Chapter 24: Midnight

The county courthouse stayed open late on the night of our anniversary, because I had asked the judge nicely and sent him a thermos.

I had planned all of it myself.

I had not told Harvey where I would be standing, only the hour, and the hour was eleven.

When my mother and I came through the doors at ten minutes to midnight, he was already there.

He was standing on the cold marble of the rotunda in a grey suit with no tie, and he was early.

He was alone, and he had no folder under his arm.

He turned, and he saw the gown, and his face went completely still.

I had worn it again.

My mother had spent a week in her own sewing chair, with a cane against the arm, mending the hem where the courthouse stairs had torn it.

She had sewn on every one of the forty buttons herself, one at a time, in a chair at home.

"Turn around," she said, in the doorway, and she fixed my veil, which I had not had the first time.

"Mom."

"I sold a ring for this dress, and I'm going to see it look right."

She wore the ring.

Behind us came the others, and they took the chairs the clerk had set out in rows.

The friend from the dental office was crying already.

The director with the mustache had brought a flask.

The old director sat at the end of the front row with a pie box on his knee, for reasons nobody asked.

The night clerk stood at the stone ledge with the same pen.

"The lawyer will be late," he said, to no one. "He's in the lot, eating."

"He's always eating," said my mother.

The judge came out of the side door in his robe over a sweater, holding his thermos.

"Which of you is the bride?" he said.

"I am," I said.

"Do you have a license?"

"I have it," Harvey said.

"Hm." The judge looked at the gown, and at the man, and at the empty space under his arm. "Mr. Lorne, is this a hostage situation?"

"No, Your Honor."

"Miss?"

I looked at my husband.

His eyes were grey and wide open.

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