Why the Tree Loves the Axe. Jim Lewis
sat in the lounge and thought the night was all wrong; and I stretched out on the couch and slept fitfully until dawn the next day, when the administrator found me, woke me, and made me go home.
Bonnie knew a man from her bar, a regular named Adam, whom I’d met very briefly one night when I’d gone by to sit with her. He was getting married and she arranged it so that I was invited. I didn’t know him very well, I didn’t know his bride at all, and I didn’t want to go to a wedding. A wedding! I didn’t want to go. But Bonnie said, Come on, it could be fun. You don’t have to meet anyone, you don’t have to talk to anyone. You just need to wear some nice clothes. When was the last time you put on a nice dress and made up your face? I made a skeptical noise. She squinched her features and said, Do it for me? I don’t want to go alone.
I don’t have anything to wear, I said. I lost all my good clothes in the crash.
I have a dress, if you want, she insisted. I’ll come over. It’ll fit. It’s a beautiful thing. All right?
I could think of a thousand better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, but I knew she was relying on me to keep her company. O.K., I said.
She was right about the dress: It was an emerald green raw silk shift, a simple sleeveless thing with a scooped neck, but the whole of art was lying in it, cherubs in the shadows and chambermaids looking on. I stood before her mirror and smoothed it down my waist, and glimmers of light flushed down the front. You wear some sling-back sandals, said Bonnie, and you’ll look perfect.—And here. She held out four little pills in her hand; two were small and white, one was white and larger, and one was pale blue. Take these; they’ll make the whole afternoon a lot better. Water. Where do you keep the cups? She went rummaging through the shelves above my kitchen sink.
Where do they come from? I asked.
This guy came in the bar with them, traded me for a few drinks.
Do you know what they do?
I don’t know exactly what they are, but he looked like he was having a good time. She turned her face away and gulped the pills down. I wanted to follow her, so I felt mine in my mouth for a second or two and then tipped my head back and let them fall into the back of my mouth; and just as I felt them pass down my throat, I saw a white flash of light. Oh, God, I thought, that was quick. But when I lowered my head again I saw Bonnie holding her camera in her hands, looking at it quizzically as the motor advanced the film.
By the time I was done with my makeup, I could feel the wedding coming on like a high, an airy burning in the hollow of my stomach, and a high coming on from the pills. The future, which until then had been a single uniform field, began to collapse into a variety of irregular shapes, like the paths through a concrete garden. My hair was sitting strangely on my head, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Bonnie took my chin in her hand and stared into my eyes. I knew exactly what she was thinking. Beautiful, she said. Green is your color.
The ceremony was in a Catholic church in a part of town that I’d never visited before; on the ride over there Bonnie sang Froggy Went A-Courtin’, all the way through. The sun was curled up in a ball in the heavens outside the window; I could see one or two planets, hovering and ducking into the clouds. Saturn, broad daylight. On the street, people were trying very hard not to stare at us. You never checked to see what those things were?
It’ll get better as it settles, said Bonnie. You know, Adam is such a nice man, I’m so happy for him. He used to come in the bar just to sit nice, and drink some, and talk. In the distance I could see hills, they were the earth’s own joke. Do this, she said, taking her hands off the wheel for a moment and holding them in an attitude of prayer. I did that. We hope he stays married forever.
In the church everyone was smiling, especially the preacher, who grinned so widely and constantly that I thought his head was going to come right off and float upward toward the sky beyond the steeple. At the front, just before the pulpit, there were two stands about waist-high: on each of them there was a large, shallow pot, and in each pot there was an arrangement of flowers. Between them stood the groom, tall, handsome, strong. The preacher was at a podium a few feet back, and behind him there was an organist. Several young saints were leaning modestly against the rear wall. They were all waiting for the bride, and the bride was waiting for the music. Her name was Marie.
Bonnie and I slid into a pew near the back and sat down; she smiled at someone she recognized, and then leaned back and sighed nervously. I picked up a hymnal from the seat beside me, but I didn’t open it; I just held it in my hands, caressing the dimpled cover and weaving the thin purple ribbon in and out of my fingers.
Roy and I were married in a dingy beige room at the city courthouse on a Wednesday afternoon, just behind a Cuban woman and her silent fiancé, and just ahead of two city sanitation workers who had their entire families along as witnesses. And did I believe that the flowers of paradise had descended upon us? I wasn’t looking at him when he said, I do. Everything seemed just right to me, and yet not quite right, somehow. What did I know? Afterward I exhaled hugely, and spent a very innocent night with my husband, whose skin under the dusky banner of our wedlock was somehow smoother and more polished, and whose shallow respiring, as he slept, was as steady and ceremonial as a command at sea. It had been two, three, four years since I’d lain down next to him and heard him breathe, but I remembered, and I remembered how much I’d loved the sound.
The organist leaned forward and a few syrupy chords came down over the congregation; we all turned around in our seats to watch with open, expectant faces. The bride appeared at the door, a dark-skinned woman wearing a long lacy white dress and a white veil, arm in arm with her father. When I glanced back toward the altar I saw three or four other men ranged behind the groom, presenting him as one of their own. The preacher was one of them, too, but the bride was different, she was all alone, a precious and powerful little vial of perfume. When she reached the front she stopped; the music stopped and there was a hush in the room. The preacher said a few lines in a loud, hollow voice about the sacredness of the marriage bond; I didn’t think he really meant what the words said, but I knew there was something he meant very deeply by saying them. The bride and groom answered by promising that they would never give up what they had right there. Then she kissed him, and the kiss was long. I thought she was going to vanish, but when they were finished she was still standing by his side. It was a miracle, right there in the church, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed it; everyone was talking about how wonderful it had been, that she had been so suddenly transformed without coming apart.
Afterward there were smiling faces bobbing in the vestibule of the church, holy expressions on the angels above the door, a few flashes of a photographer’s bulb on the front steps, some birds in the trees on the lawn. Bonnie checked her purse for the directions to the hall where the reception was to be held, and couldn’t find them. I know where they are, she said. They’re on my dresser at home. Hang on. She went over to a tall, dark man and spoke to him for a moment, and when she came back she was leading him with her hand around his wrist. This is Charlie, she said. He has the directions, so we’re going to give him a ride. This is my friend Caroline.
Charlie had a smile like a handful of candy, and a low, slightly hoarse voice. He sat in the back and hung his head over the backrest that separated us. I wanted to touch his hair, his straight black hair, just to see what it felt like. I’ve never been down here before, he said. Adam moved down here, to Texas. It’s just like the movies, isn’t it? I came down from New York—he said the city’s name without blushing.—Oh, I think you have to take a right up at the intersection here, so you better get over. Do you want to just take this? He handed up the sheet of paper and as he leaned in I caught the smell of him for a moment, the heat of his clothes, skin, mouth: it went right down the front of my dress like the memory of a man’s hand, and I flushed, shifted slightly, and cracked the window.
Bonnie pursed her lips and turned half around. Can you get down there, or move over, so I can see out the back?
Of course. I’m sorry, he said, and the smell went with him.
What are you doing out there? she asked, and then turned to me and gave me a smile.
I’m