“I looked it up on Trip Adviser!!”
I shake my head, smiling at Nessa’s endless optimism. She always finds the beautiful parts of anything. Why would Warsaw be any different?
“Come on!” she coaxes me. “I really want to see it. And I do speak Polish now . . .”
“Somewhat.”
“What do you mean ‘somewhat?’ ”
“Ehhh . . .” I shrug.
She puts her hands on her hips, frowning at me.
“How good is my Polish? Tell me the truth.”
I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I don’t want to lie to her, either.
“It’s about as good as a fourth-grade child,” I tell her.
“What!” she shrieks.
“A clever fourth-grade child,” I hasten to add.
“That’s not any better!”
“It’s a little better.” I say. “It’s a very difficult language.”
“How long did it take you to learn English?”
“Maybe a week,” I say. That’s not true at all, but she knows I’m teasing her.
She tries to give me a playful smack. I’m too quick—I grab her hand and kiss her palm instead.
“Are we going to Poland or not?” she demands.
I kiss her again, on the mouth this time.
“You know I’ll take you anywhere you want, Nessa.”
34
Nessa
It’s my wedding day.
You picture that day from the time you’re a little girl. You imagine what colors you’ll use, what your favors will look like. You plan it down to the tiniest detail.
Now that it’s here, I don’t give a damn about any of that.
The only thing I’m picturing is the man waiting for me at the altar.
I’m already bound to him, mind, body, and soul. All that’s left to do is say the words out loud.
My mother helps me get ready in the morning. She tries to put on a cheerful face, but I can tell she’s still worried about all this.
“You’re so young,” she says, more than once.
“Grandma was younger than me when she got married,” I remind her, holding up my left hand with its lovely old ring.
“I know,” my mother sighs.
My grandmother was the baby of her family, just like me. She was wealthy, pampered, and tacitly betrothed to a banker twenty years her senior. Then she got a flat tire on her bicycle, riding around down by the boardwalk. She wheeled it over to the closest garage. A young man pushed his way out from under a car—messy, sweaty, dressed in coveralls and coated in grease.
That was my grandfather. They snuck out to see each other every chance they got. She said the first time they met up in the park, she wasn’t even certain it was him, because she hardly recognized him cleanly scrubbed.
Eventually they were caught, and her father swore to cut her off without a dime if she ever saw that boy again. They ran away together the next night. The ring she wore on her wedding day was just a cheap nickel-plated band. My grandfather bought her the diamond ten years later, after he became an enforcer for the Callaghans.
My grandmother never spoke to her parents again.
My mother knows that. It’s why she gave me the ring, in the end. She doesn’t want the same thing to happen to us.
She kisses me gently on the forehead.
“You look beautiful, Nessa,” she says.
Riona brings me my bouquet of white roses. I didn’t bother with bridesmaids, so she’s wearing her usual style of sheath dress—tight and smooth, like armor. Her red hair is loose and bright around her shoulders.
“I like when you wear your hair like that,” I tell her.
“I hate when it’s in my face,” she says. “But I wanted to look nice today.”
She sets the roses down next to me on the dressing table.
“When will your new ballet be done?” she asks me.
“A few more months,” I say.
“Is it another fairytale?”
“I don’t know,” I laugh. “I don’t know what it is yet. I’m experimenting.”
“That’s good,” Riona says, nodding. “I admire that.”
“You do?” I say, surprised.
“Yes,” she says. “You’re finding your own way. That’s a good thing.”
“Riona,” I say, feeling a pang of guilt. “Didn’t you want Grandma’s ring?”
“No,” she frowns. “I told you—I’m never getting married.”
“How can you be sure?”
She tosses her head.
“I know what I’m like. I’m not a romantic. And I can barely stand living with my own family.”
“You never know,” I tell her. “You may be surprised who catches your eye someday.”
Riona shakes her head at me.
“You think that because you are a romantic,” she says.
Aida comes in to visit me last, bringing me a pair of her shoes—the ones she wore at her own wedding, not even a year ago. It seems like another lifetime.
“There you go,” she says. She looks at my ring, my bouquet, and the shoes. “Now you have something old and something new, something borrowed and . . . do you have anything blue?”
I blush.
“My underwear is blue,” I tell her.
She laughs. “Perfect!”
She helps me slip on the shoes and buckle them. It’s hard for me to bend all the way over in my dress. It’s bright white, with fitted sleeves of transparent lace, an open back, and a full tulle skirt. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a full-grown woman for the very first time. I see who I was meant to be.
“My parents aren’t very happy,” I say to Aida.
She shrugs.
“They weren’t happy on my wedding day, either.”
“At least it was their idea.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aida says, fiercely. “Cal and I hated each other. You and Miko are crazy about each other. All that matters is passion. A marriage strangles and dies on apathy. Passion keeps it alive.”
“So you don’t think they were brilliant matchmakers?” I tease her.
“Hell no!” Aida laughs. “It was pure luck we didn’t murder each other. Don’t give your parents too much credit.”
I smile. “I’m not getting cold feet. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“I know,” Aida says, hugging me. “Come on. Cal’s got your coat.”
I walk across the main floor toward the back door.
We’re in Mikolaj’s house. We’re going to be married out in his garden. It doesn’t matter that it’s February—I couldn’t marry him anywhere but here, under the dark, bare branches, beneath a wide-open sky.
My brother wraps the thick white cloak around my shoulders. It trails behind me, as long as the train of my dress.
I step out into the garden and cross the grass.
I don’t feel the cold at all. The snow is drifting down, thick and soft. It makes the garden utterly quiet, muffling any sounds from outside the high stone walls.
My family is waiting for me, along with a dozen of Mikolaj’s men. I see Klara standing next to Marcel, smiling excitedly. She’s wearing the black gown from the attic, underneath a long coat, and she looks absolutely gorgeous.