Parents, Chapter 5 ~ All I Ask of You

Las Vegas though it was not, Wisconsin did have its share of wedding chapels.  Russ and Liseli were married in one, though they had to drive nearly three hours to get to it.

By now they were no longer driving Leona and Liseli’s car; Liseli had surrendered her half of it to Leona when they moved away from Fayette.  Now they were driving an older car, with more of what the dealer had described as “character.”  They did not drive it much, because their apartment was in walking distance of most necessities, and gas cost money.  But Russ drove it to the chapel, while Liseli peered at a map in the passenger seat.

They took a number of wrong turns and ended up arguing loudly as they barreled down the wrong highway, and Russ threatened to turn around and drive right back home and Liseli said that if he did that he’d never sleep in her bed again, and he said he didn’t care, and Liseli said that he’d never be able to have sex with any other woman ever again because he wouldn’t have a dick to do it with, and they’d pulled over on the side of the road and stewed in silence for several minutes, before they kissed and told each other they were sorry.

Liseli did not wear a white dress, because she had trouble wearing white without thinking of Eliasha’s smug note from three years ago.  That was the last time she’d worn a white dress.  She knew it was silly, but she wore a pale green dress for her wedding, anyway.  It was a mint green with emerald green trim, which she thought looked very nice with her reddish blonde hair and dark green eyes, if she was allowed a bit of vanity.  And, if she wasn’t allowed a bit of vanity on her wedding day, she didn’t know when she was.

She felt a little bad about how much the dress cost, after Russ had been so touchingly conscientious about saving their money for the baby.  But, then, she half suspected that had been more to get out of shopping for a suit than anything, so she wasn’t going to let it bother her.  She hadn’t taken any chances after trusting him with the task the first time, and had went out and bought him a new, light green shirt and dark green sportcoat to match her outfit.  She let him wear jeans.  Everything about their wedding was semi-casual, right down to the fact that it was already well consummated and bearing fruit, so jeans were okay.  She wasn’t wearing a gown, just a regular everyday dress; she thought they would look very nice together.

The chapel took pictures, too, for an extra charge, and she figured that was worth it.  Leona would be seething and shooting fireworks from her ears when she learned that Liseli had gotten married without her and blown her dream of being the maid of honor to bits.  Liseli felt bad about that.  Leona wanted to be the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding, even if she had a deep mistrust of the groom.  But Leona was at a college in New York, and could hardly be summoned in the matter of days which had elapsed since Liseli’s decision to forgo the June wedding and get married right away.  So, at least they would have some nice photos to prove they’d had a nice, quiet ceremony at a quaint, charming wedding chapel.

They found the quaint, charming, blasted place finally, and Liseli thought that quaint and charming was the kind way to describe it.  Old and dilapidated was more like it.  They drove past it, arguing, three times before deciding that yes, that little building that looked like a bait shop was indeed the wedding chapel.  It was called The Something Bluebell Wedding Chapel, because it was located near an unincorporated township by the name of Bluebell and couldn’t resist the corny pun; but for years afterwards she and Russ would refer to it as the Bait Shop.  They were sure it even smelled like fish inside.  They would not have been at all surprised if they had been offered minnows for an extra charge.

No such offer was made.  However, Liseli remained convinced that the place had indeed been a bait and tackle shop in an earlier life.

The people were very nice and congratulatory, despite the fact that the couple had arrived an hour late for their scheduled wedding (which Liseli had arranged over the phone after finding their website through Google, which had a romanticized artistic representation of the building on its homepage rather than a photograph).

A balding, obese man packed painfully into a solemn black suit officiated.  His wife played the piano, and their two teenage children acted as witnesses and sang a weak and tunefully questionable duet of “All I Ask of You.”  A gangly young man who didn’t seem to be any relation snapped photos the whole time with the gusto of the paparazzi.  None of them seemed to notice that the young couple was seething, much like a couple who had just spent hours confined in a small space at each other’s throats, and had found their destination lacking, but were trying to put on a happy front.

Anyone who knew Russ and Liseli would have known just by looking at them that they were both, in their own separate ways, plotting revenge on each other.

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Russ was still angry about the way Liseli had heckled his driving and failed to navigate properly but not admitted that perhaps at least a few of the wrongs turns they’d made were the result of her map reading and not his driving.  Plus, she was the one who had found this chapel which was two hours (three after all the wrong or missed turns) away and wasn’t worth the drive at all.  He was sure, now, that there were far more professional, quaint, charming, and romantic chapels closer to home.  An hour drive at the most.

(He knew, in the back of his mind, that he hadn’t done any research himself, had just gone along with whatever Liseli came up with, so he could hardly complain, but was in no mood to admit that now, and so the admission remained shoved far in the back.)

Most of all he didn’t appreciate the threat to his manhood, and even though they had kissed and made up after that, it still rankled him.  It wasn’t that he feared her using a knife on him or anything like that, he knew it was an empty threat, but it was still an unkind thing to say.  And it was their wedding day, you just weren’t supposed to say those kind of things on your wedding day, even if you were Liseli and prone to snapping out things you didn’t really mean.  She liked to say colorful outrageous things when angry; under certain circumstances it was endearing.  He did not find it endearing today, when they were supposed to be pledging their undying love and swearing that they wanted more of this, every day, for the rest of their lives.

Today, it rankled.

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Liseli was not really upset with Russ.  She was just upset that things weren’t going according to plan, that they’d gotten lost, that the place was dumpy and that the people were too earnest and friendly and well meaning to really get upset with because they weren’t altogether competent.  How could you, without feeling like a total jerk, get upset with a teenage brother and sister for being off-key when they were attempting a song like “All I Ask of You”?  Most teenagers wouldn’t do that.  True, she had not requested Andrew Lloyd Weber, in fact she hadn’t requested any specific music, but still, they tried so hard.  They were so earnest, it was like sitting through a painful recital but not wanting to get up and walk out because the child who you walked out on would see you go and probably be scarred for life.

She felt the same way about the morbidly obese officiator, wanting to think of him as jolly and rotund, though all she could do was picture his family having to burn his house down around him like they did for Mama Grape in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? because once he died he’d just be so fat there’d be no getting him out without a forklift, which was no way to treat a human, even a really fat one.  She felt sorry about the lady playing the piano because how horrible would it be to have to burn down your house around your husband?  What kind of an end to a marriage was that?

She could have swatted the photographer, though.  The only thing that kept her from it was that she just didn’t know him well enough.

Russ was the only living being she could channel her anger onto at the moment, just like he’d been the only one in the car.  Sometimes she felt like she was full of electricity and she just had to touch someone and see the static spark and hear them yelp, or she would simply explode.  It was a horrible thing but she didn’t know what to do about it.  It was all very well and good to apologize and say you wouldn’t do it again once you’d done it, that went out the window when the anger, frustration, and anxiety was tingling through you like electricity and you felt more like a live wire than a person.

Russ was very often the only one to get the static, because he was just there.  She was not mad at him today, none of this was really his fault, except that he was the one who had gotten her pregnant too soon so that she had to skip the nice June wedding with her sister as maid of honor.  And he had been driving too fast when he missed the exits they needed.  But really, that was no reason to get all blown up over it all.

No, it wasn’t his fault.  He was just there.  And that was what marriage was, being there every day, being the person who gets to see you at your worst, without your makeup on and with your hair an unwashed tangled mess.  Always being the person to take the shit when things aren’t gong well and there’s no one really to blame but you have to take it out on someone.  The person you don’t shave your legs for anymore, because you don’t see the point.  And that scared her, standing in the fishy Something Bluebell Bait Shop holding hands and staring up into Russ’s eyes, wincing as “All I Ask of You” came to a screeching, breathy conclusion.  If she really loved him was the best way to express that consigning him to a life of being the one who always got the Bad Side of Liseli?

But then she relaxed a little.  They’d been together for three years, and had been through more together at the start than most people went through all their lives.  In fact most people never went through what they’d experienced, period.  Russ had seen her under far worse circumstances than their argument of today, and if he still loved her, and still wanted to marry her, she wasn’t going to second guess him.

She never wondered if she really wanted the worst bits of Russ.  It didn’t occur to her to second guess that at the altar.  She had made that decision a long time ago and her decisions were final.  When Liseli decided that she wanted something, she wanted all of it, and wouldn’t be happy if even the rottenest bit was held back from her.

That was, actually, one thing that tended to annoy her about Russ.  He had a way of holding stuff in, but pointedly letting her know that he was holding stuff in, and it of course made him more noble and mature and calm than her.

That just made her want to smack him even more.

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Russ, on the other hand, had actually begun listening to the lyrics of “All I Ask of You.”  It was the first time he’d heard the song, and he didn’t know just how good it could sound when sung by two people who could actually sing, and weren’t crippled by the underlying embarrassment of singing words of love to their sibling.  Neither brother or sister had any aspirations toward acting (or singing, for that matter) and they couldn’t quite forget themselves enough to pretend that they were Raoul and Christine.

Russ didn’t know who Raoul and Christine were, or what darkness and fear they were referring to.  He actually thought that the girl’s name really was just Christine.  He wasn’t really thinking about that detail, though.  He wasn’t thinking about the Phantom of the Opera at all, because he had no idea that the song was from a musical.  He just thought that it was meant for them.

And, for the first time in his life, he was tempted to sing, out loud, where other people could hear him.

He didn’t, of course.

Russ loved music, but he played guitar.  The guitar sang for him; he did not sing.  Period.

But if ever someone had written lyrics for him to sing to Liseli, this was it.  If ever someone had written lyrics for Liseli to sing back to him, this was it.  He got chills.  He felt suddenly very romantic.  He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and tell her no, no more talk of darkness, forget these wide-eyed fears.  I’m here, nothing can harm you — my words will warm and calm you.

It transported him back to Adayzjia, and Alisiya, and the gray edgeworlds of the broken Gates, and he practically forgot that three years had gone by in between.

Let me be your freedom, let daylight dry your tears. I’m here with you, beside you, to guard you and to guide you . . . 

Let me be your shelter, let me be your light. You’re safe: no-one will find you — your fears are far behind you . . . 

Say you need me with you here, beside you . . . 

Love me – that’s all I ask of you . . . 

If either sibling singer had had any idea what effect their song (which they warbled every time someone had the misfortune of getting married at the Bait Shop) was having on the groom, they might have forgotten their inhibitions and really laid it all out.  Hit notes they’d never dreamed they could hit.  Sang to each other like they really loved each other and didn’t sense anything creepy or incestuous in what they were doing.

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If Liseli had had any idea, or had been able to listen to the lyrics underneath the amateur singing, she wouldn’t have worried at all that they should share one love, one lifetime, each day, each night, each morning, and all that gak.  But she had come to that conclusion independently, in her snow-globe world, her only connection to the outside being Russ’s hands squeezing hers and his hazel eyes looking as if he was about to explode with what he was holding back, and in the background the fading bars of the piano.

She barely heard the fat man’s preamble, suddenly wondering what on earth Russ could be thinking.  He usually only looked that excited about something really cool he had to tell her about some otherworld he’d been to far away.  But she made it through the exchange of vows and rings (which they had bought at Wal-Mart, because Liseli didn’t really want to wonder where Russ had stolen her wedding band from) and dimly heard the fat man — Papa Grape — declare them man and wife by the power invested in him by the State of Wisconsin and tell Russ that he could kiss his bride, before Russ caught her up in a crushing hug and a long, enthusiastic kiss that was not, entirely, something they usually did in front of other people.  When he let her go, Liseli’s face was red with embarrassment, and flushed because Russ was, after all, a pretty good kisser.

The group watching them all thought the same thought, as if they were one entity, one Bluebell Bait Shop Brain.  They thought it was one of the better kisses they’d witnessed in a while. The gangly photographer got lots of pictures.

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That was the thing about Russ.  He could never stay angry at Liseli for long.

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Afterwards, they got back in the car and drove to a nice, sit-down restaurant that was considerably more expensive than their usual meal plan, a place where the waiter told you his name and by the end of the meal you felt like he was your friend, and gave him a large tip.  They did not share with him the fact that they had just gotten married, even though he was friendly and winked and asked them if this was their first date.  Liseli had just given him a simple, “No.”  No it wasn’t their first date.

They didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because people who got married were supposed to be sitting at a table draped in white crepe, at the head of a banquet hall filled with family and friends and people they didn’t actually know but had to invite anyway so as not to give offense.  And, there was always the chance that he’d wink and ask them if they were eloping, or, worse yet, be moved to make an announcement to the whole restaurant.  Two bad things could come of that.  Either the people would stare at the waiter as if he’d lost his bloody mind and then peer at Russ and Liseli and wonder why they weren’t in a banquet hall, or they would clap and start tapping their glasses with their forks until Russ and Liseli kissed.  Liseli even had an absurd fear that the waiters and waitresses would gather around their table and sing, “Happy Wedding to You.”

And then of course they’d have to leave a bigger tip.

After they ate, and filled up a doggie bag for tomorrow’s lunch, they made the long drive home.  Liseli fell asleep in the passenger seat, and Russ quietly hummed “All I Ask of You” to himself.  Whether or not he sang snatches of the lyrics in a low voice is his business.

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When the got home Liseli woke up long enough to wander into the bedroom and fall onto the bed, emotionally drained and car weary.  Russ started rifling through her CD collection, wondering if she had that song.

“Russ . . . .”

“Yeah’m?” he said absently to the voice that drifted from the bedroom.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you know that song they were singing?”

“Who?”

“The kids.  At the bait . . . the chapel.  What was that song they sang for us?”

She yawned.  “I don’t know, something from the Phantom of the Opera.”

“Do you have it?”

“Huh?”

“On a CD.  Do you have it on a CD?”

“No.”

There was a long pause.  Russ was disappointed, because he felt eerily as if whoever had written the song knew, knew what they had been through, knew how they had come through it together, knew what kind of effect it had on them and their relationship.  “Do you know who wrote it?” he called.

“Russell.  Don’t you want to come consummate our marriage?”

“Yes.”  He left the CDs behind and hurried into the bedroom, removing his sport jacket.  She was lying on the bed, still in her mint green everyday wedding dress, looking a little tired but not too tired.  Languid, was more like it.  She propped herself up on one elbow and, resting her head on one hand, patted the turned down bed beside her with the other.

He’d called her Mrs. Markson for the first time that night, and she’d giggled, and kissed him over and over and over.

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That was the thing about Liseli.  She had a way of making you forget the bad stuff had ever happened.

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When they got their wedding pictures back, three months later, they both had red eyes and were overexposed, so it looked like the Vampire Wedding.  In every picture.  Except when they were kissing and their eyes were shut.  In those ones instead Papa Grape loomed over them like a demon possessed Jabba the Hut.  It was fitting.  They had learned to expect that kind of thing.

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end Volume 1

The story continues in Volume 2: Six Going on Seven