GHOSTING STORIES
Maude and Richard
It was Maude’s wedding day, and she looked awful in her dress. It bunched and sagged and pillowed and bulged. It washed her out while somehow also accentuating what was, in Maude’s mind, her worst feature—her face. Richard wouldn’t care; she knew this because she looked awful in everything, and he never cared, or even seemed to notice. He didn’t really talk about how she looked, but he wasn’t one of those skeezy older men who talked about how other women looked either. Instead, he laughed hard at her jokes, engaged her in enriching conversation, made her extravagant meals, and held her hand proudly in public. He absently played with her hair while they watched movies as though it were long and soft rather than short and wiry. He touched her face affectionately when he told her he loved her, and his eyes crinkled at the sides, like he couldn’t believe he was so lucky. When this happened, she always felt her eyes do the same thing.
Maude smiled into the full-length mirror, aghast at all those lines. It was definitely harder to look good in fancy things when you were in your sixties—not impossible, just harder than it was when you were twenty-five. You could do all the squats you wanted, walk ten miles every day, apply moisturizer with a fire hose—didn’t matter: you’d lived in your body, and it showed. For the first time in her life, Maude wished she’d gotten married in her early twenties—this dress was meant for that bride. But then she thought about the kind of man she would’ve chosen back then, and she laughed out loud and decided not to worry about her face or her bulging midsection and enjoy the fact that she was in actual, mutual love. Maybe deciding not to worry was one of the few things that came easier when you were in your sixties.
And so, gathering up her courage and multiple layers of tulle and satin, she boarded a bus to the park beside the courthouse downtown, where they were to meet their photographer before the ceremony—Richard’s idea. The people on the bus stared at her curiously, and she smiled back, unbothered. Maybe they think I look beautiful, she thought, and before she could dismiss the notion, she put it on like another dress and wore it all the way to the park.
The photographer was already there when she arrived, and he didn’t notice her at first. He was taking pictures of a tree for some reason—circling it slowly like it was the bride, rotating the camera and fiddling with it, spinning the little dials, stopping every so often to frown with consternation at the sun like he hadn’t expected it to be out at two p.m.
He wasn’t a professional photographer, just a friend of Richard’s who had always enjoyed taking pictures. This meant that his services were going to be cheap, and that was the most important thing. Maude and Richard’s wedding album would not be passed down from generation to generation; it would merely sit on a coffee table for a few years until Maude and Richard were gone, and then someone would take the pictures out of it and throw them in the garbage, and the album, if it was lucky, would end up in a thrift store with a twenty-five-cent sticker on it. This was Maude’s first marriage, Richard’s second, and neither of them had children. Their relationship wasn’t the start of anything but itself.
“Hi, Maude!” said the photographer.
“Hi,” said Maude. She couldn’t remember his name.
“You look beautiful,” said the photographer.
“Liar!” said Maude, laughing. “Take lots of pictures of us kissing and from behind. More of him than me. Maybe we could do a few of those funny ones where the bride holds her bouquet in front of her face.”
“Okay,” said the photographer, looking uncomfortable. “Speaking of, why don’t we start with some bridal portraits? I read that lots of brides like to have just a couple—”
“No, thank you,” said Maude quickly. “None of just me.”
“Oh, okay, sure, no problem, sorry,” said the photographer. He took another picture of the tree.
“I’m just going to sit over there on that bench until my groom arrives,” Maude said, giddy at the thought of Richard walking down the tree-lined path toward her, dressed in a suit, looking at her in that way he always did, like she was an angel and Jane Fonda and the only woman left on planet Earth.
She arranged her pretty dress around her on the park bench and patted her hair and ran her ring fingers under her eyes to check for stray flecks of mascara and then she sat—and sat, and sat—until she began to wonder if she had misunderstood Richard when he’d said they should meet at this park. But the photographer was here; what were the chances they’d both gotten it wrong?
“Excuse me, uh . . . Mister . . . Photographer,” said Maude, a little embarrassed that she couldn’t remember the young man’s name. “I’m going to find a pay phone. I’ll be right back. If Richard gets here before I do, make him feel bad for being so late, will you?” She smiled to show she wasn’t serious.
“Okay,” said the photographer, who did not appear to mind being called “Photographer.” It even seemed to puff him up a bit. “Are there working pay phones, still?”
“Of course there are working pay phones!” Maude chuckled. “Not everybody has a cell phone in their pocket.”
The photographer mumbled something about thinking that everybody did, actually, have a cell phone in their pocket, and Maude went off to find a working pay phone.
She was right; there was one just around the corner, and she punched Richard’s number into it, feeling conspicuous. A wedding dress was, by design, a conspicuous thing to begin with—but usually if you were wearing one, it meant that you did not have to be conspicuous all by yourself. Usually.
The phone rang a few times. She wasn’t upset yet, just a little concerned. If he answered, that would be bad; he lived twenty minutes out of town, and he was already late. If he didn’t answer, though, that might be worse because, well, where was he?
“Hello?”
Okay. Bad but not worse.
“Richard!” Maude exclaimed. “What are you still doing at home?”
“Maude! Oh, Maude.” He sounded surprised to hear her voice. Who did he think would be calling on the day of his wedding?
She was quiet as she waited for a wave of emotion to pass. It was fine; everything was fine. It was her wedding day! But then, Richard wasn’t here, so . . . “Did . . . did you forget our wedding, Richard?”
“Mm . . .” His voice rumbled over the phone line. “See . . . yes. No! No, I didn’t. No, I was . . . I’m all . . . I’m trying to think of that . . . saying . . . cold something. Cold . . . ?”
“Richard. Are you okay?” He sounded off. His speech was slurred, and he seemed confused. She tried not to panic. “Richard? Richard!” What were you supposed to ask if you suspected a person was having a stroke? There was an acronym for it. FAST. That was it. Face. Arms . . . something, something. It would come to her; time was of the essence. “Okay, Richard, face—”
This caused Richard to break into laughter. “Cold face? No! Cold face?” He laughed so hard he struggled to form sentences. “Cold feet! That’s what it is. But no, that can’t be it either. That’s just ab . . . absur . . .” A gurgling sound traveled through the receiver, followed by an emphatic belch. “Cold feet! Ha! ‘Maude, my feet are too cold to get married. My feet—’” He was laughing too hard to finish his sentence.