Owen himself stood at the back of the gazebo in front of a makeshift arch of rainbow balloons, chatting with Harvey in a wheelchair at his side. Streamers fluttered overhead in the light breeze. Not quite the ambiance I’d have gone for, but a work of love, so I wasn’t about to complain.
Pete Lebraun leaned close to my ear and murmured, “Is the whole population of the nursing home here?”
“No,” I whispered back. “We wish, but some aren’t able to leave the building, and some aren’t interested in seeing two queers joined in holy matrimony.”
“Their loss.”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Here comes Shondra.” Pete nodded toward his keyboardist, picking her way between the guests toward the stand with her instrument.
“Thank her for me,” I requested.
“You already did.” As she sat down and played the first rippling notes of Elton John’s “Your Song”, he straightened his shoulders and turned to me. “Ready?”
I tugged my collar a little straighter. “Sure.”
We approached the front of the gazebo from the left. All my attention was on Lee, coming from the right with Kashira on his arm. Man, did my guy clean up nice. We’d gone with suits rather than tuxes, and Lee’s perfectly fitted charcoal-gray emphasized his height and broad shoulders. Kashira wore a bright floral number that suited her too, and she grinned at me as she let go of Lee.
When we reached the makeshift aisle between a motley assortment of chairs from Wellhaven, Kashira and Pete strode forward side-by-side to pace ahead of us toward Owen, her hand tucked in Pete’s elbow. Lee and I walked behind them, holding hands. At the front row, Lee bent to kiss his mother’s cheek. She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty. I ducked behind Lee to do the same. Ellen was more mom to me than my mother had ever been. She murmured, “I’m glad he found you,” and my own eyes blurred.
In front of Owen and Harvey, Kashira and Pete stepped to the sides. Lee and I let our hands slip apart and stopped, turning to face each other.
“Dearly beloved,” Owen said, then laughed. “Folks and friends, family and guests, welcome. It’s not often I get to return a favor these days, and this was a big one. All hail the onlineministries that help us celebrate our love the way we want to. I’m grateful to be here to join Griffin and Lee in legal matrimony.” He winked our way. Almost no one in the crowd would know why, but the four of us were deeply grateful our ruse with their illegal matrimony hadn’t come to light. Owen and Harvey were accepted as husbands, living together for whatever time they had left.
Might catch up with us eventually when death came calling, with all its attendant paperwork, but seeing the joy those two had in each other every day, I counted it well worth any cost.
Lee and I would be legal though. Husbands. Any minute now. That was a heady thought.
Owen said to the crowd, “I asked these two guys who proposed to whom, and they didn’t seem to know.”
Lee laughed and I had to join in, because yeah. Somehow, “when we’re married,” had crept into our discussions as an inevitability, like the sunrise. Until one day, Lee said, “Wearegetting married, right?” And I said, “Yeah. Want to figure out when?”
We teased each other that romance was dead, but it wasn’t. We just did it differently.
“Almost everyone here knows Lee,” Owen went on. Some of the Wellhaven residents applauded and shouted Lee’s name. Owen waited, smiling, until they were done. “Everyone here knows Griffin too.”
Tom, off to one side, shouted out, “Who?”
I called back, “The guy you beat at checkers every week.” Although I was still on parole for another year, I’d finished my community service hours in March. By then, my routineof Wellhaven in the morning and practice in the evening had become part of my life. My songwriting and residuals were bringing in enough income, I didn’t have to find a day job.
I’d quit the other two nursing homes, except for showing up now and then to play piano for the residents, but coming to Wellhaven every weekday kept my life on an even keel. I liked being a part of Lee’s days, knowing who or what he meant when he needed to vent back home.
Like when Zhukov flatly denied permission to hold our wedding at Wellhaven. We hadn’t planned on doing it that way to begin with, but once Harvey and Kashira heard us discussing options, they ran with Operation Wedding, part two. Then, when Zhukov spiked their idea, well, I always did like an end-run around a bully. The park down the block rented the gazebo out for parties. Wheelchairs and even some beds could handle a short trip down the sidewalk. Several of the aides had volunteered their time off to help wrangle the residents, and here we were. The folks who were up for it had helped decorate the gazebo within an inch of its life and even the weather was smiling on us.
Owen waved a dramatic hand. “Look around you. There are a lot of folks here whose lives were made better by the two men standing in front of you. Including mine and Harvey’s. So when they decided getting married was right for them, we all dove into making it happen.” The end of a streamer floated down near his face and he flicked it aside. “With all the glitz and rainbows we could manage.”
Carol called out, “Joe-Joe-Joey loves rainbows! So many rainbows. Look, look!” She started shuffling toward us but the aide near her intercepted her, handing her a balloon, and she fixated on that. My heart squeezed, because Lee cared about herand she was getting frailer and more confused. I doubted she’d be around for our anniversary. We were going to lose some of the people gathered here before many more years passed. I hoped for some of them, watching Lee get married could be a brilliant memory against the oncoming dark.
Owen said, “We need celebrations. We need joy. In a world that always has ups and downs, seeing love triumphant lifts us all higher. Today is about celebrating love. A melding of hearts that took a long and winding road to reach this moment. Twenty-one years ago, two men met and began moving toward love, but life came along and bitchslapped them and said, ‘Sorry, not the right moment, guys.’ Love is strong, though. It perseveres. Twenty years later they met again, and although the time apart had shaped them differently, it hadn’t extinguished that light. And if all those years of change and adventures and losses couldn’t kill the love between them, nothing will.”
He turned to us. “Today, we’re here to see you two say those vows to stay together till death do you part in legal matrimony. When Harvey and I married, there was a big element of up-yours. We’d spent so long being simultaneously told, ‘It’s not as if you’re married,’ and ‘you’re not allowed to get married,’ that finally tying the knot was vindication as much as affirmation. Today is not about that. Today is quite simply about the love of two men for each other. “
His gaze passed out across the audience of musicians and nurses, nursing home residents and cat café people. “Griffin and Lee belong together, so obviously and naturally they didn’t even bother with a proposal.” He leaned my way and murmured in a conspiratorial but totally audible voice, “Yes, I’m going to give you a hard time about that forever, Griff.” Raising his voice again, he added, “In the music Griffin gives us, we see that love.In the well of caring Lee draws from to care for his patients, refilled by time home with his beloved, we see it reflected. In the rings they will give each other, the world will be reminded of that love.”
A resident I didn’t know well began babbling randomly for someone to help her, near the back of the audience. Owen waited until the aides could reassure her, then added, “In the way they chose to share their special day with all of us, we see love.” He turned to Lee. “Will you say your vows?”
Lee nodded and held out his hands to me. I reached for him, and his fingers closed on mine. He said in a clear voice, “I like simple words best. Griffin, I’ve always loved you, even when I was hurt, even when I was angry, even when I didn’t know if I’d ever touch you again. You’re the person I want to see when I wake in the morning, and the one I want holding me when I fall asleep at night. Will you take me to be your husband, for all the days of our lives?”
