital room. “Nate conveys strength. I want my boy to be strong.”
“Paul can be strong!” Kristin said.
“Not strong enough.” He paused and looked toward the door, leaning forward. “Honey, I really do believe–”
“Fine.” Kristin had learned to interrupt Eric when he said “I really do believe” or else be subjected to a long, barely coherent lecture. “Our boy will be named Nathan.”
“Nate.”
“Nate is only a nickname.”
“Nathan is weak. Nate is strong.”
Kristin watched Eric pace across the tile floor. Eric, as a name, sounded strong, but Eric the man was weak. With her, he acted full of might and muscle because he thought she was a fainting damsel, but Kristin had seen him on calls with his boss. He cowered like a frightened, petulant child.
Kristin knew she didn’t want her son to be anything like that.
“Nate,” she finally agreed. Eric beamed at her and beamed even wider at his little boy when the nurse carried him in.
Little Nate was a boy of many words. He jabbered syllables that sounded like nothing in particular, woke his parents up with sleep-talking, and conversed extensively with the washing machine. Kristin thought it was adorable. Eric thought it was exasperating.
“Honey, I’m fed up with Nate’s talking all the time. He’s driving me crazy!” Eric did look crazy for a moment, tugging on his bootlaces with vigor as he prepared to go to work.
“He’s only two,” Kristin said. She handed him his keys.
“He’s old enough to serve some purpose, not to chatter on like a monkey. He barely even says words.”
“I think he’s perfect. He’s going to grow up to be a diplomat.” Kristin beamed at her son, who was currently chewing on a muffin and whispering to his plate.
“He’s going to grow up to be a lunatic,” Eric grumbled. “And no son of mine will ever be a lunatic!” He slammed the door before popping back in to grab his coffee cup. “Or a diplomat!”
Kristin sighed. Eric was becoming a bit too much to bear.
When Nate was six, his parents got a long-anticipated divorce. Kristin retained possession of the house, and Eric left her and it with a grumble of “good riddance”. Within a week of their last day together, Eric moved to another state. Nate visited him for a few weeks every summer and every other Christmas.
Kristin began to work as a hairdresser, trying to keep her and Nate afloat. Nate grew, still talking as much as ever. Kristin grew out her hair, because Eric liked it short and heaven forbid Kristin ever do anything that Eric wanted.
–
The second was Harry. Their love story was a perfect Hallmark movie, where Kristin went to a small town farmers’ market in search of a new adventure and found a red-haired man who fell head over heels for her. He didn’t send flowers to her, instead delivering them himself. Kristin started listening to country music and dancing around with a broom. She bought her first pair of overalls and asked ten-year-old Nate if he would ever like to live on a farm.
She went to visit Harry one summer while Nate was away, and Harry showed her how to milk cows, grow tomatoes, and sip nectar straight off a honeysuckle vine. He proposed after a year of happy, sunny days. They were married in midsummer, under a clear, blue sky.
Kristin moved out to Harry’s farm, convincing Nate that the country wasn’t so bad. She braided her long hair and wore flannel shirts and overalls. She figured out how to make delicious sweet potato casserole and brought it to every potluck the ladies of Cherry County United Methodist Church hosted. She gave up on cosmetology, on the city, and on everything but Harry and Nate.
“Honey, you’re home!” Kristin said, throwing her arms around Harry as he walked in from their fields one day. “How are the plants doing?”
“Just fine, darlin’, thank you for asking.” He sat down and gulped down a glass of water. “What did you do today? Wasn’t there some meeting of the church ladies?”
Kristin beamed. “Good memory. There was, in fact, and Mrs. Mapleton said she’d take Nate tonight if you and I want to go on a date.”
“A date! How kind of her.” Harry stood up and slid Kristin’s small hand into his larger one.
“Imagine it, Harry,” Kristin said. “Just the two of us and a big raspberry pie out in the fields…or stopping for ice cream in town and talking for hours…”
“I think we should take her right up on her kind offer,” Harry said with a soft smile that made Kristin’s heart melt.
They went on a date that night and many after, thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Mapleton. Even though she was twenty years older than Kristin, they gabbed like teenagers on the porch of Kristin’s house. All she asked for in return was a gallon of Kristin’s home-grown blueberry lemonade every summer.
Nate went to school in the nearby town, doing his farm chores early in the morning. All his spare time was spent sketching the lake near their house from a perch on favorite rock. He was happy on the farm, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about all the work he had to do.
“Mom, I hate having to do so many chores,” Nate said one day, wiping his forehead as he walked into the farmhouse. “I never had to do this back in the city.”
“But you never had this, either,” Kristin replied, sliding a glass of blueberry lemonade toward her now sixteen-year-old baby boy. “Straight from our own blueberry plants and our own lemon tree.”
Nate took a sip and tried not to smile at the perfectly sour-sweet taste
“Mrs. Mapleton will be coming over later to get some. Make sure to give her one of the gallons I put in the fridge, alright?”
“Fine.”
“I’m off to a Ladies’ Meeting at church. Your dad is out in the fields.”
“I know.”
Kristin ruffled his brown hair before heading out the door to the Ladies’ Meeting. She was right in the middle of a proud speech about her son when the ringing of the church’s ancient phone interrupted her. Mrs. Baker came back with a face that said all the women needed to know and tear-filled eyes fixed on Kristin.
Harry had been killed in a tractor accident.
–
The third was Cal. Short for Calvin Theodore Smith, a man about Kristin’s age who had come from Britain to take care of his sick sister. Kristin met him three years after Harry’s death and the subsequent move back to the city. Nate was off at college, her hair was short again, and she was lonely. She cut hair at a cheap salon five minutes away from her apartment after getting recertified in cosmetology. One day, she slipped on the stairs and ended up in the hospital with a broken arm. That didn’t turn out to be entirely terrible, because that’s where she met Cal. They bonded in the waiting room as he waited for his sister. Kristin connived to see him the next week at her checkup. From then, it was only a matter of time until their first date.
They kept dating for a year. Cal would take Kristin to gourmet restaurants and laughed at her when she asked if they could just get some fast food. He sent her flowers every Tuesday, right at 5 PM, so she would find them on her doorstep when she came home from work. She visited his sister often, but didn’t like doing so. Freya was a petulant, jealous woman, whose sickly condition made her prone to biting comments and pleas for pity. Kristin had seen Cal yell at his sister before, but she tried to block that out. She thought instead of his kindness reading to Freya when she was desperately ill and his constancy in taking a cup of tea to her every Saturday.
Nate met Cal on a visit home when Cal walked in on Kristin’s first dinner with her son for months. Nate hated him from the first time he opened his mouth. Cal was smooth-spoken, and Nate insisted that meant he was untrustworthy. He played the one card that worked with his mom: Cal seemed like Eric.
Kristin ignored all of Cal’s calls for a week, instead dedicating all her time to her son. She waved goodbye to Nate as he got on the train back to his college for the spring semester, then went back to her apartment and cried. Thirty minutes later, Cal showed up on her doorstep with flowers and a ring. Enchanted with this gentlemanly behavior, Kristin was soon engaged.
After the wedding, Kristin and Cal didn’t make it through one day of married life without arguing. They argued about the color of the curtains, Cal’s desire to go back to England, and Kristin’s old husbands. They argued about life and love and everything in between.
Kristin started going to a women’s group, just to get away from Cal and his incessant arguments. At first, she would zone out during the meetings as they talked about taking care of teething toddlers and husbands failing at making meatloaf, but soon she was listening to the other women there, relating to them, and making a few friends.
“Kristin, what do you think?” Ginny, a curly-haired woman with a penchant for wearing bright colors and holding open doors for everyone, asked after she’d shared about her experiences as an eldest daughter.
“Oh!” Kristin snapped back into focus. “Um…”
“You weren’t listening, were you?” Ginny said, but her tone held more laughter than scolding.
“Sorry,” Kristin said. Ginny smiled.
“I understand. I’ve had my share of all-consuming problems. Maybe you could…tell us about it?”
The other women nodded and scooted their chairs closer. Kristin found herself thinking about her gossip sessions with Mrs. Mapleton for the first time in a few years and missing the feeling of laughing with a friend after baring her soul.
She began to speak.
After that day, Kristin’s friends in the group were more important to her than Cal. She would get coffee with them and tell them about her few happy years on the farm, which Ginny in particular always said could relate to. Ginny had lost a husband too, but she was now engaged to another man. Kristin went to dinner with Ginny every Thursday night, and they would laugh and talk for hours over one of Ginny’s delicious home-cooked meals. Cal would scoff at how much time she spent away from home, but at this point, Kristin didn’t care. She just laughed, kissed his cheek, and headed off to bed.
Before Cal could take her on their first date as a married couple, Kristin was going to be Ginny’s bridesmaid.
–
She stared at her lipstick in the mirror, feeling the abundance of emotions connected to Eric, Harry, and Cal. Ginny squeezed her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just…remembering.”
Ginny smiled sympathetically. The first notes of the wedding march began playing, and both ladies hurried off to their positions. Kristin took her place among the other giggling bridesmaids and contemplated how lovely she felt wearing blue instead of white to a wedding.