Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

  Bam! All of a sudden my daze of nostalgic reverie was smashed as Christy threw open the door, rushed out of the motel room, and walked onto the parking lot with no shoes on. I leapt up.

  “Where you going?” I shouted after her.

  “Just getting some ice,” she called back, seemingly not angry anymore, and scampered off toward the front office, her feet hopping along the cold ground like a little bird.

  That was her only true pregnancy behavioral oddity; she had a voracious appetite for ice. All day long we’d be hustling around town running errands, setting up the wedding, and the whole time she’d be chomping ice like a hound dog gnawing on a T-bone. Crunch, crack, slurp. Crunch, crack, slurp. I thought I’d pull my hair out. I’m not exaggerating, she was always munching it. She’d order big Styrofoam cups full of ice from every store we stopped at. It started the same day she quit smoking.

  I was glad she quit, but now I was supposed to quit too, and she was cracking ice like a friggin’ polar bear.

  “Oh, Jimmy, ohhh, Jimmy!” Christy said abruptly, as she dashed back in the room, opening and closing the door quickly behind her.

  “What? What? What?” I said, whispering for some reason. I stood up, panic snapping through my body like the crack of a whip. The whole time Christy was pregnant, the mysteries and concerns of her health invaded my waking moments.

  “Look, look!” she said, and promptly fell flat on her back on the bed, hiking up her shirt to expose her naked belly. I moved up and knelt over her.

  “Turn on the light,” she insisted, whispering now as well. I leaned over and flicked on the dim yellow light of the bedside lamp.

  Now, I won’t be able to describe what I saw anywhere near as gracefully or beautifully as what it’s like to witness it, but I’ll give it a shot.

  Once, right after my dad’s suicide, when I first enlisted, I got stationed outside of Scagway, Alaska, for four months as part of a base-dismantling operation. Several times out there in the cold dark January nights, I could see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, and that was the BOMB. Light dancing across the sky, the stratosphere rippling, like a still lake hit by the first drops of rain, or billowing, like when you throw a clean cotton sheet over a mattress. The sky above me was literally at play and it was awesome, humbling, and funny. Those are the only words I have to describe watching my baby spin inside her mother’s womb.

  “You can lead us, you know,” Christy said quietly. My hand was still on her belly, feeling for my child.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I could see all these yellow speckles far inside her green eyes.

  “I’m not always going to agree with you or know what you’re talking about, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You need to believe in yourself. You’ve got a great heart, Jimmy, a heart like a horse, and I believe in it. I just believe in it more than I believe in little red books, OK?”

  Now I have a theory that if a woman wants to keep a man she only needs to say two things: She believes in him and he’s got a big cock. That’s all it takes. It doesn’t even have to be true.

  “We’ll write our own service,” I said, “in a way we both like. All right?”

  “Now you’re talking,” she said. “You know something, Jimmy? And don’t get mad when I say this.”

  Whenever she prefaces a comment like that, I know I’m gonna get pissed.

  “Sometimes I think you worry that if you surpass your father—you know, as a man—that you’ll be showing him up or betraying him in some way. But you won’t. If he was the good father you remember, he’d be proud of you.”

  She paused, looking at me to make sure she wasn’t hurting my feelings.

  “That doesn’t make me mad,” I said, as she snuggled down next to me on the mattress.

  “Well, good.” She sighed, closed her eyes, and pulled herself closer.

  I turned off the lamp by the bed and held her close, proud of the muscles in my arms. She was right, I figured: God didn’t care what words we used, it was our aim that mattered. An hour might have passed when I felt her weight increase with the onset of sleep. I was still smiling about seeing our little baby kicking around, and then easily, like a reflex, I spoke out loud.

  “Dear God, I pray for my child and I pray for Christy.” I said it lightly toward the window and the flaring lights of the parking lot, my voice fragile and slight in the echo of the empty room. “Watch over them and teach me how to love them always.”

  I stopped for a second and wondered if it felt like anyone was listening to me. I couldn’t be sure either way. Indian music from the front office was filtering through our walls. Then another thought popped out of my mouth.

  “I pray for all mothers and all their babies. I pray for all people who are lonely, all people who want children.” I paused again, smiling, maybe ’cause I felt stupid or maybe ’cause I felt better. A horn was impatiently honking outside.

  “I say a prayer for all dead people, too, and for the fathers. All dads; I pray for them.” I added, more formally, “My dad too, please.”

  Grace the cat hopped up on the bed, frightening me for a second. Then she climbed up over Christy’s slumbering back and onto her dark hair. The cat rubbed her wet nose against my shoulder. Christy rolled over, and the cat scurried to the edge of the mattress, careful to avoid some carelessly tossed limb. Christy nuzzled her face down into my ribs. It was clear to me then, easy as looking at the road from the windshield of an automobile, that I didn’t choose any of this; from my birth forward, everything was just happening, like a string of firecrackers. My father, Lisa, Christy: we were all just falling. I didn’t choose Christy, she happened to me. I happened to her. Shit, man, I like petite girls with high voices and small hands who laugh all the time; that’s my type. I could’ve fallen for someone like that, someone Catholic like Lisa, or someone who liked muscle cars or someone I was smarter than, but I didn’t. I fell in love with Christy. The cat crawled up over my chest and positioned itself directly atop my head. Slowly she began kneading my hair like a baker does bread. A purr of immense pleasure vibrated from her chest. Her claws dug into my scalp, hurting a little bit but not too much. The bliss the cat was experiencing seemed too great to justify shaking her off.

  Then silently, in case Chris was still half awake, I said a little prayer for Lisa and how I hoped she was well. Then for good measure I even half said a prayer for Christy’s first husband, that prick.

  Next, I surprised myself—it was probably something I heard some preacher say once, but it felt like I was making it up—“I give you my life,” I said. “I give it all away. I’ll take whatever comes.”

  When I woke up I was naked. I have this one oddball idiosyncrasy: Sometimes in my sleep I take off all my clothes.

  CHANCE

  You’d like to think that you go through something like marriage as a couple, but you don’t. No matter what kind of ceremony you have, you still experience everything as an individual. At least that’s been the case for me.

  I was sitting in one of the chamber rooms of the largest cathedral in Cincinnati, with my best friend Chance doing my nails. To my right above me was a portrait of a bludgeoned Jesus hanging from a cross. Looking at his anguished face I thought of his line, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” which always sounded more Buddhist than Christian to me. Heaven is right here all the time. There’s nothing you need that you don’t already have. Expectation, that’s the killer. I couldn’t think of one event that I’d loaded up with more expectation than my wedding day.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Chance said. Her bleached-blond hair hung over her eyes. She had driven in the day before with the dress, her husband, Bucky, and their eight-month-old son, Griffin.

  “I know,” I said. “Give me another one of those things.” I motioned to the pile of peppermint patties she had stuffed in her purse.

  “You don’t need
any more of those,” she replied calmly.

  “Yes, I do,” I pleaded, and then added, “Do you think I should wear a veil?”

  “Definitely,” Chance said, giving my hand a yank to encourage me to stop moving but not making any move toward the sweets.

  “I don’t think I should.” Truth be told, I was scared to get married. The idea of two failed marriages was petrifying, but it was a real possibility. Inside me lived a Gypsy, a powerful woman with dangling bracelets making a hell of a racket.

  “Stay still,” Chance whispered, as she continued painting my nails.

  “Please give me one of those candies,” I said again. Chance just continued working with a determined expression. Outside the door I could hear the church organist playing some kind of prelude.

  “Can you believe how huge I am?” I asked, referring to my fatness.

  “Hey, cowgirl, it’s my dress you’re wearing. You’re not that big.” Chance laughed, pulling my hands up so she could blow on my nails. “You look beautiful.”

  “You really think so?” I asked, my arms stretched out toward her. “You don’t think people are going to feel sorry for me?”

  This white gown wrapped around my growing belly was making me feel shy.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, I’m happy for you. You deserve it, Christy. You deserve every good thing that happens.” The anteroom we were seated in was pleasant and warm, full of candles and knickknacks. A radiator in the corner was practically glowing. The skin of Chance’s face was healthy and flushed. “Stand up,” she ordered.

  “Why should I wear a veil?” I asked again, rising as I checked out my finished nails. The engagement ring around my finger lit up like the torch of mortality. The point of marriage, I thought, must be something more than to stay together forever, because we will ultimately be redivided. One of us, Jimmy or I, would die first. Maybe it would be me. My credit card would be canceled. My driver’s license would apply to no one. There was no finishing line, no competition to win. The point must be something else.

  “Why do I have to cover up my face?” I asked.

  “Because it looks pretty that way,” she said, standing up now herself. She was wearing a royal blue gown I’d never seen before that was very flattering; it matched her eyes.

  “You think?”

  “I really do.” Chance adjusted the dress around my shoulders. In that moment I felt the possibility of marriage as a kind of holy state, a space from which to rub away my narcissism and deepen my capabilities of giving. I’d spent all this time and energy over the years searching for a home—and home for me, I was realizing, was simply being close to my own ability to love.

  “Do you think they have any beer in this place?” Chance said, as she walked over and picked up the veil from a nearby chair.

  “I doubt it,” I answered.

  “Outa beer, outa here.” Chance grinned, reciting a familiar refrain. “It’s about time, sweetie. Are you ready?”

  My father was waiting impatiently outside the door, anticipating our cue.

  “Can you believe I’m going to be somebody’s mother?” I said, looking down at my belly. “It happens so quick.”

  “What does?”

  “I don’t know . . . life.” As I was growing up I discovered the harsh fact that fairy tales were not true: trees didn’t talk, eagles didn’t pick you up and fly you away, fairies didn’t dance in the forest. There was a deepening sadness in the realization that the fantastic was all myth. Everything was just as it seemed. But recently, perhaps with the idea of marriage, or maybe pregnancy, there was a returning childish magic in the air. Was I positive that birds weren’t winged messengers from heaven? that whales weren’t space aliens?

  “Motherhood is not what you should be worrying about; that at least comes naturally,” Chance said, as she fiddled with the veil. “Being married, that is what I call unnatural.”

  “What’s it like?” I asked. “Is it OK?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” She grinned secretively. “How’s my lipstick?”

  “Tell me now,” I demanded.

  “It’s utter agony,” she began, in complete earnestness. “You will give all you have to give, and it won’t be enough. You will resent him and feel he has single-handedly ruined your life, and—worse than that—you will be correct.” She flipped the veil around in her hands and moved toward me. “He will resent you and take all your gifts for granted. For the life of you, you will not be able to remember how you could’ve fallen in love with this lazy self-absorbed creep. At night you will cry from loneliness, just as you have your whole life, only now someone will be lying in bed right beside you and that kind of loneliness is ten times worse than anything you’ve ever known before.” She paused to let out a deep sigh and continued. “And then one Christmas you’ll be driving slowly through a snowstorm, both of you not speaking ’cause you’re petrified the car is gonna slide off the road, but you’ll make it home. You’ll start laughing and kissing, and then you’ll realize that all this time while you’ve been grouchy and complaining you haven’t actually looked him in the eye, and when you do you’ll recognize the best friend you’ve ever known and you won’t be able to believe that all this time he was sitting right beside you.”

  “I think you should tell me about it later,” I said.

  Chance stepped back, still holding the veil, and looked at me. “Your mom should be here, Christy,” she said. “I wish she could see how beautiful you are today.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I’d been thinking a lot about my mother these days. What if I run away from my daughter as she had run from me? I will not, I promised myself, but the oath echoed hollowly in my chest.

  I remembered a Sunday early in my courtship with Jimmy when we ate a handful of magic mushrooms and pleasantly tripped the afternoon away. The day was long and full of adventures. We went to the movies and to the park, we laughed on the children’s swings and ate spicy Ethiopian food. We were falling in love and it was springtime: that one week in late April or early May when all of Albany’s trees bloom and flower petals fall like rain onto the streets below.

  We wound up back at my apartment that evening, and Jimmy sat on the floor in the middle of the entranceway with the door open. Looking out at all the cars passing by, letting the spring air wash his face, he fell into a trance. A half hour might’ve gone by with him just moving his head back and forth with the traffic. I made myself some tea and was in the kitchen sipping it, waiting for it to cool, when I had a vision. From where I was standing I could see the doorway, only when I glanced over at Jimmy on the floor, he was gone. There, in his place, was a massive gray wolf swishing its tail in the entrance to my apartment. I didn’t look away and just patiently breathed, waiting for the hallucination to dissipate. The wolf looked over at me, and inside the yellow irises of this wolf’s glowing eyes I could clearly recognize Jimmy. The animal was not foreign to me and I was not afraid. He was guarding me. I watched his belly rise and fall. I watched his ears twitch with the wind. Minutes passed, and still the hallucination remained. Finally I looked down, and where my feet should’ve been I saw two gray paws. My body, too, was covered in a beautiful gray majestic fur coat, and my sight, I noticed, was void of color.

  Jimmy and I had known each other for a very long time. I felt that the first night he touched me, and now I knew it to be true. I carried this vision of him and me as wolves through the whole of our affair, enjoying the fantasy that he and I had traveled through time together and met in different manifestations.

  “Now I know you don’t want to wear this thing,” Chance said, as she placed the veil on my head and began fixing my hair around it. “You want to be open and clear, not hiding or masquerading or pretending to be anything you’re not.” She met my eyes and smiled. “I.e., a virgin.” Chance was a physical therapist at the hospital where I worked, and she knew how to touch people. Her hands were ca
lm and soothing.

  “You think it’s OK to wear white ’cause that’s what’s expected and it’s pretty, but you know in your heart that you’re not innocent and you’re not a little girl and you think a veil is trying too hard or, worse, a lie—and you don’t want to be lying when you’re up there at the altar. Am I right?”

  “I need another one of those candies,” I said, not answering her question.

  “No, you don’t,” she said quickly. “But here’s the rub: First off, a veil is sexy. That’s a fact. I don’t know why but the whole virginal thing is a turn-on. And when the priest says”—she affected a deep stately voice—“You may now kiss the bride, you want your husband to have to lift up the veil to kiss you.” She surreptitiously lifted the veil from my face. It was dramatic.

  “Can I please have another candy?” I asked.

  “No,” she said curtly. “Heaven knows you’re not innocent. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten what a little slut you are—and there’s a couple boys up there at Syracuse University that I’m pretty sure also remember what a huss you are—but here’s what I know that you don’t.”