KNOWING YOUR BRIDAL RIGHTS
By Judy Zimola

Why am I sitting on the porch with my head between my knees? How much time do you have? Just kidding. Sort of. Oh don't worry. Everything is status quo, considering I've just given my future in-laws the impression that I'm having daily conversations with Elvis. It's true what they say about breathing upside down, though. Breath by pre-nuptial breath I'm gaining a clearer perspective, and I can see now that none of this is my fault. I was merely invoking the Bride's Right.

The lady patting my back is Mean Vick. Yes, Mean. She's mean because she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. No, of course not really. She'll just tell you that if you're drunk and inadvertently spit while asking for her number. Marin County, California has just vested her with the power to marry Patrick and me tomorrow morning. For the next 24 hours she'd like you to call her Reverend Vick. I'd humor her if I were you.

This whole day started out rickety. While shuffling to the kitchen, trying to throw off the remnants of a dream involving Martha Stewart, a tabby cat and a pair of blue coveralls, I came face-to-face with Patrick's bon vivant brother Jim over the coffee pot. For the record, I am not a morning person. I have met morning people, even befriended a few, and they bug me. Jim is a morning person despite jet lag, which really frosts my butt. Still, he's traveled all the way from Paris to join us, so I put on my game face.

"How's zee blushing bride?" he inquires, his voice all croissants and ouefs.

Oof. There's another thing. The whole business with the shy bride and wedding party dressed all in tulle and the water music, that's not happening. It didn't even happen with marriage number one. Now, eleven years later, I'm exploiting my age and cynicism. That is, I've decided to own my quirks rather than squash them. For instance, my Perfect World Scenario One-A, Blowout Day before the Wedding goes like this: a good boink, a mile-deep nap, and a brain-scrubbing plunge off a rope swing into a naked April pond. And somebody else does all the chores. All that spa/Bach/mimosa stuff is a load.

This day quickly slid down the ladder of Perfect World Scenarios until it rested at around Scenario 11-e. I did my own damn chores. Well, Reverend Vick and I did. She drove me around Marin County in her pickup while the windshield wipers induced a kind of blue trance. She stopped for espresso every time I even mentioned Martha Stewart's cat. She played Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison real loud, an attempt at a mental enema. It rained stubbornly, and the time got so short I couldn't even get a manicure. The right corner of my upper lip developed an attractive twitch because of all the high-grade caffeine. We still had to stop at the bank and the shoe place before going home for a quick shower. Future in-laws were arriving hourly and I had to be perky and lucid and it had to last for at least a day and a half.

Somewhere between Wells Fargo and down the rabbit hole, Vick parked the truck in a quiet spot and asked me the question all brides, cynical or otherwise, must answer as if their future, nay their entire being, depends on it. Judy, she asked, have you had your bridal fit yet?

The bridal fit, she informed me, is a tradition dating back to pre-colonial times. Brides are entitled-no, expected to pitch a raging fit at any given time three days prior to the wedding. Brides are not held responsible for their actions during the fit. If the hissy is not delivered, rights to said fit are null and void after the first glass of reception champagne. Bride's Rights clause, she claimed. I could Google it.

I suspect Mean Vick made this up, but who cares? In this crock of puckey I found a kernel of truth, a truth that begat comfort. Enough comfort to glide me through the stress of having the ATM chew up my card. Reserves of comfort that sustained me when the guy at the shoe dye place handed over my elegant Kenneth Cole shoes dyed a stunning shade of cotton candy pink. "Yeah, that's as close as we can get to the sample you gave us" he explained, handing me the shoes and rose beige dress swatch. "Those Payless shoes, you know, them Coasters? They take on the dye better." Vick offered to stuff the shoes into a dark cavity on shoe guy's body for free; part of her job as a de facto reverend. I declined her thoughtful (though a bit over-eager) gesture. I was Her Serene Highness Princess Judy, and it was time to go home.

The atmosphere was fizzy as champagne when Vick and I entered the house. Everyone was near the kitchen, of course: my parents, along with my sister Sue, brother John and his wife Liz. Patrick's mom had arrived from France and was chatting with her stateside daughter and grown grandchildren. Glenn Miller was putting everyone in the mood as family ties were forged over glasses of brut. I felt all rose-petaly as I hugged my big new family.

And yet . . . something was wrong. Not quite jiving. I sensed a fly in the aspic, something out of place. There, nestled among the bottles of champagne, was a plastic bag with some green fuzzy pods in it. It made no sense. I didn't like it. In fact, I flat-out hated it. When I asked whose bright idea it was to buy-what are these anyway, beans or something?-Jim stepped forward. They're fava beans, he explained with that Euro accent that morphed from charming to curdling in three short words. You know. Legumes.

Oh really.

I should have just averted my gaze but I swear, it was locked onto those blasted favas with a Kryptonite cable. I was rendered helpless by the combination of fatigue, giddiness, and lovey-dovey overload. My blood rose, snaking its way up my legs, into my stomach where it did a quick, deft coil, then on up my chest and to my neck, where it nested, throbbing. Right then the favas became the missing ATM and the pink shoes and the scruffy fingernails, and Jim was the reason for all of it.

Jim must be suffering jet lag because, boy, that was a really stupid thing to buy, I spewed. It must be nice to just buy any old legume that struck your fancy. I'd lay even money there's a burlap bag full of frogs in the backyard, too. I'm right, aren't I? Say, how about some boiled head cheese on rye? No, seriously, I saw it on the Iron Chef, and that and legumes would really complement this fine vintage …

Which brings us out to the front porch. I think Vick steered me out here. She complimented me on my fit, saying it was one of the finest conniptions west of the Sierras, bridal or otherwise. I think she gives me too much credit. After all, it wouldn't have happened had she not hipped me to the little-known Bride's Right clause. I'm positive Jim's in there now, looking it up on Google.

Like I said, it's not my fault.