I'm No Saint : Part 4

Memoir of a Wayward Wife
by Elizabeth Hayt

(Page 4 of 4)

I had known Cathy since my junior year at Barnard. We first met in a dorm where she was eating cold peas from a can for breakfast, wearing a metallic blue raincoat, black micro miniskirt, and bronze pumps. She was tiny, smaller than me, but very bosomy. With her flaming red hair, frosted eye makeup, and hurried manner, she appeared a fiery sprite who looked so glamorous, I assumed she'd grown up in "The City," as we Great Neckers referred to Manhattan. No, she said, Lubbock, where she was raised a Southern Baptist, the youngest of six kids, all of whom played the guitar in church during Sunday hymns, and went to parochial school in a green-and-navy-checked uniform.

During my senior year, I moved to Paris to write my thesis. Cathy was already living there, attending an international business school. When she had a free weekend, we spent it together, a pair of single American girls. One night, we went to see the Béjart Ballet at l'Opéra, met a couple of French guys, got sloshed on red wine, and had a foursome. What a memory - an up-close view of my friend being fucked from behind.

Back in the Garden City Hotel bathroom, another one of my bridesmaids, Susan, offered her support for Charlie. "He's a really good person," she said. "He'll be a good father to your children. You can be proud to be married to such a man. He doesn't try to change you."

Susan and I had become friends in graduate school. Auburn-haired, green-eyed, and six feet tall, she was the most composed woman I had ever met, never overreacting, swearing, or sleeping around, though totally nonjudgmental about those who did. I liked her immediately. She dressed up for class - fuchsia lipstick, Yves Saint Laurent jumpsuits, cinch belts around her wasp waist, and four-inch spike heels with ankle straps. We were united in our contempt for a dykey-looking student who wore cat-eye glasses and had a dark, fuzzy upper lip, calling her The Troll, and another with a vertical shaft of black wiry hair whom we named Nefertiti Head.

After the first year, Susan and I were each granted summer travel fellowships and together went to southern France. I was awestruck by everything: the silvery olive trees, the open-air markets, and, no matter how provincial the town, that French women always had great haircuts.

In Cap d'Antibes, Susan and I went midnight skinny-dipping. We were staying in a hotel on the Mediterranean shore where, beneath a full moon, I gave a blow job to the manager, a married Frenchman and Rock Hudson look-alike. When he moaned, "Tu me fais jouir," I quickly pulled my mouth away, not wanting to swallow frog jism. He caught the spurt in his hand before flinging it out to sea.

None of my bridesmaids was planning on marriage anytime soon, if at all. Their parents had actually discouraged it, only wanting their daughters to be happy and self-sufficient. Cathy's would refer to her boyfriends as "that Drake," or "that Nicholas," like they were some sort of germs. Susan's mother expected her daughter to remain a virgin indefinitely. My girlfriends never gave a thought to the things that worried me: time running out, the fading of my youthful glow, and every available guy on the planet being taken. With other priorities, Cathy had transferred to Columbia University to finish business school and Susan was heading to Los Angeles to complete her PhD at UCLA.

Looking at them, I had to swallow the resentment rising in my throat. Didn't I have what every girl really wanted - a husband? If so, then why, on my wedding day, did it feel like they were the ones leaving me behind?

When finally the reception ended and the guests had grabbed the centerpieces on their way out, my bridesmaids said their good-byes. It was time for Charlie's and my parents to go. I could sense they were lingering. Their gazes were wistful, and I imagined them hearing the words to "Sunrise, Sunset" about how quickly children grow up.

Although the song expressed the parents' loss, it reflected mine, too. When did I become such an adult? I may have been in my midtwenties with some hard living behind me but I wasn't yet ready to settle down, run a home, and keep the refrigerator stocked. I wasn't ready to be a Mrs.

I didn't want our parents to drive away. Once they were gone, there would be no postponing the inevitable: the honeymoon suite of the Garden City Hotel. There, the sight of the king-size bed covered in a mauve sateen spread, on which my bridesmaids had strewn red rose petals, awaited us. Everyone probably thought that as newlyweds, Charlie and I couldn't wait to rip off our wedding clothes and consecrate our marriage with scented massage oils and marathon lovemaking.

When we entered the room, we pulled back the drapes to check out the view over the parking lot. Then, exhausted, we collapsed into a pair of tufted armchairs. He was still wearing his wing-collared shirt and gray-and-black-striped foulard, while I had on my gown and garter. We ordered room service. The performance of the white-gloved waiter lifting the silver-plated lids off our filet mignon dinners while we remained formally dressed made us feel like we were on Robin Leach's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

We ate our dinner watching TV, afterward raiding the mini bar for Toblerone chocolate and Diet Cokes, gossiping about who did and didn't do what at the wedding. We showered separately, using the sample-size Crabtree é Evelyn bath products. It was midnight before we finally forced ourselves to pull back the bedcovers. Neither of us said a word. We just lay there in silence with the lights out until I finally got up the nerve to whisper, "Now what?"

Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Hayt

About the Author

Elizabeth Hayt is a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle. While on romantic sabbatical, she lives with her three dogs in New York City.