Marriage of Unconvenience

“Are we ready to go?” She nodded, and we rounded up our friends and piled into several cars. Cara and I were stuck with my parents, and the rest split between three cars to head to the house about an hour outside of the city.

“Mom, can we stop somewhere? I think my body is going to digest itself.” As if it was listening, my stomach growled.

“We’re going right to the house, we’ll be there soon. Can you wait?” It was like being seven again on a long car trip.

“Um, not really. And Cara is hungry too.” She nodded.

“Okay, fine, we’ll go through the drive thru, but you’re not getting anything that might spill on those dresses. Just a quick snack to hold you over.” Yup, I was a child again.

My dad found a fast food restaurant and we got in line.

“I hope this line doesn’t last too long, we really need to beat everyone to the house,” Mom said. She was fretting and Dad put his hand on her arm.

“It’ll be fine. It’s all going to work out. Don’t stress.” They smiled at each other and I felt some of the tension instantly ease. My parents balanced each other so well. When one of them got uptight about something, the other helped calm them down, or supported them through the storm. I’d always known that they loved each other, even if they didn’t say it every day. They had the kind of relationship that I had always wanted, but didn’t think I could have. That kind of love was like lightning striking the same place twice. It didn’t just happen every day.

We finally got to the window and, regardless of what my mom said, Cara and I both ordered large fries with ketchup, sodas, and a double cheeseburger to share.

“You’re going to ruin your appetites. I worked so hard on planning this,” Mom said, but let us order.

“It’s not that much, Mom, and I promise you we will be hungry again. This is just so our bodies don’t eat ourselves. Because my arm is looking kind of tasty right now.” My mom wasn’t usually so frazzled, so I wasn’t quite sure how to handle her, but Dad just laughed and handed us our bags.

“Fine, if you’re going to do this, then at least let me take pictures.” Cara and I posed with fries held to our faces and did another cute one where we were both taking bites out of the burger at the same time. Mom was having a coronary about us spilling, but we’d covered ourselves with napkins she’d handed us from under her seat, and there were stain-remover pens if we needed them. I wasn’t worried. I was just going to eat really carefully.

“Oh my god, this is so good,” Cara said through a mouthful of burger.

“Seriously,” I agreed and shoved as many fries as I could into my mouth.

“Remember what we ate after our wedding?” Dad said, smiling at Mom in that special way that was reserved just for her.

“Of course. Everyone stared at us when we walked in and I remember a few asked if we were in a play and were shocked when we said we were just married. And then we got free pie,” Mom said. I’d heard the story dozens of times before: they had gone to the courthouse and then to the local diner because it was one of the only decent places to eat in our small town. They’d still been wearing their wedding attire, and had even gotten dollars handed to them by patrons wishing them luck. Oh, and the free pie.

“So really, we’re just continuing that tradition,” I said, fishing out the last fry. Cara pouted as she realized she was out of fries. I handed mine to her.

“Here, you can have my last one.” She beamed and shoved it in her mouth.

“That was quite a ceremony. I wasn’t expecting to get emotional, but it happened anyway,” Dad said. “I didn’t know you would do vows and everything. Did you plan that?”

“Uh, not really,” I said.

“I did, just in case,” Cara said, wiping her hands with the napkins and shoving them back in the fast food bag.

“And why didn’t you talk with me about it? I was totally thrown because I was thinking about so many other things and vows kind of slipped my mind,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I kind of wanted to surprise you? And I didn’t want to freak you out ahead of time, I guess. Vows seem kind of serious, don’t they?” Yeah, they had felt serious. I might be panicking a little about this whole marriage thing. I knew other people had done this for all kinds of reasons, but hearing the words and signing the papers made it official. We were now legally married. We might not share each other’s names, but we shared everything else. And we were going to share our money.