I print out the pages, stick them into a big padded envelope, and address it to Virginia Barber, the literary agent I met three years earlier.
The next morning I hand the envelope to Sandy as he leaves for his office. “Could you mail this for me today? Overnight express.”
He tucks it under his arm and steps through the door.
“If I call you before you get to the post office, don’t answer.”
“Right.”
“I mean it.”
“Consider it mailed,” he says.
Several days later, the phone rings and Virginia Barber is on the other end, asking if she can represent me. She wants to send my half-novel to several publishers. I say yes, while simultaneously having a silent talk with myself about not getting my hopes up.
After two weeks of vacillating between hoping and not hoping, I am in the waiting room of my optometrist’s office, poking through a pile of magazines, when I receive a second call from the agent. She has found a publisher.
“Congratulations,” she says.
I impersonate a woman who seems to know more or less what to say—How exciting . . . I never imagined . . . I’m thrilled . . . Thank you so much . . . I really appreciate it—but in reality, I am walking deliriously around the empty waiting room silently mouthing the words holy shit.
She concludes the conversation by saying, “The publisher wants the rest of the novel by September first.”
I count on my fingers. Six months.
A few minutes later in the examination room, I stare through the lens while the eye chart letters float into the circle of light on the far wall. E D F C Z P.
“Which is better?” the optometrist says, flicking back and forth between the settings. “This . . . or this?”
Getting the novel published is “better,” yes, definitely. The dazed sensation I had in the optometrist’s office gives way to joy and wonder, which will always be the most pervasive feelings I have about it, but I also possess a modicum of mild terror at the prospect of pulling it off.
As spring flies by, I lie in bed too many nights and flip back and forth about whether I should have waited until life was calmer before sending my work out there. But when is there any guarantee of that? Anyway, it’s irrelevant. I leaped, and now I have to put my head down and do it.
To compound the matter, Terry and Trisha and I decided to put together another trip. Next October in Greece. When I asked Ann if she wanted to go, considering she would be a newly-wed then of only four months, she said, “Of course I want to go!”
I’m excited to have at least one more trip with her, but there is work involved—itineraries, travel arrangements, research, lectures.
There’s no time for egret watching or other sorts of wise loitering. No time for contemplative thoughts about anything, much less about Ann getting married and what that might mean as an event in my own soul.
Each day I sit at my desk and plug away on the book. The work moves with painful slowness. When the agent mentions that the publisher would like to see my outline for the final half, I have to explain there is not one, that I have no idea from day to day what will happen in the story. Worse, an old voice is back, popping up every time a new idea emerges, explaining to me why it is stupid. I regress to a place I’ve passed through before. I do not trust what comes to me.
By mid-May I am not on any sort of reasonable pace to complete the book on time, and I’m too much of a novice to imagine I can miss the deadline, as if at midnight on September 1 everything goes back to pumpkins, mice, and cinder rags.
The one leniency I allow myself is long, weekly phone conversations with my mother. More than nice respites, they become moments to weave our lives together. We talk about the wedding—the junior bridesmaid dress she’s sewing, her progress hand-tying white bows on two hundred small bells for the guests to ring instead of throwing rice, whether we should have crab cakes at the reception—but our discussions inevitably drift to other topics. She tells me about her osteoporosis, which she has reversed with weightlifting. I disclose worries about my blood pressure, how it sweeps up and down and up, which I can’t seem to reverse at all. She asks me about Ann’s and my travels, about Mary and the Black Madonna. I ask her about her fifties: “Did you have hot flashes?” “Did you gain seven and a half pounds the first year after menopause?”
She jokes, “I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. When I was fifty, I still had an eleven-year-old!”
“Good point,” I tell her. And it is a good point. Who has time to think about this stuff?
One day Mother says, “It must be special for you that Ann is wearing your wedding dress.”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” I say, and change the subject, but not before I realize the words have made a tear in the dike.
Then one morning, two weeks before the wedding, I wake at day-break with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. In those first, amorphous seconds, the grief overtaking me is so strange and dislocating I wonder if I have forgotten some terrible happening. It takes a moment to understand that life is the same, but I have somehow awakened into a depression.
My body feels weighed down on the bed. I have little will to get up. I force myself into the bathroom. Close the door. Sit on the stool before the mirror. I try to get my bearings, shake myself out of it, but it is like something inside of me has dropped anchor.
On the surface, the sudden melancholy shocks me, but deeper down, I’ve almost been expecting it. I’m guessing that what commandeered my soul during the night has to do with me, Ann, and the dress.
At times like this, I feel the small curse of my introspective nature and its obstinate demands, how it wants to be allowed, wants my unhurried and undivided attention, how the moments of life insist on being metabolized and given expression. As usual, having failed to stop and tend to this unmitigated part of myself, it has stopped me.
My eyes fall upon the cup beside the sink, and my dream from last night instantly replays. . . .
I’m in a boat on a river somewhere. Am I piloting it? Yes, I seem to be. I seem to be the only one on the boat. The water is choppy and dark, the wind picking up. I notice that women are wandering to the edge of the river, tearful, holding out their hands. I go by, curious about them. Why all the crying? What do they want? Suddenly, I feel cut to the bone, as I realize—I am driving the boat that dispenses water to dying mothers. I have to stop for them.
Tears come. The anguish I felt in the dream sticks to me as though I’ve walked through a cobweb.
Everything ceases. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, the sadness is unremitting. I sit for hours on the dock beside the marsh, watching the tides migrate. I try to come to terms with what Ann’s marriage means for me inside. I let myself feel what I feel. I write it down, trying to understand and give it form, acquiescing to the inner transaction I seem to need. These acts quench the thirsty places inside I’ve neglected. They are a small mercy I bestow on myself. Like dispensing water.
It feels like I am finishing the process I started in Eleusis, Greece, when I sat by the well where Demeter grieved and first confronted the dying of my motherhood and my younger womanhood. As much as I would like to believe that confrontation is over and done, it’s clear that remnants of longing for those aspects of myself are vividly present in the Persephone-like image of Ann in my wedding dress. The image takes me back to the time I was young and setting out into a new life, and at the same time it thrusts me forward toward the life ahead. I am stuck somewhere between clinging and fear.
There is nothing to do but stay with the whole miserable process, believing that if I hold the feelings, tensions, and conflicts as fully as I can, a shift of some sort will happen.
And so it is that a week before the wedding, I have a dream:
It is Ann’s wedding day and I am walking with her down the aisle, arm in arm. I notice a woman standing at the end of the aisle and realize she is waiting for me. Drawing closer, I see that she’s old and dressed in black. When we reach the alt
ar, I turn loose of Ann’s arm and walk over to see what she wants. She smiles at me and reaches out her arms as if she wants to dance. I resist, thinking this is not on the program, but she keeps on standing there with her arms out. I agree, finally, and we dance through the church while the wedding goes on. I am surprised at the beautiful and improvisational moves she makes, by how energetic and powerful she is, how completely free. She leads, I follow. It is exhilarating. Then it hits me: this is the Old Woman.
When I wake, I am flooded with lightness, like a fever breaking. I open my eyes, aware of how still the room is, the wood blinds drawn open on the window, a pale sky, and an awed, numinous feeling spreading through me. The movements and feelings in the dream seem astonishingly real, as if they’ve actually happened. They linger in my body like memories—my arm linked in Ann’s, walking, dancing, trying to keep up with the Old Woman as she leads, the whole mystery of her alive and regenerating.
Lying there, I remember that the well I sat beside in Eleusis is called the Well of the Beautiful Dances, and suddenly, the dream feels like a consummation, like a coalescing of the last two years. The walk with Ann toward the altar seems like a final acknowledgment and letting go of my old self, while the encounter with the Old Woman feels like an integration, the commencement of a new dance inside.
I met the Old Woman, I think. This time, in myself.
On June 3, at six o’clock, I am at the rear of the rose garden, gazing at the wedding aisle—a dirt path that leads to the mammoth oak beside the Ashley River.
The guests are congregated under the branches, the sun hangs behind the clouds, and three musicians, with oboe, cello, and flute, sit in chairs on the riverbank and play Ave Maria. It is perfect, and for a moment the sight of the soft light coming across the river and the strains of music pierce me with such happiness, such beatitude, I think I might cry. But as Bob has already pointed out to me, I cannot walk down the aisle dressed in black and my eyes running with mascara. I suppress a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Ann asks. She stands between Sandy and me, radiant in her white gown with crimson roses popped open all around her.
“Bob,” I say. “He told me if I cried at your wedding, I would look like Morticia in The Addams Family.”
This cracks her up, but then everything he says cracks her up, his sense of humor being even more acerbic than hers.
I smile at her. “You look beautiful.”
“You, too,” she says.
There are a few seconds of quietness, then Pachelbel’s Canon floats across the garden. I watch the groomsmen move along the aisle, focusing on Bob as he takes his place in the lineup near an urn of flowers. I smile at him, aware that the letting go between mother and son is every bit as important, and yet different.
When the “Bridal Chorus” starts, Sandy leans over and kisses Ann’s cheek. I kiss the other one. The three of us start down the aisle, arm in arm toward the minister. I give myself admonitions: don’t trip, breathe, smile. I gaze at my bouquet of calla lilies, where I’ve tucked the sprig of wheat that Ann found at Eleusis and presented to me as we left the cave where Persephone returned. Demeter’s wheat.
Then those thoughts are gone, and I see the tree and the river and feel Ann beside me. I hear the slight jingle of what I think might be the medals of Mary from Rocamadour and Le Puy pinned beneath the bodice of her gown.
Ann
Charleston, South Carolina
At five minutes after six, the chamber trio plays “Here Comes the Bride.” Standing in the garden, about to walk down the aisle, I decide I’m no longer worried about the 20 percent chance of thunderstorms the Weather Channel has called for all day.
It’s a typical hot day in June. As my father wipes his forehead with his handkerchief one last time, I am aware of his presence, not only beside me now, but throughout the whole of my life. He’s the one who taught me to whistle, tie my shoes, ride a bike, love baseball, and make basil pesto. The one who built my stuffed puppy an actual wooden doghouse, who came to my rescue when my kindergarden teacher critized my penchant for coloring outside the lines, who labored patiently with me over math homework, and who drove me to weekend slumber parties. Dad bestowed on me not just freckles, but an exorbitance of love. I put my arm through his, careful not to jostle loose the hydrangea blossom from France that I’ve stuck into my bouquet. Faded to lavender, the dried petals are easy to distinguish among the roses and other plump, blue hydrangeas. Mom rests her hand on my elbow, and I feel her fingers pat my long cotton glove.
I try not to step on my hem, stare at my feet, or worry about dragging the long train through the dirt. As we walk, I focus on the tree with its canopy of shade and on Scott in his morning suit, standing in front of a dipping oak limb, smiling at me, and looking as relaxed as I’ve ever seen him.
On a big safety pin attached to my bra are the small medals of the Black Virgins from Le Puy and Rocamadour, my Athena ring, and the little glass pomegranate. I slipped them on and fastened the pin over my breastbone where it wouldn’t cause a lump beneath the bertha cape. The sum of my objects has become a comical topic among my immediate family.
When I told Mom I had medals of French Mary but no Greek Mary, she offered me her small icon of the Virgin Mary from Tinos, which had come to her so mysteriously. I took it to the florist along with Mom’s childhood Bible so they could both be attached to my bouquet. The florist joked that maybe I needed a wagon for all my “stuff.” I thought: Lady, you don’t even want to know what’s going into my bra. Despite that, when I left the shop, I realized I’d left out Joan of Arc. All I had was a postcard of her. I figured she would understand me omitting the card. I had to stop or else I’d end up hauling that Radio Flyer down the aisle.
My eyes scan the guests standing on either side of the walkway. The ceremony is such an intimate and private undertaking that it strikes me as weird that Scott and I have assembled one hundred and twenty people to watch. Don’t overthink, I tell myself. I see faces. They click like slides in a carousel. Dr. Gergel, the professor who led my college tour to Greece. My close friend Marla. Trisha, from our trip to France. My three grandparents.
Certain memories have returned to me lately, a flow of mental snapshots. My grandmother at the stove, stirring a beat-up pan of sugar, butter, and milk while dictating to me the secrets of her caramel icing like the host of a cooking show. My “Biggie” (as we call my dad’s mother), allowing me to paint her fingernails various shades of pink—watermelon, raspberry, tutti-frutti. That time my grandfather (not my mother, or my grandmother, but my grandfather) took me shopping at the mall. How we scoured the racks for the special outfit he insisted on buying for my tenth-grade class trip to President Clinton’s inauguration. That houndstooth blazer with a suede collar we chose.
Halfway down the aisle, I see Bob lined up with the groomsmen, watching me and our parents coming down the aisle. On his face is an expression of pure affection, a look I would have killed for when I was eleven and he fourteen. Last night I stayed at my parents’ house, adhering to the tradition of not seeing the groom, which seemed kind of silly, considering that Scott and I live together. Bob and I stayed up late, in a magnificent regression, watching old MGM cartoons on television. During a cartoon of monkeys singing “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,” Bob fell asleep.
I turned off the TV and wondered if this was the last time we would act like kids in our parents’ house. Childhood seemed far away, like a country I would not return to. And I sat there a moment with the clicker in my hand and the screen gone dark, with a wash of images born of nostalgia, but also from a recognition—I think maybe my first real one—that everything ends, life passes, it is all changing. Getting married tomorrow would take me across the border, into a new country, one that seemed beautiful, and unmapped.
Right then, I felt perfectly positioned between two worlds. I tried to say to myself what they were—old and new, childhood and grown-up-hood, going solo and going duet, madame and mademoiselle . I wasn
’t sure, but the in-between-ness swept over me with wonder and sadness and excited anticipation.
Last week, my parents took Scott and me to a Spanish restaurant in the Old City Market downtown. Mom handed me a small box. Our wedding gift, she said. Inside lay three linked pieces of chain. I remember Rocamadour: what’s with Mom and the chain?
I read the card:
Years ago, your father and I adopted this piece of chain as a symbol for our marriage. The two outer links represent each of our lives and the center link, our marriage. It reminds us that we have independent lives, dreams, and journeys, but at the same time, we are joined in a center space where our lives are one.
We toasted our upcoming wedding and sipped sangria. I joked to Scott that his link was the surfer. Mine, he said, was the traveler who would go off to Greece in four months.
Now, as the flute sings its last notes, my parents and I reach the tree. Quietness drifts up. I hear the insects hum. Two egrets are gliding down to the grasses at the river’s edge in slow motion. I smile at Scott as Cathy, the minister, reads the prayer.
Eternal Spirit, Mother, and Father who art in earth and heaven . . .
Before the ceremony, we dress in an upstairs room of the Rice Mill House near the Butterfly Lake. Mom follows me inside with the veil draped over her outstretched arms like she’s bearing the queen’s jewels. Trailing behind her is my grandmother, then Laura, my maid of honor, followed by my three other bridesmaids, carrying their sea-foam-green dresses.
I turn the knob of the window air-conditioning unit to a promising shade of blue and hang my wedding dress on the back of the bathroom door. Settling into a chair in front of the blast of cold air, I pin the assortment of sacred objects onto my bra, which is more like an unforgiving corset contraption.
Everyone is busy. Ironing, applying mascara, plugging in curlers, unboxing bouquets. I sit still a moment, watching the flurry.