THE DAY BEFORE the wedding, my parents flew in from New York. This was the first time my father had met Gauguin, and he was determined to like him. After all, he would be family soon, and family was everything to my father. He had animal blood loyalty.
He gave Gauguin a strong handshake in the airport and then pulled him close and engulfed him in a big hug. “My son-in-law,” he said emotionally. “Now there will be another man in the family.”
When Gauguin was released, he said, “Why, hello, sir,” and his clothes fell back in place on his body.
“Nell, I’m starving.” My father turned to me. “Where’s a great restaurant?”
We went to the Lilac Room, the restaurant in my parent’s hotel in downtown Minneapolis.
“This is real fiddledeedee,” my mother said when the waiter served her a very small portion of salmon on a large white plate surrounded by eight peas and two small roasted potatoes. Fiddledeedee was a term my grandmother used. It meant acting fancy but serving so little food, you walked out starving. The walls of the Lilac Room were wood-paneled, and crystal water glasses sparkled on the table.
“Boy, does he fonfer,” my father said when the waiter walked away. This was another one of my grandmother’s expressions. It meant talking through your nose or putting on the dog.
My father looked down at his roast beef, shaved so thin you could see through it. “Nell, after we leave here, let’s stop someplace to eat.”
After we dropped my parents off, Gauguin said, “What was your parents’ problem? My family has always gone to the Lilac Room for birthdays and special occasions. I love that place.”
“Well, they’re used to Brooklyn. They like a lot of food. They like to eat,” I explained.
“We ate. I still don’t understand.”
“I think it’s cultural, that’s all.” I opened my window and breathed in the summer air. We stopped at the light. “Gauguin, tomorrow we’ll be married.” It felt like some completely unknown adventure. I could easily have said, “Tomorrow we’re going deep-sea diving.”
“Yeah,” Gauguin said, and reached across the car seat to take my hand.
The wedding was on a Sunday afternoon in Gauguin’s father’s back yard. Rita arrived that morning I hardly knew anyone at it except my parents and my sister. Anna couldn’t make it. Neither could Blue. My friends from the Elephant House sent us a photo of everyone standing in front of the house. The old lady from Boulder sent us a vase with a painting of a cat on it.
There were about thirty-five of us, including Gauguin’s parents and friends of Gauguin and his family. Camille, Rip’s mother, sent a telegram. We all stood in a circle outside in front of the judge.
I didn’t change my name. I figured I was born Nell Schwartz and should die Nell Schwartz. I ignored the fact that I had once been Banana Rose. Gauguin said it was fine with him that I didn’t take his last name. Gauguin planned to stay Gauguin, though it wasn’t his legal name.
He’d gotten the name Gauguin when he took an acid trip in the woods in northern Minnesota. For three hours he could not remember who he was. He’d stumbled past hundreds of birches. All of them were the same. He finally found the cabin where he was staying and bent down in the rearview mirror of his red truck. He thought he’d know his name if he saw his reflection, but there was no one in the mirror. He touched his face. He could feel it. He looked in the mirror again. There was no image; it was as though he didn’t exist. He jerked up frightened, and in the moment his head snapped back he realized he was everything. He looked around him: “I’m the pines, the bark, the needles, the sun on the needles. I’m this truck, this wheel—” He put his hand on the black rubber tread. Then he walked to the cabin porch and lifted his right foot to put it on the bottom step. He was the foot, the step, the screen door, the hand that pushed the screen door open. He felt the coolness of the cabin air inside; he was that, too, and he began to cry. He went to the sink and ran the cold water. He noticed, as though for the first time, that water was transparent. “I put my hand under it and opened my fingers and just looked at how my fingers moved.” He stared out the window over the sink, turned off the water, walked into the living room, and flopped on the big red chair in front of the fireplace. “There was nothing I wasn’t, and everything was magnificent.” He picked up a book of twentieth-century art on the coffee table and flipped the pages. The book fell open on page 212. There was a picture of a painting of Tahitian women. He took the leap from the artist to himself and spoke the words, “I-am-Gauguin.” It resonated. He said it again. “I am Gauguin.” That day he found his name.
My mother wore a violet silk dress to my wedding and was afraid she was too high style for the Midwest. A thin strip of woods separated Rip’s back yard from the highway. Every once in a while you could hear a semi rumble by. I wore a peach dress. In front of us on the grass were placed three white vases of carnations and tiger lilies. A breeze picked up just as the judge was about to speak, and a vase blew over. My parents took it as a signal for them to begin crying uncontrollably. My father, who is six feet tall and weighs 220 pounds, leaned on my tiny mother and wept inconsolably into her shoulder as though no one else were there.
“Edith,” he gasped, “our Nell is leaving us.”
“Wait, I have a tissue.” My mother opened the gold clasp of her small beaded purse and pulled out a white linen hanky, embroidered with a purple pansy. Mascara ran down her face. My father blew his nose as we all watched. They broke down into another spasm. Gauguin looked at me. I shrugged and turned my palms heavenward in supplication. My sister, Rita, bit the side of her lip. Gauguin’s parents had never seen anything like this.
“Hey, judge, you’re marrying the wrong couple,” Rip cracked out of the side of his mouth. “The show’s over here!” He nodded at my parents, who forced themselves to laugh and tried to control their hysterics for the next ten minutes.
It was a simple ceremony. We didn’t mention God. Mostly we weren’t sure who God was. Was He Jewish or Episcopalian? I actually believed “He” was a She. And what about Buddha? Our parents wouldn’t like Buddha. The day before the wedding, Gauguin and I had quickly written up what the judge would say. It was about love. That was firm ground. We were sure we loved each other.
As the judge spoke, a bluejay alighted on a branch of a poplar behind his head. My eye caught it and I missed some of what the judge was saying. I came back when I heard, “Nell, do you take this man to be your beloved husband?”
I snapped to. “Yes,” I said.
The judge turned to Gauguin. “Do you take this woman to be your cherished wife?”
“I do,” Gauguin said clearly.
Secretly, I wanted the marriage certificate to say, “Banana Rose and Gauguin were married on a July day.” Instead, it read, “Nell Schwartz and George Howard.” That startled me. Even Alice and Rip called him Gauguin. I’d known somewhere vaguely that Gauguin’s given name was George Howard. I had asked him once what it was when we were in a hammock in Talpa, but seeing it written I couldn’t connect it with the man I knew. Gauguin was always Gauguin, first and last. If you had wanted him to have a last name, it would have been Gauguin-Gauguin, as if to repeat the same name intensified his existence.
As soon as the ceremony was over, my parents fell into each other’s arms, crying again. When my father grabbed me for congratulations, he knocked out the fresh white gardenia I’d carefully pinned in my hair that morning.
In a photo of Rip and Gauguin taken the morning of the wedding, they are both facing the mirror and Rip’s arms are around his son’s neck. He is showing Gauguin how to knot a tie. You can see Rip’s freckled wrist reaching out of his blazer. Gauguin is concentrating very hard and Rip is smiling.
At the reception we ate fried chicken and potato salad that Alice had prepared. We had a three-tier chocolate wedding cake in my honor. There is a photo of Gauguin’s face close to the cake, licking the pinky that he’d just stuck in the chocolate icing. I am standing behind him, wanting my share.
In the middle of the reception, Gauguin and I snuck away for a short walk down the suburban street.
“You know your mother is really kind. She looks around to make sure everyone is comfortable,” he said to me. It felt as though we were both glittering. After all, this was our wedding day.
“Naa. She’s just nervous. She’s never been with so many non-Jews.” We laughed and put our arms around each other.
When we returned, there was a commotion on the patio. Rita had disappeared with the drummer from the four-piece band. My father found them behind the garage, passing a joint back and forth.
“How could you do such a thing? And at your sister’s wedding!” My father was beside himself. My mother was wringing her hands behind him.
Rita sauntered back onto the dance floor and began snapping her fingers, doing a wild, provocative dance to a Rolling Stones song the band played. All the wedding guests gathered around her to watch.
First my father was bug-eyed and furious, but then he relaxed when he saw that everyone was admiring her. “She sure can dance,” he said, proudly.
In the early evening, my parents asked me to call a cab. I went to the phone in Rip’s bedroom, and my mother followed.
“Now, Nell, please remember to eat well. Make him matzo ball soup. He’ll learn to like it. A capon is good. Go to a butcher.” She spoke to me as I sat on the bed and talked to the Yellow Cab dispatcher.
“Ma, I don’t know how to make matzo balls.” I hung up the phone receiver.
My mother gasped just as my father walked in. “Edith, what’s wrong?”
“How could we have let her marry? She can’t cook!” She turned to her husband and began to weep. “She’s just a little girl.”
They were in each other’s arms again.
My father broke down, too. “Do you remember when she was born? Our little Nell.”
“Mom, Dad, please.” I was wringing my hands.
Rip was at the door. “Hey, they’re at it again.”
Gauguin, Alice, and several of the guests crowded the doorway.
My father looked up, let out a chuckle, and said to my mother, “Edith, we’re being watched,” as he wiped tears from his cheeks.
My mother fluttered her hanky in the direction of the door. “Well, you caught us again. We tried to wait till we got back to the hotel.”
Everyone spilled into the bedroom. “Someone here must know how to make good matzo ball soup? Please teach Nell.” My mother looked beseechingly around the room. “I can’t believe her grandmother let her go away to college without knowing.”
Alice stepped forward. “Don’t worry. If it’s in a cookbook, I’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, thank you, Alice.” My mother hugged her. “Now I know I’m leaving Nell in good hands.”
The doorbell rang. Someone in the hall called, “Cab’s here!”
There was a flurry of activity as my mother’s shawl and purse, my father’s pipe and jacket were gathered up.
We all stood at the front door. “Take care of each other,” my father called out the open window of the departing taxi.
We all waved wildly.
I went back into the house and over to the food table. I nibbled at Alice’s chicken. I had been too nervous earlier in the day to eat anything. “Alice, you are a wonderful cook.” She was standing nearby, and I hugged her.
She stiffened. She hadn’t seemed to when my mother hugged her.
“Your parents are adorable. How long have they been together? They seem so compatible.”
“Oh, forever,” I said, licking my ringers and then reaching for a green grape. “No one in my family ever divorces.” Then I realized what I’d said. I looked at Alice. Her head was bent over, counting forks. “Alice.” I took her arm. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up and bit her lip.
“It’s okay,” she said, and just then I could see the lines under her eyes. I looked past her shoulder out to the patio where Rip was dancing with Caroline, one of Gauguin’s friends, who wore a low red dress.
“Thank you for all the wonderful food you made.” I attempted to hug her again, but she reached for the bread basket across the table.