“Clear expectations will head off problems down the line,” Karen had said.
They’d agreed to keep their own bank accounts and credit cards. Each owned a car and would take responsibility for repairs, taxes, insurance, and replacement. Mark had felt as if he was in a strategic planning meeting at the college.
When she’d asked how they would divide responsibility for preparing meals, Mark had tried to humanize the process by raising his hand like a schoolboy eager to answer the teacher’s question.
“Me. Me,” he’d cried. “Five nights a week, I’ll prepare dinner. We can go out on Saturday night.”
“Why…?” Karen had looked perplexed.
“You can use your vast collection of carryout menus on Fridays.”
She’d stuck out her tongue at him, but had agreed.
“You should pay all of the utilities,” he’d said when she had asked about the electric bill. “After all, I’m providing the house.”
“Your family is providing the house.”
“So? They provide it for me, and I’m sharing.”
They’d agreed to a fifty-fifty split.
After two hours of discussion, Karen had turned from the notebook in which she was keeping track of their decisions and peered at her list. “Last item,” she had said as her face turned pink. “Sex…”
“Five nights a week,” Mark had shouted. “Non-negotiable.”
He’d almost laughed at the expression on her face, not certain if it reflected feelings of surprise, anger, confusion, excitement, or all four.
“I tell you,” he said quickly, winking and grinning to let her know he’d been teasing, “let’s table that item. You consult with Vicky and get back to me on it.” He’d suspected Vicky’s suggestion would be “on demand.”
Karen had quickly agreed, and he’d heard nothing more about it.
He chuckled at the recollection, then grew serious again.
If he told Karen he loved her, she would feel obligated to say she loved him. It would be a lie, and he would know it was a lie, since her voice and her facial expression gave her away even when she tried to mislead him about trivial matters, the surprise party she’d planned for his birthday being one recent example. Believing she did not love him was different from knowing it, and he did not want to know it.
He needed to do something, though, to reassure her, to make it plain he cared for her rather than for Lucia.
***
Karen changed into the fleece jogging pants and shirt she wore to bed in the winter. She piled pillows on the sofa, dug through the boxes that were stacked around the room, searching for a heating pad, and took ice from the freezer, placing it in a plastic bag. She propped her foot on three pillows, and wrapped the pad around it, planning to alternate between the pad and the bag of ice. She had no intention of limping down the aisle in a week’s time.
She settled on the sofa. If she drifted off to sleep, so much the better.
A pile of boxes partially obscured the television screen. Most of her belongings had already been packed, and she planned to vacate the apartment on Wednesday. Mark and her father would move the boxes, the paintings, and the furniture that belonged to her, a chest, a bookcase, and her bed, to Mark’s house.
Our house, she reminded herself.
She would go home with her parents for the last three nights before her wedding.
She stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to watch television. Football games and early season basketball were all she would find on a Saturday afternoon in December anyway. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander.
Mark had said he did not love Lucia.
So, why did she feel so sad and so apprehensive? Had he simply said what he was expected to say? After all, a decent man couldn’t very well tell his fiancée that he loved another woman—a married woman with three children—a week before their wedding, could he? But, from all she had heard, he’d once had those feelings, regardless of how he remembered them, now. Perhaps he had them, still.
“Why can’t he love me back,” she cried. Then, her voice caught in her throat as she realized what she had said.
Karen clasped her hands in front of her face and bowed her head, almost in prayer. “I love him,” she whispered to the empty room. “I love Mark Stuart.”
She sat up now, with a start, jerking her foot off the pillows, glancing over her shoulder as though she were looking to see if anyone had heard what she had said. She winced as her foot bounced on the arm of the sofa, but she paid it little mind.
Never before had she voiced her love for Mark. She’d had the feeling, an inkling…perhaps she had thought it, but she’d never said it, not even to herself.
“I love him,” she said it again, with more confidence.
Voicing her feelings, made them real, and she began to cry.
Her heart was breaking…he had loved Lucia, perhaps still did, but he did not love her.
She needed to talk to Mark. Perhaps if she heard the story about him and Lucia from him, what had happened, what he had felt, perhaps her fears would be allayed. She wished she had allowed him to stay with her, and she reached for her phone, but she put it down without dialing.
Mark’s history was really none of her business and prying into it would indicate a lack of trust. Besides, she would not feel thrilled should he begin to question her relationship with Robbie, the guy who had lied to her. Or with Richard. She shivered.
Mark had said he did not love Lucia. He had said it unbidden, she had not asked. She would accept his word.
She placed her foot on the pillows again and wrapped the hot pad around it. As she closed her eyes, hoping for a nap, her telephone pinged three times in succession, “Mark’s Ping,” alerting her to an email from him. Not wanting to move her foot, she lay in place, holding the phone over her face as she opened the message. “Karen’s Song” was the title and the paper clip icon told her there was an attachment.
“No,” she snapped. “He said I have no song. He can’t just invent one. Why can’t men just leave things alone?”
She started to exit her email, but something made her change her mind. She could at least find out what he had to say. She read the email aloud.
“There is no Karen’s Song.”
She paused. At least he had the decency not to lie about it.
“There is, though, a verse of an old song that runs through my mind whenever I see you, whenever I hear your voice, whenever I hold your hand, or kiss your lips. If I had to pay a royalty for each time my mind has played that verse, I’d be a very poor man.”
Karen smiled. Her father would be concerned with the royalty too.
“I’ve attached a recording of that verse. It expresses my feelings for you.”
She glanced at the icon, then she frowned as she continued to read.
“I do not want to know whether you listen to the recording, or not. If you do listen, I do not want to know what you think. If you care for me at all, it will be as if I never sent this email.”
Karen stared at the attachment. What could possibly be in it that he would forbid her to respond? Her heart was thumping erratically and her breathing was shallow. She wasn’t certain she wanted to hear it.
Finally, she pumped the volume to HIGH, opened the attachment, and hit PLAY, bracing herself for whatever would come next.
Karen recognized the music, though this version was different. The one she had heard was one of her mother’s favorite country songs—Dolly Parton she thought—and Karen had heard it often as a child, but she had long forgotten the lyrics. Recalling the song to be a woman’s parting message to the man she loved, she frowned again as she sat up, crying out as she bumped her foot again. What was Mark telling her?
The woman in this version—Whitney Houston, she thought—sang of what she wished for this man she loved. She hoped he would be happy. She hoped he would know love. She hoped he would have everything his heart desired. Her wishes were sweet, things you might want for anyone close to you.<
br />
The music began to swell, reaching a peak, then suddenly stopping. As the woman softly sang the last line, Karen remembered the name, I Will Always Love You.
Even as she smiled, Karen felt the tears running down her face.
Then she laughed. She wanted to dance about the room and jump in the air. She shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Karen’s song!”
I Will Always Love You.
The tears would not stop. She played the recording a second time. And a third. And a fourth.
I Will Always Love You.
She’d been almost afraid to hope Mark would ever love her, although a couple of times she’d halfway suspected he did. She’d wanted him to. She’d prayed he would.
She played the song once more.
Finally, she stopped the recording and dialed Mark’s number. Her call went to voice mail. She called again, and a third time.
If you care for me at all, it will be as if I never sent this email…
She remembered what he had written. She understood his fear.
He supposed she didn’t return his love. Of course he believed that, just as she had believed it about him, since neither had ever voiced their feelings, and he didn’t want to hear her tell a lie, claiming to love him when she didn’t.
She would have had the same fears.
But his request was so unfair. It made so little sense. What if she did love him in return? Why would he not say she could respond if she did feel the same?
“Why can I not tell him the truth?” she exclaimed.
Was she supposed to be silent about her feelings for him for the next half century? Take them with her to her grave? Put them in her will, perhaps, or whisper them to him on his deathbed?
Then, it occurred to her…if he had told her she could respond if she felt the same, then, if she did not respond it would be as if she were saying she did not love him. Either way, then, he would know how she felt. She understood. More than he likely knew. But still…she would have to find a way.
***
A week later, the air was cool and crisp, the sun shining brightly, as shortly before ten o’clock, Karen left the parish house, holding her father’s arm, passing through the cloister toward the cathedral. She stepped carefully, not wanting to trip over the skirt of her long, white gown. She carried a bouquet of white roses and her cathedral-length train, certainly appropriate, she thought, given the setting, stretched behind. Her father looked dashing in his midnight blue cutaway and her nieces, trainbearers at least in theory, trailed behind her, clad in the same dark blue that her bridesmaids were wearing.
The cloister led to a side entrance to the cathedral, so they turned, walking across the grass toward the front doors. A horse-drawn carriage loaded with tourists moved slowly along the street. As the carriage reached the cathedral, the guide pointed.
“Grace Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the Episcopal…”
“It’s a bride,” a woman in the carriage cried out, pointing at Karen.
“Whoa.” The guide pulled on the reins, halting the horses, as his passengers turned to look at Karen, calling out greetings, cameras popping out to record the event.
“See the bride,” a woman said to her little girl. “Isn’t she pretty?”
Karen smiled and waved.
Living in Charleston sometimes felt like living on stage. Visitors seemed to forget the residents of the city really lived there and did all of the things other people do at their homes.
“Congratulations,” someone called. “Best wishes.”
She waved a second time. It was really rather cool.
The cathedral’s brass outer doors stood open, and a few almost-late-comers hurried in, slipping past the bridesmaids who were already in line and ready to march.
An usher pulled open the inner glass doors to allow them inside and warm air rushed out to greet them as the strains of the prelude slowly died away. There was a pause as the bells struck the hour. The organ came alive again, and “Ode to Joy” flowed softly through the church.
The priest followed the crucifer into the cathedral, and Karen knew Mark was entering from a side entrance near the pulpit. Vicky straightened her train and pulled Karen’s veil over her face as the bridesmaids began to proceed down the aisle.
As he had asked, Karen had said nothing to Mark about his email. It was, as he had requested, as if the message had never existed. Although she had fully intended to marry Mark when she had thought of him as only a really good friend, she was now perplexed that he would accept that, having unrequited feelings for her.
She had sworn Mark’s mother to secrecy just a short while ago, and told her how they had talked of being good friends and how a marriage between good friends would work.
“Good friends?” his mother had exclaimed. “Pooh. Everyone knows the two of you are in love. I mean, I know it. So does Mark’s father. Emily thinks the two of you are so cute together. Your cousin Linda told me during the brunch she’d never seen two people so much in love, and your aunt agreed with her.”
“But…”
“Your mother and I were talking about the two you this morning. She said your friend, Vicky, can hardly contain her laughter when you go on and on about a marriage between ‘two good friends.’ Why, even your landlord, Mr. Barringer…He dodged the traffic on King Street one afternoon last week just to talk with me. He regrets losing you as a tenant, but says the two of you are so obviously in love, he knows you will be happy.”
“But how could you know?” Karen exclaimed.
“How could we not know?” Mark’s mother had shaken her head. “All anyone needs to do is look at your faces, listen to you talk, watch the way you behave…My concern is how the two of you could not know. Incredible,” she had huffed, rolling her eyes.
Karen had described their walk on the Battery after the brunch and she had read her Mark’s email.
“He’d never before told me he loved me, and I’ve never told him how I feel. If I tell him, now, he won’t believe me. He’ll think I’m lying to him and he will be angry. He might even back out of our wedding.”
“I’ll take care of my son…”
“No, please. Let me tell you what I plan to do.”
Karen had studied the wedding service. The priest would address the congregation concerning the nature of marriage, her father would give her away, and the congregation would be asked if there was any impediment to the marriage, any just cause why they should not be joined together. Then she and Mark would publicly consent to be married by declaring their intentions.
She would be asked to acknowledge that she would love, honor, comfort and keep Mark, regardless of what the future might bring and be faithful to him until they were parted by death.
Karen had discussed with their priest how she might make it clear to Mark that her response to the question “Will you love him?” was more than a simple formality. The priest had been reluctant at first to deviate from the prescribed service, but after hearing Karen’s explanation, she had agreed to her plan.
“It’s best,” she had told Karen, “not to begin a marriage with secrets.” She had laughed. “I will say, though, yours is a bit unusual.”
Vicky, her matron of honor, entered the cathedral, joining the line of bridesmaids. As Vicky reached the chancel, the coordinator nodded, Karen’s father tugged on her arm, and they moved forward, halting before reaching the back pew.
Karen gasped. The cathedral was almost full. A little girl on the back row, daughter of her cousin, waved, and Karen smiled at her.
She stared down the aisle. The priest stood at the steps to the altar. Mark and his father stood to her left. Vicky was on her right. Mark had been watching the procession, and he looked up, his eyes going directly to Karen, and a smile slowly spread across his face. He turned, whispering to his father.
The organ paused for a moment. Then, it resumed, the organist pulling out every stop, the music filling the church so fully Karen was sure people stro
lling on the Battery could hear every note. She felt as if the music itself was transporting them as she and her father began their walk down the aisle.
The congregation rose and turned toward her. She smiled at friends as she passed them. She laughed. She even waved at two colleagues from the museum who were sitting on a side aisle. She looked at Mark and she almost sang along with the organ. Had she not been walking the aisle of the holy city’s cathedral, she would have danced her way through the church to meet the man who loved her, the man she loved.
The wedding service moved quickly. Karen and her father reached the chancel and the priest began to speak. She took Karen’s hand from her father’s and joined it with Mark’s. Mark smiled as he gently squeezed it. Less than three minutes after the service began, the priest was addressing her.
“Karen Anne, will you have this man to be your husband…Will you love him…keep him…be faithful to him…as long as you both shall live?”
She looked into Mark’s eyes.
“I will,” she declared, her unaided voice carrying to the far end of the cathedral.
Instead of turning to Mark, posing the same questions to him, the priest paused and nodded to Karen. Vicky slipped Karen’s veil back from her face as Karen reached out and took Mark’s hand in both of hers.
A quizzical expression crossed his face and Karen almost laughed.
“Mark Stuart, last weekend you sent me an email.” She smiled at him. “In that email, you declared you would always love me.” Her voice broke and she choked back a sob. “You asked me something then, something I tried to do, but…just…can’t.”
A range of emotions flashed across Mark’s face then, and he held his finger to her lips as though begging her not to continue. He turned to the priest, who merely smiled and nodded.
Tears were welling up in Karen’s eyes, and a love so strong was welling in her heart. She paused as she cleared her throat. In the silence, Mark’s eyes cut from her to the priest, and back. His face reminded her of the deer caught in the headlights of a car.
She reached up and squeezed his hand, kissing his finger. Then she took both his hands in hers, and stared deeply into his eyes.
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