Night of Miracles

by Elizabeth Berg

  The Night Before

  “MORE WINE, ANYONE?” MONICA ASKS, and Nola says, “Me.”

  Maddy gives her daughter a look.

  “Everybody gets some but me?”

  “Right. Everybody gets some but you. Because you’re a child.”

  The women are sitting in a circle on the floor of the living room of Lucille’s house, passing around a good bottle of red. Lucille had told Nola that a bride must under no circumstances see her groom the night before the wedding, and Nola insisted that the dictum be honored, so here they are, Iris, Monica, Maddy, and Nola. Tiny and Matthew are out at the Alarm Bell before they journey on to who knows where. Nola is in her pajamas, the women are still in the clothes they wore out to dinner, but all of them are sleeping here tonight. Tomorrow, they will help Maddy get ready for the ceremony.

  “Little French kids drink wine,” Nola says.

  “Who told you that?” her mother asks.

  “I don’t remember,” Nola says diplomatically, but her eyes slide over to Monica.

  “Well,” Monica says quickly, “they do, but they’re French, right? Different cultures do different things. For example, did you know that in Germany, it is a tradition for the just-marrieds to saw a log in half together in front of all their guests?”

  “What for?” asks Maddy.

  “It’s to show that they’re ready to work together to face the difficulties that may come in their marriage.”

  “May come?” Iris says. “Ha!”

  “Now, now,” Maddy says. “Don’t jinx me.”

  “What does ‘jinx’ mean?” Nola asks.

  “To bring bad luck to something,” Maddy says. “For weddings, there are traditions to keep away bad luck. But they’re really just for fun. You know how we talked about how, on your wedding day, you should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue?”

  “Why, though?”

  Maddy fills her glass again. “Actually, I don’t know, either.”

  “I do!” Monica says. “I’m the encyclopedia of weddings. Something old is to represent the bride’s past, and the new is for the couple’s future. Something borrowed is supposed to come from someone who has a happy marriage, so their good fortune will rub off. Something blue—”

  “Is for the sad times,” says Maddy.

  “Nope. It’s to represent fidelity and love. Chinese brides wear red for fertility.”

  “What’s fertility?” asks Nola.

  “Having children,” Maddy tells her.

  Nola’s eyes widen. “Are you going to have more children?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” Maddy says. “Would you like a brother or a sister?”

  “No!”

  The women laugh.

  Iris says, “I had a college roommate from Kenya, and she told me that there, when the newlyweds leave the village, the father of the bride spits on his daughter’s head and chest so as not to jinx their good fortune.”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” Monica says. She is slouching low against the sofa, and one shoe is off. She had two martinis at the restaurant, generously poured.

  “Okay, here’s a really nice one,” Monica says. “In Australia, they have what’s called a Unity Bowl. And all the guests are given stones and told to hold them during the ceremony. Afterward, they put them all in a bowl that the couple keep and display to remember the support and blessings of their friends.”

  Maddy looks at her watch, then at Nola. “Bedtime. Go on up and I’ll check in on you in a little bit, okay?”

  “I’m not tired,” Nola says. But she gives all the women a kiss and then heads for the stairs. “Good night,” she calls, and the women all call back, “Good niiiight!” Maddy loves hearing the singsong quality of the women’s voices. They are mothers’ voices, irrespective of the fact that Maddy is the only one with a child.

  “A good-night kiss” sounds like a little poem to Maddy. As a child, she never got good-night kisses. She tried once, she kissed her father good night when she was around three, and he endured it—sat unsmiling and stiff as a stone, his arms at his side—and then said, “Okay, that’s enough, go to bed.” She never tried again. But now! Let it never be said that Nola was not given good-night kisses. Let it never be said that she didn’t practically drown in them.

  Monica belches and quietly excuses herself; there is the sound of Nola’s feet racing down the hall to her bedroom. And then: nothing. Peace.

  Then Monica says, “Oh, Lord. I can’t believe it. I think I’m going to be sick. Oh, gosh, I’m so embarr—”

  She races off to the downstairs bathroom, there is the sound of muffled retching, and then Maddy and Iris decide maybe they’ll go to bed, too.

  After Maddy turns out the light, she lies with her eyes open, worrying. Is it normal for brides to second-guess themselves the night before their wedding? She can’t help but wonder if this was a good idea, after all. Oh, she loves Matthew, but…what is marriage, anyway? What will it confer upon her that she doesn’t have now? She doesn’t plan on having more children. She wants a great deal of freedom. What if she marries Matthew and things turn sour? What if she ends up divorced and has to put Nola through that? What if she said she wanted a divorce and Nola said she wanted to live with Matthew?

  Maddy goes over to the window, a pink-and-white quilt that Lucille made wrapped around her. Outside, the stars are clear behind the thin cloud cover and the moon is full, making it look like daynight outside. Nola’s term, daynight. Nola’s perception that at sunset, the sky comes down.

  Maddy leans her forehead against the glass. This was Lucille’s bedroom window. She wonders now if Lucille ever even looked out of it. Lucille was so purpose-driven. It seemed like she woke up every morning with a list in her head that she started working on the moment her feet hit the floor. It’s hard for Maddy to imagine that Lucille ever engaged in much self-reflection, much less self-doubt, which is Maddy’s specialty, even now, even after all the changes she’s made in her life. What Maddy has come to believe is that certain life circumstances make for people who walk with a psychic limp for all of their days. Never mind the progress they seem to make, peel back a few delicate layers and there it is: a stubborn doubting of worth; an inability to stand with conviction behind anything without wondering if they should be standing there at all; a sense that if they move in this direction, it’s wrong; and if they move in that direction, that’s wrong, too. As for Maddy, there are only two places where she feels rooted in surety: in her work, and in the caretaking of her daughter.

  Maddy has told Matthew all of this; she has told him she’s not sure she can be counted on to be reliable in a relationship. She’s told him she’s not sure she really believes in marriage. Furthermore, she’s said that she’s not sure that when you say you love someone, you’re not just saying that you love yourself in his image.

  But Matthew wants to marry her anyway. “I know you may not stay with me forever,” he said just last night, “but I’m so grateful to have you now, and for as long as you can stay.” Which naturally made her wish she could stay with him forever.

  Of course, he could change his mind—wouldn’t that be ironic? He could come to her someday and say, “Maddy, I’m sorry, but we need to talk.”

  She walks over to the other window, looks out at the street below, at the bare branches of the rosebushes that Arthur planted. She supposes he planted them for his own pleasure but also for his wife’s. Now, there was a love story, Arthur and his wife, Nola. It seemed like they were so happy, so content. But then Arthur could never fight with anyone, and he forgave everything. Even so, Maddy supposes that even in what appeared to be their near-perfect relationship there were cracks and fissures.

  She goes back to the bed and sits on the edge, pulling the quilt tighter around her shoulders and rocking, slowly at first, then fas
ter and faster. “Stop,” she whispers.

  Just then a warmth comes into her and she very nearly feels his presence, sees his brown eyes, his wire-hanger shoulders, his stick-out ears and long, skinny legs. “Arthur?” she says out loud, feeling only a little foolish. And then she gives herself over to the conversation that comes to her.

  “Nervous, huh?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Everybody will tell you that’s natural. But on my wedding day, it didn’t feel natural to me. No, sir. I kept thinking, What is the matter with you? You’re the man, the strong one, the one who knew right away she was the one, why, your first words to her were that you were going to marry her. And now you’re shaking like a leaf. Which I was, Maddy, my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t pour myself a cup of coffee.

  “All during the ceremony I tried not to give anything away, but do you know when it came time to kiss the bride, I missed the mark and kissed her nose! And that night, when she went into the bathroom to change and I lay under the bedcovers, I thought I might plumb pass out. But then she came out and she was a vision in blue. A real vision, her hair loosened from her fancy ’do, no makeup, just her beautiful plain face there, her skin as soft as flower petals, her eyes like a calm pool. She sat at the edge of the bed and she took my hand and she said, ‘Do you think I don’t know you’re scared about everything?’ Oh, I felt so found out. I said, ‘Are you?’ ‘Not one bit,’ she said. She was always the strong one, Nola. And that night she asked me to tell her what I was afraid of, and I did. Not just the manly task before me, but marriage itself. I confessed everything to her. I saw that there was going to be no pretending in our marriage. And that in accepting my weakness, she made us both strong. And then she lay beside me and said, ‘We have all the time in the world, Arthur.’ Well, I knew we didn’t have all the time in the world. I knew we were mortals slated to a short life at its longest. But I loved her to the tip-top every day of our lives together. And every day after she died, I loved her that way still, no difference.”

  “I know,” Maddy says. “That’s why I named you Truluv.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Maddy. Half of a good marriage is having someone love you for who you really are. You’ve got that already. The other half is both of you making a commitment to stay together not only at the altar but smack dab in the middle of every ugly fight. One time when Nola and I were really going at it, I walked over and kissed her hard. And she kissed me back. And then, why, we went right back at it and finished the argument. And I’d guess she won it, she won most of them, fair and square.

  “Marriage is like weather, Maddy. You take it day by day. You rejoice in the good days and get through the bad ones, though I don’t think you’ll have many bad ones because you found an ace of a fellow. But you go ahead and be as nervous as you need to be. A little nervousness never hurt anyone.”

  Maddy takes in a deep breath. She throws the pillow back onto the bed and tiptoes down the hall to Nola’s room. The child is a messy sleeper; covers and body parts go every which way. Her face twitches, and Maddy wonders if she is dreaming, and, if so, what she is dreaming about. Life is an ongoing adventure for Nola. She is strong and she is happy and she seems to like herself just fine. So…so there.

  When Maddy heads back down the hall to go to bed, she hears the voices of Monica and Iris, who are downstairs, Monica on the sofa, Iris on the sofa cushions that have been put on the floor.

  “But would you ever do it again?” Monica asks.

  “No,” Iris says. “I don’t think so.”

  “But maybe?”

  Iris laughs. “Okay. Yes. Maybe.”

  They’re talking about marriage, Maddy thinks. But then she hears Monica say, “What about in a swimming pool? Did you ever do it there?”

  “No,” Iris says.

  “In a shower?” Monica says.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, hell,” Monica says. “No wonder you got divorced.”

  Maddy laughs, and they hear her and call for her to come down to be with them, and she does.

  Here Comes the Bride

  JUST BEFORE IT’S TIME TO leave for the ceremony, Maddy is sitting in Arthur’s old bedroom. She hasn’t slept much, but she doesn’t feel tired. She’s thinking about Arthur and Lucille. She misses them all the time, really, but today their absence is keenly felt.

  The door pushes in and Nola appears, wearing a colander on her head. “This is my crown,” she says.

  “Very nice,” Maddy tells her.

  “If you really think it is nice, you may wear it to your wedding!” Then, stepping closer to her mother, “What’s wrong?”

  Before Nola was born, Maddy promised herself to speak the truth to her child. And so she says, “I’m kind of missing Lucille and Arthur.”

  “Well,” Nola says, “I know of a thing that is very good in life.”

  “What?”

  “Fish.”

  “To eat?”

  “No, silly! To swim!”

  “Oh. Well, they are beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “No, but it’s that they swim and swim and they don’t even have to come up for air.”

  “True.”

  Nola spins around and around, her arms out at her side. “I will say that at your wedding!”

  Half an hour later, Maddy arrives at the cemetery and asks for a few moments alone. She goes to stand before Lucille’s grave, coatless. The December day is mild, but not enough to be without a coat. Still, for just a few minutes, Maddy wants to be revealed as the resplendent bride that she is. She is wearing an Art Deco gown that Iris helped her find on Etsy, something from the thirties. It’s very simple, close-fitting, many buttons on the sleeves. There’s a bias-cut godet in the front skirt, and two long sashes that tie on the left side. The color is a deep ivory that leans toward yellow; it makes it look as though the gown is infused with sun. The silk fabric feels like heavy water in the hands.

  Maddy closes her eyes and offers a kind of thanks to Lucille, then goes to Arthur’s grave and does the same thing.

  Now she looks over at the little hill where Matthew waits for her, Matthew and Nola and Maddy’s father, and Monica and Tiny, who are serving as witnesses. Off to the side are three other figures, two men and a woman, whom she suspects are from the cemetery committee: she was told someone would be there. They’re huddled together, and even from here, Maddy can see that they seem even more excited than she is: arms pressed into their sides, necks craned, big smiles plastered on their faces. The woman has on a fancy hat, and a big corsage pinned to her coat. One of the men is wearing an old fedora that under other circumstances Maddy would ask to photograph.

  She takes her place beside Matthew and nods at Jon Brand, a friend who has recently become ordained as a minister. He’s an English professor at the college where Maddy went to school and where Matthew taught, and he shares with Maddy a great love of poetry. Today, he reads two poems that Maddy requested, Jane Hirshfield’s “A Blessing for Wedding,” and Robert Frost’s “Birches.” She selected them because she believes now—finally—that earth is “the right place for love.” And she does indeed wish for the vastness of the vows exchanged today to be ever “undisguised.”

  Maddy turns to her daughter. “Nola, did you want to say anything?”

  Nola, holding Monica’s hand, stares wide-eyed at her mother, then up at Monica.

  “No?” Maddy asks.

  Nola shakes her head.

  “All right, then.” Maddy turns back to face the minister.

  “Fish!” Nola says. “Are good in life!”

  Maddy tells her daughter thank you, and on the little hill near the pond and the willow tree, where a younger Maddy once lay, aching and unmoored and isolated in a way that she thought would last forever, she is proven happily wrong.

  When Maddy closes her eyes to rece
ive a kiss from her husband, she feels hand-size points of warmth on each of her shoulders. Maybe they are from her husband’s hands. Maybe not.

  Fun as a Jigsaw!

  IRIS SITS IN LUCILLE’S KITCHEN scowling at the computer screen. She skipped the ceremony to stay behind and finish the cake. Maddy wanted chocolate and vanilla, so Iris is watching a YouTube video on how to assemble a checkerboard cake. She’d found a recipe for one on a three-by-five index card stuck into one of Lucille’s many cake cookbooks. The instructions for baking the four cakes were clear enough, two chocolate, two vanilla, and that’s all done—she finished that early this morning. But for the assembly, here was what Lucille had written: Construct in usual way.

  Iris watches as the cheerful woman on the screen says, “It’s so much fun doing this, it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle!” Iris doesn’t like jigsaw puzzles. Not now, not ever. She finds even easy puzzles difficult, and for the life of her, just doesn’t see the point in laboring over them. For one thing, when you have finished, what do you have? What are you going to do with it? Take it apart again, that’s what. Puzzle aficionados have tried to explain their appeal, but it is ever lost on Iris.

  Never mind. She leans forward, grits her teeth, squints her eyes, and watches the video one more time. She thinks she understands, but maybe she’ll have a trial run with Styrofoam. When she looks at her watch, though, she sees she’s out of time. She’ll have to dive right in in order to have the cake ready for the reception.

  She puts on one of Lucille’s aprons, and closes her eyes; she can smell Lucille’s old-timey lilac perfume on it. In her head, Lucille is bustling about with her, talking fast, like she always did when she got excited. Now, remember: if you’re afraid, the cake will take advantage. Act like you know what you’re doing, see? All you’re doing is making a cake. Making a cake! What could be easier? Now get going; it needs to be perfect.

  In only fifteen minutes, the cake is done, and Iris is enormously proud. She takes a picture of it. What she wants to do is text the image to Lucille, who never even had a cellphone and who is dead, besides. Never mind. She “texts” it to Lucille; it’s an “alternative” text. Then she sends a real text with the photo to Tiny. Just leaving the cemetery, he texts back. Cake is awedome! She knows what he means. In more ways than one. The cake is spectacular. She can’t wait to serve it, and she realizes that she has found her next calling. She will take Maddy up on her offer to rent Lucille’s house. She will continue to teach baking here, not as the expert Lucille was, not at first, but maybe eventually. In any case, the beat will go on. So to speak. Iris smiles, thinking of Lucille’s insistence on beating so many things by hand. So often when she seemed persnickety, she was only right.