Slightly Married

by Wendy Markham

  “I will. But…thanks for telling me, Buckley.”

  Jack loves my hair.

  I think that’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

  That night, riding up to our floor in the elevator after another long day at work, I imagine what it would be like to find Jack waiting for me with a homemade dinner, candlelight, champagne, a dozen roses.

  It would be like walking into somebody else’s apartment—that’s what it would be like.

  Because I can predict what’s going to happen in ours: there’s going to be clutter, television, beer and takeout—at best. Jack is going to be there on the couch in jeans or sweatpants, watching the Yankees playoff game.

  But that’s what counts. Out of all those details, I now realize that I don’t really care about the clutter or the beer or the sweatpants.

  I missed him last night when he was gone.

  And tonight, I care about one thing only: Jack is going to be there.

  Jack is going to be there, for the rest of my life.

  He’s willing to stand and make that promise—that vow—in front of a few hundred people, Father Stefan and God.

  There are no guarantees.

  Plenty of people make that same vow, and break it.

  His parents did.

  Yet somehow, despite that—despite seeing firsthand the evidence of a marriage that failed miserably—Jack is willing to take a chance on us.

  So am I.

  And plenty of people do make it.

  My parents did.

  Okay, maybe there’s no candlelight and romance in the Spadolini house back in Brookside these days—maybe there never was—but there’s a dishwasher. And there’s always been a lot of love.

  I step over the threshold into our apartment.

  There’s Jack, on the couch. Sweatpants. Pizza box. Yankees game.

  “You’re home,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says, looking up. “So are you.”

  “Yes,” I say around a heavy, happy lump in my throat as he pats the empty spot on the couch beside him in silent invitation.

  We’re home.

  15

  The rehearsal dinner is held in the private party room at the Greenway Inn, which is where all the Candells are staying, along with Kate, her nanny and the baby, Raphael and Donatello, and, yes, Buckley.

  He made it.

  He’s on the opposite side of the candlelit dining room, sitting with the other guys in the wedding party. He’s been flirting with Jack’s cousin Anne, and guess what? That’s fine with me.

  It’s wedding eve and I’m the bride. I’ve only got eyes for Jack.

  But it’s not like the groom and I have had a moment alone together since we got up to Brookside a few days ago—and that’s not likely to change tonight. There’s a big crowd at the dinner, of course. Both our immediate families and some out-of-town relatives, plus all of our attendants and their spouses, Father Stefan and even Rev Dev.

  Jack’s parents are hosting this party together, and I can’t help but notice that they seem to have called a truce for the occasion.

  “They seem almost happy together,” I whisper to Jack, watching Wilma—elegantly dressed in a black velvet sheath—laughing with her ex over sips of cocktail-hour champagne. “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll get back together again?”

  Jack shudders. “God, I hope not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because two people can never be more wrong for each other than they are.”

  “Why do you think they got married in the first place, then? Did they change that drastically? Or were they just blind?”

  “Who knows? I’m just glad they did, or you and I wouldn’t be here.”

  Father Stefan steps in with a, “Well? How are you two feeling tonight? Are you ready to take this big step?”

  Naturally, Jack and I nod vigorously.

  “Any questions about what’s going to happen tomorrow?” Father Stefan wants to know.

  I assume he’s definitely not talking about later, at the hotel near the airport where we’re spending our wedding night. I really hope he figures we’ve got that part covered, and that all is forgiven at this point. I did go to confession the other day, before we left New York, so I’m starting marriage with a nice clean soul.

  Jack and I tell Father Stefan that we have no questions about the ceremony. Earlier, at the church, we went through the motions for tomorrow’s mass—stuff like who stands where, and who says what. Things were a little chaotic, but Father Stefan assured us that it’s always that way.

  “All right, then,” he says now. “Just let me know if you have any questions.”

  He pats Jack on the back and gives me a hug before wandering off to say hello to my Aunt Aggie.

  “He never did ask you whether you actually followed through and moved out,” Jack comments. “Or did he?”

  I shake my head and wonder—for the first time—if maybe I should have moved out. Would we have taken each other less for granted these last few months? Would I have found some kind of spiritual enlightenment?

  Who knows?

  But now is not the time to start second-guessing myself.

  Jack and I separate to mingle. I go first to the table where Raphael is cuddling Kate’s newborn under the watchful gazes of her doting mother and the nanny who now accompanies Kate everywhere. Billy couldn’t get away for the wedding. No surprise there.

  “Donatello has decided he wants to start a family, Tracey!”

  “Are you serious? That’s great!”

  “I know! Can you just see me with a baby carriage?”

  “I just can.”

  “Now we only need to find a surrogate.” He gives me a meaningful look.

  “No,” I say. “But hey, good luck with that.”

  “Tracey! We’re willing to pay.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have a problem finding someone,” I say briskly.

  “Leave her alone, Raphael,” Kate drawls. “Tracey’s going to be popping out her own babies after the honeymoon.”

  I have to laugh at that visual. “Not right after. I’ve got other things on the agenda.” Like house-hunting. And career-changing. And a whole lot of Couch Time with my husband. “Anyway, Kate, aren’t you the one who told me I’d be out of my freaking mind to even consider childbirth?”

  “Did I?” she asks mildly, and reaches out to adjust little Kate’s pink bootie.

  Raphael and I exchange a glance.

  “Maybe,” he suggests in a low voice, “Billy had them give her a lobotomy while she was in the delivery room.”

  “That would explain a lot.”

  I plant a kiss on mini-Kate’s head and move on to Brenda and Paulie, Latisha and Derek, Yvonne and Thor.

  “Tracey! This is the most go-aw-jus place I’ve ever seen!” Brenda informs me.

  “The inn?”

  “And the town! Right on the lake, and all these big old houses…”

  “We picked up a real estate book when we stopped for coffee earlier, and now she wants to move here,” Paulie explains.

  “We could afford a mansion here!”

  “Yeah, but Bren, what would you do here?”

  “She’d be a stay-at-home mom,” Latisha tells me.

  “Just like she’s going to be back in New York,” Thor puts in.

  “Shh!” Yvonne elbows him.

  “What?” I raise an eyebrow at Brenda.

  “I was going to wait to tell you until after the wedding…but I gave notice yesterday, Tracey. Paulie made sergeant.”

  “That’s great! Congratulations!” I tell Paulie, but even I can hear the hollow tone in my voice. “And Bren…good for you! You always said you were going to quit as soon as Paulie made sergeant.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a desperate housewife. But I’m going to miss you guys.”

  “We’ll still do happy hour,” I tell her.

  “God knows you’re going to need it,” Yvonne comments.

&n
bsp; “Just don’t you start talking about retiring again,” Latisha tells her.

  “What? Yvonne, you can’t retire!” I protest.

  “Technically, she could have retired a few years ago.” Thor’s comment is met with a dark look from his wife.

  “If you retired, baby,” Derek tells Latisha, “just think of all the energy you’d have for other things.”

  “Yeah, well, too bad for you that I’m a spring chicken,” Latisha retorts.

  Unfazed, he nuzzles her neck, saying, “No kids with us this weekend—this ol’ rooster will take what he can get.”

  “I can’t believe you guys are leaving Blaire Barnett,” I tell Brenda and Yvonne.

  “I didn’t retire yet.”

  “Maybe not,” I tell Yvonne, “but just the fact that you’re talking about it…”

  She’s going to be out of there. I can tell.

  Another end to another era.

  But I don’t dare think about that now. One ending era at a time is about all I can handle…and somebody is clinking a glass.

  “Tracey,” Jack says, grabbing my hand. “Come on. They want to get started.”

  For presumably the last time in my life, I wake up alone in my girlhood bed.

  From now on, whenever I visit my parents in Brookside, Jack will be sharing my bed with me. That will seem strange, won’t it? Sleeping with a guy under my parents’ roof?

  Not just any guy.

  My husband.

  My stomach erupts in a thousand butterflies.

  Yup, today is the end of an era and I feel like I’m about to freak out.

  Jack, I think. I need to talk to Jack. That would help to keep me grounded.

  I reach for my cell phone on the bedside table and dial Jack’s cell phone. Last night after the rehearsal dinner, he spent the night at the Greenway Inn with his family and some of our friends.

  He was going to share a room with Mitch and I wonder if it’s too early to call, but Jack picks up the phone instantly. “Hey. I was just going to call you.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah. I miss you. I feel like I’m going through this huge thing alone.”

  “I feel the same way. I feel like there’s so much we have to get through before we can be back to our normal selves.”

  I just hope we can find our normal selves—our normal lives—again, when this is all over.

  “Why don’t you meet me at Bob Evans for breakfast?” Jack suggests, as if that’s the perfectly logical next thing to say. “We can have zau-zage gravy.”

  I laugh.

  We love Bob Evans sausage gravy.

  Zau-zage.

  Just like that, I feel like we’re really going to be able to become us again. That after today—well, after today, and Tahiti, anyway—we’ll be able to think about ordinary things like sausage gravy again.

  “That sounds so good,” I tell Jack wistfully. “But you’re not supposed to see me on our wedding day.”

  “I thought that was just in the dress. Don’t wear the dress.”

  “You’re not supposed to see me at all. It’s bad luck.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. But why take chances?”

  He sighs. “Then I guess I’ll just see you later, at the church.”

  “Okay. Are you nervous, Jack?”

  “A little. Are you?”

  “A little,” I admit. “But only because there are a million details that have to fall into place between now and two-thirty. I almost wish we were eloping to Tahiti.”

  “Not me,” Jack says unexpectedly. “This is going to be great, Trace. You’ll see.”

  “The wedding?”

  “Everything.”

  I smile. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  In less than an hour, I will no longer be me.

  It’s the end of an era.

  Tracey Spadolini is about to drop into the past, replaced by Tracey Candell.

  I suppose that’s fitting, considering that I no longer even look like Tracey Spadolini. The woman in the mirror of my girlhood bedroom is a solemn stranger in white.

  All that’s recognizable is her hair—worn long and loose, the way Jack likes it.

  “You look beautiful,” my mother, in blue satin, teased ringlets and a corsage, chokes out. She’s been crying into her embroidered hankie all morning.

  “Cut it out, Ma,” Mary Beth says, adjusting the fall of my lace veil. “You’ll smear your eye makeup.”

  “I can’t help it. My baby is getting married.”

  “All your babies have gotten married, Ma,” I point out.

  “Don’t remind me!”

  “Well, I’m not married,” Mary Beth points out, stepping back to survey the veil. “Maybe someday, though…again.”

  I smile at my sister in the mirror. I really hope so. Nobody deserves what Vinnie put her through.

  I’m so lucky.

  And so scared.

  “Ma?” I say in a small voice. “On your wedding day…how did you feel?”

  “Nervous.”

  “But were you sure you were doing the right thing?”

  “I was positive.” She looks worriedly at me. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes!” I say as the doorbell rings.

  My mother hurries out of the room to answer it.

  “I wasn’t positive,” Mary Beth offers. “I knew, even on my wedding day, that I was probably making a big mistake.”

  “Why did you go through with it?”

  “Because I was afraid to be alone. I needed someone to take care of me because I couldn’t take care of myself. I wasn’t like you, Tracey.”

  Well, there was a time when I was just like her.

  Afraid to be alone. Uncertain that I could take care of myself. Willing to be with the wrong person—Will—because he was all I had. Or thought I had.

  Turned out I never did.

  And when he left me alone, there was nothing I could do but learn how to take care of myself.

  That was a lifetime ago.

  Look at me now.

  For the first time today, I smile a smile that actually reaches my eyes.

  Then my mother comes bustling in saying, “Look who’s here!”

  If it isn’t the wedding photographer…

  Followed by Grandma, who is wearing a low-cut dress that is oddly evocative of a shower curtain.

  “Dolce mia!” she exclaims, catching sight of me. “You’re a bellissima bride!”

  She comes rushing over.

  “Grandma,” I say as she envelops me in a hug, “that’s some dress. Did you make it?”

  She nods proudly.

  “Wow, where did you get that fabric?” Mary Beth asks. “It’s so…unique.”

  “I found it at Bed, Bath and Beyond when I was shopping for Tracey’s wedding gift.”

  “Did you say Bed, Bath and Beyond?”

  “Shh—it’s a shower curtain,” she says with a conspiratorial wink. “But no one at the wedding will ever know.”

  God, I hope not.

  Grandma spins around to model for us, and I check the back of her hemline to make sure there are no ring holes showing.

  “Hold that shot,” the photographer commands.

  Grandma poses and preens as he snaps her alone, then a few shots of the two of us. Then he has to get me and Mary Beth and Grandma, then just me and Mary Beth, then Ma and me…mother and daughters…three generations…

  You get the picture.

  And the photographer gets the pictures; hundreds, it seems, and I can’t wait to see Jack.

  Then Ma says, “It’s time to get to the church.”

  “Already?” I ask, and my stomach flip-flops nervously.

  Then I remember that Jack is going to be there, waiting for me.

  “Okay,” I say, picking up my bouquet and taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  Standing at the end of a white satin runner in the vestibule at Most Precious Mother, I realize that this i
s it.

  Goodbye, single life.

  Hello, married life.

  The organ is playing, my mother’s been seated and most of the bridesmaids have made their way down the aisle—which, of course, has taken a good long while. Now the twins and Kelsey are on their way, scattering rose petals as they go, leaving me, my sister, my father and the photographer’s assistant in the back of the church.

  “Can you see Jack?” I ask Mary Beth in a whisper as she moves forward, poised to start toward the altar.

  “No. But he’s up there somewhere,” she says with a smile, and then she’s gone.

  Moments later, the organist shifts to the opening chords of the wedding march, and I hear a massive creaking sound as three hundred people stand in anticipation of the bride.

  “Are you ready?” my father asks.

  I cling to his arm tightly.

  Am I ready?

  Panic sweeps through me.

  No.

  I’m not ready.

  I finally figured out how to be Tracey Spadolini! I figured out who she was, and what she needed and wanted, and how to take care of her.

  Now I’m going to start all over again from scratch, learning how to be Tracey Candell. Jack’s wife.

  I swallow painfully hard and look straight ahead.

  For a moment, all I can see is the glare of the photographer’s spotlights.

  I can’t do this, I think.

  I’m just not comfortable with endings. Not even happy ones.

  Then the lights shift and I blink, and look again, and suddenly, I catch a glimpse of Jack.

  There he is, in a dark tux, stepping forward at the opposite end of the runner.

  All the faces seem to fall away, and all I can see is Jack. He’s smiling.

  This is going to be great, Trace, he’s thinking. You’ll see.

  “Tracey?” That’s my father again. “Are you ready?”

  This time, I nod.

  I’m ready.

  I could go on to tell you that my father walks me down the aisle past a sea of faces: everyone we love—everyone who loves us, believes in us.

  I could tell you that before all of those people, and Father Stefan, and God, Jack Candell and I promise to love and honor each other all the days of our lives.