Page 54 of Spectacular Things
Something Red
The next day, after Oliver proposes to Mia on the beach, Cricket helps her sister choose a dress from their mother’s closet to wear to the courthouse.
Although the winner is not seasonally appropriate, it is the one Liz loved most—a white linen halter dress laden with summer memories.
It’s the dress Liz wore every Fourth of July and to the World Cup quarter-finals in Paris.
“I’m pretty sure she found it in the dollar bin,” Cricket says, standing behind Mia to tie the straps in a bow.
“It doesn’t fit me right,” Mia says, staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror.
“Really?” Cricket squints, trying to find a problem. “You don’t think so?” She’s hardly a bridal consultant but the dress looks great. “Let’s show Yaz,” Cricket says, steering Mia toward the living room, where Yaz is curled up on the pink floral couch, scrolling through her phone.
Oliver has gone out in search of a bouquet for Mia to hold during the ceremony. He purchased the wedding rings months ago—two matching gold bands Mia had admired through an estate jeweler’s store window in Ogunquit.
“Yeah, no, it fits you perfectly,” Yaz insists, covering a jet lag yawn as she stands up to inspect the situation more closely. “You look stunning,” Yaz says definitively, pulling Mia back into the moment with a slow, graceful nod of assurance. “It fits you, and more importantly, it suits you.”
“Thank you,” Mia says, throwing back her pale shoulders and lifting her neck with confidence. “Which shoes?”
“Let’s take a look.” Yaz follows Mia back into Liz’s room, and Cricket trails after them, heart swelling that her two favorite people are bonding in her mother’s closet.
It’s almost as if Liz were a part of the festivities, especially when Mia digs out Liz’s nicest pair of heels and Yaz declares them the clear winner.
On Mia’s wedding day, Yaz helps the bride with her hair and makeup while Cricket documents it all on her phone with their mother’s voice in her head.
She would want to see all of this. Cricket takes a video of Mia applying Liz’s ruby red lipstick in the mirror of their childhood bathroom.
“Careful, Mia,” Cricket teases. “Remember Mom said that lipstick got her pregnant?”
On the porch, right as they prepare to leave for city hall, Mia admires Oliver in his navy suit before her smile drops into a panicked droop. “You don’t have a boutonniere,” she says.
“This isn’t prom,” Oliver chides, but Mia, feeling fragile in her mother’s dress on her wedding day, says it isn’t funny, he’s supposed to have a boutonniere.
“No problem,” Cricket says. “Hold on a sec.” The others listen to her heavy-footed clip-clops as she runs down the hall to her room. They hear her opening and shutting drawers as if she might have misplaced a freshly cut floral arrangement in the back of her dresser.
“Here we go!” Cricket announces, grinning as she reappears with what looks like several short strips of translucent blue foam held together with a safety pin.
“Is that—packaging material?” Yaz asks, barely suppressing her dismay.
“It’s perfect,” Oliver says.
“It’s prewrap,” Mia scoffs, shaking her head at her feet in amused resignation. Even on her wedding day, soccer must play a role.
“Not just any prewrap,” Cricket corrects her. “Stallion blue prewrap.”
“Like I said, it’s perfect,” Oliver asserts, taking the strips from Cricket’s hand and fastening them to his left lapel.
“Also, this seems imperative,” Cricket says.
She holds up the ribbon, slightly frayed and still knotted, and Mia knows it’s the one Liz wore to watch the U.S.
women win their World Cup quarter-final match in 2019.
It’s been on Liz’s bureau, memorialized and collecting dust ever since.
“I know the saying is all about blue and new, but in this family, I think you need something red and from Paris.”
“But she’s wearing her hair down,” Yaz points out.
“Give me your wrist,” Cricket demands.
Mia holds out her arm and watches her sister tie the ribbon. “I wish she were here,” Mia whispers. She tries not to cry—Yaz has warned her that her mascara isn’t waterproof.
“She is,” Cricket whispers back. “Don’t you ever—” Cricket watches Mia’s face, searching for a sign of recognition, some hint that sometimes Liz appears to Mia, too, the way she shows up at Cricket’s goalpost on game days.
But Mia squeezes her eyes shut, and when she opens them, they are trained on the momvan in the driveway.
“Let’s go,” she says, her voice steady once more. “I don’t want to be late.”
At nine-thirty a.m., Oliver drives them to city hall. On the marble curved staircase, Mia’s heels clack so loudly that they echo, and the foursome giggles self-consciously, bodies and hearts on full display as they navigate bureaucrats with coffee breath to find the State of Maine Room.
The ceremony lasts fourteen minutes. As Cricket watches her sister and Oliver promise forever to each other, Yaz squeezes her hand to imply that someday it will be their turn.
Cricket squeezes back but keeps her eyes fastened on Mia.
She tries to ignore her dry mouth and the tight knot in her chest. Growing up, Cricket never dreamed of a wedding day or a gold ring.
Instead, she fantasized about gold medals and the five Olympic rings.
But Yaz will want this. She already does. And Cricket—although she can hardly believe it—she can imagine wanting this, too. Someday. Not yet.
A World Cup win, Cricket tells herself as she kisses Yaz’s cheek in the State of Maine Room. A World Cup win for her and then one hell of a wedding for them.