Wedding Cake for Breakfast (19 page)

 

 

Think beyond the wedding to the life you want to build together. No one will remember if the groom wore a dark suit or a tuxedo.

 

Don't measure yourself against the next couple. Be skeptical of others' perfection.

 

Do everything you can to make sure your wives love your parents.

 

Keep laughing.

 

Put those dirty boxers in the hamper.

 

Ladies, learn to roast a chicken.

 

Never think, “
There's always divorce.”

 

Call your parents. We finally know a thing or two.

Juan and Martita

ABBY SHER

I'll admit, I was a little tipsy at our wedding. My cousin had nursed me on champagne before I walked down the aisle. It was the only way to soften that sharp pucker on my face as I heard the words
forever
or
death do us part
. It's not that I doubted my love for Jay. I just didn't know if I was ready to die next to him. My father had died in 1985 when I was eleven; my mother just a year before my wedding. Many of the same faces from her funeral surrounded us now, watching expectantly, eager to cheer and dance. But the only eyes I could focus on were Juan and Martita's.

Juan had a helmet of shiny black hair and boxy shoulders. His gaze was solemn yet bright. His cheek pressed firmly against Martita's. Martita—yellow blond with a block of solid tooth peeking out of her giddy smile. Her eyes were mischievously clear, the color of the Caribbean.

Juan and Martita were our cake toppers. Crafted from papier-mâché, I think. Maybe Play-Doh. I'll never know for sure. Jay and I got to keep them for just a few short months. They'd been traveling from wedding cake to wedding cake, passed on through a chain of friends and relatives—a Spanish tradition Jay's sister had adopted. As we took our first bite of vanilla frosting, I clutched the figurines in a greedy fist and swallowed sullenly. I knew it was our turn to pass them on to the next betrothed couple, and I couldn't bear letting them go.

I'd never been that attached to my dollies as a child. I had a favorite teddy bear with mismatched eyes and a music box in his rear end. But once his throat split and his yellow stuffing started leaking out, I retired him to a bookshelf. I never really clicked with Barbie and I tossed my plastic Smurf collection in a Dumpster when we cleaned out our childhood home. But Juan and Martita were more than toys. In the brief time I'd known them, I'd come to see them as my surrogate parents, my guardian angels.

They stood smiling on our mantel as Jay and I addressed invitations and planned seating arrangements. They were resolutely sunny, teeth ablaze with fierce optimism. A constant affirmation: you two can be as bright and inseparable as we are. Even though they weighed no more than a paperback book, I began to count on them, as if cemented to that perch. I came through the front door of our one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment and said hello to them before looking to see whether Jay was home, too.

I know my sister paid a lot for our wedding cake. With both of our parents deceased, she and my older brother struggled to make me feel like we were still a family. But I honestly have no recollection of what the cake looked or tasted like. All I knew was that once I gulped down that mixture of butter, flour, sugar, eggs, I would have to part with my newest security blanket. Jay took the microphone and called up our friends Sarah and Nate. I didn't know what to say to them as I extended my arm, knuckles tight around Juan's pink neck. I didn't have the voice for anything pithy anyway. All I could think of was how much I missed those tiny painted smiles already. I knew they were dolls made of paper and glue but their spines and souls felt stronger than mine.

Sarah was actually one of the few people I could connect to without censoring myself that first year of marriage. Sarah, Jay, and I had all worked together in Chicago and she'd watched us dating, then moving in together, and finally climbing into a U-Haul and heading to New York. I kept Sarah for her rendition of what had happened.

We were really happy together, right?

He's so in love with you, Ab.

Maybe because she was thousands of miles away now, we confided in each other via long e-mails, unloading words that were too heavy to pronounce. I admitted to her that I knew Jay was a kind, handsome, funny, compassionate, stable companion, and yet . . .

And yet. I felt so displaced. So scared and unsupervised. Like I was going to get caught and punished for staying out past curfew, or drinking too many bottles of Pinot Grigio and having sex on the floor. I felt like I was betraying my parents by making this new life without them. Signing up for a joint bank account and calling this dusty apartment home. We lived above a jazz club that piped in Brubeck covers and fried catfish fumes. The telephone company and the mail carrier tried to convince us that our street number didn't exist. The front door was made of plywood and shook when we opened or closed it. There were nightly visits from a tribe of mice.

I hung photographs of my mother and father on every wall, then made up their running commentary of disapproval. Neither of them had ever really gotten to know Jay well. My father had died two decades before, and even I had trouble recalling the timbre of his voice. My mom had met Jay, but was ill at the time. Neither of them had ever given me their consent or support or defined this as love. I piled their copies of Dickens and Melville on our bookshelf. Hung my mother's wedding gown next to mine in the closet. Even though I was thirty years old, I still wanted my mommy and daddy to tell me what to do.

But the biggest sign to me that something was missing from our new life together was the empty space on our mantel. Juan and Martita were watching over another couple now. I longed for their steady vigil, their constant endorsement. They had been a lineage; a trust from four other couples.

We believe in your love.

We respect your differences.

We promise to stand sentinel as you commit yourselves to each other for always.

In their place I stacked magazines and unopened mail. Once in a while I filled a wedding vase with cut flowers, but in a day or two they'd be covered with a fine shimmer of soot from the busy street below. I started staying out later with friends or writing in bars. I didn't want to face Jay or that feeling of permanent absence. I didn't want to examine why I needed somebody, even an inanimate somebody, to tell me I'd made the right decision.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Nate were having some troubles of their own. Nate had been married years before, and when Sarah moved into his home, she felt like she had to step around his first wife's shadow. She didn't know how to make space for their new life together. The parallels between how Nate clung to his past and shut her out and how I was doing the same to Jay were obvious, but I managed to willfully ignore them. I told Sarah she deserved to be treated like a queen and if he couldn't commit to her completely then he was being cruel.

I didn't realize how bad it became until I got Sarah's shortest, densest e-mail.

I left.

I read it and reread it, trying to hear her voice, to smell her breath, to feel her fingers as they touched the keyboard. She'd packed up her belongings, stuffed them into her car, and was driving across country. Most likely to L.A., but maybe to stay with her mom in Oregon. She wanted to talk to me but she didn't know how. She just needed to keep driving. Away from him, from that airless house, from the life she'd thought was hers.

I was heartbroken for Sarah. I imagined her hatchback whipping up loose asphalt and shoe boxes filled with love letters. Her loneliness caught me as I walked to work or wrote in my journal. Where was she now? Paying for gas on a dusty service road? Checking into a poorly lit motel and smelling someone else's shampoo on the sheets? I carried her grief like it was my own, grumbling and gritting my teeth, drinking too much coffee in the hope that I could jolt us both awake from this bad dream.

Jay wanted to look at our wedding photos. I couldn't sit still long enough to get through an album. I knew it was cold, but I couldn't name him as my soul mate. He was just too sturdy, honest, whole. Until he wasn't. The stress of my aloofness started wearing on him. He took up cigarettes again and started looking for gyms where he could spar with a punching bag. At my urging, he and I went to couples' counseling. Our therapist made me promise to come home more in the evening so we could have some quiet time together. Jay usually cooked us big bowls of pasta that we ate in front of the TV. Reruns of crime shows where we knew the villains were people instead of doubt or regret. Even though we'd inherited the queen bed from my parents' house, more often than not we pulled off the couch pillows and fell asleep curled like a cup and saucer. Jay could easily nod off midsentence, especially if I scratched his back. I was grateful for his slow breath and sleep twitches. Pinned between his shoulder and the back cushion, I watched the reflections of our street's traffic on our ceiling and tried to silence my body and mind.

On one such night, tracking the headlights up our darkened wall, I realized who else was lost. Juan and Martita. Maybe in that cloud of debris kicked up by Sarah's tires. Maybe tucked into the corner of a trash can back in Chicago. Maybe split in half. Martita's blond bouffant could easily be chipped or blanketed in potato peels. Juan's dark eyes peering from beneath an empty planter or pizza box. Their glue melting in an unexpected storm. This time they were gone not just from us, but maybe from the world.

When I did hear from Sarah a few weeks later, I didn't have the heart to ask her what happened to my papier-mâché guardians. It felt too trivial and I wanted to offer my support and hear about her new home in California. She sounded exhausted, but whole. Rooming with an old friend and working in an animal shelter. Dying her hair carrot red. There were too many restraints on her when she was with Nate and she needed to see who else she could be without him.

I was relieved for her. I was relieved for me, too. As I listened to her tales of the open road, I knew for certain that I did not want that. This apartment still didn't feel entirely like home, but it was familiar. Even the plywood door reminded me that there was stability in my life that I'd never had before. That I'd never known I desired. I told Jay about the missing dolls and he agreed we should just let them go. We laughed about their buckteeth and flaky skin. We rearranged our two rooms a bit and unpacked a few more of our wedding gifts. One night, we climbed out our bedroom window, sat on the rooftop, and found the Manhattan skyline peeking through the trees.

While Sarah and Nate restarted their separate lives and Juan and Martita floated in lands unknown, Jay and I met on that rooftop night after night, as if for the first time. We didn't chat with first-date giddiness. Or make daunting promises for our future. We just stayed in that one spot, which is actually what I remember initially attracting me to him years before, back in Chicago. That he sat across the bar from me, found my eyes, and didn't let go.

I brought out a bag of potting soil, three envelopes of seeds, and a watering can. There was just a trunk-size patch of sunlight on the hot siding. Enough room for a row of small terra-cotta pots. I started with a few pansies, sunflowers
and dill. We bought a tiny Weber grill and grilled chicken cutlets; a few beach chairs made our makeshift patio complete. I remember the morning I saw our first shoots peeking through the dirt.

“Look what just happened!” I pointed giddily.

“It didn't just happen. You made it happen,” said Jay.

“You did, too,” I corrected.

Not just because he'd taken some turns with the watering can and moved the pots to a shady edge when the June sun blazed too bright. But because he continued to be there for me, to believe in me and us and our future even if it lay inside a pile of dirt.

The pansies were bright but short-lived. The sunflower never made it past a scratchy stem, and I've yet to taste fresh dill from my own garden. But Jay and I kept tending to the plants through that first hazy summer as husband and wife. We even hosted a small dinner party on that roof—a few new friends who each climbed through our bedroom window and sat on our quilt next to the jazz club's exhaust fan, telling us it was quaint and cozy. Our new community.

And when the chill of fall drove us back indoors, we pulled off the worn cushions and lay on our couch once again. I scratched Jay's back until he sank into sleep and then I gazed into the night, focusing on streetlights and shadows. On what I had instead of what was missing. I had a faithful companion next to me. I had a front door to open and lips stained with tomato sauce. I had a packet of seeds to plant again next year. These were gifts more valuable than the stack of boxes with candlesticks, vases, frames, or figurines.

As Jay snored next to me, my breath grew slower and steadier, too. It was time to move into my life without any parents or talismans pointing the way. Time to trust in the man beside me, holding me. Time to believe in this love wholly.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, thank you to Wendy Sherman for believing in this project from the beginning. I'm also grateful for the help of Victoria Sperling, who offered insightful comments, communicated with our contributors, and provided moral support when necessary. Special thanks to my agent friends Erin Harris for putting me in touch with the ever-talented Susan Jane Gilman, and Barbara Poelle for introducing me to Sophie Littlefield, who is a beautiful person both in life and on the page. I'd also like to acknowledge Liza Monroy, whom I've never properly thanked for introducing me to the world of writing and publishing. I owe you more than you realize. Sue Shapiro, a pillar in the New York City writing community, was a true champion of this book and a willing contributor. And a special thank-you to Ann Hood, who is a writer everyone should read, and a teacher everyone should have. I'm also thankful to the faculty of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the New School, particularly Zia Jaffrey and Jackson Taylor. Brittney Inman Canty, Suzanne Reisman, and Emily Adler were also instrumental in this entire journey, and I want them to know how much I've appreciated their help along the way.

When I was putting this anthology together, I often thought of the cabinet in which my grandfather carved his and my grandmother's initials inside a heart with an arrow through it. It's the same cabinet that holds many of the books that shaped who I am. I want to thank them, Mike and Bette London, for teaching me to love stories.

Thanks to my grandparents Nathan and Dorothy Perel as well. My grandfather once asked me who I thought his best friend was. I said I didn't know. But then he pointed toward the kitchen to where my grandmother was standing and said, “There she is.” You were the inspiration behind this book.

Lastly, thank you to my brother, Greg, who always sent us cookies while we were working on this, and who is hands-down the best brother anyone could ask for. And thank you, Mom—if I could choose any mother in the world I'd pick you every time—And thank you, Dad—you will always be my hero.

—Kim Perel

Biggest thanks to Kim Perel, my partner in this wonderfully fun project. It all started with her vision.

Andie Avila is a great editor and a joy to work with. The project blossomed with tremendous good faith and excitement from everyone at Berkley, especially Denise Silvestro, Susan Allison, Leslie Gelbman, and our fantastic publicist Rosanne Romanello. Victoria Sperling did much of the heavy lifting and handled the abundance of details required for an anthology.

We could never have brought together such amazing writers without the help of our many editor and agent friends. Reaching out to writers we knew and some we didn't seemed like a daunting task at first, but the idea of essays on the first year of marriage really resonated. Of course the true and ultimate credit for this book goes to the women who shared their personal stories in these pages. I am honored by their generosity and no matter how many times I read these essays I continue to be moved by the heartfelt honesty, wit, and talent.

While I've been in book publishing for my entire adult life, this project was different and has given me a fresh view of how things work, namely from the author's perspective. Maybe every agent should be an author even just once to fully appreciate the experience—the mixture of anticipation and pride that comes with actually creating the book. This process has been illuminating in unexpected ways and I know I'll be a better agent for it. So many of the writers I've worked with over the years have become good friends and I sit here now even more in awe of what they do.

I am so fortunate to have incredible friends and a loving, supportive family. We've been through a lot together these past few years and yet always manage to find humor in this crazy journey. With all my love I want to thank my sweet daughters, Samantha and Alexandra. They inspire me every day.

—Wendy Sherman