When we last left Effie, she was brooding in the bathroom at her sister's Wedding reception...
3.) She never dated a guy named Hamlet, which would have made her Shakespeare-loving sister extremely happy.
3a.) This might have saved her from a bad swim in the river though.
3b.) On the other hand, she could have dated the Prince of Denmark, which is higher in rank than a doctor.
2.) You can’t double date with your older sister if she’s married. That’s just weird.
1.) Ophelia has only dated three guys. What if George isn’t the one and she doesn’t know and she’s divorced by 25? Then she’ll have to move back home when I would have already moved out.
I heard the door to the main bathroom open. Luckily, the stall doors went down to the floor so nobody could see my feet.
“Are you sure?” It was Ophelia.
There was a loud nose-blow. It was my mother.
“We’ll miss you, of course. But you’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“I’ll visit all the time,” Ophelia said.
I snorted. That’s what they all say.
When Robbie’s older brother got married, they moved to Florida. Robbie only sees his brother like, once a year.
My mom blew her nose again – a great big honk.
“My girls are growing up so fast.”
“Where is Effie?” Ophelia asked.
“She’s probably at the buffet. Are you ready to go back, dear? You don’t want to spend your whole reception in the bathroom.”
Mom and Ophelia laughed and I heard a door shut behind them.
Probably at the buffet.
2.) I need her home to be my big sister.
1.) I need her home to save me from Weight Watchers, the Cabbage Soup diet and whatever else my mom decides is best for me.
I reached for the lock on the bathroom door. It was a silver deadbolt, and it wouldn’t budge. I propped my coke on the toilet paper roll and took the knob in both hands and tried to pull it to the right. It still wouldn’t budge.
I kicked the door, flailing my arms into the cup of coke, which flew off the toilet paper roll and all down the side of my hideously pink dress.
“Damnit!” I yelled.
Nobody answered.
I banged on the door, frantically throwing the sides of my fists in front of me.
Nobody answered.
I’m going to be stuck in the bathroom for the rest of Ophelia’s reception.
I sat back down on the toilet lid, and wiped my sugar-coated right arm on my dress skirt. I wasn’t worried about the dress – I was never going to wear it again, anyway.
3.) You’re going to miss the cake. (Shut up, I like cake.)
2.) You can’t catch the bouquet, further solidifying your existence as a future cat-lady.
1.) Your sister won’t even notice you weren’t there.
My stomach growled. I hadn’t had a chance to grab dinner before going to the ladies room, and now I was going to miss the buffet and the cake.
Before Ophelia was consumed in wedding-related bullshit, (I’m sorry, I just don’t care if the centerpieces are six inches tall or eight inches tall!) Anyway, before Ophelia was all about flowers and centerpieces and which color pink would look best on her bridesmaids, she and I used to do a Friday night dinner. We would talk about some of our mutual high school friends, who was dating who, or how she liked working at the hospital. One of the things we never talked about, was what I was eating. Or how much I was eating. At least one Friday a week, I could eat guilt-free.
When I was a freshman and Ophelia was a senior, I invited Robbie to join us. I didn’t really know Robbie at that point, he was just some guy that sat next to me in science lab. But I thought he was cute, and so when I was talking to Ophelia in the hallway and he stopped to ask for earth science help, I invited him to come with us. Of course, the next day in lab all he could talk about was how pretty Ophelia was, and how he’d never guess we were sisters (read: Ophelia is skinny). I smiled and nodded and pretended like I didn’t know what he was really saying. But I did. He was saying that he couldn’t understand how one sister could be so beautiful, and the other one a slightly overweight, brace-faced plain Jane.
It was fine, I didn’t blame Ophelia… much. She clearly wasn’t interested in Robbie. And even though my stomach still drops a little every time Robbie mentions her name, we’re still second-best-friends. Probably best-friends, now that Ophelia’s best-friend is George.
I heard the music get a bit louder as the door swung open. Instinctively, I froze and listened.
“Isn’t Ophelia beautiful?” I heard a gravelly voice ask. I heard the hacking cough of my grandmother.
It always amuses me the way my grandmother can puff on a cigarette in one hand, and poke at my fat with the other.
“Obesity kills, you know,” she’d say while we were sitting around the kitchen table.
“So does smoking,” I had the balls to say once.
Grandma didn’t speak to me for a week.
1 comments:
I'm enjoying the continuing saga. This is really fun.
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