The day of the wedding was clear and beautiful, a few vaporous clouds draped across the sky like streamers. You couldn’t have asked for better weather. The lake was as flat as a mirror. The boatshed lawn, where the bridesmaids in red were setting up chairs, smelled of hydrangeas and fresh-cut grass. The white chairs bisected by an aisle of lawn looked like snow.
At least they looked that way to the osprey, staring down from her nest. A trout moldered beneath her claws. Someone fussed with the microphone, testing to see if it worked, and an ungodly squeal pierced her ears. An eagle—or something that would eat an eagle. The osprey, afraid for her chicks, spread her wings over them.
Meanwhile, down the road at the Serenity Shore Cabins, where many of the guests were staying, people were throwing up. Norovirus had felled a third of the groom’s party. They sheltered inside, too ill to come out. The place was like an isolation ward. Guests lay on the floor with buckets or slept curled around the toilet between attacks. You could hear groaning through the windows, unspeakable sounds. Vacationers passing by the cabins on a lakeside stroll, oblivious to the nuptials down the road, had the impression of something evil—potentially even devil related—going on.
Charlie’s father, the source of all this despair, stood sheepishly on a stepladder, hanging paper lanterns from a fishing line strung between bamboo poles. He motioned to Garrett to join him on the lawn. The wedding would begin in an hour, and there was a general sense of looming disaster. Garrett had no choice but to assist. The bridesmaids setting up chairs kept their distance from Mr. Margolis; even though he’d recovered, there was a common feeling of wariness and distrust.
The Wedding Plague, as it had become known, had put a strain on the mingling of tribes.
Garrett, who might have nursed a desperate hope due to the wedding’s misfortunes if he hadn’t been sick himself, not with norovirus but with the sense that his life was ending, or about to end, felt only exhausted. He’d stayed at the hospital till one in the morning, needing to convince himself that his father wouldn’t die in the middle of the night, that this wasn’t the main event but only a preview. Then he’d lain in bed as usual, wondering for the umpteenth time if Cece had read his email. But of course she hadn’t read it. It was impossible. If she had, she would have told Charlie, who would have barred Garrett from the wedding. Certainly, at the very least, he would have found another officiant. Instead, when Garrett had called him yesterday from the hospital, half-terrified and explaining why he had to miss the rehearsal, Charlie was all kindness and concern, peppering Garrett with medical questions and asking whether there was anything he could do.
This would have been an opportune time to bow out of the wedding as well. After all, he had a pretty good excuse. But given that half the groomsmen were too sick to attend, Garrett hadn’t had the heart.
Needless to say, he still hadn’t come up with a speech for his opening words. He had no idea what he was going to say. He was convinced, as well, that everyone would know what was wrong, that the source of his misery was written across his face. The fact that he was wearing his father’s ill-fitting tux only made him feel more conspicuous.
“You’ve lost a button,” Mr. Margolis said, pointing at Garrett’s stomach. Sure enough, the tuxedo shirt had puckered open above the cummerbund, exposing a lune of skin.
“Shit,” Garrett said. He reached into his pants pocket, hoping by some miracle his dad had stuck a safety pin in there.
“Murphy’s Law,” Mr. Margolis said. “Nothing to be done.”
Garrett frowned. “Well, I’ll have to do something.”
“Nope. You look like a vagrant. Might as well accept your fate and wear it with pride.” It dawned on Garrett that Mr. Margolis was drunk. Not just a little drunk, either, but on his way to being soused. Perhaps the vilification of being a disease vector was too much for him. “Charlie’s having a bit of a meltdown. You know, his brothers are too sick to leave the cabin, and his friend Brigley isn’t doing much better.”
“Brig,” Garrett said.
“Have you met the bride?”
Garrett nodded.
“Lovely girl. Smart as hell too. Were you aware that she has strong feelings about adjectives?”
Garrett looked at him, speechless. He shook his head.
“I said I had an ‘earth-shattering’ headache, and she told me not to use the word lightly.” Mr. Margolis reached up to hang a lantern, teetering on the stepladder. “Apparently the earth has bigger problems than I do.”
Garrett helped Mr. Margolis move the ladder and then handed him up some more lanterns, unsure what to do with this information. He stared at the bridesmaids—he recognized them from Charlie’s bachelor party—as they told the caterers where to set up their stations. Despite the Wedding Plague and its discontents, they seemed to be in good spirits. When the caterers weren’t watching, one of them grabbed an hors d’oeuvre from a chafing dish, threw it into the air, and caught it deftly in her mouth. The other bridesmaids, ablaze in red dresses, clapped.
“I should go practice my opening remarks,” Garrett said.
Mr. Margolis studied him from the stepladder. “Ah yes, the minister. Of my namesake’s wedding.”
Garrett, inexplicably, gave him a thumbs-up.
“What words of wisdom will you impart?” he asked.
“Oh, you know. Your basic wisdoms.”
“Uh-oh,” Mr. Margolis said.
“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“On second thought, I urge you to get your button fixed. Or maybe find a new outfit entirely.”
Garrett agreed. He crossed the highway and went up to the house, hoping to bump into someone who could help him. How strange it was to step foot on the porch, knowing Cece was inside somewhere—that she might know how he felt about her. But of course she didn’t. The effect of Cece’s virtue, on Garrett, was profound. She’d read the second email he’d sent and then deleted the original, his confession of love, as he’d asked her to. Who else would have the moral strength to resist peeking at it? Certainly not Garrett himself. He was more in love with her than ever.
The screen door squealed when he opened it, but there was so much commotion inside that no one seemed to notice him. People—Mrs. Margolis, someone’s grandfather, a harried, fit-looking man who he could only imagine was Cece’s father—were rushing around the house, attending to mysterious tasks. Two caterers stood in the kitchen, shouting at each other. Garrett opened random drawers, unnoticed, searching for a safety pin. Aimlessly, he walked upstairs and ran into the groom, who was sitting at the top of the steps in his tuxedo shirt and no jacket. He had his sleeves rolled up, as if he were about to mow the lawn.
“Garrett!” Charlie said feebly. His sideburns were damp, and there were beads of sweat shining on his forehead.
“Are you all right?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Hey, it’s your big day. Feel happy.”
“I wish I could,” Charlie said.
Garrett felt a rush of anger. Wanted to clock Charlie in the face. If you’re going to marry this woman, hoard her monogamously for the rest of her life, then at least don’t be a wuss about it. “It’s natural to be nervous, right?”
“It’s not that,” Charlie said. “I feel sick. Like I’ve got the thing.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Don’t tell anyone! I don’t want Cece to find out!” He looked pale, his eyes darting around the room. “She’s already losing her shit.”
“I won’t,” Garrett said.
“It would ruin her entire wedding day.”
Garrett touched Charlie’s forehead, which was warm and sticky. He felt a wave of sympathy, keen and uncomplicated. He remembered the day they’d met, how he’d tackled Charlie in the snow to keep him from sliding into traffic and almost broken the guy’s arm. Charlie had never blamed him for it, or gotten angry when he’d had to quit the squash team, even though the stunt had been Garrett’s idea to begin with.
“You’re going to be fine. I bet it’s just nerves. Anyway, all you have to do is stand there.”
Charlie looked at him.
“Repeat after me,” Garrett said. “ ‘I’m getting married.’ ”
“I’m getting married,” Charlie mumbled.
“ ‘I’m getting the fuck married!’ ”
“I’m getting the fuck married!”
“That’s the spirit.”
He helped Charlie up, who seemed better once he was on his feet. He even laughed at Garrett’s shirt. He led Garrett into his father’s upstairs office, where they found a stapler sitting on the desk. Shakily, Charlie knelt on the floor and stapled Garrett’s shirt through the buttonhole so that the placket stood awning-like from his stomach, making him look pregnant. Charlie tried to bend the placket flat, but it sprang up again. He bit his lip, trying not to laugh.
“You don’t look so great yourself,” Charlie said, staring at Garrett’s face.
“That’s just my everyday appearance,” Garrett said.
“My comb’s in the bathroom—second door on the right—if you want to spruce up a bit.”
Charlie opened a drawer in his dad’s desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch, something with an unpronounceable name. It looked expensive. He uncorked the top and handed the bottle to Garrett, who took a swig. Wincing, Charlie closed his eyes and took a swig too.
“Thank god you’re here,” he said, slinging his free arm around Garrett’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Charlie left to finish getting dressed. Alone, Garrett sat down in front of a yellow legal pad that was sitting on Mr. Margolis’s desk, then grabbed a pen from a cup on the windowsill. He tried to summon at least one or two inspiring thoughts for his speech. He just needed a few words to get him started. Anything. Why had he never even begun? What was wrong with him? Why did he fail at everything he did—will himself to fail? In college, he used to write term papers in a single night, words spilling out of him faster than he could type. We’re gathered here to celebrate two remarkable people, Garrett wrote, then froze in place. He felt like he was composing his own obituary.
He grabbed the scotch out of the drawer and took a longer swig. He needed to take a leak. Dispirited, he got up and poked down the hallway, trying to remember his way around from Charlie’s bachelor party, and opened what he imagined was the door to the bathroom. But it was not the bathroom. It was a bedroom smelling of perfume, tense as a greenroom before a play; several women in red, the bridesmaids he’d seen outside, were gathered around a stranger in a wedding dress. Cece, sitting with her back to the door. So resplendent did she look, even from behind, that Garrett hadn’t recognized her. An elderly woman with a dimple on her chin—her grandmother?—stood nearby. One of the bridesmaids squatted in front of Cece, dabbing at her face with a tissue. The others all stared at Garrett, as if he’d walked into a church service. For a moment, confronted by this tableau of protective women—stern and hushed and emitting inscrutable tribal power, gathered around Cece as though guarding a fire that might go out—he was speechless.
Cece turned in her chair and noticed him for the first time, her face opening in surprise. Had she been crying? Her eyes were bloodshot, her makeup smeared. Seeing her lovely, tear-stained face, Garrett forgot where he was for a second—forgot that he was searching for a bathroom, or that he looked pregnant, or that he had a dying father in the hospital. Until that moment, Garrett had associated weddings with “Pachelbel’s Canon,” froufrou-looking cakes, maybe The Graduate. But he realized, all at once, that he’d completely misconstrued what they were about. They were about stopping time. They were about making the world conform, if only for a few hours, to the parameters of your desire, that secret part of you that sang out to perfection and rescued you from ordinary life.
What if the world had a dream, and it was miraculously about you?
And now Cece stared at him, in tears. A red rose floated in her hair. Who wouldn’t cry, with a third of the guests quarantined in their rooms? He wanted only to console her. It didn’t even matter who she was marrying. Garrett didn’t believe in a soul, at least in the ordinary sense, and yet something soul-like seemed to spring out of him—to strain toward this weeping bride, this human being, and because he was a human being too. He hadn’t felt this sort of thing in years. It was a strange feeling, like rejoining a flock.
Garrett took a step toward her, instinctively, and an extraordinary thing happened. She curled her lip at him; the tendons in her neck stiffened like cables. The effect was mesmerizing. She stood from her chair, baring her teeth like a cat. Then she raised her right hand and thrust it toward him, hooking the air with one finger, as if it were perched on the button of something. A spray can. “Pshhhhhhhhhhh!” she hissed, spraying the imaginary can in his face.