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Days before her wedding, Tara Barlow ditches her fiancé and her hometown to head west in her prize Mustang after she discovers that her dream wedding venue—the White Cliffs—has burned down.
Tara’s alarmed family sends the town psychic, Guida, to find her. When she tracks Tara to a town full of Fellini-esque characters, the two find themselves surprised but requited in their mutual attraction. They immediately hit the road, attempting to live out the happy ending Thelma and Louise only dreamed about.
Ellen Cooney is the author of three novels. Her stories appear in The New Yorker, The Literary Review, and Story magazines. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Quit my job!
Leave Mom and Dad a good-bye note!
Pick somewhere to go!
Cancel the real estate!
She was not in shock although it seemed so. She knew she wasn't in shock because people in shock have glazed-over eyes and feel stupefied. Her eyes were wide open. She was twenty-four years old and she felt that, if there was ever a person who knew their own mind, it was her.
If she couldn't have her wedding reception at White Cliffs, no way would she get married, not to Tommy, not to anyone, not soon, not ever, no way.
"Sweetheart," he said, "it's unbelievable that the wedding place you picked burned down, but we still have four months and we love each other, so let's go find another restaurant!"
Tara had it in her to rise to the challenge of the fire just fine. It was only the beginning of September. The date of the wedding was in the middle of January, and she wouldn't lose money on a deposit. The Gallaghers of White Cliffs knew her well: they didn't even ask for her credit card number to book the wide, shiny banquet hall. And the invitations weren't printed yet, so there wasn't the problem of expensive cards directing one hundredpeople to a restaurant that was no longer there, like a wedding invitation in a nightmare.
When she stood in the road at the bottom of White Cliffs Hill and looked up at what the fire had done, she could have flung herself to the ground in a beautiful fit of passion and cried like a cloudburst. Drying her eyes on the backs of her hands, she could have squared back her shoulders and got on with it, as if that's what really mattered, getting on with it, as if she'd be just as well off with a wedding at the steak house near the highway, with statues of cows in the lobby and a DJ playing Fleetwood Mac, Chicago, oldies like "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and hits from the soundtrack of Grease.
There was no other restaurant. There was only White Cliffs.
She was calling everything off, and she could not care less if no one understood her point of view. She felt that everyone she knew, and everyone she'd ever met, could only think about things simplistically, in a one-dimensional way, like four-year-olds, as if the personalities of everyone around her had stopped developing when they were four years old. If she wanted to talk to someone who was willing to admit that, yes, life was full of strange complications, strange troubles, strange desires, and heights and depths and shadings of things that were not always visible on the surface, and not always easy to explain, who was there?
She could talk to the air. She could get into her car and close the windows and talk to her car. There was no one to talk to.
She had a Mustang, eight months old and red like a fire engine. No one drove it except herself and it was barely broken in and all paid for. The seats were light-brown crinkled leather, like expensive couches, not cheap, stick-to-your-skin, clammy vinyl. She paid extra for the good upholstery. She felt that the engine was like a young, strong heart, without imperfections. She had never played a piano, but every time she clutched, she felt that this was how it worked to pump a pedal.
The dealer had tried to sell her an automatic transmission because she was a girl-Bozo Johnson at the Ford place, he came right out and said it, "Tara, you're a girl, quit looking at the manuals," as if you had to be a guy to drive a stick. She had thought of girls in a history book, sitting on horses sideways, where they swung themselves over the side of a horse as if, instead of two legs, they had one, as if their thighs were glued together. Only a mermaid, she felt, would have a reason to ride a horse sideways. If she'd lived in those days and had a horse-a Mustang-she would have climbed in the saddle with the seat between her legs. If she ended up in jail for it, she'd feel that the ride had been worth it.
"I'll go west," she decided. "I'll go west like the setting sun."
A general direction wasn't hard. North was out of the question: with anything north, it would soon be winter. She wanted nothing to do with extra weeks of winter, and she didn't want to take the time to pack her winter clothes.
East and south were no good. Her town was in a valley in central Massachusetts. When she crossed the river on the old stone bridge to the highway, then around the hills, she could only go two hours straight east, or three straight south, on less than half a tank of gas, before stopping in her tracks at the Atlantic Ocean itself, or some harbor or bay. She'd find herself out at a ledge, about to drive off a cliff into foamy, gray waves, like Thelma and Louise, but in the sea.
She made a note to herself to add something else to her list. "Make sure with the good-bye note to Mom and Dad, I don't make it sound like I'm killing myself."
She had always wanted a winter wedding. There didn't have to be snow, just cold, with a world outside the White Cliffs windows that was hard and cold and hostile, while inside, where her party was, it was glowing. New snow would have pushed it over the edge from being nice to being perfect, not that her hopes were ever up, unrealistically, for new snow.
Like winter itself, her wedding was supposed to have four basic colors: white, silver, red, and green.
She'd bought her dress in the bridal shop at the mall, an ordinary bride's dress, chiffon. She couldn't call it a gown because it came from the regular section, not the "Tall." It only went down to her shins.
She never expected anyone to pat her on the back about the rest of her outfit. She was ready for complaints, and when complaints poured in, from home, from work, from everywhere, she ignored them.
"Tara, no one wears emerald high heels with a wedding gown."
"You can't wear your pewter necklace because it takes up all your neck and it looks like a collar for a dog."
"We respect your right to be original, but please wear normal eye shadow, not that slutty silver glitter, and put the blonde back into your hair before the wedding, because you can't get married bleached out."
"Honey, do whatever you want. I love the red pantyhose, but if you wear a red bra, it can't show. That dress is real white and real thin. Your boobs will look like two fantastic tomatoes, and no one can see you with red boobs but me."
What she liked most of all was to imagine the two opposing forces of herself in her outfit and the background of beautiful old White Cliffs. If she fixed herself up like a normal bride, she'd be in there like any other bride who had ever spent a great deal of money for a four-hour White Cliffs rental. She wanted to be in there as if she belonged there, as if she owned it.
She had imagined her wedding so often, and in so much detail, she'd have the strange sensation that instead of looking forward to the future, she was looking back at the past, as if the wedding had taken place already. She'd rearrange another part of the plans, like how many minutes the piano player should play before taking a break, and it would frighten her to think that, when the real thing finally happened, she might experience it too objectively, with an unnatural detachment: she might find herself walking around at her own reception in a daze, wondering if everything was in a memory, somehow, or in a dream.
She had wanted to be alert and awake, so everything would be clear and sharp, as if lit up with neon that would never burn out.
She thought of her memory as a bag or a pot or a tube. At the start of her reception, it would be filled with empty space; then her eyes would take in marvelous things.
From the moment the wedding was over, and the last of her guests went away from the lights of White Cliffs, into cold winter dusk, her bag or pot or tube would be loaded, for all time.
Was this a great way to start out in married life, with the feeling that the best thing that could happen to her would have happened already? Sometimes she had the feeling that all she wanted was a wedding, not a marriage. Sometimes she wondered if everything else that took place in her life would only make impressions on a not-deep part of her brain, where she attended to things that seemed important, but were not. Was she basically saying, "After the wedding, I'll have nothing else to look forward to, but maybe that's all right?"
But all she'd have to do was say the words "my wedding," and it would all come rushing in. The backs of her eyes would fill up with details. A piano player in a tuxedo would play songs that did not have words, and the hall chandeliers from France would glitter away, with hot white bulbs shaped like icicles. On a table in the lobby there'd be complimentary matchbooks with white covers and fancy black lettering that said,
White Cliffs
Banquets Our Specialty
In the Heart of Massachusetts!
Enjoy old-world charm at your function!
There'd be mistletoe in the White Cliffs doorways, and spruce and juniper laid out as thick as blankets along the shiny, polished White Cliffs hallways. No one would get drunk on the one allowed glass of champagne or on the spiced apple punch, in beautiful glass bowls, spiked only a little with rum, and so what if her parents and Tommy's whole family felt that she'd be out of her mind to not serve beer, because a wedding without beer was like a swimming pool without the water. If Tommy's friends tried sneaking in a cooler and hiding it in the men's room, they'd get thrown out the door on their arses.
The fireplaces would blaze like a scene on a Christmas card. There'd be platters of roast beef and turkey on huge silver trays; gravy in silver tureens; white tablecloths, white napkins, and centerpieces on all the tables of shiny, wild green holly, with fat red berries, looking good enough to eat. She had hesitated about the centerpieces because holly berries are poisonous. But she wanted that red and that green, even if it meant cards in the arrangements that said, "Do Not Put Into Your Mouth."
The fire took place in the middle of the night. It was just after Labor Day; the summer had been long and hot and too dry. Back in June, the long fields of grass had turned to straw, all yellow and brittle, like stiff, dry old brooms.
The fields were flattened like plates. At the top of the hill were cinders, ashes, dust. Instead of filmy autumn haze and the eastern face of White Cliffs, high and broad and beautiful, there was a cloud of gray-black smoke, and it seemed to Tara that the sky itself had been on fire.
There was the fact of the fire, and the burned, black-gray earth. There was the rubble of a big charred wreck, still wet from the firehoses, and still steaming. At the bottom of White Cliffs Hill, Tara shivered as if her skin had been touched with an ice cube. She wished she had a hat, but she didn't begrudge herself her new haircut. She'd done it herself and it was almost a crew-cut. She'd dyed it white, really white: she'd wanted to match her hair with her dress. The style was like a shorter version of Andy Warhol's wig. The leftover smoke made everything colder. The air was gray like iron, and it was filled with smells of burning, as if the fire were still taking place, but in a noiseless, dry way, like rust. White Cliffs Hill looked suddenly small, as if the sky had moved down closer. Not even one small part of a wall was left standing. There was nothing to point to and identify, such as, "that used to be part of the roof," or "that's an oak panel from the hallway."
Everything would be all right, he kept saying. He'd get on it right away. He wanted her to cheer up, to look on the bright side. "Look on the bright side!" he said, but he didn't say what that was, except that they'd find another restaurant, no problem. Then they'd go into their future all resilient and wise, with the sense of overcoming an obstacle, as if the fire were a hurdle in a race.
In the cold light of day, the top of the hill was as black and gray as an x-ray, where before there had been a perfect restaurant, with pillars and arches and beautiful wood, and windows in every room that were taller and wider than doors.
"Dear Mom and Dad."
She only needed to write one note. Everything she was leaving behind could be taken care of at once, including the real estate people.
"Dear Mom and Dad, I'm not freaked out about the fire but guess what! This is excellent! I love you, I'm not doing anything stupid, you have totally got to know I want to be by myself and I haven't got time to explain but I'm moving! Remember the Beatles song you hated about the girl leaving home and every time it came on the radio you turned it off and told me, never do that to us, and I said, how could I? So I'm not! This is not like `She's Leaving Home' and if you think so, YOU WILL BE WRONG BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. Don't worry! If I find out you worried, I'll be so mad! Tell Tommy, `Cancel your tuxedo, Tom, because she's calling everything off.' (He'll know why.) Thanks! If Work calls, if they notice I'm not there, say, `She quit,' but make them send my last paycheck in the mail. Forge my signature and keep it! If the real estate people come looking for me, tell them, no deals! I'm still a fantastic daughter so trust me."
She and Tommy had been looking at houses and had narrowed it down to four. One was a ranch in the southern corner of town near the river. One was a split-level, to the north, very contemporary, like two ranches pushed together at two different levels of a hill. The third was a colonial at the end of West Hill Road, where all she'd have to do to see the sun go down would be to look out a window or stand on her own front porch. The fourth was a ranch to the east, near the highway, with great stretches of open road for a view of sunrises, and lots of open space. She hadn't been worried about competing with other buyers for the houses: she'd put down deposits on all four.
"Tara, make up your mind, just go eenie meenie miney moe," was something she'd been hearing from Tommy a lot.
He worked downtown at the bank that was just downstairs from her company, and he was very worried about the money she'd laid out, like money in a Monopoly game, he had felt. He had already started talking to the bank lawyers to help her get back those three other deposits.
Lately, she'd been leaning toward picking the split-level, facing west. But that was when the only fire she knew about was the one in the sky at sunset.
Excerpted from the White PALAZZO by Ellen Cooney Copyright © 2002 by Ellen Cooney
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Overview
Days before her wedding, Tara Barlow ditches her fiancé and her hometown to head west in her prize Mustang after she discovers that her dream wedding venue—the White Cliffs—has burned down.
Tara’s alarmed family sends the town psychic, Guida, to find her. When she tracks Tara to a town full of Fellini-esque characters, the two find themselves surprised but requited in their mutual attraction. They immediately hit the road, attempting to live ...