The Wedded Couple

The Wedded Couple

By

Paul Crehan

They had met at a bakery four years ago. Now here they were, a bride and groom in a hotel kitchen, waiting for their big entrance into the reception.

“You look happy,” the groom said, and said the bride, “I couldn’t wipe this smile off my face if I tried.”

He squeezed her hand. “Me, too.”

They listened to the DJ spin dance floor magic, and listened to the happy hubbub of 110 guests.

The toasts and speeches—all that—had been funny and heartwarming. An uncle of the groom was particularly good—had the banquet hall in a hush, and then, explosive laughter. His speech would be remembered through an entire generation after this one.

Now, it was time. The Big Moment. The bride and groom found the kitchen doors opening for them, and as they entered the banquet room, they saw everyone looking at them, applauding, smiling. Happy.

They headed toward the long, main table, a photographer backpedaling as he took pictures of them. Applause, whistles, aunties wiping tears.

The bride and groom wanted to wave to all the assembled but just couldn’t, and that was all right. They were, they understood, enough; just as they were, enough.

This was fulfillment for them; all they could hope to be.

A shining knife appeared and began to cut the cake, bottom tier first. With each cut, the bride and groom felt the earth move.

They watched everyone eating the cake, which pleased the two of them. They were so pleased to have been a part of this pleasure.

The party and dancing continued; and they looked on—smiles on their faces they couldn’t wipe off if they had wanted to.

They found themselves heading back to the kitchen.

Once there, they stood in one place, watching the kitchen staff swirl. Then a man in white, with a toque on his head, grabbed the two of them, rather more brusquely than they thought appropriate. They found themselves falling backward, bumping up once, and now at rest on their backs in a clear plastic container. A blue lid like falling sky covering them over. They couldn’t see too well through the walls of the container. To them, everything beyond was foggy.

“What happened? What’s happening?” asked the groom.

“I don’t know,” replied the bride. “But I’m happy.”

They felt the container falling, and now tumbling, end over end. They looked at each other not with fear, really, but with concern. Then—it was lights out for them as they hit the floor.

The next thing they knew, the face of a woman with silvering hair was peering down at them, the blue container lid in her hand. She gave them a smile. The groom looked at his bride and saw that both of her legs had broken off. But the smile remained on her face. How could he not love her? He would never, never let go of her hand.

The old woman took them up, their hands clasped as always, and took up the bride’s two broken legs, one, then the other.

She repaired the bride. She stood the happy couple up on her breakfast table; by the toaster. In the toaster’s reflection, the bride and groom might have been taken for a photograph of a bride and groom somewhere beyond the table, on a wall behind the table. They might have been taken for a real bride and groom, but only if one’s look at the reflection was most cursory.

Still, they were a real bride and groom, within their world of ceramic figurines. They were a real ceramic figurine of a bride and groom. They weren’t horses, or dinosaurs, or a flute-playing Pan. They were themselves.

And they were beautiful.

“Still so beautiful,” the old woman said to them.

She touched the groom’s head. She shed a tear.

She caressed the bride’s cheek. “You silly girl,” the old woman said. She chuckled.

The bride and groom could not understand the old woman’s words.

Time passed. And more time passed.

And one day there was a great shaking, a shaking of the breakfast table, the toaster bumped, bumped, bumped all the way to the edge of it and off. The clatter was so loud that the bride and groom would have covered their ears, had they been able to do so.

They found themselves, hand in hand, falling forward onto their faces, the groom’s nose breaking off and skittering across the table and off, and ending up lost to history. The bride lost a leg, but not two. The leg vibrated in place on the table, but never fell off of it.

The bride and groom heard a cry, then gasps; the old woman’s gasps. They felt her grabbing them up, and the leg. As they saw and felt her putting them in the pocket of her robe, they saw and heard the noises of her oxygen bottle on its dolly, and the old woman wheeling it in front of her. It squeaked and squeaked, and the old woman, clearly gasping for air, was saying, “Okay…okay…okay…”

The bride and groom rocketed out of her pocket and onto their backs on the dewy lawn. The lawn underneath them shook. They saw the old woman, vibrating before their eyes, hovering over them on hands and knees, gasping; and gasping; and now there was a squeak, and she fell. Right on top of them, covering them. All was dark. The dewy lawn shook. The earth under the dewy lawn shook, shook more, and cracked open in an ever-widening V, and down, down, down, they and the old woman fell. They were always falling! Why was that their fate—to fall all the time?!

Four-hundred years later, the anthropologist found them all. The old woman, bones and tatters now, and the bride and groom. Still hand in hand. Still with those smiles on their faces that they couldn’t wipe off if they tried.

They live for 67 more years on the anthropologist’s mantle (not that fireplaces are needed anymore, but people like their decorative aspect). The bride and groom like it that the anthropologist brings his guests up to the mantle, and lifts them off of it, and tells the story of how he found them and what he thinks they might mean. He is wrong. He doesn’t know what they mean. But he is right in one thing. He is right when he says, “Don’t they look like they’re happy? I mean, consider what they must have seen and gone through, and yet, look at them!” The anthropologist’s guests always chuckle, and the anthropologist says, “Whatever love looked like to that civilization, it had to look like this—two people hand in hand, and smiles on their faces that nothing has been able to wipe off.”

The anthropologist replaces the couple on the mantle, and he and his guests depart. The bride and groom will never learn what happened to the old woman; to her bones. They feel so sad to think that she is alone, that she, who is the reason they have ceramic life, because she ordered them special from the baker’s catalogue, cannot have what they have. Somewhere, she is cold and alone in the ground.

If the bride and groom knew what prayer was, they would definitely pray for her, because that’s the easiest thing in the world to do for another, when you know the happiness of true love: you'd wish that another could have it, too.

                                        The End