Lovely Pink

“perfect” father. Grandfather had an obsession with his son that did not extend to his daughters, who were already living their own independent lives by the time my dad arrived on the scene. It was just as well, because my grandparents put their efforts into raising their precious son to be the prince who would inherit the Pinkarver kingdom some beautiful day off into a bright and wonderful future.
It didn’t work out that way though.
My father’s life was nothing even close to my grandparent’s vision for him.
He ended up impregnating my mother when he was nineteen and she was just seventeen. My mother wasn’t considered quality marriageable material for Theodore Pinkarver’s only son, so the two of them were separated by my grandparents, and the scandal buried. My grandfather had the means and the connections to make it all happen with very little fuss.
Then, my very young parents went along with the business of growing up and living out their separate lives. My mom had a baby to raise and husbands (plural) to find. My dad was just getting started on the wild lifestyle he enjoyed so thoroughly.
And so, my grandfather swept the whole business—including me—under the carpet stacked in the closet with the rest of the Pinkarver skeletons. Money was provided to my mother for our support, and nobody knew I even existed.
All neat and tidy.
Until ten years later, when my father managed to kill himself one dark and stormy December night. A freak accident involving an icy tributary of the Potomac, and what was probably far too many drinks before he ever made the bad decision of getting behind the wheel.
His death was definitely the game changer for my grandfather, mostly because it was at this point my existence was finally revealed to the world. Reese Pinkarver, only child of Theodore Pinkarver Jr., sole grandchild of Theodore and Rosalind Pinkarver, was alive and well at St. Mary’s School for Girls down in South Carolina.
My grandparents tried to build a framework of bright and happy onto my presence, but it was pretty hard to shiny-up the fact, I had been born illegitimate. The only descendant of the prestigious Pinkarver clan was the “love-child” of two kids who never saw each other again after the pregnancy was confirmed—and kept secret from the world for more than a decade.
Putting a nice spin on that sad story wasn’t so easy.
My grandfather couldn’t rely on his daughters for replacements because they were past child-bearing age by the time my father died anyway, whether they were married and willing or not. One of my aunts is a dedicated heart surgeon, another a senator of Maryland, and the third is living the bohemian-artist life in Greenwich Village. She’s my favorite, in a fun Auntie Mame kind of way. Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death! Yep. “Emotionally starved” is a clever way to sum up the Pinkarver family in a nutshell. What we lacked in births, we made up for in extra “dysfunctional-family.”
Recently my own life felt like I was right on track with the rest of my family with the dysfunction—ergo the reason I am wearing a freaking wedding dress on the subway right now.
I figured I could get away with it for a costume…especially if I slutted up the whole look with makeup, messy hair, and a homemade sign that read RUNAWAY pinned to the skirt.
And yes, I’ve heard it before—sometimes my good judgment is questionable. My bad judgment? Not so much.
The thing is, the dress I’m wearing…is not a costume. Not at all.
It’s my real wedding dress.
Well, it was my real wedding dress.
It’s been hanging in the back of my closet for months, staring at me every time I go in there to choose clothes. Never to be worn. And a designer wedding dress isn’t something one can just drop off at the local Salvation Army without notice either. Undoubtedly someone would find my sad story just sordid enough to leak.
It still surprised me the news of my breakup with Tim had passed with barely a ripple in the press. We’d met at work in one of the reading rooms at the Smithsonian Institute Archives where I helped him locate some zoological records from the Roosevelt Expedition of 1913 to what was then “Amazonia.” He kept coming back to SIA asking for me specifically, to help him find documentation on some obscure expedition from a century ago.
I couldn’t resist the romance of it all.
Yeah, that emotional starvation thing from which all Pinkarver’s seem to suffer? It helped me fall hard and fast for the free-spirited archaeologist who’d managed to charm me thoroughly by the end of our first date. I’d snagged my very own Indiana Jones, and I was going to keep him. The fact Tim didn’t appear to be all that impressed with my political family tree was an extra bonus.
Nobody was more surprised than me when he popped the question nearly a year later. I said yes. We planned a small but elegant wedding in Charleston where I have extended family on my mom’s side. I bought the dress. All was good and we were happy.
Except that it wasn’t good, and apparently he wasn’t happy.
Three weeks before our big day, Tim went on a short work trip to Brazil. He never made his return flight. The morning I was to pick him up at the airport, he sent me an email saying his career was taking him in a new direction and he wasn’t ready to get married. He would be staying in Brazil indefinitely, and I was not to come there to be with him.
I had been dumped—and I was crushed.
Tim had completely blindsided me with his explanation for his reasons, the abrupt move to South America, everything.
My grandparents were remarkably supportive of the whole messy business though, assuring me they would make sure the news of our breakup was tamped down in the media. It was in their best interests really—I got it.