News of a death went about in whispers just as my husband and I were getting ready to march as principal sponsors at a wedding.
“That’s why Jenny isn’t here,” someone was heard to say.
Jenny was the bride’s half-sister from her father’s first marriage. And as friends of her parents close enough to know the complications in both their lives, we grasped the significance of the news rather quickly: It removed the last legal impediment for them to get married themselves—after all these 32 years.
It seems easy for couples of complications to trust their stories with one another: He has his own children, she has hers, and they have theirs. Vergel and I each have our own children from our first marriages, but none of our own. In fact, when I confided Vergel to my closest cousin, Ninit, she right away warned, “Teresa, you need too many corpses to make this right!”
In our friends’ case, the only preexisting impediment to a marriage was one first marriage—his. Even so, it had shown such small prospect of going away she had resigned herself to the fact that she’d only marry him in her dreams. Early on in the relationship, long before the first wife got sick, the two women had agreed on a modus vivendi—leave things alone—and all the children were the better for it. The first marriage now providentially ended with her passing, we were more than thrilled to be asked a year later to be wedding sponsors again.
The senior bride walked down the aisle all smiles in a white strapless gown, now and then pausing to tap her cheeks in mock self-assurance, that all this was for real. After rings were exchanged, the bride leaned for what seemed a premature kiss, which set off a buzz across the crowd.
“Aggressive talaga ’yang si Mommy,” whispered the daughter seated behind me.
It turned out to be one of the best wedding celebrations we had ever been part of. There were only family and truly close friends, and there was enough genuine musical talent in the family to keep everyone entertained. The most applauded were the bride’s numbers, two hot songs to her man of 32 years and husband for barely a day. The emcee—the best man himself—had to announce the party was over; still no one seemed ready to leave except the grandchildren, who were all packed to join the newlyweds in their honeymoon suite.
Growing apart
A week after, my husband and I watched “Hope Springs,” with Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones playing a couple married legally for, again, 32 years who are showing signs of growing apart. They retire to separate bedrooms after a day of going about a tired routine—she at home, and he at the office. The wife is ready to quit, though not before one last attempt at rescue. They see a counselor, who, after an assessment, declares: “Sometimes I meet couples who should never have married; you are not one of those.”
That’s enough for them to keep trying, especially in matters of intimacies, which put them through awkward, all-too-familiar scenes for older couples. Eventually, this first marriage makes it.
Sometimes a marriage is over before husband and wife realize it, and when they do, what’s left is all a matter of paperwork. Such was the precise point of the cheerful message I received one recent morning.
“Chit, I’m finally getting a divorce!” an old friend announced by phone. An American divorce it was to be, exactly what would void a marriage made in America, in New York. “Do you know what my ex-nun sister living there said when I told her? ‘What for?’”
I might have said the same thing had I not understood that she needed some kind of closure, even after he had left her again and again and finally stayed away for good. All her patience and understanding couldn’t keep the marriage. And how she tried! I was with her through some of those times.
I now realized this time it was she leaving him and closing the door on him. Feeling a sympathetic sense of relief, I heard myself say, “I suppose you’re asking me to be ninang at your divorce.”
It was good to hear her laugh so freely again.
