What I Wasn’t Told
“Mom. Stop.”
Her mother folded her arms. “I offered one practical suggestion.”
“It isn’t just one.”
“You vetoed my suggestions about the ceremony chairs and the wedding announcement. Apparently, nothing I do is good enough.”
“What chairs?” I asked.
Mia stepped down.
The blood had drained from her face.
“Could we have a minute?” she asked the photographer.
The woman lowered her camera and guided the waiting relatives toward the reception entrance.
I stayed where I was.
“Mia. What chairs?”
“Mom wanted us seated during the vows. I said no.”
I tried to picture it. The two of us sitting through promises I’d spent months imagining making face-to-face with her.
“Why?”
Her mother answered. “It would have been more comfortable.”
“For whom?”
“Howard—”
“You wanted us sitting so people wouldn’t see us standing together.”
She looked toward Mia instead of answering me.
“I refused,” Mia said.
“And the announcement?”
Her mother sighed.
“Some relatives haven’t met you. I suggested using a bridal portrait.”
“A wedding announcement without the groom?”
“So you wouldn’t spend your first weeks married answering questions.”
I looked at Mia. “You knew she wanted to send out a picture without me?”
“I told her we weren’t doing it.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
Weeks.
I’d believed we were making a life without anything important hidden between us.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I’d stopped it.”
Her mother reached toward her arm. “You understood my concerns. You just didn’t like my solutions.”
Mia pulled away. “I understood that you were wrong.”
“No, you were afraid to admit I was right! You didn’t have the guts to tell him to his face that this wedding looks like a joke.”
I waited for my wife to answer.
She opened her mouth, then looked down at our joined hands.
I let go.
Her eyes came straight back to mine.
“Howard, no. Don’t think that.”
“Think what?”
“That I agreed with her.”
“I’m trying to understand what’s been going on behind my back.”
“Every time she suggested something, I refused. The chairs, the portrait, the first dance—”
I stopped hearing the rest.
“What about our dance?”
Mia’s face changed.
“Tell me.”
“She wanted Dad to open the dancing with me. She said you and I could dance privately afterward.”
I looked at her mother, waiting for a denial.
“People would stare,” she said. “I was thinking of both of you.”
I could still feel Mia’s hand in mine from our kitchen.
The song starting over. Her laughter when she got ahead of me.
“Did you know about that last night, when we practiced?”
“Howard, I told her no.”
“When I asked whether everything was handled, what did you think I was asking?”
She took a breath that shook.
“I thought you wanted me to stop her.”
“I wanted to know whether I could relax at my own wedding!” I ran my fingers through my hair. “You told me not to let her get to me, and all along, you knew it was worse than I thought.”
“I didn’t want you carrying those things.”
“So you decided to cut me out.”
“I wanted today to be good.”
“For whom?”
She flinched.
I wished I hadn’t echoed the question I’d asked her mother, but I needed an answer.
I needed to know if I’d been wrong about Mia.
“I wanted Mom here,” she said. “And every time I stopped something, I thought we’d finally be okay. I kept thinking if I stopped the next thing, I wouldn’t have to tell you about the last one.”
“And if you told me?”
She wiped beneath one eye.
“I’d have had to face what it meant. Whether she should even come.”
The admission hurt more than her first explanation.
“What?” Betty stared at her, stunned. “You would’ve kept me out of your wedding?”
“Mom, please...”
Mia turned to her mother to placate her.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be the recurring pattern of our marriage.
Keeping her mother had required keeping me uninformed.
I knew she loved me; I couldn’t understand why that hadn’t meant trusting me with the truth.
“We need to talk before the reception,” I said.
“Howard, please.”
“Now, Mia. Just you and me.”
May you like
I walked away, not knowing if she’d follow.
But she did.
