C Reiss - Sing

JONATHAN

Her hair fell across our fists, which were balled up together around a found box holding my sister’s ring. My hands shook as I removed it. My rib cage ached like it was stretched by an ever-expanding balloon inside it. With the tube out my chest, it was filling with blood, drop by drop. I was sure the feeling of expansion was air, or my imagination, but the fear of it made it hard to get the garish thing on her finger. The size was right, but the stone was wrong. All wrong. I wanted something else for her, something more original, a ring that could only belong to a goddess.

“I won’t disappoint you,” I said.

“I’m not worried about you being the disappointment.”

Irene’s voice cut in. “I declare you engaged. Time to go.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“I want to tell you what you do to me the night I agree to marry you,” Monica whispered.

“They have to put me back in. I don’t want you to see it.”

“Jonathan, please—“

“Time to go,” Irene said more firmly.

“Go,” I said to my fiancée. “Please. Come back in an hour. Then you can tell me about our wedding night.”

Her head tilted a little and her eyes widened. Yes, it was quick, but wasn’t that the point? She kissed me a second too long because we ended with me grimacing. She must have known it wasn’t about her, because she got up and walked out with out looking back. Good woman.

I submitted myself completely to Irene and Gregory, who had broken a hundred rules or more to give me five minutes to ask properly for Monica’s hand. The rules were good. They were there for a reason, which was, I couldn’t handle five minutes kneeling. I felt like I’d just run a marathon that ended in a dark alley, where I’d been beaten with baseball bats and cut into small pieces with a serrated knife. Or something that made me too weak, too pained, too outside myself to manage my own body.

They got me out of my clothes, reinserting, realigning, and recalibrating the devices attached to me. They accepted my gratitude for as long as I had the wherewithal to express it, which was an eternity, but probably about five minutes in the rest of the world. Then I fell off the cliff of consciousness for awhile. Might have been the drugs, or my body giving out like it did a few times a day. Even then, I didn’t have the energy to fully feel angry, though there was a cord of that in my spine. Mostly, I felt fear. I was responsible for her now, and though the unknown was bad enough to face alone, in the dark, unprepared, I felt as though I had something to live for tomorrow.

MONICA

I crouched on the stairwell. It was late. Jonathan couldn’t see me that next hour after he’d given me the ring, or the one after that. Sheila had come and gone, her lips pressed together in a line of rage. Eileen called to see if I was there, and if I was, was he lucid enough to see anyone. This was fucked, but I figured, if Jonathan had wanted his family involved they would have been involved.

I called Darren.

“Do you have something blue?”

“Technically, yes.” He stepped out of the studio to finish the sentence, and I could hear the rain and traffic in the street behind him.

“Something pretty and blue?”

“Okay, what the fuck?”

“I’m getting married, and I have this ring that’s borrowed and this belt is like a hundred years old.”

“What the hell...?”

“Can you just bring me something blue, please?”

He started a sentence, but didn’t finish it. Took a breath, started to say something else, and stopped himself.

“Darren?”

“Jesus. I didn’t...I don’t know what to say. I haven’t been there for you, have I?”

“Be here for me tonight. Something reasonably attractive. And blue. And new, if possible. I’m stretching the definition with what I have here.”

MONICA

Darren arrived just as Irene was telling me to do something with my hair, then come in. He handed me a CVS bag with four blue hair clips.

“Thank you,” I said. He grabbed me and hugged me. It was the only real hug I’d gotten all week, warm and perfect, without expectation or promise. I chose a little rhinestone hairpin the color of the autumn sky and let Darren put it in.

“You’re the maid of honor and the best man.”

“I’m not making a toast.”

“He won’t have the energy. He barely had it in him to ask me to marry him in the first place.”

We walked down the hall.

“I wish you’d told me...asked me for something,” he said.

“You never pick up. I feel like I’m bothering you.”

He shrugged, and we turned into Jonathan’s room. It was lit only by the reading lamp over his bed. I felt Darren stiffen. Jonathan was halfway sitting, but bedridden and pale, connected to machines and IV bags of medicine and blood. The last time they’d seen each other, Jonathan was hale and Darren was threatening to send out wedding invitations if there was another breakup.

“Hi,” Darren said.

Jonathan held his hand up in greeting.

“You look like fucking hell, man.”

“Darren!” I cried.

“And I can still get a knockout wife.”

“Tough to be you.”

People came in behind me. I didn’t see them, I only saw Jonathan. I kissed his lips for the last time as his lover, and turned around. Irene and Gregory were at the foot of the bed, and in the chair I usually occupied, a short woman in horn-rimmed glasses and clerical collar. She was a few years older than me, and had a mop of curly hair held in place with a hip vintage clip. Darren stood behind her.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi,” Jonathan and I chanted. I straightened and stood on the opposite side of the bed from her, holding his hand. It was cold.

“My name is Sona, and let me tell you, this is not the kind of call I usually get when I do the hospital chaplaincy. I had to dig around for the right prayer book. But, happy occasions are worth the trouble. So, what do we have? Both Catholic, I hear?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“And I hear the groom has a big family? They aren’t here?”

“I’ll tell them tomorrow,” Jonathan said. My sigh of relief must have been audible, because he squeezed my hand.

“Sona,” I said, “Jonathan isn’t up for anything long and involved, if that’s okay. I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“Nope!” She smiled with big, white teeth. “You have rings?”

“Crap.” I didn’t. I glanced at Darren. He shrugged, holding his palms up.

“Can we make do with something?” she asked. “People do like the rings.”

“Yes!” I said. “I have it.” I rummaged through my bag and came up with my bunch of keys. Car. House. Front gate. Locker at work. I clicked through them.

“Clever goddess,” he said. “I owe your fingers some jewelry.”

My eyes hurt again, because the odds of him repaying that debt got smaller with each day. I focused on loosing as many keys as possible into the bottom of my bag.

“Let’s do some paperwork while Monica does that, okay?” Sona smiled again, extracting a little clipboard. She asked our full names, dates of birth, addresses, and had us sign on the dotted lines while I untwisted as many silver rings as I could. Darren showed his ID and cracked a joke about being licensed to witness weddings. By the time she was done, I’d released two smallish keyrings. I adjusted one for Jonathan’s hand, and found another for myself. I pressed it into his palm.

“Okay,” said Sona, standing, all enthusiasm and light, as if this wasn’t the most depressing situation, ever. “Groom goes first. You ready?”