11. Marnie
Marnie
Wedding week starts on the Monday before the big day with a spreadsheet and forty-one unread texts.
Here's my week, all sprawled out in front of me in black and white.
Shuttle contract, final count to the caterer, the cake stand that has to be returned by Sunday noon or we lose the deposit, Drew's grandmother's oxygen concentrator and whether the venue has a dedicated circuit, Erin's dress hem, Nathan's shoes, the flowers moving from Thursday to Friday because of the heat, and a bridesmaid who has decided this is the week to have an emotional crisis about her boyfriend.
I sleep about five hours a night. Keith works, because there's an earnings call on the twenty-third and the world doesn't stop for a wedding.
The seating goes final on Tuesday.
We did the ceremony rows in July. Two hundred and six chairs on a lawn, front row on the left for the bride's family: Keith, me, Nathan, Erin, Grandma Dee, then Deb and her husband.
Extended family in the second row. That's where Sherry has been penciled since August, second row, between Deb and April's godmother Roz, which is a good seat, which is a seat that says you belong to this family.
Gretchen emails me the final seating chart at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Sherry calls Keith at 8 on the same day.
He tells me about it after, at the sink, drying his hands.
“First of all, she's not upset."
"That's a great way to start,” I reply, bracing for whatever comes next.
"She's not. She was very good about it." He hangs the towel on the bar, badly, and I fix it without thinking. "All she said was that she understands the second row and she's not going to make a big deal out of it.”
“Because it’s not a big deal.”
"Marnie."
"What."
He leans against the counter. "She was crying."
"Okay."
"She said she used to think about it when April was a baby. Watching her get married. She said she gave that up a long time ago and she doesn't want it back, she just, she said the word was forfeited. She said she forfeited the right to sit as her mother and she's made her peace with it."
The word forfeited has now appeared in three separate communications from this woman. It was in the original message on August ninth. I've read that message enough times to know.
"That's a lot of peace," I say.
"Don't."
"I'm not doing anything, Keith. I'm standing in my kitchen."
He looks at the ceiling. Then he says it.
"Could she sit in the front row?"
And as much as I want to stand my ground, draw my line in the sand, and deny her this privilege… I say yes.
I say yes without hesitation, because I'm exhausted, because the flowers moved, because Drew's grandmother needs a circuit, because it's a chair on a lawn, because my daughter's biological mother wants to see her get married from six feet closer, and because I have been told for eight weeks that I'm the kind of woman who makes things into competitions and I do not want to be that woman, and there is no defense against being told what you are except to keep proving you aren't.
"Fine," I say. "Move Deb and Ron to the second. Put her on the end by Roz."
Keith's whole body relaxes.
"Thank you."
"Tell Gretchen tonight, because she's printing the reserved cards tomorrow."
"I will."
He kisses the side of my head, and he means it, and for about eighteen hours I feel okay about my own life.
Wednesday night. Late-ish. I'm labeling the shuttle rosters at the dining room table.
Keith comes in and sits down across from me and says my name, and I know from the syllable.
"No," I say.
"You don't know what I'm going to ask."
"Yes I do."
He puts his phone face down on the table, which he has never done, in twenty-four years.
"She asked if she could be next to me."
The pen keeps going. Roster B, shuttle two, Halpern party.
"No," I say.
"Marnie, listen. It's not what you think.
She's not looking to sit with me, that's not it, God.
" He drags a hand through his hair. "She said she's going to fall apart.
Terrified she's going to sob through the vows and have to sit there alone at the end of a row with Roz, who she met once, while everybody in that family watches her lose it.
She wants to sit next to the only other person on that lawn who knew April at three. "
"No."
"Give me a reason."
I put the pen down.
"You already know the reason."
"I don't. I actually don't, and I've been trying, and this is where I get stuck every time.
It's a chair. It's an hour of your life.
Nobody is taking anything away from you.
" He leans forward. "The pictures are you.
The aisle is you. April asked you to help her get dressed.
This is a chair, and you're going to make me tell that woman no over a chair. "
"Where do I sit, Keith?"
"You'd be on my other side."
"So the arrangement is: Keith in the middle, wife on one side, first wife on the other, in the front row, at our daughter's wedding, in every photograph anybody takes of the ceremony for the rest of time."
"Nobody photographs the front row."
"Two hundred and six people photograph the front row."
He sits back. "This is what I mean. That right there is exactly it."
"I have moved over for that woman for six weeks.
" My voice is low and it doesn't sound like mine.
"The dress. The shower. The scrapbook, the picture, the money.
My marriage. She asked to have her feelings about me, and you gave her those.
She asked for the front row. It was hers by Tuesday.
It has been eighteen hours, Keith. Eighteen hours and she came back for the chair beside you. "
"Nobody asked you to move over."
I laugh. It's an ugly sound and it comes out of me before I can stop it.
"That's all anybody has asked me to do," I say. "That's the only request anybody in this family has made of me since August. Move over, Marnie. There's room. Be gracious. Be the big one. And every single time I have, and every single time the ground has been an inch farther away."
Keith stares at me.
"I don't know who you are right now," he says.
I gather the shuttle rosters into a stack and square them on the table, edges, corners, the way I do.
"That's the truest thing you've said in a month," I tell him.
I go upstairs. He sleeps downstairs on the couch, and neither of us calls it what it is, and in the morning he's gone before I'm up.
At 7AM he texts me.
I hate how last night ended. I'm sorry. I'll figure the seating out, don't think about it again, you've got enough on you this week.
Nine weeks ago I would have read that and felt held.
I read it four times standing at the coffee maker and what I notice is the meaning of it.
He's sorry about how it ended. He's not sorry about what he asked for.
He's going to figure it out, which means it stays his to figure, which means the answer is still open somewhere in a conversation I'm not in.
I type three different replies and send none of them.
Then I go do the day, because the day is a shuttle roster and a caterer and a girl who's getting married in seventy-two hours, and there is no version of this week where the mother of the bride gets to sit down on the floor and put her head on her knees.
Gretchen calls me at ten. She wants to know if the reserved cards for the front row are final.
I look out the kitchen window at the hummingbird fighting the finches at the feeder.
"They're final," I say.