a nice day to start again (part two)

at jenna's wedding my mom pinches my arm and says, not too much champagne, as she dances away with my father, a coursage pinned to her white dress. jenna's dress is white too, but she got it for $23 dollars at a vintage store. it is fifties style, falling just above the knee, with darts for her small breasts, hugging her tiny frame. i told her it was perfect. i know, she said. my mom said, you are actually going to wear that. she is wearing it with black three-quarter length gloves and black heels. how is he supposed to put the ring on your finger, my mom asked. jenna looks like she belongs outside tiffany's eating a danish instead of at a wedding.

its perfect, i tell her. we are smoking, near the edge of the lawn, the party carrying on behind us. jenna stares at the cherry of her cigarette as she takes a drag, crossing her eyes.

do you think their happy now, she asks me.

mom and dad? sure. are you?

of course. i just want the party to be over. so what, i fell in love, she says pinching the cherry of her cigarette, the burning embers falling into the grass, it happens to everyone over and over.

jenna's husband comes over and grabs her and takes her away to dance and be in love. jenna hands me her cigarette butt, i look at the end, and i can tell it used to be white and not just because i know it. the fiberglass, or cotton or whatever filters are made of, used to be white and now it is brown because jenna pulled tobacco through it.

when jenna and were in high school we fought all the time. she started smoking when she was sixteen and i would call her white trash as she lit up on our way to school. the summer after my sophomore year my parents were gone and jenna had a party and i drank five coronas and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. when jenna left for college and I drove myself to school as I pulled away from the house i thought of jenna's empty room, and i cried.