Adam laid down his fork. “Do we have to talk about this while I’m eating? Or, at least, attempting to eat.” He reached for his water glass. Wendy didn’t answer. For a few moments, they sat in silence. “I got my college girlfriend pregnant, you know,” he announced, while inspecting a carrot in the overhead light.
“I know,” said Wendy, “but it’s possible that something happened since then—like during that operation you had ten years ago.” For months, she’d been itching to bring up the subject of Adam’s hernia operation.
“They didn’t cut off my balls, for god’s sake!” He shook his head as he cut into his ham. He brought the meat to his mouth. Then he said, “If I agree to the test, can we stop talking about my groin?”
“I appreciate you doing this,” said Wendy.
“I better not run into anyone I know,” said Adam.
Why did he always have to make her feel like he was doing her a favor? It was his future too, his baby she was trying to conceive. Or was he just trying to inject some humor into a situation that wasn’t necessarily funny? “I’m sure you won’t,” she told him. “The office is on some random street in the East Thirties.”
“Are you sure I can’t do it in the Bronx?” Wendy was about to volunteer to find Adam a more remote location, when he answered his own question: “Whatever. I’ll wear a wig and sunglasses. By the way, if you don’t mind me saying, this is the worst dinner I’ve ever eaten.”
“Well, you can cook your own food tomorrow night,” said Wendy, who wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or agree.
“I will,” said Adam, lowering a fork to the floor. “I got a treat for you, Polly.”
Adam’s dog, until just then resting peacefully at his feet, let out a high-pitched wail and bolted from the room.
“Screw both of you.” Wendy began to laugh.
Adam laughed, too—so hard that he eventually fell off his chair. Then Wendy fell off hers. As the tears ran down her cheeks and she clutched her stomach, it occurred to her that she and Adam hadn’t had such a good time in months, maybe years.
Adam’s results came in first. As he learned in a phone call the following Monday and relayed to Wendy upon her return from the office that evening, his sperm numbered in the several hundred million per milliliter. “That’s insane,” Wendy said happily, “You’re like a one-man sperm conglomerate!”
“Just call me Captain Stud,” said Adam. He began to dance around their living room like a disco king, circa 1979. Wendy was again reminded of how adorable her husband could be. (She still longed to be his disco queen.)
Contrary to Paige Ryan’s warnings of several months before, Wendy’s fallopian tubes proved fully functional as well. Wendy knew she ought to feel relieved by this piece of news, too. And she was. But it also left her further frustrated: if there was nothing wrong with her, why was she still not pregnant? A part of her was tempted to lie to Adam and tell him there was bad news, if only so he wouldn’t advocate further patience, as Dr. Kung had. (Wendy didn’t know if she had any left in her.) Not that she and Adam were in any position to afford fertility treatments. If it came to that, Wendy figured, their best hope was Adam’s parents. From what she gathered, however, the Schwartz family was already spending a small fortune on Ron’s care. For all Wendy knew, they had nothing more to hand out. Never mind the fact that Adam would likely be too proud to ask them for help, and probably wouldn’t give Wendy permission to do so, either.
Phyllis called Tuesday evening, and only Wendy was home. (Adam had gone out for a beer with a college friend.) For several minutes, the two discussed Ron’s prognosis. Then Phyllis said, “Anyway, how are you, my dear?”
While Wendy and her mother-in-law typically limited their conversation to trivial subjects, Wendy was aware of having spent a considerable amount of time that fall discussing Ron’s medical condition. It seemed fair that Phyllis should reciprocate. The words were suddenly pouring out of her. “To be honest, not that well,” Wendy told her. “I’m having trouble getting pregnant. It’s been a year. And the doctors can’t find anything wrong with either of us.”
“My poor dear!” cried Phyllis. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I didn’t want to bother you, with Ron sick and everything.”
“Please—we’ll be happy to do whatever we can. Just say the word. I need more grandchildren!”
Wendy felt a great wave of calmness and well-being washing over her. “Thanks, Phyllis,” she said. “I really appreciate you saying that. We’re not at that point yet. But if and when we get there, I’ll let you know.”
“Please do.”
“Oh, and can you do me a favor in the meantime and not discuss this with Adam? I worry he’ll be mad at me if he knows I told you.”
“Of course!”
Wendy hung up the phone feeling greatly relieved. But relief was followed by embarrassment at the sudden loss of privacy, and anxiety that Adam would find out what she’d done. And why had she? Was she only after money or was she looking for comfort, too—comfort she’d been unable to find elsewhere? (Or was it just that she had to tell everyone everything, and Adam was right yet again?)
And why was it that Wendy spent so many of her waking hours worrying that her husband was mad at her, or was going to be mad at her soon?
6.
FROM WHAT DAPHNE had told Wendy, Jonathan had hoped to have the wedding ceremony at the conservative synagogue in Cobble Hill that he’d recently joined. But Daphne would have had to formally convert to Judaism, and there hadn’t been time. Or maybe she wasn’t so inclined. Wendy never found out the full story—Daphne had been cagey in her retelling of it—but the end result was that both ceremony and after-party had been slated for the Prospect Park boathouse, a graceful Beaux Arts structure built in 1905 to resemble a Venetian library. As wedding venues went, the boathouse was small. So fewer than a hundred people had been invited. The list, of course, included Wendy and Adam. On the evening of the event, he seemed for once more eager to leave the house than she did.
Wendy had called a car service to drive them there. But the driver didn’t speak English and couldn’t find the correct turn-off. They circled the park an extra time before locating it. By the time their battered Lincoln pulled into the driveway—fifteen minutes later than intended—Wendy was in a state of near panic. She’d been asked to read a Shakespeare sonnet at the beginning of the ceremony. She wondered if Daphne would ever forgive her if she didn’t show up in time.
To Wendy’s relief, the cantor was only just approaching the dais, which, on account of the unseasonably warm weather, had been moved outside to the boathouse’s terrace, overlooking a lily pond. Two slender columns of folding chairs faced the dais. Wendy in her black basic and Adam, dressed for once in a suit, albeit a secondhand one in sky blue with a ludicrously wide lapel, sat down at the end of the second row. Moments later, the somber strains of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major began to sound behind them. Then the chuppah appeared, its birch poles entwined with gold leaves and, upon closer inspection, being supported by Daphne’s younger brother, Will; two buff-looking men whom Wendy didn’t recognize; and—was it possible?—Paige Ryan, dressed for the evening in a bright orange skirt suit with a peplum jacket.
“She looks like a giant yam,” Adam muttered under his breath.
Wendy stifled a giggle despite her hurt. Never mind that Daphne had asked her to give a reading during the ceremony and a toast at the dinner following it. (Or that she would surely have complained about the weight and strain to her back.) Wendy couldn’t bear the idea that Paige had been assigned a special role in the ceremony and, debatably, the most special role of all.
Next down the aisle was Jonathan, his arms linked with his parents’. By the look of it, Mr. Sonnenberg, tall and frail and leaning on a cane, was considerably older than Mrs. Sonnenberg, a small expensive-looking woman with gold jewelry and a silver-blond bob. As for Jonathan himself, he looked handsome, Wendy thought. But that evening
, dressed in a black tuxedo embellished with a cream-and-blue prayer shawl and matching cream yarmulke, he exuded dignity above all else. He was standing so straight that he appeared to be leaning backward. Or, as Adam put it in a just-audible voice, “Exhibit A—stick up ass.”
Wendy kicked him in the ankle. She was suddenly terrified that someone would hear him, even as she relished his running commentary. (It made the spectacle of Daphne and Jonathan’s wedding a little less surreal.) Jonathan assumed his place under the chuppah, and his parents took their seats in the front row.
Daphne appeared soon after that, balanced on the arm of her jowly, red-in-the-face, yet still somehow debonair father, Richard. Wendy could have predicted that Daphne would make a beautiful bride. But the sight of her that evening in her white satin, delicately ruched column dress, her hair swept up and back, her eyes faraway, her skin opalescent, her curves the tiniest bit more supple than Wendy remembered them being, made the hair on Wendy’s arms stand up. Age and experience had lent Daphne’s face a certain angularity that, paradoxically, seemed to highlight her fragility. She looked as if she belonged to another species of woman—the kind who floated ten feet above the earth while the rest of womankind, Wendy included, toiled in the loam.
Daphne joined Jonathan under the chuppah, and the music stopped. “Friends,” the cantor began in an oily voice, “welcome. Shalom. We are gathered here on this beautiful spring evening to witness and celebrate the marriage of two fine young people whom I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know in the last few months, Daphne Uberoff and Jonathan Sonnenberg.”
“He’s met them once,” quipped Adam, prompting a second kick and a “Sh!” from Wendy.
A Hebrew prayer was followed by: “To begin, the bride and groom have selected readings to symbolize the love and respect they share for one another. First, Daphne’s friend Wendy will read Shakespeare’s Sonnet One Hundred Sixteen.”
Her heart pounding—she hated public speaking of all kinds—Wendy stood up from her chair and walked to the podium. Gazing out at the crowd, she was amazed to discover that she recognized no more than a third of the guests. What’s more, the third she knew included classmates of hers and Daphne’s from college she hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Wendy was reminded that Daphne had always had many more close friends than she let on. The crowd vanished from view as she unfolded the sheet of paper in her hand and began to read:
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;…
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;…”
Relieved to be finished, Wendy walked back to her seat and sat down.
“Did it ever occur to you that ‘bending sickle’ is a redundancy?” asked Adam while the cantor introduced the second reader—Jonathan’s brother, David. “I mean, all sickles are bent. So much for the Bard’s mastery of the English language.”
Wendy repressed another laugh as a shorter, slightly less good-looking version of Jonathan rose from his chair. “Song of Solomon Two,” he began in an unexpectedly sonorous voice:
“Listen! My lover! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look! There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice.
My lover spoke and said to me, ‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.
The fig tree forms its early fruit;…’ ”
As David Sonnenberg walked back to his seat, Wendy found her eyes suddenly wet and her lower lip quivering. It was the evocativeness of the verse. It was the gentle undulations of the chuppah over the bride and groom. It was the enthusiasm with which Daphne and Jonathan had inserted themselves into history and literature and religion. It was also the lack of irony implicit in their stillness, the firmness with which he gripped her hand, and the quiet pride in her smile as she gripped back. Embarrassed by her tears, Wendy turned away from Adam. She thought back to her own wedding party.
A few nights after they were married at City Hall, friends had gathered at a local Brooklyn dive. Wendy had worn a green floral dress that she’d bought in a thrift store. The hem had been coming undone. She hadn’t bothered cutting the stray threads. The entertainment had consisted of their friend Howie performing Karen Carpenter hits on the ukulele. Someone had brought salsa and chips. The open bar had lasted two hours, and only the beer and soft drinks had been free. It had been everything that Wendy and Adam wanted—or, at least, everything that Adam had convinced Wendy that they wanted. Looking back, it was hard to differentiate between the two.
Looking back, Wendy was mystified as to why she and Adam had gone to such lengths to avoid having a traditional wedding. Surely the Schwartzes—who’d sat in a corner booth, looking confused if not unhappy—would have been amenable to helping foot the bill.
“Tell me you’re not crying,” said Adam. He elbowed Wendy in the ribs as the cantor began to sing.
“Maybe,” said Wendy, suddenly wanting him to see her tears and realize she was a woman who believed in love; a woman who had been deprived. She turned back to him, blinking and sniffing to buttress her cause.
“You’re not secretly in love with the groom or anything, are you?” he asked.
“It’s a wedding. People cry.”
“Meaning, if your eyes are dry, you’re a stone-cold bastard like me?”
Wendy didn’t answer. Wasn’t it just like Daphne’s life that she should manage to get married on the most beautiful night of the year? she was thinking as a delicious breeze fluttered her bangs and tickled her cheeks—a night so clear and lovely that even the city air seemed perfumed.
And every emotion was magnified by half.
After the cantor delivered an ingratiating homage to the intelligence and compassion of both the bride and the groom, as well as their respective love of literature and the law, he handed Jonathan and Daphne matching goblets filled with red wine and instructed them to drink. Which they did. Finally, it was time for the vows. “Do you, Jonathan, of your own free will and consent, take Daphne to be your wife, and do you promise to love, honor, and cherish her throughout life?” he asked.
“I do,” Jonathan answered commandingly.
“And do you, Daphne, of your own free will and consent, take Jonathan to be your husband, and do you promise to love, honor, and cherish him throughout life?”
“I do,” said Daphne, her voice even wispier than she was.
Then Jonathan reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and produced a thick platinum band, which he promptly slid onto Daphne’s already iridescent left hand.
“O God, supremely blessed, supreme in might and glory,” the cantor continued, “guide and bless this groom and bride standing here in the presence of God, the Guardian of the home, ready to enter into the bond of wedlock, answer in the fear of God, and in the hearing of those assembled.” He placed the now-empty goblets on the floor wrapped in a colorful scarf. Daphne and Jonathan promptly shattered them beneath their feet. Then the crowd erupted in cheers, and Jonathan and Daphne came together, their lips and bodies joined as if two lifetimes weren’t enough to contain the vastness of their ardor. Daphne and Jonathan must be madly in love with each other. The thought came to Wendy in the form of a revelation. All winter, she’d assumed there were ulterior motives at work in Daphne’s heart. Now Daphne and Jonathan’s love seemed as pure to her as
any fig trees forming early fruit.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Sonnenberg. I’m Daphne’s friend Wendy.”
“Thank you.”
“And this is my husband, Adam.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Congratulations to you both.”
“Thank you.”
A nontraditional receiving line had been established just inside the doors to the boathouse.…
“Jonathan! Congratulations.” (Wendy.)
“Glad you could make it.” (Jonathan.)
“Congratulations.” (Adam.)
“Thank you. Oh, and for the record, everything’s free tonight. Free bar. Free dinner. Free entertainment. It’s a socialists’ utopia.” (Jonathan, turning to Adam.)
“Give me a fucking break,” Adam swore under his breath as Wendy elbowed him in the side and muttered, “Keep moving.” (He kept moving.)
“Always a delight to see you, my dear.” It was Daphne’s father.
“Richard,” said Wendy, air-kissing him on one cheek, then the other. He smelled like bourbon and Old Spice. “What a wonderful occasion. We’re all so happy for Daphne. Also, thanks again for contributing to our special issue. Your defense of Hezbollah’s charitable works definitely provoked debate!”
“Any time, my dear Cindy,” he said, his eyes already focused over Wendy’s shoulder.
When it came time to greet Daphne’s mother, Wendy didn’t know if she should shake her hand or lean over and attempt to hug her—not only because Claire Uberoff was confined to a wheelchair, but because the woman had never been particularly friendly to her. Insofar as Wendy was capable of not taking things personally, she’d learned not to be offended. Before her illness, Daphne’s mother had been a well-respected hematologist at the university hospital. In the intervening years, far from turning adversity into challenge or finding that multiple sclerosis allowed her to see what was really important in life—as characters always seemed to do in TV movies—Claire Uberoff had grown angry and self-pitying. In the end, Wendy settled on a compromise lunge that involved shaking Claire’s hand as she laid a tentative hand on her shrunken back. (All Wendy could feel was bone.) “Congratulations, Dr. Uberoff,” she said, smiling as sincerely as she could. “This is such a happy day.”
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