Chapter 3

Ceremony

Jen Saunders looked out over the congregation just before 11:00. The pews looked almost crowded. She should get married more often. Her parents and grandmother had come out from Chicago. So had Rachel and her fiancé, Peter -- a guy Jen had barely met. David’s mother and his sister and her family had come from the east.

All the rest were locals, many of them nominal members of the church. It was just that almost nobody was missing. Most of the missing were probably hospitalized. Even Cathy Mitchell was there. Her husband Gary hadn’t attended service since a woman was assigned as pastor. This was Cathy’s second time -- she had come on Easter. Gary wasn’t hospitalized, though not in the best of health. Jen got that sort of news.

The wedding was scheduled for later in the day, but Independence didn’t hold with coming to church in the afternoon and claiming that you had been too busy in the morning.

Probably they wouldn’t hold with getting divorced on a Friday and marrying the same guy on the following Sunday either. The only thing she could do to generate this big a crowd again would be to die and have them hold her funeral. Gary Mitchell would come for that. Then Ruth Dixon started playing the electric organ, and Jen turned her attention to the service.

She’d put a good deal of care into the sermon. It was the only sermon of hers that her grandmother or Rachel would ever hear, one of the very few that her parents would ever hear. Hell! It was one of the few that some of the parishioners present today would hear. Not that anybody would remember it.

David might. She looked fondly at her fiancé during one of the hymns. He remembered the oddest things, and he did pay attention to her.

When the service was over, she headed back to her office. Her mom and Rachel, her bridesmaid, joined the two Independence matrons who were running the show. Her mom was carrying the bouquet that David had got in Evanston. The dress fit and, despite the assistance of four people -- Jen had dressed herself without assistance for decades -- finally looked perfect. Then she had to stand in it while the clock ticked.

Deborah Fitzgerald knocked on the door to tell her that the DS was here. Bless the woman; that was one more worry that could be forgotten. The other two clergy present couldn’t conduct the service; they would be the bride and the groom.

The weather being clear when the time came, she walked from the outside office door to the front door of the church. Ruth Dixon started “Here Comes the Bride,” she took her dad’s arm, stifled a giggle -- she’d grown up singing “big fat and wide” as the second line of that song, and processed at a stately pace. Independence UMC had a rather short aisle, but what there was they walked with dignity. Aside from David’s solo, and that was beautiful despite Mrs. Dixon’s accompaniment, the service was straight out of the service book.

The reception, held in the church hall, was truly crowded. The ushers knew who needed chairs; they’d asked her and David beforehand about their families. Aside from those, the chairs weren’t even stacked against the walls. Being in a Methodist church, the reception was dry. She got to meet David’s sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.

“Unca Dave,” the nephew greeted him. Somebody didn’t call him ‘David.’ The nephew expected to be picked up, and David -- despite the occasion and his tux -- clearly expected the same thing.

Holding him, he said, “Jen, meet Stephen. Stephen say hello to your new aunt.”

“Hello,” said Stephen.

“Hello, Stephen,” she said. She bent over to kiss his cheek. Stephen didn’t have his uncle’s interest in kissing her, which was lucky. He’d already had some of the cake with chocolate icing. Maybe he’d just rubbed it on his face.

With Stephen still in his arms, David said, “And this is my sister Deborah and her husband Keith.”

“Come, Stephen,” said Deborah, after Jen had shaken her hand and been pecked by Keith. David put him down, and he scampered away.

Stephen was far from the only kid attending. Most of the others were grandchildren of fairly regular attenders. She didn’t register any facts beyond those when they came through the reception line with their families.

She changed in her office again. David changed elsewhere -- the men’s john? They probably would be dressing and undressing in each other’s presence for the next fifty years, but Independence would have been shocked if they’d done it right then.

David was waiting for her when she came out of the office. The exit from the main doors was an event, with lots of thrown rice and blinding flashbulbs. Were those really necessary in the bright light?

The young kids were running around over the wet grass and stomping in the mud puddles. One of the running boys, not Stephen -- she did remember David’s nephew -- tripped and fell almost at their feet. He began to cry.

David picked him up before the parents could get there. “I am always falling down,” David sang, “but I know what I can do. I can pick myself up and say to myself ‘I’m the greatest too.’ It doesn’t matter if you’re big or small. You live now if you live at all. I am always falling down, but I know what I can do.”

The boy looked at David with wide eyes, his fall apparently forgotten. And who could blame him? She was trying not to stare herself. Who was this man she’d just married?

The child’s mother arrived. Liz Albertson’s daughter, Jen couldn’t think of her married name right now. David put him down and the kid walked away, looking back. David’s traveling clothes were all muddy, but he didn’t seem worried.

“Unca Dave,” said Stephen with the dismissive tone that only noncoms, headmasters, and preschool children seem to manage.

Joe Englehard drove her and David to O’Hare. When the plane was safely in the air, she turned her attention to the past. “Where did you get that song?”

“Wren has a publisher. I can’t remember the name at the moment, but the license was quite reasonable.”

“No. The one you sang to the kid. The falling down one.”

“The Ecumenical Institute is a lay-training group on the west side of Chicago. I learned about it when I was still in New York. Strange that a Chicagoan hasn’t heard of it.”

She had, vaguely. Still, hearing about it and knowing that song were two different things. “And they taught you that song? That’s lay training?”

“Well, the boy wasn’t ordained, was he? Anyway, they have a live-in staff, they call it an order. An order of married couples. An original idea, though you could claim that William Booth had it first. Anyway, I digress.” That could be David’s motto.

“E I, as it is called, has families. And they make up songs to express their theology just as Charles Wesley made up songs to express his. Or to express John’s. So, they make up some songs, at least that song, I can’t think of any others right now. They make up some songs to express their point of view to their children. Notice that the kid stopped crying.”