Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Read online

  But Helen said: no. Helen said, and I quote, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this one covered.”

  Did I mention that I’m not known for my dancing?

  If it’s a slow dance, I look like a stick figure; if it’s a fast dance, I look like a yahoo—that’s how that song goes. I’ve never really minded this about myself before—OK, I’ve never really cared, at all—but I’ve also never been the center of attention like this before either; never been one of the only two people dancing in front of a crowd of over a hundred. So as I walk with Helen on my arm toward the dance floor, faking a confidence I don’t feel, all I can think is: This cannot end well.

  We hit the inside edge of the parquet floor, I hear the beginning strains of some music that sounds vaguely familiar but that in my state of abject terror I can’t place, and Helen stops me. “Stay right there,” she whispers, and, “don’t worry, I’ve got this covered.”

  Why does she keep saying that? Now I’m really worried. What does she have covered?

  She extracts her hand from my arm, strides across the dance floor, meets up with her Matron of Honor, Aunt Alfresca, who produces two Mets caps from I don’t even know where.

  Helen studies the two caps and, deciding something, tosses the larger of the two across the dance floor. I may still be terrified, add to that confused, but if someone throws even remotely well and gets the flying object at least in my vicinity, I can catch it, which I do. I shag that Mets cap one handed and raise a quizzical brow in Helen’s general direction.

  She mimes putting a cap on her head and I think: Seriously? We’re gonna get our hair messed up? But, didn’t we like pay extra to look good today? Still, if that’s what she wants…

  I slap the cap on my head, wait to see what she’s got planned for me next.

  The band’s getting louder, the music jazzy like something you’d hear in a strip club as Helen slaps a Mets cap on her own head, right over the Juliet cap so the veil’s flowing out from under the Mets cap now. Then she bends her knees, snapping her fingers and jiggling her shoulders as she—there’s no other word for it—shimmies across the dance floor toward me. When she’s halfway across, I realize where I know this song from because I know the words to this part: Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don’t care if…

  Oh. My. God. She’s doing an erotic shimmy dance in my direction to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I love this woman!

  As she reaches me, she gives one last raunchy shimmy before falling into my arms—it can’t have been easy dancing like that in those delicate high-heeled satin wedding shoes—and as I hold her close, I think that I don’t care if I look like a stick figure or a yahoo at all because the song has it exactly right:

  I don’t care if I never get back.

  So, yeah, we decided on the chicken.

  Last year, when we met, I was a pescatarian. It was for philosophical reasons but somewhere along the line I realized I was being hypocritical, so I’m back to eating everything. But who knows? That could change again at some point. People do change, in this life, if only occasionally.

  When it came time to pick out the wedding meal, we were thinking: Shrimp? Prime rib? But one of Helen’s brothers is deathly allergic to shellfish, Big John’s cholesterol is high and yet he can never resist meat if it’s an option, so. Anyway, like Helen said, if people are coming for the food, they’re coming for the wrong reason, right?

  So we went with the chicken.

  “Good chicken,” she says to me now, forking another bite into her mouth. How sexy is that?

  “I know, right?” I say.

  “I heard the Mets won earlier today,” she says.

  “You heard that too?” This is shaping up to be some great day.

  Then there’s the tinkling of silverware against glass and on the other side of Helen, I see Big John forcing himself to his feet. Sometimes he can still stand for brief periods of time but it’s never easy. I told him no one’d care if he gave his toast sitting down but when Big John gets something into his head…

  I’ve given so many toasts at other people’s weddings—ten, to be exact, including Big John’s—and I’ve always wondered what it would be like when it was my turn to be toasted, not ever really believing that that day would come.

  And yet now, here we are.

  “What a day,” Big John says with a shake of the head like he can’t quite believe it—him and me both. “What a day.” Another head shake. “Hey, how about those Mets?”

  The crowd laughs, most people clap but a few don’t. What—do we have some Yankees and Red Sox fans in here? The mind reels.

  “In all seriousness,” Big John goes on, “you have no idea how happy I am to be here because I never thought I’d live to see this day. Johnny was always such a great kid and then he grew up to be—well, really—the finest man I know. Still, I never thought he’d…” Big John pauses, let’s the silence sit. “Still, here we are. And if Johnny’d been a girl, I couldn’t ask for no better daughter than for him to’ve been just like Helen.”

  OK, so that part where he supposes me being a daughter is a little odd, but I can’t expect everyone to give the kinds of toasts I give—and at least he didn’t hijack my toast to propose to someone else like I did at Frankie and Mary Agnes’s wedding, so there is that. Plus, that tear in his eye is killing me.

  Big John raises his glass and chokes out the words, “To Helen and Johnny.”

  Everyone drinks, but as Big John resumes his seat, I hear a rustle to the left of me and I see Aunt Alfresca rise from her seat, glass in hand.

  Oh geez. As Dorothy Parker used to say: What fresh hell is this?

  I know that sometimes in addition to the Best Man, the Maid or Matron of Honor also makes a toast—hey, I’ve been to a lot of weddings! Plus, before my own, Alice made me read a wedding etiquette guide. Still, I didn’t anticipate this. What can Aunt Alfresca possibly be planning to say? Let me see if I can imagine it…“Dear Dearly Assembled, we are gathered here today and I am here to inform you, that on the day of his birth, my nephew—who’s also now my stepson—killed his mother, aka my sister.”

  Yeah, that oughta do it. That oughta put everyone in the mood to do “The Chicken Dance.” How does that go again? I don’t wanna be a chicken, I don’t wanna be a duck, but what the fuck? Story of my life, even on my wedding day.

  “Helen.” Aunt Alfresca raises her glass in Helen’s direction. “My husband’s right: You’d make a fine daughter and you will make one.” She waves the glass around until she has me in its sights. “And Johnny.”

  Oh, great. Now she’s going to say how my mother really wanted a daughter and how that’s what killed her: my maleness. Maybe she’ll even start throwing the word penis around—wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Johnny.”

  Wait a second. Are those tears spilling over the lower lids of Aunt Alfresca’s eyes?

  “Your mother,” she says in a husky voice, “would be so proud of you.” She pauses before adding fiercely, “I am so proud of you.”

  Well, crap.

  Now I got tears spilling out of my eyes too.

  If Aunt Alfresca and me have ever hugged before I sure don’t remember it. But we hug now, hard.

  The troops’ve all been fed, Helen and her dad did the father-and-daughter dance—so beautiful—and now the floor’s open for dancing and everyone’s going at it. Well, except for Big John, who kind of cha-cha-chas from his wheelchair. In fact, the whole bridal party is doing a kind of cross-pollinated dance at this point: Big John dancing with Carla, Sam with Aunt Alfresca, and Billy with Helen. That leaves me with…

  “So,” Alice says wryly, “I guess it’s us?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess,” I say. “Or we could, you know, just sit or find something else to eat, if you’d rather.”

  “I think I’d like to dance,” Alice says, holding her arms out to me.

  As I assume the position, I think of the last time we danced, at her wedding, and how she got mad
at me later on for hooking up with her cousin without knowing her cousin had any name other than Three Sheets, as in three sheets to the wind. Geez, I hope this ends better than that.

  “Look at them,” Alice says with a chin nod in the direction of Helen and Billy. “If this was their wedding day, Helen would now be Helen Keller.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty funny,” I say.

  Then I wonder if it really is funny and if Alice will give me grief for saying it is. The famous Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind. Did I really just make a Helen Keller joke at my own wedding? Am I really that un-PC? But wait, it was Alice who said it. Oh, crap. Now I’m confusing myself here.

  “And,” Alice goes on, apparently oblivious to my quandary, “if you and I had gotten married today, I’d be Alice Smith now.”

  It’s a good thing I didn’t just drink something because if I had it’d be flying out of my nose as I snort.

  “As if,” I say on the other side of the snort. “You’d never accept Smith as a last name. You’d say Alice Smith sounds too common.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so. Still, did you ever wonder…”

  I’m looking at Helen, dancing with Billy, and I’m wondering: Is that woman really my wife?

  “I’m sorry, Alice,” I say, “did you say something?”

  “I was just wondering if you ever wondered…” She stops, clearly irritated, which with Alice is something of a perpetual state, at least when it comes to me. “Never mind. You know you dance like a stick?”

  Yeah, well.

  Wait a second. Did I miss something here?

  So Helen and me are working the room.

  That’s what you do when you get married: you dance, you eat, you dance some more, and you make sure to talk to each and every one of your guests.

  See? Etiquette, right?

  We’re at the table with some of my old friends and their plus-ones: Drew, Matt—those kind of people.

  “Hey, Johnny,” Drew says, “we’re doing shots. Have a round with us.”

  “Thanks.” I hold up my hand. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “What?” Drew says. “You saving yourself for the wedding night?”

  The truth is, I am. Helen and I stopped having sex about three months ago because we wanted our first night as man and wife to feel like a big deal and I don’t want to show up with nothing to contribute. Hey, I read my Shakespeare in college. I know all about wine and its relationship to desire and performance. As a matter of fact, other than a few sips of Champagne to go along with the toasts, I’ve kept dry all night. I figure, hey, I can always get tanked on the honeymoon. But tonight is for us. Still, I sure don’t want to explain all that to these mooks. It’d be indelicate. So instead I just shrug.

  “Maybe later,” I say.

  “He’s smarter than you are,” Stacy says, punching Drew in the shoulder. “Remember how bad off you were on our wedding night?”

  “Yeah,” Drew says, “well, at least I wasn’t the one who spent the whole honeymoon in the crapper.”

  Ah, love.

  “Catch you guys later,” I say.

  Helen and I move on to the next table, which is all her work cronies. Steve Miller could be at my friends’ table but since he’s a lawyer he and his wife are here. I recognize JJ Trey and Monte Carlo. I was at a Yankees game with them the day I met Helen—long story; and was even jealous of Monte Carlo for a time—even longer story. Most of the table turns in our direction with big smiles as we approach because that’s what happens at weddings: the bride and groom get treated like royalty. So I do the Old Home Week thing with JJ and Monte, get introduced to a few others I’ve never met before. But there’s one guy—blond hair, kind of…Gatsby-ish, like in that old movie with Robert Redford—who’s sucking on an e-cigarette and who doesn’t even acknowledge me until I hold out my hand to him and say, “I’m Johnny Smith, Helen’s new husband. And you are…?”

  I kind of expect him to be thrilled to meet me because, well, like Sam’s always pointing out, other guys just love me.

  But he barely shakes my hand as he says, “Ah yes, the housepainter. Daniel Rathbone here.”

  “Nice to know you, Dan,” I say.

  “Actually,” he says, “I believe I did just say it’s Daniel.”

  “Tomato, tomahto,” I say with a what’s-the-difference smile.

  The smile I get in return is distinctly chilly. Or maybe I’m just seeing things that aren’t there? Maybe I should give this guy the benefit of the doubt?

  “Nice tux,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say, fingering my Frank Sinatra lapel. It is a nice tux.

  “Although,” he adds, “I half expected to see you wearing painter’s pants.”

  I laugh. “Painter’s pants? At my own wedding?” This guy is joking, right?

  “Well,” he says evenly, and there’s that smile again, “you have to admit, you would be more comfortable, wouldn’t you?”

  Wait a second here. Did this guy just diss me? At my own wedding?

  No, that can’t be.

  “See you later…Johnny,” he says, like he’s dismissing me.

  “Um, OK…Dan.”

  More dancing, garter removed and tossed, bouquet tossed (Go, Sam!) and yet more dancing.

  And then time speeds up, rapidly, as time sometimes has the unfortunate tendency to do.

  Every wedding reception I’ve ever been to, the bridal couple leave before everyone else. But Helen and I decided in advance: We did not want to miss a single second of our own wedding celebration.

  So as the clock ticks the last minutes toward eleven P.M., our witching hour, only ten of us remain, slow dancing: Carla with some guy from the office who’s stayed behind, Sam with Lily, Billy with Alice, and Aunt Alfresca who’s sitting in Big John’s lap, her arms around his neck as he describes a box step with his wheelchair. I may not know the names of any other dances in relation to what they look like—and what exactly is a Lindy?—but I can tell he’s moving his chair in a box shape.

  And then there’s me and Helen. I look down at her, thinking how right it feels to have her in my arms, and wonder for maybe the millionth time in the past few hours:

  Is this woman really my wife?

  My Wedding Night

  If you think I’m going to divulge intimate details here, you are sorely mistaken.

  Suffice it to say that after our official driver, Sam, drops us off at our hotel—Helen: “You want to come up for a drink?”; Sam: “Thanks, I’m good”; Me: “And you won’t forget to take care of Fluffy?”; Sam: “Do I look like I’m going to starve your cat?”—we head up to our room.

  Suffice it to say, Helen needs help with the back of her dress, it’s almost painfully sweet, then about an hour later it becomes incredibly raunchy, and finally it is the nicest feeling I have ever had in my life. Who knew that nice could feel so nice?

  After all that, we’re keyed up—about the day and night we’ve had, about the day and days to come—but eventually Helen drifts off.

  And as I look at her head resting against my shoulder, even though the arm I have underneath her starts to tingle and fall asleep, I don’t try to shift her to give that arm relief.

  Instead, I tuck a stray hair behind her ear that’s tickling her nose and think to myself with utter satisfaction:

  This woman is my wife.

  My All Aboard

  Kidding. Kidding!

  What—you think I’ve become so self-absorbed that I think everything is about me, my, mine?

  Of course I know it’s simply “all aboard” as in—honk, honk!—all aboard the cruise ship, baby!

  That’s right. We’re going on a cruise.

  Back when Helen and me were talking about possible honeymoon destinations, we went through all the possibilities: the cultured, like Europe; the exotic, like Africa; the staycation, a word I abhor, as in staying home and just going to Mets games all week. But we rejected them all. The first two because they seemed like they’d require a lot of planning
when we were already planning the wedding, the last because it turned out the Mets were going to be out of town for most of the week we’d set aside for our honeymoon—how inconvenient. So we opted instead for a cruise to tropical climates. Sure, it was cliché and kitschy, but if you can’t be clichéd and kitschy on your honeymoon, when can you be those two words I’m not about to repeat for a third time? Plus, we figured it’d be great. Neither of us has been on any vacation in so long, we thought it’d be just nice to laze around by the ship’s pool and later the beach, with no pressure on our time whatsoever to do anything but bask in the sun and each other. We’d have plenty of time later on in our married life to become cultured and exotic.

  Has anyone else noticed how suddenly everything in my life has become “us” and “we”?

  And here we are:

  Cruising, baby!

  At the top of the gangplank, a photographer snaps our pic as I hold Helen around the waist from behind. The photographer says we can purchase it later, a lovely memento of our time at sea. How cool is that?

  Even though the ship doesn’t leave until four P.M., we’re on board by two and checked into our mini-suite with balcony. It cost a little more but it’s still less than we would’ve spent on Europe and Africa, plus I need those windows. I can’t stand the idea of being too fenced in. It’ll be good to be able to see the ocean.

  “You were right,” I say, testing the bounce of the queen-sized bed as Helen checks out the bathroom situation. “Our luggage isn’t here yet.”

  Helen did all this online research first and discovered that sometimes it takes hours before your luggage makes it to the stateroom on the first day. But who wants to wait hours to hit the pool? So, being the smart egg that she is, she took our bathing suits and shoved them in this beachy carryall thing she got for the trip.

  When she emerges from the bathroom…

  “Whoa!” is all I can say.

  Sure I’ve seen Helen in her undie things before, but never in a bathing suit, and she is just truly whoa. There are a couple of triangles and strings involved but not much of either and the color, well, if I were going to paint a room in it, I’d say the closest match at the paint store would be Cerulean Sky.