I'm Not Sam

I grab a beer from the fridge and plant myself on the couch in front of the TV and watch a rerun of BONES and I think how Sam used to enjoy that show, even though it was utter hokum — the day a medical examiner partnered up with a detective in the field was the day Wall Street worried about ethics.

But that was part of the fun. That and snappy dialogue and the charisma and chemistry of the two leads. I think about us early on, Sam and I, when we first started dating. How people used to say that when we walked in, we lit up the room.

My understanding is that mismatched clothing is all the rage with the kids these days but when she comes out grinning with a flourish and a ta-da! I can’t help it, I have to laugh. She’s got on woolen knee-socks, one green with yellow polka dots, one blue and red with alternating wide stripes. She’s teetering on a pair of black brushed leather three-inch heels. The dress is shiny red satin, sleeveless, with a scoop neck, cut to just above the knee. Ralph Lauren. I was with her in Tulsa when she bought it.

She’s wearing Sam’s three-strand, nickel and black agate necklace, her turquoise necklace, her red coral necklace and her fossil bead necklace, a brown and yellow camouflage-pattern silk scarf, and a pair of long white gloves with pretty much every ring in Sam’s drawer slipped over them. And to top it all off, Sam’s wide-brimmed floppy straw sunhat.

“Well?” she says.

“You look… stunning,” I manage.

“You like it? You like my shoes? You like my dress? You like my hat?”

“I like all of it.”

And I do. Just not necessarily all at the same time.

She turns around and back again a couple of times just like they do on the TV fashion shows I guess. A kind of awkward pirouette.

“Wait! I’m gonna do it again.”

She half-rushes, half-staggers back to our bedroom.

I think about her put-together, about what she’s selected. At first it makes me smile and then I realize something. Together they’re all wrong. Together they’re the Clash of the Titans.

But each piece individually is one of Sam’s favorites. Every one.

I picture her standing with the bedroom door closed gazing into the full-length mirror on the door, choosing her selections. I asked her once, a week or more ago, what she sees when she looks into a mirror. Wondering, did she see a little girl? “Me, silly,” she said and shrugged and wouldn’t say anything further.

But what’s she seeing now? Bits of Sam? Bits of Sam’s history, her likes and dislikes, her memory?

It gives me an idea. I go hunting around in our collection of DVDs until I find it. A couple of years ago we converted a box full of VCR tapes, early home movies, to DVD. Since the photo album was such a flop I’d never bothered to play them for her. But what if it were all a matter of timing? What if she simply wasn’t ready then? What if she is now?

It’s exciting. Definitely worth a shot.

I key up the DVD player and wait.

When she comes out I’m floored again. But this time I’m not laughing.

Her wedding dress. It was in a box on the top shelf in the closet.

She’s standing in front of me in her wedding dress.

All the jewelry’s gone except our wedding ring which she’s been wearing all the time throughout all of this and seems to think nothing of, like it’s part of her. But she’s looking strangely shy. As though the dress has power, as though the dress has tamed her somehow.

It’s floor-length, lace, with delicate spaghetti straps and a modest train. It’s supposed to hug her body from breasts to hips but it doesn’t quite do that because Lily’s not managed the buttons up top. She’s holding the veil out to me.

“What’s this for, Patrick?” she says.

It’s a moment before I can speak. I go to her and take the veil.

“It goes in your hair. Like this.”

I arrange the comb in her hair and spread the veil down first over her face which makes her smile and wrinkle her nose and then back over her back and shoulders. I step away.

“You look… beautiful.”

“I do?” She’s delighted.

“Yes, you do. And you don’t know that, do you.”

“Know what?”

“That you’re beautiful.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

She looks at me. Her expression serious all of a sudden.

Then, “You’re silly, Patrick,” she says, and turns to head back to the bedroom.

“Wait. Come here. Sit down a minute. I want to show you something.”

I pick up the remote to turn on the DVD player while she sits down next to Zoey curled up on the couch. The dress slides up a bit. I see that she’s barefoot.

Zoey seems to regard her lap and the dress as a possible nesting place but apparently decides she’s comfortable where she is.

“You need anything? A Pepsi or anything?”

“Nope.”

“I’m gonna go grab a beer. Wait right here, okay?

“Okay.”

I do and she does.

I’ve orchestrated our home videos with old rock and country songs and the occasional show tune. I know exactly where I want to go with this because there she is beside me on the couch, sitting there in her goddamn wedding dress so I fast-forward through our first trip to the Big Apple with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin squeaking their way through New York New York it’s a wonderful town and there’s the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and Sam eating a huge pastrami sandwich at the Carnegie Deli and gazing out over the city from the second of the doomed Twin Towers and then we hit the fireworks here in Tulsa, our first fourth of July together, and she says wait, stop.

I hit play. Fireworks bore me to tears now though not as much back then. But Lily’s interested. The music is the Beatles’ FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE which is something, at least. Still, I want to get on with it. I let her watch for a while and then fast-forward again. And there we are at Yellowstone, “where hell bubbles up,” and Tom Petty’s singing SAVING GRACE sounding like Alvin’s Chipmunks while we’re viewing geysers and waterfalls, pools of emerald water and turquoise water, incredible sunsets — and from a distance, a herd of grazing bison. There’s Sam in her cutoffs in the foreground, smiling and pointing out at them.

Next we’re in Kansas City at Worlds of Fun Amusement Park. There she is opposite me on the Ferris Wheel, on her bobbing yellow horse on that merry-go-round where I snagged the ring, screaming bloody murder on the roller coaster and wait wait wait go back! Lily says so I rewind to the roller coaster again, my aim with the video camera jiggly as hell, Willie Nelson doing ON THE ROAD AGAIN while Sam screams silent screams and Lily giggles beside me.

The giggling unnerves me. I want her to wake up, snap out of it. That’s what this is for. Instead she’s giggling.

The bumper cars are next. Ooooo she says, and claps her hands, fascinated, so I know there’s no point in fast-forwarding. She’ll only want to go back again.

She’s pulled the veil down over her face and she’s chewing on it absent-mindedly.

On the screen Sam’s getting battered from all sides. She’s getting creamed. I remember this. Sam was talking to another woman, a parent, about something or other while we were standing in line waiting to ride. There were a bunch of kids behind me, maybe ten of them, all ages, and I turned and got their attention, waving