Time to Go (21 page)

“I could have got unemployment a few times,” I say to her, “but I always had some money saved and so thought I'd live off it and write at the same time. To sort of use the time break to produce some writing that might earn me some money but not intentionally to make me money—”

“There he goes again with his purity bent. Look, I never encouraged my children to take anything that wasn't theirs. Oh, maybe by my actions I occasionally did, but I never encouraged them personally to take like that. But he wouldn't listen about that insurance. We had terrible fights over it. Of course he never would've had to reject or accept any unemployment insurance if he'd've become the dentist I wanted him to. I pleaded with all my sons to and each one in turn broke my heart. But he out of all of them had the brains and personality for it and he could've worked alongside me for a few years and then bought me out of my practice. I would've even given him the practice for nothing if that's what it took to get him to become a dentist, though with maybe him contributing to my support a little each month, mine and his mother's.”

“I wasn't good in the sciences,” I say to him. “I told you that and offered my grades as proof over and over again. I used to almost regurgitate every time I went into the chemistry building and biology labs. I tried. I was predent for more than two years.”

“Regurgitate. See the words he uses? No, you didn't want to become a dentist because I was one. You wanted to go into the arts. To be an artiste. The intelligentsia you wanted to belong to. Well, now you're able to make a decent living off it teaching, but for how many years you practically starved? You almost broke my heart then, seeing you struggle like that for so long, though you still have time to become one. Dentists average even more money than doctors today.”

“Next,” the clerk says.

Magna gives her our blood tests results. She gives us the application to fill out.

“Can we come right up to the front of the line after we fill it out?” I say.

“You have to go to the back,” she says.

“Why aren't there two lines as there are supposed to be? Why's the other window closed?”

“We're a little shorthanded today. You think I like it? It's double my usual load.”

“There are three people typing over there and two putting away things in files. Why not get one of them to man the other window till this line's a little relieved?”

“Shh, don't make trouble,” my father says. “You can't avoid the situation, accept it. It's the city.”

“I'm not the supervisor,” she says, “and the supervisor can't just tell someone to do something when it's not that person's job. Next,” she says to the couple behind us.

Magna pulls me away. “Wherever we are,” she says, “I can always count on you to try to improve things.”

“Am I wrong?”

“You'd think at the Marriage Bureau you'd tone it down a little, but no real harm. It'd be too laughable for us to break up down here.”

“He was always like that,” my father says. “Always a protester, a rebel. Nothing was ever good enough in life for him. He'd see a Broadway play that maybe the whole world thought was great and which'd win all the prizes, he'd say it could've been much better. Books, politics, his schools, the banks—whatever, always the same. I told him plenty of times to run for mayor of this city, then governor, then president. He never took me seriously. I suppose all that does mean he's thinking or his heart's mostly in the right place, but sometimes he can get rude with people with all those changes of his he wants. He doesn't have the knack to let things roll off him as I did. Maybe that's good. I couldn't live with it if that was me. You'll have troubles with him, young lady.”

We go to the Diamond Center for wedding bands. “How'd you find us?” the man behind the counter says.

“We saw all the stores and didn't know which one to choose,” I say. “So I asked this man who looked as if he worked in the area ‘Anyone place carry only gold wedding bands?' He said ‘Nat Sisler's,' who I suppose, from the photo there, is you, ‘4 West, down the middle aisle on the right. There are forty other booths there but you won't miss his. He's got the biggest sign.'”

“Just like me on both my office windows,” my father says.

“Biggest the city allowed for a dentist. If they'd allowed me to have signs to cover my entire window, I would've.”

“Too bad you don't know this man's name,” Nat says. “We always like to thank the people who refer customers to us. But he was right. We've nineteen-hundred different rings, so I promise you won't walk away from here without finding one you like. Anything particular you looking for?”

“Something very simple,” I say.

He holds up his ring finger. “Nothing more simple and comfortable than this one. I've been wearing it without taking it off once for forty-five years.”

“That's amazing,” Magna says. “Not once?”

“I can't. I've gained sixty pounds since I got married and my finger's grown around it. Maybe he'll have better luck with his weight. He's so slim now, he probably will.”

“More patter,” my father says. “Then when you're off-guard they knock you over the head with the price. But remember: this is the Diamond Center. The bargaining's built into the price. Here they think it's almost a crime not to, so this time whatever price he quotes, cut him in half.”

“Single or double-ring ceremony?” Nat says.

“Double,” Magna says, “and identical rings.”

“Better yet,” my father says. “For two rings you have even greater bargaining power. Cut him more than half.”

Nat brings out a tray of rings. “What do you do?” he asks me.

“You look like a doctor.”

“I teach at a university.”

“So you are a doctor, but of philosophy.”

“I barely got my B.A. I write, so I teach writing. She's the doctor of philosophy.”

“Oh yeah?” he says while Magna's looking at the rings.

“Turn your ears off,” my father says. “Next he's going to tell you you're a handsome couple, how great marriage can be, wish you all the luck and success there is, which you'll need, he'll say all that stuff. Though they love bargaining down here, they love making money more, so act business-like. Ask him right off what the price of this is and then that. Tell him it seems high even if you don't think it is. Tell him you're a teacher at the lowest level. Tell him you make almost zero from your writing and that she won't be teaching next year, so you'll have to support you both. Tell him any other time but this you might have the money to pay what he's asking, but now, even if it is something as sacred as marriage, you're going to have to ask him to cut the price more than half. And being there are two rings you're buying—”

“What do you think of this one?” Magna asks me. It looks nice. It fits her finger.

“You have one like this in my size?” I say.

“That's an awfully big finger you have there,” Nat says, holding my ring finger up. He puts several ring sizers on my finger before one fits. “Ten and a half. We'd have to make it on order. When's the wedding date?”

“Ask him how much first,” my father says, “ask him how much.”

“The fourteenth,” Magna says. “But I'm sure these will be much higher than we planned to pay.”

“That a girl,” my father says.

“Hey,” I say. “You'll be wearing it every day of your life, you say, so get what you want. I happen to like it.”

“How much are they?” she asks Nat.

He puts the ring she wants on a scale. “Seventy-two dollars.

Let's say seventy. The professor's, being a much larger size—and they're both seamless, I want you to know. That means they won't break apart unexpectedly and is the best kind of craftsmanship you can get—is eighty-five.”

“Sounds okay to me,” I say.

“Oh my God,” my father says. “I won't even say what I think.”

We go to the apartment of a rabbi someone told us about. His wife says “What would you like to drink? We've scotch, vodka, white wine, ginger ale—”

“Scotch on the rocks for me,” I say.

“Same for me, thanks,” Magna says.

“So,” the rabbi says when we all get our drinks, “to your health, a long life, and especially to your marriage,” and we click glasses and drink. He shows us the certificate we'll get at the end of the ceremony. “On the cover—I don't know if you can read it—but it says ‘marriage' in Hebrew.”

“It's a little bit gaudy for me,” I say. “You don't have one with fewer frills? Oh, I guess it's not important.”

“It is so important,” my father says. “That certificate will end up meaning more to you than your license. And it's beautifully designed—good enough to frame and hang—but of course not good enough for you.”

“You'll have to provide two glasses for the ceremony,” the rabbi says. “One with the red wine in it you'll both be drinking from.”

“Dry or sweet?” Magna says.

“What a question,” my father says. “Sweet, sweet.”

“Whichever you choose,” the rabbi says. “You'll be the ones drinking it.”

“A modern rabbi,” my father says. “Well, better than a modern judge. Ask him what synagogue he represents.”

“By the way,” I say, “do you have a congregation? George said he thought you'd given that up.”

“Right now,” he says, “I'm marketing a wonderful little device that could save the country about five hundred thousand barrels of oil a month, if the public would just accept it. I got tired of preaching, but I'll get back to it one day.”

“What he's not saying,” his wife says, “is that this gadget will only cost three and a half dollars retail, plus a slight installation fee, and will save every apartment and home owner about fifty dollars a month during the winter. The oil companies hate him for it.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” he says, “but I will say I haven't made any friends in the oil industry. But the effectiveness of the device has been proven, it'll last without repairs for up to fifteen years, and someone has to market it, so it's almost been like a crusade with me to get it into every oil user's home. Wait, I'll show it to you.”

“Wait'll he comes around to telling you the cost of his ceremony,” my father says.

“The other glass,” I say, after we've passed the device around.

“Is that the one I'm supposed to break with my foot?”

“Scott has the most brilliant interpretation of it during the ceremony you'll ever want to hear,” his wife says. “I've heard it a dozen times and each time I'm completely absorbed. Actually, except for the exchange of vows, I'd call it the highlight of the ceremony.”

“Would you mind if we don't have the breaking of the glass? We've already decided on this. To us it represents the breaking of the hymen—”

“That's just one interpretation,” he says, “and not the one I give. Mine's about the destruction of the temples and other things. I use biblical quotes.”

“Wait wait wait,” my father says. “Did I hear you don't want to break the glass?”

“It's also just a bit too theatrical for me,” I say to the rabbi. “Just isn't my style.”

“Isn't your style?” my father says. “It goes back two thousand years—maybe even three. You have to break the glass. I did with your mother and her father and mine with our mothers and their fathers with our grandmothers and so on. A marriage isn't a marriage without it. It's the one thing you have to do for me of anything I ask.”

“I can wrap a lightbulb in newspaper if it's only that you're concerned a regular glass might cut your foot,” the rabbi says. “But if you don't want it.”

“If they don't, they don't,” his wife says.

“We don't,” Magna says, “but thank you.”

“Then no second glass,” he says. “It's your day.”

“That's it, my father says. “Now you've really made me mad. That she's on your side in this—well, you must've forced it on her. Or maybe not. Anyway, I'm tired of complaining. From the man's point you'll be missing the best part of the ceremony, not the second best. I won't even begin to advise you about anything about the rabbi's fee.”

“I know what your advice will be,” I say, “and I don't want to bargain with him, is that so bad? Because what's he going to charge—a hundred-fifty? two hundred? So how much can I cut off it—fifty, seventy-five? What's fifty anyway? What's a hundred? And he's a professional. A professional should not only do his work well but know what to charge. You always let your patients cut your dental fees in half?”

“If I thought they'd go somewhere else, sure. Because if I wasn't working on them I'd be sitting around earning nothing in that time. But if your rabbi asks four hundred?”

“He won't. You can see he's a fair guy. And I'm not a complete jerk. If I think his fee's way out of line, I'll tell him.”

“That's not the way to do it, but do what you want. I've said it a hundred times to you and now I'll say it a last time. Do what you want because you will anyway. But I'll tell you something else. Your mother didn't give you three thousand dollars of my insurance policy benefit to just piss away.”

“That money was nine years ago. I didn't ask for a cent of it but she thought I deserved it because of the four years I helped her with you. And I used it to good purpose. I lived off it and worked hard on what I wanted to work on for one entire year.”

“Oh, just pay anything he asks no matter how high. In fact, when he says his fee, say ‘No, it's too little,' and double him. That's the kind of schmo I sometimes think you can be.”

We're being married in Magna's apartment. The rabbi's talking about what the sharing of the wine means. My mother's there. My brother and sister and their spouses. My nieces and an uncle and aunt. Magna's parents and cousins and her uncle and aunts. A few of our friends and their children. My father. He looks tired and ill. He's dressed for the wedding, has on his best suit, though it needs to be pressed. He sits down on the piano bench he's so tired. The rabbi pronounces us married. I'm trying. Magna smiles and starts to cry. My mother says “What is this? You're not supposed to be crying, but go ahead. Tears of happiness.”