A Legacy Project

We were sitting on the edge of the bed. We’d been married for ten hours. The Hotel Pontchartrain in Detroit offered a honeymoon package: a wedding suite, a chilled bottle of champagne. We’d bought that package. We’d been in the room for ten minutes now. It was nice enough. But where was the champagne?

“I’ll call downstairs,” I said. Neither of us was big on champagne. We’d probably had an Asti toast at the reception. But it was the principle, it was the moment, THE moment. To pop the cork would have been to christen the marriage. We’d have our own private toast, to our love, or something hoaky like that.

The receptionist said, “Very sorry, sir. We’ll send it right up.” 

In the movies, there would have been a gentle knock on the door. Outside, a uniformed guy would have been standing next to a cart with an ice bucket on it, inside the bucket our champagne. We sat and waited. I took off my rented shoes. Tizi said, “You’re not going to walk around on the carpet in your stocking feet, are you?” I put my rented shoes back on. Ten minutes went by, fifteen, twenty. No knock. No guy. No cart and no ice bucket. We were waiting. 

It’s hard to imagine now, but consummation hundreds of years ago was often witnessed. People accompanied the newly married couple to their marriage bed, sometimes even the priest. They hung out there and waited to see or hear evidence of the fact that, how to put this delicately, sexual congress had occurred, Then the marriage was legal. We were waiting for Bradley or Tyrone or Yuseff to briefly join us upstairs for a chaste exchange–a prim glance one man to another, a bottle of spirits, and a five dollar tip. Then, to business.

The champagne never arrived. After thirty minutes, which seemed eternal, I called downstairs and said forget out it. It was after 1:00 a.m. It was after a long day. It was after three months of planning. We were incredibly tired. We made it fast and went to sleep.