Chapter 24: Both Hands

We were married in the Congress Street park on a Saturday in September, under the maple, by a judge who had asked to do it.

She was the one who had signed the decree.

"I'm told," she said, "that this is irregular."

"Yes, Your Honor," I said.

"Good. I've had enough of the other kind."

There were thirty chairs on the grass.

Bea sat in the front row in a green dress, crying openly and eating a muffin out of her handbag.

The old woman from across Alder Street had come with her cat in a carrier, and the cat had opinions about the ceremony.

The audiologist sat beside her.

The bookbinder had closed his shop and brought the first printed copy of my second book to give us.

Eleanor sat in the third row, and Bea had decided she could stay.

She held June on her knee and let me have the aisle.

June was walking by then.

She had walked in July, four steps from my knees to Winslow's, and he had missed the first three because of a meeting.

He had not been allowed to forget it.

The surgery had been in July.

In August they had switched the new ear on in a quiet room with a screen, and a woman asked me to say what I heard.

It was a buzz, and then a bright tinny voice saying the word "blue."

It sounded nothing like a person.

The audiologist said it would take months to sound like one.

I had cried anyway, and Winslow had held my hand in the waiting room, on my right, because I'd asked him to.

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