| Generation Ex |
Robin shook her long brown hair back over one narrow shoulder and leaned
forward, looking down at her feet as they swayed just over the water. "I can't
believe it."
Candace frowned. "Get over it already. You haven't stopped saying that all
morning."
Throwing a warning look in her direction, I said, "Lighten up, Can. Try being
sensitive for once in your life."
"Yeah. Try a little tenderness," cracked Matt.
"I just can't get over it," Robin said again. Her hands were gripping the edge of
the dock so hard her pale fingers were going red. "They were together for thirty
years. How can it take that long to realize you don't love someone?"
"Christ," muttered Candace, getting to her feet and beginning to pace behind
us.
I lay back, Candace entering my sight upside down and in constant motion –
dizzying.
"What are you going on and on for, Robin? This is such old news. Your
parents have been together longer than any of ours, shit, probably longer than
all of ours put together."
"Unless you count second marriages," offered Matt.
"And third," I couldn't help adding.
"Speak for your own degenerate mother, Watkins," Matt said to me. I swatted
him on the arm and lay back down. A bird flew by overhead. I half expected it
to shit on Robin's head. It had been that kind of week for her.
Candace came back over and crouched by Robin's side. "Look, I don't mean to
hurt your feelings, but I have a little trouble understanding what makes this such
a big deal. My parents broke up when I was five."
"So you've had a fuck of a lot longer to get used to it!" snapped Robin, throwing
her head around violently to face Candace. Robin had started crying sometime
during our ribbing. I sat up and moved closer. Matt, I noticed, was edging
nearer too. One thing about us kids of divorce – we know when the humor has
gone out of a crisis.
Candace and I have been friends since first grade, when we were the only ones
we knew whose homes weren't Rockwell-esque. After that, the numbers
seemed to shift, and nowadays, a surviving marriage is kind of suspect, as are
any children of said union. We kind of huddle around and wait for them to fail in
some way, and we're always sort of relieved to be proven right. It's like when
the perfect husband blows fifteen years on an affair, or the ideal June Cleaver
clone turns lesbian, or they simply do what Robin's folks did--get bored and drift
in separate directions, we feel vindicated somehow. It's proof our world view is
intact. People just don't fall in love forever and ever amen. Candace is
currently planning what she persistently refers to as her "first wedding." The
fiancé, George, is blissfully unaware of how tenuous his position in her life
actually is.
Matt, who gets our prize for having the most unique second family, in that he
has two step-fathers, put his arm around Robin's shoulders then and tried to
comfort her. "At least they lasted as long as you were living at home. You won't
have to go through any of that custody shit."
"Yeah. Mom told me the same thing yesterday – how she'd been wanting to do
this for a long time, but for my sake, she stayed. It doesn't feel so great, Matt."
"I know. My father told me he only married my mother so he could have a kid.
My mother still won't talk about him; she just pretends he's dead. Think if you
gave your life to a man for three years only to find out he's preferred men all
along."
I jumped in with, "I can't imagine not knowing that, not being able to tell. But I
guess things were different back then."
"And if you can't even really tell if a man loves you," Robin said.
"Or if you really love a man," Candace added softly. We didn't ask for any
explanation; we were all familiar with her reservations.
Matt said, "I think we'll be able to tell. I think if there are any questions at all in
your mind, then you're just with the wrong person."
"It's not quite that simple," Candace argued. “My mother thought she was so
sure—“
"I know, I'm sorry," Matt backpedaled. I knew he wasn't really agreeing with her;
he just didn't feel like arguing. I also knew all his theories on love came from his
thoroughly unrequited passion for Robin. I had spent God knew how many
hours listening to him explain all the reasons he couldn't possibly ask her out.
"Jo?" Robin's teary face was turned toward me, pleading.
"Yeah?" I said.
"You've seen them together. You thought they were really in love, didn't you?"
She looked sort of pathetic right then, and I gave a kind of nod, but the truth
was, I had been watching her parents closely for years – they were the only
remaining intact family I knew – and I'd seen this all along. It was something in
the way they stood next to each other but didn't touch. I think people in love
can't stand not to touch, ever. At least that's what I assume, maybe because
I've never known a man I could stand to let touch me.
A tall blonde stood in the obscene three-way mirror, immense folds of white
fabric falling to the floor, little pearly beads and buttons gleaming in the
fluorescent lights. She looked like a bride in a photograph, perfect and pristine,
radiant, ready to take a new name and begin a new life.
Candace stood in front of the mirror, and she looked none of these things. It's
funny how the expensive dress and the anonymous surroundings transformed
her into someone prepared for marriage. She slouched and pouted at herself,
bunching the satin in her fists and flapping it back and forth.
"I look gorgeous, don't I?" she scowled.
Not sure what emotion I was supposed to have at this moment, I merely hmm'ed.
"George's mother insisted on helping me pick it out. Since my own mother
couldn't pry herself out of her snifter long enough."
"It's gorgeous," I said.
She swished and flapped the dress a little more, becoming almost violent with
it. "George is wearing a blue cummerbund to match the color scheme at the
hall." Candace's colors were robin's egg blue and white. I think she made
white one of her official colors to justify her wearing a white dress. She went on,
"My sister Melissa called me a few nights ago to tell me she'd looked up
everything in her Superstition Dictionary, and it turns out I'm already doomed.
Seems October is one of the worst possible months for marriage, and Saturday
is a bad luck day for unions. I told her we were getting married, not going on
strike, but she didn't laugh."
Candace was frowning, and she had turned to sit on the overstuffed footstool,
gathering the gigantic train of her dress in between her knees. "I finally told her
it didn't matter, because I see no shame in divorce. Everyone in my family is
divorced, so there's no stigma. And George'll be as good at making alimony
payments as any other man, so what's the harm in marrying him?"
"You do love him, though, right?"
Her fingers were curled around an imaginary cigarette, so I knew she was really
uncomfortable. That hand swung through the air as she spoke. "I guess so.
I'm sure I must." She held her left hand up and smiled. "I love the ring, Jo."
I admired her diamond again. She'd been showing it to me almost daily for the
length of their engagement. I thought that maybe it wasn't so much the ring
itself as the idea of getting married. The real curse of our generation was that
while we were the first to see divorce become commonplace, we were the last to
be raised believing our purpose in life was to marry and bear children. It wasn't
until we were in our teens that we began to hear differently. By the time
Anthropologist Barbie and Olympic Gold Medalist Barbie came out, we had
already stopped playing with dolls. We only remembered the ones that said in a
high squeaky voice, "Math is hard," and "I have to go to cheerleading practice,"
when you yanked the little strings in their backs.
Robin and I were both supposed to be bridesmaids, along with sister Melissa
and our old friend Angel from high school. Candace had us all in the robin's
egg blue, and our dresses were bought, paid for, and unreturnable, so we all
rather selfishly hoped she'd go through with it.
In this spirit of optimism, we threw her a bridal shower devoid of male strippers.
We didn't come out and say so, but we were a little afraid she'd allow herself to
be led into temptation. So we four, and all our other girlfriends, and a couple of
pretty decent mother types all crowded into Melissa's condo for an evening of
gifts, gossip, and a lot of wine.
"Remember Peggy Schaefer?" our friend Kate said.
"Yeah?" I said, motioning for her to spill whatever she was obviously waiting to
spill.
"Separated," she told us.
"Already?"
"No shit," breathed Candace, looking somewhat impressed.
"What happened?" I asked.
Kate dipped a stick of cucumber into some ranch dip and held it in the air like a
scepter as she said, "Well, you remember how at the wedding, she kept saying,
'I'm not pregnant, I've just been eating too much of that delicious Italian food
Joey cooks'? Turns out that was a lie. She was two months gone at the
wedding, and that was the whole reason behind it. You know, him being
Catholic and all."
"Of course," said Candace.
"So they're married and hating it for about six months, and she goes into labor
prematurely, has the kid, and it's stillborn."
"Oh my god, that's so sad," I said.
"Right," she agreed, gesturing with her hors d'oeuvre. "So they were mourning
together, and it looked like they might actually care about each other after all. A
couple of months passed, and their marriage was better than it had ever been.
And then, out of nowhere, they just realized they had nothing in common, and
they were better off apart. They broke up on friendly terms, if you believe that,
and they're just waiting for the divorce to come through now."
"Sad about the kid, though," I said again. Kate nodded and finally took a bite of
her cucumber.
Candace said, "I think it's kind of fortunate."
We both looked at her like she was insane.
"Imagine their miserable marriage going on and on in the name of family
harmony. The kid wouldn't appreciate it, cause he'd be aware of how unhappy
they both were, and it would make him unhappy too. His little soul will get
another chance at life in a different place, and he won't ever know what it feels
like to be the rubber cement barely holding together two people running in
opposite directions."
Kate and I both sat in silence and just sort of stared at Candace and then each
other, knowing that we didn't know what to say. Jeannie had come up behind
Candace, and she was standing there a little nervous, uncertain how to break
into such a dark and somber bridal shower discussion. Finally, she tapped
Candace on the shoulder and said, "Hey, Can, congratulations. I know if
anyone can make love last, it'll be you two."
Candace looked at her as if uncertain who she meant. As if she had forgotten
why we were all there, and what was coming up in less than a month.
"Thanks," she said finally, but she looked so ghostly pensive that Jeannie
backed away with an awkward attempt at a smile.
Kate plucked a celery stalk from the party platter and set about filling it with dip.
Candace lit a cigarette and smoked as if she'd forgotten how to do anything else.
I looked around the room. Our demographic was scary: four divorced women,
one twice divorced (my mother), and nearly two dozen women in their early
twenties, not one of whom had parents who had stayed together.
I spent the rest of the night doing an informal survey. None of the girls at
Candace's bridal shower could think of a single happy couple who had been
together longer than a year. Robin was a little drunk and asked me again, "My
parents looked happy to you, right? They always looked like people in love."
A few days before the wedding, I ran into Matt at the mall and asked him about
the bachelor party.
"Sorry, Jo, can't tell," he said. "Guy stuff, you know?"
"Of course. Well, then I guess you're not at all curious what Robin said about
you the other day."
He went spastic on me, begging and pleading, offering to break all sorts of
masculine codes and tell me anything I wanted to know, if only, if only, I'd tell
him.
"All right," I said. "But you first."
Turned out the bachelor party had been only slightly more risqué than the
shower. George was completely devoted to Candace and wouldn't allow a
single woman near the place. All they had were some goofy porn movies and a
few trashy gag gifts.
"Yeah," I told him, "Jeannie gave Candace one of those 'board games for
lovers.'"
"All right then," he said. "Tell me about Robin."
I smiled at him wickedly and said, "She told me you're the only guy she knows
that she trusts. She's never trusted anyone she's dated, and she's never had a
close male friend, and her brother's a shit, and her father has fallen about thirty
stories in her view, but you are a stand-up sweetheart of a guy, and she's never
doubted you."
It was worth the trade, I could see. He absolutely glowed. I tried to imagine
what it would be like to have a guy feel that way about me, and it was like trying
to imagine having wings. I'd felt both in dreams, but I suspected I'd never get all
that close in real life.
"So are you ever going to tell her how you feel about her?" I asked him for the
millionth time.
He tightened up again, that forlorn Romeo expression returning to his face, and
I knew I was in for yet another hour of "why I can't ask Robin out."
Sure enough, he started with Point One: "What if she realized I was attracted to
her and then decided I was probably just like all the other guys? I'd lose that
special way she thinks of me now."
And he was off and running, cataloging her many virtues and his many fears. I
was getting a little jealous of her, to be truthful. Not that I wanted Matt, but I
wanted someone to agonize over me in this way, to think I was worth so much
trouble and anxiety. And then of course, to finally confess his love and marry
me and stay together forever. Kids, a house, a joint tax return, the whole thing.
I caught sight of myself in a storefront window, and I imagined my reflection
superimposed with Candace's perfect bride image. And then somehow, I just
didn't see it.
October fifteenth arrived out of nowhere, and Melissa kept superstition watch for
us. "Though this is a bad month in general, the fifteenth is one of the best days
for the joining of two entities."
I said, "That's good, actually, because they're breeding aliens tonight on the X-
Files."
She scowled at me, then went on. "And also, my cat sneezed this morning, as I
was leaving the house, and that's supposed to be a positive omen."
"Not if you're the cat. She could have distemper or something."
"Jo, I am trying to reassure Candace that the fates may not have anything
against this marriage."
"Well, what if I do?" Candace said suddenly.
We all turned to look at her. She was sitting in front of a vanity table, her white
dress on, her hair and makeup perfectly done. A crown of flowers encircled her
head, and her veil sat on the table by her elbow. If she'd been smiling, she
would have looked like a picture out of Modern Bride.
"George wants to get married and have kids and live happily ever after. I told
him yes, but I don't know if I can, I mean, if anyone can. It just feels so
unlikely. I've never seen it happen, or even heard of it. All the examples of
lifetime commitments anyone can point to come from our grandparents'
generation, or from countries where they practice arranged marriages or
polygamy, and you're not allowed to get divorced anyway. What kind of
encouragement is that?"
"Candace," I said, "if you love him, none of that matters. If the two of you are
happy together, then you can stay happy together. You can be the first
example we ever see."
She picked up a tissue and dabbed at a tear that threatened to ruin her
mascara. "Maybe," she said. She stood and fluffed out her dress. "I do think I
love him," she told us. "And at any rate, the day's all paid for. It's a beautiful
ring, isn't it?"
I nodded. She smiled. "Wait till you see the wedding band."
Two-thirty P.M. Roughly. We were all standing at the front of the church. I
thought it was a good thing this wasn't a Catholic wedding, or it would last
unbearably long. Then I thought that in a Catholic wedding, the wedding party
gets to sit down during the ceremony. Needless to say, the shoes that went
with our robin's egg blue dresses were not what you would call sensible.
I couldn't see Candace's face from where I stood. I could see George, who
looked beatific, and I was getting a glimpse of his cache of attendants, one of
whom had a pretty nice smile. I wondered if I would catch the bouquet. I
wondered if I ought to even try. Candace's little breakdown could have been
something as simple as ordinary wedding day jitters...on the other hand, it could
have been something more. It was not difficult to imagine her calling me in the
middle of the night, some months from now, to tell me it was over between her
and George, and he'd just better get himself a good lawyer. It wasn't that I
disliked George in any way, it was just that Candace wasn't the marrying type.
Or at least, she wasn't the staying married type. I had this feeling she was
doing it to say she'd done it.
Or worse yet, to prove it couldn't work. Maybe Candace wanted to prove to
herself and to the world that romance was dead like a dodo, and that marriage
was a business deal. Were you willing to trade your autonomy and birth name
for...well, for...I didn't know what for. That was what Candace was going into
uncharted territory to find out for us. I prayed she'd find it worth the deal. I
wanted her to wind up certain that George was indeed the right man, and to feel
that she had been silly ever to doubt the existence of true love and contentment
with another human being. I wanted her to be able to tell me all this, so I would
be less afraid of learning it on my own. The priest spoke his last bit, and the
recessional started to play. I filed out, practically invisible behind the newly
married pair, out into the harshly white October sunlight, nervously meeting the
eyes of the groom's attendant who had smiled at me.
