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Jim proposed to her while they were still at university and almost ready to start their final semesters, him finishing his MSTP, her wrapping up the late start on her education and English undergrad work. He’d got on the ground and asked from the cold pavement of the park trails behind her apartment building—without a ring, and she’d checked with Adam that he’d known, pulling him discreetly to the side one night before he’d gone back to Alliance, after another evening where Jim couldn’t stop mentioning their life after graduation, and asked, “Has he talked to you about it? Did you mention I don’t want a ring?”
He’d known, and he stayed there on his knees for ages holding her hands and promising her as much of the world as he could get in northern Ohio. She would have said yes immediately, if he had let her get a word in edgewise, but he was so set on saying such sweet things, she’d kept quiet and let him go on.
The sun was setting by the time he’d worn himself out, and it was cold enough to see his nervous, panting breaths as she tugged him back to his feet. “Of course, I’ll marry you,” she’d said, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his shoulder. “I love you so much.”
Her rabbi in Cleveland wasn’t going to officiate, and neither will either of the rabbis she’d asked in Canton, but it was worth a shot. She’s never seen James set foot in a church, and she’s pretty sure he hasn’t since his mother let him transfer to public high school, leaving his religious education classes before he was confirmed. Instead, they trudge into the courthouse in the June humidity—because even though James isn't religious, he sure is superstitious—on a Tuesday, because she isn’t above asking for a little extra help either, in the same clothes they wore for practicum and internship to trade thin gold bands in front of a JP.
It isn’t how they were planning to do it, but then it seemed better to rush it instead of waiting around. Her dad's too sick to make it in from Findlay, and she’ll have to drive out all too soon to get him and finish his packing. William and Rose promise they'll be in before long with Jim’s siblings to wish them well, but it’s almost Harry's bar mitzvah, and she’d still been hassling him walking up the steps to their appointment, shaking her head, “I can’t believe I’m marrying you if you’d forget your own brother becoming a man.”
“Em, darling, please,” he’d said, holding the door open for her, his mother, and Adam, “I love you. Let me rest."
Their only witnesses of their own are Adam and James’s mom, who was ready to wind him up again with the idea of being in trouble with the other side of his family. “Oh, poor Harry,” she goads. “He’ll be devastated when he hears about it.”
“Mom, please,” he says, hands in supplication, “I really don’t need this.” Because doctor now or no, they’re both technically without job or home, with a couple three hundred mile trips to plan in a car close to its last legs, and trying to do it all with Jim’s dwindling stipend, embarrassed and guilty to ask her father for more help.
Adam rescues him, pulls his attention away from the round of teasing with a hand on his back and reassures him he’ll get him residency at the children's home as soon as his transcripts show up, and reminds her, “Maryann, let me know when you’ve got everything together. I know they’re still looking for someone just like you.” He steps away from James, lays his hand on her shoulder as he walks past, to offer his arm to her mother-in-law. “May I escort you, ma’am?”
Maryann moves side by side with Jim and takes his hand, leading him to their JP’s door. “I promise I’ll never tell them you almost forgot Harry’s big day.”
“Thank you for being my partner,” he says, raising her hand to kiss her knuckles, “in lying by omission to my family.”
In the end, her parents’ chuppah stayed packed away, no one read the blessings, and no one bothered to bring a glass to break. No one remembered to bring a camera either, so there won’t be any prints to remind them of their shaking hands and voices in front of the judge’s bench, but after their kiss, his mother squealed, let go of Adam, and gathered husband and wife in her arms, crying and kissing their cheeks while they held on to her loving storm. She’s still dizzy from it all on the way back to the car when Adam takes a handful of nuts from his pocket and throws them without warning into the backs of their heads, sending them into squawks and laughter.
They couldn’t ask for a better friend than the one they have in Adam. He lets them stay in his two bedroom, takes care that they know where it is because it’s hard to find if you don’t know how it sits away from the road, tells them they can store whatever in his garage while they finish the paperwork and close on the house—the one with a guest room on the ground floor in Louisville, halfway between their jobs in Alliance and the doctors Dad wants to be with in Canton. When she’s planning the first of the trips to her father’s house, he won’t hear of her going alone and sends his kid sister to help.
She’s only a kid compared to Adam or James. Kimberly’s just a few years younger than Maryann with two more semesters left on her undergrad at Mount Union.
Windows down, definitely not speeding, on US 30 isn’t the best time to ask, but she’s too curious to wait. “Since you’re in sociology,” and once she has her attention, continues, “has Adam been telling you he’ll get you on at the children’s home, too?”
Kim’s shoulders sag. “Yeah, nags me to no end to do an internship. Don’t know what his deal is.” She slouches over, head in hand, and stares at fields and power lines passing by. “I’m going to, but he’s obsessive about it.”
Maryann laughs and says, “Yeah, he gets, uh, kind of intense about what he wants,” because James can get overexcited about his plans, but if Adam thinks he knows best, he’ll grab your hand, and you’re coming, like it or not. All his opinions had worked out for her though—get your minor in social work, you should live over here, I’ve got the perfect guy for you.
“He told me he got you roped in.” Kim sits up straight and slaps her palms on her thighs. “So, how’s it feel to know you’re official?”
“I’m terrified.” She squeezes the steering wheel, thinks about all the lesson plans she’s hasn’t made, all the people she’ll be responsible for and to, how she hasn’t even seen her classroom yet. “Pretty sure they shouldn’t be setting me loose.”
Kim looks at her and smirks. “Are you sick of everyone telling you it’s just practice for your own kids?”
Her knuckles strain against her grip on the wheel. “Very.”
Her dad makes sure they get a beautiful house to spend their life in, with two stories, half a basement—all of it built just before James was born—and a wooded back yard full more of waybread and mock strawberries than grass. Perfect, he tells her, for kids, and hopefully, there will be a horde of them, even if he never gets to see them there.
“Not that I’m complaining, Miriam,” he said easing himself onto the bed the movers brought over from their old house, “but you’re going awfully fast here. Nothing you want to tell me?”
She looked away and shrugged, told him, “No, Daddy,” and helped him get his pill bottles in order on the bedside table while James brought in boxes from the car.
Rose and William come in like they said they would, and the introductions feel like they’re going to stick in her throat. The only family she’s had to impress for most of her life was her father—who has always called her, his only child, princess and sat satisfied with every choice she’s made—and only recently, James’s mother who, based on the gingham granny dress and wide-brim straw hat she wore to their wedding, has an inscrutable taste in decorum she couldn’t hope to understand.
Her husband snaps her out of her worry, takes her hand, and they open the door to a flurry of mazel tov’s directed at them that they return with the same infectious enthusiasm. She’s trading compliments with Claire in the cramped vestibule when James lets go of her hand to grab at Harry’s in a fast up-and-down parody of a handshake, repeating variations of mazel tov, little man, and William steps in to put his hand on Jim’s arm to make him stop jerking his brother around. Rose steps around everyone, arms wide, to welcome Maryann to the family.
Her father belts out his own congratulations to Harry and family as soon as the noise dies down. James drags his siblings into the living room, keen to introduce them to his father-in-law. She brings her in-laws in more sedately to say hello before taking them upstairs to put their things away.
As they come back down, she gets the impression one of the kids might have made the mistake of saying they speak Yiddish, or mentioned that Rose was teaching them, because her dad’s on the window seat speaking it rapid-fire to an audience who has no idea what’s going on. James doesn’t even know enough to say oytser right—Dad tried to teach him something sweet to say, and now her pet name is oyster—but he isn’t going to say anything to make Dad stop with his face turned into his shoulder, barely trying to muffle laughter at the looks on the kids’ faces.
Harry and Claire turn their eyes beseechingly to their mom, who takes pity on them, steps in to translate the unfamiliar parts for them, and Dad looks so tired, but he’s smiling just the same.