ABOUT FOUR SOMETHINGS & A SIXPENCE One wedding. Six participants. Be they sitting in the pews or standing at the altar, bearing witness in person or only in spirit, each of them knows something about the unsmiling bride. Go ahead—offer them a sixpence for their thoughts, and they'll make you these vows: One would love to declare this woman his “awfully wedded wife.” Verbatim. One fears what she already has and will have to hold—if not from this day forward, then soon. One takes her to be richer, not poorer—and for that reason wants to scrub the toilet with her toothbrush. One is better for what she told him this morning, worse for betraying a friend to get to this point. One worries whether today finds her in sickness or in health. And only one already knows—with certainty—that not even in death will they part. Whether they speak now or forever hold their peace, they all give the bride a little something she didn’t register for.
Something Old She steals a glance at me from the water-welled corners of those jade eyes. She ought to be concentrating on the priest’s instructions. I mean, this day certainly isn’t about me, after all… But she never could focus on any one person if they spoke for very long. “I’m visual, not auditory,” she’d say with her usual acute selfawareness. Now they’d call it ADD, but I used to call her “my little bundle of neuroses.” I never fully bought that her short attention span had anything to do with how she best processed her information; I could damn well see the five hamsters running on the wheels of her mind in different directions, but all running from the same direction of her, the epicenter of her own introspective universe. She holds the look for longer than I would have expected, considering she met my eye directly. I wish she would pay less attention to me and more on what we’re supposed to. But then again, neither am I. It’s only rehearsal, but I’m standing here at the altar steps, already trying to picture her in the white gown, the veil, painted up and polished like a store mannequin that looks vaguely like someone I knew once. Don’t get me wrong; I know she’ll look beautiful. Christ, she’ll be breathtaking. But, it won’t be like what they always say about brides, that their wedding day is when they’re at their prettiest. No way. She’s prettiest when she’s most natural; that’s her way. And I’m guessing it won’t be any different in marriage—she’ll take at least one weekend day to marinate in her own juices, sitting around in the sweatpants she slept in and not so much as changing her crusted panties. She’ll get ripe, that’s for sure; that’ll never change. But, just as certainly, she’ll never repel. When she otherwise confines herself in manners and grace, I swear those weekend days release her soul through those oily pores. She may make the effort to look the part for the outside world—refined, poised, clean. But indoors, she’s a primal one. No question about that. At least she was, when I could be privy to her privates. Getting used to going without that for a while hasn’t been the hard part, though. Not even close. Which is fine; it’s not the most important thing, blahblah-blah…my grown-up self does finally get that. I’d be lying as a man,
though, if I didn’t admit there are times I would give anything to feel her skin against mine, to share that again with each other. I wonder if after this whole circus of a day, she’ll even be giving of herself on the wedding night. Sex with her started out clumsy—but soft—those years ago, then became soft yet skillful, then became an outright ravaging as she bit and sucked with an insatiable fervor that finally matched my own. God, she got me in those days. I mean got me, to where I never even questioned that we’d end up getting married and skip along this pathway, soul mates for life. College kids, thinking we had a clue what love and commitment was. As if either of us has a clue now. Well, she might. She might very well. I look at her now as she finally does appear to listen to the priest, arching her back, trying too hard to look like she falls naturally into that elegant posture. Her spaghetti-strapped dress gives away that her shoulder blades keep readjusting, the muscles beneath that fresh spray-tan alternating between tensing and relaxing. My bet is tomorrow’s gown is going to give it away, too, though I guess the veil will hide it. My little faker. What she’s not faking are those tears, though. With amazing control, she hasn’t allowed even one to fall yet, with the command of a grade school teacher organizing her students at the door before recess. What I’ve never been able to interpret with tears, though, is whether they’re the happy ones or the sad ones. They always look sad, in my opinion. And if it were up to me, I’d say her expression right now looks fucking tragic, but her mouth is trembling between a pout and a smile. Only she could somehow do both at once. But I’m apparently the only one who could never tell the difference, so it was, therefore, always my fault. I’m the one who didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, so she glided ahead of me and my endless flaws, and I had to run until I could’ve choked up a lung to catch up. Can’t say I ever did. As she dances the choreography, passing the phantom bouquet to her sister (the Maid of Honor) then walking around toward the Virgin Mary statue, I watch her affecting that same arrogance of a house cat with her careful, measured steps. That little bitch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rumer Haven is probably the most social recluse you could ever meet. When she’s not babbling her fool head off among friends and family, she’s pacified with a good story that she’s reading, writing, or revising— or binge-watching something on Netflix. A former teacher hailing from Chicago, she presently lives in London with her husband. She made her authorial debut in 2014 with the novel Seven for a Secret, where historical fiction meets contemporary rom-com. Rumer has always had a penchant for the past and paranormal, which inspires her writing to explore dimensions of time, love, and the soul. www.rumerhaven.com @RumerHaven