A story of the first years of our wedding feast

Seven years ago I had resolved to begin writing. Then Karen and I  were invited to a Valentine’s Day dinner but with the stipulation that we must each bring a poem, a story or a song to share. So I wrote this story about Karen’s and my continuing wedding feast, now in our 28th, almost 29th year.

Better Wine

I cannot tell you much of what I’m seeing in our dark bedroom. This is, of course, because it wouldn’t be fitting to disclose intimate images, even though this is a story about our long wedding feast.  But practically, it is so very dark in here tonight.  The porch lamp is burned out and I have not replaced it.  It is moonless and the hour is late enough there is no light under the door from our teenaged children.   No candle.  Only the gray patch at the window marks the room.

I step over to the bed, to my side.  I cannot see Kay, only a woman’s shape traced gray against black, and a ripple of her hair.  Her curve is like a burgundy shadow on a charcoal field.  Can I say a gray black curve on an ink black sea is an intimate image?

My Kay sleeps.  It is a joy to me to see her so at ease now.  That she sleeps means she is free of the depression that bore her down for years.   She is able to rest.  Her familiar companion, anger, has wandered away from our company.  I have met my Kay again and found a rich and mellow draught.

Years ago was another night as dark as this.  But those days were darker than these.  A blanket had dropped over our marriage.  Depression, with its cycles, had driven out the delight of our wedding feast.  Kay had slowly lost interest in the little joys of life that had filled our first years.  In spells, she would sleep or stay at home.  I, correspondingly, grew frustrated with her listlessness and with her inability to explain a cause.  Pressing her, a fight would erupt.  No good thing would result from our arguments.  Rather, anger would be stored up to fuel the next cycle.

I still fear if an argument was to get away from us even now, that that blanket might descend on us again.

That one night in my memory, I had come up some time after her, deliberately giving her time.  We had argued over a small thing I had left undone.  I stayed downstairs until I settled and came to a resolve.   That resolution made a difference I could feel in my feet.  I came across to the bed that night.  I stepped light and did not have the mournful, shuffling feet.  She can detect my pitiful shuffling, but I had none of it.  I had resolved before I came up.

I got under the covers, waited just one breath, and whispered, “I’m sorry”.  Oh, she bristled and turned and poured out a flood against me.

I stashed away a note in my mind that night.    I could begin a movie this way, with this palpable anger.  On the screen, I’d set a few sparse lines in blackness.  Opening credits have concluded and the audience expects the illumination of the first scene.  Instead, an angry dialog begins.  Heated, jarring language.  The audience realizes this deliberate darkness is the scene.  The audience hasn’t their night eyes yet, but begins to match the voices with the shapes.  A crescent traces a forehead, skin taut upon a skull.   A shimmer is Kay’s jaw turned up and away.  The shimmer moves with the sharp cadence of her words.  Her shoulder juts against the window grey.  The rest of her is buried in a shroud of blanket.

Now follow the dialog.  The audience has caught up to the darkness and is ready to follow the argument.   I want them to catch the words and piece the words back together to discover the root of the fight, some kind of tense and wound-up complaint.  I want my audience to grimace because the words match their own words in anger and shame.  Husbands and wives tense in their seats, for the substance of this argument is the same as theirs.  Kay and I are in the fight of the ages.  Young couples may not believe my dialog, or only with imagination.  But the others, older, would believe it, though they turn away, for they have known anger and loneliness.

What did she say?  Kay opens her mouth . . . but it is empty.  I do not remember words to give her.   What was our argument?   I no longer remember the words.  The note in my mind has gone blank.

*      *      *

         It was a blustery spring morning the day of our wedding.  Clear was the air and pure blue between bright clouds.  The wind drove the clouds overhead and their shadows raced ahead of us on the highway.  We drove in procession to the reception hall.  Kay was nineteen and beautiful in white.  Her hair was pure black.  She had beamed when she set her one packed bag in my car.  Yet she was nervous to leave with me and live away from home.
That is definitely the horrifying fact as per experts who getting prescription for viagra continue to investigate deeper in the ED. Mom and dad ache joined together while using bodily problems should actually affect the best way your organization look order tadalafil no prescription at an individual’s life. We are proud to be the single most advantageous and safe online drugstore offering beat deals on highest quality cialis uk have a peek here and giving you most efficient cialis to restore your sexual power. This is treated to be levitra samples the elementary aspect of online drivers education.
Who can find a virtuous wife?  Her worth is far above rubies.  Red like rubies, we drank the wine of our wedding feast.  Our own friends, with faces young and thin, were dancing in a circle around us.   Tables borne full with mothers’ friends, the wedding hall spun around us. We clasped both our hands together upon the goblet.  We lifted it far above rubies and drank the new wine together.

Our vineyard spread out in an arc from that wedding hall.  Our jobs and our apartment and our friends and our house were the clusters of grapes spinning out from that vine.  We traveled the vine and harvested the grapes wherever we could reach.  And we found we could reach far and pull off fruit and squeeze out the wine with each grasp.  We found children among that vine and Kay held our babies to her breast.  The titles the wedding guests first conferred on us with a laugh, mister and missus, settled in upon us and we bore them fully.   These were the early years of our wedding feast.

*      *      *

I embraced Kay in the hospital.  Blessed be our eleventh anniversary.  She held her arms up at her chest and sobbed and shook as I held her.  My hands met at her back, my cheek pressed against her wet and swollen cheek.   Kay feared she was a danger to herself.  It was our anniversary, but visiting time was over and it was time for me to go.  On the second bed, her roommate scowled and twisted an unlit cigarette.  It was our anniversary, but Kay had signed a paper to put herself here this night.

Bitter years had come.

I found a note from those days.  It was in the closet where I would empty my pockets of folded papers.  The note was from the night of our severe argument.  I had jammed four lines on this paper and carried it in my pocket for days.  Turning it over, I now count how many years old was that paper.  Then how many years before was her stay in the hospital.  And how many years before that did her depression begin.  The four lines say, “She lashes at me / she sleeps and won’t do chores / won’t listen / full of anger and no hope”.

It does not match.  The sting has gone out of this note.  It lay up on that shelf for a decade but it has known nothing of what has gone on here.  Won’t do chores?  Three thousand meals she served.    Won’t listen?  She has done every duty and abided every decision.  No hope?  She has poured herself into her children and her husband.  The note is mute.   It cannot accuse.  It is a false witness.  I turned off the closet light.

*      *      *

         I am here in our dark room and see the coal shimmer of Kay’s hair in cascade.  Her sleeping breath lifts and drops the trace of her breast.  I reach out and follow the gray black curve of her hip to the inky black sea of our bed.

I still hold a folded paper, but it has no meaning.  I do not remember its meaning.  I set it beside the bed as I get in.  I will throw it away in the morning.

The wine had run out at our wedding feast.   In the bitter years, we had no wine to make us happy.  We were left with only the enduring water of life – our work to do, one another to listen to and hear, the longing for a good life together and the remembrance of the bright fruit of our first years.

But the One was in attendance at the wedding and He ordered the servants to fill the jars of water and draw out the ladle and take it to the Master of Ceremonies.  And behold, the latter wine was better than the former.

A day with her is a sip of wine again.  But now this is the better wine, this wine that has appeared in the twenty first year of our wedding feast.

– – –

(C) 2005 Bryan Dubois