A MARRIAGE STORY (Commemorating July 25, 1987 – 2024)
“Would you marry me?” He asked casually, as if he were exploring whether I’d join him for a first date at the hometown bar. His bronze arms encircled my waist from behind, our hands clasped, seated on the chest at the foot of the bed in his boyhood room.
I am visiting on a weekend leave from college in March, 1984. David had graduated in December. He left the dining table where we had been chatting with his parents, without returning. When the table-talk ran dry, I walked to the end of the hall, closing the door behind me. He drew me into his lap, embracing me with a firm squeeze. A soft touch of his index and middle fingers tipped my chin around to meet a gentle kiss. A pause, a smile, “I love my dear. What would you say if I asked you to marry me?”
“Well, maybe. I’ll have to think about it.”
In the hiccup of the moment, sans a rehearsed script in my pocket, I choose to engage in the game coyly, by playing hard-to-get. There is no ring, bended knee or waterfall, just two pretend-adults, ages 20 and 22-years old, dressed in shabby-sheik cut-off Levi’s and thrift shop T-shirts.
The mood suddenly turned cool.
He wasn’t playing. David was serious. And although I had known by this time that we were forever lovers, we were in no position in our lives to be tying cans to the bumper of my Chevy Malibu in the seeable future.
He was crushed. The moment fell in my lap to repair the ego I had unwittingly deflated.
Folding into his arms, I looked into his eyes and whispered, “of course I will marry you. Hopefully one day soon, after we’re finished with school and have a place of our own, I’ll be prepared for a more formal proposal.”
On a hot Saturday afternoon in July, 1986, Dave spent the day busying himself with curious tasks. He asked me to buy a box of cracker jacks when I went to the supermarket. An out of character request which caused my face to squinch and echo, “Cracker Jacks?”
Later that evening, David and I went out for dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant in Valley Stream, NY, of which I cannot recall the name. It was a regular choice for us, about one mile from the attic apartment we rented. Always plenty of tables and waitstaff, no need for a reservation. Not too expensive but nice enough to relax and enjoy a house glass of Merlot with fried crisp calamari and steaming plates of penne á la vodka. Dave seemed a bit flustered by the end of the afternoon, working on a project behind our closed bedroom door. I hadn’t thought much about it, since he was always fixing something on the rudimentary IBM PC XT computer we had in there.
“Are you okay, dear?”
He produced two wrapped boxes in his hands.
“Open the smaller box first.”
Lunging to bended knee, he took my hand in his, “Will you marry me dear?”
“Yes I will,” I said as he slid the diamond onto my left ring finger, sealing it with a kiss. My euphoria was broken by the exuberant applause of diners, returning me to the effervescence being poured before us.
He handed me the second package, a box of Cracker Jacks, clearly violated and taped shut.
“Apparently, toy prizes have been replaced by tattoos and riddles pre-1980, because they presented a choking hazard. Who would have thought,” he said. “I went to the convenient store to buy two more different-sized packages and they were all the same! Thinking I could cut open the little package the prize was in and slip in your ring.”
On the eve of July 24th, 1987, Dave stayed back in our Valley Stream apartment joined by friends, while I had driven 40 miles east to my childhood home in East Patchogue. My simple JC Penney off-the-rack gown, that I paid $300 for, stretched across the rear seat of my rusty Malibu. White silk pumps on the floor. There were many things to do, clean the kitchen for the hairdresser, help the girls with their wardrobe, complete assembly of favors. In the home where my fifteen and nineteen-year-old sisters continued to reside with our father, I was also seeking to feel some spiritual connection with my mom and grandmother. The home where my late mother’s red-white-blue afghan still covered the tattered threads of the couch where she last rested five-and-a-half years before.
Anxious from the promise of the day ahead, I awakened at 5:30 in the morning to an odd clacking sound outside. On the other side of the door was a tall white horse, unattended, standing in the street thirty feet before me. A fine-chiseled equine head turned toward me, his large, dark-sienna glassy eyes fixed on my figure through the glass. The atmosphere was silent—no people, cars, or chatter of early birds. It felt transcendental, otherworldly. I pressed my hand to the glass, to feel something solid, the coolness of burgeoning dawn air, to verify that I wasn’t locked in a dream, simply conjuring illusory images on my wedding day.
A white horse is symbolic of a god or hero. It is the only creature pure enough to bear the hero to triumph over evil, while also being vulnerable. White is the rarest color of horses, which is associated with nobility in chivalry, with the sun in Greek mythology, and with the end of the world in Christianity. They are often referred to as psychopomps, guides between the worlds of the living and the dead. A connection between the physical world and the afterlife. A pale horse also bears the figure of death in the Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, rode a white mare to escort souls to the land of the dead and bring dreams.
When removing the gown from its zipped opaque encasement, I discovered a small, distinct, medium-brown mark in the satin fibers of the lower 2/3 front of the skirt. A wave of panic swept through my body. My gown has a dark stain that can’t be unseen! It had been hanging in the bag in my apartment for eight weeks. I had opened it the night before in the presence of a friend, appearing perfectly white.
I dropped to my knees for close examination, unable to determine if it was a pencil or ink mark. It appeared to be neither. Certainly, no matter what it was, the satin could not be treated without leaving a more obvious stain. The mark formed a perfect cross, the prairie wood color of dried reeds, embedded into the delicate weave.
Believing that wedding day jitters were causing me to hallucinate, I called my sister in as a witness. I said, “look at this, and tell me if you see anything odd.”
“Why, what do you see?” she said as she eyed it. “Oh my God, Debbie, what is that?’
“I don’t know, it wasn’t there when I looked at the dress yesterday,” I said.
We stood speechless, feeling like there was an omnipresence in the room. Waves of emotions swirled between us. An energy parting molecules, like a drape rustling at front of the theatre. It felt both portent and reassuring to sense that we were in the presence of ghosts. At 23, I believed anything and knew next to nothing. Does grief unfold in phases, shading joyful moments throughout our lifetimes?
The weather on the South shore of Long Island on July 25th was hazy and humid. By 1:00 PM, a westerly wind began to push across the Atlantic to the berm where we stood in Massapequa Park. Jet-ski’s whooshed by as Peter, Paul, and Mary versed the garden procession where we lit the unity candle, guarding it from the wind with our cupped hands. We danced to Stanley Clarke’s “You Me Together” and gripped the knife that sliced the spiced carrot cake we’d share, ceremoniously, for the next fourteen years. The hot, balmy afternoon concluded in a fierce thunderstorm causing county-wide power outages. It was as though Zeus was striking from the heavens with the blessings and ills of wisdom and destiny.
The gifts he gave to our mortal souls, was the dénouement we took to our bed in the blackness of the unlit night.
© Deborah Garcia 2024, all rights reserved
Gorgeous rendering of the space-time continuum that is the evidence of an eternal connection between you and Dave.
Thank you so much Christa. Nice to hear from you. Hope you are having a good summer.