what I would have picked,” I admit, hearing the bitter notes in my voice. “But I didn’t pay for them, so. Didn’t get the final say.”
“Isn’t that insane, though? That you didn’t get the final say?” He examines the invitation. “Never decided on a picture to put in these, either. It’s just as well, since those pictures memorialize an unhappy day. I remember you weren’t feeling well, and I didn’t like my outfit. We were annoyed with each other, standing in front of the photographer with fake head-over-heels smiles.”
“True.”
“And these ribbons?” He touches one of the ivory silk bows on the invitation. There are tons of them, with faux pearls in the centers. “Does this resemble our taste at all? I’ve had a good long time to think about this, and when I look at these invitations they don’t feel like ours.”
“They’re not. They’re your mother’s.” I look him right in the eye. “If you didn’t like the decisions she made, you should have spoken up.”
“I know. I’m sorry I let her take over everything … I knew how it was making you feel and I just let her do it because at the time it was easier for you to be upset with me than to have Mom upset with me. Which is screwed up.”
“Yes, it is.” There’s no point rubbing his nose in it, so I add, “You’re getting better, though. You’ve been defending me. You haven’t let any of her insults slide. And for your own sake, I’m glad you haven’t been going over there every day and taking all of her calls.”
“It helps that I have you beside me, encouraging me.” He rests his head on my shoulder. “You make it easier.”
“I haven’t always made it easier.”
He takes my hand and squeezes. “I was sorting through things to throw away this morning, and found the boxes. It was the most natural thing in the world to toss them.”
“Wow,” I remark hollowly. “Don’t bother to soften the blow or anything.”
“Sweetheart, why would we have a wedding in St. Mary’s? Why would we use a stuffy banquet hall for our reception? Do either of those places hold any personal significance for us?”
“No, but—”
“It should be about us,” he continues urgently, taking both of my hands in his and turning us fully to face each other. “And the guest list! It’s a mile long. I don’t know most of the names on there. Why would we crowd all of these strangers around us for the most special moment of our lives?” He crushes an invitation into a ball, and I wheeze out a gasp. “These are for a fake wedding. I threw away the invitations because I don’t want any of those people there.”
My eyes are saucers. “None of them?”
“Why would I? This isn’t about anybody but me and you. The only people I care to have at our wedding are those who have treated both of us well. That rules out just about everybody I know, including the person who designed these invitations.”
I can’t conceive of a wedding between us in which Deborah isn’t the grand marshal. She’d never let us get away with excluding her. For Deborah, our wedding is a social event at which she can preen and trot around her son like a pageant mom. She can’t wait for all the other moms in her circle to congratulate her. “What about our families?”
“Fuck our families. Fuck everybody.” He throws the crumpled invitation at a dumpster. It bounces off the rim.
I burst out laughing. I know he doesn’t mean that, but maybe for one day, he’s right. On a sacred day that signifies putting each other above all else, celebrating a deeply personal commitment, maybe we shouldn’t have to accommodate the wants or opinions of others. We should do what feels right for us and no one else.
“We’ll make our own family,” he says earnestly.
I shake my head and muse, “You’ve lost it.” I take an invitation from the box, smash it into a ball, and shoot it at the dumpster. It misses.
“If I’ve lost it, then good riddance to whatever it was that I had.”
Scrunching up our wedding invitations and vaulting them in the general vicinity of a garbage can is strangely cathartic. Once we get started, we can’t stop. We pile them up like snowballs on the hood and take turns trying to make it in the dumpster. He scores eleven and I score nine.
“This one’s my grandmother’s,” I tell him as I hurl