The Weight of Two Words

Josephine and I met at a painting party. You know the kind—a bunch of women gather in a storefront jammed with chairs and easels, and copy the instructor’s brushstrokes while sipping wine. Two hours later, thirty almost identical paintings are held by thirty significantly tipsy artists, each woman giddy from drink, camaraderie, and creative release.

I liked her immediately and by the time we lined up for a group photo with the other drunken painters, Josephine had insisted I meet her son, who she was sure would be perfect for me. “Come for lunch Sunday,” she said. When I wrinkled my nose and mumbled something about how set-ups never work out, she shook her head and pressed her business card into my hand. “Call me. I promise you’ll be glad you did.”

She was right. Four days after Josephine and I painted matching moonlit cityscapes, she introduced me to the love of my life. Seated at her dining room table laden with platters of pasta and fried zucchini, Josephine and Ray, her funny, big-hearted husband, joked with their grown and almost-grown kids and like she had earlier in the week, she made me feel like one of her own. 

Both of my parents live more than a thousand miles from me. My mother is in Phoenix and my dad and his latest girlfriend live in a houseboat moored somewhere on the Florida coast. Neither pressure me the way my friends’ parents do, to settle down and give them grandchildren. I have no siblings, so the raucous meal at Josephine’s house felt foreign at first. Long before dessert was served, though, I knew I’d come home. 

It’s been almost two years since I was first treated to Josephine’s hospitality. Like my sweetheart and the rest of her and Ray’s kids, Josephine owns a piece of my heart. I wish she’d been with us today as her firstborn and I spoke our vows. I wanted her to sit in the front pew, hold her husband’s hand, and dab her eyes with a hankie. I’d hoped she’d greet our guests, envelope everyone in her generous hugs, and clap in delight after we danced our first dance. Instead, Ray attended alone, his face full of heartache. 

I went to see Josephine today, before the ceremony. I stood beneath the oak tree where she was resting and poured my heart out to the woman who had become to me all that my own mother never was. I begged her to change her mind, but she wouldn’t and couldn’t. “I cannot be a part of this,” she said, her eyes lowered. “If you go through with this marriage, if you and my daughter become, what will it be? Wife and wife? I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

I leaned to hug her and told her I loved her. “You do?” she asked. “Still?”

I turned to walk away, but not before saying the words I would repeat to her oldest child a few hours later. “I do.”

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GBE #60, Fiction, Prompt: “Vows”