Jack Ketchum - I'm Not Sam

Her wedding dress. It was in a box on the top shelf in the closet.

She’s standing in front of me in her wedding dress.

All the jewelry’s gone except our wedding ring which she’s been wearing all the time throughout all of this and seems to think nothing of, like it’s part of her. But she’s looking strangely shy. As though the dress has power, as though the dress has tamed her somehow.

It’s floor-length, lace, with delicate spaghetti straps and a modest train. It’s supposed to hug her body from breasts to hips but it doesn’t quite do that because Lily’s not managed the buttons up top. She’s holding the veil out to me.

“What’s this for, Patrick?” she says.

It’s a moment before I can speak. I go to her and take the veil.

“It goes in your hair. Like this.”

I arrange the comb in her hair and spread the veil down first over her face which makes her smile and wrinkle her nose and then back over her back and shoulders. I step away.

“You look… beautiful.”

“I do?” She’s delighted.

“Yes, you do. And you don’t know that, do you.”

“Know what?”

“That you’re beautiful.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

She looks at me. Her expression serious all of a sudden.

Then, “You’re silly, Patrick,” she says, and turns to head back to the bedroom.

“Wait. Come here. Sit down a minute. I want to show you something.”

I pick up the remote to turn on the DVD player while she sits down next to Zoey curled up on the couch. The dress slides up a bit. I see that she’s barefoot.

Zoey seems to regard her lap and the dress as a possible nesting place but apparently decides she’s comfortable where she is.

“You need anything? A Pepsi or anything?”

“Nope.”

“I’m gonna go grab a beer. Wait right here, okay?

“Okay.”

I do and she does.

I’ve orchestrated our home videos with old rock and country songs and the occasional show tune. I know exactly where I want to go with this because there she is beside me on the couch, sitting there in her goddamn wedding dress so I fast-forward through our first trip to the Big Apple with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin squeaking their way through New York New York it’s a wonderful town and there’s the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and Sam eating a huge pastrami sandwich at the Carnegie Deli and gazing out over the city from the second of the doomed Twin Towers and then we hit the fireworks here in Tulsa, our first fourth of July together, and she says wait, stop.

I hit play. Fireworks bore me to tears now though not as much back then. But Lily’s interested. The music is the Beatles’ FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE which is something, at least. Still, I want to get on with it. I let her watch for a while and then fast-forward again. And there we are at Yellowstone, “where hell bubbles up,” and Tom Petty’s singing SAVING GRACE sounding like Alvin’s Chipmunks while we’re viewing geysers and waterfalls, pools of emerald water and turquoise water, incredible sunsets — and from a distance, a herd of grazing bison. There’s Sam in her cutoffs in the foreground, smiling and pointing out at them.

Next we’re in Kansas City at Worlds of Fun Amusement Park. There she is opposite me on the Ferris Wheel, on her bobbing yellow horse on that merry-go-round where I snagged the ring, screaming bloody murder on the roller coaster and wait wait wait go back! Lily says so I rewind to the roller coaster again, my aim with the video camera jiggly as hell, Willie Nelson doing ON THE ROAD AGAIN while Sam screams silent screams and Lily giggles beside me.

The giggling unnerves me. I want her to wake up, snap out of it. That’s what this is for. Instead she’s giggling.

The bumper cars are next. Ooooo she says, and claps her hands, fascinated, so I know there’s no point in fast-forwarding. She’ll only want to go back again.

She’s pulled the veil down over her face and she’s chewing on it absent-mindedly.

On the screen Sam’s getting battered from all sides. She’s getting creamed. I remember this. Sam was talking to another woman, a parent, about something or other while we were standing in line waiting to ride. There were a bunch of kids behind me, maybe ten of them, all ages, and I turned and got their attention, waving my arms and then pointing to Sam and mouthing get her! which made them laugh.

And which they did.

When the segment’s over Sam and I are at Broken Bow Lake and it’s beautiful and Sam’s in her cobalt blue two-piece but I want to get through this so I fast-forward through Roy Orbison’s BLUE BAYOU and finally we’re there.

At the wedding.

And I’m wondering, does this have a chance in hell of beating out the bumper cars?

But it’s uncanny, it’s as though I knew back then when I was putting this video thing together that this was going to be important someday. Because I’ve emphasized it. I’ve left it utterly, completely silent. No scoring. Just us.

It’s a professional behind the camera so the shots are tight, focused, not jittery like my own. So there we are on this nice sunny July day in front of St. John’s Episcopal, my own limo pulling up first and me getting out in my tux with my best man McPheeters, both of us grinning, the three Johnny Walkers doing their work on us, and even my brother is smiling for a change, saying something that my groomsmen Joe Manotta and Harry Grazier seem to find actually funny.

It cuts to my mom and Sam’s mom being seated by the ushers and I look to her for some sign of recognition but there isn’t any, none at all. Next thing I’m standing at the altar with McPheeters watching my brother, Joe and Harry escort Miriam and Sam’s two pretty college roommates down the aisle, trailed by our cute little flower girl — I forget her name — very serious about the business of tossing her rose petals just so .

Then the moment I’m waiting for. Sam, arriving in front of the church and stepping out of her limo and then beaming on her father’s arm, in the dress, moving slowly down the aisle.

It’s hard to look away but I do. I need to watch Lily.

And I’m rewarded.

She leans forward, intent. She’s hardly blinking. She lifts the veil.

I remember this part from the tape. The photographer actually irritated her father slightly by focusing almost entirely on his daughter’s face. Almost nothing of him or the priest or the actual ceremony. Even I got short shrift. But I never could blame the guy. It was no wonder he was captivated. Sam was standing bathed that day in a single streak of gentle flame-red light, glowing through a stained-glass window.

This is what Lily’s seeing.

I glance at the screen. I know what’s next. The ring. The kiss.

I don’t watch the kiss but Lily does. She looks puzzled. Her eyes go to me and then back to the screen and her lips seem almost to be forming words or the beginnings of words, her eyes flicker.

They go to the gown and back to the screen again.

Come on , I’m thinking, come on.

And then the silence breaks apart into a million pieces and Kris Kristofferson and Willie are singing LOVING YOU WAS EASIER, our song back then, and I know we’re on the dance floor at the reception, our first dance together as husband and wife, and Lily leans back on the couch more relaxed now while Kris is singing coming close together with a feeling that I’ve never known before in my time and I turn to the screen in time to see that second kiss which is just as public as the first one, with everyone watching us tinkling their knives against their wine glasses but this one’s real, I remember this one all right, I can almost feel it, this one’s just for us, just between us two people so much in love and there’s nobody in the room at all but Sam and me.