a second wedding
Girl never cooked Swedish meatballs for the boyfriend her parents liked so much, and she didn’t clean the house before he came over, but he asked her to marry him anyway. This time, Mother and Stepmother both went along on dress-shopping missions, even driving up to Miami for a day.
Girl tried on a simple satin slip dress, and Stepmother ran a finger down her butt-cheek. “You are going to have to wear support hose with this one. You jiggle.” Girl jerked away—she hated when Stepmother touched her butt, and the irony of her fat stepmother who never wore pantyhose or even a bra telling her that she was too jiggly enraged her. Yes, she was gaining weight, and she was failing at dieting, but whatever happened to the feminist messages they lived by her whole life? Wasn’t Girl supposed to love her body just as it was and fuck standards that say women have to be sexy to have value?
“You can’t eat that taco salad,” Stepmother told her when she took Girl to Wendy’s. “You’re too fat for that skirt,” she said when she visited Girl at work one day. Still, when Girl tried on an A-line wedding gown in the right size so it wasn’t too tight, Stepmother teared up. And when Girl married that boy her parents loved, Stepmother and Mother walked her down the aisle together. Brother stood as her “man of honor,” and Liz drove nine hours to wear a bridesmaid’s dress along with Girl’s only other remaining childhood friend, Rebekah. The rest of the wedding party was composed of her new husband’s relatives—Girl never had that many people who belonged to her, but the few she had all showed up. Even her cousin made it, after driving fourteen hours from Tennessee in a car that wouldn’t restart if she turned it off. Girl cried to see everyone who loved her all gathered in one place. Her new husband’s khaki pants, short hair, love of golf, and family cookouts seemed to guarantee Girl’s ascension from misfit to mainstream. Her white picket fence dreams were all coming true.
Three years later, Girl, her husband, and their ten-month-old baby drove across the border into Canada for Mother and Stepmother’s legal same-sex wedding. Girl and Brother signed the marriage license, and Mother and Stepmother danced together while Girl’s baby son played trucks on the dance floor next to their feet. Finally, they were legal, more legal than their domestic partner registry in Vermont a few years before, and even though the United States would not yet recognize their marriage, a sovereign nation had done so. New York State voted to recognize all same-sex marriages performed outside of New York long before they legalized such unions inside their own border. President Obama ensured that the country quickly followed suit. They finally got to file joint tax returns. They would get each other’s Social Security someday. No one could force them to leave a hospital if their spouse was in intensive care. More than that, though, was the feeling of legitimacy. Pride. The world’s value system had finally caught up with them.
safety net
Two kids and four years later, Girl lay on her parents’ living room rug and begged them to tell her what to do. All Girl’s husband wanted was a house that looked just like everyone else’s, a well-behaved wife, and children that didn’t require too much effort. Girl’s lie was in saying that was all she wanted, too. It wasn’t his fault that he fell in love with someone Girl never was, but longed to be—some ordinary soccer mom with a stick-figure family on the rear window of her minivan. Girl had spent a lifetime trying to be just like everyone else, and now that she had finally managed to pull that off, nothing beautiful or interesting about her remained. The stick-figure family had empty heads and no souls. Girl no longer aspired to be one of the beige people living in beige houses, eating beige food, and having beige sex. She could not sacrifice the life she wanted in order to keep the life she had. Who would her children become if they had a cardboard cutout for a mother? Girl had drained all the color out of herself in an effort to fit in. She wanted her children to know beauty and sweat and tears and the messy meatiness of life. If she didn’t revive her best self, she would never be able to mother them properly.
“Try and stay until the kids are out of diapers. Have an affair if you need to,” Mother said.
“Leave him,” Stepmother said, “and I will make sure you and the children are okay.” Girl could not bear the weight of her wedding ring on her finger, and kept it in her car’s ashtray when she wasn’t home, only putting it on when her husband was around.
A few weeks later, Mother called Girl with a plan.
“We used to get four percent on our CDs, but the bank called them, and now we can’t get hardly any interest at all, just one and a half percent. We could take the money out of savings and buy a house and rent it to you. Then you could have a house for a reasonable rate, and we could get the same return as we used to. I just want you to know, this was Stepmother’s idea. The money is her inheritance from when her mother died last year.”
Girl cried in relief. They found a small three-bedroom house with hardwood floors and colorful rooms, and even a tiny second-floor balcony. The house was old and quirky, and she could turn on the living room light from the upstairs hallway, which gave any potential burglars time to run away before she walked down the stairs. It was the first
