The Bride's Eyes

 

She was an old friend from High School, and I had come back to New York for her wedding.  She had stayed home while the rest of us had escaped to the four corners.  The walk down the aisles, the wedding day smiles, the flowers, the wedding dress, were perfect but something was off. He was fun and nice to her but a bit controlling and self-righteous.  I thought she could do better.  She was the kindest, most honest person I knew.    They had history already, dark and light, but they were going for it that day. 

At the reception I distracted the brides’ maids with stories and adventures from the west and Europe, where I was headed the next day.  I was searching but still hadn’t found what I was looking for.  My only job that day was to turn on the music for their first dance, “Stay With Me” by Genisis.  It’s a slow starter and they wondered if It was ‘on’ at first but then they began to dance tentatively.  I’m not sure they heard all the words.  We all systematically joined in dancing, fathers, mothers, family and friends.  By the time I got to the bride we were swinging raucously and we slipped into some kind of Virgina Reel with do-se-dos and Alabama twists, just like we used to do at the Bluegrass at the Beach shows.  As she flew away from me in the afternoon light and then returned, I realized that she had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.  I had noticed them before, for sure, but today they were bright and shining, full of life and promise, potential and hope.  The moment was fleeting as she spun away from me to another guest beau, but it stuck in my soul. 

Twenty years and three beautiful daughters later, he found what he was looking for at work and told her he never loved her in a messy divorce.  He was nasty.  She was devastated.  Still is.  Now she sits at home and wonders what she could have done better. She was the perfect wife, picking him up at the station on rainy days and having a beer and dinner ready when he got home.  Devoted to the kids as well, she forgot about herself and lost her mojo and confidence but not her verve and empathy.   Going into the City through Brooklyn one day she said, ‘this was the train that he took every day’, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge like he did on 9-11.  She had never taken the trip with him and marveled at how hard it must have been for that poor bastard she still loved.  Let it go.

She tried dating but it was no use trying to reboot, so she lives alone and watches life passing by, made for pair bonding and double occupancy.  She doesn’t mind being alone as much as being lonely.  I wonder what I could have done, could have said, now and then.  ‘Run’.  ‘Come to Europe’.  Just say ‘no’.  But it was too late.  Time had come and gone, and we both became who we were destined to be.  As we walked down the boardwalk at Brighton Beach recently, the clouds parted and as the sun and sea reflected, I briefly saw the glint of that most unbelievable blue in her eyes that had faded slightly, but not extinguished.  She is going to be all right.