I do not own Pride and Prejudice although I own enough copies of the book...
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My grandmother's pearl necklace hung limply from my throat and my chestnut hair mocked my raw feelings by bouncing artificially with hairspray and a life I didn't feel. My dark red nails set off the two-carat diamond engagement ring whose new weight hung on my hand. Shaking my hair free from a few of its restrictive bobby pins, I began to walk around my apartment, which was warmed only by the light scattering from the kitchen. I directed my eyes toward a bouquet of white calla lilies on the table of the living room. Lilies were my favorite.
My tall, black heels clicked against the hardwood floor as, mesmerized, I went to touch the petals of these perfect flowers. The overwhelmingly white bouquet was enslaved in a glass vase that adorned my table. Surrounding that vase were dozens of unopened presents, addressed the man who put this ring on my finger. And me.
The ring was the one I had always wanted. Its stones glittered with every small flick of my fingers. Smaller stones encased the center diamond, and the whole ring, in its turn, encased my ring finger in a way that made my whole hand feel ungainly. The graceful cut of the ring did not make up for the ungraceful way I felt with it on. No, right now I felt like the whole hand was not even my own. Rather, I felt claimed by a matrimonial commitment that society encouraged me into from when I was a little girl.
Like many girls, I dreamed about getting married. And that dream only grew up with me. What would he be like? Would he want me to be myself or play a part? I thought about it often, considering my mother's emphasis on marriage. However, sometime in between getting a Chantilly-laced gown hemmed and invitations sent out to all our closest friends, I felt this lack of feeling. It surprised me. It had always been our goal, growing up, to get married. My mother was adamant. Yet I wasn't excited, or stressed by the planning involved. No, I was going through the motions of planning a wedding.
A knock on my door broke me from my thoughts and informed me that my solitude was about to be infringed upon. Picking my feet out of the tight, cutting heels, I padded over to the door, not anxious to open it. My dull head throbbed, and did not cease upon seeing who had come to visit.
It was my fiancé, and he had just come to see me after driving his grandmother home from our engagement party. I let him in, and let him follow me into my apartment. We didn't live together. I couldn't tell my mother that I lived with him before we were married. He lived in the small house we had just bought, and he had spent every night this week painting it the colors we had picked out despite the fact that he could easily afford a painter.
I nodded in agreement to his statement that the party had been a success. He asked after my parents but the pithy answers I gave seemed to worry him. Saying I felt sort of tired felt sort of like a lie. I was physically tired; it had been a long day. But I was emotionally tired as well.
He sat down on my couch as my thoughts wandered away again. I couldn't seem to make sense of the feeling inside me: a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of dread. Wasn't I excited when we got engaged? Hadn't he known the best flowers and ring to use? Was this just cold feet? Or was it something more? Maybe I was dead inside to love, or excitement. Maybe I was dead inside to love with him. What was this feeling of dread? Was I just nervous? Did I not love him? Was I afraid he didn't love me?
He certainly loved the idea of me. He loved the idea of a sarcastic, witty woman who sometimes pretended not to know how to work technological devices or the car. Maybe he thought I was cute, or maybe he just wanted to get married.
I certainly had always thought I wanted to get married. But at the same time, I was a girl who knew I would never settle for anything but love in marriage. And around my fiancé, I was always certain that we had that love. And until now, I was positive about the fact that I would be getting married for love.
And that made me nervous.
What if I was wrong? What if I was letting one of my worst fears come true? Maybe I was getting married only because it worked. My parents got along and, for the most part, their marriage worked, with some exasperation on my mother's end and witty remarks on my father's. But as a girl I swore passionately that I couldn't marry someone for convenience. I wanted love. And I knew that some people told me that kind of love didn't exist, or fades, and that marriage can't be based on love. But that was what I wanted.
I told Darcy I loved him. But the more I thought about what I had heard from friends and family about marriage, the more convinced I was that this marriage wouldn't work. It couldn't. I loved him, but marriage doesn't work like that. We came from very different family backgrounds, to begin with. His family expected certain things from him, and I did not meet the criteria.
Suddenly, I could identify the dread inside me. I dreaded the day when our love would fade and my marriage would emulate that of my parents. I dreaded the day that I became used to my husband and he became used to me. I dreaded the day when I became indifferent to him.
I came out of my reveries as I heard Darcy call my name, looking as though he had done so multiple times. I jumped a little at his voice and again when he stood up from the couch, walked to where I was standing and took my cold hands in his large ones.
I drew my hands away awkwardly and acted as though they were occupied by fixing my hair. I spun on my heels, facing away from him.
I had to collect my thoughts and his hurt voice asking me what was wrong wasn't helping. I tried to take a breath, but couldn't catch one and my mind raced.
Was I having second thoughts about the wedding, he wanted to know? Talk to me, he said, a pleading note in his voice.
The stuck words stopped up my throat and when he turned me around to face him the tears would no longer be held in my tired eyes. His own eyes flooded with alarm that would not be dissuaded by my protest of just being tired. He knew I was truly upset, which only made me cry harder. The tears flew down my cheeks as I tried to disentangle myself from him and compose myself. All I could say was that it wouldn't work, it wouldn't work, as I struggled against his grip on me.
And he just kept whispering, why, why? as if not to startle me. He wouldn't let go of my arms no matter how I twisted, and finally, exhausted, I caved into my need to have him comfort me and caved into his arms. The gentle sturdiness of his body enveloped me as he led me to the couch he had previously occupied.
My fears overwhelmed my thoughts so that when he asked again what was wrong, I took a breath and began. At first, I looked him in the eyes. Then I looked away.
I said that I didn't know about marriage. How were two people supposed to stay together in this state of happiness forever? How could two completely different personalities live together forever? What if we just got used to each other and the love part went away? What if we only stayed together, or got together in the first place, because it worked?
I just couldn't take the idea that we would end up this way: dispassionate to each other. My dread was that once we were married, everything would change, and I couldn't be disinterested with him, I couldn't and it wouldn't work.
His eyes widened as if in realization. He grabbed my upper arms again firmly and firmly said that he was not my father, and I certainly was not my mother; we were not my parents. I shook my head "no" even as he nodded "yes" and repeated his statement.
No, it wouldn't work; marriage doesn't work, I argued, though my voice shook loudly without permission from my mind.
He loudly countered that I was wrong.
Like a child I rose to the challenge and my voice rose with it. I said that he didn't know for sure it would work.
Well, he yelled (not yelled, he never yelled at me) I didn't know that it wouldn't work.
I stared.
He softened.
His eyes never leaving mine, he told me in the most yearning voice that he loved me. When I moved to interrupt, he interrupted me by saying that he loved the way my eyes got huge when I got excited about something. And he loved the way that I fiddled with my engagement ring, and the way I pretended not to know how to work the computer just so he could feel like a "fixer" and I could feel like the girl. He loved the way I held his arm and nestled my head into him when I needed a hug.
I shook my head.
Swiping my tears away with the pad of his thumb, he softly stated that there was a weight in his stomach every time I cried and a smile on his face with every echo of my loud laughter. And he couldn't change that. And no matter how many years passed, he would always love me. He couldn't not love me. So I would just have to deal with it.
I stopped my movements.
He said that he knew that I was scared. Marriage was scary. And our families didn't have the best track records. But we weren't our parents. And he loved me. He would always love me.
His grip on my arms had not lessened and neither had his grip on my eyes.
He loved me, he repeated adamantly. He loved me, he loved me.
I nodded.
His gaze bore into me.
I nodded again.
I shifted my arms out of his and folded myself into his embrace and onto his lap. My head rested on his chest and his chin rested on my head. He drew small circles on my back soothingly and repeatedly dropped kisses into my hair.
He told me that I had to stop pushing him away. He was not my father. I nodded, not trusting my voice. He wouldn't hurt me, he repeated. I could trust him.
Sighing, I nodded again and pressed my face more deeply into his chest. He was still wearing his dress shirt and the tie I had given him for his birthday and I was still wearing my red dress from our engagement party. My thoughts moved back to the party, and my eyes moved back to my ring, catching the light in a way that made my hand feel light and graceful, finally.
I looked up into my fiancé's face from my position on his lap and noticed the sincerity in his eyes. Reaching up, I placed a quick kiss on his lips before getting up from the couch. He looked at me in askance before I held my hand out for him to take. Gripping his fingers in my own, his hand closed around mine and he pulled our hands to his mouth, placing a kiss there. I smiled quietly, before leading him to the door.
We were going to our new house, I told him, our new home. I just wanted to spend one night there before the wedding. I just wanted to be in our new home right now. He brushed his thumb across the side of my face and I leaned into his touch before turning to put my black heels back on and walking out the door with my fiancé.
On the table behind me were the white lilies he had given me when we got engaged. The white bouquet gleamed in the moonlight that spread across the table. When I looked back one last time before shutting the front door, I noticed the lilies. The vase was supporting the lovely flowers and the water was giving them nourishment. The lilies were beautiful.
I shut the door.