“That’s definitely a key part of it.”
“Don’t stop playing weddings, J. What you do...it’s a form of kindness. And love needs to be given as much kindness as possible.”
“I just keep thinking I’ll find something here.”
“All the weddings in the world can’t teach you about love. Only love can teach you about love.”
The elevator finally arrives. They step inside and V hits the button for the lobby.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” J says.
The elevator doors open. J steps out, but V doesn’t leave.
“I’m actually going to go back up to my room to change out of this dress,” she explains. “I’ll see you at the party. Save a dance for me.”
“I guess I’ll have coffee,” J says. “Even though I’m tempted to change into your dress.”
“It’s not your color.”
With that, she releases the door-open button, and the doors close on her looking out at him.
J feels an impossible combination of sensations, wound and scar at once. His relationship with V is over, but it also feelscompleted.
He stares up to the penthouse, wishing Thor and Meta luck, and strength, and humor, and flexibility, and music, and honesty, and time.
He knows they will need all of it, every day.
THE TENTH WEDDING
Eleven months later
It is the night before the wedding, and the brides and the wedding singer have broken into the hall where the ceremony and party will be held. The brides do not particularly look like brides—there is nothing white or lacy about their outfits, and there’s nothing nervous in their expressions. The wedding singer looks like a wedding singer, but only because he is carrying a guitar.
Broken intois probably not the right phrase—one of the brides arranged for this rendezvous with the help of the site manager, a rehearsal with no one else around. The site itself is the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a remarkable space hanging over Columbus Circle, one wall a complete glass lookout over the street and Central Park.
Even at midnight, there is a steady stream of headlights and taillights, punctuated by the green-yellow-red signals of traffic lights.
The singer heads to the stage. The brides choose to sit in the third row, on the aisle.
“Are you ready?” J asks.
And Nadine, one of the brides, replies, “As we’ll ever be.”
About two months ago, J was interviewing Nadine and Frances on Zoom for the song for their wedding. Nadine’s story was an inspiring one; she’d been married to a man who was relentlessly berating and possessive, making her feel both out of luck and out of options. But then she met Frances and realized she didn’t need to be in a loveless marriage. Nadine left her husband, and her lawyer got her an excellent settlement. She enjoyed being on her own, but realized she enjoyed life even more when she and Frances were together. One thing led to another. And now, here they were, two women in their fifties, one getting married for the first time, one for the second.
“Your relationship to love changes, depending on who you’re with,” Nadine told J. “You give up on it because you feel it’s given up on you. But it hasn’t. You just weren’t with the person who could help you reach it in its fullest.”
“Do you feel like a different person, now that you’re with Frances?” J asked.
Nadine shook her head. “I feel like I was always me. But I changed my shape for him in a negative way. And I’ve felt more my real shape with Frances. Same thing with my relationship to love. Love is change. I tried to bend it to make it work. But it won’t allow itself to be bent for too long, not if you’re honest with yourself.”
“So she found the strength to fix it,” Frances said.
“Something like that,” Nadine replied, not wanting to take the credit.
After hearing their story, J asked if they had anything else they wanted to add.
“Actually, we do,” Nadine said. “We appreciate you asking about our stories. But we were wondering...instead of writing about us, could you maybe write a song that sums up what you’ve learnedfrom singing at all these weddings over the years? We know that’s not what you usually do, but when we talked about it, we feel like we want to be the ones sharing our story at our wedding. What we’d love if for you to touch on something greater, something bigger than us. That’s what we’d really love.”
