The Weddings (Inheritance collection)

by Alexander Chee

  “Scott’s.”

  “Yes. This other girl had wanted an abortion, but he wanted her to carry it to term and give it up for adoption. She and Jen even became friends after that.”

  “Did he invite her also?”

  “He did. Jen said she didn’t want to be here.”

  “How did she know?”

  “They’re still friends.”

  A complicated crosscurrent formed in his mind, in which he tried to decide if it was worse to be invited to the wedding of a man who had put you through such a thing, or to go to the wedding of a such a man believing you had a special connection, maybe even more special than the bride’s. He guessed he knew the answer to the next question, before he even asked. “When did this happen?”

  “The summer after Scott graduated from college.”

  The blow was so swift, like someone had blown the airlock on his life. He soared up, up off the earth, out past the outer atmosphere, even as he repeated it to himself how it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. It was in the past. At last, though. At last he knew why Jen had left Scott’s graduation weekend almost immediately and before the ceremony, knew why Scott went silent. That old summer was long gone, the possibilities of it were gone, and all that was here was this, and Caleb, who was walking across the dark parking lot ahead of him toward the hotel. He pulled himself back along this rope, down out of the upper atmosphere, down through the clouds, until he could manage to follow Caleb inside the hotel again, bag in hand, and the door to the hotel closed behind them.

  Just like that.

  He hadn’t said a thing and Caleb hadn’t said anything to indicate he’d noticed. Back at their room, which they had named the furniture rodeo, Caleb stripped off his suit coat and tie, poured some bourbon into two glasses with ice, and handed him one. “You’re over him, right?” One red eyebrow crooked upward, the lips pursed slightly.

  Jack nodded, slowly. Was he joking? He had noticed. “Yes. So much so.”

  “Well good. Here’s to our hero,” Caleb then toasted, and Jack clinked his glass and drank. And then Caleb pulled him into the bed.

  The Western ceremony was held at a nearby private golf club. Jack and Caleb arrived on the first bus from the hotel, as if by arriving early it might end early, and as they sat down in the chairs set along the eighteenth hole’s tee, they watched in amazement as a group of golfers played through. The idea that this would be something anyone would want to do with their wedding shocked them both anew, now that they were here.

  Jack was looking warily for signs of Scott. Scott had not really met him since Jack had arrived. Where was his happy friend? He knew what his happy face would look like, because it was a face he had seen so many times before. But instead there was this performance which seemed like it might go on forever after the wedding was over. The performance that was either what Soon-mi wanted from Scott or what he thought she wanted from him, and which he was, as a result, providing. The loneliness of it froze him.

  Scott appeared, dressed in one of the tuxedos the groomsmen were all wearing. The color scheme for the wedding was teal and green, and so the groomsmen wore teal vests with spearmint-green ties, like actors in a school play performing the role of some sad and terrible garden that had come alive. Scott’s eyes met his and he waved, and there it was, the faintest hint of the person Jack knew him to be.

  Out of the loudspeakers then came a voice. “Almost done,” the voice said, and then what sounded like a flushing toilet roared across the golf course. Next were the sounds of a man speaking to himself, first in Korean and then switching to English, speaking to someone out of range. It was clear whoever it was did not know their microphone was live. Jack saw Scott’s eyes go wide with horror as he ran at full speed into the clubhouse, pulling out his cell phone as he did so.

  Someone near Jack said, “Oh my God, it is Father Kim,” and then the voice clearly said, “Gay marriage, this is against the will of God.” Just before the mic was cut off.

  The crowd, silent until then, erupted in shocked laughter.

  Father Kim had been arguing with someone about gay marriage in the men’s room. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before, but Jack was still disgusted. He even wondered if he and Caleb were the reason. Were there other gay people here? He hadn’t noticed anyone else yet.

  Caleb was waiting for him to look at him when he did.

  “I’ll tell you, that hot mic was the will of God,” Caleb said, and smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said.

  “For what,” Caleb asked.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it would be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like visiting 1995.”

  “If it’s 1995, give me some Janet Jackson right now.”

  Scott reappeared in the door of the clubhouse, mission completed, and scanned the crowd as he rejoined his groomsmen, who huddled with him before they all headed back inside. Jack had guessed he wouldn’t know anyone who Scott had chosen. The men in those suits knew where his friend had been all these years in a way Scott would never tell him.

  When the guests were at last all ushered to their seats, and the crowd waited for the introit to begin, Jack looked across to Soon-mi’s family and friends. It almost felt like a mistake that he and Caleb were on what was clearly the white side of the wedding, except he remembered how often he felt like he’d been kicked out of being Korean after he came out. They were the sort of affluent conservative Christian Koreans Jack had avoided most of his life. His parents too. This was the family his friend was joining? Scott, desperate to escape his white conservative California upbringing by studying Buddhism and Asian cultures, was now marrying into a Christian evangelical family of a different kind. For the first time he wondered if Soon-mi was a believer.

  The door to the clubhouse opened then, and out came the bridesmaids, all wearing the teal-and-spearmint combination, albeit differently.

  “They will never be able to wear those dresses again,” Caleb whispered in his ear.

  The bridesmaids looked to be smiling to hide their obvious misery, and it was all so inauspicious for what the bride might wear that Jack was shocked when she appeared in what could only be a designer couture wedding gown, her father beside her in an elegant and plain tuxedo—no color scheme for him.

  She looked like she belonged at another wedding. The aesthetic mismatch was so severe the bridesmaids, much less the groom, all looked strangely homely beside her as she walked up to the front of her wedding. Her dress had a cream taffeta bodice with jeweled flowers that flashed in the sunlight. The skirt was a pale-cream organza that floated over the ground, the train held up by flower girls. A white veil hung down from her bun, sculptural and lovely, reaching down to her waist, and when Scott pulled it back and settled it over her shoulders, it hung like a cape. This is all about her, he thought, just as Caleb said, “This is all about her.”

  And good for her. Had Scott told her he felt Korean inside too? What did her family think? As the couple said their vows, he saw their smiles, but her family maintained the somber atmosphere of another kind of ceremony.

  Jack remembered the parties he’d been to, where his parents’ friends had for a while tried to set him up with their daughters. Korean American immigrant families were less strict than they had been, but they didn’t usually let their children marry whoever they wanted. It felt uncomfortable to admire Soon-mi’s looks when he could guess from his friends’ stories how much her mother or aunts probably criticized her weight during all the years she wasn’t married. He admired Soon-mi, really, marrying at a time of her choosing after establishing her career, marrying whoever she wanted and dressed better than the models in a bridal magazine. And not seeming to care at all that it was so. The dress was an organza middle finger to anyone there who had ever called her an old maid or suggested she have children.

  Jack reached down and took Caleb’s hand. Caleb gripped his, and drew him close, putting
his chin on his shoulder. He resisted the urge to tell him not to, in front of the guests.

  Another round of golfers played through, and there was laughter as they did so. The couple kissed and the crowd cheered, the bouquet was thrown and caught, and one of the bridesmaids rose up, triumphant, shaking it like a saber held to the sky.

  They all filed onto the buses and went back to the hotel, and as they stepped into the parking lot, Caleb said, “Listen, Sinatra. Let’s go see Niagara Falls before this reception starts.” He twirled the rental car keys on his fingertip. “If you’re up for it.”

  Jack blinked in surprise. “Okay,” he said.

  There were activities planned for the guests, visits to a local winery, but by now they knew they didn’t want anything to do with the other guests. It had been a mistake to come, and Jack could tell Caleb wasn’t going to criticize him for it yet. They lined up for the Maid of the Mist boat instead, donned the raincoats, and got on, riding under the glorious spray. They went to the museum and read about the people who had gone over the falls, and as they passed the wedding chapel they smiled at each other. The falls were glorious, and more amazing even than he’d expected because he had expected them to be tawdry and overblown, and instead the power of the water surging over the side of the cliff and spattering into the river below shot through with the sunlight of the afternoon made for a dazzling spangle that washed away the exhaustion. They sat down on a bench in front of a quickie chapel to rest, and Caleb laid his head on Jack’s shoulder. They watched as the couples went in and out, Jack waiting to see even one queer couple appear in the line.

  He imagined him and Caleb joining in. They were in different suits today, but Caleb hadn’t taken the same kind of selfie. “This is how you do it,” Caleb said from somewhere down near his shoulder. “Just in and out. Over and done. I don’t know if I’d even want flowers.”

  Jack nodded, but he knew he wanted flowers. Could he stand it, to marry in the suit he had on? Or would he want jewels too—jeweled lapels, a jeweled jacket, something like a figure skater’s costume. So he could step out and be the center of attention, taking a spotlight dance on his way to the altar, like Soon-mi. Would his father walk him down the aisle? The fantasy fell down a little there as he tried to imagine wearing the blazing jacket he had in mind in front of him.

  As they drove back to the hotel, Jack fought the urge to tell Caleb they could drive away. By now he was sure their departure wouldn’t even be noticed. But it was all paid for, the hotel, the car, and there was still the final dinner, and well, maybe the dinner would at least be good.

  Later that night, in the hotel room, he would lie awake wondering if Caleb had brought them there to the quickie chapel deliberately, right up to the edge, daring him to cross the street and get married too.

  The dinner had not been good. Held at a third location, a catering hall or restaurant of some kind, hung with what looked like canvas sails as walls and flowers hung down in vines along the sails, a fleet of round tables with those gold bamboo chairs filled the massive dark room. They were given a table number, and as they made their way through the darkness, checking number after number, they arrived at last at a table in the distant corner of the room.

  Jen was already seated there, and she looked up, smiling.

  “Jen!” Caleb said it like they were old friends. She gestured at the places near her and Caleb looked down and, seeing the place card on the table, turned it to face Jack. Mr. and Mrs. Jack Cho.

  Caleb laughed. “I fucking love it.”

  Jack smiled weakly. Was it always this awful? He supposed it had been, maybe even worse.

  They were the first three to arrive at their table and picked up where they’d left off the night before. Jen was a friendly and gregarious woman, and she seemed lighter, as if sleep and the long ceremony had sloughed off her tears. Or maybe she had been too drunk to remember, and she was used to picking herself up and moving on. She was the perfect person to be with them, in any case, to witness what was next, as three other gay couples, one by one, made their way to the table. And as the last one was seated, they all laughed. Their place cards had also been effaced. Whoever the calligrapher was couldn’t imagine two men together, even on a place card.

  “Welcome to the gay table!” Caleb shouted as the last couple arrived. “Gay table rules!” Caleb asked the waiters for four bottles of wine to be left out, which they all cheered loudly.

  They each took in their similarity to each other, as they went over the ways they’d met Scott, and by the time the salads were served, it was clear that under the good-natured banter, everyone had something they weren’t going to say. Who was the original, Jack wondered, as he looked around the table—was it him? Alvin, who was also Korean, who had worked with Scott at his father’s bank. Teddy, from Taiwan, whom Scott met on his year abroad. Rob, who worked with him currently, was white. All of them also had white boyfriends.

  As Jack listened to the other men speak of Scott, the idea that he’d been the only one returned as an entirely new possible humiliation. Worse, he understood something about his relationship with Scott in a new way. He had told stories about him probably several times more than he had ever spoken with him. His friends knew them all. Are we really friends, he wondered then, or do I come to this each time for a new story to tell? Worse, the sight of these other men who might have been in a casting call to replace him, all with white boyfriends, brought to mind what he had come to think of as Scott’s problem with Asian women. In college, friends had suggested Scott dated them to feel powerful, imagining they were pliant and submissive. “You’ve never met a Korean woman,” was all Jack would say. But if Scott did date them to feel powerful, was Jack so different, telling his story about the beautiful white boy who had chosen only him?

  “Under the good-natured banter, everyone had something they weren’t going to say.”

  He looked over to the head table, and watched as Scott cut the cake for Soon-mi, joking about how he wouldn’t smear her face with frosting. The woman who would have made the seating chart and perhaps put the groom’s dark secrets all at one table.

  So you’re the famous Jack.

  Yes. Yes, he was.

  “That dress cost thirty thousand dollars,” Alvin said. “God bless Vera Wang couture.” The table broke out into a brief exchange of compliments to her. When they stood up from the gay table at last, they all hugged each other like brothers, saying “Gay table!” as they did so, and left with the agreement they would all see each other back at the hotel bar. Which was in fact an agreement to never speak of what they suspected, ever. When he and Caleb did make their way to the bar later, none of them were there.

  As they made their way through the half-empty hall, Jack remembered he still hadn’t congratulated Scott. So he searched for him. The dinner was enormous, and after walking the aisles of tables in the room, he hadn’t found him. They made their way to the door instead, and as they did so, he heard Scott saying, again and again, “So great to meet you, thank you for coming.”

  Jack walked up to him, smiling, and reached out to shake his hand. Scott shook it and said, “So great to meet you, thank you for coming,” and Jack held on as he tried to let go.

  “Scott,” he said. “It’s me, Jack.”

  Something fractured in those eyes. “Oh, oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, I’m so sorry. I . . . there’s been so many people here this weekend I don’t know. I—”

  “You got snow blind. It’s okay. We’ve known each other a long time.”

  “It’s okay?”

  Jack nodded. And then he hugged him.

  “I love you,” Jack said into his ear. “Congratulations on this marriage.”

  Scott pulled back. “Thanks, man. Thank you.” He clapped him on the shoulder three times and Jack dropped his hand.

  They kept the place card. It stays on Jack’s bookshelf near his desk at home. Every now and then he notices it, and only a
few times a year does he pick it up and turn it over in the light before putting it back down again. Or when they are throwing a party, Caleb may pick it up and tell the story of the wedding. He never tells the part about Jen, but he loves to describe Niagara Falls, the place card, the gay table, and the mistaken identity goodbye. It was the exact kind of wedding Caleb feared, as he tells their guests, and it seems to Jack that being there even helped him face those fears when, two years later, it came time for them to marry.

  He didn’t wear a blazing jacket. He didn’t wear couture. There were no jewels, though Jack wore sequined boots bought while in New Orleans. He asked his mother to wear one of her cocktail rings, and she did. They dressed simply, marrying as they were a week before the Trump administration started, before they might lose the right. The ceremony was small, in the Catskills also, a karaoke wedding. Each groom sang a song to the other—he dedicated “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” to Caleb, and Caleb dedicated “Hot Child in the City” to him.

  Each time Caleb tells the story of the Buffalo wedding, Jack sees Scott’s eyes again, huge and sad in the dark catering hall, unable to stop himself from saying the words So nice to meet you. The face of his friend in the dark hall falling away, like a flashlight dropped overboard, falling down into the water. The electric shock inside his eyes as he realizes his mistake is where this stops and starts again. He watches the face recede this way until Caleb finishes the story, and as their friends groan and laugh, he recognizes his cue to rejoin the conversation. And to tell his side of the story again.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2019 Robert Gill

  Alexander Chee is the author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. He is a Whiting Award winner, contributing editor at the New Republic, and editor at large at VQR, and his essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and The Best American Essays, among others.