The wedding party in the surf

by DRM

A few heads turned, like ani­mals at a water­ing hole. Then a few more, and they started to walk, these hip­pos and rhi­nos, egrets and water boars, zebras and ante­lope that we were packed with onto the sear­ing hot strip of sand between the crash­ing waves and the clut­tered edge of the Del­marva Peninsula.

T. got up from her chair, stood on tip­toes to peer over the yel­low and blue beach umbrel­las that were rented out of weath­ered ply­wood crates. Her calves were tight and ele­gant. I stayed in my beach chair, half in the shade, watched her walk, heels out­ing against the sand in a minia­ture snow-angel pat­tern, curi­ous, falling in with all the others.

There was a wed­ding down the beach a lit­tle. A roman­tic notion, but not sto­ry­book, that’s for sure. This wasn’t the soft white sand of the Caribbean, or the lonely long span of Long Island. This was the uptown beach in Ocean City, Mary­land. Cig­a­rette smoke hung in the still air; tat­toos of vary­ing detail and dis­cre­tion were painted along the stretches and curves of thick bod­ies, bul­bous breasts, creased necks, sweaty and jig­gly thighs; fam­i­lies sat in sullen truces, bak­ing under the raw sun.

That’s too much human weight to wade through to watch a wed­ding play­ing out on a hot day, the roman­tic high­light of a condo-resort pack­age in the high sum­mer, fol­lowed by a ban­quet in a humid low-ceiling duct-paneled ball­room and drunken lust­ful encoun­ters con­sum­mated behind rusted slid­ing doors, on top of dated linens and in the lumi­nes­cent green light of microwave dials.

“They’re going in the water,” T. called over.

I walked down to the edge of the ocean. They were. A wiry man in black pants and a wife beater stood hip deep in the waves, his eyes gleam­ing. Two grooms­men grap­pled with a heavy woman in a sea-blue dress, drag­ging her through the surf, the foam tan­gling in her hem, to hurl her full length into the crest­ing wave. Other women waded in, their dresses bil­low­ing and swirling around them. The men lunged and jumped and splashed, their hoots and hollers car­ry­ing down the beach. The bride stood in the damp sand, wring­ing the water from her train.

We were all quiet. Our curios­ity was trans­formed into dis­may. The beach stood as ran­dom wit­ness to the legion of bathers min­gling in the water with the wed­ding party, all cer­e­mony and pre­tense aban­doned to a child­like glee at the cool relief of the ocean against the with­er­ing heat of the day.

The bou­quet, white and full, appeared in the air, crested and dropped back. A lit­tle girl scur­ried out of the pack clutch­ing it to her chest.

I watched her hurry under the umbrel­las to take her prize back to her family’s spot. The moment had passed.

They’ll be cold and chafe, I thought. The recep­tion will be anti-climatic. They’ll get charged extra to get the salt stains out of the rented tuxe­dos. The woman won’t be able to use the dresses again, $250 ruined before the party even started. The bridal pic­tures will be ratty.

But, they’ll have a mem­ory, a thing, a moment, that all of us will remem­ber, talk about when we get back to the day-to-day trun­dle, and they’ll be able to say, even in the quiet lull of a bit­ter fight, divorce loom­ing round the cor­ner, “Remem­ber how hot it was that day we got mar­ried? And remem­ber how we all ended up in the water? Holy shit, that was awesome.”