Who Do You Love?

by J. M. Bronston

  “Ira, you’ve photographed the most beautiful women in the world. You’ve talked to them. You must have gotten to know them at least a little. Maybe a lot. You’ve seen them in every state of dress and undress. They can’t possibly have any secrets from you.”

  “Everyone has secrets, Gena.” Ira smiled like a wise old owl.

  “Well, maybe you can tell me: What is their secret? How do they do it? I see them sometimes, around the office. When they’re not all ‘camera ready.’ Sometimes they don’t even look pretty. Is it some kind of magic you do? With lights? With makeup?”

  Ira was beginning to get an idea of what was troubling Gena.

  “That’s part of it,” he said. “Lights. Shadows. Makeup. Camera angles. That part is obvious. Those are the things we do to them. Then there’s what they were born with. The good forehead. The wide-set eyes. The cheekbones. But you know all that.”

  “Yes. I know all that.”

  “But also, Gena, these women are self-selected. Somewhere along the way, when they were girls, they looked in the mirror and told themselves that being professionally beautiful was something they wanted to do. And then they believed they could do it. It isn’t just a matter of imitating what they’ve seen on the runway or in the magazines. They bring an attitude, a confidence, something very hard to define, but it’s something I try to capture with my camera. Partly, it’s practice. Partly, it’s training. Like everything else, mastering the craft. Doing it a thousand times. Becoming a professional. And partly, it’s a mystery. Like all art, it’s a mystery.”

  This was Ira’s favorite subject, and he was about to expound further, but one of the camera people came over and said they needed him to consult about a technical problem, something about timing the sunset to coordinate with the ceremony.

  He cast a glance at Gena and decided she’d just as soon be left alone, so he whispered quickly to her, “If you’d like to talk, Gena, anytime—” But she gestured to him, “No, I’m fine,” so he left her alone.

  Brittney was waiting when they landed, with a fleet of vans to take them to the cabin. She greeted Gena with hugs and air-kisses and kept up a running chatter all the way to the cabin, about the plans for the day, the bridegrooms’ excitement, their writing of their vows, the gorgeous wedding cake Mrs. Wilkins had made, and thank goodness the weather was cooperating! Gena was thankful for Brittney’s bubbling effusions—they created a distraction that allowed her to deflect any attention away from herself.

  At the cabin, the camera people immediately spread out according to their prearranged plans for photographing the various stages of the day’s activities. Mrs. Wilkins had people in to help her with food, and Linus came up from the horse barn to help with setting up tables and chairs. Only the closest friends and relatives would be there for the wedding, and all had been sworn to the most solemn secrecy. The weather prediction was for perfect blue skies and gentle breezes, and everything about the day promised a life of happily ever after.

  Sonny and Tim had gone off to their separate rooms, determined not to see each other before the ceremony. They’d agreed earlier to allow Gena a little time with each of them and do a very simple interview, so she went into Tim’s room first. She found him sitting near the window, in a big wing chair that was covered in a blue and white crewel fabric. He was gazing across the green hills toward the mountains, and he turned to greet her as she entered the room.

  “Gena. Our recording angel. Welcome.” He gestured broadly toward the serene view. “Could we possibly have arranged a more perfect day?”

  “You both deserve it,” she said. “I’m so happy for you. And I won’t take much time. I suppose you want to be alone with your thoughts.” She got out a notepad and pencil. “Brittney told me your dad is going to be performing the ceremony.”

  “Yes. He and my mom got here last night. They’re staying in a hotel in Merryville, and Brittney’s gone to pick them up. They should be here in time for lunch. They’ve never met Sonny, so they’ll get to spend some time with him this afternoon. Sonny and I swore we wouldn’t see each other all day today, until we meet at the altar. I don’t know why we both wanted to do that, except somehow it just seemed right. A little theatrical, maybe, heightening the suspense. Gives me time to think about my vows.” He gestured toward a sheet of paper on a nightstand next to the bed.

  He knew what she would want to ask. “They’re not for publication, Gena. So I’m not going to share what I’ve written.”

  “Of course. I understand.” She looked longingly over at the paper, thinking that the men’s vows would be a great addition to the story. “I understand,” she repeated. “And,” she said, changing the subject, “what will you be wearing?”

  “Oh, God! We went back and forth on that. Must have spent three days trying to decide. Between traditional, casual, formal, flamboyant. We wanted to honor the event by being traditional and solemn in matching tuxedos, we wanted to be extravagant by wearing white tie and tails with striped pants, we wanted to express our creativity by wearing something totally made up for the occasion, we wanted to assert our individuality by not wearing identical outfits, we wanted to outrage everyone by wearing jeans and T-shirts.”

  Gena was laughing. “And what did you decide on?”

  He gestured toward the closet, where a gray suit was hanging on the doorknob.

  “Matching suits, no vest, solid color silk ties, but my favorite color is blue so my pocket square is blue and Sonny’s is red.”

  “So you’re not exactly a matched set.”

  “No, but close. An exact match wouldn’t be good. Sonny is not my alter ego. And I’m not his. But he adds something precious to my life. He adds love. And beauty. He is a beautiful man and I cherish him for that.”

  That, she thought, is worth a quote, so she made a discreet note, and then went on to dig a little deeper into Tim’s background. They talked about his childhood, his work before he met Sonny, how he and Sonny met, their shared interests, their differences. She spent a half hour with him, and then went off to find Sonny.

  “He’s in his room,” the houseboy said. “Writing his vows.”

  She knocked once, but there was no answer.

  Perhaps, she thought, he doesn’t want to be disturbed. She knocked one more time, gently, just in case.

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Come on in.”

  She found him at the writing table on the opposite side of the room, facing the bed. He was working at a laptop, and he looked very much like a man struggling to find the right words.

  “I thought this would be easy. Hello, Gena. You’re a writer. I need help.”

  “Oh, no. No way I’m going to help you write your wedding vows. That’s got to be all yours. But you’re a great writer, Sonny. Look at all the wonderful songs you’ve done. You don’t need any help from me.”

  “That’s what I thought when I sat down to do this. And guess what: it’s harder than I thought it was going to be.”

  “Funny. I just said hello to Tim and he’s got his all done.”

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “No way. Anyway, he wouldn’t show me what he’d written. But you couldn’t go wrong with love and beauty.”

  “Love and beauty. They go together, don’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” The words slipped out, and she was instantly sorry.

  Sonny swiveled around in his chair and studied her face. “That sounds sad. What’s up? Do you want to talk?”

  “Not at all. This is your day, Sonny. And I’m here only to help you preserve it. For the record. For the public. So I’ll just ask you a few questions and then I’ll leave you alone and let you concentrate on preparing your vows.”

  She had pencil and paper ready, and for about twenty minutes she asked about their plans for the day (champagne for everyone after the ceremony and then a quiet dinner with just family and a couple of
old friends), any thoughts about a family (much too soon to know, but it’s definitely been talked about), whether they had honeymoon plans (a quick trip incognito to New York to see a couple of shows, walk around, see some sights, then back to work for both of them, with a new album coming out in a month and a European tour starting in ten days).

  “Now I’ll leave you,” she said. “See you after the ceremony. I’ll just wander around, see what I can see, and try not to get in anyone’s way.”

  * * * *

  She spent the next couple of hours nosing around, picking up what bits of color she could, asking questions, taking notes, using her cell phone’s camera. A makeshift patio had been set up on a green and beautifully landscaped space near the cabin, where the view of the mountains, veiled in their blueish haze, would create an inspiring sunset-tinted backdrop for the wedding couple. Sonny and Tim had apparently decided against any stagecraft. There were no flower decorations, no ornamental arch. Not even an altar. Yet the natural shrubbery and trees formed a beautiful frame against the mountains.

  She wandered down the hill to the horse barn, a good half a mile away from all the wedding activity. Linus was up at the house, and there was no one with the horses. She walked silently through the barn, past the stalls, and out to the pasture. And there was Belinda. Oh, such a strange looking animal she was! In all her multicolored, randomly marked glory. And yet—

  And yet—

  —there was something beautiful about her.

  She loped over to Gena and reached her long face toward her, as though expecting a bit of carrot or apple. Gena held out her open, empty hands.

  “Sorry, Belinda. I have nothing for you.”

  But Belinda showed no sign of disappointment. She was an affectionate animal, and she nuzzled Gena’s neck softly.

  “I wonder what it is Sonny sees in you.”

  She tried to see the horse though Sonny’s eyes. She remembered what Brittney had told her about how she’d just appeared out of the woods, all skinny and sad, when Sonny was just a kid and he took her in and loved her—and his love made her beautiful in his eyes. And as Belinda loped away across the pasture, Gena took a good look at the funny looking animal and saw that she really was beautiful, because she was loved. And Gena began to cry.

  * * * *

  It was almost time for the wedding to begin, so Gena pulled herself together and walked back to where everything was set and ready. In a half hour, the sun would be casting the perfect glow onto the mountains, and Ira’s crew, working unobtrusively and efficiently, had everything in place to make a discreet yet gorgeous record of the event. The few guests, including Brittney and Linus and Mrs. Wilkins and Sonny’s and Tim’s parents, were drifting out to the seats that had been set up for them. Gena placed herself in a back row, apart from the guests who had a closer connection to the wedding couple.

  She was writing her notes and using her cell camera when Tim’s father went up to the front. He had some prepared comments in his hands and was looking them over. People were filling the seats. A young man, who turned out to be one of Sonny’s younger brothers, took a position near the side, framed by great banks of white spirea. He had a guitar strapped across his chest and he began to play softly. The sun was beginning to give the mountain a golden glow, and at a signal—Gena couldn’t tell from where—he began to play and hum the song that Sonny had sung so beautifully at that London concert, “You Are So Beautiful.”

  And at another signal, Sonny and Tim came from the house and walked together to the front. The quiet chatter became silent, the guitar player stopped playing, and only the twilight roosting song of birds in a nearby tree could be heard. The sun’s light on the hills grew more intense and Tim’s father began to speak. “We are gathered here today…” Gena stopped writing on her notepad, turned off her phone, and put it away. Ira Garlen had schooled his people well: they did their job so skillfully and so discreetly, they disturbed no one.

  There is a magic to a wedding that softens even the most jaded and most cynical of guests. At least, Gena liked to think so, and she gave herself heart and soul to the experience. She looked upon the two grooms with an affection that belied the short time and the limited shared experience she’d had with them. She felt respect for the very private group of family and the few friends who were gathered to witness, support, and surround these two men with their love and protection. She even cried a tear or two, for how hard-hearted must a woman be to shed no tear at a wedding? She smiled, because this time she’d come prepared for tears and she had a couple of pretty handkerchiefs in her bag. One of them even had a bit of lace decorating the edges.

  From where she sat, she was able to see the grooms’ faces. Tim was clearly aware of the solemnity and engrossed in the joy of the event. But Sonny, so much younger, looked almost ethereal, as though he expected to be wafted into the heavens at any moment. Gena smiled, pleased to have had a glimpse into such innocence. And she said a bit of a prayer that they be able to preserve so profound a state of love throughout a lifetime.

  Sonny and Tim are special. They might just be able to do it.

  As they spoke their vows, about the love and beauty they’d each found in the other (as it turned out, they’d created almost identical vows), Gena found herself falling into a daydream: There was a wedding and she was the bride, standing there before the minister. At first she dressed her fantasy self in a shimmery gray silk suit, exquisitely tailored, modeled a bit on the suits Sonny and Tim were wearing. With serious jewelry. Platinum, she decided. But then she discarded that choice. No point in imitating the men before her. No, something quite different? Something traditional? Frothy white? Like the princess dolls from her childhood? With exquisite lace and masses of tulle. And pearls everywhere. Or maybe something sleek and very modern, very form-fitting. No, she discarded that one—she’d look like a stick, a white, shiny stick. Somehow, she imagined the minister in dove gray with white gloves. Definitely dove gray with white gloves. Surrounded by banks of flowers, and it would not be outdoors—no, it would be in a chapel and it would be a conventional wedding, with a harpist and a traditional reception afterward, and it would be the most perfect, loveliest day of her life. All the magical arts would have been applied and she would have been made into a beauty, and the minister would speak the most inspiring words, and they would speak their vows with genuine inspiration, she and the man standing there by her side, and as her fantasy self turned to smile at her fantasy groom, Gena’s fantasizing self woke abruptly from her daydream, for without a word of permission, totally unbidden, the fantasy had placed Paul R. Brackman of 953 Fifth Avenue next to her at her fantasy altar. He stood there next to her imaginary self, as real as if he were real. With his nice smile, and his nice gray eyes and his nice hands, and the tiniest bit of gray at the temples and looking perfectly groomed and utterly at home in her wishful thinking.

  Did ever a subconscious thought come crashing up to the surface with such explosive force?

  What could I have been thinking?!

  Stunned and embarrassed by where her fantasy had taken her, she totally lost track of what was going on around her. Rings were exchanged, but Gena didn’t see it happen, the final pronouncement of a marriage was made but she never heard it, and the kiss that symbolized the end and the beginning, which she’d meant to catch with her cell phone camera, remained unrecorded by her. Gena’s attention had been wrenched away from the real wedding of Sonny Gaile and Tim Fine and was focused solely on the unsettling revelation she’d just experienced.

  At first, Gena wrote off Paul’s sudden appearance in her fantasy as a bit of errant brain chemistry. Maybe it was some sort of associative trick, the gray of the men’s suits with the gray of Paul’s eyes, or the bit of gray at his temples. Or perhaps it could be blamed on the glass of wine she’d had earlier. Glass and a half, actually. Or had she eaten something odd, something that caused hallucinations, perhaps a morsel of some unac
ceptable mushroom in the soup Mrs. Wilkins served at lunch? She thought of Dickens’s Scrooge, trying to argue Marley’s ghost away by blaming his appearance, chains and all, on something he’d eaten, “an undigested bit of beef…a crumb of cheese…”

  But she knew that it wasn’t something she’d eaten that made Paul Brackman appear as a phantom groom in her idle daydreaming. And she also knew that she couldn’t let that happen again.

  “Just forget about it,” she told herself. “It doesn’t mean anything.” She didn’t hear her ego’s tiny, all-wise voice:

  Yeah, right!

  * * * *

  Around her, the crew was quickly and quietly packing up their gear. They wouldn’t be staying for the dinner, and neither would she. While they packed and the remaining guests milled about, chatting and slowly moving toward the dinner tables, Gena went into the house and found a bathroom, where she could splash some cold water on her face and pull herself together. She locked the door, then looked into the mirror and had a little conversation with herself. “Gena, you hardly know the man. Don’t be an idiot.”

  She gave herself a couple of minutes to convince herself she was ready to join the others.

  And on the plane, flying over the tip of the Chesapeake Bay, she said to herself, “You’re a grown woman. Schoolgirl crushes are for schoolgirls. And you’re no schoolgirl. You have a full-grown man in your bed at home, a man you’ve been living with for almost five years now, and who might well be your husband one of these days.”

  And again she told herself, “So don’t be an idiot. Don’t do something ridiculous.”

  How much pressure does it take to force an unruly subconscious thought back into its underground psychic lair?

  * * * *

  It was almost three a.m. when her taxi left her off at Two Twelve East Seventy-Third, and she was exhausted. She couldn’t possibly think about anything. She peeled off her clothes, didn’t even wash her face, and fell into bed. She noticed for the littlest second that Warren wasn’t there, but work sometimes kept him at the office till all hours and she was too tired to give it more than a second’s thought. Ambitious New Yorkers don’t believe in “early to bed,” and car services do a brisk business bringing them home at all hours. She hoped he wouldn’t wake her when he rolled in.