You can tell how a wedding is going to go from the first five minutes. If people show up a little late, moving slowly, you know it may be a grind. With our wedding, though, everyone arrived unusually early. My best man, Angelo Foti, and his wife, Tami, drove up from the city faster than expected. They stopped at a café in Guerneville to waste time. At the café, they noticed four other couples in wedding-type clothes. They introduced themselves, and apparently the party began then and there.
With the flow of friends and relatives, my nerves, and all the rest of it, it wasn’t until the ceremony had already begun that I realized Finnegan had shown up. I was looking at Alice in her great dress, walking down the aisle by herself, en route to me, of all people, when I caught a glimpse over her shoulder of Finnegan, standing there in the back row. He wore an impeccable suit with a pink tie. The woman with him, maybe five years his junior, wore a green dress. I was surprised to see them smiling, clearly happy to be there. I guess I was expecting Finnegan and the wife to be all business, a late arrival and an early departure, attending the attorney’s wedding—a social obligation, checking a box, nothing more. But it wasn’t like that at all.
I didn’t know this then, but I know it now. At a wedding, if you’re paying attention, you can spot the happily married couples. Maybe it’s a confirmation of the choice they made, maybe it’s just a belief in the convention of marriage. There is a look, easy to spot, hard to define, and the Finnegans had it. Before I glanced back to Alice—beautiful in her sleeveless white dress with a retro pillbox hat—Finnegan caught my eye, smiled, and raised an imaginary glass.
The vows happened so quickly. The ring, the kiss. Within minutes of Alice walking down the aisle, we were husband and wife, and then just as suddenly the reception was in full swing. I was caught up in conversations with friends, relatives, co-workers, a few old high school buddies, all of whom eagerly retold their versions of my life, often in the wrong order but in a positive light. It wasn’t until darkness had begun to fall that I saw Finnegan again. He was standing near the bandstand, watching Alice’s musician friends work their way through an eclectic selection of songs. He stood behind his wife, his arms wrapped around her waist. She was wearing his suit jacket in the cool night air, that contented look still on their faces.
I had lost track of Alice, so I scanned the crowd to find her. Then I realized she was standing onstage. Since I’d known her, she had never performed; it was as if she’d left that part of her life completely behind. The lights were out, but in the darkness I could see her pointing to friends, calling them to the stage. Jane, their old drummer, a friend from the law firm with his bass, and others, a group of people I didn’t know well, some of whom I’d never met, whose presence spoke of a whole life she’d had before me, an important part of her very essence that was somehow closed off to me. I was both sad and excited to see her in this light: sad because I couldn’t help feeling left out and inessential, yet happy because—well, because she remained a mystery to me in the best possible way. Alice reached her hand toward Finnegan. The place began to glow with bluish light, and I realized that, as Finnegan approached the stage, people had quietly retrieved their cellphones and were recording.
My wife stood there for the longest time. The voices died down, as if in anticipation. Finally, she stepped to the microphone. “Friends,” she said. “Thank you so much for being here.” Then she pointed at me, and an organ note rose up behind her. Finnegan was in his element, playing the keyboard. It was a beautiful and elusive sound, the organ leading the other instruments slowly into the fray. Alice stood there, looking at me, swaying gently to the music. As the lights rose, Finnegan circled into a melody I immediately recognized. It was an old song, Led Zeppelin at their best, subtle and infectious, a beautiful wedding song, “All My Love.” Alice’s singing came in quiet and unsure, but then grew in confidence. I’m not sure how, but she and Finnegan seemed to be on the same wavelength.
As the music lurched forward, she stepped into a circle of light, closed her eyes, and repeated the beautiful chorus, such a plain statement, and yet for the first time I realized that, yes, she did love me. I glanced around the tent, and in the low light I could see our friends and relatives, all swaying to the melody.
Then the song took a slight turn, and Alice sang the critical line that I had long forgotten, a simple question, though one that washed the rest of the lyrics in a thin layer of ambiguity and doubt. For a moment, I felt off-balance. I put a hand on the top of a chair to steady myself and looked around, everything cast in the glow of the moon: the crowd, the pasture, cows dozing in the field, the river. To the side of the stage, I could see Finnegan’s wife dancing in her green dress, her eyes closed, immersed in the music.
The party continued for hours. When dawn broke, a small group of us were left sitting around the pool, watching the sun come up over the river. Alice and I shared a lounge chair, the Finnegans sharing an adjacent one.
Eventually, the Finnegans collected their coats and shoes and moved to leave. “We’ll see you out,” Alice said. Walking them up the driveway, I felt as if I had known them for years. As they stepped into their Lamborghini—borrowed from a friend, Finnegan said, winking—I remembered the gift. “Oh,” I said, “I forgot to thank you. We were supposed to talk about your intriguing gift.”
“Of course,” Finnegan said. “All in due time.” His wife smiled. “Tomorrow we go back to Ireland, but I’ll email after you return from your honeymoon.”
And that was it. Two weeks in a mostly abandoned but once grand hotel on the Adriatic, a long flight home, and suddenly we were right back where we started—the same, only married. Was this the end, or just the beginning?
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