THIRTY-TWO
DARIO
The wedding is small,which Lena wanted, and beautiful, which I insisted on. It takes place in the park in our neighborhood, the one we take Opal to whenever we get the chance.
There are thirty-one people. Most of them are Lena’s—her overly religious mother, two aunts, three close friends from various stages of her life who receive me with varying degrees of wariness that I consider entirely appropriate and make no attempt to override. They have every right to doubt me. I still doubt myself sometimes.
I have no idea how I managed to make Lena want to marry me. All I know is I’m glad I did.
Just a handful from my side: Alanda, four people from the organization whose loyalty I trust entirely, and Ed, who has seated himself in the second row with the careful posture of a man who is aware that his presence at this event requires some explanation and is prepared to be judged for it.
Nobody judges him. Opal, who has gotten used to the fact that the formerly scary man has been a fixture in her home, pats his arm twice and moves on. He watches her go with the expression of a man who has been forgiven something he isn’t sure he deserves forgiveness for.
I know the fucking feeling.
Opal has rehearsed the flower girl role with the focused dedication she brings to anything she considers important. This includes the correct pace of walking, the right distribution of the multi-colored petals, and the ideal facial expression for the occasion, which she has decided should convey dignified joy. She showed me dignified joy at the kitchen table three nights before the wedding. It looked a lot like the Joker’s smile.
I told her it was correct. She said she knew.
Over the past two weeks, she has also developed strong opinions about what constitutes appropriate wedding music, which she communicated to Lena by singing the songs she wanted to hear. Loudly. Off-key.
She asked me whether the ceremony would have a beginning, a middle, and an end, because she has learned that good presentations have structure. I told her yes. She said good and went back to rehearsing.
She is the perfect flower girl on the day of our wedding. She walks with a measured, deliberate pace, distributes the petals with an even hand, her expression exactly dignified joy (less Joker for whatever reason), and completes the full length of the aisle, taking her spot without looking anywhere but straight ahead.
Ed starts crying about forty-five seconds later. Not audibly—he’s holding it together—but the tears are there, and they keep coming, and by the time Lena appears at the end of the garden path, he has given up trying to stop them and is simply sitting there with wet cheeks, looking at some middle distance and apparently re-evaluating several of his life choices.
For people like us, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to feel forgiven. A sweet sickness settles in, an ache you can’t relieve. I’ve lived with that feeling for months now. I’m not sure it’ll ever go away.
Not for me. Not for Ed.
When he learned he was invited to our wedding, I thought he might bolt. “You’re serious?”
“I’d be insulted if you didn’t show up.” That’s the kind of thing I’ve heard from people my whole life, so it seemed appropriate.
“I… Boss, I hurt those girls. I terrified them. They want me there, or you do?”
“All of us do, Ed.”
He paused. “You talked them into it, or?—”
“Lena brought it up over dinner. Opal decided it made sense.” I shrugged. “They’re right about that. About you.”
He gulped and blinked a lot. “I… Where’s the bathroom in here?”
I instructed him, and he practically flew out of my office. Not fast enough for me to not hear him sob, though.
No one says anything about his tears. Except Opal, who sits next to him in that row and puts her hand on his, and says, “It’s okay to cry at weddings. Everybody cries at weddings.” Then she adds,magnanimously, “Even big people. It’s one of the rules Mom told me about.”
He laughs. He keeps her hand. “Thanks, kid.”
Then I stop watching Ed, and I watch Lena.
She’s wearing an ivory gown with her honey-blonde hair down and loose around her shoulders, and she’s walking toward me with the easy, deliberate walk she has always had.
I don’t know why, but I think about my father.
He didn’t say much about my mother when she wasn’t in the room. What he did was watch her. The way he did when she entered any space they shared—not infatuated, just the absolute certainty of a man in the presence of the one thing in his life he was sure about. I watched him watch her for years, and I understood it as a fact without understanding it from the inside.
