Second line, p.6
Second Line, page 6
part #4 of The DuPage Parish Mysteries Series
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You’re ruining your suit!”
“My suit—” He paused for breath and hoisted himself up a few more feet. “—is fine, thanks very much.” Another pause, a grunt, and then his voice was a lot closer as he said, “I’m more worried about you.”
“Well—” I had to think. “I’m fine.”
He expelled a hard breath, and then he must have found a foothold, because his head popped up, and he hooked one arm over the windowsill. He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut, and said, “I didn’t see anything.”
“Dag, get down. You’re going to fall and hurt yourself.”
“But if I did see something, like, maybe a teeny, tiny glimpse? Just, you know, in theory? I’d say you look wonderful.”
Wiping my eyes, I shook my head. He couldn’t see, of course, not with his eyes closed—it took me a moment to figure that out. My voice was thick as I said, “This is so fucking embarrassing.”
“It’s not embarrassing.”
A broken laugh, which was more like a sob, escaped me.
“Ok,” Dag said in a soft voice, “it’s a little embarrassing. But Bradley told everyone you’re still fixing your hair; that’s no big deal.”
I started crying harder. “This whole day was supposed to be perfect, and now I ruined it.”
“You didn’t ruin anything. You’re having a moment. That’s ok.” He paused. “E, we don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. I’ll love you no matter what. We don’t ever have to get married.”
“I want to get married! I’m the one who proposed, dummy! But—but there’s this stupid part of my brain that doesn’t work right, and now everything is horrible, and you know I’m crazy, and I can’t go down there and face those people.”
He had to adjust his weight, which was fair, since he was hanging off the side of a building while he literally saved our marriage. Then he said, “I already knew you were crazy, ever since you tried to make me eat that watermelon cake.”
This time, my laugh sounded more like a laugh. I wiped my eyes.
“We could elope,” Dag said. “We could sneak down this drainpipe and run away right now. That’d be fun.”
“It wouldn’t be fun. It would be terrible. Do you know how much I spent on this suit? And your parents would never, ever, ever forgive me.”
“How much did you spend on that suit?”
“Dagobert!”
Somehow, even hanging out of the window like that, he managed a boyish grin, and he looked so young and happy and kind that I started crying all over again.
“Why don’t we call this the practice? And we’ll try again next year?”
I shook my head, wiping my eyes with both hands. “Come on.”
“Come on?”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll help you in the window, and we can go downstairs and get married, and my hair will be terrible, and I’ll look fat, and—and you know what? Maybe I should stick with my first plan. If I keep the door locked, nobody can make me come out, and eventually everyone will have to leave, and we can go home.”
“Uh huh,” Dag said. “You know, that sounds a little like maybe you want to feel in control. And maybe like you want to avoid dealing with a problem.”
“Tell me about it.” And I thought about how much work Dag had put into this—into the day, into our relationship, into me, into this downspout. And I thought about how much work I’d been putting into today and into us, and yes, even into me too. I made myself say, “But people aren’t here because of my hair. Or because of my rocking bod.”
“Don’t get started on that stuff, please.”
The last light of day had gone out; all we had were our lights, the ones just for us. “They’re here because they love us, and because they want us to be happy, and I’m here because I love us and I want us to be happy, and—and I guess that’s what matters.”
“E,” Dag said. That’s all he had to say.
I wiped my eyes again and cleared my throat and said again, “Come on.”
“Oh no,” he said. “I’m not ruining the surprise; I’ll go back the way I came. But full disclosure, E? I don’t think D’arcy is here because he loves us and he wants us to be happy. He already offered to blow me.”
“That little fuck.”
“Uh, twice, actually. For the sake of full disclosure.”
He started to shimmy down the downspout when I said, “Dag?”
He stopped.
“Maybe you could, um, come up here? Like a human being, I mean—take the stairs. And we could walk down together?”
Against the glow of the fairy lights, I could pick out the battleship gray of his hair, the perfect military part, the familiar shape of his head and shoulders. He smiled, broad and white, and he sounded very old fashioned and very much like Dagobert LeBlanc when he said, “It would be my pleasure.”
I don’t remember much after that: the electric sconces that were haloed because I couldn’t stop crying, the heat of bodies and the crush of too many perfumes, the strings playing in the background, Dag’s hand firm around mine, the kindness in Kennedy’s eyes. We’d asked her to officiate, of course.
The shape of the question. The form of it, hanging in the air like a doorway to walk through. That, more than anything else.
I took a breath. I took my time. Because Dag would wait for me to catch up. Like always.
And then I said, “I do.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Connie for her corrections to the text!
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Gregory Ashe, Second Line
