Thank you.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Only you could have done it. How can I ever thank you?”
“Take me with you the next time you go hunting.”
“Eva, there won’t be a next time,” and he explained what the judge ordered. “There is one other thing,” said Jim. He turned to Eva. She saw a look of entreaty in his eyes. “Marta and I need to stay here for another hour or so. There’s one more legal matter and I need your help.”
“What’s going on?” asked Marta.
Jim’s knelt before her and took both of her hands in his. She colored. There was a small cluster of people in the hallway, attorneys hammering out deals, fates being cast. Their voices grew quiet as their attention was drawn to the scene unfolding nearby.
“Marta, you’ve been my rock for eight years. We have a future in front of us now and I want the best life for our baby. The judge agreed to marry us. To each other, that is.”
No one spoke. No one breathed.
“I’m asking you to marry me,” Jim said.
The hallway was as silent as a library at midnight.
“All we have to do is walk down the hall and get a license. Marta, I don’t know if this is the wedding chapel of your dreams, and there’s no wedding veil or ring bearer and all of that. But I want to marry you, Marta. Right here and right now. Will you be my wife?”
“Jim, I don’t understand.”
The onlookers craned their necks to hear.
“The judge agreed to perform a marriage ceremony after his next case if we get a wedding license. I know this is sudden, but we’ve talked about it. I want to marry you, Marta.” He placed his cheek against Marta’s swollen belly and looked up at her. “Let’s be a family.”
Marta Cruz burst into tears. The attorneys and their clients in the hallway looked at the bride-to-be. Marta looked down at the man kneeling at her feet. She pressed his face into her belly, as if to make the moment include their child.
“Oh, Jim. Yes. Yes, I will marry you.”
Every person in the hallway but one started to applaud.
“But there is a condition,” said Marta.
Movement stopped again.
“Stand up and look at me.”
Eva frowned briefly and watched Jim rise uncertainly to his feet.
“I will marry you, Jim Ecco, and I will be with you for better or for worse. But, the judge speaks for me as well. You have to learn to calm yourself. I won’t have our baby nursing on your temper. I know that anger will always be a part of you, but you must become its master, not its servant. If you will promise me that, then, yes, I will marry you, right here and right now.” Her eyes began to moisten, as did Jim’s.
Eva’s eyes were dry. They widened and narrowed. Something tugged at her, an inchoate sense of foreboding, of loss. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Back in control, she sighed impatiently. “Jeez, guys, this is a wedding, not a funeral. Hey, lovebirds—come on! We’ve got to get you to the clerk’s office.”
The onlookers cheered as the three friends ran up the hall. The line at the clerk’s window was long, but they had Eva. In less than a minute, they were at the front, and peering through security glass at a clerk.
“Huh. I didn’t know that wedding licenses were all that risky,” Eva muttered, touching the thick glass.
The clerk chuckled. “Nope. But fishing licenses? Now that’s another story.”
When the couple returned, Judge McClincy examined the license. He smiled and then retreated to his chambers. He removed a spray of daffodils from a vase on his desk and returned to the front of his bench to stand with the couple. He presented the flowers to Marta and asked, “Will this do for a bridal bouquet?”
She blushed and beamed.
He pointed to Eva. “Are you the maid of honor?”
“Best man. Jim, got a ring?”
“In fact I do.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small, cloth-covered box and handed it to Eva. She stared down at the ring. In a low voice Jim said, “Don’t lose it,” he smiled, “or make it disappear.”
Jim turned back to the judge. “Your Honor, we appreciate this. I’m not going to let Marta down—or you. But Marta and Eva have to get to their classes. Can you make this brief?”
Judge McClincy froze. He cocked his head and looked at Jim for a moment, and shrugged. “Okay, you’re the boss.” He turned to Marta. “You look beautiful, my dear. Do you, Marta Maria Cruz, take James Ecco to be your lawful husband?” She nodded, fighting to control tears, and barely spoke her affirmation.
“And you, James Bradley Ecco, do you take Marta Cruz to be your lawful wife?”
“I do.”
“Then by the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Mr. Ecco, you may kiss your bride.”
“That’s it?” Jim asked.
“You said, ‘Make it brief.’” Then, under his breath, “Gotcha.”
That evening Marta made a celebratory dinner—a simple student meal of pasta. Eva placed two red rose stems on the table. Jim produced a bottle of student-priced Chianti to toast the future but the plonk went largely untouched. Marta stuck with club soda—“the baby, you know.” Jim drank sparingly to a new future. Eva clinked a glass to the others in a toast to friendship, but set the alcohol back on the table, untouched.
The celebration marked a turning point for the three friends. It was the end of Jim’s legal troubles and the beginning of his path of self-control. For the first time since the death of Marta’s mother and the loss of her father’s attention, she concentrated on her own needs. She had made an unequivocal demand of Jim, to abandon his anger, and was rewarded by his efforts to mature.
Eva felt conflicted. When she shepherded Marta and Jim through the clerk’s office for a wedding license, she felt a kinship with them, a connection to others that was new to her. True, she had loved Gergana, but as a child loves a caregiver, not as a friend bound by voluntary allegiance. The antiquarian Coombs had offered friendship that transcended the difference in their ages. Eva accepted his benevolence, but not the mutual obligations of amity.
Her growing affinity for Marta and for Jim animated something within Eva. Platonic love, unselfish giving, unrewarded sacrifice—these could nurture her. The desiccated yearning for human connection began to bloom. She felt peace and saw that it was good.
But the Voices from the Table of Clamorous Voices counseled otherwise. They dripped poison in her ear, an insistent voice with Iago-like guidance.
Throughout their years together, Eva balanced the fear-driven impulses of the Table with the kindness of Jim’s friendship and Marta’s tolerant, if sometimes caustic, acceptance. But when Eva pulled them down a crowded hallway to the County Clerk’s office, she helped Jim move into Marta’s orbit. Eva did not understand the chemistry of human relations, that Jim could be shared by two people, much as an electron is shared by two atoms in the formation of a stable molecule. The Table of Clamorous Voices spoke, and it warned, “You have been eclipsed by another. A shadow has fallen upon you and you stand bereft of warmth and sunlight. You will perish without the light that has been taken from you. We can preserve you. You must preserve us.”
It was a plea for survival—and a declaration of war.
9
