It was like a train beginning to move and slowly picking up speed. Once it started, it would be damn near impossible to stop, and I was glad.
“Into this estate these two persons come now to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined together, let them speak or else hereafter forever hold their peace.”
I turned around and looked at the secretary. She was staring blankly at the floor. She’d probably stood quietly by as thousands of ill-suited idiots married each other, only to eventually end up back in the courthouse fighting over kitchen tables and visitation rights.
“Wilt thou, James Early Winwood, have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s Ordinance in the estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will,” I said.
“Wilt thou, Katherine Anne Shepherd, have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s Ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him so long as ye both shall live?”
I looked at the side of Kate’s face. She was crying just a little bit. I wanted to hold her right there, and tell them to leave us alone. Let us lock the door and cover the windows and stay in my room forever with the aliens watching us through the glass.
“I will,” she said.
“Please join your right hands.”
My hand was wet, and her hand was wet, and we held hands because the judge told us to.
“Repeat after me, please,” he said, and I did as he directed.
“I, James Early Winwood, take thee, Katharine Anne Shepherd, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part, according to God’s holy Ordinance.”
I stopped repeating at the tail end, thinking for a moment he said, “God’s holy orifice.” I looked at Kate, and I think she thought the same thing because we smiled at each other like no one else could see us, like the judge was a robot.
The judge looked at Kate and said, “Repeat after me.” And she did.
“I, Katherine Anne Shepherd, take thee, James Early Winwood, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part, according to God’s holy Ordinance.”
And right when he said the last part Kate and I looked at each other again, and she started laughing, and God help me, I’d forgotten what her laugh could do to me. It was a medicine.
The judge said politely, “The ring?”
I reached my left hand deep into the pocket and pulled out my grandmother’s diamond ring. Kate held up her left hand with a look of surprise on her face, and I slipped the ring onto her finger.
That was that, I thought. That was the hardest part.
The judge said, “Inasmuch as this man and this woman have in the presence of God and these witnesses, consented to be joined together in the bonds of matrimony, I do now pronounce them husband and wife.
“Ephesians: Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it…He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
“May the Lord bless and keep you, may he make his face to shine upon you, may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you his peace now and evermore. Amen.”
And when he was finished saying what he had to say, I kissed Kate Shepherd long and hard in the judge’s office, and she kissed me back in front of the witness. It was almost like the act of marriage was the proof we needed that Kate loved me, and I loved her, for all the right reasons, and it wasn’t as crazy as it seemed.
There was a sound like a gunshot. And then silence. Through a window we saw men in uniforms running. Heavy footsteps down the hallway.
I looked to the judge, but he looked afraid, and he looked at the secretary who had broken free of her trance. A large deputy sheriff came through the office door.
“Judge, there’s been a shooting downstairs. I’m gonna take all four of you through the back entrance, evacuate the building.”
The judge asked, “Has anyone been hurt?”
“Yes,” he said.
No one wanted to move. It seemed pointless, and the next day, in the newspaper, sitting in my fucked up little room, I read about what happened in the courthouse on our wedding day.
On Tuesday afternoon at 2:15, shots rang out in the County Courthouse. Investigators believe Clay Namen (age 28), and his estranged wife, Jamie (age 26), were embroiled in a custody battle over their six year old daughter, Deanna. The case was scheduled for a trial in the Courtroom of Judge Francis, and according to authorities the Court broke for lunch after the wife concluded her testimony.
Apparently, by yet unknown means, Clay Namen was able to smuggle a gun past the security checkpoint and into the Courthouse. A spokesman for the Sheriff’s department refused to speculate and stated only, “This has never happened before.”According to sources, after lunch Mr. Namen testified in the hearing, acknowledging he had made mistakes during the couple’s marriage, but begging the judge for the opportunity to see his daughter regularly. Witnesses report that before the judge issued a ruling, and during another break in the trial, Clay Namen fired a single shot in the hallway in the direction of his wife. The bullet missed Jamie Namen and apparently ricocheted off the wall, striking the six-year-old child in her face.
The child was pronounced dead upon arrival at St. Martin Hospital.
PART II
somewhere in between
one
It was just a regular day. The doctor’s appointment was scheduled in the afternoon. It was the day we expected to see the sonogram and learn if it was a boy or a girl inside. I knew there was a part of me resentful of this baby, but I suppressed the resentment and tried not to think back to Kate’s time away from me, and the yellow house and all the other possibilities, but instead to the plan mapped out on the pad of paper under the bed.
We sat in the waiting room with the other pregnant women, some with men next to them. I wondered if they were the fathers, or just men waiting for something in the waiting room. Anything. A place to wait quietly, apart from all the hustle and bustle outside.
“Are you nervous?” I asked Kate.
“Yes, I’ve got to pee.”
We were called to the back, and I sat on a stool in the corner of the room. The doctor placed the stethoscope on Kate’s belly, moving the silver circle from one spot to another.
“Excuse me just a moment,” he said, and left the room.
Kate lifted herself up on her elbows. “Do you think anything’s the matter?” she said.
“No, nothing’s the matter. He probably just forgot something in the other room. Don’t worry.”
But she looked worried, and somehow the silence and the disinfected environment didn’t help like it should have.
The doctor came back in the room with a nurse. This time the nurse moved the silver circle around on Kate’s belly, listening.
The doctor said, “I couldn’t pick up the baby’s heartbeat. It’s not unusual. Sometimes Shelley is better at it than me.”
The room fell silent again. Any second I expected Shelley to say, “There it is. I hear it,” but she didn’t, and the moment expanded slowly like a balloon filled with warm air until there was a pressure all around us.
The nurse said, “Let me try the other one.”
She left, and the doctor followed, leaving us alone again.
“Oh, God,” Kate said. “Something’s the matter.”
“No, it’s not. Nothing’s the matter. You heard the doctor, it’s not unusual.”
I believed what I said. I’d imagined the birth of the baby, our lives together, even crazy t
hings like one day encountering the natural father, but my mind had never imagined no heartbeat. It wasn’t on the list. It wasn’t part of the plan.
But it happened anyway. The baby died inside Kate, never reaching the outside. She cried with a sadness I’d never seen. I tried to hold her, but she was limp in my arms like she was dead, too.
We crawled along through the next days and nights at home and then at the hospital. I tried to imagine what it was like for a doctor to scrape the dead baby off the side of the womb and feel nothing at all, like it was a blister. To ball it all up together in one of those little metal bowls and then throw it away, hearing the thud in the trash can.
We didn’t talk much during those days. There was nothing to say. Once, when I was sitting at the kitchen table alone, I felt Kate looking at me. I lifted my eyes, she kept looking, and we just stayed that way, me trying to figure out what she was thinking, and Kate wondering if I’d wished for it. Wished another man’s baby to die inside of her, like I had a secret list somewhere, hidden, with such things written on the page. Such things as “I hope the baby dies…”
Looking back, the death of the baby inside Kate seemed to start in her an unstoppable process of decay. Who knows, maybe it was already unstoppable and all I did was slow it down awhile, but nothing was ever the same again. For my part, I was driven to deposit my seed, to put another baby where the last one had been, right the wrong, fix the problem, put everything back the way it had been. But it wasn’t so simple. The lightness was gone. She pulled back from my hands, and looked at me like I was a cripple, turning me slowly from a savior to a beggar, leaving me to make ridiculous rational arguments, sometimes out loud.
“For everything I provide to you, the roof over your head, an education, and you can’t let me touch you? You can’t give yourself to me for just a few minutes? Once every two weeks just isn’t enough for me.”
And another one. “It’s funny, I’m supposed to be strong all the time, like a statue, like a tree, always solving the problems. I can’t be weak for a minute, not even weak for you, physically. Even that weakness is unattractive to you.”
The arguments always sounded better alone. When I tried them out loud, the whole structure caved in upon itself until I was a blithering idiot and the words had no meaning, only a cutting anger and frustration. Success was rare.
One day I called Kate’s restaurant.
“May I speak to Kate, please.”
Pause.
“Hello?” I said.
“She doesn’t work here anymore.”
Pause.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“She’s no longer employed here.”
We had a gigantic fight that night over the definition of being fired. I never could figure out exactly what happened, and in the middle of the fight the electricity went out. The man on the phone said we hadn’t paid our bill, but Kate swore she sent the check.
I could barely function. I found a bottle of vodka behind a box of tampons. The bank called to say Kate had bounced three checks at the grocery store. The phone started ringing at night, and Kate would go outside and whisper. I’d press my ear to the window and pick up pieces of words, inflection in Kate’s whisper, a soft laugh.
And then, one day while I was in economics class, my wife packed her bags and went away. I couldn’t concentrate. Everything had unraveled. In just three or four months it had gone from my head resting on Kate’s belly to complete and utter chaos. I couldn’t focus on schoolwork. I’d slept on the floor, on the couch, or sometimes next to the corpse in my bed. I’d argued with myself, and Kate, and swung from one end to the other, until the day I came home to the empty apartment. Everything had happened so quickly, at least that’s the way I remember it now. Life just wouldn’t slow down.
The door was unlocked. I thought it might be another one of those nights I’d end up staying awake listening for the sound of her getting home late. But it was different. This time, even her ghost was gone, and the apartment felt like it used to feel when Eddie laid around in his socks watching daytime television.
Sitting on my bed, I closed my eyes and let myself believe for a minute it was all a dream. One of those crazy nonsense dreams you wake up from and you’re glad it’s over but wish you could get back in the middle of it a few more minutes. But it wasn’t a dream. I was married and had no idea where my wife had gone. She didn’t leave a note or anything else. Even the tampons and vodka were gone, leaving in their absence a recurring visual analogy of a person drowning in a pool, calling out for help until someone jumps in the pool and pulls them to the side. And then, a few minutes later, when nobody’s looking, the person paddles back out to the middle of the deep end and starts to drown again, calling for help, until they’re saved again, and so on and so on until finally nobody comes when they call and so the person either drowns or struggles to the side, and by then maybe nobody cares anymore, no matter how beautiful they are or how worthy they may be, because maybe God made some people unsavable on purpose.
I remember one time on the couch, after the baby died. Kate had fallen asleep. I climbed over and crawled in beside her, my front against her back, and smelled her hair. With my top hand I ran my index finger along the skin on her upper arm and slowly let my arm relax downward until I cupped her breast. We were still for a moment, the rain outside falling sideways against the window, and then, with her eyes still closed, Kate said, “You’ll be feeling me up on my deathbed.”
I remember thinking, as loud inside of myself as possible without anyone else being able to hear, “No, I won’t.” And knowing what I already knew, saying to myself, “You’re not who I wanted you to be. I can’t save you. I can’t even save myself.”
I left the empty apartment and got in the car to drive home. It seemed like the only place to go. I drove past the street with the restaurants and turned the wheel. I could see the yellow house up ahead. It was a cloudy day, thin gray clouds covered the world like a blanket. The front door of the house was wide open, but I couldn’t see anybody. I drove past slowly to the end of the street, turned around in a driveway and went by again. Standing in the doorway I saw the man I’d beaten on the floor before, and he saw me. We watched each other and I thought of him on top of Kate, kissing her mouth, her open legs around his waist, the burnt doll in the corner watching, fixated, and then I felt my lungs seize up, and the last free breath leave my body, and the burning panic like I’d felt before.
I didn’t stop driving. I opened the windows and got on the highway heading home. It was the middle of the week. I had classes the next morning. I was in the thickness of an asthma attack. My wife was gone, everything had come apart. I had no detailed plan for such a day, so I drove, and wheezed, and tried to make each breath just a bit easier than the one before. I thought about my father on the train tracks, and how until I found Kate he was the person I felt closest to, and he was dead. And now the person I’d brought closest to me didn’t want to be close to me anymore, but my father didn’t have a choice.
I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s house after hours of driving and driving. It was raining, big drops pounding against the metal roof of the car. I thought about opening the car door, but didn’t. I thought about it again, but my hand didn’t move, and I wondered if maybe my body had decided not to listen to my mind anymore. Maybe the rebellion had reached my own arms and legs, a complete rejection of any plan I’d made, or would ever make in the future. Maybe my hand would decide if and when it would open the car door, and my legs would decide if and when to go inside the house, and my mind would just have to wait.
I sat for awhile, just listening to the rain, feeling sorry for myself. I saw my mother come to the front window of the house. We looked at each other, and I wondered if she knew instinctively somehow that something was wrong, or if she was devoid of any such instincts and saw only a car in the rain in her driveway in the middle of the week.
We stayed that way for minutes, me and my mother, in a silent c
onversation, but I needed more from her. My hand opened the door and my legs took me in the house, wet and shivering, and after an awkward continuation of our silent conversation, my mother actually hugged me. She held on long enough for me to know the sacrifice.
“I got married.”
She didn’t react. I might as well have told her it was Wednesday.
“How about a cup of coffee?” she said.
We sat down at the white kitchen table. My mother’s house was always extremely clean. In fact, it reminded me of one of those model homes where no one actually lives. Just a house, with furniture, and books on the shelves not meant for reading.
“I got married to that girl from high school, Kate Shepherd. We went to the courthouse. It was the day the man shot his little girl in the hallway outside the courtroom. We were there that day, upstairs, getting married, me and Kate.”
My mother took a sip of her coffee. “I’m not sure what to ask. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
I felt myself wanting to cry. I hadn’t cried but I felt the feeling in my throat and then up into my face and eyes.
“I screwed up,” I said, trying to force back the emotion.
My mother said, “Everybody screws up, Early. Everybody.”
“She left. I don’t know where she went.”
I started to cry, and when I started I couldn’t stop. My mother stood and leaned over me, her hands on my shoulders, her face resting on the back of my neck, and I cried so damn hard I thought the asthma might come back, my body shaking, eyes squeezed shut in my hands.
My mother didn’t offer any advice, and I’m glad she didn’t. Whatever she said would have cheapened how I felt, and it wasn’t the reason I drove to see her anyway. I drove there because it was still my home, good or bad. It was the place where my father used to walk in the front door from work every day, and I’d hear the door open and run like hell to see him, until that last day when he didn’t come home at all and the world changed colors.
The Wait Page 9