What's Mine and Yours(99)
It was different than he’d imagined. Sloppier, wetter, more exhilarating. He had thought he would be scared. He had thought he might feel guilty, dirty, the way he did when he watched his videos and was swallowed up by desire he knew he shouldn’t have. What he felt instead was clear, sure. He felt himself liquefy. He hung his hands around her neck. She looped her arms around his chest. They were close, closer. He opened his mouth, and she opened hers, and Gee tried to transmit everything he had ever felt, everything he was feeling now, with his tongue, his mind. He sent her missives and hoped that she could hear. You are beautiful, he said, and I want you. Forever, he said. I am yours.
17
February 2020
The Piedmont, North Carolina
Alma wore a pink gown, a tiny veil that sliced across her eyes. Her hair gleamed even redder than usual in the glow of dusk, the barn doors flung open despite the cold, so the guests could see the golden sky over the fields of the farm.
Her shoulders were bare under a knit cape, her cheeks and lips bronze, and Diane waited for her at the front, with her sisters, and their dog Princess, who wore a pink bow tie for the occasion. The guests turned to watch Alma with an attention they hadn’t for Diane, but Diane couldn’t begrudge them. She felt glorious simply to be the one waiting for Alma, and she knew she looked good in a simple white dress, cut to her knees. She blended in with her sisters, also in white. Noelle wore a dress to her ankles, and she held Baby Agnes, outfitted in white lace, on one hip. Margarita wore a dress that looked like a white dressing robe, cut low in the front, barely covering her thighs, tied at the waist with an enormous sash. They had never looked so much alike, the three of them, and they had marveled at how kindred they looked as they posed for pictures before the ceremony, in front of the barn. They had never been the kind of sisters complimented for their similarities; some had even said they looked as if they’d been born of different parents. But in the light, in their white clothes, they were indisputably born of the same blood.
It had been the first great joy of the day—posing with her sisters—feeling gathered between them. She held her niece for a few of the pictures, Baby Agnes cupping her hands around the curls of her hair. Alma’s grandmother was a hairdresser, and she had brought her entire kit with her from the Bronx. She had done all the sisters’ hair, and Alma’s too, that morning in their little house, while they all drank coffee and fretted about the time. Margarita had switched between recording them on her phone, doing makeup, and volunteering to lead the group in a collective breathing exercise.
The second, greater joy was now, watching Alma parade toward her, the tulips in her hand so violently pink they seemed to be aflame. It was a small wedding, no more than seventy people assembled in the barn, and they would all help to rearrange the chairs and set up the dance floor before the reception began.
Lacey May and Hank sat in the front row, Lacey May in a white skirt suit and her new auburn hair. Hank wore a blazer. When the pastor asked who gave Diane in marriage, it was the two of them who stood, and Diane could see Hank was crying. She blew him a kiss, and he waved his soggy handkerchief at her.
She and Alma held hands during the short sermon about faithfulness and trust, the need for mercy in every bond, especially marriage. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do, the pastor said. There was a reading of a poem that Alma loved, and then they exchanged rings and made their vows. They were promises the women had already made and kept for years, but to say it all out loud, in public, tipped Diane into rapture. She kissed Alma, drew her body close; the dog wedged its nose between their knees.
The party started, and they danced to nineties hip-hop and romantic salsa, “Wagon Wheel” for the North Carolinians. Alma and Diane fed each other slices of the vanilla-and-rose pink cake. They tossed their bouquets. Margarita and Noelle gave speeches, Hank spun a spindly Lacey May around the oak dance floor, and the dog barked whenever the music got too loud. Diane and Alma didn’t bother dancing with anyone else, although Diane wasn’t particularly good, especially not at the salsa. Alma steered her around the room. They nestled their heads together and cooed over Baby Agnes, the pretty lanterns hung from the beams of the ceiling. They didn’t mention Robbie, how he’d never checked into the motel room they had reserved for him, hadn’t called. For once, Diane didn’t worry he was dead—he was simply elsewhere, himself.
The closest Diane came to mentioning his absence was when she whispered into Alma’s ear, “Tonight is better than it has any right to be,” and Alma had furrowed her eyebrows and said, “What are you talking about? We’ve got every right.”
They hadn’t created a seating plan, so Nelson sat himself with the staff of the doggie day care. They spent their time pummeling bourbon and saying things like I always knew, and they look so natural together about Alma and Diane. They asked Nelson how he knew the couple, and he was honest, explained that Noelle was his ex-wife. They glanced at Baby Agnes, her fair skin and inexplicable red hair, and pieced together that things had ended badly. They pretended to be interested in his work and asked him whether he ever shot weddings, and when he said he wasn’t that kind of photographer, they turned their attention away. Nelson finished one glass of wine and then another, did his best to look preoccupied by his plate of shrimp and grits, instead of Noelle.
She had a soft paunch of a belly visible through the drape of her dress. Her skin was buffed from all her time at the shore, her hair even paler, teased into a high, stiff knot on the top of her head. The little girl made the rounds from her aunts’ arms to Inéz, Noelle’s old college best friend, who had accompanied her, it seemed, as a plus-one. She and Nelson had stood together in the food line, and she had been civil but cold. It was clear to him that they had lost any bond they once had; Inéz was solid in her fealty to Noelle. Although he’d never felt particularly strongly about her, he had known Inéz long enough that he’d assumed she’d be a fixture in his life: someone he’d see periodically at birthdays and holidays and, someday, funerals. It was disorienting to see she was a stranger to him now.