Otherwise Engaged (21 page)

“In any case,” Lana says, “I’d rather be questioning my marriage than just questioning my connections with people.
Wondering whether some man is going to call me because I slept with him. Or didn’t.”

“But you have Isabel already,” I say. “You have dividends.”

I think she is going to say, No, that’s not the way to look at it, but she says, “Then maybe you should just have a baby right away. Get pregnant and get it over with, and not wait a year.”

I flash on Lana sideswiping a bus as she drove her very first car, a white Mustang. We looked at each other, said “Get the hell out of here!” and tore ass. We never got caught.

I love Lana. There is safety with Lana.

She continues, “I have always been an advocate of making many changes at the same time and getting them all over with in one lump. A baby,” she says. “That’s another huge step. Everything’s a huge step,” she says.

Then she says, “For me, I did it by not looking at it.”

I realize she is not talking about having Isabel, but marrying Raul. Maybe she is talking about having Isabel, too. She really is touched. But there’s no one else I would rather be talking to, not even Camille Paglia. Who also never married.

“I think one reason why you’re doubting is, it’s safe now,” she says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it’s so close.” She explains: “You can’t really call it off, it’s too late. So it’s very safe to have doubts now.…

“In other words, we can all put on black turtlenecks and smoke cigarettes and drink espresso and lead a heavy discussion about getting married, like
‘Fuck
, it’s not the way I
expected it to be …’ and then mention ‘Oh by the way, I’m getting married tomorrow.…’ ”

She’s right.

“Do you have anything else?” I ask.

“Well …”

She thinks about it.

“It’s sort of a cheap way out, but look at all the unhappy people.”

“I know,” I say. Thinking about all the unhappy people is actually extremely helpful.

“Tell me again how great Michael is,” I instruct.

“He’s great,” she says.

“I know,” I say miserably.

Lana says, in the voice I imagine she uses on her tenth-grade students, “I know you know, but you need me to feed it back to you.”

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain.

We have no contingency for rain at our wedding site.

I chuckle and can’t stop. Also, I can’t get out of bed. Because of the rain. The rain that is raining out of season, exactly eight days before my wedding. My
outdoor
wedding. Which I now see was complete lunacy.

Michael says, “Don’t worry about things you can’t control.”

I gaze at him as he calmly prepares himself for work. I would like to throw something at his head. I would like to knock his glasses off.

I begin to softly keen. He sits down on the edge of the bed.

“What else are you worried about?” he asks.

“Divorce,” I say. There. I said it. “My father was married twice; my mother twice. That’s four marriages and two people,” I say. It seems a very strong argument.

“Let’s get married first and then we can get divorced, OK sweetie?” he says.

I put on my wedding shoes last night, with thick socks like Fiona said. They suddenly feel two sizes too small; they were fine in the store. They tricked me.

I hobble around the house. Michael sees the shoes, but I don’t care. We won’t have any good luck anyway.

I think about postponing. But shoes don’t seem enough of a reason.

My uncle Wallace is in town, all the way from Missouri. My father’s brother, whom I haven’t seen since I was seven. He’ll be at the wedding. What I imagine is that my father will use his eyes.

Today I had a manicure and a facial. As the women were rubbing oils into my arms, I closed my eyes and thought, It’s beginning. The ritual. Afterward I bought a cream-colored pair of size-9 shoes to bring to the wedding, in case my feet start to hurt. I have, I see, some modicum of control. I can control shoes.

Later at the gym, I pick up a
Chronicle
. The weather forecast says fair and sunny on Saturday. I whoop out loud when I read it.

When my father used to take me to the racetrack, he taught me how to watch the odds board, how not to bet until
the very last minute. We’d stand and watch the odds change, together.

I will walk alone down the aisle. Deeply flawed, it turns out he can’t be replaced.

Michael has a dream that he is looking at a house for us, when he finds out that I own an elephant. He has to figure out how to get the elephant moved, where the elephant is going to sleep, et cetera. After he wakes up, he carefully explains to me how, once inside the prospective house, he climbed a ladder and poked his hand up through the ceiling to see how high the roof went, so that it could accommodate everyone.

It strikes me that this is the best kind of man to marry. The kind who will take care not just of me, but my elephant.

Union Square, a few last-minute items.

I walked down Powell Street, grinning like a fool. I can’t seem to stop.

The fear has been ebbing the last few days, and now it’s almost completely gone.

So, the ebullience comes back, two days before your wedding. The boomerang effect. Something else no one tells you about.

They should parachute this information into the major cities.

Grace let Phoebe come, at the last minute. Michael leapt when he found out. Picked her up at the airport in a limo,
the same limo we’ll be renting for the wedding. There is a certain symmetry to this.

Tonight was the rehearsal dinner. It was in the Tony Bennett Room at Fior d’Italia. Lana and Raul and Isabel and Beth and Lesli and Henry and Jill and Yvonne and Phoebe and Michael’s brother, David, and his wife, Ruth, and her mother and cousin and my brother, Mark, and my mother, Bea, and Don all gathered in a private room with dozens of framed pictures of Tony Bennett. A small grouchy Italian man in a tuxedo served us tricolored pasta and prawns and veal cutlets.

Michael sat at the head of the long table. Phoebe sat to his right, and I sat to his left. Like Satan.

Lana was right next to me. She wore black cashmere with a faux-fur collar, and I wore a new hat and the gold velveteen dress that Michael loves. Bea and Don gave us two heavy silver serving pieces with our initials engraved on the handle, along with the date of our wedding. 10.19.96.

Tomorrow.

I woke up and looked out the window. Sunny.

I pick Lana up at the Capri Motel and we drive to the wedding site in my car, which I park near the grounds. A getaway vehicle, I can’t help but think. Should the need arise.

In a small informal ceremony, we each knock back a Valium with orange juice. I give her the rest of the bottle, as a bridesmaid gift.

The wedding site was almost empty, unperturbed. A two-story Victorian perched on the edge of the bay. We walk around the terrace, through the back door. The flowers had
already arrived, and the cake. I wanted to stay and stare at them, but then within minutes the caterers were arriving and then my mother came and Mark, and the piano was being delivered. People were shouting that it was after eleven o’clock and I had to go upstairs and start getting ready, immediately.

When I ran back downstairs for my purse, I saw a silver-haired man with familiar blue eyes. It was my uncle Wallace. He had come early. After we embraced, I realized I had been waiting for him. Because the moment we parted I thought,
Now
.

I went upstairs with Yvonne and Lana and Beth and applied my makeup, very methodically, trying to get everything just right and not botch the liner on my lips so I look like a mime. And the minutes started speeding up and I couldn’t find my earrings or my hair spray. But Yvonne found the earrings and Beth lent me her hair spray. I barked orders at them and they didn’t get mad, they just said yes, yes and scurried about getting me things. When I suddenly became thirsty, Lana read my mind at that exact moment and brought me water.

Then it was 11:55, and the photographer came in with an assistant and a huge round silver reflector board. She took pictures of me in the small upstairs bathroom, which was bathed in sun. And then Lana stepped in and took my hands and said, “You look so beautiful.”

I choked and said, “Don’t make me cry.” “I won’t, I won’t,” she said, and she took me into her strong arms. The photographer is getting it all, hovering like a bee, finally flitting off downstairs to torture someone else.

And then it is just Lana and me, because Yvonne and Beth have gone to hold the huppah poles.

I can hear muffled confusion downstairs. No one knows when they are supposed to go down the aisle; they are audibly crashing around like Keystone Cops. I am whispering obscenities, wondering aloud why we had a rehearsal dinner if no one was going to pay attention. I am pacing and wringing my hands and Lana is saying, “Take deep breaths” and asking, “Are you all right?”

And I lie and say that I am. My whole body is shaking and I seem to be standing next to myself, wondering why I am so afraid. It’s not like I have to do anything. Luckily Lana is still upstairs with me, because she is second to the last in the procession. My matron of honor.

I look out the shuttered window at the top of the stairs and I see Yvonne and Beth and Jill struggling with the huppah, trying to untangle it. I would have laughed if it were someone else’s wedding. But the rabbi directed them and finally it was up; the huppah was in place.

The rabbi explained the meanings of the seven blessings and the huppah to the wedding guests. How it was a house that could go anywhere. A house with no walls, able to invite everyone in.

The music starts to play. My brother is playing Handel’s
Largo
. As in a dream, I recognize the melody. The processional is beginning.

Lana has to go down. She is carrying her bouquet and wearing the same dress she married Raul in. I feel abandoned as I watch her rose-colored hat descend. Then it is just me, waiting at the top of the spindly spiral staircase. And for the first time, I realize that the bride is left alone to come last.

I am fearful that Michael will see me before he is supposed
to. And then the marriage will fail. It all hinges on me, on waiting long enough.

I go down the stairs, pausing at each one, clutching the slim banister. When I get to the bottom, I turn the corner, and I see that it’s all right. I’ve done it right: Michael is just in front of the huppah, waiting for me.

And the expression on his face. Let me memorize it. Let me never forget it.

I grow aware of the others, the wedding guests. Standing in small rows in the sun, like wheat. They all turn around at once, to look at me. Their faces are hope. My immediate impulse is to burst into tears. I will myself not to.

Something more than the music is in my ears, a humming that is my father and Leigh and Dusty, and I think, This is what it must be like to die. I smile, pressing my lips together to stop the trembling.

I take a step. My veil lifts in the breeze. A sail.

I take another step.

When I reach Michael, he holds his arm out to me, as if we are about to dance.

And what I do is, I take it.