and I laugh and laugh and laugh. I can’t stop laughing. I seriously don’t know what the fuck is going on. I don’t even ever want to get married, to anyone! Let alone this complicated, adorable man I have nothing in common with. But I love him. He makes my life an incredibly charged and technicolour thing. Everything about him makes me feel alive.
I love him so much the thought of not loving him pains me. But I’m also slightly conflicted; do I really want something as important as marriage to begin right when a huge tragedy has just happened? I worry it’s a bad sign, this proposal in the aftermath of terrorism so close to home, while airspace is still closed, while loved ones are still missing, while images of people jumping out of falling buildings are still playing on a loop in my mind.
I’m looking at this ring, and after a while he says, “So?” and I say, “Why not?” Because really, why not? I say, “I love you and you love me. Let’s take a chance!”
And we do.
TEN YEARS LATER
I’m reading in bed. Downstairs I hear the now familiar sounds: the pop of a beer cap, the hum of the television, the punctuated laughter that seems forced, as if he is trying desperately to find joy in something. Earlier, I stood in the doorway of the TV room, lingering unnoticed.
“Why don’t you come up to bed with me?”
He didn’t. He never does anymore.
We just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. By celebrate I mean we had strained conversation over dinner, where he said he was tired about fifty times. I tried to make him laugh, but his face has turned into a hard piece of stone, his eyes expressionless. Our marriage is stuck. It’s just … there. And festering. He’s motionless, unresponsive. I don’t know what’s happened to him, and it’s making me bitter. Angry. I feel trapped and resigned.
Of course what has happened to him is her. I just don’t know it yet.
COMPROMISE
We are engaged for a year, and during that year we learn that planning a wedding is the least romantic thing you can do. We spend that year rolling our eyes at each other in utter exasperation, or giving each other long resigned looks. Despite how independent and kooky we both are, we also want to please everyone and do what we think we “should” do.
And so we give in to every expectation and trope, and end up planning the most traditional of weddings. 160 guests. Open bar. Seven-course meal. A DJ named Pino. A photographer named Greg. We get no fewer than fifty phone calls a week from either my mother or his mother, each one more maddening than the next: so and so can’t sit beside Aunt whoever, make sure you invite this distant cousin who you’ve never met plus his entire family, what kind of ribbon are you going to get for the centrepieces — eighth of an inch or tenth of an inch?
I have never cared less about anything in my entire life. Ribbon sizes and flowers and seating arrangements and shoes dyed to match my dress … honestly, I hate it all. He hates it, too, but, like the world’s best almost-husband, he does every little boring task with me. At one point he declares that making the seating arrangement for our reception is the single most difficult puzzle he’s ever done, which is saying a lot for a physicist. He’s there with me to choose the flowers, the reception hall, even the who-on-earth-cares ribbon for the honest-to-God-who-cares centrepieces. We are compromising, both of us, to make this wedding a thing that a wedding is supposed to be.
But the biggest compromise is this: he wants us to get married in a church. I do not want to get married in a church. I was raised Catholic, but I’m not exactly religious. I go to church for baptisms and confirmations and special days that are important to my father. I’m respectful of people’s faith, but truthfully? I’m not too sure I believe in God. Sometimes I wish I did believe more, but I just don’t. So getting married in a church seems wrong to me — starting our marriage by telling lies in front of all our friends and family, in front of a God that may or may not exist.
It is very important to The Scientist for some reason. Surprisingly important. He really wants us to get married in a church; he just thinks it’s “right.” He says it will make everyone happy, especially our parents. He asks me to consider the United Church. He thinks it will be less “church-y” for me. And so, for him, I say fine. I say fine to make my almost-husband happy, to make his parents happy. And to spare my own parents the embarrassment of their artsy, feminist daughter getting married in a forest, or on a hilltop, or worse — in a restaurant. So I say, Fine. Fine! I will get married in a church.
And we do.
On the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend in 2002, I wear a vintage 1960s wedding dress and hold a bouquet of bright red and orange flowers. He wears a tux with a tartan vest and stands nervously at the front of the church. I’m wearing the long two-tiered veil my mother and I made together, and everyone we know and love is all in one room, smiling and laughing and getting teary-eyed.
And there in front of everyone, at the moment that counts most, I forget my vows. I just totally, completely forget. I’m standing there, The Bride On Her Special Day, and for the life of me there are no words. I can’t remember a single thing about the beautiful vows I’ve written. So on the spot I conjure every TV and movie wedding I’ve ever seen, and I make something up: Sickness and health, good times and bad, all the days of our lives, blah blah blah.
When I finish, he smirks, leans in, and whispers knowingly to me, “Those aren’t your vows, Parise!” I throw my head back and howl with laughter. A fiddler plays as we walk down the aisle, my hand in his.
After photos, we take our brand new little black car and drive ourselves to the reception at the very north end of the city. The windows are down on this warm October day as we drive up the winding highway to get there. The wind picks up my long veil and takes it out the window, so that it’s flapping along the side of the car, still attached to my head. People in other cars honk and honk at us. They wave and hoot out of their rolled-down windows. We laugh and wave back — this wonderful tradition between strangers.
He has his hand on mine and he gives it a squeeze. “How about that, Parise?” he shouts. “You just got married!” And I laugh because really, how about that! I’m so happy in this moment, so happy to have done this thing I didn’t want to do and in a place I didn’t want to do it in. Here he is, squeezing my hand with one hand and driving with the other.
Here he is, my husband, The Husband. My teammate, my partner, my best friend. In good times and in bad, sickness and health, all the days of our lives, blah blah blah.
This is why, nine years later, when I find out about the affair, I focus unreasonably on our little car. This same car from our happy wedding scene.
I wonder about the things I can never know for sure. Did he drive it to her place? How many times did she sit in the passenger seat where I once sat with my wedding veil hanging out the window? Did she even notice Birdie’s baby seat in the back? All the little baby toys and books, the smushed-up Cheerios on the seat? And if she did notice those things, didn’t that matter?
Oh, I know. It’s just a car. It’s just metal. But it was ours, together, and so it’s more than just metal, more than the way we got to our wedding reception or to summer campsites. More than the thing
