“If any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined in holy matrimony, let him now speak, or else hereafter, forever hold his peace.”
I’d forgotten about that line. Maybe it had been edited out of most weddings I’d gone to, for fear of troublesome in-laws, or disgruntled ex-lovers. Somehow, I didn’t think of myself in the latter category, at the time.
She stood there, auburn curls topping her big white birthday cake of a dress, a nice contrast to his black dress uniform and buzz cut black hair.
I waited, just a few inches away, in my puffy bridesmaid’s dress, biting my tongue so hard it bled.
Maid of honor. My job would be done once I held on to the train and got her up to the altar. Yet I could barely stand upright, and this was just the rehearsal. I hoped her mother – one pew behind me – would think my shaking was just stage fright.
We met at the Vons one morning, when I was trying to find a magazine without a celebrity on the cover. I could see a forlorn New Yorker on the top shelf, but at 5 foot 1, could only grasp at it futilely.
I heard a gentle drawl behind me. “Could you use a hand, darlin’? Seems like you’re coming up just a bit short.”
With four inches in height on me, plus another three from her heels, she reached around and over, lightly touching my back and shoulders in the process. “Not such a great selection here, huh? But better than where I come from,” she said.
That was Ninety-Six, North Carolina, which she said only carried three magazines in its corner store – Reader’s Digest, People, and Cosmopolitan.
She invited me over for coffee, and told me about getting out of her small town with a scholarship to study English at UNC. I saw six kinds of chutney in her refrigerator, but she laughed as she told me Ray put ketchup on everything, even Indian food.
She said she didn’t like spending the nights alone, that the emptiness of the arroyo around her apartment made her nervous when Ray wasn’t home. Coming from Brooklyn, I knew what she meant. The desert made me feel vulnerable. I felt exposed without the shelter of other buildings around me, constant chatter, or Latin music drifting up from a corner store.
My fiancé was overseas as well, and I didn’t really like anyone else I’d come to know in the small, stifling circle of spouses and girlfriends at the base. As a Jew, I didn’t join them for Bible study or church. I didn’t have any kids, and I didn’t like scrap booking.
Just two days after I had finally moved to join him, John had been called up again. I worked for an insurance office in Barstow that sold overpriced annuities to nervous soldiers, and at night, I went home to an empty apartment.
Later that week she invited me over to dinner. The next night she came over to my place. Pretty soon, it became routine for us to make dinner together, and then watch a DVD, or just talk. A bottle of wine would get opened, and we’d usually drink enough that one of us would stay over rather than risk a DUI on the way across town.
She was working part time as a hair stylist. She offered to fix my hair up, though I wasn’t sure what she could possibly do with the wiry curls that my mother had nicknamed my “Jew fro.” Still, I wasn’t about to object. I sat on the couch, leaning against her as her fingers worked some kind of hair product through my scalp. At first, the close contact didn’t feel sexual. It just felt primitive, mammalian, as if we were gorillas grooming each other.
One night she read to me from Marge Piercy, “September Afternoon at Four O’Clock.”
Peaches warm from the afternoon sun, amber and juicy, flesh that can make you drunk...take, eat, we are each other's perfection, the wine of our mouths is sweet and heavy…The fruit is ripe for the taking, and we take. There is no other wisdom.
That was the first night she asked me to sleep in her bed – for warmth, she said.
I lay awake most of the night, trying to feign deep, even breathing. It never worked. No matter how hard I tried, my breath always got more rapid next to her, and I was pretty sure she knew I was awake.
For a few nights, we tumbled back and forth across the bed in a tense Brownian motion, one leg or arm drifting over the line between us, then retreating. Then one night her arm casually draped across my shoulder. Then we started curling into one another, spooning. Finally, she rolled over on top of me and put one hand over my mouth for silence while the other hand gently cupped my nipple.
Her unspoken rules were pretty clear. Touching might happen in the night, but no talking in the morning. Somehow I knew that the first one to say something, to name what we were doing, would be held at fault for everything.
Now he was home – long enough for them to get married – and I would stand by her side and watch her do it.
The minister said the dreaded line, and this time gave it a real pause. “If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined in holy matrimony…” I guess if a woman could show just cause, it wouldn’t count.
“Do you, Melissa, take Ray to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
He seemed so earnest. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him when he was just about to ship out. Maybe she couldn’t either, and that’s why she was going to go through with it.
“Rachel, take her home -- it’s bad luck to see your husband the night before the wedding,” her mother said, shooing us out the door after the rehearsal dinner. It was expected that we would spend the night at her place, while Ray bunked at the BOQ.
She unlocked the door and I realized this was the last time that we would be together before the wedding. She pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorked it, and poured us both huge glasses. I was glad of that as I didn’t know how else I was going to manage to sleep.
“You may kiss the bride.” A cheer went up among the thirty or so at the wedding – mostly soldiers from Ray’s unit.
We slipped into the choir room so I could take off her train before the reception. I touched the back of her dress to untie it, and the soft silk train slipped to the floor.
“You know, things don’t need to change so much,” she said, grabbing my arm as I reached down for the train.
“It will for me.”
“What we have, it’s just separate. It doesn’t need to get in the way.”
“Can we not talk about this right now?” After six months, the first time she said anything about what we were doing was as the music was starting for her wedding reception.
She’d taught me how to two-step in her living room, Lonestar and Sugarland coming out of her iPod that we rigged up to play on Ray’s flat screen television.
At least she always led, so when some guy from Ray’s unit would ask me to dance, I’d be able to follow and make it look sort of natural.
Natural was not the right word for what I was feeling right now. I had somehow managed to make it to this point without thinking of the obvious. Somehow I had helped her design her dress, invite the guests, and plan the menu, without dwelling on what the party was all about.
There was a knock at the door, and before we could answer, Ray came in.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.” He smirked at me as he put his arm around her, possessively, and suddenly I realized. He knew. He’d probably known all along.
We’d never talked about what we were doing. But clearly they had.
One leering look made me wonder if she had sent Ray e-mails about her seduction of a woman on the base, just for his titillation. Maybe there were even pictures that he showed the guys in his unit.
Her mother came into the room, just in time to witness what she probably thought of as a perfect tableau – her daughter, her new husband, and her maid of honor.
“You kids are missing the reception – is everything okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Everything’s fine.” With Ray and Melissa watching, I picked up her train where it had fallen, and rolled it up. But my trembling fingers couldn’t make it fit when I tried to stuff it into the bag.
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