I'm No Saint : Part 3

Memoir of a Wayward Wife
by Elizabeth Hayt

(Page 3 of 4)

After my second semester, my parents announced they were cutting the cord, severing me from financial support. I would have to get a job and pay my own rent. Now plenty of students do it but, being from Great Neck where poor was considered a four-letter word, I panicked. Entry-level art world jobs paid minimum wage, and I had at least one more year before completing my master's - and plenty more if I were to continue for a doctorate. How would I make enough to cover the cost of housing and finish school before memory loss set in?

Let's face it. I was a turbo-JAP who foresaw the worst: becoming a squatter in Alphabet City living without electricity, spending the next twenty years completing my higher education by candlelight. My parents offered an alternative. I could marry Charlie and, while he was in law school and I grad school, our fathers would split the tab. There would be no worry about creature comforts, let alone the Con Ed bill.

"Did Mom and Dad also tell you you'd have to get a job to pay your rent?" I asked my brother Warren. "Because they told me I have to, otherwise I've got to get married."

Now in his second year of dental school at Boston University, Warren was planning on a maxillofacial surgery residency before continuing on to medical school - a decade of postgraduate studies that my parents had no complaints about funding.

"Maybe they don't see you going anywhere," he said with a shrug. "That was a nudge. Get a job. Be an adult. Stop mooching. They're pushing you out of the nest. What are you going to do with an art history degree anyway?"

He had a point. I had chosen art history because my mother and Charlie encouraged it. My college courses had been inspiring and I could always teach - if it came to that. With the pressure on, I gave Charlie The Ultimatum.

"What am I supposed to do?" he said. "Ask you to marry me?"

Satisfied by that most unromantic of proposals, I said "Yes."

As a liberal young couple, Charlie and I arranged to have an unconventional ceremony: a lesbian rabbi would marry us. We assumed she'd be on our wavelength when we said we didn't want a traditional Jewish wedding with Hebrew prayers and yarmulkes. We wanted to keep it simple and secular, a brief pledge to love each other till death do us part.

Once we were under the canopy, our lefty rabbi turned Lubavitch on us. She started speaking in the language of the Israelites, quoting King Solomon, and explaining the Talmudic symbolism of everything from the canopy to the hair on my head. Suddenly, it seemed as if God had thrown a switch, igniting the electrical storm. Bolts of lightning crackled outside. The stormy weather so inspired the rabbi, she had a spontaneous vision: Our wedding was nothing less than a symbol of Israel's union with God when the Hebrews received the Torah at Sinai surrounded by fire and flashes of light.

Here we were at the Garden City Hotel, a splashy marble-and-glass four-star property with valet parking, breath mints at the concierge's desk, and the faint odor of chlorine from the indoor pool wafting through the sanitized air. This the rabbi was comparing to the sacred desert?

Finally, it was time for Charlie to smash the wedding glass. According to custom, the groom was supposed to wrap the goblet in a napkin, place it on the ground, and give it a resounding stamp. Either his timing was off or the glass was at the wrong angle but the thing didn't break. Instead of cries of "Mazel tov" filling the room, all you could hear was Charlie's lone voice, "Holy shit."

Eventually, we said "I do" - at least, I thought that's what it meant when the rabbi told us to repeat after her in Hebrew. When Charlie and I finally kissed, you could feel the canopy heave as the wedding party breathed a collective sigh of relief. We were husband and wife.

But what I felt was a far cry from release. I had a lump in my throat and was holding back tears. My childhood was over. Great Neck might not have been Mayberry but all I wanted was to turn back time, go home, and give myself a Tinkerbell manicure.

From start to finish, the wedding reception was a complete blur, a moving image of hors d'oeuvre platters, table-hopping, and great-aunts recounting how the last time they saw me, my hair was in pigtails. During the horah, Charlie and I were hoisted into the air on banquet chairs that tipped from side to side, like ships rolling on ocean swells. We gripped the edges for dear life while the mad frenzy of guests circled us. Although Charlie appeared both wide-eyed and delighted by all the attention, I flinched every time the shutter clicked, capturing the Kodak moments.

I was buzzing from the disappearing acts I'd made to the powder room with my bridesmaids to snort toot on the porcelain toilet tank. Squeezed into a single stall, they did their best to pep me up.

"Charlie's an idealist," said Cathy. "He makes you laugh. He's high-spirited and smart."

Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Hayt

About the Author

Elizabeth Hayt is a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle. While on romantic sabbatical, she lives with her three dogs in New York City.