He said in a tone of voice I can still recall, “Doctor, something is wrong with my wife, and if you don’t fix it right now, I won’t sue you, I will break every bone in your body.”
It was a nurse, an old woman, who took a closer look, who noticed the extent of the bleed, saw my face going sallow, took charge of the room, called the doctor back to work. They stopped the bleed, and maybe they would have found it without Henry, but what I know is that I would have lost much more blood if he hadn’t spoken up, that the situation would only have become more difficult, and that he was right all along.
Days later, back at home, lying in bed nursing Eleanore, I asked him, “How’d you know something was wrong? I didn’t even really know. Just thought I’d torn some stomach muscles or ripped something down there. How did you know?”
He was there, too, right beside us, and said, “I don’t know. I guess I just knew. It didn’t seem right.”
What he could have said is, I know you better than you know yourself.
And this, I think, is what marriage is all about.
L
THE DAY BETH AND HENRY were married was like this:
Low-slung clouds to scrape the yielding earth, the streams and rivers swollen and dirty, green and yellow tractors in the fields doing their discing. Vs of wild geese in the gray woolen sky, flying their ancient and yearly sorties, red-tailed hawks on telephone poles scoping voles and field mice, cows lazing in the mud, and a tire fire miles off, smudging a spot of sky.
A Lutheran church alone on its parcel of prairie, a humble parking lot newly asphalted and partitioned in yellow paint. A line of arborvitae to break the wind, another line of white pine for shade. The cemetery: one hundred and ninety-nine headstones, one dating back to 1877. BJORN ERICKSON still legible though the engraving had been softened by acid rain, by lichen, by western winds, by ice and snow. A swing set, the chains rusty in places and protesting loudly even against gentle breezes. The bell tower—taller than anything for miles but two or three corn silos and one cottonwood tree down by the irrigation ditch.
Inside the church those in attendance sat in their oak pews: fingering the paper programs, thumbing the Bible, playing tic-tac-toe, loosening their ties already, adjusting pantyhose, blowing noses, murmuring gossip, adjusting hearing aids, repeating gossip.… In the balcony, a widow began playing the church’s gassy old organ, and everyone rose loudly. The processional music was meant of course to be a march, but the widow played it like a dirge.
We were badly hungover, our nerve endings frayed, our skin jumpy, our pores leaking the day-after poison of too many shots and beers. Our mothers scowled at us through tears they had no intentions of shedding, our fathers groggy and oblivious. Even for springtime, the church felt overly warm, everyone fanning themselves with the programs. I glanced across the aisle at one of the bridesmaids, who sported a unicorn tattoo on her right shoulder. The bridesmaid just next to her, for her part, a giant black butterfly of a breastplate tattoo. Both creatures seemed to me to be genuinely in motion, enough so that I began to feel nauseous and above my shoes I know that I must have been swaying back and forth ever so gently, like a very green fern in the wind. We waited for Beth to appear.
Maybe it’s telling that Henry never chose me as his best man, opting instead for his younger brother Simon, who at the time of Henry’s wedding had not yet graduated from high school. Simon was the right choice of course; family comes first, and had Henry known some of the thoughts fluttering around my brain, or the emotions percolating in my heart as I stood up there with him at the front of Trinity Lutheran Church, he wouldn’t have invited me at all, and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen me as a groomsman.
* * *
We had misbehaved the night before—no tomfoolery, just serious drinking at the VFW following which at two A.M., we lugged two cases of warm beer up to the top of the feed mill and sat there, drinking and laughing.
Melancholy is such a dramatic sounding word, but sometimes it’s the right one. When you’re feeling both a little happy and a little sad; it’s the feeling that most people experience at a high school graduation I suppose, or watching their child board a school bus for the first time. The night before Henry and Beth’s wedding, that’s exactly what I felt—melancholy. Every time I allowed myself to loosen up at all, have some fun, I’d come back to thoughts of Beth and that night we had together—about how she was the only one I’d reached out to, and why was that? Why her? Why her, and not Ronny or Henry, or even Eddy? Did she think about me as well, and had she ever loved me?
A freight train came roaring through the night and I sat watching it, wondering where it was going. That first album, Shotgun Lovesongs, had just been released by a small record company, and it was beginning to sell better than anyone had expected (a few hundred copies every week). I wasn’t really getting paid yet, but reporters were calling. Those were the days I welcomed interviews, welcomed any chance to talk about that album, about the chicken coop and Wisconsin, winter and being lovesick.
Ronny threw our empty bottles down at the train as he danced around. He had just come back from the road with a black eye and a tooth missing, souvenirs of a particularly nasty bull in Cody, Wyoming.
“You nervous?” I asked Henry, raising my voice to carry over the train.
He shrugged, leaned in close to my ear. “I don’t know, a little bit, maybe,” he said. “And at the same time, it feels like a long time coming, you know? I guess I’m just a little nervous about the ceremony, about saying the wrong thing or fainting up there or something stupid.”
“You’ll do fine,” Ronny said, waving Henry’s worries away like so many horseflies.
“You’re a lucky man,” I said.
“I know.”
“Beth is … she’s incredible. I’m just so happy for you two.” I sipped at my beer, was glad for the darkness, that Henry could not see my face.
“Thanks.” Then, “You okay, Lee? You seem a little, I don’t know, out of it tonight.”
The train finally passed, Ca-clink-ca-clink, ca-clink-ca-clink, then its whistle, that sweet midnight jazz, all horns and rhythm … ca-clink-ca-clink, ca-clink-ca-clink …
“No—listen—I’m fine, buddy, I’m fine.”
“Well.” Henry patted me on the back, drank the dregs of his beer, then stood, said, “I think I have to call it a night. Big day tomorrow.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and after I transferred my bottle into my left hand, I did.
“Really? You’re packing it in? It’s early.”
“Lee, it’s three o’clock in the fuckin’ morning. You should go to bed too.”
“Whatever, Dad. Dawn’s in, like, two hours. Come on. Let’s catch the sunrise here, like old times.”
Henry just chuckled, gave a friendly wave, and then climbed down the rebar stairs of the mill, disappearing down the side of the building, followed soon after by Eddy, the Girouxs, and then Kip, until at last it was just me and Ronny, the way it always was, and we sat, facing east, drinking the remaining beers, each one warming up, taking our turns to stand and pee off the side of those towers—a cheap thrill—until the horizon began to soften into blurry shapes and a progressively lighter shade of blue.
“It’s coming,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” said Ronny. “Blasé. Gonna be lackluster, I can tell. I predict rain.”
“Did you just say blasé?”
He nodded. “French for not much to see. I know a few things, asshole.”
We waited for the morning colors to blossom, but they never really did. Finally, we gave up and climbed down, exhausted and drunk, and slunk toward Ronny’s parents’ house, where Ronny collapsed into his childhood bed and I fell onto the floor. Later, Mrs. Taylor must have covered me with a blanket and, at noon, she carried two coffee cups into the room, opened the curtains, and said crossly, “You two are too old for this, you know. You’re grown men. Christ, Lee, get ready. The wedding’s in a few hours.” She kicked at me, lightly, with the
pink toe of her plush slippers.
* * *
The organ suddenly quieted and everyone who had been staring at us in the front of the church now turned to look behind them, where Beth now stood next to her father. She was beautiful. More beautiful than I could ever remember, and I had known her as long as anyone, since back when we were in kindergarten and Beth wanted to be a veterinarian. I swallowed so hard my throat ached.
And then the organ resumed, louder than ever, the old widow really giving it now, and Beth came forward, slowly, languidly, as if skating. The whole church must have been marveling at her just as I was: the muscles of her arms, the moles on her shoulders, the veins and sinew of her throat, her white teeth, damp eyes, the helixes of brown hair, Revlon red lips. Never, not in the whole history of Little Wing, Wisconsin, could a woman have looked as beautiful as Beth did at that moment. Just watching her march toward us was enough to sober me up, cause me to stand up a little straighter. I watched the men in the church attendance as she walked past them, watched some of them lower their faces to examine the slate paving and smoothed-out old grout of the church’s floor; she was almost too pretty to look at. The last thing I remember in much detail was the bald Lutheran minister saying some words that relaxed the parishioners back into their pews and directed those of us at the front of the church to alter our positions and face the groom, bride, and pastor. I swiveled carefully on drunken heels.
I didn’t register much of the ceremony. The soloists were ho-hum, the readers read familiar passages, the pastor moved into a monologue about the importance of family, the gift of children, the bounty of the land. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, imagined Beth laying on top of me in bed, her lips, her long hair shrouding me, all fragrant, her bright eyes hidden behind mascaraed eyelids. Shit, I thought, you have to stop.
At last, Henry lifted her veil delicately, deftly, and then he kissed her, his jawline like the blade of a scythe, her eyes closed sweetly, his hands on her face. They kissed well, confidently, like a pair of people well practiced.
The kiss concluded, the church erupted in whistles and applause, and the new couple paraded down the aisle, hand in hand, away from where I stood, their smiles impossibly happy and Beth seeming near about light enough to levitate right over the center aisle. I could see Ronny’s mother in the pews, a mess by now, ruining Kleenex after Kleenex and clutching his father Cecil’s sleeve, saying, “Never a more beautiful bride. Never ever.”
In the narthex the bride and groom received well wishes beside a pyramid of Mexican wedding cookies balanced precariously on a table, and thanked in turn every great-aunt and -uncle, every second cousin and cousin, every high school friend, neighbor, and teacher. I followed Ronny out into the parking lot, near a side entrance to the church, where a few old farmers smoked unfiltered cigarettes and the younger ones spat tobacco into the gravel. Ronny bummed two smokes and we stood off to the side, rubbing our pounding foreheads. The bells of the tower began to boom out over the flatland and from the arborvitae three dozen starlings suddenly erupted out into the sky. I suddenly remembered our fifth grade teacher, Mr. Smith, telling us: a group of starlings is called a murmuration.
And then, someone, one of Beth’s aunts maybe, came rushing around the side of the church and told us to make cups of our hands and into our awaiting palms came mounds of rose petals, the softest, reddest things I’ve ever seen or felt. They felt about as fragile as my feelings, those petals, something that could be blown away by the smallest gust of wind, and I stood that way, beside Ronny, hungover and a little mournful, considering the minute weight in my hands, until a mighty cheer rose up and we moved toward the front of the church where the air was already filled with not-flowers—thousands of those petals tumbling low in the air and into women’s hair.
And then they were gone … ducking into the Lincoln, an older model to be sure, but a limousine and no doubt furnished with champagne and chocolate, and there she was, popping up and out of the moonroof, so happy, so beautiful, so shining. And I don’t know that she ever looked at me, ever even saw me, as she blew kisses at her friends and relatives and then disappeared back inside the limousine. But I saw her, and I’ll never forget that moment, that pile of petals still in my palms, then my fists, waiting to be thrown.
As the crowd dispersed, Ronny and I sat on the sandstone steps of the little church, the bells above still resonating, rose petals beneath our shoes. We looked out over the countryside where a single tractor plowed the black earth, a small flock of birds hovering just above it, searching for tilled-up worms.
“I’m so hungover,” Ronny said.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem too happy, buddy. Kinda bringing me down a little.”
“Just the weather, I think. So gloomy.”
“Well, soon it’ll all be green.”
“Should we go?”
“I can get my mom to drop us off.”
“All right.”
* * *
Long after Ronny and his parents had gone into the Palladium Ballroom and Supper Club, I paced the parking lot, too nervous to be late, too proud to be early, there, in my tragic rented tuxedo, the cummerbund suffocating across my stomach and enough to make me think of a corset. I watched mostly Beth’s people go into the hall, then five cars of Henry’s farming kin, all big-looking people, fit people, their faces and necks sun-tanned, though no doubt their barrel chests and flat bellies white as a fish’s. They came from all around Little Wing, all the little farming towns, each one a variation on the same sad theme of decline: a boarded-up movie theater, a vacant Woolworth’s or Sears Roebuck, and a used car lot that never seemed to sell any cars. I waved to a few of Henry’s cousins and uncles, men I knew vaguely. The clouds had been steadily burning off, the sky by now the color of sherbet, all American pastels swirled against the fertile horizon.
“Well,” I actually said aloud to myself finally, “can’t stand out here all night long.” Then I dragged my sad-sack ass into the reception, where small groups collected here and there, pulling at canned beer and sipping on cocktails in opaque red plastic cups. I was grateful when Ronny approached me, with two cans of beer in his hands.
“Hair of the dog,” he said, knocking his can against my own.
“Probably too late for that remedy.”
“Cheer up, asshole, and drink your beer.”
A deejay was situated on a stage at one end of the rectangular space, a slightly overweight man in a tuxedo and red suspenders. I watched him as he peered down at a laptop and adjusted a wall of oversized speakers. The pastor was there too, reclined in a metal folding chair, a bottle of Grain Belt in his thick fingers. He’d once been a pig farmer, I knew, and his sermons were often predicated on farming, on harvests, on the earth. A bank of windows along one wall showed some of our high school friends outside, throwing horseshoes barefoot in the uncut spring grass and smoking cigarettes behind Ray-Ban sunglasses; everyone out there, warming back up to one another, jocular and friendly—none of the feelings I could possibly feel right then. The sound of the horseshoes clanking against a steel stake buried into the ground. The ooohhs and ahhhhs.
The room steadily filled, older people taking their seats at round tables, younger people at the bar, the wedding party now arriving to scattered applause and catcalls. And then, Beth and Henry, entering the Palladium to the accompaniment of Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” arms raised victoriously, new rings glinting on their fingers, hugging everybody in their path to the stage, where a long dinner table crowned the space.
“Please give a warm and hearty welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Henry and Bethany Brown!” cried the deejay.
The crowd went bonkers as Beth and Henry took their spaces at the front of the room, and suddenly there was that good, old cacophony of cutlery against glass, as every uncle, every nephew, every best friend, urged in a sea of voices soon coalescing into a single chant: “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” And then Henry bending Beth as if a single reed, a sing
le blade of grass, her body now nearly parallel to the floor, his arms so strong holding her there, her body so weightless and elegant.
Before dinner, the pastor stood from his chair, no notes in his hands, no Bible—he’d done it all before a thousand times or more—saying, “Please join me in prayer.… Dear lord, please bless this beautiful couple—Beth and Henry.… Fill their hearts every day with love, with reverence, with patience, and kindness.… And lord, bless this brand-new couple as they grow closer and closer together each day, growing their own family and love. In your name we pray.”
And the room said, “Amen.” And I said “Amen” as well.
* * *
I watched everything from the bar: the first dance, the father-of-the-bride dance, the chicken dance, the mambo line, the electric slide. I didn’t feel like dancing. Ronny’s parents, who had known me since childhood, came over to me from another table where they had been sitting with other pairs of parents.
“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Ronny’s mother, Marilyn, said, kissing me on the cheek.
“Hey, Mrs. Taylor,” I said.
“Nice party,” said Ronny’s dad, Cecil. “Real nice party.” A can of Pabst in his hands looking small. He was a construction worker, always sunburnt, always smelling of a combination of fresh air and asphalt. But he loved music, had seen Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert. Cream, MC5, The Stones, and Led Zeppelin. He was the first person I ever smoked up with, down in Ronny’s basement around their wet bar. “How’s the music coming along, Lee?” His voice was all cigarette smoke, gravelly as the roads he worked.
“It’s coming,” I said.
“The dollar dance’s coming up,” Marilyn said, the tone of her voice rising with excitement. Then, “Cecil, do you have five dollars?”
“Five dollars!” He laughed. “That’s Beth! We’ve known Beth for years!”
“It’s so they can have a nice honeymoon!” she insisted. “And besides, I want to dance with Henry. He’s looking good. He taken over his daddy’s farm yet?”
Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel Page 26
