VOWS

by

Julie Showalter

I was surprised that Adam wanted a wedding. He hadn’t seemed to want to get married. But once we decided, he said of course there’ll be a ceremony. Of course my parents will come. Of course your parents will come. Of course we’ll invite our friends.

We’d lived together over two years, both damaged by previous divorces. Every few months he’d get angry and say, “Admit it, Jan, you really want to get married.” My analyst said I should admit it because it was what I wanted, good girl from Missouri who didn’t live with men unless she was married, no matter how many husbands she’d had. “Besides,” he said, “the way Adam keeps bringing it up, I think he must want to get married too.”

So, when he said it again, “Admit it. You’re conventional. You want to get married,” I said, “Yes, yes I am, yes I do.”

We’d agreed from the start that he wasn’t supposed to take care of me. I’d just come from a marriage where I’d been taken care of until I almost suffocated. And when Adam left his ex-wife, she said, “You promised to take care of me forever. I won’t let you go so easy.” So, we were agreed. We were independent people with independent lives, independent careers, and independent checkbooks. And now we were going to get married.

I thought we could just sneak into it, go to City Hall on a lunch hour, tell our friends and family sometime later. But he wanted a wedding, said there had to be a wedding. I thought people would laugh. Here I was, thirty-four years old, twice divorced, and acting like I thought I could be a bride; like my promise to love, honor, and cherish meant something; like I could make a lifetime commitment.

We found a minister who said, “About all anyone knows about Unitarians is that they’ll marry anyone.” After we laughed politely, he leaned forward, suddenly serious, assuming his spiritual-advisor role, “You two have to decide about your ceremony. I can’t tell you what you want to promise each other. Only you can decide that.”

Adam said, “We thought we’d go with the Dearly Beloved option.”

The minister shook his head. “I don’t do canned ceremonies. It has to come from your heart. You have to write it yourself.”

As we left, Adam muttered, “Pompous asshole.”

A small wedding in our home. Our parents, my daughter, a few close friends. Neither of us had met the other’s parents. Twenty people at most. A simple service, a cake, coffee, some champagne. That’s what we planned. Or what I planned, looking to him for approval.

Most of the time during the two months between our decision to marry and the wedding he seemed angry. When I suggested we call it off, he said no. “It’s what you want,” he said, “so we’ll do it.”

I wrote each invitation by hand. “Dear Ken and Bev, Please join us at our home for a celebration of our marriage,” and so on. Then, two days after they were in the mail, I found a pebble in my left breast. I sat up in bed. “Feel this,” I said, taking his hand. “What does this feel like to you?” Half asleep, he put his hand over my breast and squeezed. “No, here. Toward the top. There’s something there.”

He sat up and pushed me down, his hands suddenly doctor’s hands, both moving lightly over my breast like a blind man reading Braille. “It feels like a lump,” he said. “It’s probably nothing. Give Joel a call tomorrow.” Adam and Joel had been interns together; one of the invitations had gone to him. Now I had to call him about my breast

We lay there a while. I said, “It’s too bad I didn’t find this last month.”

“Why?”

“Well, you’re more or less trapped into marrying me now.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” He rolled over presenting me with his back. We lay that way a long time, neither of us sleeping.

The next day I saw Joel who felt my breast and said, “I’m not impressed.” Then he took me to see a surgeon — “best breast man in the city” — who said, “This is nothing. Don’t worry. Come back in three weeks and I’ll check it again.” The follow-up appointment was scheduled for two days before the wedding.

When Adam got home from work, he said, “I’m glad things went well for you today. I know you were scared.” He handed me a jewelry box — a gold watch. “It’s a wedding gift, a little early.” We didn’t speak again of my fear, and we never mentioned his.

That night he held me while I slept. Twice I woke with a start. “There, there,” he said, kissing my hair. “There, there.”

His parents were due on Thursday before the wedding on Sunday. He’d arranged to get off early Thursday by scheduling patients until 9:00 Wednesday night. At 5:00 on Wednesday the phone rang. “This is your future mother-in-law. We can’t find a parking place.” I met them at the curb as they circled the block in their pickup. Adam’s father didn’t speak except to say, “I don’t think this neighborhood looks safe.”

With my ten-year-old daughter Rebecca, I tried to entertain them for the evening. It was difficult to find things to talk about because I didn’t know how much they knew about me or how much Adam wanted them to know. I knew he didn’t want them to know that he’d been involved with me while he was still married to Diane. I didn’t think he wanted them to know I’d been married twice before. I settled on a position that made it look as if I’d sprung full-grown without a history into Adam’s life about a year earlier. I hoped they wouldn’t ask about Rebecca’s father and that she wouldn’t tell them she liked Adam more than my last husband. His mother said, “You just have to understand that I’m going to slip and call you Diane. It’s been Adam and Diane for so long, it will take me some time to adjust.”

By the time Adam got home, they were ready for bed.

On Thursday, Adam and I both managed to get off early. We got home at 3:00 to find his parents were gone. Two washed coffee cups and a carefully refolded morning paper were the only signs they’d been there. “Maybe they left a note,” I said, but there was no note. Adam mixed two gin and tonics without speaking.

At 5:00 the phone rang. Adam answered it. Just then, from our third floor window I saw my mother getting out of a cab. As she started up the walk, Adam slammed down the phone. “God damn them to hell!” he said. I helped Mother get her luggage up the stairs. When I came back, Adam had gone to our bedroom. After fifteen minutes, I went in. He was lying on the bed in the dark, his arm thrown over his eyes. “They’re at a motel,” he said. “My mother said my father was too upset to stay with us. I don’t know if they’ll be back for the wedding.” He didn’t move.

I went back to Mother. “Adam’s upset,” I explained. “Some problems with his folks.” He didn’t come out all evening. Mother kept saying, “I just know this has something to do with me. I’m sure if I weren’t here, everything would be fine.”

The next day was full. Prenuptial agreement in the morning, breast check in the afternoon. Adam met my mother at breakfast. He was gracious and charming. Apologized for being under the weather the night before. I wanted to kill him.

When we arrived at his lawyer’s office, the attorney asked, “Didn’t you bring your own lawyer? Do you understand what you’re signing?”

“I think so,” I said as I signed away all rights present and future to Adam’s earnings. We both had a history of being taken in a divorce. My first husband stole my daughter. My second stole my car. Adam’s ex-wife got all the money, all the furniture, and alimony besides. She even got the stereo his parents bought him as a graduation gift from medical school. The agreement I signed stated specifically that the stereo in our condo belonged to Adam.

In exchange for the prenuptial agreement, I asked that we discontinue our separate household financial accounts. I was tired of “you owe me $2.47 for half of the pound of corned beef I bought at the White Hen last week.” For two years I had kept these accounts, a running balance of who owed what to whom. Twice a month I would present the list to Adam saying, “I owe you $10.50,” or “Your paying for dinner last night balances us out.” He always appeared to think he’d been cheated. He’d ask, “Did you divide the dry cleaning bill or charge it all to me?” I was tired of keeping the list, of the real or imagined suspicion.

I was ready to stop hedging my bets and keeping score, ready to start trusting again. That’s why I signed the agreement. That’s why I wanted to get married.

That afternoon, the surgeon patted my shoulder. “This is nothing. Hasn’t changed a bit. I wouldn’t worry.” Then he said, “I can tell you’re not going to be able to relax until we take a real look at it. We can do a biopsy to set your mind at rest.”

“Do you have any time available next Wednesday?” I asked. “My parents will be leaving on Tuesday. I’ll just take one more vacation day.”

Saturday afternoon my father arrived, bringing my nine-year-old niece with him. He thought adding Stephanie to the guest list would be a surprise for me and for Rebecca. My father, despite having three daughters, knew nothing about little girls and jealousy. As Rebecca announced, “I’m the bridesmaid. I’m the only bridesmaid. I get a bouquet,” Stephanie kept saying, “I flew on the airplane with Grandpa. Just Grandpa and me.” Over and over. Louder and louder.

Adam’s parents appeared mid-afternoon, as if nothing had happened, as if they hadn’t just disappeared for two days. The two mothers exchanged stories about what foolish / clumsy / difficult children Adam and I had been. The two fathers sat in the den and didn’t talk.

Sunday, July 20. Wedding day. Adam woke to say, “You’re really not going to write my vows. I can’t believe you’re not going to write my vows.” I had written the ceremony as the minister had required, passing it by Adam for approval lest it be promising more than he intended to promise, saying more than he wanted to say. But I had not written his vows.

“Your vows are what you’re promising to me,” I said. “I can’t write that.”

It was the hottest day of the summer. Our window air conditioner hummed ominously. When we bought the condo, we knew to check things like electrical wiring. We even had an independent inspector look things over. “That’s a good breaker box,” he’d said, looking at the giant box containing twenty-four circuit breakers. He was right, it was a good box. Unfortunately, only two circuits were wired. One controlled the dining room chandelier, the other the rest of the seven-room apartment. In the six months we’d been there, we accommodated to the electrical system’s idiosyncrasies. We’d shout, “Don’t use your hair dryer. I’m starting the microwave.” Now we were running the air conditioner and the apartment was filling with people who thought they could just walk in a room and flip a light switch willy-nilly, with no regard for consequences. We kept losing power in the rest of the apartment while the dining room chandelier blazed on.

People had been invited for 2:00. As each guest buzzed the buzzer, the two girls raced down the three flights of stairs. I had suggested that Rebecca introduce her cousin, hoping this official hostess role might make her feel special, make Stephanie feel like an honored guest. “This is my cousin Stephanie,” she said to our friends. “She came unexpected.”

The minister was late. His softball game had gone extra innings. Adam’s father took Adam aside. “What kind of preacher plays baseball on Sunday?”

The ceremony I had written thanked our friends for helping us make note of a gradual change in our relationship, a relationship which had evolved into a marriage and would continue to evolve. In other words, this is no big deal. In other words, ye gods of irony, bad timing and cruel jokes who have controlled my life thus far, don’t pay any attention to what’s going on here.

I had memorized my vows, planned to say them looking into Adam’s eyes. But when the time came, I went blank. The artfully crafted lines with appropriate quotations from Donne and Shakespeare were gone. I looked at the floor, I looked at the ceiling, I looked at Adam. “I love you,” I said finally, my voice quavering. “I want to spend my life with you.” Adam put his arm around me and squeezed. Family and guests sighed and sniffled.

Then Adam took his vows from his pocket. He read them quickly, too quickly for me to remember. I know he said he loved me, but they seemed to focus more on what he wasn’t promising than what he was. “I can’t promise forever,” he said, “because I can’t know what will happen. I love you now.” Later, when my mother asked for a copy of the service, Adam’s vows had disappeared.

We cut the cake; I made the coffee; we opened the champagne. As we were serving, Adam’s parents said, “We need to head back to Missouri.” They left. It was 3:15. I asked for more champagne.

Joel took me aside and said, “Don’t worry about the biopsy. It’s nothing. It’s really just to set your mind at rest.”

“Fine, I won’t worry,” I said.

Cheryl, Joel’s girlfriend, took me aside. “I hope you’re not worried. I had a biopsy six months ago and it was nothing. I worried a lot for nothing.”

“Fine, “ I said, “I’m not worried. I’ll not give it another thought.” I smiled. “Any more champagne?” I asked.

Guests started leaving:

Joel and Cheryl had a long drive.

The Chious had a family gathering.

The Jamisons begged off. He was tired from the radiation treatments for his brain tumor. We didn’t know until the next week that she was divorcing him.

The Baileys, who were separated but had arrived together, looked as if they’d go the distance. Then Laura got sick from too much champagne and Dave had to take her home.

There were thirteen of us left. I had made no provision for dinner, unable to plan beyond the cake, the coffee, the champagne. “Let’s go to Costa Brava,” Adam suggested. We grabbed six bottles of burgundy and set off.

Later, as we straggled back to the apartment, the oppressive heat seemed on the verge of breaking. Lightening flashed over the lake. I walked with my father. “I may have had too much wine,” I said.

“That’s OK,” he said. “You’re entitled. This is your big day.”

Adam used to say that sooner or later he ended up cleaning up the vomit of every woman he’d ever been involved with. He said, “I think it was a particular virus that made the rounds while I was in school. First symptom — make a date with Adam Sherman; second symptom — mild nausea; third symptom — throw up where Adam has to clean it up.” I always said that he’d never had to clean up after me and he never would. I could take care of myself.

On our wedding night, Adam held me while I threw up, helped me out of my wedding dress, and cleaned up the mess. In the living room the little girls explained to the remaining guests that ladies often got sick on their wedding nights. “It’s part of the tradition,” they said, those two little girls who would both end up pregnant and married, in that order, before they were eighteen.

I woke up the next morning wishing I could drop off the face of the earth. Surprisingly, no one was angry. “The heat,” they said. “So much tension,” they said. “Maybe a little too much wine, “ they said. “A combination,” they said.

“How are you feeling, Hon Bun?” Adam asked. He was transformed. The angry, surly man I’d lived with the past two months was gone, and the loving, gentle fellow I’d fallen in love with had taken his place. It was as if he’d come through some terrible ordeal and was happy and surprised to be alive and in one piece.

On Wednesday, since it was no big deal, we agreed I’d just take a cab to the hospital. There was no reason to disrupt his day. I’d see him at home that evening.

I was in the waiting room trying to read when Adam appeared. “I finished rounds early and have a few minutes before I have to leave for outpatients. Thought I’d see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m glad you came by, but don’t mess up your schedule on my account.”

“I have a few more minutes. I’ll just get some work done here.” We sat there, shoulders touching, both pretending to read. When they called my name, Adam said, “I’ll wait around a little while longer. I don’t have to leave until noon.”

In the operating room, the surgeon joked with the nurses and with me. As he had promised, I felt some tugging, some pressure, but no pain. A tent of blue sheets kept me from seeing his face or what he was doing. We talked about Joel and other mutual friends as he worked.

He became silent. When he spoke again, we were no longer friends chatting. “How long have you had this?” he asked. His voice was flat.

“I noticed it three weeks ago,” I said. “The night before I saw you the first time.”

“Oh,” he said.

There was no more banter in the room. Conversation was limited to commands like “Suction here” and replies like “Yes, Doctor.”

Serious talk in serious voices.

Serious trouble.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:05. I said, “Could someone check to see if my husband’s left yet? If he’s still there, would you ask him to stay for a few more minutes, tell him that I’d like to talk to him. Could someone check right now. He may have already left.”

A nurse went out. The clock flipped over to 12:07. He’d be gone. He was never late for his patients.

The nurse came back in. “He’s here,” she said. “He said not to worry. He said to tell you he’ll be here. He promised.