The Wedding

Jean dressed me in a small room lined on one side with wrinkled choir
robes on hangers, and on another with solid mirror. She had a sheet spread in the center of the floor, and I kept wandering off it, and being scolded. I had to take my glasses off, so that I couldn't see to the mirror, and I had to keep asking if I looked all right. Elma held the door open a crack, so I could hear the music, and the people shuffling in. I was surprised at how well the violin mellowed in with the organ. They played music I hadn't ordered and I was more interested in that than in my dress. Jean did up the thirty-seven buttons, and came out wrong. She did them up again, and then I saw that I still needed to clean my nails. I sat down on one of the chairs the kindergarten uses for Sunday School, and Jean put on my shoes while I fished in my bag for the file, found it, and used it. Then they found one ear showing through my hair under the veil, and Elma pinned the hair down with a blond hairpin.
It was four o'clock, and the music began to repeat. Elma went out to sit down, and Jean told Bruce to keep the Groom out of the way while I went down stairs. We fussed about lipstick, and laughed as if we were going out of somebody's guest room at a tea party. Jean stopped somewhere and I was going downstairs alone. I stepped through a side door onto the lighted platform at the end of the hall. Waiters were moving about, placing chairs, and arranging the main table. Some of them saw me and smiled friendly, white-teeth smiles. My father and mother and my brother were standing with their backs toward me, talking. I walked out to the center of the stage and just stood there. Frank turned first, and I knew then that I looked all right. He bowed very quickly and smiled with his eyes, without saying anything. Mother and Daddy saw him looking and they turned too, but they had seen the dress before, and they were less surprised.
Jean came down and we began to get in line at the bottom of the stairs. I asked the worn-out question of why anybody would build a church so that you had to go up crooked narrow stairs to reach the back of the aisle. The blond hairpin slipped out and Jean pinned it back in place. They brought in the wedding cake and I was disappointed because it had no tiny bride and groom on it, nor even a wedding bell swinging from an arch, but I said yes, it was lovely. Mother was with us, sympathizing with the caterer about the bad weather, and wondering when Frank would come down to take her to her seat. The snow was making people late. My best friend was sitting in a wheel chair in New York, trying to remember back through five years to imagine how things looked here, - the town under snow, the hill to the church, the stone doorway, the black pews, and the bare beams in the ceiling, and trying to remember the feel of walking -to pretend that she was my maid of honor, waiting here with me in a blue lace dress, hearing the organ start Calm as the Night for the third time, shifting the flowers time after time, saying over and over 'left foot first'-.
Frank was coming down, grinning, leaning down the stair well, excited, calling Mother with a loose sweep of his arm. Mother went up and we were all proud of her, and of the color of her auburn hair against the blue flowers of her hat. She was straight, and slender, and I thought 'if I can look like that for my daughter's wedding -'
Frank was coming down, telling us to be ready, shouting in a whisper. We moved up onto the stairs, where we could see through the railing. The organ began, three hundred feet shuffled, and the whole church was standing up, waiting for me. Frank stood there, with Brooks and Rummy behind him, and I could see him counting the introduction to himself as I had taught him at the rehearsal. Then he started, in perfect time, his big head lowered a little, his wide back almost blocking the aisle, and the funny big feet rising, falling, waiting, very carefully. Jean started off, and then Daddy, behind me, put his hands on my arms to lift me up to the top step. I don't think he said anything, but something made me shiver, and I felt dampness in my eyes. I put my hand on his arm, and bent my head back to stretch, and the tears went away without coming. All the faces were blurred and I wished they had let me keep my glasses on. But as we came closer different people became distinct. We lost step and Daddy was mumbling 'left-right-left'. We stopped almost completely and got back into step and it didn't seem important at all that we had made a mistake. I saw Mrs. Wilson's pink cheeks, and Bud's eyes twinkling. I felt beautiful and I knew it was the only time I would ever feel that way. I wished I could stand aside and watch myself. I saw Douglas then, turned, waiting, and we smiled at each other. Elderly ladies marveled over that smile for weeks afterward, but it seemed to me then the only thing we could do. I saw the minister in front of me, quietly amused. I saw my old music teacher standing very tall beside the organ with one hand holding the neck or her fiddle. The iron gray pompadour and the gaunt man's face were the same as ever, and not even the white robe she wore could make her look feminine.
Daddy made his gesture and I felt him move away behind me and sit down. We said some words, and followed the minister up to the altar rail. I stepped on the hem of my dress, and remembered doing the same thing as Jean's maid of honor, but now it did not embarrass me. I was beautiful no matter what I did.
I kept thinking that the minister's words were superfluous. I remembered studying the marriage vows before I took my engagement ring, and being moved then. It was all familiar now, and almost trite, as it never had been when I hear other people saying it. Douglas said his part in a great deep voice. I recognized it as the exaggeration he uses when he is nervous, but I knew other people, and maybe he himself, would think him remarkably poised. I answered quietly, thinking it enough if Douglas heard me. I remember thinking my voice sounded rich, but I tried to put that idea away. My conceit embarrassed me, so close to the Cross.
Several times I looked at Douglas and watched him feel my eyes and turn toward me, to fill the minutes between the slow drippings of the minister's words. I felt a quick, familiar annoyance at the words ' man and wife'. 'Husband and wife' would have implied a more equal giving and receiving. The words did not move me greatly. We would not have been standing there if we had not been already man and wife far more than any words could make us. Words were unnecessary.
Douglas kissed me neatly, and I was proud of him. Jean passed me my flowers without confusion - I remembered how I had fumbled with hers in September - and we started down. Douglas whispered 'don't forget to smile' and I laughed because I had planned on needing to tell him that. It was painful to walk as slowly as the minister had dictated. Daddy whispered 'good work, little girl' as we passed his pew, and I laughed more. There seemed now to be a special joke to share with each new face I saw on either side of me. The whole thing seemed to be one hilarious joke. I didn't believe I was married, and yet all of these people thought that I was. I had no idea who should laugh and who should be laughed at, but I knew there should be laughter.
At the bottom of the stairs I was suddenly kissing Douglas, with no sense of where the floor was, nor of what held me above it. Then the room filled with people and I was shaking hands and smiling and I cannot remember what I said.