17 - Marriage

Power lines, coasting up and down. She used to watch them, as a child. She would lie back in the back seat of her mum?s car and look out the window, out and up, watching the power lines. She only saw a section of them, the small eyeglass the window would afford to the outside world, so the power line appeared to be a single living thing, silhouetted against the sky, moving of its own accord, instead of the dead solid thing it was in reality. It would race up towards each power pole, up into the embrace of its earth-bound fellows, then as soon as it reached its crescendo, it would race back down again in a long smooth arc, up and down, up and down. She?d assign tones to the different spaces it would occupy and sing along with the movement of the black stripe across the musical register, weeee-ooooh, weeee-ooooh, until her mother would angrily tell her to stop making all that racket. But still she would watch the line, singing along with it in her mind, imagining all the places it was going, following her along the road, occasionally breaking into different entities and feeding power to houses, towns, cities. Feeding it?s magical energy, riding like a wave into the beach, all the beaches of the world, an invisible current of power, mystical forces she could not understand, something huge and unknowable that powered the hairdryer, the microwave, the television, the mundane. Connecting them all, bringing them all back to that one place, the source of all.

She thought of this as she sat in the plush leather seats at the back of the stretch limousine, sinking into their cool embrace. She looked out of the window and watched the power lines rise and fall, rise and fall, thinking of her self when she was but a child. She was surrounded by her bridal party, her friends and family, her sisters and brothers, but she was alone, moving down the highway toward her destiny. She could stop it all, call out to the driver: ?Stop! Let me out! I want no part of this charade!? Yet she did not. Could not. She was too far gone, too far down the road, the engine was running, the wheels were turning, the money paid and the food lain out. Shame alone, fear of embarrassing her family, being embarrassed in front of her friends, if nothing else, drove her on. So she looked out of the window and watched the lines, and thought of being young, being in someone else?s control, and thought about the difference between being out of control because you have no power, and being out of control because you have the power yet fear to use it.

Anticipation cloaked the vehicle like a shroud, like a miasma of smoke, as if her bridal party was puffing on giant cigars of anticipation, breathing it out and coating the interior with a ghastly mixture of hope and fear. Her mother and her sisters, her aunts and ancestors. The first of the line and the last of the line, all of them were here, with her, watching her. She was the end point of all they had done, the ultimate achievement of their forgotten existences- and they wanted great things from her. After all, she owed them, did she not?

The dress she sat in was enormous, baroque. Meringesque. A white pastry puff which she felt lost in. She had to carve her was through folds of cream gauze even to be seen. When she walked to the limo it took another two and a half minutes for the trail to be folded up behind her, and stuffed into the seat next to her. At least two other members of the bridal party could technically claim to be wearing her dress at the same time, so engulfed in its many layers they were. Her mother had insisted on sprinkling a layer or icing sugar over her hair, her face, her infinitude of layers, once she had been seated, to the effect that she was sure that she would leave a perfect negative of herself on the cold leather seats when, and if, she could arise.

The moment approached. The limousine pulled up to the Cathedral, a mighty great thing, the largest church in town. ?A town doesn?t become a city until it gets a Cathedral?, her mother had told her, a thousand times or more. They?d booked it two years in advance. Only the very influential or the very committed were permitted to be married in the city Cathedral. It was a great Gothic structure, built many years after the Gothic period had ended, built to replicate those genuine structures in England, built to give the city a sense of the old world, the motherland. But those Cathedrals in England were built with the lives of pilgrims and slaves. The bones of their architects were buried below their foundations; the mortar between the bricks was mixed with the blood of those who had laid them. This Cathedral was built in a more civilized time, when the idea that money and lives had no limit when it came to the worship and glory of God had passed, cowed by the laws of men. It could not hope to compete with the genuine article- it was but an echo of its progenitor, not formidable unto itself, but a reminder to others of its dreadful heritage. No vicious spikes threatened to impale, no grinning gargoyles watched over its gathering congression.

The chauffer moved quickly from his seat, around the vehicle and opened her door for her. It was the first time in her short existence that any man had ever opened a car door for her, and she wondered how she felt about it. She supposed it was an appropriately ancient act here, before this ancient structure, this testament to older, violent times. She put one foot out of the car, first having to navigate through the manifold layers of silk, satin and gauze. A slender termination, pale flesh wrought pink against a background of white, the shoe that surrounded her foot was made of many diamonds, or at least appeared that way to the observer. It came into contact with the concrete footpath with the sharp crack of cut glass on stone, and announced her arrival to this holy place.

While the stone gargoyles were not present, they were amply replaced by the gaping, grinning, leering expressions of the congregation outside the church, some family, some friends, some passersby who just wanted to see the spectacle. Mouths open, eyes wide, some were jealous, some were genuinely happy for her, while still others seemed bored, or at least indifferent. A cheer broke out as her head cleared the roof of the limo, and a hail of confetti flew from the crowd and rained down on her, a thousand pellets of coloured rice, red, green, blue. They made a subtle pitter-patter on the folds of her dress as they struck it, but Cammie was the only one who heard them- everyone else was cheering too loud for the noise to reach them. Some grains fell into the valleys and chasms of her many skirts, became lost in the layers. Another struck her in the eye and she flinched backward momentarily, then covered her eyes with one hand, like the Captain of a ship putting his hand on his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun and look to the horizon.

The crowd parted before her as she ran forward, took the steps two at a time, alarmingly graceful for one bound by such a vastness of various cloths. The crowd cheered again, the gap they had made closing behind her, and the people followed her into the church. If she turned and ran now, they would block her in, prevent her from leaving. The final threshold had been crossed, as if it had not been crossed when she first donned the dress. Retreating from the harsh light of the day outside, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim, cavernous light of the Cathedral?s innards. Slowly, details came into form: Ranks of polished wooden chairs stretching all the way up the aisle, stopping only when they reached the altar, which seemed tiny in front of the enormous organ pipes that stretched upwards into the hidden shadows of the Cathedral spire, great metal lungs on the inside of a colossal, musical beast. At the exact moment her foot crossed the inner doorway and touched down on the red-tiled floor of the church, the organ sounded a single, gargantuan chord, its sound reverberating through the church and washing over Cammie, a wall of noise. The silence that followed was deafening, but shortly filled by the opening strains of the Wagner's Lohengrin, known to most as ?Here Comes the Bride?, played several octaves below the norm.

There was a figure standing at the end of the aisle, before the altar, dressed in a suit that came up high around the neck, in the mandarin style. She could not see his face as he was turned away from her, and it took all her self-control to take the tiny half-steps she had been told to take, and not break into a run towards him, to see who awaited her.

At least, that is how Cammie had sometimes imagined her wedding would be, if and when it came. The reality was far more pedestrian. It involved no church, no limo, no dress, no family or friends, no organ, no-one waiting for her in a suit at the end of an aisle. Her first marriage took place in a drab green waiting room filled with plastic yellow chairs. On one side of the waiting room was the door through which they had entered, and immediately opposite that door was a hole in the wall, filled in by a sheet of transparent plastic, punched with a circle of holes at the center. Below that circle was a small bench, and another, larger hole was cut into the plastic to allow documents, identification and credit cards to be passed back and forth. They sat in the hard plastic chairs for twenty minutes while the man behind the plastic barrier carried out some unidentifiable activity. There was another couple in the room, a slovenly looking man with what appeared to be mustard stains on his shirt, accompanied by a heavily pregnant woman with grey lips and grey fingertips. Her hair was so thin Cammie could see through it to the woman?s scalp. The man saw Cammie watching and glared at her, so she stood up and moved to a chair facing a different direction, so she didn?t have to look at them. She felt she was still being watched.

Anthony waited a few moments, and then also moved to sit next to her. He did not ask why she had moved.

?Nervous?? he said, without cheer.

?A little, I guess.? She replied. ?Certainly not how I imagined it.?

He smiled his small, sad smile. She was bordering on the realization that it was not a smile at all, just a signal for the benefit of others, a failed attempt to put them at ease.

?Try not to think of it as a marriage.? He said. ?Just ? getting a licence. If that helps.?

?Thanks.? She said, unsure of why, but unable to think of anything else to say. Like apology, gratuity came as an instinct.

The other couple was called up to the window first, the man behind the plastic simply said ?Next? and, since they were the second couple to arrive, Anthony and Cammie waited. They listened to the noise of the other couple rising from their chairs, the old yellow plastic from the seventies creaking audibly as it bent back into its natural position, unencumbered by its passengers. Despite the small size of the room and the absence of any other competing noise, they could not hear the details of the transaction between the man behind the window and the couple in front of it. All they heard was a low murmur from the woman, then a grumbling from the man, then a muffled voice through the plastic. Cammie strained her ears to listen, but could not make out an individual noises. In spite of the proximity, they seemed to be far away.

After a few minutes of back and forth noises, the man behind the plastic window stamped a form and handed it to the couple. They took the form and waddled out of the room, leaving Cammie and Anthony alone and in silence. The man behind the plastic window again busied himself with some unseen activity, perhaps filing a copy of the form he had just approved, or perhaps playing solitaire on his computer, Cammie would never know nor, she supposed, did it matter. Bureaucracy was as it was allowed to be.

After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, the man said ?Next? in precisely the same slipped tone he had previously, and Anthony smiled nervously at Cammie as they rose, turned, and walked to the plastic counter. Now that she was close to the plastic window, Cammie could see the man more clearly- he had thing, drawn features. His expression was one of supreme boredom, of a man who has gone so far beyond boredom that it was difficult to imagine any other expression adorning his face.

?Purpose?? He said, barely looking at them.

?Marriage.? Said Anthony, unperturbed. Cammie ran her eyes back and forth between the two men, two emotionless robots: the ultimate form-exchanging machine. Was the man behind the counter any less dead inside than Anthony seemed to be? Did he have any more reason to live? Was he loved? She wondered.

?Do you have proof of the requisite ceremonies?? The man continued in monotone.

?No, we?d like a waiver, please.? Replied Anthony. Cammie was wrong about the man having no expression other than boredom, as his countenance quickly morphed into annoyance.

?There?ll be an additional administration fee of twenty-five dollars.? The man warned, as if he could hope to change their mind.

?That?s fine.? Said Anthony. The man agonizingly reached across to his left and pulled two forms from a set of open filing drawers. He bought them back and spent several minutes carefully inscribing them with an ink pen. Cammie bobbed up and down on her feet two times, which caused the man to stop writing and look up at her. She stopped bobbing, but he continued to look at her for several more moments before returning to his writing.

?That?ll be one-hundred and sixty five dollars.? He said laconically, some time later. Anthony passed through his charge card and the man ran it through an old swipe mechanism, making a carbon copy, which he passed through the hole in the bottom of the plastic window, along with a black biro. Anthony signed the carbon and passed it back to the drawn man, secure in his cubicle. He passed them both two more firms, which they countersigned- a waiver for the wedding ceremony and the marriage certificate itself- both documents were returned. The man behind the window grinned mirthlessly as he stamped their certificate with a large metal stamp that left a circular impression on the paper- as red as a welt.

?Congratulations.? The man said through strained teeth, brown near the gums. ?I now declare you man and wife.?