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Hood River, OR 97031
541.386.8860
swatson@gorge.net
Risk and Reward:
Sometimes,
Luck Just Falls Your Way
My wife and I are cooking up a script for our contribution to the modern American theater of reinvention, so we go for pizza.
On a Friday night, not quite eight, a line of hungry others wait. We leave. We go looking for another place. We come back.
Moving in circles, you can fool yourself into believing you're doing something other than just standing still.
We order a glass of wine to wait.
Chianti comes and goes in sips, slower than the quick tick of time. It and the hostess lead us to a table. I pick the seat inside and opposite, my wife the one diagonal. Sometimes, life and love leave you like that: at cross purposes. I move opposite my wife. Somebody has to, you learn soon enough, if you're going to make a marriage out of difference.
Regarding our future home, I say we need to be methodical. A chart: If this, then this. And so on.
She smiles.
"You're funny," she says.
"What?"
"You're just like your dad."
"Wha-?"
"Make a chart," she repeats.
She sips her wine, smiles her smile. "Anyway, go on."
That smile: Two decades of seeing how my pieces fit.
I pause. It's the first time I've been compared to my dad, by anyone, to my face. I smile, as much to myself as her.
Our salads arrive, and across the aisle at the same time, another couple.
She's young, and dressed for something more than pasta marinara; he's young, and shorn to fit a military mold. On Friday night, a city full of infantry and their dates.
Not more than minutes pass.
My wife says, "I think we've got a proposal going on."
I do a left face, and quickly back. It's true. The soldier is in the aisle, on his knees, unfolding a spectacle of love for his ideal -- and all the pizza eaters gathered here today.
We nibble, munch and try to mind our steaming slices. Each time my wife's eyes angle toward their little scene, my own shift.
He's standing now.
She's seated and he's standing and he's holding her hand.
He says something I can't make out.
"I think she accepted," my wife says. "He just looked around and said, 'Did you hear that, everybody? She said she'd be my wife!'"
If anyone else hears it, they don't say. The other diners chat and struggle in their ways toward a discreet detachment.
I'm feeling a little embarrassed for the guy. Not for his guts, or the sincerity of his attempt to make this night, of all nights, special. Nope, embarrassed for his romantic and naive presumption that the world would leap, like patrons of some Broadway play, to his applause, when all he needs is the sound of one hand clasping.
No question, though: It will be something to remember. How could it not, enacted as it is, in a crowded restaurant?
No such dramatics for me, way back when. My allegiance to the woman implied no desire to engage in such rare, impassioned pleading.
Our statement to the world, as I recall, was to share the rent before the blessing. Her troubled mother wanted an exchange of rings far more than we, so we obliged. For some, it means so much to hear familiar lines. For others, it means more to hear your own.
The soldier kneels again.
We're trying not to gawk, my wife and I, but God, it's hard to concentrate on pizza when someone's going through such antiquated motions right next door.
Now he's off the floor and in the seat beside her. I wonder if he's got the ring. Of course he does. He wouldn't do all this, then promise her a trip to Freddy's.
In trade for empty plates, we get the bill. I slip on my coat, and step across the aisle: This couple seems to ache for benediction.
"Let me be the first to congratulate you," I say. "I hope you're very happy."
My wife leans in too. "Congratulations."
He grins, the happiest man on Earth. She grins, the happiest woman.
That's all we want, isn't it? A connection. To the past, to the audience, it doesn't matter, so long as someone lends approval?
At the cashier, I note that wines we ordered early haven't been included in the bill. Apprised of this, the waiter says, "Free -- for being honest."
Risk and reward. Sometimes, you get lucky.
We step into the late Alaska light. Gulls white and pure as angels lift and cry and ply their grace against the unrelenting gravity of dirt.
(This essay appeared originally in the Anchorage Daily News, July 9, 1992.)