A Pair in Love

Maxine ‘Maxy’ Herrera walked into a chapel on the day of her parents’ wedding. She’d been designated flower girl, and as such wore a pale tule dress embroidered along the hemline with tightly woven flowers.

She’d been carrying, for much of that morning, a small wooden basket filled to the brim with softly wilting petals. Unfortunately, the basket had overturned as she was getting out of her grandparents’ car and, before she could react, or her grandmother could come around from the other side of the car to help her, the petals had already been blown down the street, soon to be trampled beneath her laughing relative’s shoes.

“Leave them alone Maxy,” her grandmother had said, tugging on her by the arm. “Let’s go.”

Maxy was one of only a small group of children allowed into the chapel that day. She considered herself one of the lucky few, intuiting already that she was being allowed in on what was largely a private, adult affair, even if this particular affair happened to involve her own two parents. She fingered the few svelte petals remaining in the bottom of her basket, as she stood waiting for her grandmother to slide into a pew so that she could take her own seat next to her.

The chapel, and especially the altar, was strewn with enough flowers to have made her own escaped assortment seem largely irrelevant anyway. The narrow aisle, leading up to the arch under which her parents would soon stand to take their vows, was strewn with enough petals to have nearly covered the velvet runner beneath. The archway itself was adorned with whole bushels of roses, each surrounded by little creamy-white froths of lace.

There were so many roses hanging above the altar Maxy wondered if they wouldn’t all tangle in her mother’s hair as she stood underneath them, pricking at her with their sharp and curving thorns. On either side of the altar, sunlight streamed in through open stained-glass windows, casting rainbow shadows over the profligate roses and, further down, nearer to where she sat, over the waxed and somber pews.

Her grandmother, always quick to ignore her, was soon deep in conversation with a relative sitting in front of them. Maxy, only halfway listening, sat busy gazing around at the chapel, until she began to feel eyes on her.

She vaguely remembered the younger child staring at her as being a younger cousin of hers. He was standing with the bottoms of his shoes firmly planted in the belly of the pew ahead, a gesture she found slightly rude, and perhaps also sacrilegious, but before she could make up her mind whether she liked this particular cousin or not, he wrinkled up his nose and stuck his tongue out at her. She contemplated chucking the empty flower basket she still held at the back of his head as soon as he turned back around, when a sudden quiet filled the room.

Something was about to happen. Maxy angled in her seat to get a better look around the people sitting in front of her. Music began to play quietly from a church organ. Everyone was now, unexpectedly, craning their necks in the opposite direction of the music, down the aisle, toward the still open doors of the chapel.

Maxy also turned to watch the doors, but was soon distracted by something else. There was movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see that a woman in white was now quietly ascending, not the middle aisle, but the narrower aisle along the right sides of the pews.

This woman wore a white gown, obviously a wedding gown, splendid and trailing all the way to the ground, but she was obviously not Maxine’s mother. This woman was slightly older, and had a darker complexion, with shinier, darker hair piled in an older style atop her head. She clutched at a bouquet of white flowers; flowers which looked oddly to Maxine like chrysanthemums but were, in fact, yellow-tongued calla lilies.

“Nana,” Maxy said, pulling on the older woman’s sleeve. “Nana who is that woman?”

Maxy’s grandmother laughed at something the woman sitting in front of them had said, nudging at Maxine to quiet her. Maxine frowned and crossed her arms. She was having trouble ignoring her cousin, who still strove to make subtle eye-contact with her.

What bothered Maxy most of all was that nobody else in the chapel seemed to have noticed the stranger at all. Wasn’t it wrong, Maxine thought, for a woman to be wearing a white dress to another woman’s wedding? Especially a wedding dress? Maxy tried to feel anger or even jealousy for her mother over this white-clad competitor and found that she could not. There was something beguiling about this woman and her confident stride; the almost arrogant lift to her head beneath its sleek honeycomb of hair, the oddly shaped flowers clutched so protectively to her breast.

“Nana. Nana who is that woman,” Maxy pleaded, tugging even harder on her grandmother’s sleeve.

“Shhh, Maxy. Your parents are about to walk the aisle. You sit still and behave.”

Her grandmother gave her that look which told her not to argue. Still, Maxine tried at least getting her to look in the direction she was pointing to. The little boy in the row ahead of them was still watching her, now with undisguised interest. As soon as Maxy began pestering her grandmother again, he leaned forward as far as he could, without tumbling headfirst over the back of his pew, and shushed her. His breath whispered loudly around a protuberant forefinger, carrying something like a whiff of stale cheerios on it. As soon as he’d finished, Maxy wrinkled up her own face and shot him one of the dirtiest looks she could manage, sticking her tongue out and grimacing.

The boy’s face fell as he quietly slid back into his own pew. She thought it served him right, and was about to plan some further revenge, when the woman in white suddenly caught her eye again.

She’d stopped near the front row of pews and was now gazing over at the marriage altar in profile, hung with its profligate roses and banners of white lace. There seemed to be something intent in the stranger’s gaze, and after a while, something else. A hint of longing perhaps, or of sadness, but before Maxy could discern more, the woman had turned her back and was striding up the aisle again.

The woman paused again before a low doorway just beside the marriage altar. It was that same doorway through which Maxine had seen, earlier, a small, bowed priest enter. The woman twisted the doorhandle and entered through this door, vanishing quickly into the darkness beyond. The door remained open behind her, a somehow wordless beckoning, though it still seemed to Maxy that nobody but her in the chapel had noticed the stranger at all.

Maxine looked back down the center aisle, toward the still open doors of the chapel. There was still no sign of her parents, though the church organ continued to play, and the feeling of expectation in the room had grown to what seemed its fever-pitch. She could hardly stand to sit still, waiting. She wanted desperately to know who the stranger was and why she’d worn a wedding dress to her own mother’s wedding. She wanted that little boy ahead of them to stop darting secret nasty glances back at her, and for her Nana to stop talking to that strange older woman and pay attention to her. She wanted the petals in the bottom of her basket to somehow magically rematerialize, like the food in baskets in old wives’ tales. She wanted anything but to be sitting there in that same awful expectation as everyone else, with their necks craning and their eyes straining.

All at once, she knew she’d had enough. Slipping down onto all fours, she began to crawl down the narrow aisle in front of the pews, scrambling over polished shoes and rustling hemlines. Fortunately for her, all the adults in this row were mostly older, and could not, seemingly, react quickly enough to stop her. She was out of the row and darting down the aisle on the stranger’s trail almost before anyone had even realized she’d left her seat. She ran up to the doorway the woman had recently passed through and entered herself.

The darkness here was immediate and stifling. It seemed to press

against her cheeks and shoulders like a fog or mist, but before she’d had time to fully process this sensation, the door behind her shut with a light slam. All at once she knew she was cut-off from the rest of the world. She could make out nothing ahead of her save the rounded, distant gleams of wooden furniture.

The graveness of her situation came to her all in a sickening rush. She was already making her way backward toward the door when a slight rustle caught her attention.

The woman in white was standing before her again, as tall and proud as ever even in this low, dark, and stifling room. She stood beside what appeared to be a slightly younger man, or at least a man more timid than she, and who was dressed in a much rougher set of clothing. Maxy could see that he’d, nevertheless, taken care to tuck in his shirt, and that he’d recently attempted to shine his rather down-at-the-heel boots.

There was a single small window set high in the wall of this room, through which a narrow bar of light slanted in to illuminate the couple. This light, Maxine thought, was a part of the strangeness in the room. It was not like the light of a high noon, which she knew it, in fact, to be, but like the light of an overcast dawn, or of a darkening evening, with just the slightest tinge of green.

Below this window, nearly out of reach of its dreaming light, stood a small priest. He looked ancient compared with the priest she’d seen entering the chapel before. He had on a dark set of robes which rustled slightly as though in an invisible wind, and through which large holes shown, as if they’d been eaten away by moths the size of dinner plates. His face stood mostly in shadow, yet looked infinitely wrinkled to her, like candle wax that had been slowly melted and then dried into countless ripples and distortions.

The priest held a little dark bible in his hands. He’d started to speak, though his voice was scarcely audible from where she stood. It sounded to her like the dry rustlings of very old parchment, through which she could occasionally discern a word or two. She began to shiver, the little hairs along the backs of her arms and neck prickling.

She’d just started to inch backward toward the door again, feeling blindly in the dark for the doorhandle, when the priest’s words suddenly arrested her. They sounded as if they’d been spoken directly into her mind.

And you’ve brought the witness this time.

The woman in white nodded, turning to face Maxy in profile. Her dark gaze glinted. Maxy felt herself suddenly rooted to the spot, just as if she’d fallen under a spell.

We may proceed then.

There was a sudden shriek from outside, followed by the discordant ringing of church bells. It sounded as if a mob were slowly forming in the outside room, out in the chapel, where her own parents’ ceremony was supposed to have been taking place. Maxine felt a muscle in her jaw tighten, and her teeth clenched.

The air around her grew darker and even more stifling, as though filling with the shadows of dozens of threatening onlookers. Somebody unseen was now shouting at the couple, practically raging at them. Somehow, Maxine knew this to be the bride’s own father, although she was never entirely sure afterward how she’d known this. Her mind was suddenly filled the screams of the dozens of threatening onlookers, rising like a violent tempest in her mind, while her own fear ran underneath it all like some vivid red pulse, when a gunshot suddenly rang out in the dark, its reverberations rising steadily to match that of the newly descended silence.

The room swam for a moment and then cleared. The shadows abruptly faded. Maxine thought she’d fainted for a moment, but quickly found that she hadn’t moved, and neither had the couple standing in front of her. A bullet wound blossomed on the back of the man’s shirt, staining the dull fabric a thick, sickening crimson, but when Maxy blinked once the bullet wound was gone. The shouts coming from outside in the chapel had faded, softening into what now sounded like a church organ beginning to play the first refrains of Here Comes the Bride .

The priest’s dry whisperings resumed. Maxine stood still riveted by the scene, although she’d begun to notice other strange things happening in the room.

The priest’s robes, hung in shadow along a rack near the wall, now seemed to subtly move of their own accord, writhing as though they were being slowly filled with a tepid sort of air; odd, ugly, mishappen balloons. The room was suddenly filled with several noxious smells at once: church incense, and other scents Maxy couldn’t quite identify—the mingling of calla lilies and of sweetish, earthy decay. Maxine tried once again to move and found that she still could not.

The priest’s dry whisperings ceased, and a silence took their place; a silence which seemed to lengthen and grow deeper. A silence which seemed to creep along Maxy’s spine like a trail of ice-cold fingers. When the priest spoke again, his words startled her, reverberating somewhere deep inside her mind.

You may now kiss the bride.

The couple leaned forward and kissed. Maxine saw their lips meet, and an unseen weight seemed to shift in the room, like a long-held sigh finally released. Something in the room’s innermost equilibrium stabilized, and the maze of shadows fled. The door to the vestry flew open and the couple standing before her vanished like smoke or mist. Maxine felt herself being pulled into her grandmother’s arms, and this time she went without protest.

THE END

Bio: rista Farmer is an author who lives and works in Arizona. She enjoys long walks through the desert, as well as penning the various flights of her imagination she hopes her readers will enjoy. You can find her on Instagram: kristafarmer_

E-mail: Krista Farmer

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