And Now The World Is Ours
Chapter Fourteen: All You Need is Love
My alarm rings at eight-thirty, and immediately I'm wide awake, flinging my eyes open and rolling out of bed. I pour myself a bowl of Cheerios and eat it while pacing around as Josh might, too excited and giddy to sit still. We're getting married; we're really getting married! It's pretty much the definition of too good to be true.
I sneak a peek out of the kitchen window, and nearly drop my cereal. The sky, a brilliant, breezy blue yesterday is grey and overcast, and as I stare, heavy raindrops start hitting the pavement outside. "Oh, come ON!" I yell, hitting my palm on the kitchen counter annoyance. "Don't do this to me! Not today!" Cursing, I finish my cereal, run my eyes over the paper to make sure the world is still standing and not in the way of our wedding, and get into the shower. I'm vigorously scrubbing every part of my body while singing along to Madonna, using the expensive shower gel and moisturizer Josh bought me for Christmas years ago, which I have been saving for special occasions. Two Inaugurations. Election Day. Leo's Funeral. CJ's wedding. I remember using them after the convention, when I came to ask Josh for a job. And I took them to Hawaii.
It's only right that I'm using up both today.
I pull on my maternity jeans and a blue tank top with a smile, stare at the empty containers. I don't throw them out, but crawl under my bed to retrieve my memorabilia shoebox, and I gently tuck them inside, along with ticket stubs, dried flowers, postcards, letters, photographs and my old diaries, running my fingers through the clutter. Today, we are giving our past a future. I hear a key turning in the lock, wrenching me out of my nostalgia. I hurry downstairs, pulling on my sweatshirt, and see Josh shaking raindrops out of his hair. "Hey," he grins at me.
"What are you doing here? I thought- JOSH, STOP LOOKING AT ME!" I suddenly shriek, cowering down on the landing, out of his sight, and covering my face with yesterday's Times.
"What?"
"You're not supposed to see me until the ceremony, you idiot. That's the whole point of sleeping in separate beds the night before the wedding!"
"Really? Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense."
"Yes it does," I say sarcastically. "Imagine that. Close your eyes so I can go into the kitchen- CLOSE YOUR EYES, JOSHUA!"
He obliges, and I scoot past him. "Is there any way for me to get out of this wedding?" This earns him a swat on the head. "OW! What the hell? I was kidding!"
"I know. Still. Whatever happened to tempting faith?" I reach the kitchen and close the door behind me, leaving a crack open. "You can open your eyes now. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"I'm getting ready, what do you think I'm doing? Hey, it's raining pretty badly out there, what-"
"Not a word, Josh, not a word."
"I'm just saying, someone up there seems to really hate us."
"Hate me," I mutter, but under my breath. I hear Josh's footsteps disappear upstairs, hear the shower running and then hear him doing –I'm really not sure what, but it makes a lot of noise- while I try to properly read the morning paper, my insides tingling with excitement. I make myself a peanut butter sandwich while staring out at the sky, which seems to be getting lighter. Hope restored, I listen to Josh walk downstairs, again making a lot more noise than he should. "I'm going," he says, and I can tell that he's leaning against the kitchen door. "See you later."
"Yeah," I say, and my smile grows wide and wider at the thought of "later".
"Love you," he says, as I hear the front door opening.
"Love you too."
The rest of the morning passes excruciatingly slowly as I clean up the house just to keep myself busy, call Beano several times to make sure everything's fine and hypnotically stare outside the window, willing the sky to go lighter. They've put up a marquee and a couple of those French heating rods just in case, and Beano said something about moving the actual ceremony inside. I'm calming down. Around two o'clock, my mother, CJ, Helen Santos and Isabel suddenly waltz in, declare themselves my bridesmaids, cancel my hairdresser's appointment and declare it their intention to "help me" get ready. Isabel and Mrs. Santos' combined efforts on my hair initially results in me looking like a poodle starring in a trashy eighties movie, but we fix that, and as they leave me, they hand me four lovely presents: something old (an old bracelet of my grandmother's I thought I lost as a little girl), something new (teardrop earrings from Helen that go perfectly with my dress), something borrowed (the gorgeous pearl-and-diamond necklace CJ wore at her wedding) and, of course, something blue (gel pads for my shoes, the fancy, cooling and revitalizing kind). Amused and touched, I wave my three bridesmaids goodbye, and smile at my mother unsurely.
"This is it."
She laughs. "You want me to call you a cab to Mexico?"
"I think I'm okay." And I am, as I traipse back upstairs, slip out of my clothes and pull out the gorgeous wedding dress, empire-waist off-white with a flowing skirt that conceals my Guppy-bump without hiding it. I run my fingers lightly over the embroidered material, and my gaze falls on the wall around our bedroom mirrors. We're not the kind of people that keep pictures of our loved ones on the mantelpiece or on the staircase wall. We just tape them to the wall wherever, and most of them have wound up here, cluttering the space around this mirror. There's a faded picture of a broadly-smiling little girl with pigtails and Josh's smile, and her eyes seem to meet mine, and I'm suddenly shy in my own house. Under the watchful but approving gaze of my grandmother, whom I still miss constantly; Leo, who I wish was here so much; President Bartlet, who would have loved today almost much as I do, and Joanie, who I just hope approves of me, I slip on my dress.
When I step downstairs, fully dressed and made up, the woman who I glance sideways in the mirror, the bride, makes my stomach flutter. Mom gaps when she sees me and impatiently wipes her eyes before adjusting me where I need adjusting and getting me into the car. The sun has come out, and as we ride through DC, the city is shimmering and shining like an enchanted treasure. We arrive at Beano's at five past four, and as I squint up, I can see a crowd of people already assembled on the roof. Up the elevator, and Mom is reassuringly squeezing my hand, though I don't need reassuring. I'm more sure about this than almost anything else I've ever done.
The elevator clangs to a halt, and suddenly, we're surrounded by people, Guiseppe's mother loudly complimenting everything from my hair to my pregnant stomach, Ruth enthusiastically agreeing with her, my Dad opening and closing his mouth apparently at a loss for words, Abbey joking how she thought she's never get to see the day, and my two flower girls, Miranda Santos and Molly, asking me who I think looks prettier. We walk out of the little vestibule, past the lavishly decorated rooftop where later, in a time that seems so distant and yet so close, we will celebrate, towards the rooftop greenhouse. Guiseppe's mamma shoos the remaining guests inside, leaving me alone with my parents, Ruth and the two girls. My Mom gives me a kiss and a hug. "I'm so proud of you," she breathes into my ear. She and Ruth wish me luck before following the others.
"Ready?" I ask Dad, biting my lip.
He nods. "You look beautiful," he tells me. Then, sheepishly, "You're happy?"
"Very."
"He's gonna be a good father? He's gonna make you laugh?"
"Yes."
"Then let's go." He takes my arm, and Miranda and Molly grab their flower baskets. Molly opens the door and unceremoniously yells inside: "Here she comes!" I grip Dad's hand tightly and he smiles at me a little sadly as inside, a piano starts playing and then singing, terribly off-key but wonderfully genuine erupts.
There's nothing you do that can't be done.
Walking into a strange campaign for a candidate I couldn't have picked out of a crowd, heart-broken and pissed at the world, and finding a stranger with a puzzled, dimpled smile that had more faith in me after three minutes than Phil had ever had.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Our first Inauguration Ball, dancing with Josh and feeling like a fairytale princess just pages away from happily ever after, him spinning me around until I was breathless, mouthing along with the Sinatra playing in the background, and walking into the White House the next morning, both of us knowing that it needed to stop or I needed to quit my job.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
"I'm just saying, if you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for a beer." A silent office in a dark evening, and all my anger at him spilling out of me, and all that was left was a closeness that I couldn't name, but that was much more than a stupid crush on my boss.
"If you were in accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights."
It's easy
It was never really easy, it was complicated and messy, hanging on to each other –and sometimes just the idea, the dream of each other- despite everything. Sometimes, I was thisclose to just giving up, moving back to Madison and finding the life I thought Josh could never give me, with domesticity and a house with a yard and a tire swing. And when I quit, I did it because I thought we had run out of chances. But we never did run out of chances, out of might-have-been moments.
Nothing you can name that can't be named
And our future, together and with Guppy, seems to present itself to me on a silver tray, shining and glowing behind Josh at the end of this beautiful, make-shift aisle. As I watch the bobbing heads of Miranda and Molly, the thought 'We need to think of a name for Guppy' shoots through my head. And I know we will. And then soon enough, Guppy will be here and properly named, but we'll still say Guppy, and there will be a time when my teenage son or daughter will reproach me for doing so, and the prospect sounds deliciously appealing. I continue walking down the aisle, past beaming faces giving me the thumbs-up or sniffing into their handkerchiefs, and this moment is ending way, way too quickly.
It's easy…
The greenhouse doesn't look like a greenhouse, it looks like a lavishly decorated garden Eden, with orange blossoms and home-grown tomatoes and fairy lights and paper chains, with bougainvilleas and tulips, crocuses and roses and the people I love most in the world crowded together, each of them beaming at me. I look ahead. Josh is standing under our chuppah, four posters of wood covered in flowers and ribbons, and he catches my eye and smiles at me, and Guppy flutters against my stomach, and it's probably the best moment of my life.
All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love,
Love is all you need…
Rabbi Eliser and Pastor Fisher greet us. Josh reaches out for my hand when no-one seems to be looking, runs his fingers over mine like they're the keys of an instrument he doesn't quite know how to play. Toby reads a prayer from the Talmud, and then the President reads what we asked him to, since Josh had picked Sam as best man.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he reads. I know Corinthians is the cheesiest, most clichéd wedding reading that exists, but it had to be this. I was never the girl who had her wedding planned out in her head, but this part, even I had figured out. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." And sometimes, sometimes it does all of those things. Sometimes love speaks in desperate silences and exploding cards, in cold, wounded looks on campaign rallies, and things still work out. "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." Always perseveres. Even when your friends, roommates, your own mother is telling you to get out of it while you're still sane, quit and go out and live your life; when they don't know that for you, he is a defining part of the life you want to live. "… And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
I surreptitiously wipe my eyes. Our wonderful priest/rabbi duo deliver a sermon that's funny, uplifting, honest and wise at the same time, but I can barely appreciate it from the way my ears are buzzing by now. Then, Pastor Fisher turns to us with a smile. "Okay, everyone, it's show time," he says, loudly, and everyone laughs. "As you all know, we're gathered here today to join these two in marriage. I'm going to start with the Christian part, and then my buddy over here can do the Jewish. Ready?" He gives me a huge grin as he raises his arms in blessing and turns to me: "Do you, Donna, take Josh to be your lawful wedded husband?"
My throat is suddenly dry, and my heart's beating like crazy, and I look at Josh and then I speak, my voice loud and clear and a promise: "I do. As my husband and friend and my guy. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."
Josh squeezes my hand, and I feel a little dizzy as Pastor Fisher turns to him, and he cuts to the chase: "I, Josh Lyman, take you, Donna, to be my wife and to be mine. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."
Seamlessly, Rabbi Eliser takes over. Sam hands him the rings, simple gold wedding bands, and he blesses them in Hebrew. The words roll over me, a beautiful secret from an ancient time. Josh takes one of the rings and smiles at me, saying something in Hebrew, and then repeating in English: "Behold, you are betrothed unto me with this ring according to the laws of Moses and Israel." He slips the ring onto my finger, and my vision clouds with tears.
I take the other ring from Rabbi Eliser and slip it on Josh's finger. "With this ring, I thee wed," I say, simply.
Holding their hands aloft, Rabbi and Pastor say, together: "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you And give you peace."
"Amen," I say softly, and so does Josh; and so do my parents and Ruth and CJ and the President and First Lady and little Miranda and Molly and everyone assembled here today, and their blessing runs over me.
"We now pronounce you husband and wife."