The Wedding Toast

You’re looking at me like I’m nutzos.

Here’s a guy in a tuxedo vest rooting around like a trash bandit. I promise there’s a good reason. Just give me a minute to explain. See that? You’re a total stranger and I felt the need to explain myself to you. That need happens to be what brought me to this point.

"Harry!"

It was three days ago. Her voice grated on me. Not the tone or the emotion. Her actual, physical, normal voice made me clench my teeth. But I told myself I could live with it. I pushed it out of the center of my mind, somehow unaware of the hundred times a day I did this with every element of her personality.

"Yes, Gladiola?"

"Your mother—" Here she emphasized the word 'your' with a stab in her voice, "Your mother ordered the wrong flowers."

I thought to how foolish I’d been only six months before, just prior to meeting her. I had wanted to work in a garden. Not someone who trims lawns, but a subsistence farmer, with my own plot of land where I could grow enough food to keep a future wife and babies fat. I’d make enough money from selling the excess to pay property taxes. In this way, we would never have much, but we would have what we needed, and everything we’d have would be ours. Gladiola showed me how that was a silly idea, and how didn’t I want to be something?

Pretty soon I was getting my hair cut every week. I started owning shirts with collars. I think it was all so new to me that I confused the novel experience with happiness. If I’m honest, it all happened a little too fast to process.

She got me a job with one of her father’s high-powered friends, whatever “high-powered” means. Everyone there was a jerk. When I vented my concerns to Glad, she asked why I couldn’t just be happy like everyone else. I asked myself the same question. I tried to explain myself to her. I couldn’t, and soon she did all my explaining for me, including how and when I should get on one knee. We had a shorter timeline than most, but Glad explained that we loved each other so much, we didn’t need to wait to be married as long as other people.

That brings us to ten minutes ago.

I straightened my bow tie for the last time. It was agony, waiting for the pastor to pop his head in and tell me it was time. Discomfort rumbled in my stomach. I couldn’t believe it, but the main thing occupying my thoughts was my hunger.

Always with the fancy touch, Gladiola had insisted on a late morning ceremony with brunch for the reception. This meant that, because she’d insisted on us skipping breakfast, I had been up for six hours without a crumb, and I was starving. I bribed the catering assistant to palm me something edible.

That kid was a wizard. He brought a paper plate buckling with quiches, salted meats, and the star of the show, the entire contents of a generously sliced avocado on lightly browned bread. It drew my eyes. It looked so fresh, so green, so delicious.

As I lifted it to my mouth, I wondered if it was a sin to eat it. I felt like I was taking a bite of the Mona Lisa.

A swirl of flavors hit my tongue. You know those old movies where people start tap dancing while surrounded by heavenly clouds? It was like that, but in color.

The secret was the rich pad of half-melted butter between the tender avocado and the bread. Sea salt dusted the top. Sesame seeds, toasted of course, finished the flavor with a nuttiness that highlighted and headlined the deep, luxurious waves of green and yellow flavor.

“This is the best avocado I’ve ever eaten.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean this is like world class, like unbelievably good. This isn’t like when people use the word. I mean this is actually at the top of the mountain. I have to see the seed.”

The photographer, a stocky friend of the bride with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, piped up.

“Har, is this really the most important thing right now?”

A picture of my intended rested beside the mirror. Suddenly, I thought back to that morning when I had wandered the house. Glad’s changing room was empty. As in no photo of me. I don’t want to marry this woman. And she doesn’t want to marry me.

I looked to the catering assistant.

“Can I see the pits?”

In minutes I was rooting through the trash cans behind the house. I tore into the strata like an oilman’s drill. As I came across a layer comprised of coffee grounds, egg shells, and avocado pits, my breathing diminished. I inspected each seed with a watchmaker’s care.

“Harry!”

Gladiola’s voice shredded my peace. Not now, Glad, I thought. This is important.

Without turning, I kept pawing through the pits. Until I found it. It sat inside half an egg shell. Perfectly round, a deep walnut brown, I knew in an instant that this seed was the initiation of my garden, my future.

“Come back inside, Harry. All the people are waiting.”

“Gladiola.”

I looked into those brown eyes, usually large but now squinting in the noon sun, and I saw her. Not who I wanted her to be for me, but the actual her. She wants to be married. Anyone will do.

“I’m sorry. You were right. I do want to be something and so should you.”

I tucked the seed into my waistcoat.

“Happy.”

***

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