Flirty Harry

"You're doing the right thing," my friend assured me as I choked down an early lunch before heading downtown to get divorced. Funny. I hadn't asked. At least not out loud.

I don't remember much about my wedding day. The event -- if you can call it that -- was thrown together hastily. Yes, it was a shotgun wedding; I was not pregnant, but my soon to be mother-in-law had promised to pay for our honeymoon if we would stop living in sin. It seemed reason enough. We were in a strange city, and we had spent much of our courtship living almost a thousand miles away from each other. There was no Facebook, no email, no "sexting" to help deepen our relationship. Only the occasional drunken phone call in the middle of the night. "I lourvvve you," he would croon, as I drooled on my Princess phone.

My dress, which I had bought without benefit of an entourage, was frilly and cheap. My hair was cut short, with tight curls from a recent perm poking up through the lacy veil. I looked like Little Lesbian Bo Peep. My parents wore their best fake smiles; his parents' smiles were genuine. It's amazing what alcohol will do, if you only just give it a chance. The photographer sucked, I don't recall even choosing the band, and about an hour before everything got going I realized I had never updated the guest count and we were about thirty dinners (and place settings) short. The wedding coordinator -- I think she was about eighteen -- was still in jeans and a tee shirt, the tip of her nose pink from an afternoon spent drinking beer at the Cubs game.

The evening passed in a blur, and somehow we found ourselves riding in a taxi to Ohare the next morning. The three of us -- me, my new husband, and Harry from Miami. Nice guy; he used to let me sit on his lap and take the steering wheel when my family would head south for spring break. Hmm. Maybe he was joining us on our honeymoon -- I wasn't really sure. But I wasn't worried; I always liked Harry.

Maybe the memories of my divorce will fade as well. Neither the beginning nor the end of the marriage was memorialized in a video, although the latter was recorded in a court transcript. The divorce certainly took longer to plan, cost a lot more, and probably involved a lot more alcohol along the way. It took me longer to choose my outfit for court than it had to choose my wedding dress, and I liked it a lot better. My hair is long, his is mostly gone. All the folks who were supposed to show up were there. There were no surprise add-ons to accommodate, no last minute meals to prepare. All we needed were pens, and there were plenty of those to go around. Each time I said "yes" or "I do," I was pretty sure I meant it.

The husband I had barely known on that day more than twenty-six years ago is now somebody I know better than anybody. When we hugged hello, I felt more genuine fondness for him than I remember feeling back then. When we hugged goodbye, I wondered to myself, as I had on my wedding day, whether I was doing the right thing. We were so different from the other couple in the judge's chambers, the tired looking thirty-somethings who could not stop snapping at each other. "Why can't everyone just get along?" my brand new ex wondered out loud. His attorney reminded him of a venomous affidavit he had drafted only months earlier. Short term memory loss can be a beautiful thing.

The elevator news feed in my attorneys' office building had informed me that 12/12/12 was an auspicious day for weddings, and couples everywhere were rushing to the altar. Several hours later, I emerged from the court house into the December sunshine, certified copy of our divorce decree in hand. Already more auspicious than the wedding (we had forgotten to have our license signed, so -- much to what would have been my mother-in-law's dismay -- we honeymooned in sin, on her dime). I thought about Harry, now long gone. I could have used some company on the ride home.