The Seating Plan

One hundred people must sit at twelve round tables. I survey the jumbled pile of hand-written response cards in the red shoebox and grin. Soon Steve and I will hold hands as we zoom away from the quaint chapel and glide through the hills in the back seat of our gleaming limousine. Later, we will emerge from the plush interior, flushed with the glow of becoming Mr. and Mrs. I have planned the perfect wedding. Robin Red Breast will alight on the fronds of the lush palm trees standing sentinel before the stately manor’s French doors. The sun will beam. My angelic blond niece in her spotless gown will enter first, scattering pink rose petals along the lace-draped entry hall to herald our arrival.

I take a small stack of cards from the shoebox and lay it out before me like a Texas Hold ’em hand. I look up at the calendar, which displays a respectable distance between today and my blessed event. I had suggested a buffet dinner without assigned tables, but our parents prefer that we create a seating plan.

One hundred people divided among twelve round tables shouldn’t be so difficult. One hundred guests divided by twelve tables makes eight or nine guests per table. Why buy software for wedding planning? I grab some paper and begin to sketch. I draw twelve globes orbiting an inner blank space that represents the banquet hall’s dance floor. I turn the paper clockwise three times to fit them all into my diagram. The sharp pencil makes a satisfying scratching sound.

Names dance through my mind. The Holland cousins and their siblings will all sit together. They all chat amiably. I pencil a letter “H” on the table farthest from the center of the diagram. I select five cards from the hand laid out in front of me, and fish in the shoebox to withdraw two more. I put all the Holland-related cards face down on the floor next to my desk. I exhale.

I grab another stack of cards. My seven Nugent aunts and uncles dance well, I note, and so I write an “N” on a table near the dance floor. Two seats to fill with them. But with whom? My witty cousin Jenny from Boston? Maybe my former boss Kara and her husband Tim Rudy? I vow to show my admiration for my respected, former supervisor by seating her with impressive people. I pick up another card, this one messily scrawled, “M-Flaherty-2.” My Flaherty uncles are quiet. Perhaps I will seat Kara with them and talkative people like my cousin and our friend Dr. Carroll for balance. Wait, darn, cousin Jenny likes to drink, so she can’t sit near any of my Flaherty uncles; they’re all in recovery. Could Kara sit with Aunt Angela? No, Angela likes to sit near the aisle at weddings so she can take a cake-cutting photo. Sighing, I put the card marked “Mr. and Mrs. Rudy” aside on my left.

Then I snatch up a card that reads “Taranto-4 persons.” I pause. Are these the Tarantos from New Jersey? No, wait, the Taranto brother is the groom’s cousin who crews for NASCAR. Cool. My eyes dart back to my diagram. I look at Kara and Tim’s card. I start to move my pencil downward, listing guests in my mind… Danny Taranto. His step-brother Luke Taranto and his wife from San Francisco… Lilly? Lucy! Lucy Taranto who I know from… from that spinning class last year. Small world. Whoa. That means that she’s also the Lucy who went out for late night cocktails with her personal trainer. And my swim coach. And that married lawyer. No way! I won’t seat her within a mile of sweet, unsuspecting Tim and Kara.

The phone rings, dragging my thoughts and my fingers away from the insistent reply cards.

“Miss Flaherty? I want you to know we have everything in order for your perfect day,” purrs my florist. “I must notify you of one slight impediment, though, regarding your lilies.”

Alarm bells clang in my cerebral cortex. “Impediment? Did you say impediment?”

“Yes,” soothes her honey-soaked voice. “It’s nothing really, only the tiniest of delays regarding the centerpieces, Miss-Mrs. Pagan.”

“We’ll see if it’s tiny!” I interject, breathing hard. “What kind of delay are we talking about?”

“Flower crops can be temperature-dependent,” she breezes on. “Thus my supplier informs me that the number of lily stems that you requested, may, and I stress may, not be available by the eighteenth of July.”

“Let me get this straight. You can’t guarantee that we’ll get the lilies we want for the tables?” My manicured fingernails drum on the desk. The calendar glares at me. Throbbing pinkish blotches appear on my neck and quickly spread to my cheeks and forehead.

She pauses. “My supplier can’t get enough lilies for all twelve tables in time.”

“We paaaaiid,” I draw the vowel sounds out, “for lily centerpieces for all twelve tables.”

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Pagan, and I am aware of our contractual agreement, but I can not control…”

“As you say, we have a contract. We contracted for lilies on all twelve tables at the manor house on July eighteenth.” Then I clang down the receiver into the cradle, relishing my rudeness and the dramatic sound of our landline landing hard.

My eyes turn back to the once-promising shoebox of ivory reply cards. Looking in, my eyes catch sight of the card bearing the names of my wacky Uncle John and new, hippie Step-Aunt Star. I gulp. Where the heck do I seat them? Talk about opening a can of worms! Where would they want to sit? Do I care where they want to sit? Who will talk to them? Who knows? I shove the shoebox away.

I awake my hibernating laptop. I image search “July” and “flowers” and “New York.” I half-heartedly inspect the search results. I scan pictures of hydrangeas. I steal guilty glances at the shoebox.

Suddenly, I look up. What the heck are we doing? Forget this! I look at my watch, and then back at the accusatory calendar. I fish a calculator out of the top desk drawer. The second hand on my wrist twitches by. I think long and hard about how many miles stand between us and Las Vegas. I wonder if we have enough gas in the Volkswagen to make it all the way to Reno. Blotches fade down my face towards my neck. My fingers dance over the computer keyboard and my grin returns, broad and free. Maybe we should elope.

That night, my future maid of honor stops by to see how our preparations are going. She knocks zealously. No one answers, and friendly concern gets the better of her. She lets herself in with our obviously placed hide-a-key. My future maid of honor frowns at the unnerving silence. There is no bride in the living room consulting magazines. There is no bride in the kitchen tasting cake samples. There is no bride on the phone scolding the florist. There is no bride in the bathroom on the scale. In the office, my future maid of honor finds a trail of ivory cards littering the floor. Her frown deepens into a fretful mask. Tiny shreds of cardstock dot the floor. Her panicked eyes widen as she spies edges of reply cards falling pell-mell from the gaping mouth of a gleaming, silver shredding machine.

…To learn the ending of this story, pick up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: True Love, available on December 29, 2009!