Breadcrumb #549
MELANIE KACHADOORIAN
An episode of King of the Hill flashes before me—the one where LuAnne gets Hank a “swim with the dolphins pass” as a gift and while he swims with them, one of them mistakes his smell for another dolphin. He gets pinned against the side of the tank as the dolphin tries to mate with him. I hadn’t thought about that show until the trainers tell us that dolphins don’t like sunscreen, so we aren’t to wear any. I had rubbed sunscreen on before we arrived at Vallarta Adventures. Suddenly, my feelings of excitement turn into fear. I have no fear that the dolphins will want to make sweet bottle-nose love to me, but I do worry that maybe they won’t like me in general. What if I inadvertently do something to piss off one of them? What if, even without sunscreen, it doesn’t like my smell and attacks me? What if I get the dolphin that suddenly realizes it hates humans, and takes its years’ worth of pent-up hostility out on me? I do not tell Bryan I’m thinking any of this. I’m the one who said no matter what else happened on our honeymoon, we were swimming with dolphins.
***
I never wanted to get married. I never minded spending copious amounts of time by myself and never felt like my self-worth was dependent upon a man loving me. But, mostly, commitment scared me. My father left us, the first time I said “I love you” to a man and meant it, he cheated on me, and my ex-brother-in-law abused and cheated on my sister. If man told me loved me, then I was done. I almost never said it back. Most of the time, I could see it coming, so I would get up and go to the bathroom, or my allergies would flair up and a coughing fit would ensue. If I couldn’t dodge it, then I usually stammered and said, “That’s so nice. Thank you.” But, then I was done. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that I still wanted that relationship, I felt bored, or irritated, or both. The longest I ever lasted in a relationship after having heard “I love you” was one miserable month.
And, then I met Bryan.
We dated for six months before he told me he loved me at my twenty-fifth birthday party. I didn’t see it coming. He wrote it in my card. I read it, looked up and mouthed, “I love you, too.” He smiled. I got diarrhea.
He asked me to marry him one year later.
***
I wipe my skin red making sure that the sunscreen is off, and look around to see if anyone else appears nervous. No one does. For good measure, I take off my visor and my sunglasses and put them in a locker. When Bryan asks why I did that, I tell him it’s because I don’t want to miss anything and really want to see the dolphins.
“No it’s not,” he says. “I saw the look on your face when they said the thing about sunscreen.” He reaches into the locker and pulls out my sunglasses.
“What if they forgot to tell us the dolphins don’t like this stuff either?”
“The trainers are wearing sunglasses. It’s okay.”
The tank isn’t really a tank, but a pen within the harbor. There are six people to a trainer (meaning six people to a dolphin also), and there are 5 groups of us. Each group will be in the pen at the same time, so ultimately I have five dolphins that could decide to swim over and kill me at any moment. As we sit in our groups on the wooden deck, our trainers explain the rules: no splashing the top of the water with our hands, and no swimming away from the wall unless it’s your turn.
“Each group will be in the pen at the same time, so ultimately I have five dolphins that could decide to swim over and kill me at any moment.”
I like rules. Rules are a contract between ruler and rulee: If you don’t splash the top of the water, then we’ll let you swim with dolphins. If you do splash the water, then you have to get out. Rules mean that someone, besides me, has realized that something bad could happen, and is trying to prevent it.
***
Registering for wedding gifts was not as fun as I had hoped it would be. We walked out of the store twice without scanning anything because the pressure paralyzed me. Sales people followed us around telling us what we had to have: dish towels, a new microwave, a toaster, pots, pans, pillows, crystal, china. China.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of china patterns. Our bridal consultant forced china on us: “Make sure you pick a pattern that you will love forever. You’ll use it for all the holidays. Here, let’s set it up on a table so you can see how it will look with the crystal you picked.” I couldn’t. Every time I thought I liked one, I changed my mind the second Bryan said he liked it too. I thought I wanted a traditional pattern with blue painted fruit baskets around the edges of the plates, like my grandmother’s. Then, I wanted a contemporary pattern with platinum swirls on the edges. I searched online for patterns not in the store. I went back and forth for weeks. I asked my mom what china should be. There had to be a china rule. She said it was up to me, but I didn’t know, and the idea that I had to know I would love it forever was too much to bear.
People constantly asked how I knew Bryan was the one. How did I know? How could I? I didn’t know how to be wife. Regardless, the invitations had been sent, deposits put down for the church, reception hall, flowers, photographer. People started sending gifts. My aunt sent money with a card that said she had wanted to buy us a place setting of china, but didn’t see it on the registry. How could I get married if I couldn’t even pick a forever china pattern?
It was in the midst of my weeks-long panic attack that the pastor at our church emailed me the script of our vows, and told me that we could change them however we wanted. I read them. Vows. Rules. I printed them. I took them into the kitchen and read them to Bryan.
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
“Really? You want me to obey you?” I asked.
“Right, like that would ever happen,” he said rolling his eyes.
I stared at him and pictured Patrick Bergin’s character in Sleeping with the Enemy right before he back-hands Julia Robert’s character for not organizing their kitchen pantry the way he wants. Until they get married, he is funny, understanding, handsome, perfect. But, then he beats her into submission. I didn’t think Bryan would ever beat me, but I did think that he might change. What if he expected me to obey him?
“Uh-uh, look at you,” he said. “Don’t get stuck on that one word. We can change it, right? So take that word out if you want.”
He handed me a pencil, I crossed out the words “and obey,” and then we tweaked the rest: We would be not man and wife, but husband and wife. Neither of us knew for sure how we wanted those labels to define us, so we agreed to help each other figure it out over time. We realized that the traditional vows were too vague, naïve and some of them outdated. They had the right idea, but they were too romanticized. It seemed irresponsible to enter into the commitment of marriage without having further discussions about phrases like “forsaking all others.” Both of us agreed that cheating would not be tolerated, but we also recognized the need to be realistic: If cheating did occur then we promised to be honest with one another about it and to, at least, respect the non-cheating spouse enough to use protection because, as Bryan said, “nobody wants herpes.” We didn’t know that we would love one another forever. We couldn’t. All we could know was what we knew at that moment.
Right in front of me there was a contract.
Two months later, I stood in the dressing room of the church, waiting with my bridesmaids to walk down the aisle. The church coordinator came in and told the girls to line up. They walked out single file, each one hugging me as she passed. I turned and looked at myself alone in the full-length mirror. Was I ready? I looked down at my “something old” – my grandmother’s wedding ring that I wore on my right hand. I walked out of the dressing room and waited for sanctuary’s double doors to open.
***
Bryan grabs my hand and gives it a gentle “it’s okay” squeeze. I give him a weak smile. The trainers tell us to jump in with our legs straight and arms crossed over our chests, like divers. They demonstrate. I looked over to see how far away the ladder is that the trainers use to climb back out of the pen. Our group is the closest group to it. I’m not sure how I feel about the trainers not staying in the water with us. Bryan lets go of my hand and takes a step toward the edge of the dock. He turns around and says, “If you get nervous, just get out. It’s not like you’re gonna be stuck in here.”
I’m not worried that I’ll never be able to get out. Even if a dolphin, or God forbid, dolphins maul me, I feel certain that at some point I’ll be dragged out. But until then, it would hurt in ways I can and cannot imagine. And, there is no telling how long it would take to recover from something like that. Watching starts to look much more appealing than doing, but then my mother’s voice comes to me. My whole life she’s tried to get me out of my own head—to not allow opportunities to pass me by because of my anxiety. Whenever I’m afraid to do anything she says, “The time is going to go by whether you do this or you don’t. You can either have done something by the end of that time, or you can have not.”
Bryan crosses his arms over his chest and disappears off the dock into the water, with the dolphins. I step forward and look down. These ninety minutes will go by whether or not I do this. And I jump.