The Wedding
The Wedding
NICHOLAS SPARKS
Prologue
Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change? Or do character and habit form the immovable boundaries of our lives?
It is mid-October 2003, and I ponder these questions as I watch a moth flail wildly against the porch light. I’m alone outside. Jane, my wife, is sleeping upstairs and she didn’t stir when I slipped out of bed. It is late;
has come and gone, and there’s a crispness in the air that holds the promise of an early winter. I’m wearing a heavy cotton robe, and though I imagined it would be thick enough to keep the chill at bay, I notice that my hands are trembling before I bury them in my pockets.
Above me, the stars are specks of silver paint on a charcoal canvas. I see Orion and the Pleiades, Ursa Major and Corona Borealis, and think I should be inspired by the realization that I’m not only looking at the stars, but staring into the past as well. Constellations shine with light that was emitted aeons ago, and I wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might use to illuminate life’s mysteries. But there is nothing.
This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never considered myself a sentimental man, and if you asked my wife, I’m sure she would agree. I do not lose myself in films or plays, I’ve never been a dreamer, and if I aspire to any form of mastery at all, it is one defined by rules of the Internal Revenue Service and codified by law.
For the most part, my days and years as an estate lawyer have been spent in the company of those preparing for their own deaths, and I suppose that some might say that my life is less meaningful because of this. But even if they’re right, what can I do? I make no excuses for myself, nor have I ever, and by the end of my story, I hope you’ll view this quirk of my character with a forgiving eye.
Please don’t misunderstand. I may not be sentimental, but I’m not completely without emotion, and there are moments when I’m struck by a deep sense of wonder. It is usually simple things that I find strangely moving: standing among the giant sequoias in the Sierra Nevadas, for instance, or watching ocean waves as they crash together off
Last week, I felt my throat tighten when I watched a young boy reach for his father’s hand as they strolled down the sidewalk. There are other things, too: I can sometimes lose track of time when staring at a sky filled with wind-whipped clouds, and when I hear thunder rumbling, I always draw near the window to watch for lightning. When the next brilliant flash illuminates the sky, I often find myself filled with longing, though I’m at a loss to tell you what it is that I feel my life is missing.
My name is Wilson Lewis, and this is the story of a wedding. It is also the story of my marriage, but despite the thirty years that Jane and I have spent together, I suppose I should begin by admitting that others know far more about marriage than I. A man can learn nothing by asking my advice. In the course of my marriage, I’ve been selfish and stubborn and as ignorant as a goldfish, and it pains me to realize this about myself. Yet, looking back, I believe that if I’ve done one thing right, it has been to love my wife throughout our years together. While this may strike some as a feat not worth mentioning, you should know that there was a time when I was certain that my wife didn’t feel the same way about me.
Of course, all marriages go through ups and downs, and I believe this is the natural consequence of couples that choose to stay together over the long haul.
Between us, my wife and I have lived through the deaths of both of my parents and one of hers, and the illness of her father. We’ve moved four times, and though I’ve been successful in my profession, many sacrifices were made in order to secure this position. We have three children, and while neither of us would trade the experience of parenthood for the riches of Tutankhamen, the sleepless nights and frequent trips to the hospital when they were infants left both of us exhausted and often overwhelmed. It goes without saying that their teenage years were an experience I would rather not relive.
All of those events create their own stresses, and when two people live together, the stress flows both ways. This, I’ve come to believe, is both the blessing and the curse of marriage. It’s a blessing because there’s an outlet for the everyday strains of life; it’s a curse because the outlet is someone you care deeply about.
Why do I mention this? Because I want to underscore that throughout all these events, I never doubted my feelings for my wife. Sure, there were days when we avoided eye contact at the breakfast table, but still I never doubted us. It would be dishonest to say that I haven’t wondered what would have happened had I married someone else, but in all the years we spent together, I never once regretted the fact that I had chosen her and that she had chosen me as well. I thought our relationship was settled, but in the end, I realized that I was wrong. I learned that a little more than a year ago—fourteen months, to be exact—and it was that realization, more than anything, that set in motion all that was to come.
What happened then, you wonder?
Given my age, a person might suppose that it was some incident inspired by a midlife crisis. A sudden desire to change my life, perhaps, or maybe a crime of the heart. But it was neither of those things. No, my sin was a small one in the grand scheme of things, an incident that under different circumstances might have been the subject of a humorous anecdote in later years. But it hurt her, it hurt us, and thus it is here where I must begin my story.
It was
“Is there anything you want to say?” she asked after a moment.
I hesitated, aware there was more to her question than its innocence implied. I thought perhaps that she was referring to a new hairstyle, but I looked carefully and her hair seemed no different from usual. I’d tried over the years to notice such things. Still, I was at a loss, and as we stood before each other, I knew I had to offer something.
“How was your day?” I finally asked.
She gave a strange half smile in response and turned away.
I know now what she was looking for, of course, but at the time, I shrugged it off and went back to work, chalking it up as another example of the mysteriousness of women.
Later that evening, I’d crawled into bed and was making myself comfortable when I heard Jane draw a single, rapid breath. She was lying on her side with her back toward me, and when I noticed that her shoulders were trembling, it suddenly struck me that she was crying. Baffled, I expected her to tell me what had upset her so, but instead of speaking, she offered another set of raspy inhales, as if trying to breathe through her own tears. My throat tightened instinctively, and I found myself growing frightened. I tried not to be scared; tried not to think that something bad had happened to her father or to the kids, or that she had been given terrible news by her doctor. I tried not to think that there might be a problem I couldn’t solve, and I placed my hand on her back in the hope that I could somehow comfort her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
It was a moment before she answered. I heard her sigh as she pulled the covers up to her shoulders.
“Happy anniversary,” she whispered.
Twenty-nine years, I remembered too late, and in the corner of the room, I spotted the gifts she’d bought me, neatly wrapped and perched on the chest of drawers.
Quite simply, I had forgotten.
I make no excuses for this, nor would I even if I could. What would be the point? I apologized, of course, then apologized again the following morning; and later in the evening, when she opened the perfume I’d selected carefully with the help of a young lady at Belk’s, she smiled and thanked me and patted my leg.
Sitting beside her on the couch, I knew I loved her then as much as I did the day we were married. But in looking at her, noticing perhaps for the first time the distracted way she glanced off to the side and the unmistakably sad tilt of her head—I suddenly realized that I wasn’t quite sure whether she still loved me.
Chapter One
It’s heartbreaking to think that your wife may not love you, and that night, after Jane had carried the perfume up to our bedroom, I sat on the couch for hours, wondering how this situation had come to pass. At first, I wanted to believe that Jane was simply reacting emotionally and that I was reading far more into the incident than it deserved. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I sensed not only her displeasure in an absentminded spouse, but the traces of an older melancholy—as if my lapse were simply the final blow in a long, long series of careless missteps.
Had the marriage turned out to be a disappointment for Jane? Though I didn’t want to think so, her expression had answered otherwise, and I found myself wondering what that meant for us in the future. Was she questioning whether or not to stay with me? Was she pleased with her decision to have married me in the first place? These, I must add, were frightening questions to consider—with answers that were possibly even more frightening—for until that moment, I’d always assumed that Jane was as content with me as I’d always been with her.
What, I wondered, had led us to feel so differently about each other?
I suppose I must begin by saying that many people would consider our lives
fairly ordinary. Like many men, I had the obligation to support the family
financially, and my life was largely centered around my career. For the past
thirty years, I’ve worked with the law firm of Ambry, Saxon and Tundle in New
Bern
,
firmly in the upper middle class. I enjoy golfing and gardening on the weekends, prefer classical music, and read the newspaper every morning. Though Jane was once an elementary school teacher, she spent the majority of our married life raising three children. She ran both the household and our social life, and her proudest possessions are the photo albums that she carefully assembled as a visual history of our lives. Our brick home is complete with a picket fence and automatic sprinklers, we own two cars, and we are members of both the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. In the course of our married life, we’ve saved for retirement, built a wooden swing set in the backyard that now sits unused, attended dozens of parent-teacher conferences, voted regularly, and contributed to the Episcopal church each and every Sunday. At fifty-six, I’m three years older than my wife.
Despite my feelings for Jane, I sometimes think we’re an unlikely pair to have spent a life together. We’re different in almost every way, and though opposites can and do attract, I’ve always felt that I made the better choice on our wedding day. Jane is, after all, the kind of person I always wished to be. While I tend toward stoicism and logic, Jane is outgoing and kind, with a natural empathy that endears her to others. She laughs easily and has a wide circle of friends. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most of my friends are, in fact, the husbands of my wife’s friends, but I believe this is common for most married couples our age. Yet I’m fortunate in that Jane has always seemed to choose our friends with me in mind, and I’m appreciative that there’s always someone for me to visit with at a dinner party. Had she not come into my life, I sometimes think that I would have led the life of a monk.
There’s more, too: I’m charmed by the fact that Jane has always displayed her emotions with childlike ease. When she’s sad she cries; when she’s happy she laughs; and she enjoys nothing more than to be surprised with a wonderful gesture. In those moments, there’s an ageless innocence about her, and though a surprise by definition is unexpected, for Jane, the memories of a surprise can arouse the same excited feelings for years afterward. Sometimes when she’s daydreaming, I’ll ask her what she’s thinking about and she’ll suddenly begin speaking in giddy tones about something I’ve long forgotten. This, I must say, has never ceased to amaze me.