C Reiss - Sing

“For a long time, now.”

They did something that made me draw my breath in and clutch the arms of the chair. The two put their hands under Jonathan’s arms and slid him off the bed and lowered him to the floor.

“What—?“

When they let him go, I was too stunned to finish the sentence. He kneeled before me. I heard his labored breathing, the rattle of the IV pole, and glanced up at Irene and Gregory.

“What are you doing? This is crazy.”

I was ignored. Gregory said something to Jonathan in Russian and he answered in kind, with a wave of his hand that indicated, “I got it.”

Jonathan, with great effort, pulled a knee up, until he was on just one, then glanced up at me. “I’m going to lean on you a little,” he said.

“Sure?”

He put a forearm on my knee, and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small black box.

“Oh, Jonathan...”

He opened the box and handed it to me. It had a ridiculously huge square cut diamond.

“Thank Theresa if you see her. I’ll get you one that suits you when we’re up to it,” he said.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Shh. Behave, would you? For once?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. One side of his mouth curled in a smile, and then he laughed gingerly. I wanted to kiss him deeply, and for a long time, breathing him into me, but I knew he didn’t have the breath to spare. I settled for a fraction of the kiss I wanted, leaning down and brushing my lips against his, the softest parts of our faces melting together for a brief second, half a gasp, a tease of desire.

“Goddess,” he said, his breath on my mouth. “Have me, please. I was wrong. You’re not the sea under my sky. You are the sun I revolve around, the stars that mark me, the moon rising through me. I’m lost without you. And if you won’t have me, I’ll break, I swear to God. I know it’s selfish, and I’m sorry. Let me serve you. Have me as yours. Let me live under you.”

I held his face, running my fingers over the stubble on them, jaw in the heel of my hand. I could feel him leaning into me, weak, as if this had taken everything out of him.

What could I say to this? What could I say to being loved enough for this monumental an effort? Did I ever, in my wildest imaginings, think I deserved this level of devotion after I’d rejected him the first time?

After I’d left him, cursed him, denied him? After lying to him, drugging him, disobeying him, using him, could I justify letting him make this mistake, even if it was the last mistake he made? I was ambitious, venal, antagonistic, impoverished, and arrogant. I was unworthy, by a mile, and overcome at the circumstance that would lead such a man to beg to be bound to such a woman.

So, I said the only thing I could.

“Yes.”

JONATHAN

Her hair fell across our fists, which were balled up together around a found box holding my sister’s ring. My hands shook as I removed it. My rib cage ached like it was stretched by an ever-expanding balloon inside it. With the tube out my chest, it was filling with blood, drop by drop. I was sure the feeling of expansion was air, or my imagination, but the fear of it made it hard to get the garish thing on her finger. The size was right, but the stone was wrong. All wrong. I wanted something else for her, something more original, a ring that could only belong to a goddess.

“I won’t disappoint you,” I said.

“I’m not worried about you being the disappointment.”

Irene’s voice cut in. “I declare you engaged. Time to go.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“I want to tell you what you do to me the night I agree to marry you,” Monica whispered.

“They have to put me back in. I don’t want you to see it.”

“Jonathan, please—“

“Time to go,” Irene said more firmly.

“Go,” I said to my fiancée. “Please. Come back in an hour. Then you can tell me about our wedding night.”

Her head tilted a little and her eyes widened. Yes, it was quick, but wasn’t that the point? She kissed me a second too long because we ended with me grimacing. She must have known it wasn’t about her, because she got up and walked out with out looking back. Good woman.

I submitted myself completely to Irene and Gregory, who had broken a hundred rules or more to give me five minutes to ask properly for Monica’s hand. The rules were good. They were there for a reason, which was, I couldn’t handle five minutes kneeling. I felt like I’d just run a marathon that ended in a dark alley, where I’d been beaten with baseball bats and cut into small pieces with a serrated knife. Or something that made me too weak, too pained, too outside myself to manage my own body.

They got me out of my clothes, reinserting, realigning, and recalibrating the devices attached to me. They accepted my gratitude for as long as I had the wherewithal to express it, which was an eternity, but probably about five minutes in the rest of the world. Then I fell off the cliff of consciousness for awhile. Might have been the drugs, or my body giving out like it did a few times a day. Even then, I didn’t have the energy to fully feel angry, though there was a cord of that in my spine. Mostly, I felt fear. I was responsible for her now, and though the unknown was bad enough to face alone, in the dark, unprepared, I felt as though I had something to live for tomorrow.

MONICA

I crouched on the stairwell. It was late. Jonathan couldn’t see me that next hour after he’d given me the ring, or the one after that. Sheila had come and gone, her lips pressed together in a line of rage. Eileen called to see if I was there, and if I was, was he lucid enough to see anyone. This was fucked, but I figured, if Jonathan had wanted his family involved they would have been involved.

I called Darren.

“Do you have something blue?”

“Technically, yes.” He stepped out of the studio to finish the sentence, and I could hear the rain and traffic in the street behind him.

“Something pretty and blue?”

“Okay, what the fuck?”

“I’m getting married, and I have this ring that’s borrowed and this belt is like a hundred years old.”

“What the hell...?”

“Can you just bring me something blue, please?”

He started a sentence, but didn’t finish it. Took a breath, started to say something else, and stopped himself.

“Darren?”

“Jesus. I didn’t...I don’t know what to say. I haven’t been there for you, have I?”

“Be here for me tonight. Something reasonably attractive. And blue. And new, if possible. I’m stretching the definition with what I have here.”

MONICA

Darren arrived just as Irene was telling me to do something with my hair, then come in. He handed me a CVS bag with four blue hair clips.

“Thank you,” I said. He grabbed me and hugged me. It was the only real hug I’d gotten all week, warm and perfect, without expectation or promise. I chose a little rhinestone hairpin the color of the autumn sky and let Darren put it in.

“You’re the maid of honor and the best man.”

“I’m not making a toast.”

“He won’t have the energy. He barely had it in him to ask me to marry him in the first place.”

We walked down the hall.

“I wish you’d told me...asked me for something,” he said.

“You never pick up. I feel like I’m bothering you.”

He shrugged, and we turned into Jonathan’s room. It was lit only by the reading lamp over his bed. I felt Darren stiffen. Jonathan was halfway sitting, but bedridden and pale, connected to machines and IV bags of medicine and blood. The last time they’d seen each other, Jonathan was hale and Darren was threatening to send out wedding invitations if there was another breakup.

“Hi,” Darren said.

Jonathan held his hand up in greeting.

“You look like fucking hell, man.”

“Darren!” I cried.

“And I can still get a knockout wife.”

“Tough to be you.”

People came in behind me. I didn’t see them, I only saw Jonathan. I kissed his lips for the last time as his lover, and turned around. Irene and Gregory were at the foot of the bed, and in the chair I usually occupied, a short woman in horn-rimmed glasses and clerical collar. She was a few years older than me, and had a mop of curly hair held in place with a hip vintage clip. Darren stood behind her.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi,” Jonathan and I chanted. I straightened and stood on the opposite side of the bed from her, holding his hand. It was cold.

“My name is Sona, and let me tell you, this is not the kind of call I usually get when I do the hospital chaplaincy. I had to dig around for the right prayer book. But, happy occasions are worth the trouble. So, what do we have? Both Catholic, I hear?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“And I hear the groom has a big family? They aren’t here?”

“I’ll tell them tomorrow,” Jonathan said. My sigh of relief must have been audible, because he squeezed my hand.

“Sona,” I said, “Jonathan isn’t up for anything long and involved, if that’s okay. I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“Nope!” She smiled with big, white teeth. “You have rings?”

“Crap.” I didn’t. I glanced at Darren. He shrugged, holding his palms up.

“Can we make do with something?” she asked. “People do like the rings.”

“Yes!” I said. “I have it.” I rummaged through my bag and came up with my bunch of keys. Car. House. Front gate. Locker at work. I clicked through them.

“Clever goddess,” he said. “I owe your fingers some jewelry.”

My eyes hurt again, because the odds of him repaying that debt got smaller with each day. I focused on loosing as many keys as possible into the bottom of my bag.

“Let’s do some paperwork while Monica does that, okay?” Sona smiled again, extracting a little clipboard. She asked our full names, dates of birth, addresses, and had us sign on the dotted lines while I untwisted as many silver rings as I could. Darren showed his ID and cracked a joke about being licensed to witness weddings. By the time she was done, I’d released two smallish keyrings. I adjusted one for Jonathan’s hand, and found another for myself. I pressed it into his palm.

“Okay,” said Sona, standing, all enthusiasm and light, as if this wasn’t the most depressing situation, ever. “Groom goes first. You ready?”

“Yes,” he said, and pulled me toward him.

“Can you repeat after me?” she asked.

“I got this.” He was talking to Sona, but looking at me, big, tired, green eyes. Serious, committed. I hoped to God he lived even if it meant he lived to regret it.

“I, Jonathan Drazen, take you Monica Faulkner, to be my lawfully wedded wife.” He paused. I didn’t know if he was weak, or doubtful.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked. “You can back out. I’ll still love you.”

“Shh,” he said. “Behave.” He smirked at me and took a deep breath. “Left hand, Goddess.”

I held it out for him and he continued as he slipped the keyring on my finger. “To have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health to love cherish honor and worship all the days of my life.”

“Excellent!” Sona said. “Monica? You want to do it the same? Or do you want to repeat after me?”

I didn’t want to repeat anything. I wanted to take my guts and spill them onto the sheets. I wanted to take my heart out and put it into his chest. If there was ever a time to hold anything back, it wasn’t then.

“Jonathan Drazen,” I said, squeezing his hand. “You’re a manipulative bastard, a brazen liar, and a sadist. You’ve brought me to my knees. You’ve dominated me. You’ve told me who I am and then challenged me to be it. If you made me strong enough to stand up to the world, let me stand by you. If you completed the woman I am, let me be that woman in your honor. Every part in my body is dedicated to you. Every note I sing. Every breath in my lungs. My pleasure and pain. Take me. Let me serve you. Let me be yours.”

He put my hand to his cheek. I was going to have to kiss him before I was told, though it seemed like it took Sona forever. When I looked from Jonathan to her, she was holding her phone.

“Sorry,” she said, pocketing it, her good mood gone. “Gotta go do a last rites.” She cleared her throat and held her hand up. "You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, let no one tear asunder. I now pronounce you husband and wife.”