The next morning, the first day of our honeymoon, of our married life, Meda watched me try to shave through the steam her marathon shower had left on the mirror. It was one of the two most important shaves in my whole life, and I was trying not make a botch job of it. Maybe trying to be helpful, Meda wiped the mirror with her palm, but that made it worse.
I kept thinking she would go out and open the door, clear the mirror, but she hovered right at my elbow. Twice, I bumped her when I went to rinse the razor. A little too casually she said, “Aunt M. said we ought to have real wedding pictures taken after the baby’s born.”
“Really?”
“So we’d have wedding pictures where I wasn’t the size of a VW bug.”
“I like Volkswagens.”
“Thanks. She says in twenty years nobody will even remember that they aren’t the actual wedding pictures.” My elbow made grazing contact with her breast again, but she didn’t move. “So, what do you think?”
“If you want, we can have fake wedding pictures taken.” I preferred not to confuse the issue by referring to them as ‘real’ wedding pictures. The shave was as good as I could get it under the circumstances. It would have to do. I rinsed my face and toweled off.
“But what do you think?” Meda said.
It was the point in my morning routine when I once would have combed my hair. After a month of not combing it all, which had not been the goal, according to Meda, I had to have a radical haircut to get rid of all the knots in it. I didn’t have much hair not to comb. Meda was waiting for me to answer.
“I think…I want to remember all of it,” I said.
In my clandestine recording of the wedding, Meda held her breath for a good fifteen seconds before she exhaled, “I do.” She must have remembered the signed license at last and got the words out.
“What if it doesn’t work? What if this doesn’t work out?” Meda said.
That was the real question, not the question about the pictures.
“It’s never too late to change your mind.” I immediately wished I could take it back. It wasn’t the right answer or even an honest one. I thought of all the things I’d left unfinished under the guise of changing my mind, when that had never been the real reason they were left undone.
“It’s too late to change your mind about this baby,” Meda said.
“We could sell it on the black market.” She pinched my arm, not amused. “No, I know, it’s too late to change our minds about that, but it’s not too late to change your mind about wanting to be married to me. I just hope you’ll give it more than a day.”
She lifted two fingers to the fogged over mirror and drew a series of elaborate strokes. An alien language only she knew. Then the steam crept in and filled her calligraphy. She cleared a swath of mirror to be able to see me. When that didn’t suit, she turned me away from the mirror and looked up at me.
“There are some things you shouldn’t be able to change your mind about,” she said firmly.
“Okay. No changing our minds.” It had a nicer ring to it than ‘til death do us part.
“Are you sure you’re ready to do this?"
I could see what she was thinking. The same thing I was. Him. Him watching me. Sitting somewhere, free, watching TV. Watching me.
“Why? Because I’m not drunk?”
“Psh. Because. Nothing,” Meda said.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
The commercial won’t be perfect. It won’t quite match Lionel Petrie’s vision.
If you watch closely, you’ll be able to see where I nicked myself shaving. I’m supposed to look right into the camera, but for most of the commercial, I will look at Meda, who is standing beside the camera, trying to smile encouragingly at me, but mostly chewing her fingernails with her perfect white teeth.
In the last few seconds, I manage to look at the camera, and when I deliver the line, “Raleigh Industries is looking to the future,” I will actually mean it. When I fold my hands on the desk, I will do it with purpose. I will shift my left hand from the chair arm and fold it over my right hand.
To show two things.
Not just the stump of my amputated finger, but my wedding ring, too. If he is watching, let him see that. What he did to me isn’t the most important thing in my life anymore.
It isn’t anything at all to me now.
Last Will Page 28
