Hold Your Peace

When it was time to object, Gemma stood in front of the forty or fifty assembled guests and ran her hands down the front of her slightly wrinkled cream dream. She cleared her throat, and all forty or fifty heads turned to look at her. It’s moments like these that people believe are staged or performative. There’s so much inauthenticity in the world that anything out of the ordinary begins to feel produced. Gemma looked down the aisle at the happy couple. Their officiant was their favorite college professor. His name was Eduardo String and he taught Forensic Science. Gemma raised her voice as best she could without it cracking, and said--

“I’m sorry.”

The wedding was being held by the ocean at a New England mansion where Irving Berlin wrote “Cheek to Cheek.” The Kennedy’s had been visitors more than once. Grace Kelly was once proposed to by a member of the Belgium Royal Family. At the time, she had no desire to become a princess. Things change. The sea rolls. Gemma stopped the wedding and then made her way to the lighthouse a quarter mile from the mansion. She walked along the road, her dress snagging pieces of gravel along its hemline, and she thought about all the shoes she could have worn. The ones that would have been kinder to her soles. Why wear nice shoes to a wedding you’re planning to ruin? There was no answer to that. Upon reaching the lighthouse, she pressed her hands against its foundational stones. The beacon spinning at the top of the structure halted. An old woman exited the building through a slightly warped wooden door. She looked at Gemma and spit on the ground.

“What was wrong with this one?”

Gemma told her that the groom had once taken a crisp twenty dollar bill belonging to his father off the kitchen counter and then blamed his sister for it. His father died thinking that her daughter had the heart of a thief. She told the old woman that the bride had manipulated her best friend (and maid of honor) into breaking up with a man who would have been the love of her life. She did this with carefully worded assessments of his character and actions. Even Eduardo String had his share of skeletons. He became a forensic scientist after murdering several people in Southern California between 2003 and 2005. The concepts and executions of murder fascinated him long after he’d decided that serial killing required a kind of emotional detachment that he didn’t truly possess. There were very few innocent people at the wedding. One man had given a kidney to a co-worker, but even he cheated at Monopoly anytime he played.

The old woman held out her hand. Gemma ripped a small piece of fabric off the shoulder of her dress. She placed it on the old woman’s outstretched palm. The lighthouse keeper went back inside without motioning to Gemma, but she’d done this many times before, and the process was cemented. Gemma followed the old woman inside where a table was set with two bowls of barley stew and two cups with chilled black coffee in them. Gemma never drank the coffee, but she’d bring it to her lips to be polite, not that the old woman seemed to notice. They sat and ate without speaking. The old woman slurped her soup. One year, Gemma had blown a little too loudly on hers, and she was banned from attending a wedding for years. Etiquette was something learned through punishment rather than demonstration. Gemma had to wear taffeta when she was finally allowed to return to a ceremony. Someone confused her for a bridesmaid. It was a Catholic wedding, and when the priest asked if anyone objected, she stood up, ran her hands down the taffeta, and said--

“I’m sorry.”

Every apology was met with cessation. The festivities would end. The band would be sent home. All the stuffed chicken would be fed to nearby wild dogs. The groom would sit on any step he could find and put his head in his hands. Gemma didn’t speak to anyone after destroying the Big Day. Once she had spoken with the bride’s grandmother and been cursed at. The grandmother wished her nothing but a lifetime of pain. Gemma wanted to tell her that she had already lived several lifetimes of pain and that she would live several more, but how would the grandmother have understood? She died shortly after that while hiking. Gemma sometimes repeated the curse to herself under her breath. A lifetime of pain. A lifetime of pain. The bride would enter while the music played. The ring bearer would carry a small pillow and the flower girl would drop her petals. Gemma would flip a coin before it all began. Heads, she’d sit on the bride’s side. Tails, the groom’s. At one wedding, an uncle hit on her. He gave her his business card, and she saw that he sold stereos. When she stood up and apologized, he whispered to her that she was supposed to say “I object.”

“Not that I’ve ever done it myself,” he hissed, “But I think I saw it in a movie once.”

Gemma was in a movie as well. Two actors had gotten married in the “O” of the Hollywood sign. She showed up ready to object and saw that someone was filming the whole thing. It might have been for People magazine. When she stood up to apologize, the cameras turned towards her and she almost relented. For the first time, she thought about going home instead of back to New England. Back to the lighthouse and the old woman and the cup of black coffee. She thought about finding a love of her own. Someone who would give her a ring and a new name and a day that would be special to her forever. Then, she remembered the objection she’d had all those years ago. There was no way of sitting for very long once the memory struck. It propelled her up. She’d feel sick to her stomach, but the only alleviation came from destruction, not creation.

Each time the heads turned, she only knew two words to say. The bride would plead with her. Sometimes to bite her tongue. Sometimes to speak. Sometimes the relief she saw after apologizing would buoy her spirit a bit. Then, she’d smell the stuffed chicken waiting to be served, and she’d wonder how dry it was. She’d wonder if anybody had ordered the salmon instead.

It seemed as though nobody ever ordered the salmon.