Meta closes her eyes, then says, “I’ve gotten so caught up in planning that I haven’t let myself stop and wonder if I should be doingthis at all. I think it’s been weeks since I slept well, and I kept telling myself it was because I was anxious about meeting his mother, and anxious about my parents coming all the way to Sweden, and anxious about getting everything right even though I was making calls from six hours in the past, thousands of miles away. But now I’m wondering if it wasn’t just that. I’m wondering if we’re about to combine elements that were never meant to combine. We wanted coalescence, but what if we get combustion instead?”
V looks over to J with raised eyebrows:Do you want to take this?
He signals back,Not at all. All yours.
“It’s natural to feel that way,” V begins. “I don’t know many brides who haven’t. So let’s put it into that perspective. But I also feel that it’s not too late to change your mind. If you go in there and say, ‘Hey, we’ve decided not to get married,’ everyone will understand. Marriage is a big step, and you don’t have to take it now. The two of you are so young, and your love is so young. You don’t need to make it grow up fast.”
“I’m not sure getting married is the issue,” J says delicately.
“Of course it is,” V replies, somewhat dismissively. “You’re not saying they have to get married, are you?”
“No, not at all. It’s just...”
“It’s justwhat?”
J looks to Thor beseechingly and says, “You have to tell her.”
V shifts her glance from J to Thor. “Tell me what?”
Thor turns to Meta, who opens her eyes, looks at him, and nods. She sits up and he reaches for her hand. Only when the hands are clasped does he look at V and say, “That we’re already married.”
“WHAT?”
“We went to Borough Hall and got married a few weeks ago.”
“I happened to be there when they did,” J adds.
Now she swings back to him. “You mean, you knew this whole time—”
“We swore him to secrecy,” Meta says.
“Still. Wow.”
J waits for more, but V remains stunned. He turns to Meta and Thor and says, “So...are you regretting now that you’re married?”
“No,” Thor says.
“Maybe a little. But not a lot,” Meta says at the same time.
Thor stares at his wife for a second. “Honey?”
She touches his cheek with her free hand, soothing. “I mean, no. I’m glad we’re married. It’s just that...before it was just the two of us, and now it’s going to be everybody. That’s the problem.”
Thor nods in agreement. Then he turns to V and J, who are now side by side facing the bed, and asks, “What do we do?”
J and V look at each other then—and this time, there aren’t signals as much as sympathies. J understands: Both of them want to have an answer to give the young couple, and neither of them has any idea what that answer is. Even though they have been on the earth almost twice (!) as long as Thor and Meta, even though they’ve been in far more relationships and attended far, far more weddings, they cannot solve anybody else’s crisis any better (or worse) than they can solve their own.
J realizes: Thor and Meta might not even know he and V have broken up. What if the reason he’s here is because they think he and V are still together?
Still, there has to besomethingfrom all the weddings he’s attended that he can share with them. There has to be some helpful truth he’s gleaned from all the stories he’s witnessed unfolding.
What he finds himself saying is, “You have to understand that none of it matters. Nothing about a wedding matters. It is created to be an exception—the one time your life together is purely for show. It should never interfere with how you feel for each other, or what you mean to each other. You share your vows in front of otherpeople so they will understand what has happened between the two of you...but that part has already happened. It’s like when a scientist makes a great discovery and then a year later announces that discovery in a scientific journal so everyone can know about it. Your love is the discovery. The wedding is the scientific journal.”
Thor and Meta don’t look particularly comforted by this.
“I have an idea,” V says. “Both of you, stand up.”
Thor lets go of Meta’s hand and stands. Once he does, Meta swings her legs around and pulls herself up.
