Fear arrives late as usual, filling everything. Yuna rasps politely, gazing without focus toward the ceiling. I want to say her name but my throat won’t work. I have only a sense of where she attends school and for what, but I like sharing shifts with her because of the cooking thing and because she doesn’t chatter for the sake of noise like other baristas. She, the man, and I lie in milk and blood. I reach for her. I say her name. I think if I can touch her, I can heal her. God? I ask. I ask, Please? God.
“Grilling will be coming up, when we get away from this snow.”
“It’s hard to believe we will ever be rid of this snow.”
“Let’s get back to fennel.”
“Let’s.”
“Do you enjoy fennel?”
“Fennel was the first vegetable I ever braised.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I ONCE SAW A WOMAN MAIL HER SHOES
In one of the unexpected events that arise in emergency—I am left alone in the ambulance, covered in a thin blanket, breathing into an oxygen bag. I’m stable and conscious so not the priority. Inside the coffee shop, a team of paramedics work on Yuna. Through the ambulance’s back windows, I watch police cars block the street. Cloudless. My grandmother will be watching the second of two episodes of her favorite game show.
On the perpendicular road it is a regular day. There, oblivious to our crisis, a woman halts in front of a mailbox. Leaning on it for support, she removes one shoe then the other and picks them up, two plastic fish. She pulls down the mailbox door and slides the shoes in. It is not possible I hear them flack against the metal bottom yet I do. She peers inside, closes and opens the slot until satisfied they’re gone, the way you would check on a letter. She turns and walks away barefoot on the frozen pavement.
An EMT climbs into the ambulance to double-check my vitals. “Yuna?” I say. She presses her palm against my heart for a few deep breaths then climbs back out to join the others.
At first, I am an injury novice. Months of ice chips, shuddering to the ground after physical therapy. Eventually, a step, another. My gait is different post-injury, like someone who no longer trusts the ground.
Invisible injuries that are harder to articulate level me. My married boyfriend disappears. Friends abandon me after I breach some unknown time limit of healing. Rose says I imagined the woman who mailed her shoes. It is the first of many times my perspective is doubted because a man decided to delete a shop of people and rendered me unreliable. I stay inside then retreat further. I trim reactions, halt passion before it blossoms into something that can wreck me or, worse, disappoint others. After a while, I doubt my own perspective. Previous injuries are triggered. Snubs, insults, the times my mother ignored me. Reinjury is worse than injury. I don’t know which to manage first.
People who want to be supportive say the gunman was an animal but animals have reasons to kill. They want to eat, they want their family to eat. They don’t destroy their habitat because they’re frustrated. People who want to be supportive say it wasn’t personal, but what that man did to me was as intimate as a lover. To be hurt so intensely that one can no longer feel the weather.
I spend years in this emergency state until I am an injury veteran.
In the hospital I become known for conversation because I don’t judge and harbor suspicion for anything a large group believes, like religion and insurance. Many patients were failed by both. I talk to everyone in the hospital. Nurses, priests, visiting family members, patients with far more frightening injuries. One afternoon, a visiting lawyer asks if I want to join his law firm in a new position: biographer. Juries are so desensitized by mass violence, he explains, that savvy lawyers must deduce new ways to tell a story. What do I know about reptiles?
One day, my grandmother calls to ask what the Internet is. I lie and say it’s a phase. The next morning, she climbs to the top of a ladder and falls. I sit with her for a month, trying to will her out of a coma, as approaching death carves her. I play her favorite Lawrence Welk records. She prefers to stay asleep. My mother shuts down the machines. They tell us it can take moments, a day, or a week. That we’ll sense death is imminent when she stops urinating. On day four she opens her eyes and sucks in a choking breath. Death enters. Her chest rises then is still.
I no longer feel collected and I am no longer afraid of death. I’ve played its records. I ask my grandmother, haunt me, please. Like god, she fails to appear.
Who does appear is an elementary school principal with no apparent hang-ups who sings songs to children. On our fifth date I prepare a symmetrical meal. I cut my pork breast into logical slices as he asks for my attention.
“This is the time,” he says, “that I am going to ask you to marry me.”
He doesn’t second-guess my perspective and he has never given me an orgasm. He will never lie to me and he will never make me howl with laughter. He says commitment is as simple as yes or no.
“Okay,” I say. We finish our meal and call our parents. Everyone is thrilled. The decision brings me closer to a societal norm. For the first time, my mother sounds like she recognizes me. Oh. You’re a human girl. Sports television before bed. The reliable click of the remote. For once, trouble at bay. Age recedes into its deep chamber. I assure myself that no one marries for love anymore. If lust ultimately defroths into friendship, I’m ten steps ahead. A human girl, making rational decisions. The next morning, wedding plans begin.
A WEDDING IS AN INTERNET WHERE EVERYONE SEARCHES FOR THEMSELVES
I gather only what I need into a pearl clutch and am careful to close the hotel room door as quietly as Rose did even though I’m almost positive there’s no one left inside. Waiting for the elevator, I search the Internet for bride in space and time.
A scene from Fiddler on the Roof, backlit bride on a bare stage. Disaffected bride and groom at the back of a bus, the last shot of the movie The Graduate. Bride chained to a desk, urinating in her dress. Bride holding bouquet, floating downriver. Bride on wide lawn. Frowning bride in regalia. Dead Renaissance bride mourned by man wearing cassock. A 1950s bride winking, smoking. Bride holding gun, eyes caked in mascara. Bride wearing jockstrap. Pastel bride flying over town holding chicken. Bride with beard of bees.
“They all look sad,” someone says, and I realize I’m speaking aloud in the elevator that jolts to a halt. I’ve grown fond of the Inn’s idiosyncrasies. I assume this is a particular type of elevator that breaks on the way to every destination. Who can’t relate? I consult the lit panel and the doors, firmly shut. I call the front desk.
“Will only be a moment,” the concierge says.
A text comes in from the groom: I can’t wait to marry you. Pressure builds in my throat. “No rush,” I say.
“I’ll bet no rush.” She laughs as if I’ve made a joke. “You’ve got nowhere to be.”
In the mirrored walls, refractions of brides avoid my stare. I step in and out of my ecru heels. The dress’s hem rubs against my bare legs.
The hanging syrup-colored orb is a camera. I wave. The concierge must see me, alone in an elevator wearing a wedding dress and veil. The sulfurous scent of the stopped elevator deepens. I smell my pulse where a few moments before I’d swiped vetiver.
Her voice comes through the box: “Are you excited?”
The elevator depresses its brakes and brings me the rest of the way down.
“It’s fixed!” I step into the lobby, noting a distinct disappointment in my chest.
Rose and the party have been waiting long enough for their faces to rest into expressions of anguish. My mother searches a mirrored compact as if trying to locate a criminal. Our limo idles outside. Everyone turns their rouged, matted, highlighted complexions to me and applauds. Strangers sitting on an opposite couch follow the party’s gaze to where it meets me. I blanch under the attention.
“We’ve been waiting for the bride,” Aunt Henshaw says. “We’ve been eating those bagel things and talking.”
“Flagels,” An
tonia says.
Someone has contoured my mother. “My god,” I say. “You’re commercial-pretty.”
“I’ve been blowing my nose all morning. I swear there’s a cat in here.” Her gaze scans me. “That’s the wrong dress.” Her tone is egg whites whipped to stiff peaks. “That’s not the one you bought.”
“It’s the other dress I bought.”
“What was wrong with the first dress?” she says.
“Too fussy.”
“I think this one’s perfect,” Rose says.
“What have you been doing all morning?” my mother says. “I called and called.”
“I was in the lobby, Mother. Telling everyone how excited I am.”
“How excited are you?” Antonia wants to know, and I tell her there is no mechanism on earth that can measure an amount that large.
“What about the scales that weigh an elephant?” the groom’s nephew Rodrigo says, sitting on the arm of a couch. I’ve never seen him sit in an actual seat. He is a quiet boy who only pipes in when he’s thought of a sarcastic comment. “What about the scales that weigh a jetliner?”
When I talk to Rodrigo I make every statement a question, reflecting the brattiness I divine in him. “What I’m talking about isn’t necessarily a solid?” I say. “So the examples you’re using don’t apply? An emotion isn’t a jetliner? It would be like weighing the sea?”
On the pocket-size screen of his video game, Rodrigo’s avatar sprints through an expanse of fog-lit mountains. In real life the kid is blond and scrawny. In the game he has chosen a dark boy with muscles. “He” rolls neatly under a barrage of gunfire, then completes an unlikely jump to tag a yellow disk triggering the mountains to part. He makes a dismissive sound and returns to his game where “he” levitates through a cavern of candelabras. I didn’t want to invite Rodrigo, or any children, but the groom insisted.
We file outside where the air is a crisp threat. I am seated in the limo when a thought launches me back out, jockeying everyone between me and the door, which is everyone, because as the bride I was allowed to enter first.
In the lobby, the concierge has retreated behind the desk and is tapping at her computer’s keyboard. She looks surprised to see me. “Can I help?”
Whatever reason I’ve returned has been torn clean out. Nothing in the room reminds me. The untidy fire. The smell of cheap cranberry candle. The twenty-dollar bill in my hand.
“Did you forget something?” she says.
I hold out the bill. “A tip!” I slide it over to her.
“Too much,” she says.
“For your daughter, then.”
“No.” She slides it back.
It is odd behavior to run back to tip when you’re a bride. Everyone seems to be thinking it: the strangers, the fire, her resumed rapping on the keyboard.
I return to the limo and the driver shifts us into movement. We ease down the driveway to the main road. There are only five stoplights until the church. I counted the day before.
The trees are furred with thick needles that insulate against what the lake can throw. It is midday on a regular Saturday for everyone else. A mother hurries her children along the sidewalk. A line at the bakery. A group of college-age students sit on a low wall, exchanging a mug of something hot. The limo passes through town like a cloud over the sun, reminding passersby of an opulent event, whether they want one or had one or hate the idea. Every time I see a limo, I think: tuxedoed teenagers.
We pull beside a man tapping his fingers against a steering wheel. A girl on the sidewalk insists to her mother, cheeks wet with tears.
After five stoplights, the limo reaches the church.
We’re early. The guests are still arriving. The bridesmaids call out the names of people they recognize as we hide in the car.
Finally, all the guests have climbed the steps and vanished behind the heavy doors.
Someone says, “It’s time.”
We disembark from the limo. An official countenance settles over the party, silencing the bridesmaids who let me pass like a specter from one world to the next.
The driver leans against the car, hands folded against her thigh. Even my mannerless mother recedes as I push through the oak door to the vestibule where my stepfather stands, staring at a collection of pamphlets shoved into wall cubbies. My mother insisted he’d walk me down the aisle. I fold my hand into his elbow’s crook. The bridesmaids file into the antechamber, ducking out of view from the open middle doors. Organ music pumps through the church.
My stepfather’s mahogany musk hangs in the air along with incense from an interior room beyond the vestibule. I clasp the unfriendly fabric of his rented tuxedo. Someone tucks my hair behind my ear. Someone gently wrenches my purse out from under my arm. Someone shows me where she keeps her mints in case I want one later. Someone says, “Any minute now.” The groomsmen line up like soldiers. Whispers of guests make angelic noise that chorus around the chancel, my mother asks the usher, What’s the holdup? A missalette rockets to the ground followed by nervous chuckling. Someone apologizes for the wait. The priest was in the bathroom. Every church wedding throughout history has begun late on account of a priest being in the bathroom.
Rose said it would be over before I knew it. Which is what I tell my clients about suffering. Time spent away from a lover, a plane ride. Everything in my battered life has led me to this vestibule, this hyphen of space that will join my life to another’s. The man tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. The girl insisting to her mother. I would have traded places with any of them. Is this correct? Maybe all brides feel this way but are sworn by oath not to tell.
Aunt Henshaw loses then finds her pashmina. “It’s like when you’re looking for something, you find it,” she tells Antonia.
“So true,” Antonia says.
Someone says, “It’s time.”
The organ music switches from meandering to focused, as if it will deliver us down the aisle with its certainty. My mother marches through the middle doors on the arm of a groomsman. One by one, each woman vanishes into that sacred slot until only my stepfather and I remain.
“Where are they going?” I ask him.
“Where are who going?”
I check his watch, two fifteen. “No one left but us chickens,” I say.
Someone says, “It’s time.”
Occasion steals my memory. I can’t remember what hairdo or which veil I chose.
“Am I wearing a tiara?” I ask my stepfather.
Confusion uglies his face. “Are you wearing a tiara?”
We pose in the center of the doorframe. Several empty pews away, the guests pivot to see us.
The music shifts into the furtive and holy song the groom and I chose the month before. It made sense then, but now I can’t remember why we wanted such a militaristic dirge as my stepfather and I glide through the standing guests. Here is Rose’s stepfather, festively belted. Here is a cousin, petrified in rouge. Here is Rodrigo, stiff with occasion. I thought I could count on him to stick out his gross tongue, but even he realizes that what I’m entering means no fun.
I do not remember my stepfather’s grip or having to recalibrate my steps to match his. One step, another. I dismiss the thought that no one has said I look beautiful. But as the groom’s sleeve comes into view, promising the rest of him on my advance, this bothers me. I’m not a woman who trades on beauty but you’re supposed to tell a bride she’s beautiful even when she’s not.
Granny, I miss you. There are all these people on earth who aren’t you.
The groom comes into full view. A cracked map of blood vessels reddens his nose and cheeks. He’s been drinking already. The girl insisting to her mother on the street was speaking to me. The groom sees me and grins. Beside him, four groomsmen are arranged by fondness. We reach the altar. My stepfather kisses me dryly on the cheek and takes his place in the pew, noticeably relieved. I face the groom.
The priest ahems and asks if we have come here of our own volition. Yes,
we say, and this signals the guests to be seated.
The priest says some love is deep but unfulfilling, a durable towel on a rack. Some love is general, a sense of community, a garden that is watered from within. Love can be a hummingbird that lands on a jut of wood and, finding it undesirable, flutters off to try another.
A guest in the front pew moans erotically. The people around her titter.
“We are right to exult over these kinds of love,” the priest says. “But they are not the reason we stand in this room today.”
The love that gathers us is more reliable than some stupid bird, more durable than your pitiable towel, it doesn’t need your dumb-ass water, but contains the kinetic energy of dynamite or a car crash. The kind of love that is not like but is a bridge.
Bridge is bride with a g, I think. Then: Bride has a bird in it. Has anyone else noticed? The groom is not the type to think of things like bridge is bride with a g. He is no doubt thinking about love forming itself into pillars and counterbalanced pulleys, laying itself down over a choppy sea.
I want to lower myself onto my stomach and place my cheek on the thick carpet. I’d like to nap. I’ll address the congregation: If it’s copacetic, I’ll die until this is over and you’re gone. I don’t need a pillow or any attention at all. Don’t touch or speak to me. Please continue without me. To debride means to remove damaged tissue from a wound. If I take myself away from this ritual, everyone will heal.
Bridges are built to sway in bad weather. How did engineers figure that out? Left to myself, I’d build one with no flexibility and it would snap under the weight of the first car. And everyone would wonder how I could have made such a mistake. But I’d wonder why anyone trusted me to build a bridge in the first place.
Parakeet: A Novel Page 14