I would often speak Spanish even at home, making Celia and Robert piece together what I was saying from their own limited knowledge. I loved sharing it with them. I loved being able to show a part of myself that I had long buried. I was happy to find that when I dug it up, that part was still there, waiting for me.
But of course, no matter how perfect the days seemed, there was one ache looming over us night after night.
Celia was not well. Her health was deteriorating. She did not have much time.
“I know I shouldn’t,” Celia said to me one night as we lay together in the dark, neither of us yet sleeping. “But sometimes I get so mad at us for all the years we lost. For all the time we wasted.”
I grabbed her hand. “I know,” I said. “Me too.”
“If you love someone enough, you should be able to overcome anything,” she said. “And we have always loved each other so much, more than I ever thought I could be loved, more than I ever thought I could love. So why . . . why couldn’t we overcome it?”
“We did,” I said, turning toward her. “We’re here.”
She shook her head. “But the years,” she said.
“We’re stubborn,” I said. “And we weren’t exactly given the tools to succeed. We’re both used to being the one who calls the shots. We both have a tendency to think the world revolves around us . . .”
“And we’ve had to hide that we’re gay,” she said. “Or, rather, I’m gay. You’re bisexual.”
I smiled in the dark and squeezed her hand.
“The world hasn’t made that easy,” she said.
“I think both of us wanted more than was realistic. I’m sure we could have made it work, the two of us, in a small town. You could have been a teacher. I could have been a nurse. We could have made it easier on ourselves that way.”
I could feel Celia shaking her head next to me. “But that’s not who we are, that’s not who we have ever been or could ever be.”
I nodded. “I think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But if the last few years with you have been any indication, I think it also feels like taking your bra off at the end of the day.”
I laughed. “I love you,” I said. “Don’t ever leave me.”
But when she said, “I love you, too. I never will,” we both knew she was making a promise she couldn’t keep.
I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her again, losing her in a deeper way than I’d ever lost her before. I couldn’t bear the idea that I would be forever without her, with no tie to her.
“Will you marry me?” I said.
She laughed, and I stopped her.
“I’m not kidding! I want to marry you. For once and for all. Don’t I deserve that? Seven marriages in, shouldn’t I finally get to marry the love of my life?”
“I don’t think it works that way, sweetheart,” she said. “And need I remind you, I’d be stealing my brother’s wife.”
“I’m serious, Celia.”
“So am I, Evelyn. There’s no way for us to marry.”
“All a marriage is is a promise.”
“If you say so,” she said. “You’re the expert.”
“Let’s get married right here and now. Me and you. In this bed. You don’t even have to put on a white nightgown.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a spiritual promise, between the two of us, for the rest of our lives.”
When Celia didn’t say anything, I knew that she was thinking about it. She was thinking about whether it could mean anything, the two of us there in that bed.
“Here’s what we will do,” I said, trying to convince her. “We will look each other in the eye, and we will hold hands, and we will say what’s in our hearts, and we will promise to be there for each other. We don’t need any government documents or witnesses or religious approval. It doesn’t matter that I’m already legally married, because we both know that when I was marrying Robert, I was doing it to be with you. We don’t need anybody else’s rules. We just need each other.”
She was quiet. She sighed. And then she said, “OK. I’m in.”
“Really?” I was surprised at just how meaningful this moment was becoming.
“Yeah,” she said. “I want to marry you. I’ve always wanted to marry you. I just . . . it never occurred to me that we could. That we didn’t need anyone’s approval.”
“We don’t,” I said.