Alone At My Wedding

Alone at My Wedding By Patricia Lawler Kenet Cousin Denise, my maid of honor, called me from the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. "I'm about an hour from New York.” In the background I heard the rumble and slam of tractor trailers pulling out their hauls. “I got an off-white dress. Mid-length. You'll like it." “Sounds good,” I said. “See you." I was getting married in two hours, and was relieved that Denise had a sense of style which I trusted implicitly. Whatever she chose would look chic. She and I had grown up together, just one block apart. My mother, Katie, pushed us in a double stroller while Denise’s mother worked as a hairdresser in her basement. Katie, was more than her favorite aunt—she was a second mother. Two nights before, Denise and I had watched over Katie at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, tucking the white sheets around her frail body, offering her a drink from a bended straw, wondering if she understood. We knew she’d never be able to attend the ceremony, so we didn’t even discuss it. Instead, the goal was getting married before she died from the breast cancer that chased her for four years. Mine would be the shotgun wedding of the post-modern bride —the one who pursues a post-graduate education, a judicial clerkship, and a good job before finding husband. Delaying meant risking what I now faced—a photo finish race with death. Every part of the planning was rushed, whittled to the bone, a crucible of pragmatism. Two weeks before, I had selected my gown on an hour lunch break from the law office where I was working in Philadelphia. My friend Debbie had met me at the Sophie Curson boutique on Rittenhouse Square. Inside the cramped dressing room, I tried on two dresses. "The first one's better," she said with sweet authority. And it was settled. The saleslady looked deflated at the military-like swiftness of the purchase. She had other selections, flattery, and powers of persuasion that would go unutilized. Save it for the next customer. Debbie and I sat on a park bench afterwards, ate soft pretzels, and drank Diet Cokes. She drummed her red nails against the empty soda can. "We'll order flowers tonight. I know a guy. He owes me a favor." Her mother had died two years prior from pancreatic cancer. Instead of sympathetic understanding, she pressed me into action—a far better method of dealing with me. She moved with ease between the world of money, time, and business deals into the other world of prayer, faith and the transcendent acceptance of death. I leaned and she led me. We returned to our respective offices. The law firm where I worked insisted that I sit for the New Jersey Bar, two days before the wedding, so in the evening I studied. When I wasn't studying, I took care of my mother—driving her to chemo treatments, doctors’ appointments, picking up medicine, talking to her, sleeping with her, lying with her, to her.

I spent the night before the wedding in New York with my girlfriend Randy. I liked the romantic notion of not seeing the groom until I walked into the chapel. Ours had been a five-year long-distance relationship. I felt myself exhale whenever we had the chance to be together. His soft voice, open smile, and sharp intellect drew me to him. His talents—so different from mine— scientific, organized, and optimistic—gave me the patience to wait years. We had met in an empty disco inside the Warwick Hotel. It was not love at first sight, but I was very taken by his shoes—lace ups, tied up tightly. I'd never been with a man who wore them. It had always been sneakers, work boots, and cheap loafers. "Hello, How are you?" he asked, with no guile. "Good. How are you feeling?" I responded over the sweeping Barry White orchestrations. "I feel like a blueberry pie," was his non sequitur, a giveaway that he was feeling nervous standing next to a friendly blonde with tight white pants. He offered to buy me a drink in record time. Here was a guy with some class. Had we not met then, we never would have again. We had no friends, schools, or family in common. On our second date, Barney purred up in a vintage BMW down the blue collar street where I lived with my parents. My mother leaned against the screen door watching with me. "That's him," I said. She scooted out behind me, barefoot, in a loose flowered nightgown carrying a shot glass filled with Galiano. "Hey, Bernie, have some," she said leaning into his open window. "You might need it." And she laughed. When he reached out, tipped the glass toward her and cheered, “Centi Anni,” he took my heart. He proposed five years later in January. My first inclination was to elope that night. "Let's fly to Miami or Las Vegas," I suggested. "Sure," he agreed, but I knew he wanted more than that for his family, so we made plans. When I showed my mother the diamond, set in an antique platinum setting, she could not help saying it. "Now who will take care of me?" I swallowed a ball of anger welling in my throat, so I could say, “I will.” I wanted enchantment, not a reminder that I was all she had. I made arrangements for a wedding ceremony at the United Nations Chapel on Saturday, July 29th, followed by a small reception at my in-laws apartment. I planned another party for the next day in Philadelphia with everyone invited—aunts and cousins, neighbors—anyone who could not make it to New York. The UN Chapel accommodated interfaith marriages. Hanging from its ceiling were five flags, one with a cross, another the Star of David, the Muslim scarab, Sanskrit. Depending on the couple's faith, the appropriate flag descended. Ours was the traditional Jewish/Catholic merger. At first it seemed that it would work out. My mother was doing well and we planned accordingly. She selected a salmon-colored chiffon dress, empire-waisted, accordian pleats with a slightly flounced hem. She ordered trays of cookies, sprinkled with powdered sugar, flecked with silver almonds for house visitors. Week by week, however, her health declined. At the end of May, she had surgery, and woke up in a

dream, lost to us, detached from the world. She had moved somewhere in her journey toward death, returning to me only in moments. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. "Could be the anesthesia, a brain met, the other drugs. She'll improve." He squeezed her toe under the sheet and shuffled into the wide hallway. Her long-time oncologist had vanished—a seminar, a retreat, burned out from witnessing perpetual loss. At the beginning of July, I had to make a decision. "She's not going to make it, she's not going to get out of the hospital," I said to Barney. "I don't think we can have the reception in Philly. It doesn't make sense." "I'll do whatever you want," he said. He was sympathetic, but inexperienced in sorrow. He studied disease, but not its emotional tributaries, and burdens. He was raised in the perpetual sun of an orange grove in Florida, with four nannies in white starched dresses, a gardener, and a driver. He was the son of a surgeon, praised for the way he sang "Oh Susanna.” I called Debbie. "What's the right thing? Should I call the whole thing off?” "It's like this," she intoned with shard of South Philly twang. "You gotta do this thing. It'll work out. I'll say a rosary. Your mother wants you married now." I began undoing arrangements, canceling flower orders, losing the deposit on the Philadelphia reception, paring the event down to its essential parts. There would be no time for wedding jitters, wet feet, wet eyes, or second thoughts. When I look back, I realize that I compressed my wedding ceremony to the parts I wanted most: the place— New York, attended by my two closest relatives—my cousin Denise, and sister Catherine. I asked some aunts to come to New York, but they hesitated—the traffic, the trip. "Maybe you should postpone," one suggested. "Until when?” I said, or thought I said. The day came, but not many family members after all. Not my mother, not my father—unable to leave his wife’s bedside. Not my brothers—too dependent on drugs to venture out of the neighborhood. Not my aunts or grandfather—too angry at me for daring this. No neighbors—too far, Manhattan, parking's a problem. I had Denise. She looked elegant, her hair twisted in an inky chignon, as simple and unembroidered as the occasion. Catherine walked me down the aisle in a suit the exact color of Denise's dress. The wisdom of chance. Four friends attended. They were not merely witnesses, but participants. I needed each one. Tom and Peter took pictures. Debbie negotiated with the florist and caterers who had balked about the reduction in the order. Randy organized the music and Hilarie worked the crowd. None of them tried to cheer me on, or pretend it was a perfect day, and I appreciated that. My husband's family was there in fullness: his five blonde aunts, jingling with charm bracelets and gold chains, his cousins, friends from Washington and Pennsylvania, uncles with smoothly shaved faces, and his parents, of course. When I arrived at the chapel, a breeze lifted my short veil and his aunt Shirley patted it down and dabbed my lipstick with a tissue. They were mine now. His father arrived at the chapel with his Yorkie, Sebastian, in tow. Valerie, his mother, toted three empty Bloomingdale shopping bags and another filled with glass

vases and scissors so she could take the flowers back to the apartment and arrange them for the reception. She wore a navy floral silk dress, Ferragamos, and simple jewelry. The differences between his family and mine were enormous, but the one I always found most striking was that his believed in cause and effect, probabilities, that taking precautions resulted in safety. Seat belts, declining dental x-rays, avoiding bedding with formaldehyde, vitamins, double and triple checking. My family was convinced, albeit unconsciously, in the chaos theory. "What the fuck do the experts know," my mother said sucking her Benson & Hedges 100’s, a habit she took up only a few years before she was diagnosed. "You can get hit by a truck too." "Jenny Caputo's son was in a car crash. Good thing he wasn't wearing his seat belt. The car caught on fire and he escaped." As I walked down the aisle, I saw Barney in his Brooks Brothers tuxedo, the smile that reassured me. He looked eager but nervous, rocking on his heels, hands clasped behind his back, waiting for me. There was no fear in his eyes, no tears in mine— like warriors—when we kissed. I was not merely holding myself together that day. I felt real joy. It was knowing that I was right to marry at that place and that time. I have a favorite wedding picture. It is a photo, taken after the ceremony, of us under a cathedral of trees on a path in a garden. It is not the dappled light, nor the natural setting that attracts me. I regard this picture with tenderness because in it, we are walking away together—our backs toward that which we had faced, moving on. Nineteen days later on August 16, my mother died. On the eighteenth we held her packed wake at Gangemi's Funeral Home on South Broad Street. She wore the salmon pleated dress, and looked more lovely than she had in over a year. Two days later, I turned thirty and returned to New York for good. In September, I learned that I passed the New Jersey Bar—now that was miraculous. My wedding was gorgeous. It was disastrous and heartbreaking. It was a baptism of fire, a purification, a way to another part. Grief is a small room where survivors wander blind, passing each other, knocking into each other, blaming, furious. "Why did you do that?" "Where were you going?” “Wait, not yet.” Nineteen years have passed. The sorrow has become a memory of sorrow, the heat of anger a still pool of acceptance and understanding of the ones that didn’t come. They were all grieving in the small room with me, blind and overwhelmed. They were trying to understand why their Katie had to suffer and her daughter insisted on making plans. I probably should have made more of an effort to include those who stayed away. I should have made it clearer that my heart could only hold so much. I should have told them that I was on a mission, a marathon, and like every runner knows, in the end, you win or lose alone. It is liberating to forgive. And it is easy now with my life so full of blessings. I can convince myself that it is over and I am far beyond it, and it’s probably true, except for one thing. Ever since that photo was taken under the trees, and I became a married woman; I cry at every wedding that I attend.