Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
LOUISA JAMES EVANS…ELLIS
LOUISA
The chair makes that awful plastic-on-linoleum screech as Hudson pulls it out and sits beside me, like the building itself is objecting to our presence.
“Okay,” Hudson says. He’s prepared for this, mid-process and ten steps ahead.
The way other men prepare for triathlons.
(Note to self: ask Hudson if he has done a triathlon.) “We start with the I-130 and the supporting affidavit. Then, I have the financial co-sponsorship form, already filled out, you just sign at the bottom.”
“You filled out my forms?”
“You don’t have a great track record with paperwork.”
“Presumptuous,” I mutter not so quietly under my breath.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“Sorry, did I say presumptuous? I meant asshole.”
“Wow,” he says, completely unbothered. “I didn’t know you Brits pronounced ‘organized’ like that.
Cute.” He pulls out the paper and hands me a pen.
Tapping his long finger on the dotted line where I’m meant to sign.
Scrawling Louisa James Evans on the line before looking at it a second longer and adding a quick Ellis to the end of it.
There’s something about the way he does things that’s not just organized, but inevitable.
Like even if I didn’t sign it, the pen would somehow sign it on its own just to keep things moving because he said so.
Hudson takes the paper back without comment, already stacking it with the others, and on to the next thing.
Of course he is.
When they call our number the anxiety begins to build. I wish I could say it’s exciting. It’s not even really fear. Just an awareness of every single nerve ending in my body suddenly remembering they exist. Waiting to be told what kind of reaction to have. (I wish I knew.)
The clerk (Deborah, according to her lanyard) looks at us, a completely unhidden assessment of the two of us.
Her eyes move from me to him, back to me, taking in the differences, the similarities (wedding bands is about where it ends), and whatever invisible checklist she’s running through in her head; she’s marking things off.
I wonder what she sees. (If she sees it immediately.) If she has a mental stamp of FRAUD she just slammed against my forehead.
But she accepts the first form Hudson hands her without question.
I always thought the DMV was bad. This? This makes that scene in Beetlejuice look like a dream.
Not because of the people in the waiting room, we’re surrounded by them, all kinds, all stories, all sitting in the same awful chairs under the same flickering lights.
I want to talk to them, and what brought them here, what they left behind, what they’re hoping for.
But Hudson was more focused on paperwork than making waiting-room friends. (Boo.)
“Do you have the original certificate?” the clerk asks. Hudson doesn’t hesitate, opens the folder, finds the right tab, and pulls another sheet, and slides it across her desk.
Deborah says nothing, so I say nothing.
My leg, however, did not get the memo. What started as light shaking is beginning to become a non-stop bounce, and I wonder how long before it gives me away.
Before they realize I’m a fraud, he’s helping a fraud, we could never be married, and they arrest me.
The anxiety in my chest is blooming, but I’m trapped in this chair until we finish this transactional ‘the United States government does not yet consider that you are a person’ paperwork.
Any second now, they’re going to stand up, walk around the desk, ask us to come with them, and suddenly this becomes a different kind of room for a different conversation.
I feel his hand come down on my thigh. Pressing it down, stopping the jittering from continuing. Not aggressive, but firm. (Like everything he does.) The bouncing stops, not because I told it to, because he did.
I spend our entire time here watching the clock behind Deborah’s head, because there are only so many times you can read the laminated posters about penalties for immigration fraud, what to do if you suspect someone of immigration fraud, and of course, job recruitment.
Every poster begins to feel more and more personal.
I’m on maybe the fourth or fifth document when I finally pause.
It’s not anything dramatic (maybe it is), but the pen didn't run out and no one walked in to arrest me.
I just simply looked down at the paper with a little more clarity, and saw for about the dozenth time today, our names together, printed in that standard government font, clean and official, and entirely without sentiment.
Hudson James Ellis and Louisa James Evans.
Right next to the box checked ‘spouse.’
The word is there in its little bitty box like it means nothing, because to the form it doesn’t. It’s just a category in someone’s database somewhere, and yet, somehow this is the moment it finally clicks into place. The gravity of the situation. Not just mine, but his as well.
“Louisa,” Hudson says, as it pulls my attention away from the hyperfixation of something that won’t do me any good now. His hand is still on my leg, maybe the only thing keeping it steady, as his finger taps against my inner thigh. A quiet, gentle rhythm like he’s counting me back into the room.
I don’t know how this can feel so intimate, when it’s all paperwork. How the government, which doesn’t care about my feelings, looks at the two of us and goes ‘yep, you both are legally bound.’
I’ve been other kinds of intimate with people before, I’ve shared beds, even a toothbrush holder, I’ve told people things I hadn’t meant to, laughed when things weren't funny, and I’ve stayed when I should have left.
(Clearly.) I might not always find passion easily, but there are intimacies of friendships, and even what I thought might have been love, that I’ve shared with people in my life.
But when the time came and I needed someone to stand next to me at an altar and in a room like this, I can’t think of anyone else who would have even considered such a thing.
And I don’t think I would have been able to say yes to anyone but him, knowing his investment is transactional.
It’s the one thing I can’t mess up, because he hated me from the start.
It's a deflating thought, the slow air seeping out of a balloon versus a balloon being squeezed so tight, it pops. But there’s something underneath it that makes me want to laugh. Because how in the ever-loving fuck did I end up someone’s wife.
Not just someone’s. His.
I look at Hudson as he’s trading papers with Deborah, sliding our IDs across the desk.
It’s contractual for him, a dance he knows steps to.
His jaw is slightly set, he’s dressed for work, and he’s getting through this as quickly as possible.
If I’m smart, I’ll do the same. But smart is not something I’m often called.
Each time signing my name, appending the new last name that I haven’t taken more legally than updating my instagram. (For show, obviously.)
With that, Deborah, who does not go by ‘Deb’ (sorry), takes a large stamp and presses it into the ink before bringing it down onto our application. (Not my forehead.)
“Are we approved?!” I say, excitedly. Okay, sure my hand hasn’t had to sign that much paperwork maybe in my life, but this wasn’t nearly as hard as people make it out to be.
She laughs. (Okay, maybe not.)
“Step one, Louisa,” Hudson says, a voice low in my ear. Somehow finding its way to speak to me even with the background noise of dozens of papers and people all around us doing the same thing.
“We will contact you about the interviews, any questions?” she asks, typing something quickly into her computer and eager to dismiss us.
“Um, what questions do I have…” I think out loud. “What. Questions. Do. I. Have.” It’s almost a nervous little jingle as it comes out of my mouth.
“None,” he says smoothly. “Thank you.” He collects the papers, pulls my chair back before I can even process that I should stand, his hand settling at the small of my back as he guides me out of the chair, out of the space, out of the room.
“Hey, what if I have a question,” I ask him as his hand on my back guides us through the fluorescent government-building hallways.
“I’ll answer it.”
The restaurant is loud in a good way, you know the kind that means people are enjoying themselves and the music, and kitchen is just a backdrop to that.
I invited Hudson to join us for lunch and our ‘Tequila Update’ but I knew he wouldn't for two reasons. One, he doesn’t eat lunch, and two, he spends as little unrequired time around me as possible.
He did tell me to ‘be brave and order the fajitas’ before he got into his car and headed back to the office.
I’ve barely sat down before my shoulders drop the six inches from where I felt them hanging from my ears. “I need a big one.”
“Pretty sure you’ve got that at home,” Chandler jokes as she flips to the back of the menu to pretend to make a decision about something she definitely already decided before we walked in.
“I mean a margarita,” I say.
“Ahhh,” she theatrically says, always one for a little bit of gossip. Even when I wasn’t dating, she loved to hear the salacious details of whoever I’m narrating, it always makes for fun margarita conversation.
We have a usual booth by the window, it’s also in our favorite section because in all the time we’ve been coming here, Mateo, the server, has completely gone along with the fact that we are fully invested in reaching the bottom of the bottomless chips and salsa.
(Which of course, we never do.) The margaritas usually take up more real estate than we anticipate.
“Good afternoon, ladies, my name is Paul, I’ll be your server, can I get you started with anything to drink?” I look up from my slightly sticky menu where I had been mulling over what flavor sugar-tequila mixture I was going to go for today, when the unfamiliar voice interjected.
“I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude,” I begin.
“Yes, she does,” Chandler jokes.
“But we were hoping to sit in Mateo’s section, is he here? Is this not his table today?” I ask, hoping Paul can see that it’s really nothing personal.
“He no longer works here, but I’ll be glad to take care of you.” Ugh. Last time we were here, he was telling us all about his sister’s gymnastics competition. How am I supposed to know how it went? I shake away the fact that I’ll just have to accept it.
“I’ll have a mango marg, please and thanks!” Chandler orders, knowing Paul is surely just as capable. He put down the chips and salsa with the same enthusiasm as Mateo always did.
“I’ll do the same.”
The margs come out, the chips and salsa are replaced for a second bowl, and we put in our order for lunch, late lunch. Closer to dinner. (I did not get fajitas.)
“So,” Chandler says, “How’s it actually going?”
I drag a chip through the salsa. “Which part?”
“Being married.” Chandler props her chin in her hand. “Like, day-to-day, because it all happened so fast, Lou, and you know me, you know I’m supportive, and I get it, I mean, I’ve seen him, but it just went from nothing to somethin’ real fast.”
“It was always something, Chan,” I say, and it doesn’t feel like the lie it might be. “You heard him at dinner.”
“I heard him, but now I’m asking you.”
“He’s different from anyone I’ve ever been with.” And that is a truer statement than anything else I could have said.
“I figured, I mean, when he called to help with the wedding, I was stunned. But he was so specific, he had everything thought through, flowers, music, all of it.” I’m drinking down the last drops of my mango marg, and definitely ready for another one considering the topic of this conversation.
Trying not to fixate on just how much he did, even though he was ready to dismiss it all to Chandler and Paola.
“He’s very specific,” I say, licking the salt from the rim.
“Would you tell me the truth?” she asks, staring at me in a way that fills me with self-doubt.
“About what?” I ask.
“All of it. If, well, if you weren’t happy, or if something is wrong.
” She almost sounds sad, and that makes me sad.
I didn’t want to lie to her. Then again, I also didn’t want to lie to the government.
But I also don’t want anyone else in a position where they could get into trouble for me.
So, I pack it away, think about what Hudson said.
I don’t have to lie, I can just tell the part of the truth that’s the safest.
“I am happy,” I say, “but I’ll be happier with another drink.”
Chandler’s phone buzzes on the table, and I see the name flash across the screen, along with this face beneath a red circle with a slash through it. We both look at it as her eyebrows shoot up.
“Now, Chan…I guess the question is, would youu tell meee the truth about why my brother is calling you?” I cock my head to the side, playing coy, because she has refused to admit what everyone around her has seen from the beginning.
That the two of them, no matter the literal ocean that is between them, cannot stay away from each other.
She flips her phone upside down, pretending that by not seeing it, it’s not real. But just because it’s facedown on the table does not mean the phone stops ringing. But that’s not how problems work.