This is like some kind of fable in which the beginning matches the end. You recall the hailstorm at the end of your last marriage: whiskey, drugs, gambling debts. Never again, you have told yourself. And yet...
This is a truly fine man. Your children have come to love him; they will be torn apart -- again, as they were when their father left -- if he disappears. Your wedding is just five days hence and his arguments are compelling. He was an unencumbered bachelor when he began racing. Circumstances have changed and he is willing to change with them.
You make a date with a couple you trust, motorcycle riders themselves who have been married for 22 years and still treat each other with the utmost respect. They tell you to have faith in your commitment. Romance, disillusionment, joy, they say. This is the endless cycle. So you take a breath and decide to believe.
Your wedding is perfect: a sunny, cool day on Lake Superior. A friend -- licensed by the church of Mother Earth -- marries you. Throughout the entire ceremony, Bach's cello suites play in the background and your 240-pound linebacker son cries.
You leave for your honeymoon by train. Glacier Park, Mont. It is completely remote: no phone, no e-mail. Just the two of you hiking and camping in the mountains. By the fifth day, you are certain you have made the right decision. The man you met in that wine bar so long ago -- the sweet, gentle math geek with the funny pince-nez -- is back.
Day 6, on a side trip to Alberta, you stop at an Internet cafe to download the hundreds of e-mail messages each of you has received. Then you drive to the trailhead where you begin an 11-mile hike. It is on your first water break that he speaks.
"You should know, my friends are talking about us," he says, referring to the racing listserv to which he still subscribes. "Dallas wrote to ask why I'm not racing anymore and Mike posted back saying you laid down the law and if I ever want to have sex again, I have to quit. A few people actually defended you. But overall, it wasn't ... good." His voice is mournful, his bearded face perplexed.
It is late afternoon and the air is beginning to chill, but you flush hot with embarrassment and irrational hurt. You are the mother of teenagers, a woman with a small but respectable literary reputation, and a gang of bikers has been discussing your lovely new marital life via e-mail. Making it sound dirty and ugly. Accusing you of using sex as currency. Essentially calling you a whore.
You open your mouth to say this is not your life, you do not associate with people who talk about women in such a diminishing way. Then see that, in fact, you do: When you married him, you inherited this group as surely as you would have a set of in-laws were his parents not both deceased. You close your eyes and try to adjust to this.
From the glacial valley below a silence rises, thick and clear. And you are simply two tiny people at the top of a gorge, whimsically linked together for life, risking everything, wondering what comes next.
About the writer
Ann Bauer is the author of the novel "A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards."
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