The Wedding Cake by Madeleine Thien

JOSEPH sat across from the others. He was a stocky man whose every movement seemed sudden and whose nickname, Abu Victor, with Victor pronounced in the French way, had come to him when his son was born 25 years ago just as, 50 years ago, his own father had become Abu Joseph when Joseph, himself, came into this world. It was common.
The four men sat around the patio table. It was late afternoon and sunlight sliced a line through the wedding cake, cutting a diagonal shadow from the its decorative roses to its perimeter, reminding Abu Victor of a sundial. The deck creaked, the whole patio had been declared structurally unsound but the owner was too poor to fix it. Finally, last year, the owner had sold the whole building to a developer. Abu Victor and his wife, Nadia, would be moving at the end of month to a smaller apartment in a different neighbourhood. The timing was right. Unlike their neighbours, they were not fighting the eviction.
But what about the cake? Abu Victor had wondered, waking suddenly two nights ago. Nadia had been away, visiting her sister in Vancouver and in her absence, their bed had felt wide and uneven, it had seemed to tilt and slide him onto the floor. He had gotten up. The room was a furnace. In a daze, Abu Victor went to fridge and opened the freezer door. How long he stood there, he couldn't say. Chilly air washed against his surface. At last, he removed the cake, which was encased in plastic wrap and had been in the freezer since 2011. He set it on the counter.
He waited until 5 am to call his best friend, George.
“Catastrophe,” was all Abu Victor could say at first. He feared that different words might pull the imaginary knife out of his gut, cause him to bleed imaginary blood, and die an imaginary death. “Catastrophe.”
“What happened?”
“We can't move the cake into the new apartment. But we can't throw it out either.”
“What does your wife say?”
“She doesn't say anything. Nadia says nothing.” He was crying now and he hoped George couldn't tell. “She won't be back until the weekend.”
His friend had proposed a solution. On Friday, George would bring Tony and Elias to Abu Victor's house, and together they would eat the wedding cake.
The cake somehow looked both shellacked and softening, it was probably inedible.
Abu Victor withdrew his right foot from its leather slipper and scratched his left ankle. He had not set out any plates because now, in the clear light of Friday afternoon, he wasn't sure that eating it was such a good idea.
In Beirut, before the war, the four of them had been merely kids. Tony, rocket-shaped, was the leader. George, blinded in an accident, used a cane. Elias was a snob who spoke French at home and one day pronounced himself Le Colonel. And finally there was Joseph, who excelled at sports. From birth, they had lived in the same building, their mothers drank coffee together and their fathers repeated the same jokes.
Decades later, the four had arrived in Canada via separate trajectories, and now they lived in different neighbourhoods of the same city; Montreal had pulled so many of their friends and neighbours across the seas. There had been a war after all, and how could any family be expected to live beneath bombs and snipers for fifteen years? Still, it was odd, Abu Victor often thought, how many of his fellow Lebanese had left in 1990, just as the war was winding down, after having seen everything and lived enough.
It was in 1990, in fact, that Abu Victor had glimpsed Tony crossing the street in downtown Montreal. Tony had grown to over six feet tall, he was still rocket-shaped, still wild in the eyes. Abu Victor would know him anywhere. He had shouted his friend's name, they had hugged, cried, slapped each other's backs, gotten deliriously drunk, talked about everything and nothing as one does. Tony had been in contact with Le Colonel, and Joseph was close to George, and so a few nights later, the four found themselves in a restaurant, 25 years old all of a sudden, with nothing between them except food, four bleeding steaks, and drink, three hefty pints of beer and Le Colonel's bulbous glass of Chateau Margaux.
What kind of life was this, Joseph had wondered then. How miraculous.
The waitresses loved George, they were fascinated by his dark glasses and watchful face, by the white cane he wielded as confidently as a weapon.
Drifting in nostalgia, Joseph had mentioned the narrow crevice in their shared building where, as kids, they used to hide, one at a time, until it became too dangerous, when they grew too tall, too thick, when they risked getting stuck in the wall.
“Just think!” Tony had said. “These days, even one of my thighs wouldn't fit.”
Le Colonel had made a joke about something else that wouldn't fit.
Of the four, only Joseph was married and had a child. His friends had raised their glasses and christened him the Proud Father of Victor, Abu Victor.
Joseph had glanced up at a clock on the restaurant wall, and found himself inexplicably breathing the clean, mysteriously perfumed scent of his wife's skin. Nadia, Nadia, Nadia. Victor, Victor, Victor.
Around the patio table, Le Colonel was laughing over some joke that George had told. George had collected jokes ever since he was a kid. He and his small white cane used to wander all over the neighbourhood to beg, borrow or steal one-liners from the old men idling forever in cafés. Later, George had collected jokes in the bomb shelters. Plenty of jokes then. His grand dream had been to write his own joke book but as Abu Victor always said, What the hell kind of dream is that?
Now the sun was three-quarters down. On the opposite balcony, university students were being obnoxious; their rowdy laughter ran rough-shod down the alleyway, scattering wave after wave of birds.
Le Colonel glared at the students, “God in heaven, I want to poke their eyes out!” He taught at the Université de Montréal and was a specialist of the Peripatetic School, Aristotle, Strato, people like that. “In this country, when they’re serious, they whisper! But when they’re frivolous, they shout! They only want you to hear their stupidities!”
George began, “It's just like that joke, when Abu Abed goes into the restaurant in Bourj Hammoud and the owner says to him — “
“The cake looks okay,” said Tony.
“Wedding cakes are for decoration only.” Le Colonel's voice was reedy and aggravating. “Not to be insensitive, Abu Victor, ya akhy, but you've had it in the fridge for three years.”
Abu Victor leaned back in his chair. They all did, and for a moment he felt as if could he pull each and every one of them on a string, that he could reel them in or push them back, that everything they did was, unbeknownst to them, compelled by some action of his. They were all trying to shelter him like leaves along a branch. If he leaped from the patio, would they follow him? But when had their faces grown so heavy, their hips rotund, their feet so flat? When had they all started looking like their grandfathers? He knew his friends wanted to help him, maybe some part of them even wanted to make light of the catastrophe because, all through the war, hadn't they made light of the catastrophes of others? To joke was heroic, it proved one's indifference. It was these kinds of emotions – not weeping, not tearing your hair, not thoughts of suicide – that showed you had survived intact.
George tapped his cane firmly on the ground. “I think, Abu Victor, you might bring the cake to the new apartment. There's no reason to do anything with it until you're ready.”
“Yes, George. When will I be ready?”
“But why eat it at all, habibi?” Le Colonel asked.
The question was reasonable but Abu Victor felt a surge of irritation. He imagined sculpting a perfect likeness of a chocolate éclair and serving it to Le Colonel on a plate. That would break his precious teeth.
Tony said, “Maybe we should set it on fire. Taoists do this, don't they? Make burnt offerings.”
That Tony should know anything about Taoists was so surprising, they could say nothing.
Finally, George spoke up. “But what is this cake made of? It might burn for seven days and seven nights.”
“Why don't you donate it to the homeless?”
Abu Victor ignored Le Colonel's question and gazed across the alleyway. He had lived in this apartment with his wife and son for almost twenty years, while Victor was growing up. It was rent-controlled and, in consequence, nearly falling down. There were cracks in the plaster, lines emerged from the walls as if the building was writing them a message. Meanwhile, the neighbour on the second floor despised him. She complained that, when he walked, bits of plaster fell from her ceiling. Can’t you at least take off your shoes?
Abu Victor had told her, sadly, No. I can’t. You want to see the eczema on my feet? He didn’t have eczema, but his deceased grandfather had suffered from the ailment. Cracked soles, so painful, there were times when poor Jidi could barely walk. I have to keep vaseline on my feet 24 hours a day. If I don’t wear these special slippers, I might slip and break my neck. Those slippers are as important to me as a white cane is to a blind man. Our relations are not perfect, but even you wouldn’t wish disaster upon me. Would you?
The neighbour was too polite, and perhaps pitied him too much, to call him a liar to his face.
Not his wife though. Nadia had called him a liar everyday of their life together, sometimes teasingly, but lately only in despair. Was it really everyday? Well. Even if he was exaggerating, didn’t he have the right? The grief inside this house would soon kill them both. He couldn't breathe.
The wedding cake had come from, of all places, a Japanese bakery in Montreal. Yuki and Hank, wedding cake makers. It looked like four ladies’ hats of diminishing sizes resting one on top of the other. Abu-Victor's son, Victor, had chosen the cake with his fiancee, Mi-yung. It was not common to see a young Lebanese man with a young Korean woman. The two had been together for six years and had planned a small wedding with no more than 60 guests.
The cake glinted in the sun like a giant tooth. He imagined Victor in a suit with a cake knife in his hand, a smile upon his lips. Imagining his son made Abu Victor want to tear his heart out. What could he ask of his friends? Would a friend hold him underwater? What friend could help him die, save his marriage, take his life and rip it up and begin again?
Tony swivelled his chair away from the patio table. He looked out at the alleyway and told them: One afternoon in the spring of 1987, he walked into a cafe in Montreal. He sat down and ordered an espresso and a baba au rhum to celebrate the end of the Lebanese civil war. He'd thought, But what if it's all lies? What if it's all in jest? Maybe the war is not really over. But I no longer care! Every single time they say it might be over, I’m going to buy myself something that I like. He’d put on ten pounds, maybe fifteen before he finally realized his plan was faulty. He told himself, These militia pigs are making me fat. What should I do to stay lean? I’ll have to fall in love. That’s what he did.
“You fell in love?” Le Colonel asked.
“Didn't I look good then?”
George said, “It's a city of beautiful women.”
“That's why we stayed, isn't it?”
Le Colonel said, “Speak for yourself.”
Tony didn't say that he'd fallen in love with Nadia. Beautiful, teasing Nadia with her long, piano-playing fingers and her scented, heavy hair. With Abu-Victor's wife, Tony had felt himself becoming another kind of man. He'd tried to steal her but he had failed. That was a long time ago, ancient history. But why had he said so much, and why now of all times? When Tony started telling the story, he'd forgotten the ending. He'd forgotten there had been an ending at all. He stared at the cake, struck silent by his own confusion.
The sobriety around the patio table was unnerving. Abu Victor brooded, turing his wine glass round and round in his hand. George could hear a music crackling from another balcony. His French was only passable, but he thought the singer was shouting, Take off! Take off! Take off your shirt! George wiped his nose. His dark glasses were slipping, it was very hot. When he was a child, the neighbours used to whisper: Poor George, with his white cane and his dark glasses, he already looks like a little old man. He smiled. The neighbours had no idea that women were drawn to his blindness like stars to the night sky.
George slid his left hand across the table, and someone, probably Abu-Victor, pushed a glass up to his fingers.
“Water, George?” It was Tony. “The evening is still so hot.”
“I’d prefer wine. You know what Abu Abed says, If you’re going to steal something, make sure it’s a camel.” The water was lifted away. The stem of a wineglass was fitted between his fingers. “Thanks.”
One of them leaped suddenly from his chair. Abu Victor, no doubt. He never did anything slowly.
George heard steps, the screen door opening and slamming shut. Opening again. Abu-Victor came back with plates and utensils. Probably forks. The sun was making a red veinous pattern, like the back of a leaf, against his eyelids. It was very bright out.
The morning they unwrapped the bandages from George's eyes, he had felt so devastated, he had asked his parents for a new name. They had thought he was only joking, so he had remained George. Because he had been ten years old when the accident happened, he had experienced plenty of colours already and so colours in his mind never went away. Colours were visited upon him in streaks and textures, in tessellations that bandaged the world. Doctors, nurses, adults, and priests told him all sorts of things: how lucky he was to have survived the explosion, how fortunate he was to have the chance to experience God's earth in a different way. God, they said, had surely been looking out for him! George observed the spidery lines breathing behind his eyelids: they made the forms of animals, the meter of languages, the stomping of colours. They were lines attached to wires that exploded but left no victims. 1975, the year the war began, he, Joseph, Tony and Le Colonel, were all ten years old. They liked to tease him, waving their hands in front of his eyes, their movements distorting the colours he saw and making a breeze against his skin. The three boys would pick up his hands and run it over the surfaces of things, the shell of a bullet, a stolen negligee, a rock in the shape of Napoleon, a cat named Foufou. He remembered, most of all, how Joseph, Tony, and Le Colonel would run him down to the bomb shelter at the bottom of their building, all their hands on his body – holding his wrists, elbows, back, head – as they spirited him down the staircase, the racket of their feet so small against the deafening explosions. Just the sound made you feel as if you'd died. He'd had the sensation that they were the bomb falling, rushing headlong down the stairs. Or more precisely, he was the bomb carried in the belly of their hands, about to be tossed into the shelter, to take everyone, loved ones and enemies, family and strangers, away with him. Joseph, Joseph, he would cry, and the other boy would shout George, and the sound of his own voice seemed to call a different George out of George's chest, and this boy, too, would pull him along. To where? Not to safety. Only the next step, the next hiding place, the next onrush of feeling.
But now, as he sat beside Joseph, he did not know what to wish his friend except numbness. The death of feeling. Joseph's son, Victor, had always had a soft voice. The soft voice is always drowned out.
“Might as well give me some wine, too, eh Tony?”
Le Colonel's voice reminded George of seagulls.
Tony said, “The wine is very sweet, habibi.”
“Eat the cake,” George said quietly, “and the wine won’t seem so sweet.”
“Abu Victor,” Le Colonel said. “Is that a new sculpture?”
“New? New from three years ago.”
“How can that be? Have I not visited you in so long?”
Silence.
“The last time I saw you,” Le Colonel continued, “there was also a war.”
“A different war.”
“Same fucking war,” Tony said.
Le Colonel wanted to bring up something from the past, from when they were kids. If he said the right thing, he was sure the four of them would just relax. The present was minefield. Peace was such a tricky thing. And how could they be expected to help Abu Victor? Nothing could replace Victor, who even at 22 had still possessed the sweetness of a child.
Tony said, “George, old man. You want cake?”
“Why not?”
“Yes,” Abu Victor said. “Why not?”
Abu Victor held the knife and dish in his hand. He put the dish down and, with both hands, positioned the blade on the highest tier of the cake.
“I would start from the bottom,” Tony said.
“You would, would you?”
“Shall I do it for you?” Tony asked.
“No, my friend. You've done enough.”
Le Colonel laughed. The laughter felt odd. Abu Victor felt as if the sky itself was staring at them and passing judgment, and that he was disappointing not only his three friends, not only Nadia, but the sky itself.
“Who’s the oldest now?” Le Colonel asked, even though he knew.
“Tony. He’s the first to turn fifty-one.”
“I stopped getting old a long time ago, George. Are you fucking blind?”
“Your girlfriend, what’s-her-name,” George hummed. “I saw her very well. Oh La La.”
“Remember Miss Oh La La!” Le Colonel said. “The little breasts of Miss Papineau. The shapely legs of Mme Le Normand!”
“One day,” George said, “a Parisian, an American, an Iranian and Abu Abed met at a conference. In the middle of their conversation, they – ”
“No more jokes,” Abu Victor begged.
Tony knocked over his glass of wine. No more jokes. The wine spilled on George whose body didn’t react at all. The pitch-black lenses of his glasses turned away from the cake and in the direction of the sun. His white cane, disturbed by a twitch of his knee, clattered to the floor.
Downstairs, the neighbour shouted in frustration, “Mais, non! Non!” but perhaps it wasn't meant for them to hear.
Tony leaped up, ran inside looking for a cloth and returned with a handful of paper towels.
“Was it red wine?” George asked.
“Yes.”
“I see.”
They cleaned up and settled down again.
“Cut the cake, Abu Victor,” George said.
“Yes,” he answered. Father of Victor, Father of Victor. “Thank you. I will.”
The cake melted slowly in Abu Victor's mouth. It surprised him, the sugar tunnelling through his body. Maybe a person didn’t have to know all the things he or she did. Abu Victor felt so sick of knowing, he thought he might be drowning in knowing. And today, more bombs had fallen on those poor, accursed people. What could anyone do? There was no justice. He was tired of knowing.
The fighting in Lebanon had ended slowly. That had been Abu Victor's experience. Actually, for 20 years, one didn’t know if it was really alright to turn around and go home to Beirut. One didn’t know if peace was just an interregnum, a little pause-café, a short afternoon nap before killing, which had its own relentless schedule, resumed. Also you didn’t know when you would open a door and have the past rush towards you with its hysterical weeping and outstretched arms. In truth, he preferred the past to the present. Mi-yung had told Victor of a Korean saying, “To thrive in calamity but perish in soft living.” Mi-yung's parents had lived through the Korean War, they'd been children back then. “You'll feel at home with them,” Victor had predicted, and he had been right.
Abu Victor understood Beirut, but he believed there was something ill and volatile about Montreal. Was it the air, the water, the hard ice of winter?
What made people go mad, even momentarily?
Why did the sun seem so frivolous here?
His son had grown up in Canada. If, in different circumstances, Victor had ever needed someone to help him, he could easily have come to his father, to Tony, to Le Colonel, even to George! (A blind man could kill a person by accident. This had been their joke when they were kids: George could accidentally shoot any number of people.) Survival was that easy. As teenagers, they thought everything they touched turned, if not to gold, to life itself. The act of living was nothing more than taking matters into one's own hands.
Mi-yung, who should have been his daughter-in-law, didn't need this cake. A year ago she had met someone else. Despite their attachment her, Abu Victor and Nadia had decided not to attend Mi-yung's wedding. It would have felt too much like giving away their own daughter. Mi-yung's parents were fortunate; they had three children, but they had only their one beloved, their son, Victor.
Now Abu Victor remembered an earlier incident. He started to tell Tony, Le Colonel and George about it. Abu Victor and his son had been in the car. Victor had just gotten his license, so he would have been 17 years old. They had been driving through the intersection of St-Laurent and Mont-Royal when a cyclist ran the light, swerving so close that Victor came within inches of, accidentally, running him down. The cyclist was an idiot. Completely oblivious to the fact that he’d cheated death. In shock, Victor had rolled down the window. He'd shouted, “What's wrong with you? Don't you see I nearly killed you?”
The cyclist laughed. In French, he said, “Where are you from, you piece of shit?”
Abu Victor had felt as if the entire street, the whole city, maybe even the entire country, had turned to stare at them. Silence covered him like a cloth.
Victor broke the silence. “I’m from here,” the boy had shouted. He'd shouted in French, then English, then Arabic. “From here! From here, you asshole. And I’m not going anywhere! You hear me, you racist shit? We're here and we're not going anywhere.”
Were they from here? Abu Victor asked his friends now. The car had driven on and Victor had repeated only two words: That bastard, that bastard. Victor had always been soft-spoken, his temper non-existent, and Abu Victor had been inordinately proud of him for standing his ground. He'd said it aloud: “Victor, you really showed that ghabi! Did you see the look on his face? I'm proud of you.”
Around the patio table, no one answered him. Their discomfort and sadness felt like smoke inside his lungs.
Abu Victor drank his wine and took another bite of cake.
His son's name, Victor, belonged to this place – to Montreal, to Paris, to Beirut – and the name had also belonged to Joseph's own father. All was belonging. But had a name ever been enough to bind a person to a piece of land? People don’t belong to other people, Nadia had told him only last week. Mi-yung doesn't belong to Victor, our son doesn't belong to you, you don't belong to me. And none of us, none of us, belong here. None of us.
“If not here,” he had said, wanting to take her in his arms, but knowing deep in his heart she did not want him, “then where?”
“I don't know, Joseph.” Her tears had scalded him. “Why don't we have any answers?”
Now he said to the air, to Tony, Le Colonel and George, “If you bleed into the ground, as Victor did, don't you have the right to call the land your own?”
“Abu Victor,” George said. “It was an accident.”
“What is accident, George, and what is catastrophe?”
Le Colonel said, “I agree with you, Abu Victor. But maybe all of it, everything, is accident. Not the will of God, just the unending motion and weight of accident.”
Abu Victor shook his head. “Is that all this is?”
“But you misunderstand. That is not a small thing.”
Victor had been on his way to work downtown. It had been very early in the morning. A stranger had been causing a disturbance, he was having some kind of breakdown, waving a knife around. The police said the man was making too much noise, he was ripping up bags. Victor, approaching from the opposite direction, heard the confrontation. Had he entered the alleyway on purpose? He spoke three languages, maybe he thought he could speak any language. He'd graduated in Engineering and was working towards his professional license, he knew about crumbling cities where things fall down, brought low by shoddy construction, or bombs, or hate. Like his father, Victor always woke early, by 5 am at the latest. Victor had opened his eyes in the bed of the apartment he shared with Mi-yung. He was very precise with time, it was like he had a clock ticking away inside him. He bicycled to work at exactly 6:30 am. He and his bicycle had turned onto the scene. Had his presence caused someone to flinch? The police, when they shot dead the man with the knife, accidentally shot Victor as well. A bullet had ricocheted off a wall and struck Victor in the chest. The police tried to help him. No one would tell Abu Victor if his son had said anything as he lay in the alleyway. In the ambulance, Victor had still been breathing. But neither he nor Nadia, nor Mi-yung, had reached the hospital in time. At the moment his son died, Abu Victor had been awake as usual. He had been sitting in this very chair, looking up at the changing light over the rooftops. Afterwards, the police gave Abu Victor his son's clothes, his bicycle helmet, and his bicycle. The knife brandished by the homeless man turned out to be only a butter knife. The shooting was in the news, there was an outcry, the police apologized, the ensuing inquest called it a tragedy, and then it was over. Everything was gone. All this had happened three years ago, at 6:40 am.
How can it be, Abu Victor wondered, that am I still the father of someone? Would it not be better if I became nameless? Abu. Father of.
He cut the cake cleanly, from the bottom tier, and served a second helping to Le Colonel, who said, “It's surprisingly soft inside.”
“I broke all the bones already.”
Le Colonel laughed but looked nauseated.
So it's true, Abu Victor thought. A joke is a knife. A joke can spill blood.
Tony accepted the piece that was given to him. All through the apartment, Tony saw reminders of Nadia. Photographs of Nadia and Victor, Victor and Nadia. Nadia and Mi-yung, Victor and Mi-yung. Nadia had wrapped the wedding cake in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. Why had she done that? What would she do when she came home and found it gone? He had not seen Nadia in such a long time. She was a good and upright person. Abu Victor might have lost his son, but he still had a home and someone who loved him. Shouldn't that count for something?
“Yuki and Hank made this cake,” Abu Victor said drunkenly. “We should send them a letter of gratitude. We should tell them their cake has lasting quality.”
George's cane had the lightness of a cat’s paw against his knee. He thought the cake was ten storeys high and wreathed with pink roses. He had seen a cake like this when he was a boy, at a wedding in Harissa, a village in the mountains, in the region where his mother was born.
Le Colonel: “Remember that night in Cyprus when we met the princesses . . .”
“I don’t remember a fucking thing,” Tony said.
They laughed.
Tony again: “I've loved the formality of wedding cakes ever since I was a child.”
George pushed his plate across for a third helping. “Tony, what does formality taste like? Do you know the one about Abu Abed going to a wedding in Jounieh . . .”
My son in a suit. My son in a suit of clothes. My father in a suit. Father and son, Victor and Victor. “I really don’t know either.”
Tony: “Are you drunk, Abu Victor?”
“I would pay a lot of money to be drunk.”
“Do they eat this kind of cake in Japan?” Le Colonel asked.
Abu Victor wanted to laugh and laugh. “Every single bloody day.”
The cake was surprisingly delicious. Le Colonel found himself listing the things they had once picked up from the streets. All the sweets he, Joseph, Tony and George had eaten after trading bullet casings, cigarette packages, marbles, anything, with other bands of brothers in the neighbourhood. He remembered all the older boys who had sauntered by with beautiful girls on their arms. Ever-changing girls in ever-changing dresses and ever-changing shoes. Of course they weren’t really changing, material goods had been in short supply . . . But the streets of Beirut had once been kaleidoscopic, alive and more alive with each rotation of the hours. The war had lasted a long time and eventually they had all left Lebanon. Le Colonel, himself, had been the first to go. He had fallen in love with a French girl, and he had followed her; Le Colonel had told his parents he wished to study philosophy, and they had happily paid the bills. In France, he'd fallen in love with a Lebanese man who never experienced the war. Now they had a home together in Hampstead, a wealthy Montreal enclave that had its own Public Security Department. But he couldn’t recall the order of the others' departures. Was it Abu-Victor in 1984, then George in ’86? Had Tony really stayed all the way to 1990? He couldn’t remember. It was a nothing place, Beirut. He refused to go back. Le Colonel was not that child anymore, a boy who could be satisfied with sweets, with watching the world go by. The philosopher Strato observed that water pouring from a spout separates into individual droplets, Strato imagined that everything in this universe was produced by weight and motion. Old Strato thought he could free God himself, make it so that God was no longer responsible for creation: all that was required for life to continue was weight, was motion.
Freed from the idea of God, Strato believed, we would finally be free of fear.
Le Colonel had been introduced to the ideas of Strato when he fled Beirut for Paris, but from the beginning he had carried a seed of doubt. Le Colonel did not fear God. God barely made any claims these days, it was people who thought they were responsible for all of creation. Society was bloated with ego. When he thought of men, Le Colonel felt an almost incapacitating terror. In his entire lifetime, there had been not a single minute in which war did not exist. Peace, therefore, was the grand illusion. And those who lived in peace lived in a dream about to vanish. Le Colonel had been awake in Beirut, but he had fallen asleep in Paris. He slept still, he slept and chose sleep rather than the terrible sadness of waking.
Softly, George was telling a joke about Abu Abed taking a class on the environment. George was a master of comic timing. The other three men leaned forward as one to hear the punchline. The joke was absolutely filthy. Le Colonel could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard. His nose ran and tears dripped from his eyes.
Afterwards, Tony said, “I think I'll leave Montreal. When this cake is finished, I'm going to go home and pack my bags.” He had not been back to Beirut since 1987. He ate a pink rose made of sugar, and found that it was still frozen in the middle.
George took a fourth helping. In their mother tongue, blindness is used as a curse. Al'ama. But they didn't know. His friends couldn't see all these colours and all this sun. All they could see was this cake. He said, “Good for you, Tony. Send us a letter now and then.”
Victor was riding his bicycle down Avenue du Parc, and the world was quiet. He was trying not to think about the wedding. Instead he watched as a pale, liquid light slid over the towers of downtown Montreal. His bicycle was whistling down the hill. He passed the city's centrepiece, Mont-Royal, a hillock, really, compared to the mountains of Lebanon. There was an immense statue, a woman balanced on the ball of one foot, arms uplifted, asking for justice. Victor did not know what to ask for. He was worried about Mi-yung, who was worried about her grandmother in Seoul. They would go to Korea, they would take care of things. That's what he most wished for, to be able to take care of things for her. To set their world, just their small part of this city, in order. One day, he would engineer a transparent building. Imagine that. He flew down the hill, he savoured the breeze against his skin, and imagined himself as an object falling down into the world.
George dropped his fork.
“What is it?” Abu Victor said.
George's voice was almost lost behind the laughing clamour of the young students on the opposite balcony. “Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about the staircase of our old building in Beirut. I thought I saw something that wasn't there.” George fell silent. But he saw it still, a weight and a motion, falling past them. A bird on an electric pole was chirping in an even ticking, like a clock measuring time, and then it stopped.
Abu Victor heard the front door opening. It could be Nadia coming home. She would come out onto the patio. She would see Tony. She would see him. Why did you do this, Joseph? Don't you understand? I saved it. I saved it.
He wanted to ask her, What can any human being put into such a cake? If this is all that God, the universe, nature, Buddha, I-don't-know-who, gives us, what is there for us to add? Let me take it into my own hands or else how can I continue? Tell me, Nadia, please, how I can remove your sorrow. Your sorrow, our sorrow, is killing us.

Free wedding at Bexar courthouse set for Feb. 14

Free courthouse weddings on St. Valentine’s Day, a popular San Antonio tradition for 26 years, are only a few weeks away.
The mass ceremonies conducted each Feb. 14 since 1989 are expected to draw scores of couples once again this year, and attendance could see a boost because St. Valentine’s Day is a Saturday.
Those hoping to participate will need to get their paperwork in order. Even though the marriage ceremony at the Bexar County Courthouse is free, there are other costs and considerations for participants, including license requirements.
This year there are five mass weddings and one renewal of vows ceremony, starting at 12:01 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m., all conducted by the Rev. Joe Sullivan.
Times of the ceremonies, all on the north side of the courthouse facing Main Plaza at 100 Dolorosa Street, will be 12:01 a.m., 10 a.m., noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., with the vows renewal at 5 p.m.
With a few exceptions, participating couples must obtain a marriage license 72 hours prior to the ceremony in which they’re participating. However, waivers may be obtained by members of the U.S. military on active duty. The 72-hour waiting period also may be waived by a judge for “good cause,” and for those who complete a premarital education course approved by the state and who provide the county clerk with the course completion certificate.
Marriage licenses can be obtained from the Bexar County Clerk’s Office on the first floor of the Paul Elizondo Tower at 101 W. Nueva St. The fee for a marriage license is $81 (cash only) and both applicants must provide proof of identity and age as well as their Social Security numbers (if any).

Rev. Sullivan will sign all marriage licenses and return them to the Clerk’s Office to be filed within one week after the ceremonies.

When the wedding is off but the costs aren’t, even with insurance

If a couple says ‘we don’t,’ bill collectors still say ‘yes you do.’
Weddings, as most Americans know, are expensive. As it turns out, canceling them isn’t much cheaper. Depending on how far in advance the decision is made, the couple (or their families) may be left with the entire bill to pay. “Anything the couple is going through canceling the wedding is far more difficult than the hotel canceling the event,” says Tobias Rimkus, director of catering and event management at The St. Regis Aspen Resort.
However, the emotional toll does not change the fact that vendors — hotels, caterers, florists, etc. — are also businesses and cannot simply surrender the cost of a reservation no longer being held. After all, planning (and purchases) usually happen far in advance of the actual Big Day. “Preparation time in the kitchen for a wedding typically starts three days prior to the event, but orders are placed much earlier with suppliers, especially with Aspen being a more remote mountain destination.” At The St. Regis Aspen, Rimkus explains, “The cancellation fee changes as the event gets closer: at 180 days out, it is 50%; 120 days it is 75%; and [within] 60 days it is 90%.” When pricing starts in the $200 per person range, as it does at The St. Regis Aspen, a seriously luxurious mountain resort, even a 50% cancellation fee is a hefty one.
That scenario — a canceled wedding, a big bill — is not uncommon. Americans spend $55 billion on weddings annually, according to IBIS World, a market research company. But a survey of 1,500 U.S. brides done by The Wedding Report found that 13% of engagements in the U.S. — or 270,000 — don’t end with a wedding. When those weddings get canceled, most of the bills still need to get paid — how much varies, but deposits are almost always non-refundable, many vendors charge cancellation fees, and the closer to the wedding date, the less likely they’ll be able to fill in with a new booking, making them more likely to charge higher amounts. And usually it’s the bride’s family that foots most of the bill. On average, 44% of a wedding is paid for by the bride’s family, more than triple the 12% contribution from the groom’s side, according to a 2013 study conducted by The Knotsurveying 12,600 U.S. brides. (The couple pays 42% and 2% is paid by other family members.)
Though few couples purchase it, theoretically, this is the purpose of wedding insurance: To cover unexpected costs like a last-minute catering replacement or an entire cancellation. (Statistics aren’t available, but every expert asked agreed that only a small minority of weddings are insured.) A family member might get ill, a venue may burn down, a hurricane or blizzard can blow in. But while insurance will probably cover those situations, it will almost never cover one where the cancellation comes from the couple.
Insurers offer several reasons for not covering what they refer to as a “change of heart.” Ed Charlebois of Travelers Insurance says the company’s wedding insurance is meant to cover events outside of the insured’s control. (This is the same reason your car insurance will probably cover an accident that’s the other drivers’ fault but usually not one that’s your own.) “People wanting to get married and then changing their mind—to us that’s not an insurable event.” What if it’s only one party’s decision, but the other one is left with the bills? “We’re insuring the couple,” Charlebois says. If one of them makes a mess, then, as if they were already married, the other one might be left to clean it up. He adds that the company is careful to make sure couples understand this.
Even a law firm that does cover changes of heart, does so with a strict time limitation. Robert Nuccio, whose firm offers change of heart insurance through wedsure.com, says that frequent fraud made more coverage essentially a losing business deal. He added change of heart coverage in 2007 because his policy recognized that it was usually the parents who were paying the cost of the wedding — parents who theoretically wouldn’t have known that the bride and groom might call it quits. “We called it ‘Innocent Party Change of Heart Coverage.’” But, he says, fraud quickly followed. “The mothers knew that [the bride and groom] were fighting, so they were calling in buying the coverage, knowing they were going to split up.” The mothers would lie on the applications, saying they didn’t know anything that might give rise to a claim. “Turns out the mother’s not so innocent,” Nuccio says. Since its initial offering, Nuccio has had to adjust the term’s timeline to deter fraudulent claims. While it originally gave couples four months, his change of heart coverage can now only be invoked if the wedding is canceled more than a year outside the planned date.
Luckily, it’s not all bad news. There are other ways to recoup some of the lost costs. CanceledWeddings.com, for example, brokers canceled contracts and last minute availabilities. One couple’s canceled four-star, paid-in-advance honeymoon can become another’s last-minute dream vacation — at a bargain basement price. But, CEO Peter Ulrich notes, the company is still in early stages, so not every wedding will find a buyer. Again, the more in advance of the wedding the cancellation comes, the better.

No matter how expensive it is, almost no one will say a couple should go through with a wedding it doesn’t want. Women with premarital doubts are 2.5 times more likely to get divorced than women without them, a 2012 study in the Journal of Family Psychology found. (Worth noting: “Men’s doubts,” it found, “did not predict divorce.”) Anne Milford, co-author of How Not To Marry The Wrong Guyand a wedding-canceler herself, tells women to focus on getting out of the relationship, not the financial problems that follow. After all, divorces are expensive, too. “Cancel the relationship. Let loved ones cancel the party.”

In Oklahoma, same-sex marriage brings concerns about acceptance and rejection

The "polite gays," was how Tracy and Kathryn described themselves. Not political or loud, not obvious or overt, but understated, in keeping with their Oklahoma surroundings. Never asking anyone to think too hard or talk too much about the fact that they were gay at all. Except now they were about to ask everyone they knew to think about it, because they'd decided to have a wedding.
"Okay, here are our wedding plans, right here," Tracy Curtis said, opening her notebook at the Hideaway Pizza and scanning the friends she and her partner, Kathryn Frazier, had invited to their inaugural planning session. "If you'll notice, this notebook's empty. We need help."
"Tracy, I don't know." Across the table, one friend half-raised her hand. "I just haven't been to many gay weddings. And I'm gay. We're in kind of uncharted territory."
They were at this restaurant because in October the Supreme Court decided to let several lower court marriage rulings stand, which made same-sex unions legal in some of the country's reddest states, including theirs. The next day, Tracy and Kathryn picked up a marriage license on the advice of a lawyer friend who told them to hurry before this suddenly opened window closed. But after a two-minute ceremony, Kathryn, 39, went to work and Tracy, 44, went to a doctor's appointment, and then went home and cried because what they'd just experienced felt like checking something off a list, not like getting married.
And so now, in November, they were at the Hideaway to plan an actual wedding, to take place in a state where 62 percent of people in a recent poll said they didn't approve of same-sex marriage — and 52 percent said they felt that way strongly.
One friend suggested that the reception could have a casino night theme. A teenager at the table wondered why the couple hadn't chosen their outfits a long time ago — "Because, honey, we didn't think we could ever get married in Oklahoma," Kathryn explained — and someone else started ticking off venues. Tracy had a vision of guests holding candles. But centerpieces? Flowers? Music? Thinking of it all made them feel overwhelmed, especially when it came to one question above all: Who would come to this wedding?
A few nights later, the couple sat at their dining room table and went over prospective guests. They still didn't have a venue, but they'd chosen a day, in January, and they'd made enough save-the-date cards to send to 86 people, a list Tracy had written on the bottom of her Bible study worksheet and kept re-counting.
"Are they coming?" Kathryn asked, pointing to one of the names in surprise.
"I don't think they'll come," Tracy said. "We're just sending a postcard to be polite." She looked at another name and laughed. "I just cannot imagine inviting her to this wedding."
But they would, they decided. They would invite everybody to this wedding and let them decide for themselves whether to come.
"It feels very emotional and vulnerable to be inviting all these people," Kathryn said.
"But that's why you have a wedding," Tracy replied.
So the next week, they put the save-the-dates in the mail, and soon after, the invitations, and then they waited.
---
Oklahoma. This was a place where Kathryn's workplace had a cussing jar, a quarter per swear, and the words written on it, "Let Go and Let God." Here, Christianity was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and Oklahoma football was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and people could be decent and kind and judgmental, sometimes all at once, which was why, when Tracy told some Rotary Club friends that she and Kathryn were getting married, she kept her eyes planted above their heads so she wouldn't have to look at their faces.
Tracy and Kathryn had been together for seven years and known each other for 18, but they began worrying about everything in their lives that could be disrupted by this ceremony. They worried about offending people. They worried when Tracy called their top choice for a venue. At first the woman who answered the phone said the location was available, then she asked for the bride's name — "Kathryn" — and the groom's name — "Tracy" — and then, when she figured out that Tracy was not a man but a woman, she explained that they didn't do same-sex weddings and wouldn't accommodate the party after all.
"We had our first run-in with meanness the other day," Kathryn told her mother, Jane Webb, the next morning when they met for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel.
"Well, did you have to tell them it was a gay wedding?" Jane brainstormed. "Couldn't you just say you were having a beer fest?"
"No, Mom."
"Now, I haven't told him about the wedding, and I'm not sure that I intend to," Jane said a few minutes later, bringing up her own worries about her husband, Kathryn's stepfather. He hadn't reacted well to learning she was gay.
Kathryn wondered: Would her stepfather come to the wedding? Tracy wondered: Would her parents come? Her empathetic mother and her ex-military father?
What about Kathryn's boss, Tim? He and Kathryn talked all the time about homosexuality and the Bible, and his wife, Kelly, was the leader of Tracy's Bible study. The two couples had eaten dinners at each other's homes and been friends for more than a decade — but would Tim and Kelly come to the wedding?
The person Kathryn wondered about most was her biological father. He had raised her; after his divorce from Jane, it was the two of them alone in a small, boxy house in the middle of open plains. He was a rural postman and the job suited him — a solitary route that took him down the same path, every day, a hundred miles of roads. His world was predictable and contained, and Kathryn hadn't found the right way to talk to him about the wedding.
Tracy didn't know they hadn't spoken. She sent his invitation in a batch with all the others — and now Kathryn had no choice but to call her father, or he would learn about the ceremony by checking the mail. As the words about the invitation came spilling out, they became words about why she and Tracy had decided, despite all their worries, to have this wedding.
She told him that she didn't think there was anything wrong with the way she and Tracy felt about each other. She said that marriage was an important rite in the history of humanity, something people had been doing throughout time, and something she wanted to be a part of. She told him that marriage, as a value, was American.
He didn't say anything. There was only silence on the other end of the line.
"I'd like for you to come," Kathryn said after a while. She left it at that.
---
The first RSVP arrived in the middle of December, addressed to "Bride Central." Tracy saw it in the mailbox but made herself wait until Kathryn was home to open it. Inside was a response from a teenage girl Tracy had mentored at a homeless shelter. "This will be my first wedding!" the girl wrote, and the couple took the card inside and started to make a pile: three more "Will Attends" arrived the next day, five the day after that.
By then they'd found a venue, a tea house on Main Street, whose owner recalled telling them, "I haven't been exposed much to that life, but I love all God's children," and by then Tracy's mother had phoned with a request.
"Tracy," Diana Lobrano asked her daughter in a serious voice. "Would you consider wearing your grandmother's wedding dress?"
Tracy snorted before she could help herself. The gown may have been an heirloom, but her grandmother was a diminutive size 6 and Tracy was a tall 14 — it would never fit. But in that moment, Tracy began to realize that other people were taking this ceremony seriously.
They ordered trays of cupcakes and truffles, downloaded dance tutorials and made multiple trips to Dillard's, where a white-haired clerk sold Kathryn a gray blazer and helped Tracy find an evening gown, then a different gown, and a different gown when she still couldn't make up her mind. They told the clerk they needed the clothes for a wedding; they were too worried about what she might think to tell her the wedding was theirs.
A few weeks before the wedding, Tracy's parents arrived from South Carolina, where they'd moved several years before. On their first night in town, her father came into the kitchen while Tracy and Kathryn were washing dishes. He told them he had a question he felt a little awkward about asking.
Bill Curtis was politically conservative. A retired technical sergeant with the Air National Guard, he thought that things might have been easier before the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, when someone would know another person was gay but not talk about it. He questioned news polls that said that the majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage. People on the coasts might, he thought, but he wasn't sure about people in the middle of the country.
He also thought that his daughter was a good person who deserved to be happy, with the same rights as everyone else, and so he had packed a gray suit and a selection of ties and driven 17 hours with Diana to be at the ceremony.
Now, in the kitchen, he asked, "Is there a role you would like me to have in this wedding?"
He didn't mean to presume or impose, he said — he just wanted to offer.
---
A week before the wedding, the pile had grown to 67 affirmative RSVPs: Tracy's sister, in California. An old friend in Washington state. Brandon, the 22-year-old Tracy and Kathryn gained custody of after his mother died five years before, would be driving up from Florida. There were a handful of no's — "This is our annual duck hunt weekend," one invitee apologized — but Tracy and Kathryn were starting to feel optimistic. "Maybe I underestimated the people around me," Tracy said. They still hadn't heard from Kathryn's boss, Tim, though, and they still hadn't heard from Kathryn's dad. They'd visited him for the holidays, but he didn't bring up the wedding then and neither did they, and finally, with six days to go, Kathryn telephoned and asked whether he was coming. There was another uncomfortable silence.
"I don't want you to hate me, and I don't want you to disown me," she would remember him telling her. "But I just want things to stay as they are." He would not be coming.
Kathryn didn't ask him why. "Mad is not the right word," she told him. "But I am disappointed."
Two days later, Kathryn's mother called. She would not be coming either — a medical procedure had been scheduled for a few days before the wedding and she didn't know whether she'd be recovered in time.
"It's really okay," Kathryn told herself.
A few hours after that call, Tim stopped by Kathryn's office to ask about a service request in Prague, a small Oklahoma town several miles out of their normal coverage area.
"I told them I'd have to bill them double," Kathryn said.
"At least," Tim said.
"It's about a 50-minute drive."
"I trust you," he said, and soon after he left, Kathryn's cellphone rang.
Tracy was on the other end. She'd just gone to the mailbox and found an RSVP, she said. It was from Tim and Kelly. They wouldn't be coming.
"Mmm-hmm," Kathryn said, staring at the window in front of her as Tracy told her about the thoughtful card the Lashars had sent along with their RSVP.
A few minutes later, Tim came back in. "Where is Prague, anyway?" he joked. "Isn't that in Europe?"
Kathryn took a deep breath. She laughed, and meanwhile, back at the house, after Tracy talked with Kathryn, Tracy's father pulled her into the kitchen and asked that his daughter hear him out on something.
Don't recite vows, he suggested. Have a party, not a wedding — it just seemed like that might be the sensitive thing to do. Besides, he pointed out, the couple was technically already married.

That wasn't the point, Tracy remembered telling him. Their ceremony in October had been done in haste with court decisions in mind. They wanted, she told her father, to feel married.

Good life beckons for St Minver weddings venture

A young St Minver couple are planning to take their holiday cottage business in a new direction in 2015 – by using it to host their own wedding.
Nick Cameron and Megan Brigstocke run the Mesmear cottages on a 15-acre smallholding.This year they plan to expand the business by providing wedding facilities and offering a bespoke catering service – Megan is a classically-trained chef who has worked around the world.
The former 18th century stone barns were converted to holiday cottages some years ago, but now the business is offering to prepare and cook gourmet meals as well – not just for their own guests, but for door-step delivery across the Rock, St Minver, Trebetherick and Polzeath areas.
“We’re offering a wide range of menus so there really is something for all tastes,” said Megan.“Everything is prepared on-site using only the freshest ingredients – we even have our own hens to provide on-the-day eggs.”
The couple are also looking to increase the agricultural element of their business by adding goats and a few pigs.But it the weddings sector that they hope will really take off in 2015.
“This is such a fantastic coastal location,” said Nick, “that people are drawn here from all over the UK and Europe.We offer a completely tailored and individual wedding service to ensure that the special day is everything a weddings couple ever dreamed of.
“We also offer the flexibility of self-catering and catered accommodation, in beautifully-maintained grounds - this really is the ideal boutique wedding location.”

Nick and Megan are due to marry in December.

COUPLE DENIED DATE CHANGE, REFUND BY WEDDING VENUE AFTER BRAIN TUMOR SURGERY GETS HELP

For the second time around, Destiny and Nicolas Brzuska are looking for a wedding venue.
"It's amazing. I never thought something like this would happen," Destiny said.
That's because three weeks before their Jan. 4 wedding, the couple was told Nicolas needed surgery to remove a four-ounce brain tumor.
And if that wasn't bad enough, The Garden Room in Garden Grove, where they had planned to host their wedding, refused to reschedule the date or give them back their $3,600 deposit, so they contacted Eyewitness News for help.
"Our whole goal was to warn future brides and grooms and make sure they don't go through something like this," Destiny said.
The story, however, got the attention of Sir Bruno Serato, the owner of the Anaheim White House restaurant. He offered to throw the Brzuskas the wedding of their dreams.
"When I saw that this young gentleman was fighting something that was in my family, I think my first thought was like let me help," Serato said.
He is providing the venue and preparing the food free of charge. Other Eyewitness News viewers have offered to give the bride and groom flowers, a cake, a photographer and a DJ for the day.
"It restored some faith in humanity that there actually are kind, warmhearted people out there," Nicolas said.
The couple tied the knot back in December in a simple ceremony at a 24-hour chapel when they feared the worst. Now they have a second chance at the wedding they hoped for.
"It's heartwarming to know there's people out there that would do something like this for us," Destiny said.

Monday's tasting was just one of many decisions the couple will be making, but the biggest decision they still have to make is setting the date for the celebration.

Desiree Hartsock And Chris Siegfried Are Married: ‘Bachelorette’ Wedding Finally Takes Place

Bachelorette lovebirds Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried are married after a California wedding ceremony over the weekend. Fans knew that the two were getting married sometime this month, and now they are officially husband and wife.
As Us Weekly reports, Desiree and Chris’ wedding took place in California on Sunday, January 18. Gossip guru Reality Steve had previously said that the two were getting married this weekend, though throughout the week Chris and Desiree definitely made it appear that their wedding was still a week or so away. Their plan to keep their wedding date under wraps mostly worked and fans can’t wait for more details.
E! Online notes that Hartsock wore a one-shoulder lace dress with a sheer overlay at her neckline. Desiree had previously said she had designed two dresses with her Maggie Sottero line. One gown would be for the wedding ceremony and another would be for the reception. Desiree’s wedding dress reportedly had a long train that definitely made an impact.
Sources indicate that Hartsock wore a long veil at the back of her head and she wore her long hair in waves with a side part and one side clipped behind her ear. Desiree and Chris had previously shared a few other details about the colors their wedding party would be wearing and Bachelorette fans will be excited to see the photos this coming week via Us Weekly.
An insider said that Desiree and Chris were very excited to get married and he was amazed at how beautiful she looked as she walked down the aisle. The ceremony reportedly was short, sweet and emotional. The two walked out of the ceremony apparently kissing and holding hands. Insiders say that the private ceremony took only about 15 minutes.
Though Des and Chris’ Bachelorette wedding wasn’t done in front of ABC cameras to be televised, the two had previously said there would be a number of familiar franchise faces in attendance and even in the wedding party. So far the couple has kept mum on specifics regarding where the ceremony was held and what the plans were for the reception and honeymoon, but more details should be coming shortly.

Though there were many Bachelorette fans who doubted Des and Chris would make it down the aisle, they proved their doubters wrong. The two have had a fairly drama-free and low-key relationship since their finale aired and their fans are thrilled they finally got the wedding they had been working toward for so long. Congratulations to Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried on their big day!