OCEAN by Layla Edwards
My Wedding and Karen's Wedding
My whole yard is mesquite trees now. Not really, but their branches extend. So it makes greenery everywhere. They are swaying in the breeze now. Today is a lovely day. It is not as hot as it was. It dropped back down to the 80s and there is lovely breeze swaying the branches of mesquite trees and their boughs.
I lived with Bill long time before I got married. Getting married turned out to not be so easy. We went down to City Hall to get our wedding license. It was good for one month. We had to get married within the month. But I couldn't find anyone to marry us.
I went to the synagogue across the street and the rabbi didn't want to do it.
So I walked up to the Catholic Church on Second Avenue and said to the priest “my fiancé is Catholic will you marry us” and he said “no, because you are not a member of the community and some people just want a church wedding so they can have a church in their photographs.”
I did not understand when he said I am not a member of the community because I was a member of the community of the lower east side for long time, but now I realize he meant a member of his church.
I began to get desperate because the month was almost up. I bumped into Leona in the street and told her. She is the mother of the boyfriend I had in high school. She said there is a reverend on WBAI and he has a church in midtown, she bets he would marry us. So I called and spoke to someone.
But he said he would not marry us unless we had counseling for a whole year to see if we were ready to make the big step. I said “we have lived together for 16 years we are ready to make the big step.” So he referred me to someone else who he said might be willing to do it.
This time I knew what I was up against. So when I got on the phone with him, I began right off saying how “Bill and I had lived together for 16 years and we want to marry, we have the marriage license but Bill wants religious wedding, not City Hall, but he doesn't care which religion it is, just that it is under God.”
He said “ordinarily I insist on a year of counseling to see if you are ready to make the big step but in this case I don't think you need it” and he said he would marry us on Monday. And he gave us an address on West 57th Street, “it is near Carnegie Hall” he said.
I assumed it was one of the pretty old churches over there and I was ecstatic. The night before the wedding I set the iron on the washboard sink of my kitchen and I ironed Bill's shirt and my skirt. And Joey dropped by and I chitchatted with Joey as I ironed. I was actually terrified about getting married but I don't know why now. It sounded like entering another world, and I didn't know what the other world would be. I guess that is why I didn't mention to Joey I was going to get married the next day. I liked everything feeling familiar and the same, Joey sitting in my kitchen saying the same stuff he always did, as if nothing had changed at all.
The reverend had said to bring two witnesses, so Helen and Geraldo agreed to be our witnesses and to drive us to the church for the wedding. The next morning they arrived and Helen was carrying a big box, “it is your wedding present.” It turned out to be a beautiful Navajo blanket that Wendy had given her. Bill and I both loved it, and in fact it is one of the few things we took to Tucson. It is up on the wall of our living room now.
Bill and I were both in terror of getting married, altho we both tried to hide it from Helen and Geraldo and from each other, and acted like everything was normal. It was Martin Luther King Day so Bill was off work. Helen had just had 3 weddings to Geraldo over the last few months, so she was old hand at getting married.
She had met Geraldo in Nicaragua the year before, they had married there at a civil wedding, then again at religious wedding because that is what Geraldo's mom wanted, then Helen's mom threw big fancy catered Jewish wedding for Helen and Geraldo in Roslyn Long Island, a fancy suburb of NYC.
Geraldo had only been in USA for one month so I gave directions on how to arrive at Carnegie Hall. The address was a block or two west of that, on the north side of the street.
“OK we are at Carnegie Hall now Geraldo, we just have to keep our eyes peeled for a church now on the other side of the street.”
We arrived at the address but it was not a church. It was just an office building and when we walked in and took elevator to our floor, it turned out it was a center for disturbed adolescents. We went to the desk and I asked for the name of the reverend, and she directed us to his office. It turned out he was a counselor for the disturbed adolescents there. I was crestfallen. That is not how I pictured my wedding being.
But Bill had sat in the chair in the waiting room, reading the brochure about the center, and told me “this is a place where they try to help teenagers.” He was overjoyed about it. The fact that Bill liked it so much reassured me.
I knew we were in a shrink's office and I tried not to say to myself “my wedding is taking place in a shrink's office.” He arrived and enthusiastically greeted Helen and Geraldo, and the three of them had enthusiastic vivid chat. I thought Bill and I are ‘sposed to be the stars at our own wedding, but in fact we were both so nervous neither one of us could open up our mouth. Then he said “join hands” and I was trembling all over and it helped me to put my hand in Bill's hand, it steadied me.
I was not crazy about the wedding ceremony he wrote. It was not one bit like the movies. There was poem by Tagore, and something from an Apache wedding ceremony. I would have loved it that it was Apache, maybe like everyone I always identified with the Native Americans, but it was all about big spaces in the relationship and big spaces are good.
And Bill and I had just gone thru 3 such stormy years we were not close at all. I didn't want big spaces, I wanted to be close again. Altho I will say, after the 3 tumultuous years of storminess in our relationship it was tremendously meaningful to be standing up there marrying him. For us to be standing there hand-in-hand, being married, in front of witnesses. I experienced the depth and reality of my love for Bill. It had withstood all the storms.
After the wedding we signed the papers. And Helen and Geraldo again chatted it up with our minister, and again Bill and I said nothing. Then Bill and I took Helen and Geraldo out to lunch at small Italian lunch place in our neighborhood.
I changed out of my wedding clothes to be more comfortable. I had forgotten what I wore to my wedding, but when I was cleaning my room this past September I found an envelope on top of the closet which contained the wedding photos Helen had taken. I had worn a white silk blouse with short puffed sleeves, creamy white, a blue cotton ruffled skirt from India, because you're sposed to wear something blue at your wedding.
And for some reason black very sexy stockings that you'd imagine a prostitute wearing, and I assume sexy shoes altho those were not in the photo. I have no idea why I wore those black very sexy stockings. It makes for an unusual wedding pic. There is my black black hair, that white blouse, that robins egg blue long ruffled skirt, and then because I am sitting down and pulled up the skirt to my knees those black stockings. Helen lent me her wedding ring for the part in the wedding where Bill puts the ring on my finger, so I guess that was the borrowed part. Also there is crimson nailpolish on my finger nails. I look like Snow White.
I put together the outfit the night before. I didn't want to wear my wedding outfit for going out to lunch because it had been such big deal to be married, I was in state of shock, I thought it would help me feel normal again to change into an ordinary dress. Helen brought me a black dress made of cotton, very simple and comfortable, but by a designer so it was pretty and I liked it and I changed into that in the adolescent help center girls bathroom.
It had rained all the way in the car to our wedding and on the way back to Lower East Side, huge and loud hail kept hitting windshield. I loved it because I knew it was Heaven throwing rice at our wedding. I knew it was a blessed wedding.
We went to our favorite Italian lunch place, just simple tables in one small simple room, and Bill went next door to buy a bottle of wine and we all had lunch and I was happy but I was still in shock. The next day Bill's boss offered him the day off because “you just got married.”
“Take the week off” he said.
Bill said “are you kidding, I am in a state of shock, I want to come back to work to feel normal again.”
So the following year when Karen called me up to say she and Alan are going to get married I wanted to save her the trouble I went thru. “Just call the Unitarian Church, they will be willing to marry you without making you wait a year, tell them how long you and Alan have lived together, and don't let them put in the part about huge spaces in your relationship.”
Two weeks later we arrived for the wedding. It was held in the loft of Alan's daughter in the West Village. Instead of my minister there was a woman minister. And all of Karen and Alan's friends and relatives, from the Dojo were there. From karate school, aikido school, tai chi, and from when Karen had worked at the print shop. It was before she became a beautician.
Everyone was gathered and the lady minister was there, but there was a hold-up.
“What is the hold-up?” I asked someone.
“Karen refuses to arrive” I was told. Alan was already there with the minister with his son standing next to him as best man.
So I went downstairs and there was Karen. “I refuse to go” she said, “everyone is sitting there staring, it is scaring me.”
I said “nobody is sitting there staring, they are all talking to each other, come on up, no one will even notice you arrive, I have been chatting with Linda F's best friend from the print shop, I am so happy to meet her.”
“Are you sure no one will notice me” she said.
“No one will notice you they are all talking to each other.”
It was big fat lie, but what could I do. Karen had to show up at her own wedding. “We'll go up together and I'll go up front with you.”
“Stay with me” she said.
“I will.”
I swear I must be a crackpot. We walked up the stairs, I said to everyone “Karen is here, no one look” and we walked up to the front together.
Then Karen put her hand in Alan's and I knew she was fine and I took a seat. Karen and Alan had worked with the lady minister to say what they wanted her to say so it was a lovely ceremony, and Karen was happy afterwards.
“You didn't tell me the truth, Anne” Karen said afterwards.
“I know but what could I do” I said. I sat with Karen and her friends from the print shop and we chatted. Then Bill and I walked home across town.
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