I ask her and then she asks me. We each
accept. There's no back and forth about it. After nearly eleven years
together, we know our minds and more. And this postponement, it's
ripened too. Makes sense now. I suppose we should be
in a rose-filled garden or at least on a beautiful cliff overhanging
the sea, but we're on the couch, the one where sleep
sometimes catches us with our books open, or
some old Bette Davis movie unspools
in glamorous black and white—flames in the fireplace dancing
menacingly in the background as she ascends the marble
staircase with a sweet little snub-nosed
revolver, intending to snuff her ex-lover, the fur coat
he bought her draped loosely over her shoulders. Oh lovely, oh lethal
entanglements. In such a world
to be true.
A few days back some things got clear
about there not being all those years ahead we'd kept
assuming. The doctor going on finally about "the shell" I'd be
leaving behind, doing his best to steer us away from the veil of
tears and foreboding. "But he loves his life," I heard a voice say.
Hers. And the young doctor, hardly skipping a beat, "I know.
I guess you have to go through those seven stages. But you end
up in acceptance."
After that we went to lunch in a little café we'd never
been in before. She had pastrami. I had soup. A lot
of other people were having lunch too. Luckily
nobody we knew. We had plans to make, time pressing down
on us like a vise, squeezing out hope to make room for
the everlasting—that word making me want to shout "Is there
an Egyptian in the house?"
Back home we held on to each other and, without
embarrassment or caginess, let it all reach full meaning. This
was it, so any holding back had to be stupid, had to be
insane and meager. How many ever get to this? I thought
at the time. It's not far from here to needing
a celebration, a joining, a bringing of friends into it,
a handing out of champagne and
Perrier.
"Reno."
"I said. "Let's go to Reno and get married."
"Reno."
"I said. "Let's go to Reno and get married."
In Reno, I told her, it's marriages
and remarriages twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. No
waiting period. Just "I do." And "I do." And if you slip
the preacher ten bucks extra, maybe he'll even furnish
a witness. Sure, she'd heard all
those stories of divorcees tossing their wedding rings into
the Truckee River and marching up to the altar ten minutes later
with someone new. Hadn't she thrown her own last wedding band
into the Irish Sea? But she agreed. Reno was just
the place. She had a green cotton dress I'd bought her in Bath.
She'd send it to the cleaners.
We were getting ready, as if we'd found an answer to
that question of what's left
when there's no more hope: the muffled sound of dice coming down
the felt-covered table, the click of the wheel,
the slots ringing on into the night, and one more, one
more chance. And then that suite we engaged for.
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