IAR 37-B
For their honeymoon night, Andy and Miranda had been moved to a small private cabin. It was secluded away from the lodge but within easy walking distance. They were both glad for the bracing air after the food and wine and the warmth of the dancing. Andy took Miranda’s arm as they walked, an uninterrupted sea of stars above them in the rural Vermont sky. The path to the cabin had been cleared of snow and was illuminated by scores of light pink Japanese lanterns. As Miranda was thinking how soft and eerie the lanterns looked, Andy took her arm from Miranda’s and put it around the woman’s waist. “Did you have fun?”
Miranda smiled at the question. Thank God for Andy and Emily. She expected the unreasonable every minute of her professional life but she’d never have imagined fun would be something personally reasonable to ask from a wedding and certainly never would have planned for it. She supposed it was possible they hadn’t planned it and it had just happened. Miranda wasn’t quite sure how fun worked for her-not until she happened to find herself having it. Planned for or not, she had had it so she answered, “Yes.”
Andy smiled and squeezed her waist. “Good. I had a blast. I think everyone else did, too. I wish we had video! I could watch Carlo and Nigel dancing the shopping cart together for the rest of my life.”
“My choice would be Wanda and Magdalena but I wouldn’t need the video. The fact their hips don’t lie is forever burned on my retinas.”
Andy snorted through laughter, “Oh my God. That was insane. Who knew!?”
“I certainly didn’t but that said, I’m grateful it was video-free. I’d never want to relive the spectacle I made of myself.”
“Oh please. You were terrific.”
“I’m sure. For a middle-aged woman.”
”For any woman. Not only are you a mean little mover, you effortlessly maintained ironic distance while singing wiggida wiggida wiggida wack. I was insanely impressed.”
Miranda barked out a laugh, “That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”
“Bonus points for me, then. Aren’t the lights pretty!”
“They are.”
As they arrived at the cabin, Andy said, “I have to warn you that this is going to be a surprise for me as well. I wanted something about the day to surprise us both so I turned the space over to Emily and wouldn’t give her any suggestions. So we’ll see, alright? The rules are if you like it, it’s all Emily. If you don’t, it was me.”
As she opened the door, Andy’s mouth dropped open. This wasn’t the rustic cabin she’d seen. There was a low Japanese platform bed covered in white linen on one side of the cottage and a fire crackling in the large fireplace on the opposite wall. Tall and beautifully trained grey-barked cherry trees in full pink spring blossom stood in black ceramic pots at each corner of the bed. Pale pink paper lanterns were suspended from their limbs, some of which stretched over the bed, lending their light to that of the fireplace.
Miranda sat on the bed, looked around her from that vantage point and patted the bed. “Come and look. Our wedding bed is being guarded by attractive Yoshino tree people.”
Andy sat down beside her and looked at the trees. “It’s beautiful.”
Miranda took her shoes off and lay flat on the bed, “It’s not bad.”
Andy rolled her eyes and said, “It’s a knockout and you know it,” as she joined her. They watched the play of the candlelit lanterns’ reflections on the ceiling in silence for a few minutes. Miranda took Andy’s left hand in hers and whispered, “It was a lovely wedding.”
“It was.”
“Thank you for marrying me.”
Andy smiled at the ceiling. “It was entirely my pleasure.”
After another few minutes of silence, she asked, “Do you want to stay here in the forest for a while or do you want to explore the bathtub?”
“Are you saying you want a bath or are you trying to seduce me? If it’s the latter, you could do that here. We wouldn’t even have to get up.”
Miranda’s voice was quiet and even pleasant but it was subtly something else as well. Andy turned on her side, propped her head up on one hand and studied Miranda’s profile for a clue to what had sounded like an emotional shift. She settled for the obvious and asked softly, “Are you tired, sweetheart?”
Miranda turned her head and said, “Not really.”
“What then?”
Her blue eyes surveyed the room as if the answer were outside herself. “I’m not sure, actually. I think I’m a little overwhelmed.”
Andy scooted closer to her, “Why? By what?”
Miranda didn’t answer for a few moments. She finally reached up with one hand and cupped Andy’s cheek. “You’re perfect tonight. A perfect vision.”
Andy grinned sweetly, “Thank you-you are too.”
“Thank you but no. Not like you. Not like these trees.”
Andy tilted her head at that answer and looked at the solid grey trees, then at their blossoms lightly trembling with the infinitesimal shifts of air in the room. Perfect, young, pink and fragile.
Ah. Well. True enough.
“The blossoms are pretty, Miranda, but the trees are perfect. You need to remember that.”
Miranda smiled and looked as sad as it was perfectly realistic to be when you knew you’d just married someone you knew and hoped would outlive you. Andy could read that meaning in the expression as easily as reading a neon billboard. She returned the smile with a happier one and determined to sound matter-of-fact rather than exasperated. “Tell you what, Priestly. The trees may be a little too visually on the nose regarding our age difference and God knows they’re poetic but instead of lying here composing a wedding ode called intimations of mortality, I think you just need to decompress. Today had to be emotional jujitsu for you because it certainly was for me. Wanna take a bath?”
Andy saw the flash-the split-second-it took for Miranda to peruse the emotional options and make the decision to accept this change of focus. She noted with an inward scowl that of course she saw it. She was as sensitive as a damned cherry blossom.
Especially when she found Miranda’s eyes suddenly sweeping over her body and heard the woman saying, “I think I could decompress just as easily in bed.”
“See that, Miranda? Just a little plain talking and your thoughts turn from mortality to la petite mort.”
Miranda blinked at her. “Or not. A bath it is. Anything but your raillery.”
“You like my raillery.”
“Yes, Andrea. Of course, Andrea.”
“Stop that.”
***
The large bathroom was warmed by a its own small fireplace and lit by the pink paper lanterns hanging from the branches of four Bonsai cherry trees placed on stands at each rounded corner of a huge claw foot tub.
“This is beautiful but I’m beginning to sense a theme.”
Andy ignored this, letting her attention wander past the plush towels, soaps and bath oils arranged atop a Japanese tea chest to a black coat stand in the far corner from which two white robes were hanging, to a standing ice bucket holder, “Oh look-champagne! Want some?”
“Yes, but surely this is a bit too much of a programming note. As in, clothes will be removed where there’s a place to hang them and champagne will be taken in the bath at the commencement of the evening.”
“Oh no.” Andy gasped, looking extraordinarily sheepish as she removed the cage from the wine’s cork. “Speaking of programming. I wasn’t thinking-I think I should have asked something important.”
“Yes?”
“When I suggested the bath, I was just trying to-I didn’t mean to preclude the whole wedding night lingerie reveal...not that I thought of it in those words exactly or even thought you thought that’s what we’d do but if you were thinking we would we can still do that in here or we could, you know-or would that be special enough to just…” she paused and looked ruefully at the empty tub, “Bathe?”
Miranda actually felt her breathing catch at Andy’s rambling. She was seldom more enchanted than when the younger woman was just this shade of bumblingly unsure of herself. It invoked the memory and the frisson of their working relationship, which had been for her-in the clarity of hindsight-pleasurably predatory and pure sex.
She gave Andy an appraising once over. “A bath can be very special, Andrea. Or don’t you remember our first bath?”
Andy’s face flushed red. Of course she remembered it. Miranda’s voice was as hot now as the bath had been that night. Even the cork Andy had finally managed to loosen seemed to remember that bath if the sound of its sudden soft pop was any indication.
Miranda gently took the bottle from Andy and poured the wine. “We’re doing this out of order. First thing’s first.” She lifted her glass. “To us.”
Andy tapped her glass with Miranda’s, “To us.”
After one sip, Miranda leaned forward and kissed Andy very tenderly, then ran one thumb over Andy’s lips. “Back to my original thought. Bed first. Bath later.”
“Bath later then.”
***
“I loved this dress on you, Andrea. It was flawless.”
Miranda was standing behind Andy unbuttoning her dress and the younger woman felt goosebumps scatter over her skin at the sound and feeling of her dress’s slipping into past tense. Although the room was pleasantly warm, Andy shivered as Miranda slowly exposed her skin, closed her eyes and let her focus collapse into the sound of the fire, Miranda’s murmuring, the feeling of warm hands slowly, slowly, exposing her but not yet touching her. She inhaled sharply as Miranda gently pushed the fabric open and forward down her arms, leaving the dress pooled at the waistline before skimming her soft warm hands down the straps of Andy’s bra.
Miranda’s voice was low and soft. “This silk is lovely.” She unzipped the zipper beneath the buttons and gasped at the vision of what she uncovered. She slid the dress over Andy’s hips and down her legs. “Step.” Andy stepped out of the circle of fabric and gasped as Miranda slowly ran her hands over stocking-covered legs.
“Turn around please.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “That’s…well…you’ve certainly outdone yourself.”
“Really?”
Miranda nodded. Andy was wearing a white silk bra and panty set trimmed with incarnadine lace and an incarnadine garter belt clipped to her sheer stockings. She looked down at herself before asking in an equally silky voice, “Does incarnadine suit me?”
Miranda pursed her lips, “Oh honestly, if you’re going to remember every little thing I say.”
Andy sighed because-just like that-the mood was gone. Oh well. “Oh, c’mon. You’ve said it a few times but the first was our first date-of course I remember it. I get to make visual allusions, too, Miranda.”
Miranda’s mouth twitched at the earnestness of that declaration. “Of course you do, Andrea, and I must say although the garter belt does hearken back, it’s a tremendous step up from that ridiculous belt buckle.”
Andy grinned . “To quote the kids-I know, right? But don’t think I can’t see it’s all been fantastic editing on your part, Miranda. You’ve kept the ‘in love with the girl’ part but ditched the hospital room for this cabin and that belt for this one.”
“I wouldn’t dare take credit for that. A divinity shapes our ends, after all. If I were a romantic of a certain sort, I might imagine that room a prefigurement of this one.”
“You’re a romantic of exactly that sort.”
Miranda bent to retrieve Andy’s pink dress from the floor, then turned and said over her shoulder, “Would you help me with my dress?”
“Of course.” Andy said before she was gobsmacked by the sight of her task. “Wow. This dress is a dream come true but trust you to beat me in the button war.”
“There was no button war.”
“If you say so-but you’re not doing the unbuttoning. It may not be a war but it’s at least a skirmish.”
Feeling the feathery movements of Andy’s soft hands, the fabric of Andy’s dress in her own, Miranda smiled at the fire, herself, her life. “Andrea.”
“Yes, Miranda?”
“I’m changing moods and subjects and worrying about where to put dresses and quoting Shakespeare to forestall my tendency to quibble when nervous. I told you I was overwhelmed and I am but don’t think I’ve lost my place. I’m completely aware this is the only wedding night we’ll ever have and I’m incandescent with desire for you but-“
Andy was focused on the last few cunningly difficult buttons. “No worries. I’ll hang the dresses up in the bathroom.”
“I wasn’t saying-I wasn’t asking that.”
“I know exactly what you’re saying. I happen to be listening and, what’s more, ” Andy bit her very gently on the nape of her neck and whispered, “I hear you. It’s my pleasure to assist you, Miranda, and right now I’m assisting you out of this dress.”
Miranda’s lingerie was of blue silk. Andy drank in the sight with appreciative eyes and the older woman chose that moment to say, “The colour is one of the darker shades of Egyptian blue.”
Andy looked up from a happy vision to a happier one-Miranda’s eyes filled with impish mirth. But that was before she said, “Egyptian blue is the world’s oldest artificial pigment, Andrea. Does it suit me?”
Andy’s mouth dropped open. “O-kay. That was so…you know what? No. Watch what I can do, Miranda. This is my leaving what you just said completely alone. I’m going to hang up these dresses now and when I come back to the room-no more lingerie. I’m totally serious. It’s getting us off track.”
“You bereave me. Does that mean the lingerie reveal is over?”
Andy’s eyes tightened at Miranda’s smug expression. “I told you I didn’t call it that in my mind.”
Miranda waved one dismissive hand, “Of course you did. Admit it.”
Andy bit out the words. “Fine. I did. But I’m not kidding here. No more lingerie reveal and, I swear to…” she pointed at Miranda fiercely, “No more age jokes, allusions or analogies and…and…no more Hamlet!”
Miranda tilted her head, “For curiosity’s sake, no more Hamlet or what? Or else?”
Andy stifled a laugh before saying without smiling, “Lay on Macduff and you’d better believe you’ll be the first to cry ‘hold, enough.’”
Miranda lifted one eyebrow, “Oh, you think so?”
Andy shot her a withering glance before leaving the room to hang the dresses. She smiled contentedly as soon as she’d turned her back. This was all so them. Their wedding night was going swimmingly as far as she was concerned.
Miranda was slightly shocked as she watched Andy walk away. So shocked that she chuckled even as she ogled. She’d completely forgotten Andy was wearing lingerie. Trust her to win the button skirmish and to love talking and playing with the gorgeous woman she’d married even more than looking at her.
***
Miranda had certainly taken her at her word, Andy thought. At her word and without a word.
As Miranda guided her back onto cool cotton sheets, her eyelids fell closed just enough to make everything above her, trees and lanterns and Miranda, even more hazily romantic than it already were. Miranda’s soft, naked body pressed her into the bed with a weight so intensely familiar that it made her body and heart ache. Miranda kissed her for a few minutes before slowly pulling away and sitting up. She then surprised Andy by straddling her waist and looking down into Andy’s eyes. “I need your attention for a moment.”
”Okay.” Andy smiled uncertainly but said, “You certainly have it.”
“You have mine, as well.” Miranda moved gently on Andy’s stomach, “Can you feel it?”
Andy worried her lower lip with her teeth. “Oh yeah. Sure can.”
Miranda nodded. “Good. I think we’re both past ready so I’m going to tell what I want to do and then I’ll tell you what I hope we’re going to do.”
Andy furrowed her brows at this but said, “Alright.”
Miranda leaned forward until her breasts were resting on Andy’s, her hands on either side of the woman’s head. She whispered into her ear, “You look so…fucking new and sweet and pretty tonight that it makes me want to be everything but gentle with you.”
Her mouth was hot and wet against Andy’s ear, “But wouldn’t that be a shame, Andrea? Can you imagine my doing that to you? Being so demanding and so relentless and withholding that you had to beg me for it on our wedding night?”
“Well…I see your point but…” Andy cleared her throat and her voice was higher pitched than normal, “I’m sure…somehow…I’d manage to get over it.”
Miranda leaned back, smiled down into Andy’s eyes and said silkily. “Yes. Somehow, I’m sure you would.”
She gently tickle-scratched Andy’s stomach with her nails. She suddenly didn’t sound at all like herself. “That’s what we’re not doing tonight, if you don’t mind. What I’d really like to do is hold you and love you and talk and quibble and drink more champagne in the bathtub. But only if that’s amenable to you and only if it won’t bore and disappoint you.”
Andy heard the hesitancy in the woman’s voice and looked up at poor, anxious Miranda sitting on her throne. A throne that was her, actually, at the moment. Andy knew better than anyone it was nearly never really ‘good to be the queen.’
So she kept it light and shrugged, “What are you talking about, Miranda? Are you kidding? That sounds fantastic.”
She watched Miranda’s tension ratchet down a notch before she added, “Not that I mean you’re not welcome to fuck me so hard you make me forget my own name tomorrow. Don’t think you’ve closed any doors here.”
Miranda sighed, “Our wedding night is devolving into ribaldry.”
“Please. Now that we have our bearings straight, our wedding night is about to become the most romantic night of our lives.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so-and you have to admit I’m generally right about these things.”
***
Andy was generally right about these things but happened to be particularly right about this one.
***Two Weeks Later
***Miranda poured a glass of red wine and took it and Caroline’s newly hand-delivered 8x10 portfolio to her study. She did something she never did when perusing the book. She sat in her favorite chair and propped her feet up on an ottoman. The portfolio was titled Charles and Guests and was comprised of black and white photographs of individual and paired wedding guests. For the individual shots, the guest was seated in a chair next to Charles. In the paired pictures, two chairs were placed on either side of Charles’ head. Miranda was intensely curious about the results of this shoot and particularly interested in seeing which adults had obeyed her edict that they not touch the moose.
Father Michael did not touch Charles but sat beside him with obviously unperturbed equanimity. His smile was almost radiantly Irish and priestly.
Patricia and St. Roch were not touching Charles. Miranda considered it an excellent character portrait of both dogs. Patricia’s attention was clearly divided between Caroline, the moose and St. Roch. Asking the poor soul to concentrate on one thing was difficult enough, much less three. She looked sweet and sweetly baffled, which was her default. St. Roch was handsome, stern and task-driven, his attention completely focused on Charles, a subject clearly worth herding.
Richard and Audrey sat on either side of Charles. It was an excellent picture of both of them. They looked happily engaged with having their portrait taken but gave absolutely no visual indication they were aware a moose’s head was between them. It suggested an impressive ability to ignore pattern disconcertion, which was more amusing than surprising to Miranda at this point. Not that it wasn’t sometimes hard won. Audrey’s pleasant presence at the wedding was evidence enough of that.
John and Cecelia weren’t touching the moose, either, but everything about their smiles said, ‘Look-Caroline’s taking a picture of us with a moose between us!’ They looked as carefree together as she’d ever seen them. Miranda had always suspected John would never allow himself to be happier than she was. He looked like he’d finally let himself of the hook. Good for him. Good for Cecelia.
Magdalena did not touch the moose but sat close enough to him to confer a sense of solidarity between them. She stared into the camera with grim hauteur, exactly as if she and Charles were the two remaining siblings of a lost Spanish nobility.
Sam sat smiling rakishly into the camera with one hand on each of his thighs. He wasn’t touching Charles but he was leaning sideways toward him. Everything about his expression and posture indicated his attention was divided between being photographed and listening to something Charles was saying.
Roy and Mary were both beaming on either side of Charles with their cheeks to moose jowls so that Roy could place one hand on Mary’s stomach. The hand Mary had placed over his had a ring on it and Charles seemed a party to their happy news.
Nigel smiled into the camera, looking happy and relaxed, a sight as relatively rare for him as it was for her. He wasn’t touching Charles but they were wearing matching cashmere scarves. Miranda chewed the inside of her cheek at the sight, thinking it would be quite something to come upon a moose wearing a scarf in the wild. Of course, her life was full of such images-images of ideas she wished for that didn’t exist. Pictures of ideas of things-never the things themselves. Nigel understood this.
Lily and Doug didn’t touch Charles. They smiled closely enough to him to ensure they were all in frame and rather obviously so. Miranda pursed her lips. A rookie mistake for models who considered their photographer a rookie. Despite that misconception, the picture was lovely and Miranda was pleased to see they both looked relaxed and confident. Gone, evidently, were the days when these two could be frightened by this kind of whim on her part. She didn’t kid herself that they still weren’t frightened of her.
Wanda and Carlo weren’t touching Charles and although they smiled, it was in the dignified, humble way people smile when a person of greater importance is in the frame with them. She knew they felt great reverence for the sacrament of marriage and if a moose had been chosen as a signifier of the occasion, they gave him his due. As such, it was a wonderful portrait of wonderful people she felt lucky to have been shot to meet.
Juan Carlo and Cassidy sat on either side of the moose with their cheeks on his. Miranda had always wondered what would happen when the twins inevitably met a boy or girl they both liked. Now that it had happened and earlier than she’d imagined, it hadn’t seemed to involve any negotiation at all. Juan Carlo and Cassidy were holding hands under Charles’ neck and gazing into the camera with a look of such intense fondness for the photographer that it made her a tacit part of the picture. Miranda was certain it had been Juan Carlo who’d interpreted sitting for Caroline’s first professional assignment as a very solemn trust. Evidently so much so that neither of them were smiling. Their earnest, loving faces made Miranda smile.
Caroline had used a remote control to snap her self-portrait. An open laptop, cameras, cases, lights, ladders and the rigging for the scaffolds surrounded Charles. She wasn’t looking at the camera. She was combing Charles’ hair, her face serious and thoughtful. Miranda was pensive as she studied her more difficult, less happy child. Her artist at work. She gave Caroline’s image a wistful, sympathetic tap with one forefinger.
Serena was dressed in black jeans, turtleneck and cowboy boots. She wasn’t looking into the camera. She was looking at Charles with a sly and salacious 1000-watt smile. Her vibrancy juxtaposed with Charles’s fixed expression conferred upon the moose the stunned look of a man propositioned by a woman completely out of his league. Charles looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. Miranda laughed out loud.
Emily sat cheek to cheek with Charles and had looped one arm under his neck to place a hand on the moose’s other cheek. Her expression was decidedly more imperious than Magdalena’s. Miranda was shocked to discover this was possible.
Andy was wearing a faded green sweatshirt, a Yankees ball cap and very little makeup. She looked roughly about eighteen years old. Like her parents, brother and friends, she’d obeyed the rules and wasn’t touching Charles. She was, however, sitting as closely as she could without touching him, smiling brightly at Caroline exactly as if Charles were smiling with her. Actually, she was smiling enough for both of them and it was difficult not to notice how big and exactly the same shade of brown their eyes were. Miranda made a critical assessment of the picture and decided her wife did not, as she’d feared, look like a doofus. True, she looked vaguely related to Charles but surely that was a happy thing. Miranda loved the picture. Andrea was like and unlike finding a moose wearing a scarf in the wild. She was that impossible thing devoutly wished for. Miranda finally had both the picture and the thing itself.
She turned to the last page with some trepidation. The only picture left was Caroline’s portrait of her. She stared at it, scarcely believing her eyes. The photo showed her seated next to Charles laughing uproariously with one side of her face and head nestled in the fur on his neck. Miranda thought back to the shoot.
She’d been pleased enough to be sitting next to Charles and had perhaps been directing and grilling Caroline rather than talking with her about the set-up and her progress. The girl had paid her little attention as she rifled through her lens case. She had been listening, however, because she’d finally become irritated enough to snap, “Jesus H. Christ, Mom! I’m shooting this, not you. News flash! You’re an editor. You don’t get to edit stuff before there’s something to edit.” She’d narrowed her icy blue eyes at Miranda, “And in case you’re wondering? Just so ya know? That includes people.”
This outburst had been so surprising, and true, that Miranda burst into laughter. Caroline had been fast enough to snap the picture and so-there she was-captured forever deliriously happy and laughing at herself. With a moose. At her wedding.
Good.
Miranda smiled at the question. Thank God for Andy and Emily. She expected the unreasonable every minute of her professional life but she’d never have imagined fun would be something personally reasonable to ask from a wedding and certainly never would have planned for it. She supposed it was possible they hadn’t planned it and it had just happened. Miranda wasn’t quite sure how fun worked for her-not until she happened to find herself having it. Planned for or not, she had had it so she answered, “Yes.”
Andy smiled and squeezed her waist. “Good. I had a blast. I think everyone else did, too. I wish we had video! I could watch Carlo and Nigel dancing the shopping cart together for the rest of my life.”
“My choice would be Wanda and Magdalena but I wouldn’t need the video. The fact their hips don’t lie is forever burned on my retinas.”
Andy snorted through laughter, “Oh my God. That was insane. Who knew!?”
“I certainly didn’t but that said, I’m grateful it was video-free. I’d never want to relive the spectacle I made of myself.”
“Oh please. You were terrific.”
“I’m sure. For a middle-aged woman.”
”For any woman. Not only are you a mean little mover, you effortlessly maintained ironic distance while singing wiggida wiggida wiggida wack. I was insanely impressed.”
Miranda barked out a laugh, “That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”
“Bonus points for me, then. Aren’t the lights pretty!”
“They are.”
As they arrived at the cabin, Andy said, “I have to warn you that this is going to be a surprise for me as well. I wanted something about the day to surprise us both so I turned the space over to Emily and wouldn’t give her any suggestions. So we’ll see, alright? The rules are if you like it, it’s all Emily. If you don’t, it was me.”
As she opened the door, Andy’s mouth dropped open. This wasn’t the rustic cabin she’d seen. There was a low Japanese platform bed covered in white linen on one side of the cottage and a fire crackling in the large fireplace on the opposite wall. Tall and beautifully trained grey-barked cherry trees in full pink spring blossom stood in black ceramic pots at each corner of the bed. Pale pink paper lanterns were suspended from their limbs, some of which stretched over the bed, lending their light to that of the fireplace.
Miranda sat on the bed, looked around her from that vantage point and patted the bed. “Come and look. Our wedding bed is being guarded by attractive Yoshino tree people.”
Andy sat down beside her and looked at the trees. “It’s beautiful.”
Miranda took her shoes off and lay flat on the bed, “It’s not bad.”
Andy rolled her eyes and said, “It’s a knockout and you know it,” as she joined her. They watched the play of the candlelit lanterns’ reflections on the ceiling in silence for a few minutes. Miranda took Andy’s left hand in hers and whispered, “It was a lovely wedding.”
“It was.”
“Thank you for marrying me.”
Andy smiled at the ceiling. “It was entirely my pleasure.”
After another few minutes of silence, she asked, “Do you want to stay here in the forest for a while or do you want to explore the bathtub?”
“Are you saying you want a bath or are you trying to seduce me? If it’s the latter, you could do that here. We wouldn’t even have to get up.”
Miranda’s voice was quiet and even pleasant but it was subtly something else as well. Andy turned on her side, propped her head up on one hand and studied Miranda’s profile for a clue to what had sounded like an emotional shift. She settled for the obvious and asked softly, “Are you tired, sweetheart?”
Miranda turned her head and said, “Not really.”
“What then?”
Her blue eyes surveyed the room as if the answer were outside herself. “I’m not sure, actually. I think I’m a little overwhelmed.”
Andy scooted closer to her, “Why? By what?”
Miranda didn’t answer for a few moments. She finally reached up with one hand and cupped Andy’s cheek. “You’re perfect tonight. A perfect vision.”
Andy grinned sweetly, “Thank you-you are too.”
“Thank you but no. Not like you. Not like these trees.”
Andy tilted her head at that answer and looked at the solid grey trees, then at their blossoms lightly trembling with the infinitesimal shifts of air in the room. Perfect, young, pink and fragile.
Ah. Well. True enough.
“The blossoms are pretty, Miranda, but the trees are perfect. You need to remember that.”
Miranda smiled and looked as sad as it was perfectly realistic to be when you knew you’d just married someone you knew and hoped would outlive you. Andy could read that meaning in the expression as easily as reading a neon billboard. She returned the smile with a happier one and determined to sound matter-of-fact rather than exasperated. “Tell you what, Priestly. The trees may be a little too visually on the nose regarding our age difference and God knows they’re poetic but instead of lying here composing a wedding ode called intimations of mortality, I think you just need to decompress. Today had to be emotional jujitsu for you because it certainly was for me. Wanna take a bath?”
Andy saw the flash-the split-second-it took for Miranda to peruse the emotional options and make the decision to accept this change of focus. She noted with an inward scowl that of course she saw it. She was as sensitive as a damned cherry blossom.
Especially when she found Miranda’s eyes suddenly sweeping over her body and heard the woman saying, “I think I could decompress just as easily in bed.”
“See that, Miranda? Just a little plain talking and your thoughts turn from mortality to la petite mort.”
Miranda blinked at her. “Or not. A bath it is. Anything but your raillery.”
“You like my raillery.”
“Yes, Andrea. Of course, Andrea.”
“Stop that.”
***
The large bathroom was warmed by a its own small fireplace and lit by the pink paper lanterns hanging from the branches of four Bonsai cherry trees placed on stands at each rounded corner of a huge claw foot tub.
“This is beautiful but I’m beginning to sense a theme.”
Andy ignored this, letting her attention wander past the plush towels, soaps and bath oils arranged atop a Japanese tea chest to a black coat stand in the far corner from which two white robes were hanging, to a standing ice bucket holder, “Oh look-champagne! Want some?”
“Yes, but surely this is a bit too much of a programming note. As in, clothes will be removed where there’s a place to hang them and champagne will be taken in the bath at the commencement of the evening.”
“Oh no.” Andy gasped, looking extraordinarily sheepish as she removed the cage from the wine’s cork. “Speaking of programming. I wasn’t thinking-I think I should have asked something important.”
“Yes?”
“When I suggested the bath, I was just trying to-I didn’t mean to preclude the whole wedding night lingerie reveal...not that I thought of it in those words exactly or even thought you thought that’s what we’d do but if you were thinking we would we can still do that in here or we could, you know-or would that be special enough to just…” she paused and looked ruefully at the empty tub, “Bathe?”
Miranda actually felt her breathing catch at Andy’s rambling. She was seldom more enchanted than when the younger woman was just this shade of bumblingly unsure of herself. It invoked the memory and the frisson of their working relationship, which had been for her-in the clarity of hindsight-pleasurably predatory and pure sex.
She gave Andy an appraising once over. “A bath can be very special, Andrea. Or don’t you remember our first bath?”
Andy’s face flushed red. Of course she remembered it. Miranda’s voice was as hot now as the bath had been that night. Even the cork Andy had finally managed to loosen seemed to remember that bath if the sound of its sudden soft pop was any indication.
Miranda gently took the bottle from Andy and poured the wine. “We’re doing this out of order. First thing’s first.” She lifted her glass. “To us.”
Andy tapped her glass with Miranda’s, “To us.”
After one sip, Miranda leaned forward and kissed Andy very tenderly, then ran one thumb over Andy’s lips. “Back to my original thought. Bed first. Bath later.”
“Bath later then.”
***
“I loved this dress on you, Andrea. It was flawless.”
Miranda was standing behind Andy unbuttoning her dress and the younger woman felt goosebumps scatter over her skin at the sound and feeling of her dress’s slipping into past tense. Although the room was pleasantly warm, Andy shivered as Miranda slowly exposed her skin, closed her eyes and let her focus collapse into the sound of the fire, Miranda’s murmuring, the feeling of warm hands slowly, slowly, exposing her but not yet touching her. She inhaled sharply as Miranda gently pushed the fabric open and forward down her arms, leaving the dress pooled at the waistline before skimming her soft warm hands down the straps of Andy’s bra.
Miranda’s voice was low and soft. “This silk is lovely.” She unzipped the zipper beneath the buttons and gasped at the vision of what she uncovered. She slid the dress over Andy’s hips and down her legs. “Step.” Andy stepped out of the circle of fabric and gasped as Miranda slowly ran her hands over stocking-covered legs.
“Turn around please.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “That’s…well…you’ve certainly outdone yourself.”
“Really?”
Miranda nodded. Andy was wearing a white silk bra and panty set trimmed with incarnadine lace and an incarnadine garter belt clipped to her sheer stockings. She looked down at herself before asking in an equally silky voice, “Does incarnadine suit me?”
Miranda pursed her lips, “Oh honestly, if you’re going to remember every little thing I say.”
Andy sighed because-just like that-the mood was gone. Oh well. “Oh, c’mon. You’ve said it a few times but the first was our first date-of course I remember it. I get to make visual allusions, too, Miranda.”
Miranda’s mouth twitched at the earnestness of that declaration. “Of course you do, Andrea, and I must say although the garter belt does hearken back, it’s a tremendous step up from that ridiculous belt buckle.”
Andy grinned . “To quote the kids-I know, right? But don’t think I can’t see it’s all been fantastic editing on your part, Miranda. You’ve kept the ‘in love with the girl’ part but ditched the hospital room for this cabin and that belt for this one.”
“I wouldn’t dare take credit for that. A divinity shapes our ends, after all. If I were a romantic of a certain sort, I might imagine that room a prefigurement of this one.”
“You’re a romantic of exactly that sort.”
Miranda bent to retrieve Andy’s pink dress from the floor, then turned and said over her shoulder, “Would you help me with my dress?”
“Of course.” Andy said before she was gobsmacked by the sight of her task. “Wow. This dress is a dream come true but trust you to beat me in the button war.”
“There was no button war.”
“If you say so-but you’re not doing the unbuttoning. It may not be a war but it’s at least a skirmish.”
Feeling the feathery movements of Andy’s soft hands, the fabric of Andy’s dress in her own, Miranda smiled at the fire, herself, her life. “Andrea.”
“Yes, Miranda?”
“I’m changing moods and subjects and worrying about where to put dresses and quoting Shakespeare to forestall my tendency to quibble when nervous. I told you I was overwhelmed and I am but don’t think I’ve lost my place. I’m completely aware this is the only wedding night we’ll ever have and I’m incandescent with desire for you but-“
Andy was focused on the last few cunningly difficult buttons. “No worries. I’ll hang the dresses up in the bathroom.”
“I wasn’t saying-I wasn’t asking that.”
“I know exactly what you’re saying. I happen to be listening and, what’s more, ” Andy bit her very gently on the nape of her neck and whispered, “I hear you. It’s my pleasure to assist you, Miranda, and right now I’m assisting you out of this dress.”
Miranda’s lingerie was of blue silk. Andy drank in the sight with appreciative eyes and the older woman chose that moment to say, “The colour is one of the darker shades of Egyptian blue.”
Andy looked up from a happy vision to a happier one-Miranda’s eyes filled with impish mirth. But that was before she said, “Egyptian blue is the world’s oldest artificial pigment, Andrea. Does it suit me?”
Andy’s mouth dropped open. “O-kay. That was so…you know what? No. Watch what I can do, Miranda. This is my leaving what you just said completely alone. I’m going to hang up these dresses now and when I come back to the room-no more lingerie. I’m totally serious. It’s getting us off track.”
“You bereave me. Does that mean the lingerie reveal is over?”
Andy’s eyes tightened at Miranda’s smug expression. “I told you I didn’t call it that in my mind.”
Miranda waved one dismissive hand, “Of course you did. Admit it.”
Andy bit out the words. “Fine. I did. But I’m not kidding here. No more lingerie reveal and, I swear to…” she pointed at Miranda fiercely, “No more age jokes, allusions or analogies and…and…no more Hamlet!”
Miranda tilted her head, “For curiosity’s sake, no more Hamlet or what? Or else?”
Andy stifled a laugh before saying without smiling, “Lay on Macduff and you’d better believe you’ll be the first to cry ‘hold, enough.’”
Miranda lifted one eyebrow, “Oh, you think so?”
Andy shot her a withering glance before leaving the room to hang the dresses. She smiled contentedly as soon as she’d turned her back. This was all so them. Their wedding night was going swimmingly as far as she was concerned.
Miranda was slightly shocked as she watched Andy walk away. So shocked that she chuckled even as she ogled. She’d completely forgotten Andy was wearing lingerie. Trust her to win the button skirmish and to love talking and playing with the gorgeous woman she’d married even more than looking at her.
***
Miranda had certainly taken her at her word, Andy thought. At her word and without a word.
As Miranda guided her back onto cool cotton sheets, her eyelids fell closed just enough to make everything above her, trees and lanterns and Miranda, even more hazily romantic than it already were. Miranda’s soft, naked body pressed her into the bed with a weight so intensely familiar that it made her body and heart ache. Miranda kissed her for a few minutes before slowly pulling away and sitting up. She then surprised Andy by straddling her waist and looking down into Andy’s eyes. “I need your attention for a moment.”
”Okay.” Andy smiled uncertainly but said, “You certainly have it.”
“You have mine, as well.” Miranda moved gently on Andy’s stomach, “Can you feel it?”
Andy worried her lower lip with her teeth. “Oh yeah. Sure can.”
Miranda nodded. “Good. I think we’re both past ready so I’m going to tell what I want to do and then I’ll tell you what I hope we’re going to do.”
Andy furrowed her brows at this but said, “Alright.”
Miranda leaned forward until her breasts were resting on Andy’s, her hands on either side of the woman’s head. She whispered into her ear, “You look so…fucking new and sweet and pretty tonight that it makes me want to be everything but gentle with you.”
Her mouth was hot and wet against Andy’s ear, “But wouldn’t that be a shame, Andrea? Can you imagine my doing that to you? Being so demanding and so relentless and withholding that you had to beg me for it on our wedding night?”
“Well…I see your point but…” Andy cleared her throat and her voice was higher pitched than normal, “I’m sure…somehow…I’d manage to get over it.”
Miranda leaned back, smiled down into Andy’s eyes and said silkily. “Yes. Somehow, I’m sure you would.”
She gently tickle-scratched Andy’s stomach with her nails. She suddenly didn’t sound at all like herself. “That’s what we’re not doing tonight, if you don’t mind. What I’d really like to do is hold you and love you and talk and quibble and drink more champagne in the bathtub. But only if that’s amenable to you and only if it won’t bore and disappoint you.”
Andy heard the hesitancy in the woman’s voice and looked up at poor, anxious Miranda sitting on her throne. A throne that was her, actually, at the moment. Andy knew better than anyone it was nearly never really ‘good to be the queen.’
So she kept it light and shrugged, “What are you talking about, Miranda? Are you kidding? That sounds fantastic.”
She watched Miranda’s tension ratchet down a notch before she added, “Not that I mean you’re not welcome to fuck me so hard you make me forget my own name tomorrow. Don’t think you’ve closed any doors here.”
Miranda sighed, “Our wedding night is devolving into ribaldry.”
“Please. Now that we have our bearings straight, our wedding night is about to become the most romantic night of our lives.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so-and you have to admit I’m generally right about these things.”
***
Andy was generally right about these things but happened to be particularly right about this one.
***Two Weeks Later
***Miranda poured a glass of red wine and took it and Caroline’s newly hand-delivered 8x10 portfolio to her study. She did something she never did when perusing the book. She sat in her favorite chair and propped her feet up on an ottoman. The portfolio was titled Charles and Guests and was comprised of black and white photographs of individual and paired wedding guests. For the individual shots, the guest was seated in a chair next to Charles. In the paired pictures, two chairs were placed on either side of Charles’ head. Miranda was intensely curious about the results of this shoot and particularly interested in seeing which adults had obeyed her edict that they not touch the moose.
Father Michael did not touch Charles but sat beside him with obviously unperturbed equanimity. His smile was almost radiantly Irish and priestly.
Patricia and St. Roch were not touching Charles. Miranda considered it an excellent character portrait of both dogs. Patricia’s attention was clearly divided between Caroline, the moose and St. Roch. Asking the poor soul to concentrate on one thing was difficult enough, much less three. She looked sweet and sweetly baffled, which was her default. St. Roch was handsome, stern and task-driven, his attention completely focused on Charles, a subject clearly worth herding.
Richard and Audrey sat on either side of Charles. It was an excellent picture of both of them. They looked happily engaged with having their portrait taken but gave absolutely no visual indication they were aware a moose’s head was between them. It suggested an impressive ability to ignore pattern disconcertion, which was more amusing than surprising to Miranda at this point. Not that it wasn’t sometimes hard won. Audrey’s pleasant presence at the wedding was evidence enough of that.
John and Cecelia weren’t touching the moose, either, but everything about their smiles said, ‘Look-Caroline’s taking a picture of us with a moose between us!’ They looked as carefree together as she’d ever seen them. Miranda had always suspected John would never allow himself to be happier than she was. He looked like he’d finally let himself of the hook. Good for him. Good for Cecelia.
Magdalena did not touch the moose but sat close enough to him to confer a sense of solidarity between them. She stared into the camera with grim hauteur, exactly as if she and Charles were the two remaining siblings of a lost Spanish nobility.
Sam sat smiling rakishly into the camera with one hand on each of his thighs. He wasn’t touching Charles but he was leaning sideways toward him. Everything about his expression and posture indicated his attention was divided between being photographed and listening to something Charles was saying.
Roy and Mary were both beaming on either side of Charles with their cheeks to moose jowls so that Roy could place one hand on Mary’s stomach. The hand Mary had placed over his had a ring on it and Charles seemed a party to their happy news.
Nigel smiled into the camera, looking happy and relaxed, a sight as relatively rare for him as it was for her. He wasn’t touching Charles but they were wearing matching cashmere scarves. Miranda chewed the inside of her cheek at the sight, thinking it would be quite something to come upon a moose wearing a scarf in the wild. Of course, her life was full of such images-images of ideas she wished for that didn’t exist. Pictures of ideas of things-never the things themselves. Nigel understood this.
Lily and Doug didn’t touch Charles. They smiled closely enough to him to ensure they were all in frame and rather obviously so. Miranda pursed her lips. A rookie mistake for models who considered their photographer a rookie. Despite that misconception, the picture was lovely and Miranda was pleased to see they both looked relaxed and confident. Gone, evidently, were the days when these two could be frightened by this kind of whim on her part. She didn’t kid herself that they still weren’t frightened of her.
Wanda and Carlo weren’t touching Charles and although they smiled, it was in the dignified, humble way people smile when a person of greater importance is in the frame with them. She knew they felt great reverence for the sacrament of marriage and if a moose had been chosen as a signifier of the occasion, they gave him his due. As such, it was a wonderful portrait of wonderful people she felt lucky to have been shot to meet.
Juan Carlo and Cassidy sat on either side of the moose with their cheeks on his. Miranda had always wondered what would happen when the twins inevitably met a boy or girl they both liked. Now that it had happened and earlier than she’d imagined, it hadn’t seemed to involve any negotiation at all. Juan Carlo and Cassidy were holding hands under Charles’ neck and gazing into the camera with a look of such intense fondness for the photographer that it made her a tacit part of the picture. Miranda was certain it had been Juan Carlo who’d interpreted sitting for Caroline’s first professional assignment as a very solemn trust. Evidently so much so that neither of them were smiling. Their earnest, loving faces made Miranda smile.
Caroline had used a remote control to snap her self-portrait. An open laptop, cameras, cases, lights, ladders and the rigging for the scaffolds surrounded Charles. She wasn’t looking at the camera. She was combing Charles’ hair, her face serious and thoughtful. Miranda was pensive as she studied her more difficult, less happy child. Her artist at work. She gave Caroline’s image a wistful, sympathetic tap with one forefinger.
Serena was dressed in black jeans, turtleneck and cowboy boots. She wasn’t looking into the camera. She was looking at Charles with a sly and salacious 1000-watt smile. Her vibrancy juxtaposed with Charles’s fixed expression conferred upon the moose the stunned look of a man propositioned by a woman completely out of his league. Charles looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. Miranda laughed out loud.
Emily sat cheek to cheek with Charles and had looped one arm under his neck to place a hand on the moose’s other cheek. Her expression was decidedly more imperious than Magdalena’s. Miranda was shocked to discover this was possible.
Andy was wearing a faded green sweatshirt, a Yankees ball cap and very little makeup. She looked roughly about eighteen years old. Like her parents, brother and friends, she’d obeyed the rules and wasn’t touching Charles. She was, however, sitting as closely as she could without touching him, smiling brightly at Caroline exactly as if Charles were smiling with her. Actually, she was smiling enough for both of them and it was difficult not to notice how big and exactly the same shade of brown their eyes were. Miranda made a critical assessment of the picture and decided her wife did not, as she’d feared, look like a doofus. True, she looked vaguely related to Charles but surely that was a happy thing. Miranda loved the picture. Andrea was like and unlike finding a moose wearing a scarf in the wild. She was that impossible thing devoutly wished for. Miranda finally had both the picture and the thing itself.
She turned to the last page with some trepidation. The only picture left was Caroline’s portrait of her. She stared at it, scarcely believing her eyes. The photo showed her seated next to Charles laughing uproariously with one side of her face and head nestled in the fur on his neck. Miranda thought back to the shoot.
She’d been pleased enough to be sitting next to Charles and had perhaps been directing and grilling Caroline rather than talking with her about the set-up and her progress. The girl had paid her little attention as she rifled through her lens case. She had been listening, however, because she’d finally become irritated enough to snap, “Jesus H. Christ, Mom! I’m shooting this, not you. News flash! You’re an editor. You don’t get to edit stuff before there’s something to edit.” She’d narrowed her icy blue eyes at Miranda, “And in case you’re wondering? Just so ya know? That includes people.”
This outburst had been so surprising, and true, that Miranda burst into laughter. Caroline had been fast enough to snap the picture and so-there she was-captured forever deliriously happy and laughing at herself. With a moose. At her wedding.
Good.