Page 45 of The One Day You Were My Husband
Those palm trees would often crop up in my frenzied thinking when I was trailing around Bangkok trying to find someone,anyone, who could tell me why Johan had been removed from me by armed men. When I had nightmares or flashbacks, those happily swaying trees always came first.
—
That evening we went to a night market forty minutes away on a moped. Johan smiled good-naturedly through the tourist shops, which I loved, and talked to the mangy dogs wandering in from the beach.
“Beautiful ring for your girlfriend,” a man on a stall said, sweeping an arm across his wares. Behind him, a woman fed baby twins at the same time as if it were the easiest thing in the world. And so Johan went off to the cash machine. He bought me a slender silver ring holding a little piece of jade, and I loved it from the moment he picked it up.
We wandered hand in hand through the stalls, beads of sweat on our brows illuminated by the festoon lights. Above us, paper lanterns swayed and pale stars hung in a darkening sky. I didn’t look where I was going and stepped in a dank puddle containing fish heads from a food stall, but I didn’t care. Someone would have a tap.
And they did, at a shop on a junction in the road. I hosed down my leg, leaning against Johan. When I looked up, there it was—my wedding dress.
I no longer own it; I think Maya must have thrown it away when I was at the lowest point of my depression, but I remember every detail of it. Like the others on the rail, it was short and cheaply made from thin jersey, but unlike the others it was not spangled with lurid prints or metallic thread. It was white with black spots, two straps that crossed over at the back, and although I’d never have worn it at home it was exactly what I needed.
“Look away!” I said. “I’ve located my gown!”
I carried it home in a blue plastic bag.
The storm sent its first tentative smatterings across the beach as we arrived back at our bungalow and we fell asleep early, on our last night together, lulled by the steady rhythm of rain on a reed roof.
Fifteen.
Mandi, who had done her celebrant training just three months earlier, said she was “still fresh” and in no need of a ceremony script. “I can improvise,” she said breezily, as if talking about a minor speech on a hen night. Johan’s mouth twitched dangerously as he watched me trying to make peace with the idea.
Of course I told them both I was fine with it all, but Johan just laughed, and then I laughed, too, because there really was no point trying to hide any part of myself from him. Mandi told me she had once been like me and that she was finding small doses of psychedelic drugs to be very helpful with Letting Go.
“Mandi, I’m a surgeon. Psychedelic drugs are off the table.”
“Ah,” she said. “Then you will be like this forever, I think. I am sorry.”
Mandi spent the entire afternoon at the bar drinking mojitos, watching the storm. By the time we ventured out onto the damp beach she was howling drunk. There were many long freestyles and off-scripts. My favorite, I think, was, “Do you, Carrie, take…ah…this guy…I’m sorry. I have actually forgotten your name. To me you are just the Hot Swede.”
Johan’s speech was beautiful. I think everyone fell in love with him a little, especially when he included a few lines from a poem called “The Road Not Taken.” Those of us present loved it so much we had asked him to recite the whole thing—which, astonishingly, he was able to do—and then he hooked a finger under the strap of my spotted dress and said, “This woman is destined for big things. In fact, she is already a Big Thing, with a big brain and an even bigger heart—not to mention a very big career. With Carrie I am my best self; it is that simple. I am often surprised that she is able to find time in her schedule for me—a mere mortal—but until things get really bad and she wishes to schedule in sex via her secretary, I feel like the luckiest man alive.”
Then came the food, which I’d negotiated with the chef that morning. She’d wanted to go all out on what sounded like a splendid feast but, given that I was offering her no time to get to a market, had had to settle on noodle salad, chicken pandan leaves, and fish cakes to start, followed by prawn pad thai. Pad thai was not whatanyoneshould be eating at a wedding, she said sadly, but I was delighted.
We ate on the beach as the sun began to set. Johan ate with one hand because he wouldn’t take his arm from my shoulders. He dropped kisses on my head all the way through our dinner, which we shared with the seven other guests staying at the resort plus Mandi and the staff—Kulap, Than, and Anchali. A collection of beach dogs came and went. The evening passed in flashes of luminous, post-rain sun and welcome breezes, the sky layered orange and charcoal.
After dinner Johan and I walked down to the sea, holding hands. A warm wind was sweeping out any last strains of the storm.
“We did it,” he said, squeezing my hand. I looked down at my toesin the darkening water. I hadn’t had so much as a pedicure for my big day.
Johan took off his waistcoat and hung it on the hull of a longtail.
“Doesn’t the air feel amazing?” he asked, holding out his arms to the warm night.
“Everything feels amazing.”
He nodded, looking up at the stars.
“This really is the best day of my life,” I said. I picked up his hand and kissed it. “If we’d had a proper wedding at home I’d have made myself ill preparing. This is—this is just perfect. I love you, Johan. I love us. I love absolutely everything.”
—
Soon after, I called my sister, who was meditating by her lake in Colorado (with her phone on). She screamed, then cried, then screamed again. We spent some time laughing over what Mum would have to say about my failing to learn from her mistakes and giving in to patriarchal tradition, but I felt moved to change the subject after a while. Johan had brought about a shift in the way I’d come to see my mother; the conversation didn’t quite feel right. Then Maya said she was going to have to find the money to fly over to London to celebrate me when I got back, and I said I’d go halves with her because it suddenly felt terrible to have done this without my sister.
I did try Mum, who didn’t answer, but I got through to Dad. “Oh, Carrie,” he said, after a long pause. Even accounting for that delay on the line—Dad was in Bangladesh on a work trip—I could hear the raw edge of emotion in his normally steady voice. “Oh, my darling. I’m so happy. So very, very happy. You deserve nothing but joy.”
He made me promise to have photos in his inbox by the next morning.
