“Marriage is still the best legal framework to protect children, and with issues of property and inheritance and such. And families like it. There’s only a fifty-fifty chance it will last, and I don’t mean us, Reenie, because ours will last...”
“It’s been months. My relationships aren’t long on... on longevity. Months for me are like years for other people. So this has already stood the test of time.”
“Well, families want to be on the side of hope. I think that’s a good thing.”
I added, “And so are presents. I really want the presents. I love presents.”
“I thought we could say, please, no presents.”
“No presents, no Irene. The real, real truth is, I want everyone to know that you love me. I want you to say it in front of everyone.”
“We have to have a champagne fountain. I know how tacky that is but Italians require a champagne fountain and a live band. A live band that plays the tarantella. And a satin purse the bride carries that people put cash in when they dance with her.”
“Like what the strippers had!” I said. “A little pocket on their bikini bottoms.”
“My mother says back in the day, people used to stuff money right in the bride’s garter. I thought that was kind of earthy.”
“Too earthy for me!”
None of those things ever happened.
Fourteen
Red-Winged Blackbird
Agelaius phoeniceus.A beautiful bird with a distinctive three-note trill, the red-winged blackbird lives almost everywhere that suburban people do, in meadows, prairies, fields, and marshes, but also suburban yards. And like those human dwellers, these birds can be fiercely and even combatively territorial. A male red-winged blackbird is polygamous, sometimes with more than a dozen concurrent mates, but things are not always what they seem. In some populations, half the chicks have a sire that is not the dominant male. In folklore, red-winged blackbirds symbolize inner strength even when faced with change, as well as a masterful blend of arts and justice. Although they’re not uncommon, the population of red-winged blackbirds is decreasing, but as Lennon and McCartney famously sang with the Beatles, they are also resilient creatures, all their life, “waiting for this moment to arise.” In the 1970s, cult leader Charles Manson, who, coincidentally, was always surrounded by a harem of young female followers, believed that this song was about his murderous mission. In “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “A man and a woman are one/A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.”
I had lied to my parents.
Indeed, when Sam and I announced our engagement, I was pregnant.
All through the trial, unawares, I’d carried a stowaway, my daughter, the unknown agent behind all those bags of taco chips. For more than four months, in a circumstance seemingly impossible for a modern woman, I had not noticed. Like a sixteen-year-old in denial, I’d let the chaotic days and weeks unspool without counting. Sam might have believed that all those birth-control slipups were so pre-2020s, and yet mistakes apparently still did happen—even when the window of opportunity, a single weekend, was opened only a crack. After employing diagnosis by Google, because I was so ravenous and yet felt so full, I finally saw a doctor because I feared that I had diabetes.
In fact, we had Cornelia Bigelow Damiano—a name whose initials, Sam helpfully noted, were the abbreviation CBD, or cannabidiol, one of the active ingredients in marijuana. I wanted to call her Claire, but Sam insisted that a clean break healed best and hurt least. His grandmother’s name was Anna Cornelia Marie Messina, Granny Coco the namesake. We added “Frances” as a nod to that birdy chapel where we took our first vows.
There was no black-and-white wedding, although there were black-and-white cupcakes. No champagne fountain, but there were mimosas for everyone except the bride, who drank ginger ale with her orange juice and who never wanted to look at another mimosa. My parents hosted a brunch for a few dozen people, catered by Fair Alice, the premier local restaurant, and I thanked the universe because my mother would not be contributing any tried-and-terrifying culinary efforts.
Life is determined. Life strives against the odds to renew itself. It wasn’t the best way to start things off, we agreed, until we saw her furious red face and assertive baby Mohawk. Then there was only Nelia, the very first firstborn, the light of the world.
My long story appeared inFuchsia, a story that, I will say, boosted the profile and circulation of the magazine to newheights, encouraging more of the same kinds of long features. It wasn’t true what I feared, that all my friends were going to be strangers. Instead, I heard applause from people who hadn’t contacted me in years—former colleagues, professors, grad school classmates. I got two real job offers that were flattering if not tempting. The story was reprinted in countries around the world, probably as an example of American decadence, but that led to even more attention for me, and ultimately to a book contract for which I stipulated a very long deadline to delivery.
The story began this way:
Women on trial for murder don’t wear pants.
In a simple navy blue shirtwaist dress, Felicity Wild walked into the courtroom, stopping only so police could remove the shackles around her wrists. Her dark hair expertly cut in an angled bob, huge turquoise glasses framing her strange amber eyes, Felicity looked like the homecoming queen she was once—not like an escort who killed two clients in cold blood.
Surrealis one of those words likesurvivor, too often said and too little understood. People throw it around when it doesn’t even really pertain to the circumstances:Oh, I was literally thinking about you at the moment you called! Surreal!
This actually was surreal.
I was a couple of feet from Felicity, physically close enough to touch her, but unable to touch her—in a time and place that neither of us could ever have imagined growing up.
We were best friends. From the private history you share, a best friend knows what each of your eye rolls really means. Sometimes when you think something, you realize that the voice in your head is hers, not your own.
Writing that story was like a surgery for me.
I felt like I was betraying her, betraying myself, exploiting her, exploiting our friendship, like Nell said, because I could. But still, it needed to be finished, and once it was finished, I recognized that, like a surgery, it hurt badly at first. But in the end, even I could see that it had done me good.
