The Second Weddins #3
Early on, her naked presence would have been too distracting, and she probably would have insisted on his presence being naked as well.
Now it feels normal for them to be like this.
As J experiments with chord progressions, V closes her eyes and treats the music like steam.
Were she in a different mood, J’s volume might feel intrusive.
But she’s in this mood, ready to welcome his presence as part of her recovery from the workday.
Her friends had teased her at first, for dating a musician. You just want him to write songs about you . Or, Aren’t you worried he’s going to write songs about you ? Or, Guys like that never stay in the same place for too long . Plus the usual concerns about his financial and mental stability.
V understood what she was getting into.
..but she’d had no idea what it would feel like.
J’s stresses are so diferent from her own, and his ability to create something out of nothing isn’t a talent she feels she shares.
It is astonishing to her how he can pick phrases out of the air and string them together into something other people want to listen to.
She feels that creative part of him will never really be accessible to her—she can help him shape the final product, but she has no idea where the raw material comes from.
His work is as much a secret project to her as hers is to his. Only, he doesn’t realize it.
As it happens, V loves baths and doesn’t mind being serenaded.
She thinks J’s obsession with weddings is a little strange, but she’d never tell him this.
Based on her own parents’ wedlock, V is a glass-half-full person—and that half is full of poison.
What Tom’s mom and stepfather are doing is insane to her.
Does J want to get married? Sometimes V thinks yes, and sometimes V thinks he’d rather have it be something other people do.
V admits to herself that she loves J more when she thinks the latter is true. But she isn’t sure why. It’s one of the many questions she’d rather not ask herself. Some people take baths so they can let their thoughts run wild. V takes them for a silence of the mind.
“What do you think?” J asks.
Early on, V would have told him it was wonderful, or requested he play it again to cover for her own lapse of attention.
Now, she says, “I’m sorry. I drifted off. How did it sound to you?”
“It needs work,” he says. “Can I play it again?”
That’s the thing with these wedding songs, V knows: He doesn’t just want them to be good for him. He wants them to be good for the couple, too. She likes him better for it, but also feels she can help him less. They’re strangers to her. She has no idea what they’ll like.
This time, she keeps her ears above water.
When he’s done, she tells him what she thinks. Whatever that’s worth.
The first thing J notices about the wedding is that it’s about half the size he expected.
He’s come early to make sure the sound system at the banquet hall works.
Now he’s standing beside the table with the place cards, chatting with Tom, who looks as nervous as he had in high school when the hot girl from the swim team asked him out to a concert two hours away, assuming he had an idea of how to get there when he didn’t.
Tom notices J doing a mental count and says, “A lot of people didn’t want to come.
One ‘friend’ of Mom’s wrote back I’m tired of this, Lisbet on her response card.
George’s daughter lives in South Africa now and wasn’t going to bring her family all that way, which I kind of understand.
But George’s son lives in London—he could’ve come.
He said he was busy. I told Mom if she’d really wanted them to come, they should have combined it with George’s birthday.
The kids couldn’t have said no to that. It’s a big birthday.
They can be real pains, but I don’t think—”
Tom looks over J’s shoulder and stops abruptly. Two seconds later, a hand lands on that shoulder, and a rough voice says, “Well, if it isn’t our wedding singer!”
“George!” J says, turning. Then he, too, stops abruptly.
It is indeed George, but it’s a gaunt, old version of George.
His hair is gray and his complexion is almost the same color.
Everything he’s wearing looks a little too big, but it has a worn quality that makes it clear it’s his usual size.
His hand remains on J’s shoulder, either for camaraderie or support—J can’t tell which.
He stays steady, just in case it’s the latter.
“I’m looking forward to your song, kid!” George says, and it’s like hearing a pop song coming out of a haunted house, because even if his body language is beleaguered, there’s a brightness to his voice that J clings to.
“It took you two long enough to ask me,” J replies, keeping his own voice bright.
George lets out a laugh that’s half cough and takes his hand off J’s shoulder—but only so he can punch him in the arm.
“Such a kidder. You were always such a kidder.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Well, you got me there.”
They make small talk for a few minutes, until the planner comes over to say the guests will soon be arriving, so they should move into the room where the ceremony will be taking place.
George allows himself to be ushered off. Tom instinctively holds back with J.
“I know,” Tom says before J can ask anything.
“I know what you’re thinking. And here’s the thing—we’re not talking about it, okay?
George doesn’t want to talk about it. Mom doesn’t.
We’re doing this like nothing’s wrong. He hasn’t been well, but it’s all under control for now, okay?
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She told me I couldn’t. ”
J finds himself asking, “Do his kids know?”
Tom shakes his head. “When I say they’re not talking about it, I mean it.
They’re really not talking about it. They’ve got each other.
They don’t want anyone else. Mom didn’t even tell me at first. I had to force it out of her.
Eventually she let me take him to chemo, so she could get a break.
..but I couldn’t tell anyone. I had to say we were going shopping. ”
J doesn’t know what to say. He feels ridiculous because now it’s Tom squeezing his arm when he should be the one giving the support.
Someone comes over and tells Tom his mother needs him for a second. J goes out to where the guests are starting to gather and finds V, looking splendid in a floral suit. One look at him and she can tell something’s wrong.
“What is it?” she asks.
The other guests are too close, chatting away. J is afraid of being overheard.
“I’ll tell you later,” he says.
She’s curious, but she is willing to carry her curiosity for a while, which J appreciates.
Instead she whispers, “Do you realize that we’re the youngest people here?”
J looks around. She’s not wrong.
She goes on, “Do you think at a certain point you just stop meeting new people? So you decide to marry one of the old ones?”
When V asks a question like this, J always tries to find their own relationship within the riddle, to figure out whether there’s a right answer or not.
“We’re far from old,” J assures her.
“I know. That’s why we’re the youngest people here. But in a way, it’s nice, isn’t it? To have this many people stay by you. If I got married tomorrow, I doubt I’d have this many people show up. Not from my side. I wonder what that means.”
Before J can even begin to think of the right response here, a woman interrupts, asking if J remembers sitting next to her at wedding number two.
(He does not.) V recedes, and he only gets her back when the announcement is made that the doors are now open to the room where the ceremony is taking place.
“Will you sit with me?” he asks.
“Are you in front?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, I’ll stick behind. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” J says. Because he understands not wanting to sit at the front when you barely know the couple getting married.
Still, he would feel better with her beside him.
It is only after the ceremony has started that J realizes how inappropriate most of the lyrics in his song are, if George is that ill. He tries to rewrite it in his head, but his head doesn’t work that way.
Tom walks his mother down the aisle. George stands at the front of the room, beaming even brighter.
He looks at her like it’s the first time, like it’s all brand-new.
J is sitting in the front row because they’ve asked him to sing “I’ll Be Seeing You” as part of the ceremony.
It isn’t until he takes his position and faces the audience that he sees V toward the back.
She smiles at him, and then he looks and sees that many other people in the audience are smiling at him, too.
To look at them, nothing is wrong. They are here to celebrate.
J starts a cappella, then fills the music in.
I’ll be seeing you
in all the old familiar places...
He looks over to Lisbet and George. George’s eyes are closed, and he is smiling as he listens. Lisbet is mouthing along the words.
Even though, technically, the two of them aren’t married yet, they are holding hands like they’ve been married a long time. When J finishes, there’s applause. This is not usually the case during a wedding. But since it’s the fourth time around, people figure, why not?
V understands what J didn’t tell her earlier. She also presumes she now understands why Lisbet and George are doing what they’re doing. They don’t want to die alone. Fair enough. V can think of far worse reasons to get married. But she’s not sure it’s a reason she ever wants to consider.
J cannot look over at Tom, who has tears in his eyes. J has never seen Tom cry, or even come close.
J has to turn away. He does not want to cry in front of all these people.
The vows are simple.
“You will be my reason,” George says to Lisbet.
“You will be my reason,” Lisbet says to George.