The Yellow Wedding Dress

It just slipped out. "I'm never going to get married." What she
really meant was, "I will never marry you, so get that idea out of
your head for good now." Dropping that line, "When we get married,"
he shook her off balance like the many mini-earthquakes did when she
first moved to Los Angeles. She jumped by throwing out this comment
with the swiftness of a flyswatter squishing an innocent fly. A
sharp pain spirals up her calf through the back of her knee as she
steps on the gas.

She new it was a mistake as soon as she said it. Not because she has
any doubt that she did not want to marry this person, but because she
knew in her heart that she did want a partner, either in a formal or
informal marriage.

That is, almost April, that ominous month, she refused to let another
wedding be salt in her wound of loneliness. She zipped up the
strapless cotton dress, yellow like Gilma's wallpaper, falling in a
slight A-line around her pale legs, and slipped on low black heels.
This wedding is for her, she barely knows the groom, a member at her
church. She gracefully wraps her black pashima round her shoulder,
fluffs her hair one last time, and steps out into the bright, warm
afternoon.

Walking up the steps to the white stucco chapel, she slips her
sunglasses into her purse. She enters, a bit overwhelmed by the
silky spring dresses and tuxes. Her decade long avoidance of
weddings is apparent as she tries to remember wedding protocol.

"Blackstock or Westfield?" inquires one of the tuxes.

"Um, I'm with the groom," she answers hesitantly. She is bad with
last names.

"Really, we've never met? I'm Dean." She smiles, explains she only
knows the groom as members of this church. He directs her to another
usher who seats her next to one of the older church ladies. A
quartet plays as the church ladies around her loudly gossip about the
dresses of the women and the handsomeness. Everyone mills about,
getting seated, waiting for the event to begin. She closes her eyes;
her inner peace holds.

As the ceremony unfolds, as lovely as it is for this couple, she has
visions of her own wedding, little fantasies to which she holds no
particular attachment. It is not so far off. It could happen. She
imagines a hundred varieties, here in her church, in a foreign land,
bilingual, Christian, Catholic, or something other, large or small.
It could happen. She reads the program with poems and quotes of love
and remembers the glimpses she has had in her life, she knows it is
real, possible, and one day, perhaps, sustainable.

After tears and laughter and varied proclamations of love and
devotion, everyone files out of the church. She lingers with the
other members who are here just for the ceremony, just for something
to celebrate.

"Beautiful guitar playing," she compliments her choir director.

"I hung in there," he nonchalantly responds as his wife and kids run
up the aisle. "I can't wait to sing at your wedding." Normally
outraged by such presumptuousness, She silently chooses to accept the
compliment that she seems to still be marriageable, though a bit odd
from this person she has only known a month.

"I would love that. Though I my wedding will probably be overseas,
somewhere beautiful and exotic, so if you don't mind a bit of
travel," she allows herself to voice one of the several fantasy
weddings concocted during the ceremony. "If I win the lotto, I'll
even pay for your plane ticket."

"It only takes a dollar."

"What, to get someone to marry me?" she jests.

"Not with you looking as pretty as you did today sitting there in
your summer dress," chimes in his wife as she wrangles the children
running through the pews.

She shrugs, still not the best at accepting compliments.

Though work awaits, she lingers at the informal reception for those
not invited to the formal one later, chatting with the row church
ladies standing guard, volleying commentary about the fashions of the
guests.

"So, you're next?" asks a recently married man in the church.

"What makes you say that? I don't even have a date for tonight."

"Ah, that doesn't mean anything. As Stevie Nicks says, love can
change in an instance."

And so it could. In any direction. She smiles coyly at herself,
understanding, perhaps for the first time, the hope of weddings in
loving not only another, but oneself and love itself.

Walking up the steps to her apartment, she realizes the pain that has
been plaguing her knee for weeks is gone.