Chapter Twenty-four

A HORSE AND CARRIAGE and a driver in her top hat waited outside the New Hope courthouse. It was parked here on weekdays, in the hope that there might be newlyweds and they might want a ride. Paula had grown up feeding the horse, and they’d already decided to ride the carriage to the Logan Inn after the ceremony.

It was a warm November morning in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Charlie was comfortable in his suit; he only needed it and a cashmere Burberry’s scarf that had been Jee-Jee’s, one of many hand-me-down wedding gifts that had been bestowed on them by the Greens. A weathered (but still intact) set of Louis Vuitton luggage. A fur stole for Paula.

They’d decided to limit today’s festivities to two witnesses, Rose Green and Mrs. Henderson, and have a real celebration with family in the summer after the baby arrived. Charlie and Paula had slept separately the night before, Charlie at the Logan Inn, in their wedding room. A restless night atop the sheets. He’d expected to be hungover on the morning of his wedding. That was always the story he told himself. After being at a bar in New York with John. So many toasts. So much advice. Champagne deep into the night. Instead, he’d had orange juice and a burger in his room and watched The Honeymooners: the brassy big-band intro while fireworks go off in the background; the camera panning up to a starry night; Jackie Gleason’s face, superimposed on the moon. Charlie could barely keep his eyes open while he watched a live audience on a Saturday night in 1955 applaud Norton’s entrance.

“They think he is a fool, Charl, but Norton? He is the wisest of them all,” Jee-Jee had said. “In fact, he reminds me of you. A skinny genius. A true compliment, no?”

Charlie watched the good-natured sewer worker with vaudevillian elbows yell for his best friend to come out: “Ralphie boy!”

While Norton waits, he looks at his watch, puts it to his ear, frowns, then bangs it once, just so, against the breakfast table. He puts it back up to his ear, turns to the camera, and smiles.

Jackie Gleason was probably grabbing a drink, thought Charlie, and Norton was forced to improvise.

People can be so selfish. I hope my mom isn’t drunk tomorrow.

*

Charlie waited across from the courthouse, red and yellow leaves drifting over his new shoes. Now would be a good time to be a smoker, he thought, watching a guy in a jean jacket light up in the distance. The guy looked Charlie’s way, then darted into an antiques store. The shopkeeper won’t like that. He and his cigarette will be out in no time—but even after many minutes, nothing. Smokers have all the luck, he thought, stamping out a pretend cigarette. I want to see my wife-to-be. I hope she shows.

Paula had bought a new white dress for the occasion, not a wedding dress, just a white dress. When she tried it on for him, she looked more like an old-fashioned nurse than a bride. It fit so cleanly over her imperceptibly swollen belly.

I need to unzip that dress soon, he thought, though John had said that wedding night sex was the most overrated sex a man could have. “No drama. Might as well go right to the room service menu and pay-per-view.”

Charlie wasn’t sure what they would do with the hours in between the courthouse and bedtime. Paula didn’t want a photographer, or a big lunch. The flowers came from Mrs. Henderson’s garden. The dress she paid for on her own. They’d considered spending the day looking for a house to rent, but the Realtor refused to bother them on their special day.

“We could get drunk and have day sex,” Charlie had suggested on the phone, the night before.

“Maybe,” said Paula. “Don’t worry. You’re definitely getting lucky.”

“Not too much drama there.”

“I’m tired of drama, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“You are showing up tomorrow, right?” she asked.

He’d said Of course, but she had her doubts. Her mother said it was fifty-fifty, as it is at all weddings. So Paula called Tommy in an irrational panic. She told him to wait by the phone the next morning, in case she got jilted and needed his chest to cry on.

“I’ll help you bring up the baby, if the gent doesn’t do right by you,” Tommy had said.

In the morning, she came to her senses and tried to call him, to tell him not to worry, but there was no answer. While Mrs. Henderson brushed her hair, she left a message on his machine: “Listen, Tommy, I overreacted last night. I just—I know you, and I really hope you don’t do anything rash. I feel guilty enough that you came over for coffee. I love Charlie, and I know he loves me.”

He’d begged for the coffee date, a chance to apologize. Some closure. So while Charlie was in Philly, shopping for a suit, they met in Mrs. Henderson’s noontime living room, the emptiest room in the world; against open windows, gossamer curtains sounded like sailboats a million miles away. The scene suited Tommy, who’d sobered up, lost his muscles, broken things off with Iñez. He’d seemed refreshingly mortal to Paula. Gentle, like an old, sweet Irishman slurping his tea through missing teeth. But after hanging up the phone on her wedding morning, Paula was sure he was skulking nearby. Drunk, chain-smoking, dangerous.

“Mom, if you see Tommy, don’t be all flirty. Tell him he has to go.”

“I don’t flirt, Paula.”

“I’m serious.”

*

The wedding chapel was a converted courtroom. Streamers and plastic flowers lined the aisle, whose carpet was fifty years removed from showing its pattern. And all of that bunting from an ancient Fourth of July. Mrs. Henderson blubbered in the front row, while Rose sat a few rows back. She said it was to give her camera better perspective, but Charlie saw something in her purse: a plastic bottle of Tropicana orange juice that was no doubt a stiff screwdriver. After a slug, he saw his mother’s face. The human face can’t suppress a booze cringe.

Charlie’s voice didn’t crack when he said I do, and their kiss was as tender as the very first one. Man and wife. Nothing ever sounded better to Charlie. He wanted to carry his wife to the inn, throw her on the bed, and rip off her dress.

“This is amazing,” he said to Paula as they ran down the aisle, then down the stairs.

“Husband,” she yelled in the stairwell.

“Wife,” Charlie yelled back.

They could hear their mothers’ applause trailing them down the stairs.

“Screw it,” said Charlie. “We should really celebrate. Let’s take the horse and buggy to New York.” He slapped open the courthouse doors and raced down the steps. There, holding the bridle, wasn’t the Dickensian costumed woman, but Tommy.

“You got a nice steed here, Paula,” said Tommy, lipping a cigarette.

“What is he doing here?” asked Charlie.

“He’s doing nothing,” said Paula.

“Looks like I’m too late,” said Tommy. “Ah, well. Take good care of her, gent.” He dropped his cigarette dangerously close to a hoof, then lit another. “Was up all night. Guess I’ll be a day boarder and sleep it off. Enjoy the nuptial bliss.”

“I left a message that you shouldn’t be here, Tommy,” said Paula, hugging her new husband from behind. Tommy popped the collar of his jean jacket and jogged down Main Street, lipping his cigarette.

“Even on her wedding day, they’re still lining up,” said Mrs. Henderson, who had just come outside with Charlie’s mother.

“You handled that well, Charlie Bear,” said Rose.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Which was the right thing to do.”

“I defeated him, and he still shows up? That’s not fair. And how did he know it was today?”

“We’ll talk later,” said Paula.

“I have to live with that memory forever.”

“Charlie Bear, just enjoy the moment,” said Rose, closing her eyes and inhaling the air. “You can really smell the river in the air. Just like the Seine.”

“This isn’t the Seine, Mom.”

“All rivers are sisters, sweetheart.”

She’s buzzed, thought Charlie. Probably started around nine this morning.

“Tommy looked like he lost some weight,” said Mrs. Henderson. “It suited him.”

“Jesus,” said Charlie. “I can’t believe we’re talking about him on our wedding day.”

“You have Paula,” said Mrs. Henderson. “Tommy doesn’t have much.”

“How did he know today was the day?” Charlie asked Paula.

“I called him. It’s a long, boring story. Let’s get in our carriage and go to the inn.”

“Listen to your wife, Charlie,” said Rose. “You’ll look back on this day and only remember the good.”

He wanted to sink her then and there, destroy her croissant-and-Chablis vision of the world. Call her an orange juice drunk and a senseless romantic, even if it meant taking his own old, romantic soul down with the ship. But he saw sadness in her eyes. He saw an old woman for the very first time, the whites of her eyes lubricated in pain, a hardened face connected by a network of tiny purple capillaries. The November daylight of New Hope was such an honest light. Not even Le Bon Marché makeup could hide her from it. She’d been a beautiful woman. All those nights with the two of them touching shoulders on the couch, luxuriating over black-and-white photos of young Paris Rose.

Charlie made a wish that his mother would never, not for a single moment, lose her 1950s joie de vivre even if it meant having always to drink her way back there.

“Listen, you two, said Mrs. Henderson, “Get in that buggy, go to the inn, make whoopie, and stop with all the Tommy nonsense. The two moms are going to Martine’s to tie one on and cry about our babies.”

The tears came early, as the moms watched the horse slowly pull its cargo down a carless Main Street. The clomping of hooves was the only sound in the air.

There was silence in the cab, too. While Paula clung tightly to Charlie, he couldn’t help but scour the streets for any sign of the Irishman.

*

In homage to their wild Plaza night, they ordered room service, two colonial wedding luncheon platters. Oxtail stew and pot roast, straight from the inn’s famous rathskeller, where Washington’s faithful drank and prayed in December 1776. History’s meat stunk up the wedding suite. They had to open all the windows.

“You realize that Tommy could be staying in this very building.”

“We could find out. I could ask him to go. He’ll listen to me.”

“I don’t want you speaking with him. Not ever again.”

“He’s just a friend. An old guy with lots of problems.”

“A friend? I have friends, too. Remember that frat party I told you about?”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to know. Did you have sex?”

“Define ‘sex.’”

“Gross. I’m going for a walk.”

“Wait. No. You can’t. Alone on your wedding day?”

“Who was she?”

“She’s a girl in my class. We were drunk, you were on the river cruise. Well, you were supposed to be on the river cruise. I’m sorry. We’ve both made mistakes.”

“I didn’t have oral sex with anyone.”

“We didn’t have oral sex or any sex. No, Paula, please don’t go.”

She slammed the door behind her so definitively that the slam subsumed its own echo. My wife sure knows how to slam doors, thought Charlie. My wife. He opened the door in the same spirit it had been closed and ran after her. He was prepared to run for miles, tackle Tommy, and carry her back across the threshold, but there she was in the lobby, slumped in a chair in her white dress.

“He’s not staying here,” said Paula. “And if he were, we’d go to another inn.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry I brought up my frat night.”

“If you ever cheat on me, I just don’t want to know. Lie, and lie well. And don’t cheat in New Hope. It’s a small town. Everyone’s slept with everyone, and bad news travels fast.”

“Have you slept with everyone?”

“I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. There’s really not a lot else to do here. So just don’t let me catch you.”

“Paula, I have zero interest—”

“Shh. Let’s go upstairs.”

They had soft, soundless afternoon sex in the woodsy room. It seemed more a demonstration of sex than sex itself. Two instructors teaching a class on the missionary position.

“Married sex,” said Charlie.

“It was cute.” She usually kissed him before disappearing into the bathroom but didn’t today.

“I don’t think I should wear my wedding dress all day,” she said over running water. “If you want to go to the rathskeller for a drink, I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m going to wait for you,” said Charlie. “We shouldn’t be apart today, not even for a second.”

There was no response. After a minute, Charlie got out of bed and pressed an ear to the door. “Are you all right?” he said, finally. “Are you crying? You miss him, don’t you?”

“I miss my mom,” she sobbed. “I miss my fairytale wedding. The soap in this bathroom is so tiny and skinny. Why did they even bother to wrap it?”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Charlie.

“Not the rathskeller. It smells like wet deer.”

“No. Fuck the rathskeller. Let’s have a real honeymoon, like my parents did. In Paris. At the George Cinq. It’s like the Plaza, but a million times better. My mom already offered us a honeymoon.”

The bathroom door opened to a bright face. “Paris?”

“I should have thought of it before, but you said you didn’t want to make a big deal out of this.”

“I know, but today I realized it is a big deal.”

“Let’s go find my mom. She’ll be well-buzzed and will write me a check.”

“We shouldn’t take advantage of her. We can save up and go in the summer.”

“She drank vodka at our ceremony. Paying for our honeymoon will help with her guilt, and besides, by the summer I’ll already have inherited my paintings. Our honeymoon should start tomorrow.”

“I need time to buy clothes. I have to go to Philly to buy Paris clothes.”

“Sweetheart, you buy Paris clothes in Paris.”

“Oh my God!” She jumped into Charlie’s arms. His knees buckled, but he held on. “I can’t wait to tell Mr. Frommer that I’m going to make it.”