“Can you imagine life without him?”
“…Yes.”
Cordo cringed.
“But it’d be worse,” Tom said.
Cordo nodded.
“I can’t…” Tom paused. “I couldn’t bear coming home without him being there…I couldn’t bear him being somewhere else without me…Every night after work, my heart swells with…excitement…love.”
He was steadier. He took a breath. Cordo rubbed his shoulders as though he were preparing a prizefighter, adjusted the white gardenia on Tom’s lapel.
A gazebo stood south of the house and around this had close to 100 white wooden folding chairs been set up with an aisle in the middle, which led up to the steps of the gazebo, wherein Cordo stood with a leather-bound notebook in which he’d written his script. Mark’s groomsmen stood on the steps of the gazebo while Amelia stood on the opposite topmost step.
The band, which a friend of Mark’s had recommended and which had come from Olympia, were set up beside the gazebo on a wooden stage in the grass. They started acoustically, playing Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” With the first lyrics, Tom and Mark came down from the house and stood at the top of the aisle, which was lined with large white vases of flowers handpicked by Tom.
The audience turned and stood and watched Tom and Mark, arm in arm, come down the aisle.
Cordo looked at Lila and Rachel in the audience, in the third row of Tom’s side, and smiled at her.
At the bottom of the aisle, four couples—two on each side, Tom’s and Mark’s parents and grandparents—stood and hugged and kissed the couple and wiped away their tears. Then Tom and Mark headed up the steps into the gazebo, strewn with floriculture.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming out to this wonderful event, the marriage of Mark Evans and Tom Liking,” Cordo began. “We’re all here today because of love. ‘There are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.’ We’re here today to celebrate the love that has made Tom and Mark decide to spend the rest of their lives together. This is no light decision and should not be made as such. Life is as often a maelstrom as it is peaceful. In both cases we all need a good companion, someone who will wait for you if you should fall behind. Someone who won’t let go of your hand should you lose everything, should you fall from grace. It may be that the gulfs will wash you down. It may be you shall touch the Happy Isles. In either case you will have each other. Be each other’s North, South, East, and West, each other’s working week and Sunday rest.”
Cordo gave them each one of the two silver bands in his pocket and instructed them to say their vows as they put the rings on each other and they both respectively cried during the recitations.
Then Cordo asked each if he took the other as his partner for as long as they both should live? Then by the power vested in me by the State of Washington, I pronounce you married.
Tom and Mark kissed and the audience raucously applauded as the band resumed “Harvest Moon.”
The reception took place in the courtyard behind the house, where there was a prominent stone fountain trickling and where also tables with white linens had been previously situated, as well as a large dance floor in the middle of the courtyard, a stage set up with the band’s electric equipment, and a pillared tent with tables of covered food and drink and ice fountains and an open bar.
Family members and friends—including Amelia—gave brief speeches after everyone had gotten food and then they cut the cake and Tom and Mark mashed the chocolate into each other’s face, then the band played from both a prepared playlist and also took requests: “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” “Slow Ride,” “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “Uptown Funk,” “Bang Bang,” “Kickstart My Heart,” “Love You ‘Till the End,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Snow (Hey Oh),” “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor),” “Addicted to Love,” “Simply Irresistible,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “So Happy Together,” “Join Together,” “Baba O’Reilly,” “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Surfer Girl,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “California Girls,” “Barbara Ann,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Kokomo,” “Black Betty,” “The Wonder of You,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” “Carry On Wayward Son,” Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World,” Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time,” and others.
When night came on, the strings of white lights strewn about the house and the tent and the trees and bushes came on to illuminate the night like a million torch-carrying fairies.
Cordo danced with Lila in the languorous melody of “Surfer Girl” and whispered, “I love you” and she said it back and kissed him.
They and Rachel and even Amelia danced like idiots during “Uptown Funk” and Cordo and Tom drunkenly sang along to “Baba O’Reilly” with silver serving spoon-microphones held to their mouths, singing with all the intensity as though they were on stage before more than four million people in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, on New Year’s Eve 1994.
The party stopped at midnight. The drunk were driven by the sober to the hotels whereat Tom and Mark had made reservations. Tom and Mark were driven in a limo to Spokane International to fly to their week-in-Madrid honeymoon. Life remained paused until morning.
In May Lila’s mother in Minneapolis was hospitalized after falling and a case of severe vomiting. She was diagnosed with vertigo and Lila went to take care of her for a few weeks.
As neither Cordo nor Lila could take the time off to go to Minneapolis and drive her to Seattle nor could she fly nor did any relatives live anywhere near her, Tom and Lila’s wedding was postponed until Lila’s mother could travel.
But by August the dizzy spells were just as frequent and severe, though no psychological nor neurological causes could be found, and Cordo and Lila were faced with the possibility of postponing indefinitely.
“What if we got married there?” Cordo asked.
Lila thought about it and eventually scowled.
“There’s a reason I left,” she said. “Have you ever been to the Midwest?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Cordo laughed as they sat on the couch in his living room. They were quiet for a moment.
“Then again,” Lila said. “There is a town south of Minneapolis.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s called New Ulm, it’s where my mom was born. There’s a stunning chapel there, part of the seminary there. There’s an incredible organ in there, we’d probably only be able to do gospel music.”
“They wouldn’t even let us do ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis?’”
“No, probably not.”
“Oh well. I love gospel music though—old gospel music. Everything written these days is garbage.”
“Agreed,” Lila said. “We could probably get them to agree to ‘In the Sweet By and By.’”
“I love that one!”
“Me too! So when should we plan it?”
Cordo thought.
“January? After New Year’s but before school starts up again? That way everyone can have Christmas with their families and get ready mentally for the trip.”
“It’ll be a lot of driving for everyone.”
“And we could go in December to spend Christmas with your mom,” Cordo went on. “Get a head start on all the preparations.”
“You’d be OK with that?” Lila asked. “Would Amelia?”
“I’m sure I could convince her. Will this chapel, will they let Tom and Mark…?”
Lila thought.
“Damn it, they better,” she said. “We’re paying for Christ’s sake.”
Cordo laughed.
“You’re the best,” he said, kissing her.
“You are.”
So they planned the wedding for the first Sat
urday in January and it seemed to work for everybody.
Shortly after the start of school, Cordo met Amelia in the ground floor of the Husky Union Building for lunch. He asked her if she would mind going to New Ulm before Christmas and staying until after the wedding and she had no problem with it, saying she had been making excellent progress in her research and all her benefactors and supervisors would be pleased.
They talked then of Amelia’s plans in terms of the future: She wanted to get more grants and scholarships and then apply to the university’s graduate biology program in the spring.
“You sound like your mother,” Cordo said.
Amelia nodded and they went silent and Cordo might have regretted the remark.
“Are you OK with…Lila?” he asked.
Amelia looked up.
“Yeah, of course. Why?”
Cordo shook his head.
“I don’t know. Your mom hated her own stepmother, it’s what ruined her relationship with her dad…”
Amelia watched strangely.
“If you don’t want me to marry Lila, I won’t.”
Amelia didn’t know what to say.
“No, Dad, I…see how happy she makes you. And I like her. I really do…I want you to marry her.”
Cordo smiled and Amelia’s strange countenance turned to one of happiness. Cordo reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“…I love you too.”
By the middle of November, everything had been arranged for the wedding and the honeymoon—a week in Budapest.
Cordo, Lila, Rachel, Amelia and Margaret had Thanksgiving together and then a week later was Amelia’s 13th birthday.
Cordo had to work later than he wanted that day, so he called Lila, who was already home with Amelia and Rachel, and told her he would be home around eight and he’d made reservations for them and Mark and Tom at a French restaurant at nine.
They both said I love you before hanging up.
Lila’s car was in the driveway when he got home—nothing unusual about that. He parked beside it and headed in through the garage.
Amelia and Rachel were sitting at the kitchen table doing homework while Lila was putting the finishing touches of icing on Amelia’s cake. They were all dressed.
They all said hi to Cordo and Cordo kissed Lila on the lips under Amelia’s hard gaze. Then he told them he’d be right back and went to change.
He was perhaps 10 minutes in changing into a pair of black pants and a blue collared shirt and Oxford shoes. He took two aspirin, sprayed on some cologne Lila had gotten him for his birthday a year ago and which he’d only used a handful of times up to now. After making sure his eyebrows were straight, he headed back into the kitchen.
“Who’s ready for some delicious—”
As he made the turn into the kitchen, the first thing he saw was the previously pristine-looking cake lying in the middle of the floorboards in a splattered shambles, the glass platter it had been on shattered. When he looked up, he saw Lila’s face was red—both from anger and crying, blue veins bulging out of her temples—as she grabbed Rachel’s hand and pulled her out of her seat at the table.
Amelia sat stoically, not watching as mother and daughter stormed past Cordo, Lila tearing off the cameo pendant from around her neck and hurling it to the floor, obliterating it, and she and Rachel hurried out of the house with Cordo in a fugue, sure none of this was truly happening.
But the thunderous slamming of the front door wakened him. He caught eyes with Amelia, who looked unremorsefully at him.
“What the hell did you—”
But then he heard Lila’s car grindingly start and he must have felt electrified or set afire, for he ran through the house and out to the driveway, just in time to see Lila’s car swerve out of his neighborhood and speed away.
He stood in the motion-sensing light of the driveway with his breath coming out as fog.
He never heard from or saw her again.
He stayed there for some time, he didn’t keep track, calling her and leaving voicemails. Eventually his calls went straight to voicemail.
When he went back in, Amelia had scooped up the cake mess and the cameo and platter shards and thrown them away and was wiping the floor with a rag and disinfectant.
“What’d you say to her?” Cordo asked as she had her back to him.
She stood and turned.
“I said nothing.”
“You’re lying, what did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Fine, what did you fucking do, did you destroy the cake on purpose?”
“She did that.”
“Why, what did you fucking say?”
Amelia scowled at him.
“I asked if you were sure about me marrying her, you said you were fine.”
“And I am! Maybe she just doesn’t want to.”
“You’re fucking lying, what did you say?”
“Nothing!”
“I’m not trying to replace your mother, I’m just—”
“Do you really think I’m so banal? Give me some credit to be a little more mentally advanced than that.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“I don’t know.”
Cordo kept his eyes glued to her, glowering.
“Goddamn it.”
He went out onto the back porch, slammed the door shut, stood in the dark grass.
Tom found out about the end of the engagement the next day, through Amelia, and he brought her home that night to see how Cordo was doing.
He’d spent the day, and would for the next week, trying to call Lila, though he never got anything but her voicemail, until that filled up, then he got nothing, none of his emails were returned and eventually they bounced back to him. Several times he drove out to her former house in Redmond, which had gone on the market after she’d moved into his house and which had yet to sell, and pulling up to the mailbox at the dark curb, he saw still the ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard and all the windows still black.
He stared up at the façade, perhaps hoping to even see a ghost inhabiting. But there was nothing. He went home.
He finally gave up after coming home from work one day and finding all of Lila’s and Rachel’s things gone, Lila’s house key left on the kitchen table. He sat against the wall of the dark room that had been Rachel’s and cried.
Tom helped him cancel everything and figure out what couldn’t be refunded, which amounted to a lot. Tom also tried to extract from Amelia what had been Lila’s reasoning for storming out that night but she maintained she did not know, that Lila had gone into a spontaneous rage and left.
Tom spent quite a bit of time with Cordo and Amelia that week and had he not, father and daughter would not have spoken to each other. They didn’t even for his presence but at least there was some conversation because he was there.
Tom’s presence at Cordo’s house inevitably lessened and by January, their living situations were back to normal, though Cordo and Amelia still did not speak to each other more than was absolutely necessary.
Cordo started coming home early from work, day after day, to get a jumpstart on drinking and watching episodes of Frasier.
One night after he’d been able to stumble into bed and fall asleep, he was wakened some time in the darkness by a singularly pleasant feeling. He rolled his head, eyes still heavily closed, head swimming in confusion. Was this a dream? No, surely he’d been drunk enough not to dream.
With Olympian effort he raised his eyelids and saw only moonlit distortion out of his eyes while the beautiful feeling continued to resuscitate him. He blinked and groaned, perhaps feeling as though he were someone trying to inform his surgeon the anesthesia hadn’t taken.
The blurriness started to evaporate like rain streaks on a window shield and then he made out a black blob hovering over him, tilting forward and back—in sync with the apexes of the pleasant feeling.
Cordo heaved out his breath, takin
g in the feeling for a few strokes, closing his eyes and perhaps imagining he were on a boat and the pleasant feeling and the shadow with its back-and-forth rhythm were the propulsion. Then he opened his eyes and made out the contours of a woman’s body in the shade: slight paunch of the pale-skinned belly, small breasts—what some might call mosquito bites—long flowing hair—what color?
He rolled his head and groaned more. Was it Lila? Had she come back?
With his eyes still closed, he grabbed the woman’s butt and took hold of what little was there, to push her down deeper onto his erect penis and then lift her up all the way to the tip before burying himself deep again.
He felt a chill on his scrotum and penis each lift, realizing then he wasn’t wearing a condom and so was coated in the woman’s excretions.
He gasped at this, still with his eyes closed: Lila and he had never had sex without a condom—they had been holding off until they had room for a third child. And the only person with whom he’d ever had sex without a condom was…
As though injected with adrenaline, he tore open his eyes, threw up his hands into the cavern of dark hair above him, found hot sweaty skin, held onto the face, tossed back the hair.
“Lourdes!”
And he saw her face—yes, yes, dear God it was her, she bit her bottom lip the same way, moaned the same way, her breasts swayed the same way, her hands on his ribs were the same, everything—
“I’m gonna cum—”
“Do it, baby, cum for me!”
But that voice wasn’t hers, why wasn’t that her voice, oh fuck—
He threw the woman off onto the bed just as the semen started bursting out of him but he didn’t feel the glorious crush of orgasm as he scrambled out of bed like some lone surviving soldier from the trenches. The semen jettisoned wildly all over his darkly carpeted floor as he landed on both feet but he was still drunk and his knees didn’t lock, so he tumbled, colliding with the wall beside his closet, and he sank down, holding the back of his battered boozy head, catching just a sidelong glance of the shadowy miniature Lourdes dashing out of his room into the dark hall.
But he couldn’t pursue her, he couldn’t even stand now if there were a clattering rattlesnake beside him. He slung back his head and let the swirling darkness overtake him again.
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