The Don's Wife Never Looks Back novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Wedding

By nine Mama's house was full of women.

Marisa did my hair in the kitchen, twisted up the way I always wore it, with a pencil through it.

"You can't get married with a pencil in your hair," her mother said.

"It's a nice pencil, Ma. I bought it new."

"It's a pencil."

"She wants a pencil," Marisa said. "She gets a pencil. Read your binder."

Her mother read her binder.

The old lady next door came through the back gate at ten with a corsage for me that I hadn't asked for and a flask of anisette that nobody admitted to.

At half past ten I put on the dress.

It fit.

Marisa did up the thirty little buttons at the back, one by one, and when she reached the top she put her chin on my shoulder and looked at us both in Mama's long mirror.

"She'd say the sleeves are too long."

"They're the right length."

"I know. She'd say it anyway."

We walked to the church.

It was three blocks.

Mama had walked them every Sunday of her life.

Marisa's mother took my arm at the bottom of the stoop and didn't let go of it the whole way, through the old ladies on their porches waving dish towels and the butcher standing outside his shop in a clean apron, clapping.

Saint Bridget's was full again.

The third time that year.

This time the lilies on the altar were for me.

I stood at the back of the church on Marisa's mother's arm and looked down the aisle.

The neighbors on the left. The altar society. The men from the Knights.

The junior from the studio, in a suit too big for him, with his date.

The dentist from Ashland, for some reason, in the sixth row.

The old sister from St. Agnes, near the front, with two of the girls from the housing trust beside her in new dresses.

Nonna in the second pew, in black, because she had worn black since 1971 and did not intend to stop for an architect.

Marisa at the altar steps in green, holding my flowers.

Tripod beside her, sitting upright, with a green ribbon tied around his neck and the two rings knotted into the bow.

And Nathaniel.

He was standing at the front in a dark suit, with his hands clasped in front of him and his glasses mended with a proper screw for the first time since I'd known him.

He saw me.

His face did something I will never be able to draw.

The organ started.

Marisa's mother squeezed my arm once.

"Walk slow," she said. "Make him wait. He's skinny, he can take it."

We walked slow.

Nobody stood behind my chair.

Nobody held my phone.

I'd left it on Mama's hall table, on purpose, beside the brass key.

Marisa's mother gave my hand to Nathaniel at the altar steps.

She held onto it for a second longer than she was supposed to.

Then she kissed my cheek, and his, and went and sat in the front pew and cried into a dish towel she had brought from home.

The priest smiled at us over his glasses.

I don't remember all of it.

I remember Nathaniel's hand shaking in mine during the vows.

I remember his voice cracking on the word "cherish," and him stopping, and clearing his throat, and saying it again louder, and the whole church laughing.

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