Page 68 of Just Say Christmas
He was a get-it-done man. A next-thing man. But he couldn’t get it done, and he couldn’t sort out the next thing.
She sat and thought some more, and when she finally said something, it came from ninety degrees out, the way Nyree’s thoughts so often did. “What was your card of the day?”
“What?”
“It could help.”
He didn’t even have his phone. He’d thought he was proceeding methodically, rationally, focusing on what was around him. He hadn’t been doing any of that, obviously, because he had no idea where he’d left it. He went downstairs, finally ran the phone to earth in the pocket of his shorts in the washer—it was a good thing he hadn’t turned it on—brought it up to her, showed her the photo, and said, “Eight of Swords Reversed.”
“Geez,” she said, “that looks comfortable.” It was a blindfolded woman, her arms bound, surrounded by swords set into the ground to form a cage. The woman was upside down, too. “What does she say about it?”
Cat was in his lap again. She was warm there, and so was Nyree. He scrolled on down to his mum’s message and read it aloud.
“’You are freer than you realize. The power is in you. Loosen the bonds, take off the blindfold, and look for the way out.’In other words, exactly what she always says.”
“Right,” Nyree said slowly. “So . . . what’s the blindfold we’ve got here? What’s tying us down? That would be the wedding. Theideaof the wedding. It’s not the . . .” She did some hand-waving of her own. “The party that’s important. It’s not the cake, it’s not the dress, and it’s not the performance. It’s the promise. If we focus on that . . . How can we do everything that matters? The answer’s pretty obvious. Amona can’t come to the wedding? We take the wedding to her. We get married in your mum and dad’s front garden. There’ll be flowers, and a lake, and mountains. We’ll have our day, and it will be beautiful. And if sheisin hospital? We have it there. We have it wherever we need to go.”
He was going to cry. He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and breathed in and out, and she got a hand over his and her other hand on his shoulder, her soft body halfway over his own like a security blanket, and said, her voice urgent in his ear, “Marko. Listen to me. I love you. You’re the man I’ve always wanted, and you’re the man I need. That’s what matters, that I love you and you love me. That you can’t stand to wait any longer to marry me. Do you have any idea how cherished that makes me feel? What matters is that we’re promising to spend our lives together, to help each other and lift each other up and celebrate each other. And that’s what we’re going to do. Whatever happens . . . I’ll be there. You can count on me.”
He cried. Still wearing a towel. With a cat in his lap. And with Nyree’s belly pressing into him, Nyree’s arm around him, Nyree’s cheek against his. Nyree being there.
* * *
NYREE
Was there a harder thing than watching the man you loved cry? Seeing his shoulders shake, hearing the ragged sobs being ripped from his body? Right now, she couldn’t imagine it.
It didn’t last long. When he sat up again, she handed him tissues, and he blew his nose and said, “Geez. Sorry. That came from out of nowhere, eh.”
“No,” she said. “It came from love.”
“Stop, or I’m going to do it again. Right.” He blew his nose again. “It’s logistics. We’ve got our priorities straight, so it’s just logistics now.”
“Can you think about logistics, do you think,” she asked, “and also poach some eggs while I take a shower? I’m so much cleverer when I’m clean and fed.” She smelled like paint, she had too many emotions bouncing around inside, and she was so sticky, she couldn’t imagine how she’d slept through the night like this. Also, being competent was Marko’s comfort zone.
When she came downstairs, he was already pulling eggs carefully from the pan with his slotted spoon, the toast was toasted, the mushrooms sautéed, and the spinach washed and dried, and he looked more like himself again. Back to being strong and in control. They needed to go to Tekapo soon, though. They needed to go today.
When they’d started to eat, he said, “One problem.”
“Only one?” she asked, getting stuck into some toast with Marmite. She’d had a serious Marmite craving ever since she’d fallen pregnant. Yeast spread should make you sick, but it somehow had the opposite effect.
“Three-day wait to get a new license, if we change the venue,” he said. “You have to specify it, and I didn’t think to add an alternate site. And a celebrant who already told us he only had a two-hour window, which would rule out traveling to Tekapo.”
“Oh.” She considered that. “Well, that’s not very surmountable, so here’s my suggestion. We keep that to ourselves. We travel down there today. I can arrange for that. Within my area of competence. We find a celebrant—any celebrant who’s willing to do it under those circumstances. We have a . . . not a fake wedding. A symbolic wedding. We tell our families we’re changing the venue, and can they please come anyway, and say the same to anybody else who’s important to take along. Victoria, Koti, and so forth. Instead of going to Northland tomorrow, can they please come to Tekapo. We send an email to everybody else and tell them why the big party’s off, and I tell Kauri Cliffs. You can do the guest-notifying, though, because you probably still have the list. I can’t even remember where the listis.We ring upWoman’s World—well, I do, and also work on the celebrant, because I’m a better liar than you—and tell them why we’ve had to change it, and I don’t mention that teeny bit about the license and it not being the real thing. It’s the reallyimportantthing, getting married in front of your grandmother and showing her this great-grandchild we’re making. We’ll do the gender reveal afterwards, too, exactly like we planned. I talk that up toWoman’s World—they didn’t even know about the gender reveal, and how good is that going to be? Photos of you with your hands on my belly?Iwant to see that, and I’m the one it’s happening to. Anyway, I tell them they can still come take photos if they want. Heartwarming family story, and the photos will be even better. Relaxed. Candid. Special. I’m practicing. How do I sound?”
“Good,” he said, finally giving her a smile. “Convincing.”
“And we get married on Sunday,” she went on, her heart so eased and so full, “exactly like we planned, but in the front garden, in front of a much smaller crowd, and with less flash food, because it’ll be whatever we can manage to pull together. Oh, and no big cake, but never mind. That’s just one more thing we don’t really need. After that, when we’re home again, we apply for a new license and do the legal thing. We’d pay for the big wedding whether we actually got married in Northland or not, right? If the money’s spent already, it’s spent, and what will it matter where we did it, down the road? There’s probably a word for that.”
“Sunk cost,” he said. “You’ve already spent it and you can’t get it back, so it shouldn’t factor in.”
“Another reason I want to marry you. Every couple should include one person who likes maths. And if the magazinedoesn’twant the story, we tell each other that life’s full of rain, but it’s also full of rainbows, and you’ve got to have the rain to get the rainbows. Anyway, I’ve got a show in February. I’m going to sellsomething.They believed in me enough to get me a show, right?I can make up the difference. Eventually. I’m sure I can. I can . . .”
“You don’t have to make it up,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“Yet another reason I’m marrying you,” she said, and he laughed at last.
“We’re going to need tents,” he said after he’d eaten some more of his eggs on toast and was looking like himself again. Like a man whohadgot this, and always would. “Not everybody’s going to fit into my parents’ house, especially with all my sisters and my terrible nephews there, and there’s your own Nan, and your mum and stepfather. They’ll need rooms, and it’s December. You’re not going to find a room in Tekapo in December. There’s Jakinda’s place, of course, but it’s small.”
