Truth be told, in the past two years things had slowed down considerably in that department. Which was his fault, not hers. Just as he couldn’t bring himself to relax and enjoy a cold drink or a long walk or a night out, he had been struggling to keep his head in the room when he was alone with Sara as well. Clothes off or on, really. When they were having dinner or watching TV, he was aware of always being halfway somewhere else. It used to be the other way around — whenever he was away from her, she was all he thought about. Of course he knew that these things changed over time. People went from being lovers to companions over the course of a relationship. He just didn’t think that would start to happen before he turned thirty, before they’d even said, “I do.”
But after what they’d been through — essentially managing a hospice out of William’s living room — he felt as if his twenties were already far behind him. What still felt right on top of him was the loss. Irene’s absence. At night, while ¡Vámonos, Muchachos! was on commercial breaks, he would sometimes stumble over to her urn on the mantelpiece and clink his drink against the curved metal handles as if to say hello. Occasionally he’d lift it off the fireplace and carry it over to the couch so it could watch with him. Sara had not been happy, the first morning she’d found him there like that.
Soon after this incident, they’d agreed it was time to scatter the ashes. Jacob had told Sara how Irene had asked to be scattered in France, and she’d agreed they ought to do it on the honeymoon. There was a spot in the mountains nearby where the cliffs rose two thousand feet above the most beautiful turquoise water. Sara knew that one of Irene’s greatest regrets was never having left the country, and here was their chance to rectify that. George didn’t know if it was really the right move, but he wanted to make Sara happy, and he wanted to get things back on track. There would be the wedding night, in the bridal suite, and there would be ten more beautiful days in a French seaside paradise, where absolutely nothing could go wrong.
He turned the shower off and stepped out, getting his breath back, beginning to feel again, the top layers of his sickness lifting, leaving only the deeper part behind for him to live with. Towel around his waist, he sneaked into the bedroom, only to find that his brothers weren’t there. The bed was made. Their tuxedos were gone from the closet, and there was a note on the dresser saying that they were going to find some breakfast and would meet him on the roof. The note ended with Where’s Jacob?
George grabbed his tuxedo out of the bag and began to assemble everything. He had seven minutes. He slipped on the boxer shorts with hearts on them that he’d bought for the wedding, followed by a pair of thin black socks, and then he got his arms into the starched white shirt. As he did the buttons, he roamed around the hotel room, watching the molted boa feathers dancing. It was as if a whole cast of Sesame Street characters had disintegrated in there. George wafted his arm in the thin space, sending a flurry of colors up into the air again. They fell like confetti.
He slipped on the tuxedo jacket and looked at himself in the mirror. It was perfect. As if nothing had ever happened. He walked to the shade that he’d drawn over the balcony doors, wanting to let some light in before he left. There was an explosion of reds, purples, yellows, greens, and blues as the shade pushed the air away. And there, on the other side of the glass, he saw Jacob, sitting at the patio table, already groomed and fully dressed in his tuxedo. He looked vaguely miserable, tapping the tip of his pen at the corner of a piece of hotel stationery like a crazed woodpecker.
He looked up at George and mouthed, “What time is it?”
George slid the door open. “Five minutes to one.”
“You’re supposed to go up for photos.”
“Yeah, I know,” George said, standing back and turning around for Jacob to admire.
Jacob tapped the pen again. “I was supposed to wake you up an hour ago.”
“It’s okay. I got up.”
“Sorry.”
“What?” George couldn’t remember ever hearing Jacob say that word before.
“Sorry,” Jacob repeated, looking down at the paper. “I got caught up in this.”
There on the paper, he could see a poem — or the rough guts of a poem at least — covered in cross-outs and inserts and arrows shifting things from here to there.
Jacob looked at the page in annoyance. “What’s a word that rhymes with fellatio?”
George grinned and, before taking off for the elevators, reminded Jacob to be up on the roof in fifteen minutes for the group photos. He had three minutes to spare. Sara would be coming up just behind him. He hadn’t felt this happy all year, knowing he wouldn’t disappoint her.
• • •
Everything came together just as it was supposed to. The rooftop of the Waldorf was wide and clear, and the views of the city in all directions were nothing short of jaw-dropping. It wasn’t too windy or too cold. One of the first warm breezes of the year blew through the assembled Murphys and Shermans that day. Everyone behaved. Brothers and sisters fell in line; mothers hugged each other; everyone smiled. Whatever problems and dramas and concerns had existed before were forgotten.
Later the photos would show George holding a glowing Sara in his arms and she looking up at him with absolute, pure adoration. They kissed with a sea of high rise towers behind them. They danced to invisible music; she spun weightlessly. Hand in hand they walked away, smiling back over their shoulders. Her dress was white all the way down to the hem, where it appeared to float just above the ground, as if by magic. She buried her nose in the bouquet of white roses, the shadow on her eyelids echoing the turquoise in the peony buds.
In the group photographs, all six bow ties were straight, and every heel and hem was the right height, and everyone’s hair stayed where it was meant to stay. The photographer told jokes like “How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?” (“Ten tickles”), which were so terrible, they actually were funny. And when it was all over, they crowded into the elevators and went down to the front of the lobby, where two white limousines were waiting for them. Every parent, aunt, sister, brother, grandparent, and friend was ferried to the church in under two minutes.
Enormous, majestic flags rippled over the church entrance as everyone piled out of the limousines and moved to their stations. The guests, who had been arriving for the past half hour, were being ushered in smooth rotation, each oohing and aahing over the programs, especially the floral trellis detailing that Sara had created with the designer, based on a 1920s Heiligenstein vase. The lettering on the inside wasn’t, as George had feared, unreadable in the dimmer light inside the church. In fact, it exactly matched the brick face inside the sanctuary — and the Oldenburg font choice was a real winner.
And there was Clarence! Made it with ten minutes to spare. He’d actually climbed out of the cab he’d been stuck in on the southbound lanes of the West Side Highway, crossed the northbound lanes on foot, and scaled the six-foot retaining wall along the park so he could catch another cab going south along Riverside Drive. He arrived with both wedding bands in his pocket, as safe as could be, and when the organ began to play the processional, he walked calmly up the aisle with Adeline on his arm, followed by the rest of the wedding party.