Read The Late, Lamented Molly Marx for Free Online Page A

must have assumed I’d say yes, because from the restaurant we drove immediately to his mother’s apartment, where at least a dozen relatives and family intimates had gathered to toast our future happiness. “To Dr. and Mrs. Marx,” Kitty said, raising a glass of Veuve Clicquot. Until that point, it never occurred to me that I’d ever not be Divine. My name was as good as it gets, even if I had to share it with an obese drag queen. But Barry echoed Kitty with “To Mrs. Marx,” and I was smothered by well-wishers. Only late that evening, when Barry dropped me at home on Jane Street, did I call my parents.
    “Larry who?” my father asked.
    “Barry,” I said. “Barry Marx. The doctor.”
    “The plastic surgeon?” my mother asked.
    “He prefers
cosmetic
.”
    The silence between New York and Chicago stood between us like ice. “Are you sure, sweetie?” my mom continued. “You just ended things with Christopher.”
    “Christian,” I said. “And it’s been nine months.” Our breakup had been a load off for my mother, who offered me a subscription to J-Date within hours of hearing the news. “Marriage is hard enough without Jesus coming between you,” she’d said.
    “When will we meet this Barry?” my parents asked more or less in unison; then and there I saw myself as an ungrateful brat because I’d impulsively agreed to marry a man my parents had never laid eyes on. My mother and father, I always felt, had been nothing less than perfect-two people I genuinely respected, who were generous and just interfering enough for me to know they cared.
    “We’ll work it out,” I said quietly.
    “Has Lucy met him?” my father asked. If Lucy approved of Barry, it would be good enough for him. Divine family lore classified my father and Lucy as the sensible ones, while I was considered to be a good-hearted and dizzy blonde like my mother.
    “Not yet,” I said. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. I wanted my parents to be bouncing with happiness, not shooting questions as if our conversation were a press conference. “Aren’t you pleased?” I finally asked. If I whined, I note in my defense that it was late and my face hurt from smiling.
    “Molly darling, if you want to marry this man, he must be extremely special,” my mother said. Not only was she always a steel beam of support, she knows when to end a conversation. “But don’t rush. Have a long engagement.”
    The next day, Barry and I set a date for only four months later and I kicked into action. Calligraphy or my mother’s distinctive penmanship? DJ or band? Cornish hens or Chilean sea bass? Tent or no tent? Peonies or hydrangeas? Noon or twilight? Vintage Bentley or a Cadillac in Mary Kay pink? Hair up or hanging loose? No detail was too small to be deconstructed as if it were a line from the Talmud.
    Except for the Bentley and band, Barry didn’t voice strong opinions. “You’re only going to do this once, Molly—I’ll go with whatever you want,” he said, and made me feel as loved as I ever had by a man.
    “I never took you for a psycho bride,” Brie said as we gown-shopped in New York three months before the wedding.
    Brie was right. I fulfilled every cliché, obsessing over decisions as if the lives of babies depended on them. A pink wedding? Too cupcake. Yellow? Unflattering on 80 percent of skin types, claims
Allure
. Blue would do, but “nothing too Cozumel,” I lectured as I whipped out a paint chip to show the wedding coordinator, whom I’d forced my parents to hire at considerable expense. “It’s got to be barely blue, like a duck’s egg.” Terms like “too matchy-matchy” infected my vocabulary. I am sure people were mocking me, but ensconced as I was in my bride bubble, how could I hear or see?
    When it came to the gown, however, Brie talked me down to earth. After I considered no fewer than five hundred possibilities culled from every bridal magazine—even
Las Vegas Wedding
—and we had the ooh-la-la