The Space Between Promises (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

The wedding is breathtaking, an evening candle-lit service in October. Tea-lights sprinkle the altar table, tall arrangements of red roses stand proudly on either side of the carpeted steps that were created solely for my ascension to the altar, and a violinist serenades the audience with selections from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." The crystal chandeliers are turned low, emitting a soft glow, the balconies lined with Victorian style glass candle lamps. The main lights are off, and the sanctuary alight with the inviting glow of flickering candles. Accompanied by two bridesmaids, my sister and Clare, it is an elegant understatement in comparison to the flamboyant circus weddings which would become increasingly popular in the following years. No detail was missed in the painstaking planning, and the effect is an intimate, romantic and somber event.
Complete with a cathedral length veil, trailing some five feet behind me, carrying a lush arrangement of deep red roses, the chapel length train of my ivory taffeta a-line princess style gown sweeps the floor as I approach the altar. The sounds of Pachabel fade, expertly stilled by a final stroke of the violinist's bow. Gregory is not crying, a trend which has seemed to gain popularity in recent years. Instead, his face is an intense and stoic mixture of admiration, awe and sobriety. There is the traditional lighting of the Unity Candle, accompanied by a soloist, whose velvety voice commands a reverent audience. There is an exchange of monogrammed handkerchiefs, briefly blessed and anointed with oil by both ministers present, my father, and the co-officiate. This, an idea of my own, is inspired by the apostle’s ancient practice of anointing healing cloths with oil. A reading from "Idylls of the King," the excerpt taken from "The Coming of Arthur," imbues the ceremony with romance and legend. I have grown up under the rainbow of wedding readings from Corinthians ... "Though I have the tongues of angels," and am determined for my wedding to bear its own significance. Her voice softly spills into the audience, and the words embody our love, my gift to Gregory. My very own King Arthur, humble, unassuming, a king disguised among men.
"And Arthur yet had done no deed of arms,
But heard the call, and came: and Guinevere
Stood by the castle walls to watch him pass;
But since he neither wore on helm or shield
The golden symbol of his kinglihood
But rode a simple knight among his knights,
And many of these in richer arms than he,
She saw him not, or marked not, if she saw
One among many, though his face was bare.
But Arthur, looking downward as he passed
Felt the light of her eyes as he passed,
Smite on the sudden, yet rode on,
And pitched his tents beside the forest. Then he drave
The heathen, after slew the beast, and felled
The forest, letting in the sun, and made
Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight
And so returned."
He searches my eyes, his vows delivered with heavy sincerity, each word lingering momentarily amid the glow of the candles. He holds my hand in his warm, dry palm. He is completely sure of himself and of this moment. He is not smiling, nor trembling. He is neither anxious nor elated. His steady gaze is purposeful and intimate. My own voice follows and it feels like a whisper, registering somewhere in mid-air, the words floating in a soft chain of promises. I do not feel nervous, and am concerned that I do not feel so. I am strangely disassociated from the moment and wonder if this is how it is supposed to feel. It seems as though I am stifling a girlish giggle under his serious gaze, yet I am committed to delivering my vows with elegance. Our kiss is modest, and even so, the entire congregation erupts in cheers and applause. Amid the whistling and smiles, a throng of well-wishers on either side, I am Lady Guinevere as she is welcomed into Camelot, as Arthur's bride.

***
I am curling my hair, and he steals his arm around my waist, ducking his face next to mine, and smiling at me in the mirror. "Now this is a picture," he says, admiring our early morning reflections in the wrought-iron framed mirror on the wall. I smile obligingly, humoring him. The kiss embargo is reaping its intended results. It has been a pleasant two weeks. The daily garbage mysteriously disappears, without request. Toast crumbs are wiped from the countertop. Miraculously, dirty laundry migrates from its usual dumping ground on the bathroom floor to the hamper in the bedroom closet. In the place of what I have referred to over the years as a "trail of tears," I find that Gregory has embarked on a series of small endeavors to lighten my housekeeping burden. It is no filet mignon dinner, complete with kitchen recovery, but it is something.
My back is beginning to protest sleeping on the couch, though, and I'm not sure of when I would like to rejoin him in our bed. We will make love soon, but I will retire in the living room, the impact of what is occurring in our marriage solidified. Without kissing, without closeness, the sex act is used to further my cause, rather than to narrow the gap of emotional space. It is a distance that can be measured by all that is absent in our marriage. Space that he will find a way to fill or it will remain open for someone else to do so. I will no longer strive to fill this space with false cheer, idle banter, make-believe smiles. It is his turn to bridge happiness. It his time to fulfill promises. And if he does not, he stands to lose everything. I am prepared for this.
I know that we will not divorce. We are a tangled family, our vines inseparable. We have tried to extricate ourselves over the years, tugging at our individual vines, attempting to free them, and the remaining small vines contract, pulling us back together into a tighter unit, the closeness affording security for the children, strangling me under his grasp. We can only thrive as a unit and there is no alternative. The loss that threatens him is my love. I will remain his wife, fulfilling my duties, and he will continue to fulfill his, until the time should come that I will be free to find love again. Meals will be made, laundry will be done, appointments scheduled and kept. We will love each other through our children, but in time he will realize there is a place where I used to love him, and he will be unable to find his way through the maze my heart has become.
"Your mother will always tell you the truth," he instructs Sam. "You can trust her no matter what." Sam is arriving at the tender age where he understands there is a world larger than what he has known, but he is not yet old enough to understand its evils. Gregory sits him down to discuss an element of social disturbance that he was introduced to on the school bus. Somehow, Gregory shifts the conversation in a direction to afford me high praise. It does not seem to entirely fit the context, but I hear him boasting of my character, merit and motherly love. It is a far cry from the day he stood before Sam and I, and coldly stated, "Your mother is ignorant, Sam," unable to reconcile himself to the fact that we share entirely different political opinions, an often enough argument between us. Yet, here he is today, two weeks into the embargo, boasting of my integrity, love, and honesty. It is about time, I think. I will take it.
The common understanding is that respect is earned. I disagree. Sometimes it is taken. With men like Gregory, it takes a force greater than his ego and pride to possess what is rightfully yours. I no longer care to lay claim to his heart, but he will, most definitely will, respect the woman that I am, and always was. I wage this invisible war on feminine ground, a turf he is completely inept at scaling. And I take by silent force what is mine. I put the finishing touches on my loose hair, brush it over my shoulder, smile pleasantly, tapping his arm, and slip my bare feet into a sexy pair of open-toes patent heels.

***
While we wait for Sam's and Maggie's voices to drop off, and for Tessa to wriggle herself into a self-induced slumber, we sit on the couch talking. I am wearing his flannel shirt, facing him. Our conversation turns toward current events and the disparity of opinion prompts him into a rigid position, his back straight and tense. I giggle girlishly, and wrap my bare legs around his waist, tickling his side with my toes. He squirms, and then surrenders, shoulders loose. I can see he wants to smile, but he is smothering it under a pseudo stern gaze. I unbuckle his belt and in a fluid movement slide it out, doubling it over in my hands.
"What are you doing?" He asks, trying not to appear overly interested. I snap it, smiling. "Got to lasso me a man." I stand up, sliding out of the flannel shirt as it melts into tempting puddle around my ankles, wrap the belt around his waist and turn him toward the bedroom. It is harder this time as he folds into me, and I welcome his touch. He reaches for my lips and I cannot avoid him. I bite his lower lip and hold it between my teeth until the moment passes. We go slowly, and I do not wonder what it would be like with Nick. I am lost in Gregory, unyielding to his kiss, but nevertheless, his.
It was years ago that another man would sneak into our bedroom. I was not one to imagine making love to someone else. I was interested only in being Gregory's wife, body and soul. I would turn away when women would drool over Hollywood stars, crudely discuss intimate details of their lovers, or worse, being themselves married, ogle other men and openly admit their shameful desires. "I'm married, not dead," one co-worker laughed. I remained silent, feeling completely alive in my desire for Gregory. I found our relationship to be fulfilling, and knew the lengths he took to work toward my comfort and satisfaction. Nate was a thief in many ways, and it would happen that a few years into our marriage, as we would make love, without warning, Nate's face would flash behind my closed eyes, and the tears spill down my face. Was this my heart breaking, over and over? Would I ever move past this empty well, surviving on the slow trickle of water seeping through the rock. Always wondering how it would feel to be full?
I do not think of Nate tonight. I have not thought of him for months. My only concern is wielding the desire of my husband, searching for the truths that brought us together, and evolving into a woman he could only imagine being married to. Like discarded clothing, I am retrieving pieces of myself that once redressed, will cover my nakedness, and complete me. I have been stripped far too long, and ashamed of whom I have become.
Gregory slips into his boxers and I lay naked on the bed for a few moments before slipping into the hot shower. I join him minutes later in the living room. He is playing a game on the computer and I pop in a "Friends" DVD. We take turns laughing at our favorite scenes, ones that we have laughed at for more than a decade, and the sound of Gregory's chuckle is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.
I do not join him in the bedroom. I am waiting to be asked.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
It had arrived after five o'clock. There was a short knock on the door heralding its deposit followed by a careful thud. "It's Sam's crib!" I announce excitedly. Gregory is back within moments, lugging the massive box up the stairs to the loft bedroom. We have just found out that we are having a boy, and after a brief few days of bleeding at ten weeks, we are confident that at five months it is safe to decorate the nursery. I had expected that I would need to both nudge and urge Gregory to assemble the crib. I had visions of being weeks from delivery, a dresser packed with little outfits, stuffed animals looking for a home, and a four foot cardboard box plopped in the middle of the bedroom. To my surprise, he immediately begins to remove the heavy mahogany pieces, and within minutes the floor is cluttered with popcorn packaging, shrink wrap, torn cardboard, small packages of nuts and bolts, and dozens of chunks of wood.
It is an ambitious choice. A gorgeous mahogany sleigh crib, both the headboard and footboard curling into a grand Victorian sleigh look-a-like. It would be replaced years later with a simple vintage style solid blonde oak crib for Maggie, complete with ivory and black French toile bedding, and later a confident white crib for Tessa, its tall curved back resting against the wall, clouds of pink tulle woven through the rails.
He toils for several hours, meticulously working the nuts and bolts, carefully aligning the wood. "It's a beautiful crib," he says, complimenting my choice. Finally, around nine o'clock, it is finished. We admire it together, unable to imagine the joy and strain that a child will bring. We are about to journey into the great unknown, me with my list of "must-haves" that I downloaded from a baby website, and him with his paperback copy of Dr. Spock that he has read cover to cover. Nothing prepares you for the moment you will hold a slippery newborn in your hands, giving him his first bath, or for the first diaper you change when pee squirts at you with such ferocity that you yell for your husband to come to your aid. Together, you will wrangle a new diaper on the squalling baby, sliding its tiny body parts into sleeves and bottoms that are much too long for his balled fists and tightly curled legs.
It would be different with Maggie and Tessa, whose cribs I would assemble myself for the sake of time and convenience, and whose diapers I would slap on with quick and precise accuracy, whose mouths I would squeeze open to insert the medicine dropper, depositing all of its contents into the pockets of their rebellious cheeks. I would come to know the tell-tale signs of an ear infection, and I would learn to live and thrive on less than eight hours of sleep every night, seven nights a week. I would come to understand that there is no such thing a weekend anymore. That each day blends into the next without discretion or favor. That a Monday could be the best day all week, and that a Saturday could be a day of walk-in sick visits, grocery shopping, laundry, and cleaning. It could also be a trip to a zoo, but more often than not, anything that I had known as recreation would dissolve into a non-stop flurry of chores, sun up to sun down.
As my hand caresses the curve of the headboard and I wonder what our baby boy will look like tucked inside the ivory eyelet bedding set, I am completely unaware of the ways in which my life will change forever. I do not know that I will lose myself in motherhood, and that this loss of self will slowly in turn, begin to unravel my marriage, as happiness eludes me, and discontent grows like a cancer in my spirit. Gregory sips soda from a thick glass mug, satisfied with his work. He joins me momentarily in the nursery, plants a kiss on the top of my head, and pats my back. "Soon," he says softly, and we turn off the light.