Honeymoon
I got married on Sunday. I know people don’t usually get married on Sundays, but the venue was half price. Steve and I wanted to leave most of my dad’s money for this trip to Miami. I know people also don’t usually get married so quickly, but no one seemed alarmed. Mom told Steve, “We’re so glad someone wants to marry our Holly.”
I could never afford this hotel except for my Sheraton employee discount. We didn’t spring for a rental car, so we’ve just been hanging around the neighborhood.
I want to work out as a part of my married self. There’s a gym here, but it costs extra. We tried running on the beach but we gave up after a couple minutes. I kept sinking into the sand and could never catch my breath.
Our first morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I got a lox bagel. It was expensive, even with the discount. So now we eat most every meal at Flanigan’s Seafood Bar & Grill. It’s only a couple blocks walk, and they have TVs for him and seafood for me. They have this guy’s bearded face on the sign and on terrible green plastic cups and everything is fried, but we can afford it.
I wonder what it will be like to have money, to not always know the price of everything, to only work one job. Marriage, I’ve decided, is how I’ll find out. Now, we are saving money on cocktails by drinking store-bought booze in our hotel room: whiskey (his) and Starbucks cream liqueur (hers). Married jokes.
Yesterday we went to the beach again. We walked into the ocean where the tide keeps surging. After a minute, I returned with a book to a chaise. Steve stayed in the ocean. Then we went inside, back to bed, the one place we could agree on.
When I woke up, my skin was red: burning, burnt.
***
The night before the wedding, Mom ripped the seams out of the wedding dress I had bought online and resewed them to allow for my breasts. My sister bundled calla lilies from Baker’s Supermarket as my bouquet. I was thinking how if I had a girl—one I got to name, I mean—I’d name her Lily.
I took the shelves out of my apartment’s refrigerator to fit my wedding cake (the bakery charges $110 to deliver it). On the morning of my wedding, I went to a budget salon without an appointment. I showed the hairdresser a picture of Avril Lavigne from her wedding last month: her soft waves. My hair didn’t turn out like that, so I brushed it out. Steve drove to the venue while I balanced our cake on my lap, uncovered because that’s the only way it fit in the fridge. “Don’t wreck!” I said.
As I was getting ready—applying more eye shadow on than usual for the occasion—I realized that although we had twenty bottles of $5 champagne, we forgot the orange juice. Karen sent her parents to buy me some at a gas station. I’ve never drank a mimosa so quickly and that is really saying something.
My sister played the keyboard as my dad walked me down the aisle. We stopped in front of the minister and dad gave me away as rehearsed. Then he turned to be seated, his part over. He stepped on the train of my dress by accident. To recover, he slapped his hand over his heart like a drunk pledging allegiance. “Oop!” he said.
Oop, I keep remembering.
***
I’m still in bed today. It’s miserable here. I’m watching the news. Warren Jeffs was just captured. He’s a polygamist. I don’t know how he could handle sixty more women like me, asking for aloe vera, pizza delivered to a hotel bed.
Last night Steve went outside to have a cigarette and met the Miami Dolphins’ quarterback’s brother. He relayed this to me, his voice rising when he got to the part that was supposed to thrill me. I scratched at my legs, willing my skin to flake off.
Today is the Dolphins’ last preseason game, the reason we picked Miami for our first trip as man and wife. We bought t-shirts at Walmart to wear to the game. We both bought children’s sizes. We took a cab to Sunlife Stadium in the middle of nowhere.
We got there too early, so we ate at Denny’s where the cook wore a paper hat. I watched him slap burgers on to the grill, wondering where he got his arm tattoos. My skin is flaking off and everything burns. The aloe vera doesn’t soothe, even when my husband rubs it on my back, my legs, my breasts.