Altared

by Colleen Curran

  My parents had honeymooned in Bermuda. They lay in hammocks and played golf. I guess I thought that if my honeymoon were different, my marriage would be, too. We chose to go to Belize, which, like us, was cheap and edgy. We took three-week vacations and made reservations for only the first night. We stuffed big backpacks with bathing suits, snorkels, and hiking shoes.

  We had moved to Texas for Tip's Ph.D. work, and the morning after our wedding, we headed back to Austin, where we planned to catch a flight to Belize City. We spent the night in Amarillo, at the Big Texan Motor Inn. It was the best hotel in Amarillo, our friend told us. Actually, his words were, “Well, if you can eat a seventy-two-ounce steak in an hour, your room is free.”

  We booked the honeymoon suite.

  Unhappily, they had stopped serving beef by the time we arrived. We climbed the stairs to our room, me carrying the straw hat full of strawberries, Tip holding the free bottle of Cold Duck champagne.

  The headboard of our marital bed was made of brown antlers bound together with rawhide. And the promised “heart-shaped Jacuzzi” was actually a dingy beige bathtub in the normal oval shape, albeit with some moldy jets. There were cigarette burns in the couch, where other honeymooners must have smoked as they ate their strawberries.

  We twisted off the top of our champagne and toasted a new life together under the antler chandelier. My best friend—the only person as strange as me—was now my husband. I remember feeling a bit scared at the prospect of forever. Maybe making our honeymoon as taxing as possible let us both forget about the real challenge: a lifetime of staying in love.

  We made it to Belize by the following day. Belize is an English-speaking country in Central America, located between Mexico and Guatemala. It's known for both its jungles and beaches and is a mecca for serious scuba divers. In July, it's hot.

  Under the weight of our enormous backpacks, we trudged to find a bus, which would take us to a ferry, where we could ride a slow boat under the blazing sun to an island called Caye Caulker, where we would keep on slogging until we found our hotel. We had a clean room with a minifridge, which we decided was way too luxurious. By morning, we'd checked into Ignacio's Cabins, where twelve dollars bought us a night in a rickety cabin overlooking the water.

  That night, I sidled up to a beachside bar and told the bartender I was on my honeymoon. “Ah,” he said lasciviously, “then I will make you a special drink.”

  From one sip I was hooked. Made of coconut rum, pineapple juice, and fresh lime, the cocktail tasted wild and sexy. A drink that tasted the way I wanted to feel. “Order me another,” I requested.

  Tip went to the bar, and I heard the bartender laugh and say loudly, “Another Panty Ripper for the new wife!”

  Oh, dear. I had fallen for a cocktail named the Panty Ripper. We were so embarrassed to order them that by our second day, we bought the ingredients and mixed them ourselves. We had cocktails, went for a steak dinner, and sat in hammocks under the moon. In bed, I read Memoirs of a Geisha with a headlamp strapped to my head.

  Ignacio went crazy the next morning. At least, we think it was Ignacio. A man yelled, roosters crowed, and we realized that our rustic cabin lacked not only electricity, but peace and quiet. Also, drawn no doubt by the fragrance of Panty Rippers, fire ants had arrived in full force. After a day of scuba diving, we ate grilled lobster and discussed the future of our honeymoon. We wanted to do more scuba diving, and we wanted to see a monkey. I knew my parents had not seen a monkey on their honeymoon. In fact, my mother had told me that my father had mostly watched TV in their air-conditioned room.

  We headed to San Ignacio, a town near jungle preserves. In a coffee shop, we met a young man named Louis who claimed he could take us into an underground cave system. “Show up here in the morning,” he said. “Wear your bathing suit and be brave.” The cave was called Actun Tunichil Muknal, “Cave of the Stone Sepulchre.”

  We couldn't resist. After my morning eggs and Pepto-Bismol, we climbed aboard a van and drove toward the rain forest with Louis. We parked and hiked along a jungle pathway to the mouth of a cave. “Go on and swim then,” said Louis, when we hit a river. We put on our headlamps and dove in. When we surfaced, we were inside an amazing cavern. Columns of crystal glimmered from the walls, and Louis led us for three hours, pointing out shards of Mayan pottery. At times, we inched along slick rock walls, and at times we had to swim again, holding our breath. I am scared of heights and almost couldn't climb a rickety ladder to a second-story grotto.

  Finally, he told us to stop and close our eyes. We held hands, and when he said, “Now!” we spun around. Illuminated by our headlamps, the skeleton of a young girl shone, partially settled into the dusty ground. She had been killed, Louis explained, as part of a Mayan sacrificial ritual. She had been left in the cave for the gods, and later for adventurous tourists.

  At the end of the day I was exhausted, but not exhausted enough to sleep through the music pounding through the walls of our ratty hostel. My husband and I held each other as the theme song from Friends played with a thumping techno beat. This was nothing like my parents' honeymoon, I told myself happily.

  The next day, I saw an index card tacked to the wall of the hostel:

  GLOVER'S REEF

  ISLAND GETAWAY

  $100 A WEEK

  BRING YOUR OWN FOOD

  MEET AT MINERVA'S GUEST HOUSE SAT A.M., WAIT FOR BOAT

  We had heard that Glover's Reef, a marine reserve in the Caribbean, had some of the best scuba diving in the world. The only resorts we had ever read about on Glover's Reef charged thousands a week. After dinner, we packed our bags and counted our traveler's checks.

  We brought our own food: chocolate, rum, various fruit drinks and Coke for mixers. Bread, peanut butter, nasty cheese triangles, fruit. We shouldered our backpacks and hopped a bus that led away, far away from all the lovely beach resorts and vacationers who wanted, well, a vacation. We shared the bus with some Belizean people and some Belizean farm animals. When I smiled wide and told a rotund man in a straw hat that we were headed to Minerva's Guest House, he guffawed and said, “Minerva's! Oh, ho ho!”

  I decided to believe that all the people on the bus were laughing with us.

  My husband squinted out the bus window, calculating our location. I loved that he read the landscape like a novel and always knew where we were in the world. Before Tip, I had never really used maps. With him, the whole world made more sense.

  The bus driver pulled to the side of a dirt road, pointed to the bushes, and said, “Walk awhile that way.”

  Gamely, we shouldered our packs and bushwhacked. Finally, we came upon a dilapidated dwelling barely held aloft by splintered logs. A hand-painted sign proclaimed, bunk house. Dirty tapestries waved from the windows, and a fan hummed hello. The shack had been painted a cheery green and white. “Okay!” I said. We ducked inside.

  Lying on bunks were the four other couples who would share our weeklong adventure: Randy, a German man who had married Marisa, a Spanish woman; the Brinkleys, from Columbus, who wouldn't make it the whole week; Sunshine and David, San Franciscans peroxided to platinum blond; and a couple from New Zealand who were biking their way around the world (somehow). We chatted for a while and determined that we had all seen the same index card at the same hostel and none of us had the slightest idea what lay ahead, but for a hundred bucks a week, what the hell.

  Minerva arrived, a slight woman in a porkpie hat. She took us down the street to buy eggs and butter, advising that the Frenchman would arrive in the morning to pick us up on his sailboat. When pressed, she explained that he would bring us back in seven days or so.

  Mushed into a bunk together, my husband and I slept fitfully.

  The Frenchman arrived, as promised, with a young woman who appeared to be either Minerva's daughter, the Frenchman's lover, or both. The Frenchman collected our cash dollars and stood aside as we loaded our gear into the sailboat. Hands on either side of his potbelly, he did not respond to our myriad questions
about where we were going and when we would be back. My husband—and I was proud of this, that the handsome geologist in aqua swim shorts was mine—loaded our rum and supplies, donned his damn gulls hat (complete with fake bird dung), and climbed aboard happily. As per my recent vows, I followed him.

  We set sail on water as clear and blue as mouthwash. In English and halting English, we talked about scuba and sunscreen. The Frenchman and the young woman stared stonily ahead, steering the boat toward a tiny island. As we neared, thatched-roof homes became visible. The Frenchman muttered something about choose a hut and pit latrines. We docked and were met by three more French-speaking people and handed a price list.

  The hut and pit latrine, it seemed, were included in our hundred dollars. Everything else—from canoes to water to scuba gear—was priced at a premium. One of the French-speaking people was a dark man with no shirt and mirrored sunglasses. He told me I could call him the Breeze and asked if I wanted to scuba.

  “Yes,” I said. “We want to scuba.” I pointed to my husband and said proudly, “I'm married.”

  The Breeze was undeterred. “Night dive?” he asked. “How about a night dive tonight?”

  We weren't experienced divers, but this was irresistible. We made plans to meet the Breeze on the north beach at sundown. Then we picked our way carefully over the exposed roots of palm trees toward the thatched-roof huts lined up on the beach. We chose one and climbed inside. The view from the hut was amazing, and the structure only swayed a little when the wind blew. We had been given an array of buckets for washing and cooking. We heated up some SpaghettiOs and gulped warm Sprite.

  The Breeze was ready to roll when we arrived on the north beach. He piled gear into a boat, and we headed into the waves as the sun set. We perched on the edge of the boat, and I tested my oxygen line. “I don't think…,” I said, but the Breeze put a palm in the center of my chest and pushed me into the water. As the weight belt pulled me down, I breathed deeply. Luckily, the oxygen worked.

  Being underwater is amazing, but being underwater at night is magical. My flashlight attracted glowing bugs, and moonlight filtered over the fish and plants. The Breeze looked bored as Tip and I swam, hand in hand, through the coral reefs. When I met my husband's eyes, they were also filled with wonder.

  We spent a week scuba diving and reading and drinking rum mixed with various juices. We became friends with the other couples, and when Mrs. Brinkley went crackers and insisted she had to “get off this teeny tiny fucking island,” we all sympathized. My husband was the only one who knew how to fillet and cook a fish, so evenings were punctuated by visitors bearing gifts of cigarettes or food in exchange for his expertise.

  We went a little crackers, too. Tip began recording the actions of various lizards around our hut. I had lengthy daydreams about chlorinated pools and room service. Bugs, as always, were an issue. Walking to a pit latrine became less edgy and more annoying, especially in the middle of the night. But each evening, we watched the sun set over the water. We even threw a party the last day, cooking all our extra food and serving it mixed together. The party was BYOB… bring your own bowl.

  When we finally sailed back to Minerva's, seven days that felt like seven months later, we decided to take the bus to Guatemala. We had heard that the border crossing was dangerous, but the ruins of Tikal seemed worth the risk.

  On the bus, a Belizean woman told me about her honeymoon. “We had a big meal, some dancing, and a nap,” she said, patting her pregnant belly. “It was a wonderful nap,” she said.

  For just a moment, I felt tired. Did I really think that I could ensure a happy marriage by never relaxing? I thought about how wonderful it would feel to slow down. To check into a clean hotel somewhere safe and ease into my new husband's arms. To hope for the best. But I was too afraid of what might happen if I stopped filling my mind with logistics and plans.

  We reached the place between Belize and Guatemala, and it felt scary. Shifty-eyed teenagers sidled up to us and offered unbelievable exchange rates. No one could agree on what we needed to pay to get over the border. We were told that Guatemala was filled with armed men who would drive us into countryside, shoot us for our shoes, and leave us to rot.

  We pressed on. Over the border, a man approached us and offered to drive us to Tikal. Nervously, we accepted and climbed into his dented pickup truck. We knew this was dangerous. But somehow being in real danger felt good to me. At least when I got into a truck with a shifty-eyed man, a backpack full of expensive items, a passport, and traveler's checks at my side, I knew what to be afraid of.

  The man drove us away from the border crossing, into Guatemala. The road was narrow and deserted. “I want to show you something,” said the man. My husband stared straight ahead. I saw that his jaw was clenched. His eyes scanned the road frantically, and I could tell that he was trying to understand where we were.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It's a lake,” said the man. His voice was hard. My husband swallowed.

  But there was a lake, and we stood by it, and the man took our picture. We got back in the car, and the man drove us to Tikal. We saw monkeys and ruins; we flew home and made a life together. We had a son, and my love for him is so fierce I can hardly leave the room much less travel the world without him.

  I realize now that our honeymoon was made up of self-imposed dangers: no one made us go scuba diving at night or cross the Guatemalan border. Life—and this was before September 11 and Iraq, and before my son showed me what real fear meant—was safe and simple. Courting thrills in foreign countries seemed more important, somehow, than just taking a nap.

  I feel differently now. I want to keep my son safe but not sheltered; I want to write about the world with clarity. I want to sleep heavily at night. These have proved harder tasks than braving ratty guesthouses or scuba dives.

  I look at the picture of my husband and me, taken by a Guatemalan lake almost six years ago. My husband told me later that he thought this was the end: the man would take our picture and then pull out a knife or gun. In the picture, he looks tanned and nervous, wearing the aqua shorts that are now hanging on a chair, drying out from yesterday's trip to a local pool to teach our son to swim.

  My husband looks straight at the camera. He thought this was the end, and he is holding my hand.

  weddings for everyone

  amy bloom

  I love weddings. I love the tall, blonde bride, curvy and flushed, holding a bouquet of peonies, very much like a peony herself. I love the short, geeky groom, made handsome by his radiant conviction that this pink and perfect girl loves him and smiles for him alone. I love the multi-culti affair: jumping the broom and crushing the glass; the bride in a teal, gold-embroidered sari, the groom in a dashiki; him in a yarmulke and sober suit, her in the traditional barong; two young women in white tuxedoes and leis; dim sum and lasagna at the reception; toasts made by the father from Slovakia and the father from Des Moines and soon multiply pierced teenagers from Ames are doing the czarda.

  I love drippy, sentimental toasts made by men who pride themselves on their discipline, and witty, impassioned ones made by demure aunts, who reveal themselves, after a couple of champagne cocktails, to be the offspring of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sandra Bernhard. I love the older couples. (Although I am disturbed by the bridal business phrase “encore” bride, as if a second or third wedding brings boxoffice success, the star back by popular demand, which is a brilliant marketing ploy but surely fools no one, least of all the bride, whose fond but wary children and friends gave crystal champagne flutes the first time and teak salad bowls the second and can now be forgiven for contemplating nothing more than a lucky horseshoe. Couldn't we all simply agree that these people represent a fine, shining—or fragile, foolish, but very dear—example of the triumph of hope over experience?) I love the older couples who have been lovers for years, a little complacent in their unconventionality, pleased with their decision to forgo paper and ceremony until there comes a bout of cance
r, the death of a dear friend, the birth of a grandchild, and suddenly a wedding and the concomitant piece of paper seem just the ticket. I love long-parted high school sweethearts coming together after twenty or thirty or fifty years, during which whole novels of life (along the lines of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Middlemarch) have unfolded, still seeing each other as the handsomest boy in Urbana, the prettiest girl in Eagle County.

  I like weddings so much (and having been a bride, a mother of the bride, a bridesmaid, and a guest many times over, I feel that I am, if not an authority, certainly not an amateur) that I think everyone should have one. I think that when I was twenty-six and pregnant with my first daughter, I should have been allowed to take a walk down some aisle. Afterward, we could have had a small party with petits fours and champagne, no dancing, no carrying on. This would not have been a celebration with my husband, the baby's father—with whom I had already had a lovely wedding—but with the man who had been my surrogate father, from whom I had been separated for several years by various misunderstandings. We had only recently come back to each other, feeling blessed by possibility (of forgiveness, of family, of his being a grandfather of a sort, at last), and it seems to me now that we were entitled to have had a proper celebration of our eternal love—and a wedding should be the term for what that thing is called. I feel this way about my fifty-year-old neighbor and her three cats; there has never been more touching devotion (on both sides; these cats come when called, lick on request, and sit by her feet until dismissed), and I feel the same about my mother and her best friend of the last fifty years. These ladies deserve a wedding and some presents and some suitable tears and the admiration of friends and family. Why shouldn't we celebrate Jeannie and Dellie as much as (if not more than) marrying-for-money, marrying-for-maid-service, and marrying-for-fear-of-the-future? (I do realize that my particular licensing bureau, which gives licenses only to people who actually love each other and have enough decency and self-awareness to make a go of it, will not be popular. I am prepared.)