Wedding Season Read online

  “I’m allergic.”

  “To flowers?”

  “To marriage.”

  “Ah,” Gabe said. “You don’t want to get married?” A funny half-smile dimpled his face.

  “No. And specifically, no.” I eyed him with suspicion, bracing myself for the usual queries, the predictable patient scorn, but they were not forthcoming.

  “Never cared much for weddings myself.” Gabe leaned back in his chair and looked intently at me. “Never saw the point of marriage, really.”

  Now, this exchange may not strike the average Jane as the quintessence of romance, but it was an aphrodisiac for me. Gabe and I stared at each other for a few long moments, during which I felt as though my chest were filling with helium. It was terribly cinematic. There was a thud behind us, and we turned to see that the bouquet had hit the floor. Several women dove for it. Gabe stood and held his hand out to me.

  “Would you like to take a turn around the grounds and discuss the possibility of forming an allergen-free colony with me?”

  “That sounds like an excellent idea,” I told him, and put my hand in his.

  And it was.

  GABE AND I HAVE been dating for a year and a half now. It’s my first real relationship; I once had a boyfriend for two years—the first and last time, until Gabe, that I was in love—but that was in high school. I didn’t really date much during college, in part because there was a supreme dearth of straight men at Vassar, and I wasn’t about to jockey with a thousand crazed undergraduate girls for some lousy keg-party—ignited two-week romance. I did have a couple of postmixer flings with well-meaning young men from nearby colleges. And for a brief shining moment I contemplated cultivating a crush on my Victorian Lit professor, but everybody I knew had a crush on a professor, which made the whole enterprise seem unattractively redundant and, as my father is a Nineteenth-century Lit professor, unpardonably Oedipal.

  Also, there was the one summer that I spent entangled, albeit platonically, with a junior partner in the law firm where my mother had arranged an internship for me. He was just a few years my senior; he was bright, funny, and a relentless flirt. However, Mr. Junior Partner was engaged to be married, and there was no way I was going to play the concubine or trollop or what-have-you—not with my supervisor, not with an acquaintance of my family, and not with someone named Bryce, for heaven’s sake. Of course he attempted to persuade me a number of times, and at first it took every filament of moral fiber I had to resist. Toward the end, though, the temptation was mitigated by the fact that transgression for its own sake has never held that much appeal for me, and also by what a cliché it all seemed—illicit workplace liaison, older man/younger woman, and so forth. These misgivings were confirmed by my father, who, when I discussed the situation with him, laughed and told me it was just a crisis of originality, and that I deserved better (though by better I didn’t know if he meant a man who was actually available, or a situation less predictable).

  When I graduated from college and moved back to Manhattan, I humored my parents and went on a couple of dates arranged by family friends, of which less than nothing came. After a few years, my friends began to despair of what they considered my premature spinsterhood. For a period of time they threw eligible men into my path at every conceivable opportunity; as often as not the men would ask me out, and I would agree, sometimes simply because it was easier and less embarrassing than declining. We’d go out once or twice and that, usually, would be the end of that. A few times things progressed—or at least continued. One fall I dated this very soft-spoken, eerily well-dressed computer programmer whom my older brother James introduced me to (after making a pass at him and finding out he was straight). For a couple of months I went out with a jocular, deliberately eccentric guy who worked as a deejay for a local public radio station and owned three dogs as large and hirsute as Shetland ponies. I was avidly pursued by and for a brief period succumbed to a sculptor a decade my senior, with a picturesque loft, a mind-boggling libido, and a troublesome pair of ex-wives. And so on. In the end, whoever it was, we always broke up. Because I, in the Gospel According to the Exes, am: edgy, intense, hard, too cynical, too analytical, too defended. Or they found me reserved, secretive, elusive, emotionally unavailable—they couldn’t understand me, couldn’t get to know me, I wouldn’t let them in. Or I didn’t take anything seriously, I made a joke out of everything, I was flip, glib, too clever by half, I didn’t really listen (which is what my mother always said about my father; go figure). All of which I interpret as their sense that I was not sufficiently vulnerable, fragile, pliable, woundable, to meet the standards of the Eternal Feminine Principle. Either that, or I’m some delightful mix of the very worst qualities of both my parents, and woe to all comers.

  Gabe was not of this opinion, apparently. He called me the day after the wedding, and we had our first official date a couple of days later. From the very beginning it was easy between us, easy to be together, easy to proceed. We dated for well over a month before we spent the night together; there didn’t seem to be any rush. It felt as if we had all the time in the world. It still feels that way. It’s like everything has been all settled for us via some prearrangement or osmosis, and we’re simply getting on with the matter of spending our lives together.

  I don’t think my affection for Gabe takes much explaining. He’s the kind of man almost anyone would like. What he sees in me is something more of a mystery. I know he’s partial to redheads, which I have in my favor. He appreciates my sense of humor, and I put up with his awful puns. Beyond that, I just thank my lucky stars and don’t ask too many questions, for fear of jinxing it. Gabe and I just fit. For example: We’ve never been big talkers about The Relationship, by some apparently mutual, tacit agreement. Which is not to say we don’t talk. We talk constantly about anything else—books and movies, politics and art, the news, our families, our work, quotidian stuff. We banter. We gossip. We chat, as Henry says. She means it as a pejorative, but this is precisely what I want—someone to chat with.

  Also, we don’t fight. We’ve had a couple of very mild squabbles; easygoing as Gabe is, he can also be outrageously stubborn on occasion (he’s an oldest child, the beloved only son, and accustomed to getting his own way). The closest we’ve ever been to an argument was over our plans for Labor Day weekend last year. He wanted me to go sailing with his family and I resisted, because being around his family makes me uncomfortable; their formality and their coolness keep me constantly on guard. Also, I don’t think they’re terribly keen on me. So when this Labor Day plan was proposed, Gabe and I had words over it. He won. We went. I can’t say that I had the time of my life, but it turns out Gabe had planned the whole thing so he could have a suitably atmospheric setting in which to propose cohabitation. Two weeks later, I moved into his apartment.

  Apart from that incident, Gabe and I have had only one major disagreement, and it was about manners. It took place on Valentine’s Day (of course—who ever gets through Valentine’s Day unscathed?) at this very fancy restaurant Gabe had selected for a romantic dinner. It was one of those places where the tables are set with napkins folded like prizewinning origami and nineteen different utensils for each course; I guess the whole atmosphere and the ritual aspect of the evening had me a little tense. The fight began when I picked up a fork with which to consume my appetizer, and Gabe told me it was the wrong one, and I snapped at him. Who cares, I argued, whether I eat my salad with the salad fork or the oyster fork or the butter tongs? I chew with my mouth closed and beyond that it’s a pack of classicist bunk. Gabe told me—not gently, and I can hardly blame him, since I had taken a fairly antagonistic tone—that I was quite wrong; at the table, in the drawing room, in the office, in the barracks, manners are gestures of respect. Feh, I said, they’re useless silly conventions intended to enforce social order and social distinctions. Not so, Gabe insisted, hushing me; by adhering to the behaviors assigned to denote politeness in any given culture or society, one demonstrates regard for one�
�s fellows. Exactly, I said, you sublimate and efface yourself and become a subservient clone. And on we went. There was no shouting or anything, but it felt like a serious event. We never really resolved it, either. What finally happened was that Gabe pulled a small gift-wrapped box from his pocket and asked whether, as I disliked social rituals so much, he should just return my Valentine’s gift, since he didn’t want to insult my value system. He waved the box at me and we both started laughing in a nervous, embarrassed way, and then with relief, and we went on with dinner as if nothing had happened. My gift, by the way, was a watch that had belonged to Gabe’s grandmother. It’s delicate and elegant and feminine—in short, very nice and nothing I would ever choose for myself. I wear it almost every day, though. What it represents is more important than what it looks like.

  The fact that Gabe’s little jewelry box might have contained something quite different—a certain item that most young women rabidly desire—didn’t cross my mind until I spoke with Henry the next day and she brought it, not without considerable mockery, to my attention. I don’t know why she was surprised. Things like that never register with me. They’re just not on my radar, for one very good reason: I don’t believe in marriage. I don’t want to get married. Yes, Gabe seems to be my ideal mate. Some days I’m still taken aback by how much I like him. And yes, I hope to continue on with him, ad infinitum, until we’re doddering and drooling and infirm and incontinent, and I believe this hope is mutual. But I don’t want to marry him.

  It seems silly that I should have to explain or justify my resistance to marriage at this late date in history, but I usually do. Part of it can be explained by the fact that I, like everyone else, fancy myself an independent thinker. Social conventions, the weight of those expectations and assumptions, give me a kind of metaphysical claustrophobia. They make me feel squashed and breathless, flattened out like a paper doll. Why do that to a relationship? Everything else in my life is institutionalized anyway; why should I voluntarily offer up to the preconceptions of church, state, and society one element that isn’t?

  Also, and more to the point, I have no empirical evidence that marriage is really all useful or effective these days, that it does anything good for relationships and the people in them. To the contrary, from the moment divorce became relatively legally simple a few decades back, all over the country it’s been sayonara, sayonara, sayonara. Who even needs statistics to make the point? How many happily married people do you know, honestly? I know of almost none—neither in my generation nor in our parents’. They’re either newlyweds, grumpy and/or discontented and/or unfaithful, or divorced. Which makes a pretty strong statement about the efficacy of modern wedlock.

  The reasons people get married in this era—in the last fifty to seventy-five years, say—are fundamentally different from the reasons for which marriage was conceived and which it served for the last twenty-odd centuries. So why bother? Getting married these days is like, I don’t know—using leeches or bloodletting to correct an imbalance of the humors, instead of taking a rational twenty-first-century antibiotic.

  To forgo marriage seems so clearly the sensible, the intuitive, the obvious option that I really don’t understand why people react with such disbelief to my position. But they do, and since being treated like a reactionary crank whenever the subject comes up is irritating, I prefer to avoid the issue.

  That, apparently, is not possible.

  I ARRIVE AT PANTHEON before Henry. The restaurant is quiet, just a few customers at the tables for an early Sunday dinner. Waiters cluster and lean against the banquettes, murmuring to one another at the back of the dim, dozing, lofty room. Luke, my favorite bartender, is on duty.

  “Hey, little gal. You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He comes from behind the bar to hug me. His flat, soft Oklahoma accent, flaxen hair, and ever so slightly hayseed manner always make me picture him as one of those wholesome, broad-shouldered, lightly freckled soda fountain attendants featured in Norman Rockwell posters. He’s also extremely tall, and as always, his embrace lifts me half a foot off the floor. “What’s shaking, Joy?”

  “The foundations of contemporary society,” I tell him, my legs dangling.

  “Bad day?” He returns me to earth and slips back behind the bar. “Tell the bartender your troubles.”

  “My troubles.” I watch him uncork a bottle of wine, the tips of his long fingers permanently stained by oil paints. “Well, I have seventeen weddings to attend between now and September.”

  “Aw, you’re making that up. April fool, right?”

  “I wish.” I accept the glass of wine he offers, and toast him.

  “Well, that’s just a hell of a thing. You of all people. How’d that happen? Hello, Blondie.”

  “Hello, barkeep.” Henry slides onto the stool next to me, flicks her fingers dismissively at Luke, and kisses me on the cheek. “Why so glum, chum?” She takes off her coat and throws it over the stool beside her. She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt that reads Slippery When Wet.

  “She has to go to seventeen weddings between now and the end of September.” Luke sets up Henry’s usual, a dirty gin martini with four olives.

  “Including mine,” Henry chortles.

  “Including hers. Henry loves weddings. I’ll get no sympathy from her.”

  “That’s great,” Luke tells Henry. “Congratulations.”

  “You get all decked out, drink free booze, and watch people French kiss in front of an audience.” Henry lifts her glass to us. “What’s not to like?”

  “Magical thinking on an epic scale?” I put a finger to my chin. “Let’s see, now: shameless kowtowing to outdated traditions. A total lack of imagination and foresight. Mass delusion, did I mention that? Oh, and perjury.”

  “Whatever.” Henry rolls her eyes at me, unfazed. She doesn’t take it personally. We’ve been through all this before.

  “Perjury?” Luke scratches his jaw. “How do you mean?”

  “The usual. Lying under oath. Anyone who gets married knows the divorce rate is higher than fifty percent. The occurrence of adultery is even higher, of course. So these people vow until death do us part, forsaking all others, and so on—knowing full well these are promises that they have less than a fifty percent chance of keeping. In essence, they’re willfully lying to their lucky new spouses, and to themselves.”

  “That is a staggering leap in logic, Jojo.” Henry sloshes down the dregs of her martini. “I applaud your bold disregard for nuance. Barkeep! Another round for me and this, this, this ridiculous creature I call my best friend.”

  “Who’s the lucky girl?” Luke asks Henry.

  “Delia Banks. You remember her?”

  “It would be a miracle if he did, you slut,” I tell her.

  “No, no, I do,” Luke says. “Pretty African-American girl. The composer, right?”

  “Yes! And Luke, guess who’s going to be my best man?” Henry turns a beatific smile on me.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I shake my head at her.

  “Not kidding.” Henry gets down on her knees and grabs my hand. “Little bundle of Joy, please, please be my best man? I can’t get married without you.” She covers my hand with kisses. “You can’t say no to me anyway. You’ve already agreed to be a bridesmaid for everyone else.”

  “Henry, I’d be honored. Please get up now. You’re making a scene.”

  “It’s what I do best!” Henry hops up and throws her arms around me.

  “Hello, darlings!” Joan, who has appeared beside us, takes off her coat and makes kissing faces in our direction. “Don’t want to get lipstick on you, girls. Luke, darling, be a doll and make me a Manhattan. What’s new, all?”

  “Joy is going to be Henry’s best man,” Luke says. Joan laughs her hoarse laugh and pulls up a bar stool. She’s a classic Tough Broad, raven-haired and hourglass-shaped and possessed of this very 1940s quality that she plays up to great effect. Joan is not an especially good-looking woman, but by sheer force of will, and that preternatural s
exual confidence usually seen only in European women, she’s brought the world around to a general consensus about her desirability. She carries an air of sexual allure around with her like a formidable designer handbag with which she might whack anyone at any time. We met when I was in law school and she and Henry were working together as editorial assistants at some fashion magazine. (This was before Henry quit to become a Latin teacher, of all things, at a private high school in the West Village.) Joan kept her shoulder—and her sharp tongue, and her ferocious ambition—to the squeaky wheel of journalistic endeavor, and now works as the executive editor at X Machina, an online magazine of literary erotica.

  “I can hardly wait to hear your wedding toast.” Joan lights a cigarette and gives me her wicked grin. Her incisors stick out a little, and they give her smile a predatory aspect.

  “Oh. God.” I feel myself go pale. I am very much less than fond of public speaking. Very much less. In a subzero kind of way. In my family I’m known as Silent Silverman. To see me with my friends you might not guess it, but I’m shy. Or socially anxious. Whatever. I get pathologically self-conscious and awkward in the company of people I don’t know well, or in situations where attention is focused on me, or at large public functions. Weddings, for example. “Henry, I can’t—”

  “No backsies, Joy. You promised.”

  “Oh, sweets,” Joan says. “You’ll be marvelous. Cheer up. Watch me tie the cherry stem into a knot with my tongue. You always like that.”

  Someone grabs me around the waist, and I turn to see Miel, and Maud skipping up behind her. Miel is a wispy girl, slender and small with a narrow, sallow pixie face and pale, lank red hair. She’s an artist, the very picture of an artist, in fact: fey and dreamy, with a tubercular-orphan quality that makes us covetous and protective of her. Maud calls herself our diversity quota girl; she’s Korean—second-generation Korean-American, I think. She’s round and cheerful and sanguine as a farm wife in a Victorian novel, part hip-hop tomboy and part Hello Kitty kitsch princess. Tonight she has a dozen rhinestone barrettes holding her hair so that it sticks out in little tufts, and when she speaks, the tufts quiver like antennae.