The Unspeakable Name

The Unspeakable Name

Jean returned to the dressing room at the rear of the family church to find her sister pacing the faded green and cream rug. Her bridal veil had gone a little lopsided, but Jean thought better of mentioning it. DeeDee’s white satin gown tangled hopelessly around her short, shapely legs.

“Jean,” DeeDee said, “It’s about time you got back in here. Fix my gown, would you? It’s driving me nuts.”

Jean gathered her own silk gown and approached DeeDee, but she wouldn’t hold still long enough. “He’ll come.”

“Why would he be so late to our wedding though?” DeeDee put her index finger in her mouth and sat on the pink tufted stool by the vanity.

“I don’t know. Don’t bite your nails.”

DeeDee frowned at Jean, her jaw setting. “It’s my wedding.”

“It’s my wedding, too,” Jean shot back, regretting it instantly. “We can’t afford to fight each other, not today.” She sighed. “The guests out there are getting antsy. I don’t even know what Leon must be doing or thinking. Bad luck to see me and all.”

DeeDee glared at her sister. “Leon showed though, didn’t he?”

The implied accusation stung - sharp, pointed, and venomous like a snake bite. Leon was Episcopalian, not Catholic like the Merchant family. Their widowed mother, Iris, had protested. The priest had protested. The only way for Jean to marry Leon in the first place was to pay for a special dispensation. Jean had railed against the hypocrisy of righting a wrong with a financial transaction, but Iris had insisted on paying it for the sake of a respectable wedding ritual.

Jean would have had her ceremony in Leon’s church, but he hadn’t exactly settled on one, rarely attending at all.

Her exchange of vows would have been relegated to a side chapel in their Roman Catholic church if Leon didn’t convert. Leon had laughed at the suggestion. All hope was lost until DeeDee had suggested the double wedding. That would allow all of them to be in the main chapel.

Jean didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, run, or hide. Her love for Leon was on equal footing with her love for her sister and mother. All she wanted was for a family tradition to bind them all together, but instead it threatened to unravel her very soul.

What must have started as a murmur on the other side of the door grew into a chant. “Where is the groom? Where is the groom?”

Patience ceded to panic. Jean knelt in front of DeeDee, catching a shaft of light from the lone window. “I can’t imagine what happened to him. He wouldn’t just not show up, DeeDee. There must have been an accident blocking his way, or an emergency of some sort.”

“This is a disaster!” DeeDee. “It’s so embarrassing. I thought he loved me. And there you are, looking all angelic, and I’ll be a laughingstock.”

Jean didn’t know how to respond. The pain seared on both ends. “He’d be a real horse’s ass not to love you. You’re amazing. You’re the most beautiful girl ever.” Jean said, taking DeeDee’s gloved hand. She wondered haltingly why DeeDee’s fiance never stayed long enough to sit with the Merchant family for supper. He’d always had to leave right as Ma set the table. Why hadn’t he ever taken DeeDee on dates on the weekend like a regular fella? She pushed the thought away and focused on her sister’s bowed head.

“How can I face everyone after this?” Tears began the ugly work of dissolving DeeDee’s mascara.

“This isn’t your fault,” Jean said, squeezing her hand. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“But I chose him. He proposed and I said yes. It is all my fault.”

“He’s still coming. He has to. If he doesn’t show up, and there was some kind of horrible emergency, we’ll just have another wedding for you.”

“If he doesn’t show up, I’ll–”

The door swung open and their mother Iris entered quickly. She looked down the hall, and closed the door quietly. Her pale face was flushed behind her mourning veil, her hazel eyes wide with fear. Something about her mourning skirt suit struck Jean as ominous. Father had passed away just late May. September Ninth was supposed to be joyous, doubly so.

“Ma, what should we do?” Jean asked, pulling DeeDee’s hand to her own chest, covered in handmade lace with sequins and pearls.

Ma didn’t answer. She looked from Jean to DeeDee and back.

“Ma, what should we do?” Jean asked again, shaking.

Iris was paralyzed, looking lost and terrified. Jean had never seen Ma like this. She always knew what to say or do. She was always practical. This paralysis and fear were contagious, and Jean's panic took the form of sweat beading down her back.

“DeeDee,” Iris hissed. “The guests are whispering that [unspeakable name] is already married. How could you let this happen? How could you not know? Our whole family is being utterly humiliated.” Her words sucked all the light and life out of the air, leaving only the smell of sickly gardenia and gray desperation hanging in the rectangular room.

Jean and DeeDee gasped, their eyes and mouths hung open. Jean didn’t want to be sure she’d heard right. Already married. Was that why he never sat to her family’s dinners? Was that why weekends were off limits to her sister? DeeDee’s fault for not knowing. People were talking. That meant they knew. That meant these people related to them by blood and claimed to love them never once offered a word of warning. What kind of people had they invited to share in their wedding? These spectators came to be entertained by DeeDee’s misery.

Jean’s head spun. The pink, green, and cream of the room merged into a vaporous, swirling cloud of nothingness. Her bones rattled while she gulped for air. This feeling was so familiar. She’d felt it when Father collapsed in the fourth row pew of this very church. Again at Father’s funeral and his viewing. Again when the nuns and Board of Regents wouldn’t allow her to postpone her Latin Regents exams despite a death in her immediate family. Grandma Jo casting doubt on the family’s ancestral story of being nobility fleeing France during the Revolution for the safety of Corsica. She closed her eyes, unable to withstand anymore.

“Ma, don’t blame DeeDee for this. You could have taught us how to spot liars. You could have taught us to spot fake men and–”

“Shush, child. Don’t you blame me for this fiasco.” Iris’s words were as black as her mourning veil.

“Fiasco?” Jean burned with white hot fury. “I’m supposed to get married, too. Ma! What should we do?”

“Keep your voice down. People might hear.” Iris met Jean’s eyes, sharp, steady, sure. “You, Jean, are going to go out there and get married. Go, child. I’ll stay with DeeDee.”

Jean remained frozen, clamped down on DeeDee’s hand, and locked on Ma’s eyes.

“Jean Merchant,” Iris said through clenched teeth. “Get up. Go get married.”

Jean’s tears broke through against her will. “Ma, I can’t. How can I go down the aisle without Father and without you both?” The entire world was reduced to a staticky ball. It would crack open, fragile like an egg, and swallow her. It would close again, crushing her bones, her ribs, her heart.

“You love Leon, right?” Iris took Jean by the shoulders and guided her to her feet.

The invocation of Leon’s name brought Jean back up to the surface. She could focus on handsome, steady Leon. “I do.”

“You said yes when he asked you to marry him.”

“Yes, I did.”

“This is your moment. This is it.” Iris removed a black glove from her hand and wiped coarsely at Jean’s tears. “Let’s bring your veil down, and you pull yourself together.” A grim smile spread across Ma’s mouth. The surface of her voice seemed chipper, but the rip current remained. “Now go march down that aisle to Leon, the man who loves you. You’ve rehearsed, so you know what to do and when to do it. So does Jehan. Just follow his lead, mm? Go. Go now.” Iris was shaking hard enough to cause an earthquake, but her feet wouldn’t move, confusing Jean. “I will stay with your sister.”

Ma wasn’t coming out to the chapel to witness her get married.

Shaken but with one solitary mission, Jean walked out the door of the dressing room, sealing off the anemic gardenia aroma. Her eyes watered from the priest’s incense. Her maid of honor seemed to appear out of nowhere. She handed Jean the bouquet of dahlias and trailing ivy and then guided her train. An usher took her to a starting point and motioned with his hand. The music for the bridal chorus started. Jean took her cousin, Jehan’s arm, and followed his lead - one step at a time.

The neighbor’s little girl went down the aisle first, sprinkling marigold petals from a basket. The bridesmaids went next. Her maid of honor stood facing her.

“Jean. We’re here. This is it. You can do this.”

Jean nodded, both absent and fully in the present. She was aware of her feet in her shoes, standing on a red carpet. The maid of honor turned and went down the aisle toward Leon’s best man, his brother Luke.

“Jean, we’re next.” Jehan’s eyes were vacant but his voice steady.

She nodded again, wordless behind her veil. Her heart beat. Her lungs inhaled and exhaled. The guests stood, but Jean no longer cared about them. It suddenly made sense why the small cathedral was filled in lopsided. More than half the guests were on the bride’s side of the aisle, and there were so many unfilled pews on the groom’s.

Jean recognized her new mother-in-law, Bessie, and Leon’s workmate, Ainsley. She focused randomly on faces. She erased their names, reassigning them Spectator #1, Spectator #2, Spectator #3, etc. They were all guilty for betraying her sister. Her amazing sister DeeDee, whose clever idea made this respectable and solemn day possible.

She would marry Leon, and maybe he’d even take her out of Brooklyn. It was 1950. She’d graduated high school and the world was changing.

More automobiles entered the roads, pushing the horse-drawn banana cart out of the way. New, gleaming grocery markets with mounds of fresh produce piled high were also making the banana cart less relevant. The world continued without Father, and wasn’t that unimaginable? Ma hadn’t coached her or answered her questions on what to expect for tonight on her honeymoon.

The world was changing in inexplicable ways, some hard, and some for the better. Leon and Jean could find a place where it was better. Maybe Philadelphia or a suburb in Queens.

Ma was there, but not there. Jean wanted to cry, but then she caught sight of Leon, standing by the altar. Candlelight flickered and illuminated his proud face. What was it he always said, “Me always go come.” Some Trini patois nonsense that made all the sense in the world at this moment. He came. Like always.

Leon was no spectator. He was participating and embarking on a journey into the future with her. Regal and so Americanized in his black tux. He was the one wearing the azure blue and white cufflinks with the brown butterfly in the center that mattered to him. Every color carried symbolic weight and meaning all the way from Port of Spain, Trinidad. He stood before her without a trace of malice. In his eyes, she witnessed the steadfastness of a love that held the world at bay.

Jehan turned her over to her betrothed. When Leon pulled her veil over her head to reveal her face, Jean had no idea what he saw. Did he see a naive girl or a woman bearing centuries?

She recited her vows. He recited his. All that was left were the only words that mattered: “By the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss your bride.” They were the only words she remembered.

Leon’s kiss tasted of curry and rum, mingled with the salt in her tears. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.