After I Do (26 page)

J
onathan Louis Spencer is born at 1:04
A.M.
on June 2. He weighs eight pounds, six ounces. He has a full head of dark hair. He has a squooshed face. He sort of looks like Natalie. If someone squooshed her face.

By sometime around nine in the morning, we’ve all held him. The nurse has taken him and brought him back, and now Jonathan rests in my mother’s arms. She is rocking back and forth. Natalie is half-asleep in the hospital bed.

Charlie looks at me, proud papa written all over his face. “I’ve only known him for eight hours,” he says to me, sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead at his baby boy. “But I could never leave him.”

I grab his hand.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Charlie says, shaking his head. “How our dad could have left. It doesn’t make any sense, Lauren.”

“I know,” I say.

Charlie looks at me. “No, you don’t,” he says. It’s not accusatory. It’s not pointed. He is merely telling me that there is an experience in this world that he understands more intimately than I do. He’s letting me know that as much as I think I get it, there is a world of love out there, a world of deep, unending, unconditional dedication that I know not of.

“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t yet.”

“I’ve never loved anything like this,” he says, shaking his head again. He looks at Natalie, and he starts to cry. “And Natalie,” he says. “She gave it to me.”

My brother may not have been in love with Natalie when he asked her to marry him or when he decided to move back here. He may not have been in love with her when he brought his things into her house and started to make a life with her. But somewhere along the way, he learned to do it. Maybe it happened at 1:03 or 1:04 or 1:05 this morning. But there’s no doubt it happened. You can see it in his eyes. He loves this woman.

“I’m proud of you, Charlie,” Ryan says, patting him on the back. “I’m so happy for you.”

Charlie closes his eyes, holding in the tears that want to fall onto his cheeks. “I’m gonna do this,” Charlie says. He opens his eyes. He’s not talking to me. He’s not talking to Ryan. He’s not talking to Rachel or Natalie or my mom. He’s talking to Jonathan.

“We know you are,” my mom says. She’s not answering for herself. She’s answering for all of us. She’s answering for Jonathan.

I look at Jonathan’s face. How can something so squooshed be so beautiful?

I look at Ryan, and I can tell what he’s thinking. We can do this, too, one day. Not today. Probably not next year. But we can do this one day. Ryan squeezes my hand. Rachel sees it, and she smiles at me.

It’s a good day. My mom, Charlie, Natalie, Jonathan, Rachel, Ryan, even me—we made this a good day.

“Wait,” I say. “Is Louis for Lois?”

Natalie laughs. “It wasn’t, but it is now!”

Charlie starts laughing, and so does my mom. If Charlie and my mom are laughing, then I’m right. It’s a good day.

T
here is a funeral. And a wedding. And in between, a reunion.

At the funeral, Ryan holds my hand. Bill holds my mother. Charlie holds Natalie. Rachel holds Jonathan. Fletcher reads the eulogy.

I’m not going to lie, his eulogy is a little weird. But he does capture the heart of Grandma. He talks about how much she loved Grandpa. He talks about how lucky he felt to live in a home where his parents loved each other. He talks about how his parents are together again, and that brings him great solace. He talks about the right things my grandmother always said at the wrong times. He talks about how we all laughed when she said she had cancer, and he tells it right. He makes it funny and idiosyncratic instead of sad and rueful.

My mom stays quiet. She tries to keep the tears in and mostly succeeds. I am surprised to find that she does not lean on Rachel, Charlie, and me all that much. When she does cry, she turns to Bill.

Once the funeral is over, we all go back to Fletcher’s house for food. We talk about Grandma. We coo over Jonathan. We follow Natalie around the room and ask her if she needs anything. She’s the star of the family now. She’s given us the crown jewel.

When I’m tired and I want to go, when I’ve had enough talking, enough crying, enough dwelling, I look over at Charlie and Ryan, talking to each other in the corner, each with a beer in his hand.

How did I forget that they are brothers in their own right? They do it so well.

W
hen Ryan and I finally get back to Los Angeles, we don’t go to our home or to his apartment. We go to Mila’s house.

And waiting for us there is Thumper Cooper.

Ryan doesn’t say anything when Thumper runs to him. He doesn’t say
Down, boy
or
Hey, buddy
or any of the things you say to an excited dog. He just holds him close. And Thumper, normally excitable and rambunctious, rests comfortably and patiently in his arms.

Mila gives Ryan a hug of her own. “So you’re back, huh?” she asks. She knows she’ll get the details soon. She’s just glad he’s here. “Happy to see you,” she says, smiling at me.

Ryan laughs. “Happy to be seen.”

We thank Mila and Christina, and the three of us get into the car. We drive to our place. We get out of the car. I open the front door. We all walk in.

Here we are. Our tiny family. Nothing’s missing anymore.

We’re home.

That night, Ryan gets into bed next to me. He holds me. He kisses me. He slides his hand down my body, and he says, “Show me. Show me how to do what you want.”

And I do. And it feels better than it did with David. Because I am once again myself with the man I love.

We forgot, for a while, how to listen to each other, how to touch each other. But we remember now.

The next morning, I wake up and open the shoebox in the closet. I dig out my wedding ring. I put it back on.

T
he wedding is a month later. It’s a hot July day. We’re at Natalie’s friend’s beach house in Malibu. What this friend does for a living, I don’t know. I would guess, judging from the fact that this house is quite literally on the beach and has one-hundred-eighty-degree ocean views from every floor, that it’s something in entertainment. There is a bonfire scheduled for late tonight and a lobster bake picnic scheduled for after the ceremony. Drinks and dancing are on the roof deck. Remind me to start hobnobbing with Hollywood producers. I would like for this to become a regular thing.

The ceremony is starting in a few minutes. Natalie, Rachel, and I are finishing getting ready. Natalie is wearing a ­Grecian-looking dress, draped around her. Her face is flush. Her boobs are huge. Her hair is long and curled. She is wearing long earrings that are buried in her long, dark hair. Her eyes have so much life behind them.

“Does this look right?” Rachel asks, as she fastens the halter top of her “persimmon” dress behind her neck. I assure her that it does. I know, because mine looks exactly the same.

Natalie’s mom is helping Natalie get her shoes on. I thought Natalie’s parents would be lithe and vibrant like her, but they look entirely average. Her mom is round in the middle. Her dad is short and hefty. I’m not sure what it is about them that makes it clear that they are from Idaho, but they certainly don’t seem to be from around here. Maybe it’s the fact that they are some of the nicest, most sincere people I’ve ever met.

Natalie’s dad knocks on the door to come in.

“Just a minute, Harry!” Natalie’s mom calls out. “She’ll be ready in a second!”

“I want to take a picture, Eileen!”

“Just a second, I said!”

Natalie looks at Rachel and me with a laugh. “Oh!” she says, the thought just coming to her. “The bouquets! I left them in the fridge.”

“It’s cool,” I say. “I got it.” I cross out of the room through the shared bathroom and head down the stairs to the kitchen, where I can see my brother standing with Ryan and his friend Wally just outside the sliding glass doors.

Charlie is dressed to the nines in a fitted cream suit. He looks sleek and handsome. He doesn’t look nervous. He doesn’t look shy. He looks ready. Ryan and Wally are wearing black suits with black ties. Outside on the beach, white chairs line either side of the aisle, facing the light blue sea. People are trickling in. They grab their programs. They take their seats. The minister is standing there, waiting. My mom is sitting in the first row on the right side. She is wearing a navy-blue dress. She’s got Jonathan in her arms. Bill is sitting next to her in a gray suit. Mila and Christina are a few rows back. They are having a rare moment alone without their kids. I can see Christina look over and kiss Mila’s temple. She smiles at her.

I grab the three bouquets from the refrigerator and shake them out over the sink.

“Any last insights?” I hear Charlie say. “Any words of advice?”

I should head back upstairs, but I want to hear Ryan’s answer.

“All you have to do is never give up,” he says.

“Simple enough,” Charlie says.

Ryan laughs. “It is, actually.”

I hear a pat on the back, I’m not sure who is patting whom, and then I hear a third voice, which I’m assuming is Wally’s. “Dude, I have zero advice to give. Because I’ve never been married. But if it makes any difference, I think she’s great.”

“Thanks,” Charlie says.

“You ready?” Ryan asks.

I hear them start walking, and I peek to see their backs as they walk out together, getting ready to take their places.

I run back up to the bedroom to find Natalie. All four of them—Natalie, her parents, and Rachel—are ready to go. I hand Natalie her bouquet and hand one of the smaller ones to Rachel. I keep the third.

“OK,” Rachel says. “Here we go.”

Natalie breathes in. She looks at her dad. “Ready?”

He nods his head. “If you are.”

Her mom snaps a picture.

“OK, I’m going down first,” her mom says. “I’ll see you in a second.” She kisses Natalie on the cheek and leaves before she can start crying.

“Hoo. OK. Here we go,” Natalie says. “Any last tips?” She laughs. I assume she’s talking to her dad, but she’s talking to me. I am now a person people go to for marital advice.

I tell her the only thing there is to tell her. “All you have to do is never give up.”

Natalie’s dad laughs. “Listen to her,” he says. “She’s absolutely right.”

I
t’s ten o’clock, and the party is still going strong. When Natalie danced with her dad, I got misty. When Charlie danced with Mom, I broke down. The sun set around eight, but it’s been a warm night. The wind off the beach is strong and cools us down. Charlie and Natalie put the baby to bed a few hours ago.

Rachel made the cake, and it is the hit of the night. People keep asking about it. Everyone thinks it was from a very expensive bakery somewhere in Beverly Hills. I correct one person who asks Rachel about it. I say, “It’s from this great new place opening up called Batter,” I say. “Location TBD.”

“Location is on Larchmont Boulevard,” Rachel says, correcting me. When I give her an inquisitive look, she tells me the bank approved the loan.

“When were you gonna tell me?”

“Well, I just found out, and I didn’t want to steal the sunshine from Charlie’s wedding,” she says.

I whisper, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she whispers back. “You can pretend you’re hearing it for the first time when I tell everyone next week. You’re good at that.” She smiles at me to let me know she’s teasing.

Mom and Bill dance the night away. Later on by the rooftop bar, I point to him across the room, eating shrimp cocktail. “So the romance is alive and well, huh?” I ask Mom.

She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe it’s OK to stick around a little longer than the honeymoon phase.”

“Wow,” I say. “I’m impressed. Are you thinking about letting him move in?”

She laughs at me. “I’m thinking about it. All I’m doing is thinking. Have you seen this, by the way?”

“What?” I say, turning my head to look where she’s pointing. Over in the far corner of the dance floor, Rachel is now dancing with Wally.

“Interesting, no?”

I think about how Rachel would want me to answer. “Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “We’ll see what happens.”

“Yes, we will.”

The music changes. You know the party is reaching its peak when the DJ plays “Shout.”

Ryan runs up to me. “Baby! We gotta dance!”

I put my drink down and turn to my mother. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say.

“Certainly,” she says.

We run into the crowd. We surround Charlie and Natalie. We join Rachel and Wally. We sing our hearts out. And because “Shout” is the type of song that brings everyone onto the dance floor, Mom and Bill hop in just as Natalie’s parents make their way into the circle. Soon Mila and Christina join us, and even Uncle Fletcher can’t resist. We dance together, twisting side-to-side, crouching lower and jumping higher as the song plays on, forgetting to worry about whether we look silly, forgetting to worry about anything at all.

I look at the people in this circle with me—my family, my friends, my husband—and I am overwhelmed with hope for the future.

I don’t know if everyone is as thankful for this moment as I am. I don’t know if everyone here understands how fragile life and love can be. I don’t know if they are thinking about that right now.

I just know that I’ve learned it for myself. And I’ll never forget it.

A
few months later, it’s a Wednesday night. My night to pick whatever dinner I want. I decide to order from the Vietnamese place down the street and then think better of it. Ryan has had a hard day at work. I’m going to order us a pizza.

But before I do, Ryan waves me over to his computer.

“Uh . . . Lauren?” he says.

“Yeah?” I say, walking toward him.

“Remember when you said you wrote to that woman?”

“What woman?”

“Ask Allie?”

I sit down next to him. Thumper is at his feet. “Yeah,” I say.

“Well, it looks like she wrote back to you. Are you ‘Lost in Los Angeles’?”

• • •

Dear Lost in Los Angeles,

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s a lesson learned by those who have faced the most miserable of tragedies, and it’s a secret that I suspect you yourself already know: the sun will always rise. Always.

The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising.

And the other little piece of information that I think you need to know is that there are no rules in marriage. I know it would be easier if there were. I know we all sometimes hope for them; cut-and-dried answers would make the decisions easier. Black-and-white problems would be simpler to solve. But there simply isn’t a rule that works for every marriage, for every love, for every family, for every relationship.

Some people need more boundaries, some people need fewer. Some marriages need more space, some marriages need more intimacy. Some families need more honesty, some families need more kindness. There’s no single answer for any of it.

So I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t tell you if you should be with your husband or not. I can’t tell you if you need him or want him.
Need
and
want
are words we define for ourselves.

Here is what I can tell you. All that matters in this life is that you try. All that matters is that you open your heart, give everything you have, and keep trying.

You and your husband reached a point in your marriage where most people would give up. And you didn’t. Let that speak to you. Let that guide you.

Do you have more to give your marriage? If you do, give it everything you’ve got.

Much love,

Allie

• • •

I print out the letter and put it in the shoebox in the closet. It’s the first thing you see when you open it now; it’s on top of all the keepsakes and mementos. I think of it as the last piece of advice my grandmother ever gave me.

Ever gave us all.

And I intend to follow that advice.

I don’t know if Rachel’s bakery is going to succeed.

I don’t know if Charlie and Natalie will stay together.

I don’t know if my mom will move in with Bill.

I don’t know if Ryan and I will celebrate our fiftieth anniversary.

But I can tell you that we are all going to try.

We’re all going to give it everything we’ve got.