The Wedding

Our second short story by Mindy Newell. Mindy was writing and editing comics for DC and Marvel back in the days we were also in the business, and is probably best known for her work on Wonder Woman and Catwoman.


The rest of the house was dark and quiet. Everyone was asleep. Except for me. I was 11-going-on-12 and I was absolutely terrified. I lay in my bed and stared at my hand, balling it into a fist, spreading out my fingers, twisting it up and down and all around. My hand was real. It was solid. It was here. I was here. But it was all temporary. One day I would be gone. Death lay ahead of me as sure as my birthday in two weeks. There was no escape. No one could save me. Not Supergirl. Not Peter Pan. Not my little brother or my Mommy and Daddy.
One day I would be dead.

***************************

As usual, I’m late. Jeff and Linda’s wedding has already started as I quietly slip into the last row of pews in the rear of the sanctuary. I had expected to have to stand through the ceremony, as both Jeff and Linda have large families, many friends and important business associates in our town—my mother had warned me that she wouldn’t be able to save a seat for me if I was late, as “everyone who was anyone was coming,” so you better be on time for a change.

But the temple is oddly empty. Only the first 3 or 4 pews are filled. I can see the backs of my daughter, my brother, his wife and my parents all sitting together in the second row, and I think I recognize Renee and Lenny, Jeff’s aunt and uncle, next to them. I see Sandy, Jeff’s mother, in the first pew with Jeff’s older sister and youngest brother, Louis—Barry, two years younger than Jeff and my brother’s best friend, died from Ewing’s Sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, when we all still in high school. There’s a man sitting next to Sandy, but I don’t recognize the hairline. Jeff’s father had died 12 years earlier, a few years after Barry’s death, so obviously it’s not him. I wonder why my mom, the perpetual yenta, hasn’t mentioned Sandy’s new beau.

Another weird thing. Linda’s family isn’t here. I know they are thrilled about their daughter corralling the primo scion of the Walling Jewish community, so I can’t imagine what would keep them away.

All of a sudden I feel like I’m watching a movie that I’ve seen before, only the film is chopped up for commercial time and the colors are a bit faded, like an old print of My Fair Lady before it had been restored to feature length in all its full Technicolor glory and aired without commercials on Turner Classic Movies.

But something is wrong with the television. The wedding is a tableau, an image seen from afar, an episode from The Twilight Zone. The empty pews stretch before me like the headstones at Arlington Cemetery. The aisle stretches towards the altar like a road to eternity. Far down that road my family and friends are gathered in front of the open Temple Ark to celebrate one of life’s most joyous moments.

But I am apart from that joy. I cannot share in it.

I feel terribly alone. And terribly frightened. And I recognize it. That same dread I felt as an 11-going-on-12 child who realized how ephemeral life really is.

I can’t deal. I can’t look at this. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t, so I look everywhere but straight ahead. Up to the gothic ceiling, left to the stained glass windows, right to the empty pew across the aisle—

And Barry is sitting there.

He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him. No. Not exactly. Then he had been sick, and pale, and three days from death. Barry looks as he had when I was 14, when he and my brother had teased me constantly and mercilessly about my crush on Jeff. Young and full of life. Healthy. Before the cancer. Not dead.

He slides over and I get up and cross the aisle and sit down next to him.

“Hey, Barry,” I say. As if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world that I should be sitting and chatting with a boy twenty years and more in his grave while his brother gets married.

“Hey, Min’,” he says.

“It’s good to see you.”

I think about the man sitting next to Sandy, the one whose hairline I couldn’t recognize. Now it makes sense.

“Your dad’s here, too, isn’t he? Does your mom know he’s here? Does she know you’re here?”

He doesn’t answer me. He just looks at me with eyes that are deep with patience and serene with ancient knowledge.

And then I have a question. “What do you do now, Barry?”

“I help people cross over.”

It makes sense. Barry had always been kind, behind the teasing and laughter.

“Were you there when your father died? Did you help him cross over?”

“Uh-uh. And sometimes I bring them back to visit, like I did today with him, to see Jeff get married.”

He sits and waits, without the appearance of waiting. Just sits.

Until I am ready.

“I’m afraid to die, Barry. Really afraid.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t comfort me, he doesn’t take my hand. He just looks at me with his eyes—the eyes of an angel.

“Will you be there when I die, Barry? Will you help me cross over?”

“I promise.”

“I’m so afraid, Barry.”

He smiles at me. And I jump into that smile, that well of peace, and feel it wash over me.

“Thanks, Barry.”

“See ya, Min.”

And then, I swear to God, deus ex machina or not, I wake up.

*******************

Was it a dream? I mean, was it only a dream, or did Barry really visit me that night? I only know that when I woke up, I still felt that peace, and that peace has stayed with me. I kept it to myself for a very long time; not wanting to share it, not wanting to be told it was only a dream by disbelieving people, not wanting to be laughed at. I especially avoided telling Sandy about it, for years, because I was afraid that somehow it would hurt her, or that I was belittling Barry’s death in some way to her; but I finally did, because I thought she should know. To this day I’m not sure if I did the right thing telling her; did it comfort her, or did she think it was just another one of Laura’s crazy daughter’s imaginings?

After I told Sandy, I told my mom about it, I think to give her a head’s up in case Sandy mentioned it.

I’m not sure what she thought about it, either.

She didn’t laugh.

But she didn’t scoff, either.