by Mira Ptacin
A finger-thin branch flings itself into the glass window behind our mothers. Outside, pruned green bushes tremble in the wind. The storm has gotten so torrential that we can’t even see St. Mary’s Lake. The sky is dumping water like the whole state is on fire. Andrew and I had hoped to have our wedding outside. We had planned on declaring our love for one another in front of our families and the pine trees and the grass (God is nature, Andrew and I both agreed), but an hour or so before the ceremony, a tornado hit our town. This is not normal. It is September 13, 2008, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
“Love never fails.”
I hear sirens in the distance. It is possible that our matrimonial ceremony may be moved downstairs, into the cellar, but we feel safe enough where we stand, so we keep on going. There is a Victorian-looking couch facing the altar, where Andrew’s mother now sits, sniffling, and in one of the few armchairs to the side is my father. There are more people standing at the altar than there are in the crowd. When the storm hit and we moved inside, we only needed about five chairs. We are sheltered within these walls, among this flowery wallpaper, these portrait oil paintings and watercolors, these aged, oval mirrors and lightly tarnished brass knickknacks. We are getting married in the living room of Greencrest Manor, the bed-and-breakfast down the street from my childhood home. It is a fun house of antiques and old memories.
“As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.”
I want them to think I’m good, that I’m not crazy or a bad person. This is the first time I have met Andrew’s best men and I am worried they might think that this was all a part of my plan. That I had motives and had a crafted plan. That I was a crazy woman from the Internet who would do whatever it took to find a husband and be a bride. I want them to trust me. I’m doing my best.
My mom has reminded me that men need sex—this is how they heal. But I may not be capable. Her advice makes me angry, and I don’t understand why she’d say this. Is she worried that is the only way I can keep Andrew from leaving me? Surely she doesn’t think that is what my role is in this marriage. And Andrew must understand why, and despite it being a tradition, I don’t want to have sex tonight, even if it is our wedding night. Surely I shouldn’t have to defend myself. Right now I am getting married and I want to explode, but I’m really making an effort to keep myself together, and I am not wearing a maxi pad and I might still be bleeding.
I wonder, do I come across as bizarre? As a wacko? I realize I have been very quiet these past few days; I’ve had trouble with the small talk and getting into the festivities this weekend. I want everyone to know that we are partners and that I really do love this man; it’s just that I am currently in a bit of a state of shock. It has only been a month since the baby.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
Last night, Andrew and I slept in separate places. Separate homes, separate rooms, separate beds. Separate for the last time. We wanted to participate in at least one customary tradition—it’s supposed to bring good luck. We wanted to do something normal. We want things to be normal. Last night, after Andrew kissed me goodbye and was carried off into his final hours as a bachelor, I stayed home and stood around the kitchen, waiting for the appropriate time to excuse myself, say goodnight, and retreat to my bedroom. All I wanted to do was be alone. I didn’t want to sip champagne. We had no ceremony. There was no spa day, no manicures, nothing traditional. I hadn’t had the energy to put one together, but maybe people expected me to. No one else organized anything. There was nothing old or borrowed or blue.
The boys grabbed Andrew for a rowdy night out, which my family suggested he needed. Before they left, I pulled Andrew aside, and asked him to be considerate of me, of us, and of what just happened, and to be sober for our wedding tomorrow. I added a request that he please not patronize a strip joint, and away they went. The house got silent, people puttered around wordlessly, so I just threw on my sweatpants and retreated to the vault of my bedroom, a world frozen in time. I had nothing left to give, nothing to say. I just needed peace and quiet and a night of familiarity and solitude before I delved into a new existence.
Within the walls of my bedroom, I thought about what was about to happen, or what just had, but I didn’t realize anything, just that I was exhausted, sore, and needed to sleep. But I wasn’t alone—I shared my bed with the dog. Gonzo, the furry relic of my youth, the living artifact that always made me feel like I was still just a little girl no matter how old I was, and that nothing had really changed. Gonzo snored all night.
“Repeat after me,” Reverend Schipper says. “I, Andrew, take you, Mira.”
Andrew tries, but he cannot. There is a rock in his throat, a twisted lump of vocal cords. My man cannot stop choking up. He wipes his eye with his thumb, smiling and crying at the same time, and witnessing this makes me believe he really means what he is trying to say. “I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad,” is about as far as Andrew can get until he tears up again. Finally, he reaches the finish line—until “death do us part”—and it is my turn.
I’ve heard my lines before. I recognize them from films, novels, real weddings. And now I am the one delivering them. It feels funny but okay. Okay, Reverend Schipper, I will repeat after you. I look into Andrew’s eyes and give it a try, but I cannot. My lips and my mouth have taken over. They expand so wide and I start to giggle. I try again, “. . . to be my husband . . .” and I have to stop and laugh. I try, but it’s the same airy, embarrassed laugh that came out when Andrew proposed. I can’t repeat more than a few of the preacher’s words before my body takes over. I really do mean this, but there is something so ticklish about the script. “. . . in sickness and in health . . .” The words are so short and what is happening right now is just so . . . immense. “. . . ’til death do us part,” I finally promise, and “I do.” And then, just like that, we are married, in what feels like less than an instant.
After the wedding, we will drive to the hospital to pay Andrew’s father a visit—he was taken there last night for stomach pains. He had to miss the wedding. It’s still drizzling and storm sirens are still howling far off in the distance somewhere in Battle Creek. Intestines, my dad explained. He had severely obstructed bowels. And as my father, my new husband, and I walk down the hallways of Battle Creek Community Hospital, we realize that the reason all the patients are out of their beds, slumped in wheelchairs, and lining the halls isn’t because we are catwalking down the corridors in our wedding garb, but because all the patients were evacuated out of their rooms during the storm. Hand in hand, Andrew and I follow my father down the hallway, looking for one particular patient, and judging by the faces of all the others we pass, I imagine Andrew and I look like two trick-or-treaters looking for doorbells and my father, our chaperone.
After the hospital, we will drive to my home, where Mom has organized our wedding reception dinner. She has made fruity tortes and parfaits. Chocolate cake. Lobster. My parents will be glowing; there will be lots of champagne and toasts. Kerri will deliver her father’s speech and blessings for him, and it will make us think about the institution we just entered. And about the tumultuous journey we took just to get here. And how everything is somewhat normal now. Established, safe, peaceful. I think about the vows we just made, and the way Andrew cried all the way through them. Something about his tears and our promises made me feel like a child and an adult all at once. Something about being married—it was so adult-like, so grown-up, so swift. Something about it all left me with a feeling that I just cannot name. So I don’t try.
fifteen
I know some things. I know you set the backyard on fire. It was autumn. You were six years old. The oak leaves were dry and crispy. You and your pal Don Johnson, that blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from St. Philip Elementary School who threw up every time he got
excited, were playing in the backyard. I’m assuming you guys found the matches in the pile on Dad’s workbench.
“Mom, the backyard is on fire.” She said that’s how you told them, Mom and her best friend, Claire.
Suspenders hold up your blue jeans. Velcro shoes. You never actually fessed up to whose idea it had been, who had lit the first match, maybe the only match, but the fact is someone had lit the backyard on fire, and Mom and Claire had to subdue the flames until the fire squad arrived. Back and forth they ran from the shores of St. Mary’s Lake to the kindergarten blaze, dumping two gallons of water at a time. You must’ve loved those fire trucks.
Mom says that people always remember things the way they want to remember them instead of the way it was, because it was never just one way. That memory isn’t what happened; it’s what happens over time. She says she was never really mad at you. That she was laughing while the yard was burning. She said it was because of your delivery—your Abe Lincoln honesty had been so blunt. That, and the fact that Don Johnson was barfing the whole time.
My memories of you are a special kind of truth. Your laugh, the things that made you bite your fingernails, what it felt like to be around you—a feeling I can only achieve when I am asleep and you appear in my dream. It’s the only time I can really sense your essence.
She said you gave someone the gift of sight. The night of the accident, a nurse came to her, less than an hour after you died, and said something like this: “Your son, Julian, was a young, healthy man. Would you like to donate any of his organs?”
On your last human day, I was leaving the house and you said to me, “See ya, scrub.” Then you threw a sock at my face. Then you died. To me, it’s just so crazy that one day I see you and the next day your eyes are in somebody else’s body. You throw a sock and then you’re gone. You become a memory, a ghost, just like that. For me, the idea is still taking some getting used to.
You died and we were taken to a different place. We didn’t choose to be the survivors, but we chose to survive. After you died, Mom said we must be responsible for ourselves, that we must be strong. After you died, Dad told me this: “Individually, we will have trouble. But when we come together, we are strong. We press on.”
After you died, I didn’t become the homecoming queen. I didn’t want anything to do with it in the first place. There was the homecoming game. I didn’t want to go and stand in the middle of a football field with hundreds of people watching me wait to see if I was a winner. Dad had his arm in a sling and Mom wore her ankle-length fox-fur coat and they escorted me down the bleachers and out onto the field and I knew what everyone was thinking: There goes that naughty girl whose brother was just killed. And when the announcer called our names on the loudspeaker—“Mira Ptacin with her parents, Dr. Philip and Maria Ptacin”—it was Mom who led Dad and me onto the football field. As we were walking, people behind us were clapping, and before we even reached the field, Mom stopped, dropped our arms, turned around to face the crowd, and waved both hands at them triumphantly. We weren’t even halfway there, but she just turned and started waving. Her entire body. She looked so strong, the way she addressed the faces in the bleachers with her entire body. It was as if she was conducting whatever love they had inside of them. As if she was thanking the world for its love, thanking the world for us, and for her own life, even though she had just lost her only son. The way Mom looked in that moment, it was as if she were looking at God and saying thank you for my beautiful life.
Mom told me that I prepared her for losing you. That when I ran away, it was worse, it was a crueler experience than losing you because she had no control over losing you. When you died, Mom and Dad were already very strong. She said the most difficult thing was choosing your coffin. Just a couple of hours after you died, they had to be logical, make “arrangements,” think about things like the budget, and stationery, and coffins. They picked a plain, wooden one. Mom made sure it was a wooden coffin, because that’s how her parents did it. The natural way to go into the earth. And she said she couldn’t donate anything but your corneas, because the car accident was under a criminal investigation.
Here’s a memory: I am seventeen years old and inside your closet. It is late morning, a few days after your funeral. I’ve shut the door. Your shirtsleeves rustle my shoulders like the leaves of hanging ferns. I am looking down at your big shoes, smelling your clothing, the darkness, and I am vaguely aware of the noises going on outside of your bedroom. There are dozens upon dozens of people in our house. As I step out of your closet, metal hangers clang. I walk out of your bedroom, past Gonzo who is still waiting for you, and as I step out of your room, I see Mom and Dad sitting Indian-style on the carpeted hallway, holding one another. They are rocking and weeping. Their shoulders shake up and down. Dad’s ribs are broken and his arm is in a sling. I see the years falling away from them. If they were to speak, their voices would be those of children.
All that week, I take long drags off Parliaments and Amanda forces me to eat. After the boys take the shoe box of Playboys, we find a homemade escape ladder hidden under your bed and a notebook of poems, tucked deep back in your T-shirt drawer. A book of poems, written by you.
What the Yellow Had to Say
By Julian Ptacin
I am the joy of a flower
the singing of birds.
I am a promise
The happiness that fills your body
I am the delight of friendship
The feeling of being with someone.
I am the light shining through your window
Making you warm
The sight of someone you love
I am the peacekeeper,
The never-ending joy.
We never knew about this, that you were a secret poet. I am starting to see that, often, you kept your thoughts hidden from the rest of the world, too. Those parts deep within us that are so difficult to share. Tender things, like regrets and beliefs that, when exposed, make us even more vulnerable. The stories we write, the notebooks we hide, never knowing if they will be read with someone else’s eyes.
sixteen
It’s mid-October and my girlfriend has harvested her eggs. She’s done it: sold her eggs. I’m on foot now, headed to pick her up from the procedure. The fertility clinic is on the Upper East Side and shaped like a Lego. I arrive and walk to the check-in desk, where a receptionist is chatting with a coworker. She ignores me, but her perfume permeates the air between us with a scent of baby powder and Grammy’s medicine cabinet.
“I’m here to pick up my friend,” I say to the receptionist at the desk. I’m standing in front of her in my hoodie sweatshirt, gripping a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast. Pretty gross. I smell like an everything bagel and I look like the Unabomber, or a gym shoe. I am a worn-out gym shoe and you are a business-casual pump. I wait for her to look up, but she’s not seeing me. It is as if she is deliberately ignoring me. As if I’m an untouchable. It will be called The Battle of the Shoes.
“Her name is Grace,” I say, and she directs me to sit down. I unwrap my bagel and wait.
A nurse sauntering down the hall whisper-yells, “Hey! Hey you!” to get my attention, and when I look up she mouths, “You can’t eat in here,” lifts her hands up to mouth level, then chomps down on an imaginary hamburger. My stomach growls. I wait.
I wait and wonder if my mother would be proud or pissed at me for assisting Grace with her egg harvest. As a kid, I spent a bit of time with former meth addicts and recovering alcoholics that Mom had hired from the local mission to rake leaves in our backyard or powerwash the siding on the house. Mom called the ensemble “Mission Possible.” She fed them egg salad and tuna sandwiches, and invited them to Christmas Eve dinner. My mom always admired troublemakers and underdogs. She rooted for those who paved their own path, especially if their path was paved with the intention of escaping injustice or any type of shit show. I just don’t kno
w if my mom would consider Grace’s method of paying off her student loans a survival technique or soul selling. But it doesn’t matter. Grace is doing what she thinks she needs to do. Whether or not I believe in it, she needs a friend.
Just as I pull out my phone to check the time, a nurse walks through a set of swinging doors with Grace treading softly behind her. Grace’s face is overcast. She looks like shit. We hug, board the elevator, I hail us a cab, we get in and give the driver the best route to her apartment deep in Brooklyn.
“Are you in pain?” I ask her.
“I dunno. Just crampy,” she says, and it won’t occur to me for many months that this is not a typical thing for a young woman to do on a Friday afternoon in October in America. Or is it?
We merge onto the smooth ribbon of the FDR, whirl a bend, then our cab whips over the Brooklyn Bridge like a roller coaster cart when Grace slides an envelope from her bag: $8,000 and she’s not telling her parents. She’s created a separate bank account for it and the ones that will follow. I ask her if she’s okay, mentally. She says yeah, sort of. Make sure you take the weekend off, relax. She says she just plans on watching old movies and not doing homework. I tell her it’s pretty fucked up that we have to pay an arm and a leg for higher education, and we both note the awkwardness of the phrase.
Locked within the bars of P.S. 116’s concrete playground, a recess supervisor wishes he were a drill sergeant, and the children, it seems, are too scared to play. It seems as if that playground is never unpopulated. Like right now, it’s about 7 p.m. and dark out, and there are a bunch of kids still on the monkey bars. I’m watching them from one of the windows of our apartment. Andrew usually doesn’t get home until after eight. This allows me just enough time to take Maybe to Madison Square Park. We walk six blocks there; we play games like catch or “chase me,” and then walk six blocks back home. This is followed by a bath to rinse off all the dust she collects at the dog run. Afterward, Maybe is pretty spent, so I can work for a bit in quiet while the room is asleep and purring. Tonight I seem to have things under control.
