by Tom Perrotta
“I can't believe I'm getting married tomorrow,” he says.
“Believe it,” Chuck tells him, getting up from the chair.
Brothers in another family might have chosen this moment to hug each other, but Dave and Chuck say good night the Raymond way, trading casual, almost imperceptible nods, like distant acquaintances passing on the street. In the doorway, Chuck stops and turns around.
“By the way,” he says, “who's Marlene Fragment?”
“What?” Dave says, a little too loudly.
“Marlene Fragment,” Chuck says again. “The poet.”
Dave can't quite believe what he's hearing.
“How do you know Marlene Fragment?”
“There's a book of hers up in the bedroom. I'm thinking about using one of the poems for my reading tomorrow.”
“I thought you were doing that thing from Four Weddings and a Funeral.”
“I was. But I talked to Paul, and he said he was doing the same thing.”
Dave's shock has begun to wear off. He tries to think of a good reason why Chuck shouldn't read one of Gretchen's poems at the ceremony, but can't come up with any. In fact, he kind of likes the idea.
“Which poem?”
“I'm not sure yet. There are a couple that look like they might work.”
“It's your call,” he tells his brother.
It's warm night, and Dave likes sleeping with the window open. At first, he thinks it's a raccoon outside making the scratching noise and tries to ignore it. But then he hears the whisper, just inches from his head.
“Hey,” she says. “It's me. Open the window.”
DREAM OF A LIFETIME
Despite the fact that it's held in a church rather than on a football field, the wedding ceremony reminds him of nothing so much as high-school graduation. There's that same feeling of anonymous ritual, the same need to walk more slowly than usual, the same illusion that the audience consists of his family and a bunch of extras. Taking his place next to Glenn at the front of the church—there's no altar in the Catholic sense, just a raised stage and a podium surrounded by flowers—Dave wonders if the bridesmaids and ushers flanking him on both sides share this feeling of déjà vu, or if it's somehow a product of his own arrested development, if the day will ever come when the world stops reminding him of high school.
The minister, Godfrey Tucker, greets him with a toothy smile and an unsolicited full-body hug that Dave has no choice but to submit to, like a child set upon by an adoring grandparent. Glenn, less demonstrative by nature, settles for delivering a kindly, somewhat tentative pat on the shoulder. He looks bug-eyed and a little sweaty, and Dave can see the effort it's costing him to stand up here in full view of the hundred or so assembled guests. Further down the line, his brother, Buzzy, and Paul flash a synchronized thumbs-up that would have made the Temptations proud. To his left, the Maid of Honor and the three bridesmaids—-Julie has repeatedly instructed him to use the term attendants but he can't bring himself to do it—are all peering at him with the kind of unqualified approval that life so rarely offers, at least in Dave's experience.
The minister clears his throat, and Dave turns just in time to see Julie and her father move into view at the far end of the church. At almost the same moment, the audience rises as one, turning to face the center aisle. A strange hush overtakes the church. Then, for a few seconds, nothing happens. Clothes rustle, voices murmur. Heads peer up in the direction of the choir loft. The minister clears his throat again, this time more loudly, and suddenly the watery strains of an organ fill the air, the inevitable fanfare signaling that the star is here, the show's ready to begin.
And this too is like commencement: the stupid music gets to him. An instantaneous lump forms in his throat, squeezing upward, and before he has a chance to defend himself, his eyes are crinkled and dangerously moist, and his bottom lip is sliding around so much he has to bite it to keep it in place. His shoulders start to heave. By anyone's definition, he's crying. “Pomp and Circumstance” did the same thing to him, but at least then he was lost in a crowd, and only had to worry about the snickering sidelong glances of Mark Rizzotti, the asshole to his right, who kept elbowing him and saying, “Don't cry, honey. It'll be okay.” But now he's standing in full view of a churchful of Mark Rizzottis, gulping for air as his bride approaches.
The bridal march, or whatever the hell it's called, seems to take forever. Flashbulbs are popping, Julie's smiling and mouthing hellos to people on both sides of the aisle, her father's looking dead ahead, his eyes wide open and oddly unfocused. Dave usually hates that description of someone looking like “a deer caught in the headlights”— he, for one, has never seen such a thing—but that's the phrase that come into his mind as he watches Mr. Müller approach, moving as stiffly as a toy soldier, his lovely daughter welded to his arm.
Julie looks radiant, not tired at all, despite the fact that they'd stayed up until three in the morning, making up for weeks of voluntary prénuptial celibacy. (After he helped pull her through the window—a task greatly facilitated by the picnic bench she'd dragged up against the house—she confessed that she'd always wanted to sneak out of her parents’ house in the middle of the night for a wild sexual encounter, and figured that she'd never have the chance again.) And it was wild, in an unexpected sort of way. For the first time since her abortion five years earlier, they made love without protection—Dave's novelty condom assortment was upstairs, hidden in his bedroom closet—and he understood without her having to tell him that it was for real now, that they were summoning forces beyond their control. And it felt different to him, more adult and consequential than any sex he'd ever had before. He's still terrified by the thought of becoming a father, but the fear seems less theoretical now, more intimate and potentially manageable, something he might even learn to live with or move beyond. Julie must have felt something new as well, because she'd given herself up to the act with a passion Dave had almost forgotten she was capable of, crying out like she wanted to wake up his parents and show them the spectacle her own parents had stumbled upon such a short time ago, in what already felt like another era.
But the events of the previous night are just one of the many secrets they share—among the many others they don't—as Mr. Müller unlocks his arm from Julie's at the front of the church and offers Dave a clammy handshake.
“Take good care of her,” he mutters. There's a weary resignation in his voice, as though he doesn't quite believe this is possible, but has no choice but to take his chances.
“I will,” Dave promises.
Mr. Müller extracts his hand from Dave's. He kisses Julie on the cheek and retreats to his front-row seat. Julie passes her bouquet to Tammi and takes her place next to Dave, interlacing the fingers of her right hand with the fingers of his left. Except for this odd little fairy godmother tiara her mother insisted upon her wearing— they've been squabbling about it for weeks—she looks stunning in her gown, which is both simple and traditional, and also happens to reveal what strikes Dave as a daring amount of cleavage. She glances at him quickly, but then does a double take, her face lighting up with pleasure.
“Are you crying?” she whispers.
He doesn't have time to answer, though, because the minister chooses just that moment to tap on the microphone and ask if everyone can hear him in the back.
All through the readings Julie keeps sneaking delighted looks at him, as if he's won her heart forever by crying at their wedding. Dave's composed now, slightly sheepish, but also a bit irritated; he has a feeling he's never going to hear the end of it for as long as he lives. He imagines her telling it to their kids—I was such a beautiful bride, your father wept when he saw me walking down the aisle—the story becoming one of those family legends passed down for generations, like the one about his mother's parents meeting at Ellis Island or the one about his father getting a flat tire on the way to his wedding, then opening the trunk only to discover that his spare was flat as well. He and Julie aren't even married
yet and already he feels himself being transformed into a historical figure, frozen into anecdote by his unborn children and grandchildren.
Julie's sister Claire is reading that passage from the Bible about love being patient and kind; Dave's heard it a hundred times, and the words drift past him like Muzak, pleasant and forgettable. The two previous readings affected him in the same way—Margaret led off with “the marriage of true minds,” and Paul followed with that poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral—the sentiments so airy and pure they seemed to have about as much to do with him and Julie as a commencement speech does with the average graduate. It's a formality, something you have to sit through before the diplomas get handed out.
But maybe he's just distracted. His brother's last on the list of readers, and Dave finds himself unexpectedly jittery at the approach of Gretchen's poem (he still doesn't know which one his brother has chosen). Now that he's here, trying to focus on the moment at hand, he senses clearly the danger of her presence, even in verse form. She might as well be sitting in the front row, right between his mother and his pregnant sister-in-law, wearing a short dress and the pained expression he always found—and would still find, if he were lucky or unlucky enough to see her—inexplicably attractive and challenging. He remembers her telling him that there's no way not to be pathetic on the day of your boyfriend's wedding and wonders what she's doing to mark or ignore the occasion. At least he knows she's not with Randy, and for some reason—not that he's proud of it—this gives him a certain amount of satisfaction.
Claire steps down from the podium, a forty-one-year-old hospital administrator trying gamely to uphold her dignity in a shiny peach-colored dress with puffy sleeves, a plunging neckline, and an orange sash tied around her waist. Chuck brushes past her on his way up, looking mature and substantial in his tux, every inch the prosperous bean counter that he is. Once installed behind the lectern, he fishes a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and makes a bit of a production out of affixing them to his face. Dave wonders if he learned to do this at some sort of public-speaking seminar.
“On the occasion of Dave and Julie's wedding,” he says, pausing to make eye contact with his audience, “I'd like to read a poem by Marlene Fragment.”
With a subtle flourish, he withdraws a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and smooths it out on the lectern. Dave glances at Julie, but she's busy whispering something to Tammi. As soon as his brother begins to read, Dave recognizes the poem. It's a new one, entitled “my FINAL offer,” and not a favorite of his, though it is one of the few poems in her collection even remotely suitable for a wedding:
You were a gift, I think
And now I offer one in return
If I could
I'd take my beating heart
And place it in a box
Tie it shut with a pretty pink ribbon
And deliver it to your doorstep
Urgent overnight
But that's no longer possible
So here's the next best thing
A little brown bag
Full of hopes, dreams, and feelings
My earthly treasure
Take it, my love
Treat it well, and carry it with you
Always
The red pulsing heart of everything I am.
Chuck looks around for a few seconds after he's finished, as if he's willing to entertain questions from the audience. When it's clear that none are forthcoming, he carefully refolds the paper and tucks it back in his pocket. Then he removes the glasses with a slow, deliberate air, stretching out his time in the limelight. When Dave finally works up the courage to check Julie's reaction, it's clear she's been smirking at him for some time.
“Jeez,” she whispers. “Where'd he dig that up?”
Once the VOWS begin, the world shrinks down and time speeds up. The most crucial phase of the ceremony vanishes in a blur of repeated words, more like a memory test than a pledge of lifelong commitment. Rings are exchanged; a blessing is spoken. A kiss follows—a nice one, sexy but not ostentatious—but it's over before it starts, and the next thing he knows the organ's playing again, and people are clapping.
“Come on,” Julie says, tugging at his arm. “Time to go.” Dave looks around in disbelief. Flashbulbs pop. Every face he sees is smiling. That's it? he wants to say. Thaïs what all the fuss is about?
By Contrast, the receiving line seems to take forever. It's a little like drowning, your life passing before you in the form of aunts, uncles, neighbors, friends, co-workers (with a few strangers thrown in to keep you guessing), kissing your cheek, shaking your hand, telling you you're a lucky man, demanding to know what took you so long, saying, “Ha ha, welcome to the club,” and making not-so-discreet inquiries about the possibility of a little Dave or Julie on the horizon.
When the line finally dwindles down to nothing, the newly-weds step out of the church into the sunlight—it's a glorious September day, warm and golden, as if summer hasn't yet heard the news that it's history—and hustle through a hailstorm of rice into a waiting limo that will whisk them off to Nomahegan Park for a photo session by the lake.
Someone shuts the door behind them and the limo pulls away. Dave and Julie wave out the back window until the well-wishers recede into specks, then turn around and look at each other, disoriented for a few seconds by the sudden silence and privacy.
“You okay?” she asks, reaching out to knock a few grains of Uncle Ben's out of his hair. She's still clutching her bouquet, wearing so much makeup it reminds him of seeing her backstage at one of the high-school musicals she used to perform in. For some reason, he hadn't noticed this in the church.
“I think so. How about you?”
She looks down at her lap, smoothing one hand over the billowy fabric of her skirt, and gives a soft laugh.
“I can't believe you're my husband, “ she says, grimacing at the strangeness of the word.
“Scary, huh?”
“It's not that. It's just that you've been my boyfriend for so long, it's hard to think of you as anything else.”
“I'll consider it a promotion.”
The limo follows the same route their school bus used to take to Harding High. Dave gazes out the tinted window at the modest houses lining the road, the small, well-tended lawns. Except for a couple of older guys washing their cars, the world seems deserted. Now it's Dave's turn to laugh.
“What?” she says.
He shakes his head. “I'm finally doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“My teenage fantasy,” he explains. “Riding through town in a limousine.”
“See that?” she tells him. “You should have married me a long time ago.”
The photographer's a moonlighting high-school English teacher with perfectionist tendencies. He seems flummoxed by the late-afternoon light, and keeps herding his subjects from one lakeside location to another to reshoot the entire series of group portraits.
Until now, Dave has never stopped to consider the number of possible combinations and permutations hidden inside the average wedding party, but it turns out to be way more than he ever could have imagined. They've allotted forty-five minutes for the session, but an hour and fifteen minutes into it, the end is nowhere in sight. Dave's face hurts from smiling so much, and he can't help envying the less important guests, already trickling into the Westview, enjoying the open bar and whatever music Rockin’ Randy is providing for their listening pleasure. He watches as the photographer's assistant poses Julie, her sisters, and her parents for yet another Müller family portrait.
“Come on!” the photographer cajoles, studying them through his viewfinder. “This is a happy occasion, right?”
All five of them show their teeth at once. Claire and Melanie peel off, and the assistant rearranges Julie, Jack, and Dolores into a suitable Bride and Her Parents tableau. Dave turns away from the picture to stare vacantly at a softball game in the distance. The batter strokes a single up the middle, and the whole fiel
d explodes into motion. Just then Glenn detaches himself from the cluster of ushers nearby and taps him on the shoulder. His face is ominously pale, a bit panicky. It's a look Dave remembers well from the Talent Show fiasco so many years ago.
“Uh, listen,” he mumbles. “I kind of have to split.”
“How come?”
Glenn shifts his gaze from Dave's face to the ground.
“I'm not quite done with my toast. I need some quiet time to polish it up.”
Dave lays his hand on his Best Man's shoulder. “You're not gonna disappear on me, are you?”
Glenn looks up, neither surprised nor offended by the question, and shakes his head.
“Not tonight,” he says, forcing a smile to signal his resolve. “I'm in this till the bitter end.”
“I'm counting on you.”
“Don't worry. I'll catch you at the reception.”
Glenn starts off for the parking lot, walking a little too fast, like a criminal trying to make an inconspicuous getaway. Dave's wondering if he's going to have to deputize another Best Man when the photographer's assistant calls out for him.
“Groom,” she says.
He turns around and sees Mr. and Mrs. Müller waiting for him in the grassy clearing by the lake. They looked dazed in their pretty clothes, a bit wilted; Dolores's cotton candy bouffant appears to be in the early stages of a collapse. Dutifully, Dave takes his place between them, waiting for Julie to step in and complete the picture. Instead she hangs back, off to one side with her sisters and the rest of the bridal party, as the assistant adjusts his chin and straightens his boutonnière.
“What about the bride?” he asks.
“It's just us,” Mr. Müller informs him.
Surprised by this information, Dave reluctantly snakes an arm around each of his in-laws. Mrs. Müller tenses beneath his touch, and all at once, Dave knows that the three of them are all thinking about the same thing. They've seen my penis! Before he can stop himself, he finds himself wondering if Dolores was impressed or if she somehow found him lacking. The photographer looks up, clearly dissatisfied.
