“Okay,” my mother said, flipping through some pages on her clipboard. “How’s this: we just find another bridesmaid. Ashley, you could ask one of your friends, right?”

“Mother,” Ashley said in that annoyed voice that I’d heard way too much of in the last six months, “the wedding is tomorrow.”

“I know that,” my mother said wearily.

“There’s no time to get a bridesmaid, get a dress, get it fitted.... We can’t do it. There’s no way.” Ashley picked at the fringe of her cutoffs.

“How about bumping an usher?” Lydia suggested. “There’s got to be somebody we can ask to bow out. For the sake of evenness.”

“We can’t throw someone out of the wedding,” Ashley said. “God, that would be so horrible. ‘Oh, thanks for renting the tux and everything, but we won’t be needing you. Get lost.”’

“Of course we wouldn’t say it like that,” Lydia said sullenly, and they all got quiet, their minds working this over.

I figured this was the best time of any to come in, so I headed straight across the kitchen, over Ashley in the doorway, and made a quick dash for the stairs.

“Haven?” My mother was already after me. I heard her pushing her chair away from the table, that familiar scrape, and then her footsteps coming down the hallway behind me. “Haven, I have to talk to you.”

I stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned to look down at her. She seemed very small. “What is it?”

“Well,” she said, starting to climb up, step by step, “I got a strange call from Burt Isker. Did you have some sort of problem at work today?”

“No,” I said, turning back around and taking the rest of the stairs, then heading to my room only a few paces away.

“Whatever happened, we can talk about it,” she said quietly, still following me. I felt that stab of guilt, but pushed it away because I was tired of protecting her from my father, forgiving him for leaving us for the pregnant Weather Pet, giving Ashley free reign to hurt me because she was The Bride.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, and even as the words came out I knew the look I’d see if I turned around, the hurt like a slap spreading across her face. But I didn’t turn around, didn’t even stop walking, until I was in my room with my hand on the back of the door, closing it.

“Haven,” my mother said in a louder voice, trying to be stern, “we’re going to talk about this. If you’re accosting the customers and running out on your job, obviously something is going on that we need to discuss. Now I know it’s been hard this summer with the wedding, but this isn’t—”

“It’s not about the wedding. It’s not about the goddamn wedding or Ashley. For once this isn’t about her. It just isn’t,” I said, now looking at her face closely as it changed from authoritative to lost. And then I slammed the door in my mother’s face, so hard it shook the pictures in their frames on the wall of my room. I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door, waiting for me to open it, apologize, pull her close, and save her from everything just like I always did. But I didn’t. Not this time.

A few minutes later, as if conceding defeat, she just said, “Well, don’t forget your father is coming over. You told him you’d go shopping with him for a gift for your sister.” Her voice was soft, and she was trying to sound like she wasn’t upset. She waited another minute, as if this might bring me out, and then I heard her going slowly down the stairs.

I walked to my bed and stretched out across it, symmetrical, with my feet pressed to the bedposts and my head locked against the headboard. I closed my eyes and tried to block it all out, the mall and the bathing-suit woman and my mother’s face as the door swung to close on her. I tried to think about anything to block out the sound from my vent, so clear, and what I knew they’d be saying about me as soon as my mother got back downstairs.

“What’s wrong?” That was Ashley.

“Nothing.” My mother didn’t sound like herself, her voice quiet and even. “Let’s get back to this bridesmaid problem.”

“What did she say to you?” Ashley said, protective now. “God, what is her problem lately? She’s impossible to deal with. I swear, it’s like she’s purposely doing it so close to the wedding just to ruin it....”

“It’s not about the wedding,” my mother said quietly, echoing my own words. “Just leave it alone, Ashley. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

“I just think she could wait to have her nervous breakdown until next week. I mean, it’s not like we don’t have enough on our hands, and it’s pretty selfish, really.”

“Ashley,” my mother said in a louder voice, sounding tired. “Leave it alone.”

I lay there and listened as they talked about Carol, the difficult bridesmaid, who was supposed to fly in that afternoon but apparently had called earlier to say she had broken off her own engagement just this morning and was therefore too hysterical to attend. They went round and round, coming up with plan after plan, none of which would work. I looked at the clock. It was only eleven-fifteen.

And I was still expected to go shopping with my father, to pick out the Perfect Gift for the Perfect Wedding. It was too late to cancel; my father had his faults, but he was always punctual. I went to my bathroom and washed my face, looking at myself under the greenish fluorescent light. I looked sick, haunted, which I felt was appropriate so I just left my face as it was, without applying any makeup or touching my hair. I was still in my work clothes as I crept downstairs, and out onto the porch to wait for him.