“You knew Larry?”
“I knew he was sick.”
Margaret frowned. “Of course.”
“How?”
Her eyes moved around the courthouse.
“He worked here.”
I stared at her.
“Here?”
“For 28 years.”
“Then how did he end up outside?” I asked.
“He worked here.”
“His health failed after he retired. Medical bills took his savings, and when he lost his apartment, he was too proud to call any of us.”
“What did he do?”
“Marriage licenses, mostly.”
Margaret took off her glasses.
“He never told you?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“That sounds like Larry.”
“What does that mean?”
She paused. “Come with me.”
Margaret guided me down a hallway and into a small room used for civil ceremonies.
Against the wall stood a wooden arch I immediately recognized.
“This is where we got married.”
“Come with me.”
“I know.”
“You were here?”
“No. But Larry was, the afternoon before.”
I turned toward her.
“Why?”
Margaret walked over to a cabinet and unlocked its bottom drawer.
“I asked him the same thing.”
“You were here?”
She removed a thick binder and laid it across a nearby table.
“He sat right there for almost an hour.”
She gestured toward a chair positioned beside the wooden arch.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Margaret smiled faintly. “He said he was nervous.”
“What did he want?”
I almost laughed.
“A man who worked around weddings for 28 years?”
“That’s what I told him.” She rested one hand on the binder. “He looked at that arch and said, ‘Tomorrow I’m standing on the other side of the desk.'”
“Tomorrow I’m standing on the other side of the desk.”
I suddenly remembered Larry’s trembling hands.
I had assumed they were shaking because he was sick.
Maybe I had actually been witnessing something entirely different.
Margaret opened the binder.
“Look.”
An old marriage record sat beneath a protective plastic sheet.
I had blamed the illness.
Two names I didn’t recognize were printed at the top.
Near the bottom was a signature that I recognized immediately.
Larry.
Beside his signature appeared a single word.
Witness.
Margaret flipped through several more pages.
Another couple.
Larry.
Witness.
Then another one.
Beside it was one word.
The dates moved forward through the years.
Different names.
Different couples.
But always the same handwriting.
“What is this?”
“People sometimes came in without anyone else,” Margaret said. “Larry would step out from behind the counter and witness for them.”
The same handwriting.
She turned to another record.
“He hated the thought of somebody getting married with nobody standing there.”
I placed my finger against one of his signatures.
Seeing Larry’s handwriting from decades before I ever knew him felt strangely intimate.
The same narrow L.
The same uneven y.
“How many?”
I touched one of his signatures.
Margaret lifted her shoulders.
“Hundreds, probably.” She smiled. “He used to joke that he’d attended more weddings than anyone in the building and never had to remember an anniversary.”
A small laugh escaped me.
Then it disappeared when the obvious question entered my mind.
I touched one of his signatures.
“Was he ever married?”
Margaret closed the binder.
She said nothing.
“Margaret?”
“Once.”
I searched her expression.
“To who?”
She held my gaze.
“You.”
I lowered myself into the nearest chair.
For twenty-eight years, Larry had watched strangers walk into that courthouse carrying two separate names and leave legally joined together.
“Was he ever married?”
Whenever someone arrived with nobody beside them, Larry stepped forward and became their witness. His name appeared on page after page, but never beside the word spouse.
Not until me.
Margaret opened a different drawer.
Never beside the word spouse.
“There’s something else. Larry asked me to pull this after the marriage was recorded, in case you ever came looking for me.”
She removed a transparent plastic sleeve and set it in front of me.
Inside was a copy of our marriage certificate.
My name.
Larry’s.
And beside his:
SPOUSE.
“There’s something else.”
I remembered the care with which Larry had folded his own copy after the ceremony.
I remembered him asking the clerk twice where his signature belonged.
And I remembered teasing him.
“You’re acting like this is a real wedding.”
I’d teased him.
Larry had become quiet for a moment.
