Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

This was happening. This was really happening. Her sister was standing up and reading the passage from The Velveteen Rabbit : “‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’”

Franklin was next, with good old Psalm 121. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand…”

Now Minister Thaw was recounting Christ’s first miracle, performed at a wedding in Galilee. That word always made George think of the song, “Puff the Magic Dragon” who had “frolicked in an autumn mist in a land called ‘Honah Lee’”—but as a boy he had misheard it and had for some time believed that Puff was from northern Israel. He looked up at Sara, and he could see her lips were moving, mouthing the words to the song she knew was in his head in that moment. They smiled, and Sara wished, a little, that they could recite the song instead of the vows that the church required, and she hoped this wasn’t as sacrilegious a wish as it felt. George’s eyes bugged a little, as if to ask if she could believe this was all really happening, and hers bugged back as if to say that she couldn’t, but it was, and that through everything that had happened, over all the years, they had made it here.

Of course none of the guests could see any of this happening. They fanned themselves with programs, strained to hear, and subtly adjusted their clothing. Grandma Pertie unwrapped a lozenge midway through the vows, irritating more than a few people nearby, but it was quickly forgotten. There was an audible buzz when Franklin Murphy got a text message from American Express, concerned about that morning’s suspicious $103.22 breakfast charge — he hadn’t notified them that he would be traveling out of the Midwest. Beth forgot herself at one point and could be heard softly humming the theme to SpongeBob . Jacob, standing to one side in the front with the other groomsmen, was mentally rewriting his poem and wondering what the hell William was doing wearing a fedora in the back row.

Then there was a sudden blasting on the organ pipes, and a cheer that rose through the pews, with people flying to their feet in applause, for Minister Thaw had just told George that he could kiss his bride, and (with gusto) he was doing so. Beaming, proud, resilient: they came then down the aisle arm in arm, waving and smiling at everyone. Both of them had assumed that since they had known each other so long and had lived together for years already, the moment would feel no different, really, than a million prior moments — but it did. They both were a little surprised, but there it was. A strange sense of having expanded. As if they had been, until now, living in two neighboring apartments and finally had knocked down the wall between them.

They had no receiving line — no time! It was right on back to the limousines, where the first round of champagne awaited them. Sara had arranged for four bottles of the more expensive Krug NV Grande Cuvée Brut, to be shared by the wedding party members only, then stepping down to the more reasonably priced Moët. They went around the corner and up the three blocks and back around to the gorgeous Palm Ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria. The crème marble floors were polished, and the mahogany wood was gleaming in the chandelier light. The band was playing something light and jazzy that everyone could talk over.

The cocktail hour flew by, with people steadily arriving from the church, met by a steady revolution of servers with hors d’oeuvres: crostini with duck confit and rhubarb marmalade, green tomatoes with balsamic and crispy serrano ham, elegant mini mac-and-brie cheeses, a festive French play on pigs-in-a-blanket that involved tiny croissants wrapped around an authentic andoulliette, and the coup de grâce, a gloriously orange spoon made out of Mimolette cheese that contained a single scoop of Prishibeyev caviar topped with crème fraiche. These were passed out with shots of Gray Goose, but there were also blood orange gin and tonics, a ginger bourbon lemonade, and George’s newly refined blackberry sages. There were thick lines at both bars at first, probably because of the hand-carved ice cubes, but within fifteen minutes, at the most, everyone had a glass in hand.

They were young but once. For one night and one night only, let there be no heartburn, no traffic, no bedtime, no chafing, no fears. George and Sara wanted to create not just a moment but a memory — a moment that lives beyond its borders — and the usual shrimp cocktail and steely Chardonnay wouldn’t cut it. There would be nights ahead (oh yes, there would be) as there had been nights before, where nothing would go right, where the memory of a tulip and sea grass centerpiece on a perfectly set table would be needed. Where a turmeric-flavored butter would be remembered. Where a spring vegetable salad could be recalled, along with the way the dressing perfectly prepared the tongue for the truffle in the wild mushroom soup that followed. The earthy quality of which was then met and cleansed from the palate by the perfect purple scoop of beet sorbet that followed. And the steam released from the phyllo-dough parcel containing juicy red lamb loin encrusted with macadamia nuts and a swirl of potatoes mashed with Roquefort…

Father danced with daughter; mother danced with son. Sisters made tearful speeches in which they both spoke the truth and lied through their teeth in wishing the happily couple nothing but the very best. Brothers told what light-blue stories they could of George’s love life before Sara (the story of his serial kindergarten proposals came up in both their speeches).

And then Jacob unfolded his hotel stationery and smoothed the wrinkles out against his sleeve. A big cough, a steadying look in George’s direction, and a good throat-clearing.

“This is just something — Sara asked if I’d read something brief. A poem. Anyway. This is part one, of, I think, three parts, about what was maybe the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Which was meeting these two people and following them here. Anyway.”

And he began to read, “‘We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died…’”

He went on and on. George had never heard anything like it from Jacob before. Was it technically even poetry? It wasn’t exactly brief. His mother was looking around as if someone were supposed to flash the lights, but others were laughing, and Sara was crying for the first time all night — oh well, she’d almost made it. The poem (if it was a poem) was about them (all of them) as they had been before. She could hardly remember when it had been like that.

When Jacob finished, no one quite seemed to know what to do, so George stood up and loudly cheered and clapped, and it being his day, everyone else followed his lead. Jacob took a bow, and then a drink, and dessert was served.

Six tiers of alternating Opera and St. Honoré Cakes with a vintage topper from the 1920s, obtained on eBay after a vicious auction in which Sara had left several competitors eBleeding on the virtual floor. The cake was served with the special-roasted coffee (with a shot of Napoleon brandy added by those in the know) and then a series of passed postdessert munchies: champagne wine gelée, a sour cherry-filled soufflé, and a perfect madeleine stamped with an M .