“Amen,” Melanie said, grinning.
“Thank you,” Jamie said, and hugged Joanna close.
There had been talk in the town that it was too early for the Kreugers to be hosting such a celebration; Scarlett had killed herself last October, and this was now only June, barely eight months later. But the occasion was for them, and Melanie told this to Jamie the first time she proposed it on the telephone, a way of coming to terms with life again, of shaking off the persistent grief that seemed threatening to bury her and her husband along with their daughter. Only this past February had the Kreugers been able to spend an entire evening in the company of friends without one or the other of them bursting into tears. Melanie, her voice soft but determined, told Jamie on the phone that she really wanted to do this for him, and that it would be a kindness if he accepted. She did not mention that the first time she’d laughed since the death of her daughter was at a story Joanna told the first time they’d met, in April.
The guests Jamie had invited from his side of the family, so to speak — in addition to his mother and a dozen or more couples from Rutledge and Talmadge — were mostly photographers and their girlfriends or wives, and one might have thought from the number of cameras in evidence that this was a convention of photographic equipment retailers. Even Lew Barker had brought a camera. “First pictures I’ll be taking since I got myself off the street and behind a desk,” he confided to Jamie, and then kissed Joanna on the cheek and said, “There’s still time to get out of this, darling.” The women accompanying the photographers were usually people they’d met in their line of work, which meant that many of the wives and girlfriends were models Joanna instantly recognized from the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
Joanna’s father, a jolly little man who had liked Jamie the moment he’d met him, commented that he had never seen so many beautiful girls in his life. Joanna’s Uncle Izzy Berkowitz, who used to play first desk with the Philharmonic and who had first engendered in her a love for the cello, idly wondered which one of the bearded young men was the rabbi. When Joanna informed him that a Christian minister would be performing the nondenominational ceremony, Uncle Izzy rolled his eyes heavenward and said, “My mother will die.” Joanna’s grandmother, the spry old lady who had first taken Joanna to see Lucia di Lammermoor, whereat Joanna had fallen in love with the lady flute player and the instrument itself, and who had just overheard every word her two no-good sons had exchanged, said, “I haff no intention uff dyink b’fore my dollink iss merrit!” and Jamie suddenly realized upon whom Joanna Jewish patterned her voice. But in addition to Joanna’s many real relatives — and there were many; this was her first marriage — she had also invited “relatives” from her large musical family, all the musicians and composers and conductors and teachers she’d known since starting her lifelong love affair with music in general and the flute in particular. If, like the photographers, all these musicians had brought the tools of their trade with them, there’d have been no room in the house for the people.
The guests kept coming through the front door.
Jamie kept expecting Connie to arrive.
The wedding was set for three o’clock sharp. At five minutes to three, Larry Kreuger asked if he might have everyone’s attention, please, and then he signaled to the minister, and to Jamie and to Joanna, and to Lew Barker who was Jamie’s best man, and to Linda Strong, who played second flute with the New York City Opera Orchestra and who was Joanna’s maid of honor, and to Lissie who’d been standing near the Welsh dresser in the dining room, talking to some kids from Talmadge, and they all went together into the living room.
The words that served as the basis for the simple ceremony were those the minister had suggested, later amended and amplified by Jamie and Joanna to say what they felt should be said about what they were doing here today, in this place, in the company of their fellow men. (He kept expecting Connie to walk through the door.) As they stood before the young pastor whose pregnant wife was sitting just near the window which, open just a crack, billowed the sheer curtains into the room, they each and separately recognized the importance of the vows they would be taking within the next few moments, but Jamie perhaps more than Joanna: he had already taken similar vows once in his lifetime, and he was about to take them again.
Standing just behind them, watching, listening, Lissie thought the same thought that had passed through her father’s head at several different times today. She stood there behind this woman her father was marrying, waiting to hear the words this woman and father had concocted between them to sanctify what they were about to do, looked at this woman, and could think only that somebody was missing here, somebody who should have been here was not here. As the minister began to speak, she realized who was missing. Her mother. She had been expecting her mother to walk into this house from the moment she’d got here this afternoon. Her father was getting married. But some stranger was standing by his side.
“Dearly beloved,” the minister said, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God and these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate not to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently and discreetly. Into this holy estate, these two persons now come to be joined. I charge you both,” he said, “to remember that love and loyalty alone will avail as the foundation of a happy and enduring home. No other human ties are more tender, no other vows more sacred than those you now assume.
“James,” he said, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and cherish her, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will,” Jamie said.
“Joanna, wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and cherish him, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will,” Joanna said.
“The rings, please,” the minister said, and Lew Barker promptly handed him the two gold bands. “The wedding ring is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual bond which unites two loyal hearts in endless love,” the minister said, and gave one of the rings to Jamie and the other to Joanna. As Jamie slipped the ring onto her finger, he said, “In token of the vow made between us, with this ring I thee wed.” Joanna slipped the second ring onto his finger and repeated the, same words.
“Forasmuch as James Croft and Joanna Berkowitz have consented together in holy wedlock,” the minister said, “and have witnessed the same before God and this company, by the authority committed unto me by the church and the laws of this state, I declare that James and Joanna are now man and wife.” He grinned broadly and said, “May God bless your union and grant to you the wisdom, strength and love to nurture and sustain it forever. Amen.”