A Happy Catastrophe

Patrick and I got married in a crazy big May wedding on our rooftop with, yes, sixteen cakes and one secret banana cream pie with a plastic bride and groom standing up to their knees in whipped cream. There was a mariachi band and people dancing under the full moon. Everybody wore wonderful boho clothes, and Patrick found a tiara for me that he said belonged to Blix and that she’d worn when she threw her own Irish wake, because only Blix would have thought of putting on her own wake so she could get to comfort the mourners herself. And only she would have worn a tiara for it.

Fritzie stood up next to us while we read our vows, and she said her own, in which she promised to love our family and to notice if we were falling away from all the things we promised that day, particularly the one about always having ice cream in the house, which was her idea. She also said she’d pick up trash on the street and thank people on the subway when she saw them giving up their seats for pregnant women or old people, and people clapped—and even though that didn’t really have anything to do with our marriage vows, the clapping was a nice touch, and Fritzie, I think, needs a full amount of clapping. Years of clapping!

For my part, I promised to clap for her and love her and make sure she gets a lot of time to be a kid and I promised to remind her that she doesn’t have to worry about parenting the grown-ups around her.

Talk about interesting speeches, my mother got up and said that her dearest wish for us was that we shake up our marriage at least once every five years—that we should just throw out all the rules and break loose into doing completely new things.

“It’s great to be in a couple, and most people will tell you that you have to sacrifice everything for the marriage and work hard at it, but I say you should play hard at it, and don’t sacrifice a thing. Most of all, be brave enough not to give up on your own personal self,” she said. “Also, if you hate making meat loaf every Thursday night, don’t do it. Do not do it.”

My dad called out, “Could we have it on Wednesday sometimes, maybe, every once in a while?” and everybody laughed, and Paco yelled out that he’d give my dad some meat loaf to take home, and also give him the recipe so he could make it himself. That line drew some applause. My wedding was becoming like a group conversation.

You know what was the best part, though?

Well, first let me tell you that all the people from the Frippery came: Anxious Toby, Kat, Ernst the Screenplay Guy—and all the Amazings, which was like having precious swans show up. Lola and William Sullivan were there, and Lola kept dabbing her eyes and telling me that she knew that Blix was right here with us, enjoying immensely the whole idea that her plan for Patrick and me had worked out after all.

“That’s the thing about Blix’s plans,” she said. “Just when you give up on them and think they’re not coming true, then everything kind of works out just the way she said it would.”

I pointed to the tiara. “She’s right here,” I said. “Narrating the whole thing.”

So right there on that rooftop was everything I’ve ever loved about weddings: tears and applause and laughing and family and food and dancing and children and a fire in the firepit. Nobody jilted me at the altar this time or said he didn’t think he could go through with it.

But now I need to get to the best part.

After we’d said the vows, and after everybody had gotten their plates of food and the sun was starting to go down, Patrick came over and tapped me on the shoulder. I was chatting with my sister about Brooklyn kid events, and my nieces, Amelia and Louise, were running in circles around us.

“Marnie,” he said in a low voice. “It’s time. She’s pushing.”

“Oh!” I said. I stood up and put my plate on the table nearby. I felt like my cheeks were flushed.

“Should we put somebody in charge of this wedding while we’re gone, or will it just run along on its own power?”

I looked around. It seemed like a wedding that had enough oomph for a few more hours at least. Mariachis were lining up to play after a break, and there were still a whole bunch of cakes to be introduced.

My sister thought that we should stay at our wedding—“It’s your moment!” she said—but we thanked her for that observation, and kissed and hugged everybody and said we were off to have a baby.

Janelle had been very clear that she wanted us to come. We were supposed to be there for her whole labor, but she’d known we were getting married today, so she had her mom call us at the pushing stage instead. We hadn’t even known she’d been in labor since it was a whole week early.

Three hours later, I sat in Janelle’s hospital room, and Patrick and I held on to our new little daughter, and all of us cried. She was beautiful and pink and perfect, with curled-up little fists and big, soulful navy-blue eyes that gazed right up into mine. She was swaddled up in one of those white hospital blankets with the pink-and-blue stripes, and she was wearing a jaunty little knit cap that Fritzie said was so cute that we should all make some for ourselves.

Yes, Fritzie was there with us. She insisted on coming along to meet her new sister, and make sure we didn’t name her anything stupid, she said. Her eyes were glowing, I noticed, and she kept saying, “Now my daddy has two little girls.”

At Janelle’s request, I stayed with her after Patrick and Fritzie left and went back to the wedding. I think she wanted me there for fortification when Matt came to see her. The reluctant father of the baby.

He looked like a cowboy, striding into that room, bringing in an air of testosterone and defensiveness, and I didn’t like it one bit. When he asked me if they could have some privacy, I looked at her, and she nodded so I left the two of them alone and went down to the cafeteria to have a cup of tea and walk around. People looked at me and smiled, and maybe it was because I was wearing my wedding dress, which was dragging along the ground, all that lace and colorful silk—but maybe it was because I couldn’t stop hugging myself, since I was having two very intense and opposing feelings at once. I was so excited and happy in the main part of myself, but there was this other little section that was, I have to admit, a little bit scared that maybe Matt was going to say he’d changed his mind, and that he wanted to raise his baby girl with Janelle after all.

You know these things can happen.

So I asked the universe for a little sign. The universe and I hadn’t been communicating so much lately, to tell you the truth. I’d gotten a little bit more practical, maybe, and things were humming nicely along on their own, without me doing spells.

But sure enough, ten minutes later I saw a nurse’s aide come in and sit down at a table with a sheaf of papers and a tired, worn-out expression. She started reading her papers, and fidgeting—and a few minutes later, a man in a uniform came in. I saw him look over at her and then look away. And look again and look away again. She was completely unaware of him until about the third time he looked at her, this time from three tables away—and then their eyes met, and guess what I saw.

Yep, sparkles. It had been so long since I’d seen any. But there they were, shimmering as beautifully as the sparklers we used to run around with on the Fourth of July. I closed my eyes, but the stars didn’t go away. They stayed there, plain as anything, like they were reaching out to touch us all.