It’s a panic attack, that’s all this is. I take a deep breath and reach out and take his hand. “Noah,” I hear myself say. “It’s okay, honey. Take a deep breath. Here, sit down. Let’s take deep breaths together,” I say.
“Marnie, listen, I love you too much to do this to you. It’s not going to work. We’re not going to make it. I see that now. I am so, so sorry, baby, but I can’t.”
“Of course we’re going to make it,” I hear myself say. “We love each other, and that’s—”
“No! No, it’s not. It’s not enough to love each other. You think I want to do this to you? Marnie, I’m fucked up. I’m not ready to do the husband thing. I thought I could, but I have stuff I still need to do. I can’t, baby.”
My mouth goes dry. “Is there someone else? Do you have another woman?”
“No,” he says. His eyes dart away. “God, no! No one. It’s not that.”
“Then. What. Is. It.”
“I can’t put it into words. I just can’t say those vows. I can’t settle down yet, be some man with a lawn mower.”
“A lawn mower? What the hell does a lawn mower have to do with it?”
He’s quiet.
“It’s the permanence? That’s what the lawn mower means? Just what the hell is it about the lawn mower, Noah?”
He puts his hands over his face and sits down in the tall grass.
I start laughing. “Ohhh, I know what this is! You and Whipple stayed up all night, didn’t you? And now you’re hungover and sleep deprived, and you’re probably dehydrated. You need to eat every few hours, and you need at least six hours of sleep, or you go crazy.”
He doesn’t answer me, just keeps his head in his hands.
“Damn it, Noah Spinnaker. People are waiting for us, and all you need is a nap, some ibuprofen, and about a gallon of ice water, maybe a Bloody Mary and maybe a cheeseburger with onion rings, and you’ll be fine.”
It’s suddenly crystal clear even in its craziness.
I plop myself down on the ground next to him. I am the only one who can save him, and the only way to save him is to marry him, and yes, there will be grass stains and possibly mud on my dress, but I don’t care. I rub his back, his fine muscled back that I have rubbed a thousand times and want to spend at least the next fifty years rubbing.
“Noah, darling, it’s all right. Listen, I love you more than life itself, and I know that we are meant to be together, and that we are going to have a happy marriage.”
“No,” he says into his arm. “It won’t work.”
“It will work, trust me. And if it doesn’t—so what? We’ll get divorced. People do it all the time.”
There’s a silence and then he says, “Divorce is terrible.”
I explain then how much more terrible it would be if one of us has to walk into that church and break the hearts of my parents and all the people sitting there by announcing there will not be a wedding because of lawn mowers.
After a moment, he says, “What if we’re making a huge mistake?”
“It’s not a mistake,” I say, and I realize I believe that with all my heart. “Anyway, let’s make a mistake if we have to! So what? That’s what living is, Noah. Failing and making mistakes and figuring it out as you go along, for next time. At least we’re alive and trying things. Listen—let’s just do this. If we have to get a divorce tomorrow, we will. But today we’ll go in there and say those words out loud and everybody will clap for us, and then we’ll dance a waltz and eat some wedding cake, and we’ll go on the honeymoon because windsurfing in Costa Rica sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? And then we’ll come back, and if we want to, we’ll get a divorce.”
“Oh my God, you’re insane,” he says. “You’re actually fucking crazy!”
“It would be hard at this moment to say for sure who is more insane,” I say in a low voice. “Come on. Let’s go drink to a big mistake!”
I have him. I see with some surprise that I am stronger than he is and that I always have been.
“Let me put this another way,” I say amicably. My hands are on my hips. “I am marrying you today. I just am. So get up. Suck it up and come with me.”
And he does. He actually does it. I am not even surprised when he gets up. I knew he would.
We don’t touch each other on the way into the church. We walk in quickly, with our heads down, and we stride down the aisle together—him in his jeans and me in my grass-stained wedding dress—and people actually stand up and clap for us. They do. They clap so hard it’s as though we’re Prince and Michael Jackson and possibly even Elvis and the Three Stooges, all returned from the dead.
I keep smiling. I don’t know what he’s doing because I can’t bring myself to look at him, but when we get to the altar and the ceremony starts, we say the words we’re supposed to say, like all this never happened. I’m just there, getting married like so many women before me, and maybe when I stop to unpack all my emotions, I’ll figure out how I really feel. But for now, I just keep moving forward, and so does he, and finally we hear the words, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” and Noah kisses me and together we run down the aisle, and everything is just like I thought it would be, except for the feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I’ve just come down a mile-high hill on a roller coaster and realized the track ahead of me is broken.
The reception, held at my parents’ country club, is lovely even if I spend a lot of it knocking back more cocktails than is medically advisable and dancing with anyone who will dance with me, getting more and more raucous as the night wears on. For some reason, Noah goes ahead and sings the song he wrote to me, which has all the right sentiments since he wrote it back when he still wanted to marry me, and when he sings it, people go “Awww.” Then he sings another and another, like he can’t stop himself; he just needs the attention.
Some people ask me what the holdup was all about, and I tell them, “Oh, it was just some mix-up with the time and the tuxedo shop.” I wave my arms as though it’s all nothing to us now; the wedding went forward, and we’re married. And, ha ha, every wedding needs some little drama to make it memorable, right? A bridegroom in jeans, arriving late with his nostrils flaring like a wild stallion who’s been spooked. What of it?
My new in-laws stay at their table, looking dismayed and judgmental. My parents’ country club perhaps does not live up to the standards they like to see in polite society, so they keep to themselves. Or perhaps, given what’s happened already today, they’re thinking this marriage will only be temporary, so why should they make the effort? But Blix—I see Blix off to the side dancing with everyone, even the groomsmen, even Whipple at one point. When she comes over and pulls me out onto the floor with her, we close our eyes and smile and fling ourselves around with abandon, like maybe we’re communicating something in our own perfect, unseen world.
It’s my wedding day, and I am married and doomed and half drunk, flying on the outskirts of crazy, with the world tilting under my feet and the whole night opening up in the middle of my head.
Later, after I have danced myself into a whirling frenzy, I go outside alone to get some air. I’m hanging over the railing of the deck, looking out at the moon shining on the swamp, and I’m soaking up the Florida humidity and wondering if I’d feel better if I let myself go ahead and throw up, when I hear a voice behind me.
It’s Blix. “Well, you’ve certainly got yourself an interesting wedding story to tell, don’t you, my love?” She lowers her voice. “Are you doing okay?”
I stand up straighter, put on my public happy-bride face. “Hi! Yeah. I’m fine. Just danced too much, is all.”
She gets busy taking off her shoes, and loosening her blouse, flapping her skirt up and down, humming something. I look over at her.
“I’m trying to cool off my legs,” she says. “Do your legs get hot when you dance?”