27. Clarence
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Clarence
Turns out I’d rather watch Charly argue about napkin colors than do pretty much anything else. Six months of wedding planning taught me that.
We’re at one of those wedding expo things.
Big hall, a hundred booths, way too much free cake.
And we’re basically done already. Venue’s booked, flowers are sorted, caterer’s locked in.
It’s just the dumb stuff left, the stuff that doesn’t actually matter but somehow eats up the most time. Table numbers.
Whether the napkins are cream or some other cream that costs four bucks more apiece for reasons nobody can explain to me.
And I do it anyway. I’ll stand here and argue about napkins like it actually matters, because I want this thing to be perfect for her. All of it. Charly’s been through enough. She deserves the whole perfect day and I’m going to make sure she gets it.
“These are the same color,” I say, holding up two of them.
“They are not the same color.” She grabs them off me like I insulted her. “That one’s ecru. This one’s ivory.”
“Those are two fake words for the same color.”
“You’re hopeless. I can’t believe I’m marrying a man who can’t tell ecru from ivory.”
“I can tell one thing. One of them costs more for no reason.” I lean back in the dinky folding chair and watch her hold the napkins up to the light, all serious, eyebrows scrunched up, and my chest does the thing it always does. “Just buy both. Buy the whole booth. I don’t care.”
“That’s not how any of this works.” She’s fighting a smile though.
“Come here.” I tug her hand until she gives up on the napkins and lets me pull her into my lap, right there in the middle of everything. “Hi.”
“You’re ridiculous. People are looking.”
“Let them look.” I settle my hands on her hips so she can’t go anywhere. “I’m marrying the prettiest woman at the napkin booth.” I tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “I got the good one. Everybody knows it.”
“You’re an idiot.” But she’s smiling, really smiling, leaning into my hand, and for one second everything’s exactly right.
Here’s what I’ve figured out these last six months.
She’s happy now, mostly. Lighter. She laughs a lot easier than she used to.
But there’s this thing she does that I don’t think anybody else even sees.
Anytime it gets near kids, or family, any of that, she goes quiet for a second.
Just kind of shuts a door somewhere I can’t get to.
Then she catches herself and comes back like it never happened.
I keep waiting for the day she stops doing it. It hasn’t come yet.
***
We’re packing up the little tote bag of samples when I hear her go, “Rebecca?”
And there’s the sister. Big smile, glowing, the whole thing, and pregnant again, real far along this time, one hand resting on top of it like a reflex.
“Oh my God, Charly, I didn’t know you’d be here.” Rebecca hugs her, careful around the belly. “We just booked our venue, can you believe it, the wedding’s actually happening this fall, I keep pinching myself.”
“That’s great. That’s really great.” Charly’s smiling. It’s a good smile. I’m probably the only person in the building who can tell what it’s costing her.
Here’s the part that makes it worse, the part I didn’t expect. Rebecca isn’t cruel. She’s not doing it on purpose. She’s just standing there being happy and round and lucky, asking real questions, pulling out her phone.
“You have to see, we just got the new pictures.” She’s already scrolling, turning the screen around. “Look at that little profile. Mark says it’s all me but I think the nose is his.”
“It’s a beautiful nose,” Charly says.
“You’re sweet. Hey, are you two trying yet, or? After the wedding?” Rebecca says it light, easy, no weight on it at all, the way you’d ask about a vacation. “You’d make the most gorgeous babies, I’m just saying.”
And I watch it happen. The light going out of Charly, not all at once, just dimming, click by click, while she keeps that good smile bolted on.
“We’ll see,” she says. “One wedding at a time, right?”
“Right, right, of course.” Rebecca squeezes her arm. “God, it was so good to see you. I have to find Mark before he buys an ice sculpture. Love you, mean it.”
And then she’s gone, off into the crowd, glowing, and Charly stands there holding the little tote bag of napkin samples, and the smile’s still on her face, and her eyes are somewhere a thousand miles away.
“Hey.” I put my hand on her back. “You want to get out of here?”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t look at me. “Yeah, let’s go home.”
***
The drive’s quiet. She stares out the window the whole way and I leave her to it, because I’ve learned that poking at her in the car just makes her shut down harder. I hold her hand on the console. She lets me, but she’s not really holding on.
It’s not until we’re home, until she’s at the bathroom sink pulling the pins out of her hair one at a time, that it finally comes out. She says it to the mirror, not to me.
“She makes it look so easy.”
I’m in the doorway. I don’t jump in yet. I know this isn’t really about Rebecca.
“And I’m happy for her, I am, that’s the worst part.
I love her, I want her to have all of it.
” A pin clicks down on the counter, then another.
“I just stood there with my stupid napkin samples thinking, she gets to have that and I might never. And then I felt awful for even thinking it, because who makes their sister’s good news about themselves. ”
“Hey. Charly. Come here.”
“I’m fine. I’m not even, it’s not about her.” She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’m so tired, Clarence. I’m tired of feeling like this. I thought it would go away and it just doesn’t.”
She’s crying now, but it’s not the loud kind. It’s the worn-out kind, the kind that comes from hauling the same thing around for months and finally setting it down because your arms gave out.
“And then I think.” She stops. Her voice goes small. “I think, what if one day you wake up and figure out this isn’t enough. That I’m not.”
I don’t answer right away.
I see it hit her, the not-answering, see her start to spiral on it, and that’s the thing that decides me. Not the crying. That. The fact that she’s standing in our bathroom genuinely braced for me to agree with her.
“Get dressed,” I say.
She turns from the mirror, a pin still in her hand. “Get dressed for what?”
“Just get dressed. Come on, grab a jacket.” I’m already grabbing my keys off the dresser.
“Clarence, it’s ten o’clock at night.” She’s staring at me like I’ve lost it.
“I’m aware of what time it is.” I find her shoes by the closet and set them down in front of her.
“Where are we even going?”
“Trust me. Please, baby.” I hold out my hand and wait for her to take it. “I promise it’s a good thing. Just put your shoes on and come with me.”
***
She doesn’t talk much on the drive. Keeps asking where we’re going and I keep not telling her, and eventually she gives up and just watches me like I’ve lost it, which, fair.
I pull up in front of the little chapel on Hargrove. Not our venue. Not the nice place we booked with the lights and the garden. Just a small old chapel, white paint going gray, the kind of place you drive past a thousand times and never actually see.
“Why are we here?” She’s looking at it, then at me. “Clarence. Why are we at a church at ten thirty at night?”
I reach across her into the glove box and pull out the folder. Hand it to her. She opens it, and I watch her read it, watch it not make sense and then make sense.
A marriage license. Ours. Signed weeks ago on my end.
“I don’t get it.” She looks up from the folder. “What is this, Clarence?”
“Plan B.” I keep my eyes on her.
“Plan B for what? You’re scaring me a little.”
“I got it a few months ago. After the doctor. After I figured out how scared you really were.” My throat goes tight and I push through it.
“I never planned to use it unless I had to. I just wanted it to exist. I wanted a way to prove I meant it, for the day you finally said the thing out loud. And you said it tonight.”
She presses the folder to her chest, and the tears start again, different from the bathroom ones.
“You keep waiting for me to change my mind about you.” I take her free hand and hold it between both of mine.
“Six months I’ve watched you do it. And I can’t watch it anymore.
There’s a guy inside who does this, and his wife already said she’d stand up as our witness.
So I’m asking you. Marry me. Tonight, right now, in there.
The big one still happens, I promise, your dad still gets his whole show.
But I want one that’s only ours first, before you find a way to talk yourself out of believing me. ”
She brings her hand up over her mouth, staring at me over it.
“You are completely insane,” she says into her palm.
“A little bit.” I can’t help the grin. “Is that a yes?”
She launches across the console and grabs my face and kisses me, hard, before she even gets the word out. “It’s a yes, you lunatic. Take me inside.”
It happens fast and it’s nothing like the one we planned, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
There’s no flowers. No guests. No band, no big white runner down the middle, none of it. There’s a tired old guy in a cardigan who shuffles out from a back room when I ring the little bell by the door, and he reads our license over twice, slow, then nods like it all checks out.
“Reverend Pruitt,” he says, shaking my hand and then hers. “I’ve been doing this out of here going on forty years. Don’t worry, it’s all real and legal, the state and I are on good terms.” He gives Charly a kind look. “You two want to do this tonight, then, do you?”
“Tonight,” I tell him. “Right now, if that’s alright.”
“Then let me get my wife, she’s my witness, and we’ll make it official.” He calls back over his shoulder, and a woman in slippers comes out with a box of tissues already tucked under her arm, like she knows exactly how these go.
Charly’s still in the clothes she cried in earlier. I’ve never seen her look better in my life.