What I Should’ve Said
What I Should’ve Said: Prologue

Sunday, July 25th

Norah

The bride couldn’t remember what her soon-to-be husband looked like or why she was marrying him in the first place.

I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, willing the features of Thomas’s smile to come to me, but all I see are black words on a gray page—a New York Times article I once read that compared two types of people: the ones who remember faces and the ones who remember names.

For the life of me, I can’t recall what the study proved or what it meant to be one or the other, but I do know the premise of the article speaks to me.

I’ve always been a face person.

Eye color, nose shape, the depth of a smile—even a tiny, obscure dimple in someone’s chin. I see it all so well, the details imprinting on the soft surface of my brain.

But a name? I can never remember a name. For six months, I thought my round-jawed neighbor’s name was Sally, but her name is really Margaret. Her dog, on the other hand, is Sally, and is a Jack Russell Terrier with wiry white hair and a snobby-looking, pointy nose. Don’t ask me how I found this out—Margaret and Sally running away from me every time I see them is trauma enough.

But today, on my wedding day of all days, there’s a glitch in my matrix, and I can’t remember what the man I’m supposed to marry looks like.

I try to picture him in my mind, but all I see is a foggy, blurred-out image of a man with great hair.

Thomas, my fiancé, does, in fact, have great hair. But he also has a face. One I’ve seen many, many times, and yet cannot for the life of me remember.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror reveals red splotches covering my chest, and my heart feels like it’s doing jumping jacks inside my throat. I wet a paper towel with cold water in an attempt to ease the angry welts down, but it does nothing, because on the inside, I feel like a terrible storm is coming. Flight-or-fight engaged, everything inside me wants to seek refuge somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I hope the truth will set you free.

My eyes dart to the bathroom counter, landing on the manila envelope bullseye. The script on top is feminine and delicate and the exact opposite of the cataclysmic bomb of truth that lies inside.

When I walked through the giant doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral today, journalists and photographers from Page Six were already here, taking pictures of my entrance and wishing me an early congratulations.

They don’t expect cold feet when you’re marrying someone as important as Thomas, and for as much as I can’t seem to remember what I ever liked about him right now, neither was I.

This cathedral, the very spot I’m supposed to get married, is a New York icon. Mariah Carey got married here in the nineties, and it sits smack-dab in the middle of Rockefeller Center and Saks on Fifth Avenue. It screams big money and big dreams and a one-in-a-million chance at happiness for a girl from a little bitty town in Vermont.

But the contents of that envelope prove it’s all just smoke and mirrors to hide the dirty, appalling truth.

Because not only do I not know what my fiancé’s face looks like today, I don’t know who my fiancé is at all.

“Apparently, your whole damn life is a lie,” I mutter to myself and brace my hands on the edges of the porcelain sink. In the mirror, my stupid bridal face stares back at me. All thanks to the beauty team my mother hired, my naturally curly, light-brown hair is in a perfect chignon, and my makeup is an elegant combination of light pinks and neutral tones that highlight my features.

Besides hives, I look good. Beautiful, even. But someone has poked the inside of my chest with a hot branding iron, and the sting is so poignant I should be a blubbering mess of tears. Instead, I am devoid of feeling. The kind of numb a woman in labor hopes an epidural will make her when a baby the size of a bowling bowl is trying to make its grand escape from her uterus.

Between my mother and stepdad and Thomas and Thomas’s family’s invitations, there are three hundred people here to watch me commit myself to one man for the rest of my life, and instead of excitedly prepping myself to walk down the aisle, I’m staring at an envelope.

There should’ve been red flags. I should’ve known. But I didn’t know, and now, I’m here with hundreds of people waiting, and I can’t stop seeing her face. Or the way her hands shook as she handed me the envelope.

With clammy palms, I run my hands down the front of the twenty-thousand dollar dress my mother’s favorite designer custom made for me. It makes me remember the day I went with her and Thomas’s mother to speak with the designer—I sat silently while they selected every detail.

Story of your life.

At twenty-six-years old, I have a backbone of rubber, ready to bend to anyone’s will. The dress, the location, the guest list—you know, all the details that brides usually get a say in—have all been picked by someone else.

And if I’m honest with myself, so was the groom.

Thomas is born and bred of real money. Influential. Powerful. He’s the kind of man my mother always envisioned, and naïvely longing for her approval, I agreed.

I look down at the envelope again and then back at myself in the mirror. I think about last night’s rehearsal and the vows the priest had us practice.

“Norah, will you take this man to be your husband for the rest of your life?”

Rest of your life. Those words stand out like a penis in a pair of gray sweatpants, and they’re not even the right words. The right words would be more like, Will you promise to make yourself blissfully unaware of the truth and fake your way through the life your mother and Thomas want you to live?

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, but when I open them again, the mirror might as well be one of those funhouse mirrors at a carnival, comically scrunching and twisting and turning my face up into all sorts of horrific expressions.

I don’t look like a blushing bride. I look like a woman who just had her entire world shattered with one sentence—I hope the truth will set you free.

Quickly, I gather the envelope, my little bridal purse, and the extra fabric of my train, and I exit the bathroom without looking back.

When I don’t replace anyone waiting for me in the hallway, I make my move.

The bride-to-be couldn’t remember the groom’s face…so she ran away instead.