Heaven

(continued)

By Holly Kent

At the reception you stand behind me, your arm tightly curved around my waist, drinking more champagne than you ought but (as usual) not showing it. You make my roommate and her new husband (whom I had thought incapable of laughter) laugh — my college friends (whom I had thought long since past their days of blushing) blush — my mother (whom I had thought long since inoculated against your charm) smile as though you were the son-in-law she'd dreamt of her entire life, and not the man she'd spent my entire life trying to pry me away from.

You release me only when the bride makes her way to my side, her face flushed a pleasant pink by the heat of the room and her happiness, begging me to come and join the crowd gathered in anticipation of her pending bouquet toss. Biting my tongue to prevent myself from saying something about the toss's oppressive patriarchal symbolism, I join the tightly-packed feminine crush, my bare arms hanging limply at my sides — my elegantly-shod foot tapping an impatient rhythm on the floor — my freshly-manicured fingers inconspicuously counting the number of hours which remain before I will be liberated from this pastel purgatory, free to resume my normal garb and natural self.

I feel your eyes on me, and look up. You make no gesture and speak no word, but your eyes say what your lips do not - why am I not poised and ready, my arms upraised, my hands eagerly extended to catch the coming bouquet? I wave my hand dismissively and turn away, pretending to contemplate the ever-increasing pile of presents on the table by the door. I know that if you saw my face at this moment, you would be able to read its expression — and that, above all things, is what I do not want you to do. Because I know what you are thinking, well enough — that one day I will stand where she is standing now, that one day we will do what they have done, today.

And I know that we will not.

My roommate catches my eye and raises one eyebrow at me inquiringly. Much has happened in the years since she took pity on me and let me copy her calculus homework, but she is still my best friend, and she would still cheat for me, if I asked her to. She would put her powerful, softball-hardened arm at my service, and throw her bouquet right into my waiting arms, if I asked it of her. But imperceptibly, I shake my head. No. Don't.

And so, turning her back on us all, she throws her bouquet — trying, I think, to direct it as far away from where I stand as possible. Yet for once her (usually unerringly accurate) aim fails her, and, despite her best efforts, the perverse bouquet heads straight for me, as swift and sure as a lost child who has just spotted its mother in the midst of a large and frightening crowd.

I do not lift my head, nor move my arms, nor raise my hands. I let the bouquet fall at my feet and watch it burst apart when it hits the ground — feel its soft petals fan out over my feet and slide silkily in between my toes.

And I remember a summer night long ago, when we walked through the quiet park of our quiet hometown, feet bare and hands clasped. We were fifteen — you still growing out of your adolescent awkwardness into your current angular grace — me still trying to figure out whether you were my friend or my boyfriend, and how, exactly, I was supposed to know the difference. And then, you pulled me into the shadows of the oak tree at the edge of the park — your fingers delicately tracing the curve of my meticulously-glossed lips — your lips carefully following the line of the necklace that I wore, down my throat, to my collarbone, to my heart.

This, then, was the difference.

And for a moment my blood and nerves deceive me — make me think that I am still that fifteen-year-old girl, who thought all the stars in the heavens uninteresting, compared with the pattern of freckles dusted over your sun-browned arms — who thought all the rivers of the world dull, compared with the labyrinthine paths of your violet-dark veins beneath your honey-gold skin.

And yet, I am not that girl.

Not any longer.

And so I turn away from my contemplation of the ruined bouquet, its beautiful buds and slick petals now half trampled by the shifting crowd. I will myself not to feel your eyes searching my face — your gaze grazing my skin — and make my way through the crowd, out of the church's parlor, back into the (now quiet) sanctuary. And I cast my eyes upwards, resuming my search for the ceiling's gleeful cherubim.

And suddenly, like magic, there they are, joyously contemplating — what, exactly?

And then I see it. The thing which they are so rapturously regarding is not, as I had anticipated, a grave, masculine divinity, with a full, snowy beard and majestic, terrifying gaze — but instead, the open sky. The simple, beautiful open sky, glowing blue and gold and glorious through a small skylight in the center of the church's dark-wooded ceiling.

And I gaze upwards, beyond the grave saints and cruel-eyed angels and gleeful cherubim, out into the broad expanse of blue sky which lies beyond this cramped, narrow little church - out into the wide world which lies beyond my own cramped, narrow little life.

And I see heaven.