Happily and the Ever Afters

Viola had officiated 7,062 weddings at the little chapel, the type of tiny chapel in the type of backwater town where people come to get married so they can say they were joined at the junction of Happily Boulevard and After Drive. She had seen 7,062 beginnings to 7,062 fairy tales, women in white, sometimes men in white, sometimes two women, sometimes three, although they didn’t all stand up at the front together, but she’d noted people in the pews mouthing the words in tandem with the bride and the bride or the groom and the groom. Or some combination thereof.

She’d never said “I do” herself. Because she couldn’t imagine what came after the happily evers. What happened next? She understood the build up, the dresses and the tuxes and boutonnieres. The crinoline and the white satin shoes bought to be worn once and then wrapped in fancy pastel tissue and shoved up high on a shelf in the back of the closet. The overly fragrant corsages sold by the alcoholic florist down the street. What came after all that pomp had to be a let-down.

Viola could easily imagine: A “honey do” list on the dresser, used floss in the pink plastic pail beneath the pedestal sink, an argument over who let the cat out. The oil to be changed and the milk expiring and the bickering over who had forgotten to buy eggs.

Where was the fairy tale in that?

Her friends said she had a skewed view of life, and didn’t her oil need to be changed and her garbage need to be taken out even as a single person? Weren’t those facets of life and not solely relegated to marriage, blissfully or otherwise? And couldn’t she ever imagine the comfort of being with someone who loved her even when she had curlers in her hair?

Viola said the fantasy was that they never knew she had curlers, or wore contacts, or put honeysuckle lotion on her heels so they would be soft.

She never let a man come to her house. She would only go to theirs. She never gave a man her real number or her real job. She was a one-night only type of girl—looking for the magic of a 24-hour relationship, from the once upon a time, until she drove her little MG out of their lives forever.

“Don’t you ever like them? Don’t you ever want a second date?”

She would just sip her margarita and tilt her head and think of all the I do’s she heard all day long.

And yes, sometimes one of her one night stands would try for a second-night stand, but she never said yes.

The band that played the dumdumdedum march was called Happily and the Ever Afters. That’s what they were called when they were in the little chapel. When they played at the dive bar called Corner Pocket, they were something else. Max tickled the organ at the chapel and the piano at the bar. He regularly watched Viola come in and go out. He knew she saw him, but they never spoke outside of work. It was as if they didn’t exist to one another when she wasn’t marrying couples and he wasn’t playing the same few bars on the keyboard, or on their few breaks between ceremonies.

Because sometimes she and Max would sit outside the tiny chapel, tossing pebbles, occasionally, if the time felt right, sharing a joint. He liked to ask her questions. They would carry on a single conversation all day as if she hadn’t married six couples in between. She often thought about what he had asked her while she was officiating. She could repeat the marrying words by memory, her mind open to other options.

Viola would unite the couples, noon and then 12:30. One p.m. and then a break. She would picture how they might look driving back home to wherever home was, and wouldn’t there be a sinking feeling, a letdown, what now, what next?

“It’s marriage,” Max told her. He had muttonchops and always wore a red suit. Always. She had wondered occasionally if he had just the one suit or a closet of suits, but asking felt invasive. “Marriage. You buy a house. You have 2.3 children. Or you used to. I think maybe it’s less now.”

“Fewer.”

He rolled his eyes. “How many weddings have you officiated?” he asked next.

She told him.

“And you never wanted to wear a white dress?”

“I wear white dresses all the time.”

“You know what I mean.”

She was due to marry the next couple. The bride was a blonde. The groom was ginger. They were young, attractive, athletic looking, pink cheeked, combed hair with straight parts. They reminded her of cake toppers, but they both seemed nervous. Giggling. Teasing each other. Perhaps they were here on a bet. Sometimes that happened. But when she got to the point of saying the solemn words, the couple stood up quietly and paid attention, and they gazed at each other with a look of love, and Viola did wonder for a moment if that was something she might be missing.

She heard “I do” in her dreams. I do I do I do.

Now she told Max, “I’m fine in my white tuxedo, marrying the people, watching them head off into the whatever comes after I do.”

“Swing on the front porch,” Max tried. “Apple pie cooling on the window sill? Picket fence?”

“What if I don’t want a picket fence?”

“Picket fences are optional.”

It was time to wed a couple she had seen before. She didn’t remember all of her couples—how could she? But these two, with their tattoos and their fringed leather were noticeable. The bride told her they’d split, gone their separate ways for seven years, and now had decided to give things another go. They looked a little dusty, in Viola’s eyes. A little crinkled around the edges, like the cellophane around cigarette packages after you tear the wrapping open.

Later she thought about them. She wondered what had driven them apart and pulled them back together. She liked the idea that they had tried other tastes but never got their mutual flavor out of each other’s mouths.

“What if I don’t want to argue about whose turn it is to let the cat out?” she asked Max at their next break.

“We won’t get a cat.”

“What if…” she paused. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

He settled back against the white-painted wood.

“What do you mean ‘we’?” she asked again.

They were late getting back into the chapel for the next couple. They were late because he had kissed her and because she had let him. She’d seen 7,062 kisses. This one set those to shame.

After the ceremony, Max said, “You know what all of those couples have?”

A 401-K plan. An apron. A fuzzy bathrobe.

She didn’t think any of those answers were right, so she shook her head.

“Hope.”

Viola repeated the word softly.

Max said, “That’s why people drive out here, to the middle of nowhere, to get married in a tiny chapel, with a kitschy band and a pretty officiator who has her own IG following.”

“IG?” she asked.

“People adore you online.”

Viola looked at him. She didn’t even know what to say. Her lips felt bruised and her body felt, well, electrified. As if he’d plugged her in. Kissing him and been different from her one-nighters. For a weird flash, she thought she wouldn’t mind emptying a pink plastic garbage pail, or remembering to buy milk. Maybe she could even pour some into a saucer for the cat.

“Why are they hopeful?” she tried, and then amended it to, “How are they hopeful?”

He said, “That’s the fairy tale of love. It doesn’t start with once up on a time, it starts long before. And it doesn’t end with happily ever after. You only see the snapshot of two people who are taking a leap.” He kissed her again. “Take that leap.”

They tied tin cans to the bumper of her MG and they headed out into the sunset, and she said, “Where are we going?” and he said, “Do you care?” and he squeezed her hand for a quick second before she had to shift gears, and she thought for a moment, and then she said, “I don’t.”

“Do you love me?” he asked next.

And she said the thing she had heard 7,062 times before but maybe never fully understood: “I do.”