Chapter 23 Adelaide
adelaide
The very next day, we went down to city hall, got a license, and said our vows before a justice of the peace, with his secretary and receptionist as witnesses.
I wore a white suit that Lucille loaned me.
It was too large, but I borrowed Marge’s white belt, and it gave it a stylish peplum effect.
Marge and Lucille both wanted to come to the wedding, but I wouldn’t allow it.
Charlie’s and my parents would be crushed that we were getting married without them present; to learn that we’d invited anyone else would just add insult to injury.
Charlie bought me a bouquet of orchids and baby’s breath. I didn’t think to get him a boutonniere, but Lucille cut a white rose from her garden, and I pinned it to his lapel.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” intoned the justice of the peace—a tall, lanky man in his mid-fifties, with thinning gray hair. Charlie kissed me. I fought back the feeling of being smothered by his mouth.
We took the train to Biloxi for our honeymoon, and called our parents from the hotel.
The reaction was an odd mixture of delight and outrage. “How could you elope?” my mother cried. “Virginia and I have been planning your wedding since you two were born!”
“That’s exactly why we did it,” I said.
“We didn’t want a big fuss,” Charlie added. “We figured we’d save a lot of money this way.”
We checked into a beachside hotel and ate crab at a local restaurant. I didn’t have much appetite. Morning sickness now seemed to hit at random times of the day.
I thought about pretending to be too sick to perform my marital duties, but Charlie seemed heartbreakingly eager. My mother’s advice for handling things you’d rather not do ran quite unromantically through my mind: might as well get it over with.
I put on my nightgown in the bathroom—it was a gift from Marge, a sheer blue peignoir set with sparkles, an outfit better suited for an experienced seductress than a reluctant bride, but it was all I had.
I could feel my face flaming as I walked into the bedroom wearing it. Charlie was waiting for me in bed.
He was nervous. His hands were clammy, and he had a sheen of perspiration on his upper lip that moistened my face when we kissed. The preliminaries were bumbling, and as for the actual consummation . . . well, it was over almost before it began. To make matters worse, I cried.
“Did I hurt you?” Charlie asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then what’s wrong?”
You’re not Joe. I didn’t say it, of course, but Charlie was no dummy. After all, I was pregnant by another man, a man I’d loved and planned to marry, a man whose death I was grieving.
Poor Charlie—he didn’t know what to do. He looked like he was about to cry himself.
“It was a lot better with him, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t,” I told him.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask me about Joe.”
“It’s almost like he’s here with us, since his baby is inside you.”
I sat up and swung my legs to the side of the bed. “I was crazy to think this would work. We’ll get a divorce or annulment in the morning.”
“No. No McCauley has ever gotten a divorce. No one in your family has, either, and it’s not going to start with us. Besides, what about the baby?”
The baby. My spine sagged. “Charlie, you knew the situation when you married me. If you can’t accept it, we’d best end things now.”
“I accept it. At least, I’m trying to.” His voice broke. Tears streamed down his face. “Oh, Addie—I just love you so much. And it’s killing me that you gave yourself to another man.”
“Look, Charlie . . . I can’t—I won’t—put up with you throwing it in my face. You said as far as the world was concerned, this is your baby.”
“Yes. Yes, it will be.”
“No. It is.”
“Okay. You’re right. It is. It’s our baby.”
“And I’m your wife,” I said, “and you’re my husband.”
He drew me into a kiss so desperate it seemed as if I were his source of oxygen. He didn’t bring up Joe again that night, but he was right there with us, every time we tried to make love.
I say “tried” because instead of getting better, Charlie just got worse. The second and third times, he couldn’t even wait until he was inside me.
I held him in my arms and stroked his hair, as if he were the doll we used to play house with. “It’s okay,” I told him. “It’ll get better. We’ve got a lifetime to figure it out.”
That calmed him down. I felt him relax in my arms. I eased his head down on the pillow and lay beside him. As my new husband’s breathing grew deep and rhythmic, I spent the rest of my wedding night silently crying into my pillow.