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 that we used for cross-country road trips or for bringing our newborn baby home from the hospital.
Yeah, it’s just a car. But it’s all the life that was lived in that car, too. And that strangely hurts almost as much as thinking about his wedding band all over her skin.
CHAPTER TWO
WAITING
MARRIED LIFE
Married life is good. We spend a year in a basement apartment to save money to buy our own place. It’s small and crammed with all of our stuff. Well, all of my stuff. He has nothing. I remember the first time I was ever in his room, in the house he shared with a bunch of guys. I asked, “Where’s all your stuff?” And he shrugged and said he just left it all when he moved to this city. “I like to travel light,” he said, but I didn’t understand. I mean, he wasn’t travelling at all, he was living, wasn’t he?
I love my stuff. I’m nostalgic for an old bowl that belonged to my friend’s late mother, and my grandmother’s kitchen utensils, and the first piece of art I ever bought on my own. I would never leave any of my things behind. But he could. He did. I wondered what that said about him, what it meant that he was the kind of person that had no sentimental attachment to things, the kind of person that could just up and go whenever he wanted to. Could it mean he was unsentimental about people, too?
It was a distant early warning sign I chose to ignore. Obviously, because here we are, married and living in a tiny basement apartment with all of these things of mine I would never leave. He’s brought into our marriage only his clothes, a box of university textbooks, a fishing tackle box filled with odds and ends, and thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of student loans. We also have all the things you get when you have a big wedding like we did. My side, the Italian side, fulfilled all the traditional gift requirements. Twelve place-settings of china, cutlery, and crystal stemware. Coffee makers, blenders, tablecloths, bedsheets, towels, and luggage sets. There are so many trays and platters, I don’t even know what I would ever use them all for. But for now they’re in boxes while we save money to buy a real home.
We’re in the basement of an old house, so everything slopes. The ceilings are only six feet, three inches high, and The Husband is six foot two. He bends his head down to walk around. It’s freezing cold in there all winter long, and sometimes it gets so bad that we turn the oven on and open the door so I can sit directly in front of it. At night he fills plastic bottles with hot water and puts them in our bed so that by the time I’m ready to sleep it is toasty between the sheets. He’s gold in this way, The Husband. These little things.
There are all kinds of crazy little insects and spiders in all kinds of nooks and crannies, and when the people who live upstairs walk around it sounds like thunder. We are so happy. We hang out all the time. He watches TV and I read, both of us on the couch with our legs wound together. We play cards and talk and talk and talk. During hockey season, we walk down the street to our local bar to watch the game and eat plates of macaroni and cheese. They know our drinks, so we never have to order. We go to movies, we go dancing, we eat in restaurants all the time because our rent is so cheap