My Charlie Manson (essay) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helen Mallon

MY CHARLIE MANSON

ur wedding was in a graveyard in

November darkness. I had recently turned eighteen, old enough to make hash of my life and do it legally, and my fiancée, Kemp, was forty-two. I wore light makeup and under a raincoat, my best dress of striped wool. My hair was long and straight, and my MaryJane style shoes were better suited to a little girl. I felt numb and disconnected, as if I were about to sign up after stumbling into in a meeting of bomb-assembling anarchists. I was also a little disappointed. It would have been festive to show off my dress, but the night was too chilly to take the raincoat off.

A brick wall surrounded the graveyard of Saint Peter ’ s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia ’ s Old City; it was the nearest thing we had to a park, given where Kemp and I were living in the city. I was worried that someone who belonged to the church would boot us off the property, even though Kemp said they ’d told him we could do anything on the premises, as long as it was legal and took place outside the church.

The absence of light at the wedding was due to a miscalculation. We ’d scheduled the ceremony for five p.m. We didn ’t realize—but how could my physicstrained fiancé not have realized?—that light fails early once autumn cold begins to shrivel the sycamore leaves.

I don ’t remember what Kemp wore that night, but he was a man who considered his coiffure. He bleached his dark hair brassy blond on the optimistic—but faulty—premise that if his hair were similar in color to his scalp, he could pass himself off as not-balding. The stringy combover rarely stayed put, but he had an appealing, little-boy grin and nice, agate-colored eyes. He was endlessly authoritative when relating my own passion, visual art, to his interest in science. He encouraged me even as he dictated the kind of painting I did. You ’ re an artist now, he said. Why wait till you ’ re twenty-one to call yourself one? From him I learned terms like sexual revolution and Renaissance man. Years later, I found out from a former student of Kemp ’ s that in the early days of our relationship, he pinned my panties to the wall of his apartment.

O

Nobody gave me away at the wedding. My father stayed away, but my mother showed up with an elderly friend for moral support. The aisle I walked down was the worn brick path on which 16 Kemp and I met the Ethical Culture minister. Mr. Smith was not exactly a believer, not Episcopalian, nor Quaker, as my family was, but the price he ’d quoted to do the ceremony must have been right because Kemp hired him.

Limes & Lemons by Todd Marrone © 2008