Sing You Home

with a poof.” He waits for me to get the punch line and then grins. “Works every time with a nervous bride.”

“How’s Vanessa doing?” I ask.

“Gorgeous,” he says. “Almost as gorgeous as you.”

My mom gives me a kiss on the cheek. “See you out there.”

Vanessa and I made the decision to walk down the aisle together. Neither of us has a father around to escort the bride, and this time, I didn’t feel like I was being given away into someone’s safekeeping. I felt like we were there to balance each other. So I follow Joel out of the women’s room and wait while he gets Vanessa out of the men’s room. She is wearing her white suit, and her eyes are bright and focused. “Wow,” she says, staring at me. I see her throat working, as she tries to find words that are big enough for what we are feeling. Finally she reaches for my hands, and rests her forehead against mine. “I’m afraid that, any second now, I’m going to wake up,” she whispers.

“Okay, lovebirds,” Joel says, clapping his hands to interrupt us. “Save it for the guests.”

“All four of them?” I murmur, and Vanessa snorts.

“I thought of another one,” she says. “Rajasi.”

We have been trading, for the past four hours, the names of people we think will brave the elements to celebrate our wedding with us. Possibly Wanda, from the nursing home-she grew up in Montana and is used to blizzards. And Alexa, my office assistant-whose husband works for the DOT, and who could probably hijack a snow-plow to get her here. It stands to reason that Vanessa’s longtime hairdresser will probably be one of the guests waiting for us, too.

With my mom, that makes a whopping four people at our party.

Joel leads us through a tangle of gears and pulleys and equipment, past stacks of boxes and through a doorway. A short curtain has been set up, and Joel hisses a command: “Just follow the runner and be careful not to trip over the gutters… and, ladies, remember, you are fabulous.” He kisses us on our cheeks, and then Vanessa reaches for my hand.

A string quartet begins to play. Together, Vanessa and I step onto the white runner and make the hard right turn at the edge of the curtain-the place where we step onto the aisle of the bowling alley we will be walking down, the place where the guests can see us.

Except there aren’t four of them. There are nearly eighty. From what I can see, everyone we called earlier today-everyone we advised not to come in this treacherous weather-has made the trip to be here with us.

That’s the first thing I notice. The second is that this AMC Lanes & Games bowling alley-the only spot in town that Joel could rent out completely on such short notice-doesn’t even look like a bowling alley anymore. There are vines woven with lilies lining the gutters on either side of the aisle we’re walking down. There are fairy lights strung overhead and on the walls. The automatic ball return is draped with white silk, and on it are frames with the faces of my father and both of Vanessa’s parents. The pinball machines are draped in velvet and covered with appetizers and heaping bowls of fresh shrimp. The air hockey table sports a champagne fountain.

“What a quintessentially lesbian wedding,” Vanessa says to me. “Who else would tie the knot in a room full of balls?”

We are still laughing when we reach the end of the makeshift aisle. Maggie’s waiting, wearing a purple shawl edged with a rainbow of beading. “Welcome,” she says, “to the blizzard of 2011 and the marriage of Vanessa and Zoe. I’m going to refrain from making any jokes about lucky strikes, and instead I’m going to tell you that they’ve come to honor their commitment to each other not only today but for all the tomorrows to come. We rejoice with them… and for them.”

Maggie’s words fade as I look at my mother’s face, my friends’ faces, and, yes, even the face of Vanessa’s hairdresser. Then Vanessa clears her throat and begins to recite a Rumi poem:

The moment I heard my first love story I began seeking
you, not realizing the search was useless.
Lovers don’t meet somewhere along the way.
They’re in one another’s souls from the beginning.

When she is through, I can hear my mother sniffling. I pull out of my mind the ribbon of words I’ve memorized for Vanessa, an E. E. Cummings poem with syllables full of music.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

There are rings, and we are both crying, and laughing.

“Vanessa and Zoe,” the minister says, “may you avoid splits and always play a perfect game. As you’ve pledged in this ceremony, in front of family and friends, to be partners for life, I can only say what’s been said thousands of times before, at thousands of weddings…”

Vanessa and I both grin. It took us a long time to figure out how to end our ceremony. You can’t very well say I now pronounce you husband and wife. By the same token, I now pronounce you partners sounds somehow lesser-than, not a true marriage.

Our minister smiles at us.

“Zoe? Vanessa?” she says. “You may kiss the bride.”

Just in case you aren’t sure that the Highlands Inn is lesbian-friendly after you call its phone number (877- LES-B-INN), there is a row of Adirondack chairs in all the colors of the rainbow set on a hilltop. It hasn’t escaped my sense of irony that this little corner of open-minded paradise is set in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, that maybe this sleepy namesake town at the edge of the White Mountains could be the birthplace of a new way of thinking.

After our wedding ceremony-which may have been the only ceremony in the world that has included both a chocolate-Grand Marnier ganache cake with real gold leaf and a midnight game of cosmic bowling in the dark-Vanessa and I wait out the storm to drive to our honeymoon destination. We have plans to cross-country ski, to go antiquing. But we spend nearly the first twenty-four hours of our honeymoon in our room- not fooling around, although there are lovely interludes of just that. Instead, we sit in front of the fireplace, drinking the champagne the inn owner has given us, and we talk. It seems impossible to me that we haven’t exhausted our