There will not be a third. I was his second wife, and soon, his daughter (my stepdaughter – Alyssa) will be married. She hasn’t decided if she herself will remain Ms. Delaney or take on Jeremy’s last name. I ponder last names and the language of Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss as I prepare for the ninety-minute drive to Milwaukee. Shorewood, really, a separate sweet village just up from the city, on Lake Michigan itself. The mailing address sometimes says Milwaukee, sometimes Shorewood. I’ll stay near Alyssa’s mother, in a nearby neighbor’s spare bedroom (which will be fine, I’m sure), for the wedding weekend.
I’ve lived in Wisconsin thirty years, after thirty on the west coast, and I am still California-soft when it comes to the weather, especially the winter weather. But as luck and the calendar have it, today is the 20th of August, so no driving worries, and no fear of slipping on ice after getting out of the car. Those first winters, I will never forget.
Packing was easy, simply two nights’ worth of clothes, plus the “business formal” attire for the event itself. I’ve worn robes so long I rarely pay attention to fashion trends. Yes, I did Google “business attire,” and while I think I’ve chosen well, I’ll let others be the judge, and I’m sure some will. That’s all right. I’ve lived long enough to not worry (overly) about such things.
*****
I married George Delaney fourteen years ago, in Madison, in a lovely little inn on the shores of Lake Mendota. He really was quite charming, and had a bit of a ’40’s actor look – not the matinee idol look, but the idol’s best friend – which I had no problem with, none at all. His grin, oh, his grin, especially those first years. He was so generous with that grin, with his time, with his energy. He treated me well, showering me with attention and affection. A decade earlier, my own first spouse had left me on our fifth anniversary, a choice that stung at the time but eventually I saw as his last, best gift. After that, I had a couple of relationships, plus a few “flash friendships” as the kids say now, but no thought of marriage until I met George when he came to town for a conference. A month after we met, he had moved from Shorewood/Milwaukee to Madison, transferring from his pharmacist position there to a similar role here, and three months later, we were living together. The marriage took place exactly a year after we met. I surprised more than a few of my colleagues in the D.A.’s office by taking his last name. I surprised even more of them when, the next year, I became a Superior Court Judge for Dane County. “Judge Rebecca Delaney” had a nice ring to it, George and I agreed, and he surprised me on our first anniversary with a gorgeous gold ring.
When we married, George’s daughter Alyssa was ten years old. It took a while for both of us, Alyssa and me, to make sense of each other, but then it wasn’t long before we were walking hand-in-hand whenever we were together. Her mother, the first Mrs. Delaney, wasn’t ever warm to me and truthfully wasn’t all that cuddly with Alyssa, either. The word “aloof” pretty much nailed it, though “icy,” too, could have been a contender. But that was okay. She wasn’t the one I married, and, fortunately, she was increasingly fine with Alyssa staying with us during school breaks and in the summer. I certainly wanted Alyssa and her dad to have a good relationship, which they did most of the time. It was mostly positive, and I must say that George, not Alyssa, was the one who slipped on occasion, especially while Alyssa was in the critical early teen years. She matured; he didn’t. It is also fair to say he had real issues, mostly emotional, and worked extremely hard to deal with them via both medication and intensive therapy. It was not easy for him, nor inexpensive, and we were thankful for our excellent medical plans. The “American Dream” – sometimes, yes, sometimes closer to its opposite.
I quickly settled into the Family Court Division, partly, I suspect, because I was a woman (female judges at that point were barely thirty percent of the county judges), but it was absolutely a good fit for me. It’s a tough role, in some ways tougher than criminal court, because there, one can attempt to bring things to a close. In family court, nothing is ever over, and no one is ever happy. I do the best I can, and I feel I am of service — can’t ask for much more than that.
It was a blessing, too, though that’s a word I don’t often use – or any words with a religious sense or connotation—to come home to his warm embrace. After a long day on the bench, seeing/feeling the pain of the adults and, in absentia, the children, I knew I was lucky to have the home I did, the man I did, the stepdaughter I did.
July, eight years ago. I was fifty-two. George forty-seven. Alyssa, sixteen. She was with us for the entire summer. We’d gone to a neighborhood party, for some reason in costume as the three bears of Goldilocks fame, though perhaps a little saucier than the original version. Coming home, close to midnight on that remarkably warm night, we acknowledged we’d had a bit too much to drink, and jokingly warned Alyssa to “do as we say, not as we do.” She laughed, and admitted she’d had half a beer herself — “that stuff tastes terrible,” she said, and managed to squeak out a smiling “Your Honor,” as she made her way up the stairs.
The next week, coming home a day early from a judicial workshop in Chicago that had unexpectedly been trimmed from three days to two, I came up those same stairs to find George stumbling out of Alyssa’s room, stumbling and pulling up his jeans. I raced past him to find her, sprawled and sobbing on her floor. She reached up to me, grabbed me, screamed like the world was ending. We stayed on that floor for hours, not once letting go.
The next night, George came home from wherever he’d fled. Around midnight, while Alyssa finally slept — sedatives do have their place in this world — I got him into the car, sextuple-dosed him on his downers, and drove aimlessly but carefully for an hour before circling back to a pier not far from our wedding site. There, I slit his wrist and dumped him into the lake, tossing the razor blade in after him. When the body was found, several days later, it was determined a suicide. There will not be a third Mrs. Delaney.
Remarkably, and thankfully (dare I say blessedly?), after his death, the first Mrs. D. agreed it would be best for Alyssa to stay with me, in Madison, permanently, rather than returning to her old home and school. I often wondered, but will never ask, what Melissa Delaney really knew about George.
Thanks to difficult but valuable counseling sessions, I learned the terrible truth about his repeated threats, and finally his violations of Alyssa, a truth I’d instantly but subconsciously realized that night. She, on the other hand, was never told exactly what happened on his last night, but I think she knew.
And now she is getting married, at the old small church near her birth-mother’s home, to be surrounded by a small coterie of friends and family, as is the norm. Those people still mourn the loss of George Delaney, “George-the-Great” as many call him. Some, I’m sure, consider me the primary reason for his depression and early demise. Even the first Mrs. Delaney, in her public comments, has elevated him to near sainthood. Absence, and the heart growing fonder, that sort of thing. As a judge, I could have officiated, but her mother wanted her pastor to do it, which was fine with Alyssa. And if Alyssa was fine, I was more than fine.
When Alyssa, a first-year law student herself now — she’s thinking criminal defense but will see what years two and three bring — starts to walk down the aisle, to marry Jeremy, who seems okay and that’s really all we can ask, isn’t it, I’m sure she and I will share a knowing and loving glance, and then she will take the next steps.
Tony Press tries to pay attention, and sometimes he does. His story collection, Crossing the Lines, was published by Big Table and is available in all the usual places (hooray for indie bookstores). About 150 of his stories and poems can be found in print and online. He cherishes walking the streets of his tiny town, and sipping hot chocolate, too. He swears he once played catch with Juan Marichal, and, on a different day, chatted with Alexander Kerensky.
The Orange Rose 