The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

by Sally Koslow

  Seven

  A FOOTNOTE IN BRIDAL HISTORY

  arry and I were married in my parents’ backyard beneath a canopy of willow branches twinkling with—may the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forgive me—tiny white Christmas lights. Rain misted us halfway through the seven benedictions, so by the time I heard “makest the bridegroom to rejoice in his bride,” I was fully engrossed in whether my hair would frizz and thought only for an instant about Barry.

  Several months before the wedding, at a restaurant in the Village where Barry and I went for my birthday lunch—I was turning twenty-seven—I found a Burberry box on my chair. Attached to an umbrella inside was a poem Barry had written about protecting me from life’s storms. There was also a hunky emerald-cut diamond ring.

  I stared at it as if it might explode. We hadn’t even talked about living together. I was hoping Barry might be extravagant, and had visions of an Art Deco bracelet or a pair of expensive gold hoop earrings I’d been stalking at Saks. Instead, after only six months of dating, he was asking me to marry him.

  “Molly Divine, you are the woman for me,” he said. “I knew that the moment I met you.”

  After Barry and I had briefly dated in college, I’d had three serious relationships: Trevor, who dumped me for Sarah; Jeff, whom I dumped when I began falling asleep during sex; and Christian, whom I broke up with not because he was Christian but because if your idea of hors d’oeuvres is deviled eggs made with Miracle Whip, you can’t grow old beside me.

  I considered Barry’s good qualities. There was his playful manner with friends’ small children, and his ability to navigate life without maps—the man was a living, breathing GPS who from memory or by scent, for all I know, could retrace his steps five years later to a remote address he’d visited once, while I have the uncanny ability to consistently turn left for every right. I considered the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his waist, the length and steadiness of his immaculate surgeon’s fingers. I noted the fact that he seemed to know exactly the life he wanted, whereas I couldn’t tell you if I’d rather eat a Cobb salad or tuna for lunch.

  I liked that he liked me. Wanted me. Loved me, apparently.

  I decided on the spot that twenty-seven was the perfect age at which to get engaged: you’re young enough not to be too cynical or wrinkled for a long white dress, and old enough—presumably—to know what you’re getting into. You also have a fair shot at conceiving before life becomes hot-and-cold running infertility specialists.

  The day he popped the question, Barry Marx had all the right words. “I will marry my soul to yours,” he said. I cried, spilling tears on the tablecloth. I actually thanked him for proposing.

  He must have assumed I’d say yes, because from the restaurant we drove immediately to his mother’s apartment, where at least a dozen relatives and family intimates had gathered to toast our future happiness. “To Dr. and Mrs. Marx,” Kitty said, raising a glass of Veuve Clicquot. Until that point, it never occurred to me that I’d ever not be Divine. My name was as good as it gets, even if I had to share it with an obese drag queen. But Barry echoed Kitty with “To Mrs. Marx,” and I was smothered by well-wishers. Only late that evening, when Barry dropped me at home on Jane Street, did I call my parents.

  “Larry who?” my father asked.

  “Barry,” I said. “Barry Marx. The doctor.”

  “The plastic surgeon?” my mother asked.

  “He prefers cosmetic.”

  The silence between New York and Chicago stood between us like ice. “Are you sure, sweetie?” my mom continued. “You just ended things with Christopher.”

  “Christian,” I said. “And it’s been nine months.” Our breakup had been a load off for my mother, who offered me a subscription to J-Date within hours of hearing the news. “Marriage is hard enough without Jesus coming between you,” she’d said.

  “When will we meet this Barry?” my parents asked more or less in unison; then and there I saw myself as an ungrateful brat because I’d impulsively agreed to marry a man my parents had never laid eyes on. My mother and father, I always felt, had been nothing less than perfect-two people I genuinely respected, who were generous and just interfering enough for me to know they cared.

  “We’ll work it out,” I said quietly.

  “Has Lucy met him?” my father asked. If Lucy approved of Barry, it would be good enough for him. Divine family lore classified my father and Lucy as the sensible ones, while I was considered to be a good-hearted and dizzy blonde like my mother.

  “Not yet,” I said. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. I wanted my parents to be bouncing with happiness, not shooting questions as if our conversation were a press conference. “Aren’t you pleased?” I finally asked. If I whined, I note in my defense that it was late and my face hurt from smiling.

  “Molly darling, if you want to marry this man, he must be extremely special,” my mother said. Not only was she always a steel beam of support, she knows when to end a conversation. “But don’t rush. Have a long engagement.”

  The next day, Barry and I set a date for only four months later and I kicked into action. Calligraphy or my mother’s distinctive penmanship? DJ or band? Cornish hens or Chilean sea bass? Tent or no tent? Peonies or hydrangeas? Noon or twilight? Vintage Bentley or a Cadillac in Mary Kay pink? Hair up or hanging loose? No detail was too small to be deconstructed as if it were a line from the Talmud.

  Except for the Bentley and band, Barry didn’t voice strong opinions. “You’re only going to do this once, Molly—I’ll go with whatever you want,” he said, and made me feel as loved as I ever had by a man.

  “I never took you for a psycho bride,” Brie said as we gown-shopped in New York three months before the wedding.

  Brie was right. I fulfilled every cliché, obsessing over decisions as if the lives of babies depended on them. A pink wedding? Too cupcake. Yellow? Unflattering on 80 percent of skin types, claims Allure. Blue would do, but “nothing too Cozumel,” I lectured as I whipped out a paint chip to show the wedding coordinator, whom I’d forced my parents to hire at considerable expense. “It’s got to be barely blue, like a duck’s egg.” Terms like “too matchy-matchy” infected my vocabulary. I am sure people were mocking me, but ensconced as I was in my bride bubble, how could I hear or see?

  When it came to the gown, however, Brie talked me down to earth. After I considered no fewer than five hundred possibilities culled from every bridal magazine—even Las Vegas Wedding—and we had the ooh-la-la shopping experience, tea and all, I spent one-fifth the cost of a Vera Wang when Brie dragged me to a garment-center hole in the wall. “I’m the last person in the world to ever say no to designer clothes,” she said, standing tall and tailored as I tried on fourteen gowns in thirty minutes. “But don’t throw money at a dress. You could look good in a dry cleaner’s bag, and honestly, strapless is strapless.”

  In the world of fashion, I’m a foot soldier, not a commanding officer, and so I did whatever Brie suggested. She guided me to a slim column of satin with just a spritz of blue-gray crystals. “To pick up the blue of your eyes,” she said, but I suspect she was thinking a sheath made me look thinner. We sewed a pirated Carolina Herrera label into the lining and Kitty not only never knew of the counterfeit, she bragged about the gown to her friends at the engagement party she threw a month later. This is when my parents met Barry. Between his surgery schedule and my bridal dementia, we’d never made it to Chicago.

  At the party, held at the country club Kitty made her second home even as a widow, Barry danced with my mother and Lucy and invited my dad to play golf. I assumed the evening had gone splendidly. “So?” I said in my parents’ rented car on our drive back to the city, the first moment when we were alone together. “What do you think?”

  “He’s handsome, Molly,” my mother said. “His nose isn’t as big as you said. It fits his face.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, waiting for more.

  “Great food tonight, but the mom’s a piece of
work,” my father said. He hates when a woman other than my mother tries to make him samba.

  “Yeah, well, what about Barry?”

  He paused. “If you love him, we’ll love him,” he said finally.

  “Great dancer,” my mother added. I could tell she was stretching.

  I turned to my sister.

  “He complimented my tits,” Lucy said.

  “He did not,” I shrieked, while I heard my mother sigh. Lucy is the most cleavage-focused woman I’ve ever met. She thinks every man is staring at her boobs, trying to decide if they’re real. They are.

  “Did.”

  “Did not.”

  “You two …,” my mother said.

  “Molly, give me three reasons why you want to marry this guy, and that headlight of a ring doesn’t count,” Lucy said.

  I stared at Lucy. I couldn’t say “You’re just jealous,” not so much because the remark crossed a line I didn’t want to pass, but because some unplumbed nook of my psyche considered that she might be on to something. I looked out the window, but there were no answers in the passing cars.

  “He’ll make a good father,” I offered.

  “That’s crucial,” my mother quickly responded. She didn’t ask me how I could tell, and I wouldn’t have been able to explain. Just intuition.

  “He worries about me,” I said. “I like a man who doesn’t want me riding the subway alone past ten.” As if I couldn’t make that decision for myself.

  He may love me more than I love him was something I didn’t think I should list. I still thought it was wildly desirable for that to be the working dynamic in a successful relationship, and in our case, the only reason I believed it to be true was that he’d asked me to marry him with record-shattering speed. Because I’m attracted to him? I can tell my mother anything, but talking about sex with my dad? Nope. I trust Barry? I wasn’t sure I did.

  “Lame,” Lucy snickered.

  “Do you want me to screw up by marrying Barry?” I asked her.

  “You hardly know the guy.” I noticed that this failed to answer my question.

  “My fiancé has a name—Barry—and we’ve been spending every minute together,” I said, though it was a lie. His work always seemed to get in the way. “Mom and Dad had an even shorter engagement.” After knowing each other for two months, they eloped.

  “Point taken,” Lucy said.

  The four of us remained mute for the rest of the ride.

  August arrived. The day of the wedding, Lucy showed more décolletage than a random Hollywood starlet. It was a small price to pay to have her drop the subject of my making a mistake. “You can still get out of it,” she’d said sotto voce at my bridal shower the month before, which she threw at a Chicago lingerie shop that specializes in X-rated undies with toys to match. I got enough thongs to outfit a brothel and the thirty-one guests each received a vibrator disguised as a lipstick.

  Three weeks later, I was a comely footnote in bridal history, not a radiant headline. Wearing my hair up was definitely the wrong move—I looked like a hostess at Howard Johnson’s—but it wasn’t that or the fact that Rabbi S.S. had double-booked and had to send his twitchy sidekick. When I looked at my pictures later, I saw a frightened bride.

  I walked down the aisle on my father’s arm. Under the chuppa, six feet away from me, a stranger was waiting. It took a moment to realize he was Barry Marx, who in ten minutes would become my husband. Forever. I broke a sweat and, worrying that perspiration stains would show, stumbled on the white carpet that had been unfurled down the middle of our lawn, dividing the Divines from the Marxes. My dad, pale as milk, steadied my arm. We exchanged a glance and in his face I saw the fear I felt.

  I don’t remember the vows. I don’t remember anything about the actual ceremony except Barry’s lengthy, theatrical tongue kiss. What was the romantic ballad I had obsessed over that accompanied our first walk as husband and wife? My ears echoed with silence.

  But then the reception began—loud, long, throbbing. In summer, the Chicago twilight comes late, and at ten, along with a fistful of stars, lights hidden in the oak trees lit up like pavé diamonds. On account of the heat, everyone drank not just the pomegranate martinis circulated after the ceremony but cases and cases of crisply cold pinot grigio and, later, Champagne.

  There’s nothing I find less appealing than a drunken woman, but I definitely had a buzz on. Loose-limbed and smoking, Lucy and I did our Molly and Moosey number, alone in a circle of clapping girlfriends, a performance saved from lewdness only because it was performed in bridal frou-frou. Soon Brie, my other Northwestern friends, and the New York crowd joined in, watched on the sidelines by Isadora, too soignée for such a display.

  “This must be what happy feels like,” I said to Brie as we twirled in the middle of the dance floor, our booties bouncing to the beat.

  When the band took a break, I went in the back door and upstairs to powder myself with scented talc and keep the dainty bride thing going. As I walked out of my bathroom door, I heard Barry’s laugh. He owns the kind of guffaw that makes people turn around in movie theaters; aspiring standup comics should pay to have that appreciative noise in their audience. The sound stopped abruptly, but it had come from downstairs, and I moved toward it.

  I got to the foyer as Barry walked out of the guest bathroom and continued in the other direction, toward the hallway that led outside. I was ready to call his name when the door opened again. One of his guests from New York—Remy, Romy, Ronnie?—exited the bathroom and sashayed in the other direction. Which made us collide.

  “Molly,” she said, nonplussed. Her Toffee Frost lipstick was smeared, her long red hair disheveled. I couldn’t tell if the hairdo was intentional or if a neo-beehive had collapsed due to avid fondling. “Beautiful wedding!” she gushed, and flew away, innocent as a butterfly.

  I staggered outside, searching for the nearest chair.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Barry said, running toward me. “C’mon, sweetheart—the cake.”

  “I need a moment,” I said, but a waiter was rolling in three towering layers of chocolate pastry, heavy on the whipped cream, studded with enormous strawberries, topped with blazing sparklers. Barry and I completed our drill—his hand on top of mine, the new gold band gleaming against his tan—as the knife sliced through the layers and the shock sliced through my heart. We smiled for the camera.

  “Is Mrs. Marx ready for her life to begin?” Barry whispered as he drew me toward him. His breath was minty, his smile confident, his teeth unnaturally white.

  Mrs. Marx has another idea about where to stick this knife, I thought as he kissed me and the photographer snapped.

  Eight

  OLD SOULS

  f anyone imagines that during shiva a moratorium is declared on discussing the widower’s social life, they would be dead wrong.

  “Whenever you’re ready let me know, because my wife’s sister—you remember Stacey?”

  “Stacey with the chest?” Barry asks.

  “Precisely. Stacey and her husband? Finito.”

  I overhear at least six proposed hook-ups, including one from our accountant, who wants Barry to meet his daughter. She’s a senior at Stanford but, he promises, “an old soul.”

  “I thought you could use some dinner,” a divorced mom from Annabel’s school class says as she presents an armful of vegetarian lasagna. “For you and Andrea.”

  I hear Barry think, Not my type, as he sizes up her double-wide hips, but the only words out of his mouth are “Thanks. Annabel and I appreciate it.” He hands off the Pyrex to Delfina, who crams it into the freezer next to a pot roast, turkey chili, and a tragic casserole of Velveeta and canned pinto beans that’s made from a recipe I passed by last month on the AOL home page.

  “Should have gone for the bigger Sub-Zero,” he says to Delfina as he returns to the living room.

  “A lot of things you shoulda done,” she says to herself after he leaves the room.

  While many
Reform Jews do a token shiva for a day or two, my family goes the whole nine yards: seven days, with time off for good behavior on the Sabbath, when Barry shows up at temple, both Friday night and Saturday morning. Throughout the week, I carefully monitor my husband. Has Model Mourner researched funeral customs? Although he dresses carefully, in a black cashmere turtleneck and gray flannel pants, he doesn’t shave, which leaves him looking just this side of seedy. On at least a dozen occasions he gets teary when someone mentions my name.

  It took me two days to notice, however, that Dr. Barry Marx has varied his meticulous routine. Before dinner, were it not for shiva, he’d have gone for his usual after-work run followed by a shower that would last five to fifteen minutes, depending on whether or not he jerks off. After dinner, he’d log time at his laptop to look at e-mail (he has three accounts: barrymmd@aol.com and bmarx8@earthlink.net, plus the one he doesn’t know I know about, bigbare@hotmail.com). He’d then check out the Wall Street Journal’s take on medical developments, followed by a spot of porn while he’d blare the TV—always a marital sore point. Because of shiva, he’s taken a break from these pursuits, but the rest of his evening remains intact. At eleven-ten, Barry does two hundred sit-ups and fifty push-ups, kisses Annabel’s forehead, and spends eight minutes on WaterPik maneuvers. Letterman’s opening monologue follows, then exactly one chapter of a book—mystery, history, or athlete’s biography—before his midnight curfew.

  But he’s added an intriguing detail. Barry has taken to wearing his wedding ring, which every night he now deposits in the Cartier box in which it arrived, the one he keeps in his second-from-the-top drawer. The box is in pristine condition, since the ring has seen little action. This never bothered me—my father doesn’t wear a wedding band and plenty of cheaters I know do. Nonetheless, the ring—engraved with our wedding date and the word forever—has started appearing on his finger. Tonight he looks at the shiny band as if he’d never seen it before, turning it over in his hand as the phone rings.