The Second Wedding

(Clemency and Anselm’s house in Elmhurst, Queens. Sunday afternoon, one week after the wedding in their back garden.)

Anselm: Clemency. Twenty people are standing outside in good suits.

Clemency: Holding gifts?

Anselm: Every one of them. Your aunt has two.

Clemency: The invitation said the twenty-second. Our wedding was the fifteenth.

Anselm: The printer.

Clemency: The printer.

Anselm: So that’s why half the guests didn’t come last week, and now they’re on the steps.

Clemency: Do we tell them?

Anselm: Tell twenty people they missed a wedding? In front of each other?

Clemency: Right. No.

Anselm: Are we allowed to have a wedding twice?

Clemency: Is there a tradition about it?

Anselm: My grandmother would say it’s bad luck.

Clemency: Your grandmother says the bus is bad luck.

Anselm: True.

Clemency: The chairs are still in the garage, and there’s cake in the freezer. We invite them in, we say nothing, and we celebrate again.

Anselm: I’ll phone for chicken.

(The couple open the doors. Nobody asks a single question about the date.)

(The music starts, and after that the reception runs itself.)

Anselm: I liked this one better than the first one.

Clemency: Me too. And the people who came on the fifteenth will never know.