A Wedding in December

The scarf had traveled the world with him. It had protected him from sandstorms and dust storms and he refused to be parted from it or have it replaced. It fascinated her that someone so clever could think a scarf could bring luck. She couldn’t understand how someone with his brain could think there was something magical about a wool/cotton mix.

“I can’t believe Rosie is getting married. She’s so young.” She was desperate to talk to someone about it. Nick might not have been her first choice, but as he was the only candidate for her confidences, he won.

“Twenty-two.” He spooned sugar into his coffee. “If this were ancient Egypt, she would have been married a decade ago.”

Comments like that, Maggie thought, were why a woman needed girlfriends.

Sometimes she wanted to lift up the nearest frying pan and clock his clever, but somehow still clueless, brain.

“This isn’t ancient Egypt.” Sometimes his head was so deep in his studies, she was convinced he’d forgotten that. “And we haven’t even met him.”

“Well, we’re not the ones marrying him. As long as she likes him, that’s all that matters.”

“Likes him?” Sometimes she despaired. “They’ve barely spent any time together. And it’s all been heady, romantic good times. That’s not real. That’s not what marriage is.” Marriage was holding tightly to each other as you stumbled over rough ground. Marriage was never letting go.

She and Nick had let go.

He stirred his coffee slowly. “Maybe it should be. Maybe there should be more of those romantic good times.”

What was that supposed to mean? Was it a dig at her? “Life happens, Nick. Someone has to handle it.”

“Woah—” He sent her a startled look. “What did I say?”

“You were implying that I was so busy looking after the practical side, I forgot to be romantic.”

“I wasn’t implying anything.” He put the spoon down. “You know I don’t think that way. I don’t go for hidden messages, or subtext or any of those other complex ways of communicating. I was simply saying that romantic, heady times can be real, too.”

Was she overreacting? “All I’m saying is that they’re still in the dizzy whirlwind stage. They’re not arguing about who is going to change a lightbulb or cook dinner. They haven’t had to cope with things going wrong. We both know there will be challenges. That’s life. They barely know each other. I’m worried this is the wrong decision.”

“If it’s the wrong decision, then it’s their wrong decision.” He took a sip of coffee. “And people who know everything there is to know about each other can get divorced, too.”

She felt herself flush. “I know that, obviously, but—oh, never mind.”

This was often how a discussion between them ended, with her giving up. It hadn’t always been that way. At the beginning, they’d talked about everything but somewhere along the way that had stopped. Conversations had gone from deep to shallow and practical.

Can you pick up Rosie’s prescription on the way home?

At some point she’d stopped sharing with him and it occurred to her now that she had so many thoughts and emotions that he knew nothing about. She’d never told him she sometimes felt inferior next to him, even though she knew deep down that she wasn’t. She felt, somehow, that she’d forgotten how to be her.

She remembered attending a parents’ evening where the teacher had said oh you’re Katie and Rosie’s mother as if that somehow became an identity. At the time it hadn’t bothered her because she was their mother. And she was Nick’s wife.

Who else was she? Lately that question had started to trouble her.

Nick put his mug down on the table. “You’re upset.”

“A little, yes. I’ve been looking forward to Christmas for so long. I brought the decorations down from the attic last week, and the cake is made—” She finished her coffee. “Ignore me. Christmas is just a day. We can all get together some other time.”

Nick frowned. “We’ll all be together in Aspen, but we both know that’s not why you’re upset.”

She put her cup on the counter. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not upset because of Christmas. You’re upset because our Rosie is marrying an American. You’re thinking that she might choose to live there permanently. Have kids there. Grow old there.”

Maggie felt as if someone had punched the air from her lungs.

She’d been trying not to think about that. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about that part of the equation.

She’d kept her thinking short term. Christmas. That was about all she could handle. But Nick was right. Deep down that had been her fear from the moment Rosie had made her announcement.