Chapter 1.12
Tom started taking two night courses at Montgomery County Community College to confirm that his ancient allergy to homework was really gone. If the experiment was successful his plan was to quit his job in the spring and go back to school full-time. He could finish in three years, counting a few credits from his tour in the Army right after he finished high school.
Tom and Elaine’s wedding was held in November. It was a small affair, with twenty people. They decided not to invite Juliet and Marvin because they were Bonnie’s family, but Juliet was relentless, claiming an inherent right to see Josh perform as Tom’s best man, until Elaine was forced to admit that it was an honest oversight, so Juliet would finally calm down. Tom fumed for a few days, but in the end decided not to let her ruin an agreeable time in his life, and let it go.
The wedding ceremony and the reception were both held in the banquet room at a restaurant in a building that dated back to the revolutionary war. Elaine waited in the rest room to make her appearance with Josie, her office manager at the nursery.
“You look absolutely spectacular,” Josie said. “Did Tom see your dress? That’s bad luck you know.” Josie was fussing with the orchids in Elaine’s hair.
“I know,” said Elaine. “I feel weird about wedding traditions at my age. That’s for the young girls. But I didn’t let him see it, just to be on the safe side.”
Elaine was wearing a pale blue cocktail dress that showed an ample amount of cleavage, a rarity for Elaine. The bodice was beadwork in shades of ivory, lavender and several different blues that were so pale they seemed like reflections in tropical waters, and the skirt was chiffon that billowed around her like a cloud whenever she moved. Elaine’s application of beauty in her life was usually in the arenas of gardening and interior decorating, not on her person, but she had plenty of taste to bring to bear when the situation called for it.
“Wait until Tom sees what we did to the room,” said Josie. “It’ll knock his socks off.”
There were five incredible arrangements as tall as Elaine, from friends in the industry, of exotic orchids worked into live topiaries in the shape of doves, so that the effect was of a row of birds in flight shedding flowers from their wings, leading to the arbor where the ceremony was to be held. The staff at the nursery had knocked themselves out to decorate the rest of the room as a joint present to her and Tom. They paid for all the materials they used and donated their time. The arbor was covered with climbing white roses and pale blue clematis plants that they had forced into bloom out of season in one of the greenhouses, and surrounded by pots of also forced pastel tulips and bleeding hearts and live giant ferns, so that the effect was of a fairytale cottage garden. On the tables and under the windows were arrangements of gardenias and roses in shades to match Elaine’s dress that contributed their perfumes to the room. A pair of live plum trees in full bloom flanked the entrance.
“He’ll like it,” said Elaine. “It’s not like he’s that particular.”
Josie said, “He’s a good guy, Elaine. You’re not having second thoughts are you?”
“No, it’s not that. But there are some things that I am never going to have. Like him appreciating the floral work.”
“Big deal, Elaine. I’m sure there are things he’s never going to have either. Maybe fishing together like he did with his first wife, or something. He’s a good guy. It’s not like they exactly grow wild in every field,” said Josie.
“Yes, you’re right,” said Elaine. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“How are you getting along with his son?” asked Josie, putting the finishing touches on the flowers in Elaine’s hair.
Elaine chuckled. “Great. He’s a fun kid to hang out with. Wilder than Max, but who isn’t?”
“Well there you go then. Money, Sex and Kids. The lethal three subjects that kill second marriages. You’re golden.”
Judy came into the restroom. “Wow,” said Elaine. “You sure do clean up pretty.”
Judy was to be Elaine’s maid of honor. She was wearing an elegant pink shirtwaist dress with pearl buttons and her usual ponytail was wrapped up into a bun on top of her head, surrounded by pink rhinestones. She laughed and said, “Thank you. I’ll try not to embarrass you by throwing a line over the rafters.” Judy was a tree surgeon who spent many workdays suspended in a harness with a chain saw. “I have to admit, though,” she said, “whoever decided to stick four penny nails under the ass-end of women’s dress shoes was a pure sadistic bastard.” But then she sashayed down the length of the restroom like the best of runway models to show off her dress, and that she could play dress-up when she wanted to. Elaine laughed out loud.
A thought crossed through Elaine’s mind that this was a different flavor of women’s liberation altogether than her mother’s Cambridge coffee house version. But maybe we couldn’t have gotten here without going there first. She pushed it away. She had had about enough of her mother’s strident voice always hammering away somewhere in the back of her mind and endless internal arguments with someone who wasn’t even there. She resolved that now that she was finally getting married, she was going to banish her mother’s opinions altogether and start fresh.
Tom had to take Josh to pick up Winnie for the wedding. He was teaching Josh to drive, a terrifying experience, but the prospect of Josh getting around on his own was appealing nonetheless, especially since Winnie came on the scene.
He waited in the car while Josh went to the door to collect her. When she came out Tom was surprised again, as he was every time he saw her. Surely it was not possible for a girl her age to be so tall. She was nearly six-feet and probably not finished growing yet. And she didn’t even play basketball.
“Hi, Winnie,” he said, when she got into the back seat. “You look pretty.” He couldn’t see what she was wearing under her raincoat, but it seemed like the right thing to say. She did have makeup and big hoop earrings on.
“Hi, Tom,” she said. “Aren’t you excited? This is your wedding day.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. Actually he was anxious to get it over with. The day itself didn’t matter. The marriage did.
“Are you going on a honeymoon?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said. “Just taking a week off of work, but we’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh,” she said.
“They’re afraid to leave Max and me unsupervised,” said Josh.
“That shows they have some sense,” said Winnie. Tom suppressed a chuckle.
“What did you get them for a present?” she whispered to Josh, although Tom could easily hear her.
“I didn’t get a present,” whispered Josh back. “I’m just a kid.”
“You’re kidding,” she said. “Really, what did you get them?”
Tom started humming loudly, mostly the tune to Brahms wedding march, but somewhere along the way it turned into “Oh come all ye faithful.”
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Yes you did,” she said.
“OK, I did,” he said.
“I knew it,” she said. “What is it?”
“A box of condoms with holes in them,” he said. “I want more brothers and sisters.”
“Na uh,” she said. “Anyway, what for? You’ll be gone before they are old enough to go to school. Do the math, genius.”
“I can do the math,” he said. “I could still be like an uncle. It would be fun.”
“Come on,” she said. “What did you really get them?”
“OK,” he said. “I made them a lamp in shop at school. But I did get them a box of condoms with holes in them as a joke.”
“That’s cool. A handmade gift,” she said. “Now I feel dumb. I got them candles.”
“They’ll love them,” said Josh. “Maybe I’ll get more brothers and sisters after all.”
The ceremony was brief, sensually overwhelming with simultaneous beauty in words, color
s, music, lights, fragrances and movement, and by far the most romantic thing that Winnie had ever witnessed. She cried but not over Tom, or Elaine, or even Josh. She cried not over the particular, but over the universal. Witnessing the joining together of a man and a woman was like watching life itself being created. Without that union, nothing else of any importance could follow, but with it all manner of happiness and creativity was possible. Winnie was very young.
Since it was such a small crowd, there was no reception line. Everyone immediately began to mingle. Winnie stayed close to Josh hoping he’d help her through all the introductions, but he had something else on his mind. It didn’t take long for Josh to shake her off and grab center stage to offer the best man’s toast.
He clinked the side of his glass to bring all eyes in his direction, and to make Tom and Elaine kiss, and when he was happily basking at the center of attention he began.
“Two score and three years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent my Dad, and then a bunch of other stuff happened, and now he’s married to my new stepmother Elaine.”
The laughter of the group was like a rich sweet desert to Josh’s ego. He and drama club were beginning a lifelong journey. He continued, “Elaine was conceived in a test tube, and dedicated to the proposition that all women are created equal to men.” He looked over and saw that Elaine was dabbing her laughing eyes with a tissue. He winked at her.
“We are now engaged in a new marriage, testing whether any marriage of such a man and any woman so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We have come to dedicate a portion of our afternoon to wishing the new couple well, that the marriage might live. This we may in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this marriage. The brave man and woman who dare to love again after all the events that have brought them to this place have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. And from the bottoms of all our hearts, we wish you love, luck, prosperity, and happiness that shall not perish from this earth.”
The room burst into laughter and applause. Max yelled out, “That’s Shakespeare, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Josh. “Hamlet’s famous Gettysburg soliloquy.” Josh took a deep bow with a theatrical sweep of his arm.
Satisfied with his moment in the limelight, Josh was attentive to Winnie for the rest of the afternoon. They realized that Max was feeling left out while they danced and kidded around with people, so Winnie danced every third dance with him.
Max, Josh and Winnie sat with Pete and Karen for the meal. Winnie was fascinated by Pete’s police stories. Juliet approached the table during a tale of a robbery gone terribly wrong due to the robber’s heart attack, cut Pete off in mid-sentence and announced with lots of drama, “Mitch is going to be released in a week. They wouldn’t postpone the wedding so he could come. No one has any manners in this family.”
Josh stared for a half a minute and then said, “No one was ever going to invite him anyway.”
“Joshua. He’s your uncle. He’s family,” Juliet protested, putting her hands on her hips and stretching her bejeweled jacket’s arms to the breaking point. Everyone at the table heard a rip as the front of the shoulder seam gave way. Karen, already well lubricated, busted up laughing and everyone else stifled a grin as best they could. Juliet tried to act like nothing had happened until Josh said, “Grammy, I think we’ve got some duck tape in Dad’s truck.”
“Brat,” Juliet said and then she stormed off.
“Is she always like that?” Winnie asked.
“No,” said Josh. “Lots of times she’s worse.”
Josh and Winnie moved on, and soon found an excuse to go outside with Ray and Jack to keep them company while they smoked, which then gave them the opportunity to find a nice secluded grove where they could kiss for a while.
Elaine had a surprise for Tom, and she wanted to give it to him before the party wound down too much further. “Do you know what happened to Josh and Winnie?” she asked Max who was playing chess with Josie. Elaine realized that he must have smuggled the set in from the car. “Would you go find them for me?”
Max looked and said, “It was a beautiful wedding, Mom.” Elaine hadn’t seen him look so happy in a long time. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, and said, “Thank you honey. You know, I never thought I’d ever be married. I still can’t believe this is happening, sometimes.”
He said, “Well, it took you long enough, but it was worth the wait. I was getting really tired of it just being the two of us.”
Josh and Winnie appeared by the table and Elaine said, “Tom, come over here, will you?”
Tom came over and said, “What’s up?”
Max already knew what the present was. He was involved in the planning. It had been a bit of a project to keep both Tom and Josh in the dark, but Max and Elaine had both learned that Josh was constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret.
“I have a wedding present for you,” said Elaine, smiling mischievously at Tom.
“Uh oh,” he said. “Were we supposed to get something for each other?”
“I just wanted to,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you got anything for me or not.”
“OK,” he said. “I wasn’t aware, you know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. She didn’t expect him to get her anything. She really didn’t expect much of anything from him at all, except that he didn’t break her heart, which didn’t look very likely to her, and that he relieve her loneliness, which he did quite well. And she found that her sense of human touch and her sexuality were more lively that they’d been in years so she really didn’t know what else there was to expect, given that in her experience life never resembled a fairy tale.
She handed Tom a wrapped package about the size of a shirt box, adorned with fresh greenery and roses in a corsage holder. “Is it clothing?” he said. “Look inside,” she told him.
He opened it and took out a fat office folder. “What is it?” he said. Jack and Ray and Frank appeared beside Elaine. Tom started flipping through the papers in the folder.
“It’s from all of us too,” said Ray. “It’s a community present.”
Jack said, “Did you get it yet?”
“No I don’t get it,” said Tom. He looked at everyone confused. “I can see what it is. It’s plans for an addition to a house, with brochures for all the materials, but…”
“It’s an addition for our house,” said Elaine, smiling triumphantly. “It’s two rooms. One is a study for you for going to college, and when you are a teacher. The other one is another bedroom so the boys can each have a big room. I already designed it all with the guys, who are volunteering their time for the dry walling. But we can change the design if you don’t like anything.”
“Wow,” said Tom. “I really don’t know what to say. Thank you everybody.”
“Hey, I think I need a drink,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He turned and took two steps, and then did a Columbo impersonation, turned and scratched his head, and then slapped his forehead. “I almost forgot,” he said. “I did get you one little thing. What did I do with that?”
He started searching all his pockets, and finally came upon an envelope in the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “Would you believe it?” he said. “There is something here for you.”
He handed the envelope to Elaine.
“You sneaky dog,” she said. It was his turn to grin playfully. She opened the envelope and found travel documents for a week at an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas, commencing in three days.
She looked at him and said, “But I thought…”
“Josie and Judy,” he said. “They’re taking the boys camping for a week while we’re gone.”
Elaine looked at Josie, who said, “Elaine, they’ll be fine. We’ll take good care of them,” and then at Judy who said, “Go girl. You’ll never get another chance
to have a honeymoon.”
Tom looked at her anxious and worried, “Is it OK?” he asked.
And that was the moment when Elaine realized that she really was in love after all.
“Yes, dear. It’s much more than OK,” she said.