My First Wedding

                     

           
           

            January 18: On this date in 1975 Roger and I were married in my parents’ backyard.  We were supposed to get married on Friday and have the reception Saturday. His mother and grandmother had flown down from San Francisco.  I remember all of us walking up the steps of Monica City Hall, looking for the marriage office and then being embarrassed to find out we were supposed to have made an appointment with a justice of the peace.

            We took Roger’s mom and Gram back to their hotel and returned to my parents’ house.  Barney, a grizzled old guy who worked for my dad building cameras, and sipped vodka-laced peppermint schnapps all day to dull the pain of pancreatic cancer, was a member of the Unitarian Church. He called Reverend Pipes and scheduled him to come Saturday morning, before the reception.

            I wanted Greek food, so my mother and I spent the rest of the day making spanakopitas, smyrni meatballs, salads.  When someone remarked that the bread was delicious I told them, “That’s the wedding cake.”    

            Saturday morning I got my very short hair trimmed, curled, sprayed. Someone in the salon, hearing it was my wedding day, did my make up.  I wore the cream colored satin dress I had bought for $28.00 at a little shop on the

third street

mall, and beige high-heeled sandals. Roger wore his pin-striped suit and a red tie. We had just a few minutes with Reverend Pipes to fine-tune the ceremony. I made sure the word “obey” was stricken. My father wore his usual white pants and zories. My mother wore lavender. My eight-year old niece was the ring bearer. At our feet were Dickie, my parents’ miniature dachshund, and Sherman, their desert tortoise. 

             Roger and I had already lived together for three-and-a-half years,  in Berkeley. I always imagined we would eventually move up into the hills, get married, have kids. The year before he had returned from Mexico with hepatitis, which he told me he got from eating raw oysters.  He got a gamma globulin shot, so wasn’t very sick. I was supposed to get a shot, too, but the day of my appointment it was raining so hard I decided not go to. Later, when Dr. Stallone checked me out, he said my blood was clear. So we went ahead with my scheduled tonsillectomy; I was tired of getting strep throat three times a year.  Roger brought my little red black and white TV to the hospital and I watched the news bulletins of Patty Hearst’s abduction.  She lived just two streets away from us.

            I went home after the required hospital stay. My throat finally stopped hurting but I didn’t get my energy back. I remember walking home from work one day, feeling like my shoes were filled with concrete, and how difficult it was to walk up the stairs of our rented house. Then I started throwing up. Roger tried to take care of me but I could see it was a strain on him. I got up to go to the market.  I had to lean against the shopping cart to keep from falling down. When I got home he took one look at me and drove me right to the doctor.

            I was hospitalized for eight days. I remember a friend coming to see me, standing in the doorway. I didn’t want to be looked at. I felt that only a very small part of me was there in that hospital bed. It was as if I were gradually being erased.       

            Roger and my mother decided I needed to go to my parents’ house to recuperate.  I had no opinion. I only wanted to sleep. I flew to L.A. and stayed in the bedroom I inhabited from the age of six to twelve. The room I took over from my sister when she went to college was now a second office. My parents were busy hiring models and finding locations for the annual Ridge Tool Calendar.  

            On June 29^th my father rented a studio apartment on the eleventh floor of a building on

Ocean Avenue

. He covered one wall with mirror tiles and put Astroturf on the balcony.  This was the compromise my mother had struck with him: if he was going to have affairs, do it on Monday nights, and go to the apartment, so she wouldn’t worry, wondering where he was or when he was coming home. She signed up for a Monday Night French class at SMCC.        

            I flew back to Berkeley on June 30^th.  I was getting disability but Phil agreed that I could do some work from home, so I worked on sales figures and did a little invoicing.  He brought me the Olivetti Underwood with the little green keys. I loved that typewriter. When he got an IBM Selectric, he let me keep it.   Roger took another trip to Mexico. On July 12 he called to say there were forty imprisoned Americans on a hunger strike. I phoned writers I knew, and TV stations. Eventually it made the national news. My diary notes, “but they showed a hypodermic needle in the background.”   Nixon was being impeached. Inflation was at 12%.  My best friend’s father was on a fourteen-day drinking binge.

            Roger finally came home. But he was splitting his time between me and friends in Mendocino.  He informed me he had V.D.  On July 25^th I decided to move back to Santa Monica. On July 27^th Roger told me he thought he was losing his mind.

            I went to the bank and withdrew the $700.00 I had saved. Roger told me he loved me, that he would move my things for me, and would visit me every month.  He said he was sorry he continually disappointed me. I flew to L.A.  

            My diary lists day after day of being sick to my stomach.  My parents’ psychiatrist told them my father was on the verge of a great depression. The apartments I looked at were small and too expensive.  On August 8^th, Nixon resigned.  Finally on August 9^th I rented a one-bedroom upstairs apartment, with a pool, on

Yale Avenue

in Santa Monica. The rent was $210.00 a month.  Because I was still sick, my disability insurance was extended.    When I talked to Roger I told him, “I miss you when I go to bed.” He said, “I miss you when I wake up.”

            On August 16^th Roger arrived with my things, including our two cats, Button Chaser and Schnee.  We spent the next three days putting my things away, going to the beach, making love. Swimming in the ocean I felt that my illness, sadness, worry and fears were being washed away.

            Over the next two months, I found a part-time job. Roger continued to travel and write. On Halloween I was sitting on the floor of that little apartment, talking to him on the phone.

            “I really miss you,” he said. “I’m thinking about moving down there to be with you.”

            “You have to marry me,” I said.

            “What?”

            “I’m not going to do this any more unless we’re married. And my mom won’t give us money toward a house unless we’re married.”  There was silence on the other end of the line.  I stared at the orange shag carpet. I could hear my heart beating. Finally Roger spoke.

            “Okay,” he said.  And so, two months later we got married in my parents’ backyard. Of the fifty-eight people who came to the reception eleven are still friends.  Many of them I don’t remember at all.   Budd and Jo and Marc are dead. My father is dead. Roger is dead. He died last year, thirty-two years after we were divorced, just a year after his liver transplant.