Now I can make everything perfect.
This is what Chelsea told herself while unpacking her new apartment in Phoenix. The two-bedroom unit offered a lot more to her than just more square footage and warmer weather than her previous home in Vermont. It felt like a clean slate, blank walls, new construction, a tabla rossa for the next chapter in her life. Like so many of us feel when presented with the opportunity to make a change, Chelsea had some big dreams for herself. She was going to leave the mess behind, start fresh, and reinvent herself.
She’d just graduated from UVM, spending those years living in a large, crumbling Victorian home with eight or eleven other roommates, depending on the week. The place had been furnished with a hodgepodge of furniture rescued from both other people’s houses and the side of the road. The place had never really felt truly clean. Chelsea hated the idea of appearing uptight so she kept her mouth shut and her germophobic tendencies to herself.
This is good for you, she’d whisper while dusting her bedroom in privacy, everything doesn’t have to be planned. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect.
But telling yourself something and actually believing it are two wildly different things. In Phoenix, while desperately trying to feel some sense of control, she took to putting together her apartment as if it were a set-up display for The Container Store.
Chelsea had an obsessive, intense need to organize. She emptied the shelves at Target, purchasing more plastic bins and shelf dividers than she needed. She folded her shirts around a cardboard square like she learned to do when she worked at the GAP in high school. Her clothes resembled a retail store at the opening of the day. She even put her label maker in her carry-on for the flight. Like her medications and toothbrush, she didn’t want to be stranded without it for any length of time.
When her space was perfectly put away, every dish stacked in an obsessive order, every pair of underwear folded in the same-sized square, every cosmetic categorized in a labeled drawer, Chelsea was finally able to give into her exhausted brain and body and set her alarm for her first day of work.
The following morning was a whirlwind. She was onboarded by Rue LaPage, an executive twelve years older than her. Rue was, well, as far as Chelsea could see, a woman with a perfect life. She’d worked her way up in the company, starting right after graduation just like Chelsea. She’d received a promotion every year at her annual review. She also trained a puppy to do agility competitions and met her now-husband at 27. At 29, she’d gotten engaged, married at 31, and was now showing Chelsea the ropes because she would be clocking out for maternity leave in the next month. The pictures on her desk served as more than a gentle inspiration: they turned into Chelsea’s roadmap for her own future.
During her weeklong training, she took exhaustive notes, not just about Rue’s position, her expectations (Chelsea was joining Rue’s team of five,) but also about every nugget of personal information that Rue let slide.
Rue was fit, a by-product of running seven times a week with a highly-trained dog. She seemed to have a robust social life, a very nice kitchen (Chelsea squinted at the background of one of her photos,) went on vacations, had this great man, and was highly respected at her job. Chelsea didn’t want to admit to herself that she sounded obsessive and a little Single, White Female-y but if a genie with a bottle offered her three wishes, she would have wished to have Rue’s life and given the other two away. That’s how ideal it looked.
That night, she powered up her laptop, the cord neatly coiled and stuck to the side of her desk with an organizer clip that might have been the best $0.99 she’d ever spent, and next few hours until bedtime were filled with organizing her files, filling in her calendar obsessively, logging some of the same milestones inspired by Rue. Her expectations were a bit much.
Let's fast forward a dozen years later, when Chelsea looks back on this time, this year, this night specifically, she feels a soft spot for her younger self. She doesn’t regret her perspective, that anal-controlling young woman might have set her older self up for disappointment in the world, but she also set herself up for a lot of success. She was not a lifelong employee of the company like Rue. She’d been poached twice - once to a logistics firm in Arizona and then a second time to Austin, Texas. She was certainly not expecting the Southern city to be home. She was wrong.
Austin took some getting used to. It was a quickly growing city, way younger and funkier and dirtier than Phoenix. She couldn’t find a brand-new apartment anywhere. She’d wanted something like she had before, uninteresting, easy to clean, orderly. That didn’t happen. The real estate agent helping her had too many tattoos to make her feel comfortable describing what she really wanted. Instead, Chelsea signed a lease on a converted loft space that forced her to use her imagination to decorate
She got some plants for the first time in her life even though, as you probably know, they are full of dirt and can attract bugs. Chelsea took design classes and made friends at her new creative firm who refused to conform to any kind of personality norms. She even shopped twice with them at a vintage store, forcing herself to block out the idea of how many germs were living in those four walls.
Ok, yes, she washed everything on the sanitizer setting twice before she wore her new clothes, but still.
Chelsea began expanding her hobbies and social circle. It had been a long time since she’d even thought of Rue. But Chelsea being Chelsea had entered her old boss’s birthday into her calendar and sent a card every year. Her fastidiousness was part of the reason that her professional life had blossomed. And her (albeit, grudging) effort to go with the flow and chase new opportunities was the reason she was now doing so well. Rue was always both grateful and surprised to hear from her.
Chelsea! You remembered!
Chelsea didn’t have the heart to tell the now full-time dog trainer that Google was remembering for her.
With the idea of a design career percolating in an organized part of her brain, Chelsea made sure to be on top of her networking opportunities. Every Sunday, after a green juice, two cups of coffee, and a morning run, she’d log into her Linkedin, respond to requests, and then reply appropriately to a myriad of invites, both social and professional. It helped assuage her Sunday Scaries to imagine herself living through each day of the week, each activity, meeting, and even cocktails with friends. To some, it may have been a little over the top. To Chelsea, it just worked for her. So, you can imagine her surprise when she logged into her calendar and saw an invitation for a wedding that she didn’t remember inputting.
Now, look, a wedding anywhere can be fun. This is especially true in Austin. For one, the music scene in the Lone Star State is second to none. The incredible weather for most of the year means that celebrations take place outside for all but the hottest and coldest months. There are so many places to party. And Texans like to party.
It seemed like over the past two years, every friend’s Facebook post was about a wedding or engagement. She’d been to more showers and parties and ceremonies in the past couple of years than she’d had for the entirety of her 20s. Chelsea wasn’t complaining. None of these were stuffy celebrations. They were filled with two-stepping and laughter, and, she had to admit, great networking. She’d met the most interesting people while drinking champagne and toasting a new couple. She’d line-danced and been flipped in the air by prospective clients. Three years ago, she’d met her now best friend while standing at a dessert chocolate fountain at her co-worker’s reception. Weddings were not something that Chelsea would easily forget.
She stared at the Google calendar. It simply read 5:00 Wedding. Who’s? Where? When? Chelsea felt a knot form in her stomach. Her brain flipped through her mental Rolodex. She came up blank. She logged into Facebook, scrolling through her friend's status updates and various announcements. A lot of people were having garage sales. A lot of people were going to watch Spring Training. A lot of people were going to Dallas for a music festival. No one seemed to be getting ready for their wedding in a week. After much deliberation, because she had no interest in discussing her own love life, Chelsea finally decided to call her mother.
Mary picked up on the first ring.
“Wait - who is getting married?”
“I don’t know, Mom, that’s why I’m calling you.”
“Well, what does the invitation say?”
“I don’t have an invitation.”
“Then how do you know that there’s a wedding?”
“It’s on my calendar.”
“Who put it in your calendar?”
“I did.”
“Then you should know who’s wedding it is.” Chelsea exhaled. Wrong person to call. Best to change the subject to something she wouldn’t be required to actively participate in.
“So, did you manage to trim your mint back before it bolted?” Her mother did, thank goodness, and then went on to describe the health status of every plant in her half-acre lot.
Chelsea took the phone, put it on speaker, laid it down on her desk, and went back to scrolling and trolling, looking for any clue about whose big day was right on the horizon, her mother’s voice blending into a distant background hum.
Unbelievable to Chelsea, but it was true: she could not find a single person with an April wedding in anyone’s profile. She called up her favorite co-worker, trying to suss out the answer without being outwardly nosey. The co-worker was going to a Bluegrass festival in Dallas that weekend so obviously she did not have any wedding plans. Chelsea tried her cousin Becky who also lived in the city. Becky had a similar reaction to her mother.
“But, like, you just know that there’s a wedding happening? You don’t know who or where or, like, anything?”
Again, thought Chelsea, the wrong person to call. She loved her cousin and Becky didn’t give a shit about gardening. She responded as best she could,
“Ok Bex, when you say it that way, I sound insane.”
“You are,” Becky replied. “I heard there’s a Bluegrass festival in Dallas this weekend. Want to go, since, well, it looks like you don’t have any wedding plans?
Fuck it, thought Chelsea, I do like Bluegrass.
The cousins planned to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to get to Dallas in time to walk around the city and catch the afternoon concerts. Becky didn’t mind driving.
As Chelsea sat in the passenger seat, still in her sweatpants from the night before, she scrolled, half asleep on her phone. Her calendar icon dinged, “Wedding, 5:00,” Just as Chelsea was taking a split second to decide to delete the task or go back down the rabbit hole, it hit her like an anvil flying out of the sky in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
She remembered whose wedding it was. She recalled entering it into her calendar. She could see the event so, so very vividly that she could recount the white tank top with the tiny blue flowers that she’d been wearing when she entered the date. She remembered where she was sitting and the iced coffee sweating next to her computer. At that moment she knew one thing: she would not miss this wedding. Why? Well….
Because there was no wedding to miss. The day with the blue flower tank top? That had been her first week in Phoenix when she’d met Miss-Has-It-All-Together Rue LaPage. She’d paid so much attention to the ages and dates that Rue had gotten promoted, met her boyfriend, gotten engaged, gotten married, that she had put them all into her Google calendar as sort of a “Twelve Year Plan.” This was the last entry. Chelsea was missing her own… nonexistent wedding. It took her a minute to laugh.
She just stared at her bright iPhone screen, physically shaking her head, trying to rid her mind of the stunned fog she was presently experiencing. At first, it was just a small, almost imperceptible Mona Lisa smile to herself. And then, like Alice eating the other side of the mushroom in Wonderland, it grew. Her smile soon engulfed her entire face. And then came the laughter. First, it presented as an involuntary snort. And then a chuckle. And then that laugh took on a life of its own. It was so deep, so genuine, so hearty and contagious that, even without any context whatsoever, Becky joined in. The women laughed so hard that they had to pull over before they’d even merged onto the Freeway.
“What… are… we… laughing about?” Becky could barely choke the words out of her heaving chest.
If she thought that she couldn’t laugh any harder while asking the question, she was wrong. Because the answer, though it took Chelsea almost eight entire minutes to get the story out, made her double over.
“You… planned…. your… own… wedding… twelve… years… ago….?” The words almost sounded painful, as if the effort it took to form them was an absolute travesty.
All Chelsea could do was nod. Her face had now turned the color of a ripe watermelon and was dripping with just as much moisture. She was choking on the air that she could manage to lasso into her windpipe.
“But… you’re… single.” This statement had two effects: it made Becky slightly lose control of her bladder, and she peed just a tiny bit in her new Victoria’s Secret underwear. For Chelsea, it made her sober up. She hadn’t been worried recently about being single at all. There were plenty of great people around to date, and she was focused on her career trajectory. She took a deep, jagged breath and remembered the 22-year-old who trailed Rue around like she was a Rocket Scientist Miss America who’d just gotten back from living with Mother Theresa. That’s how much she’d wanted to be this woman. That’s what those calendar entries were meant to ensure.
But look at her life now: Sure, there wasn’t a serious partner in it. But there was so much more. And yeah, everything hadn’t become the neat, perfect, organized machine that she had once believed was the definition of success. Nope. Life instead had become wild and exciting and messy and vibrant. And, no offense to anyone, but maybe a little more dynamic than living as a dog trainer in a condo in Phoenix. Also, Rue only trained really little dogs. This thought made Chelsea crack up all over again.
The girls made it to the Bluegrass Festival a bit later than expected. As they were running through the commons, looking for a band they knew, they stumbled upon a gathering. Men were in jeans and cowboy boots but also collared shirts, suit jackets, and boleros. The women wore floor-length floral dresses and carried bouquets. Two women stood in the center of the commons, one playing a violin and the other on the flute. It was the unmistakable melody of “Here Comes the Bride.” There was a small wedding taking place right in front of the warmup band. This is not what the girls were expecting.
Chelsea and Becky stopped in their tracks; it would have been rude to run in front of the bridal procession. They watched the vows, clapped for the couple, wiped their eyes, and then stayed around for, you guessed it, the party, which turned into a hootin’ and holler; good old time. And that’s when Chelsea saw her chance.
After her long, romantic kiss with her new husband, the bride turned to the small crowd, waved the bouquet in the air, closed her eyes, and threw it into the sky like the practiced baton twirler that she was. Maybe Chelsea wasn’t thinking straight, maybe it was something in the air, maybe it was the weird calendar invite and the realization of its origins, but whatever it was, it gave Chelsea the strength and drive of a pro football player going in for the game-winning touchdown. Yeah, she got that bouquet. Yeah, she knocked over four women she’d never met. Yeah, she looked back and ran. She ran across the commons to the West Side Stage to see Billy Willer and The Tambourine Trio, dancing with both Becky and strangers, all while holding her new bouquet.
Now, google might have been wrong about her wedding day, but it seemed to have an interesting way of telling her that she was next.
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