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The Tall Girl's Wedding
by Todd Outcalt She had been the tallest girl for as long as she could remember. In grade school, when the other girls were hitting their stride in puberty—growing boobs and voices and pubic hair—she had stood head and shoulders above them all, a giant among dwarfs. She was taller than her teachers. Taller, even, than the doorway of the girl’s locker room under the gymnasium. At first her parents had been alarmed by her growth. They considered her abnormal. They took her to doctors and specialists and swamis—all of whom examined her and pronounced her normal. “She’s just a tall girl,” they said. “Perhaps the tallest.” But by middle school her features had blossomed and she filled out majestically, like an immense angel spreading her wings. Her mother had named her “Lisa”, but after her daughter’s shoulder-length hair darkened and her face assumed its startling beauty, she began calling her “Liza” in hopes that the name might somehow bestow her daughter with a measure of new life and identity and also change her fortunes with the boys. Liza knew many boys in high school, of course—but all of them regarded her as a freak of nature. For conversation, Liza preferred the company of older men, for she had the type of rare stature that made her stand out in a crowd. She just looked older. But in spite of her intelligence and wit, she never had a date. Not even an invitation. And by the time she was eighteen she stood six feet eleven inches tall and had the life experience of a twenty-five year old, though love had always eluded her. College came and went, and so did graduate school, but as Liza grew older she found that most men were not interested in her intelligence and beauty as much as they enjoyed the shocking presence of being in the company of a tall woman. She had heard all of the jokes, had grown accustomed to looking down on men (even as inferiors), and had gently resigned herself to the idea of living alone. On her thirty-first birthday, Liza moved out of her small apartment near the university and purchased a modest house. The quaint ranch had tall doorways and a better-than-average flower garden and was located directly across the street from a city park where, sometimes in the evening, she would take walks, or watch the children playing, or sit at a picnic table to read a book and daydream. Liza was happy, though she had few friends, and even though most women leered at her, slack-jawed, as if she had descended from heaven, like a goddess residing among mortals. One Saturday morning Liza was sitting on the front step of her home, nibbling at the toasted end of an English muffin, when a ball bounded onto her lawn. Glancing toward the park, Liza noted a circle of sweaty men who were playing Rugby. She watched as one of the men coaxed himself from the line of bodies and bravely emerged to retrieve the ball. He approached shyly, out of breath and slump-shouldered, his bare muscular torso pale but defined, the sun bathing his face like a halo. As he neared the sidewalk, however, he was suddenly taken aback by the sheer magnitude of her frame. He paused, wide-eyed and mouth ajar, gazing at the magnificence of her body. Liza, often mistaken for a basketball player, though she had no penchant for athletics at all, rose from the steps in a smooth movement to pick up the ball. She flipped it underhanded and, much to her amazement (and the awe of her admirer) the ball spun perfectly in a line, arced slightly, and settled neatly into the young man’s outstretched hands. The man gasped, blinking into the sun as he peered up at her face. Having grown accustomed to such nonsense from men, Liza settled onto the front step again with the morning paper. The young man, handsome in a plain sort of way, staggered back to the park to join the others. He crept away slowly, calculating what he knew, certain that he had just met the tallest woman on earth. Watching the fellow over the rim of her paper, Liza imagined the range of conversation around the scrum: Where does a woman that tall buy her shoes? What size are her breasts? Can she fit into a car? Where does a seven foot woman sleep? How would you like to make love to that? After a few minutes, Liza gathered her paper and retreated into the house, every eye in the neighborhood upon her, the park screeching to a halt at the very shock of her towering presence. *** Later that afternoon, when Liza returned from the grocery with two sacks of canned goods, she was surprised to see a plain package leaning against her front door. Leaving her sacks in the car, she bounded across the yard to retrieve it. There was a simple note taped to the package: My name is David Phegley. I’m the guy who noticed you this morning. I’d like for you to give me a call, if you’re not seeing someone else. He had also written his phone number, and inside the package there was a beautiful porcelain music box that played the theme song from Doctor Zhivago. She studied the situation. It was not romance which moved her exactly, nor the thought of going out on a first date, nor even the wonder of the gift itself—but the mystery of it all which compelled her. Here, at last, was something new, she told herself. After all these years, she had a choice to make. The prospect was not merely a date, but a fresh venture into the wondrous, heartrending world of men. Experience had taught her well: that men were the real oddities, that men were the true freaks of nature, and that most men possessed few redeeming qualities. And yet . . . there was this David Phegley, with his music box, his kind note, his shy smile. She had his number. Later that evening, she sat down in the quietness of her bedroom and dialed. He answered right away, a kind of sleepy voice strained with overtones of sincerity. “This is Liza,” she said. “You left the music box at my door today. That was very nice.” “Oh, oh . . . yes,” he stuttered. “Thanks for calling.” She waited for him to carry the conversation forward, but no words were forthcoming. He was the usual inarticulate frog. “I love that movie,” she told him. “What one is that?” “Doctor Zhivago. Omar Sharif. The song from the music box.” “Oh, oh, that. Right. The music box.” “It was very nice.” There was more stifling silence. Finally, she heard him clear his throat. “I was wondering,” he said, “wondering how you’d feel about a blind date.” “Well, it’s not exactly blind,” she pointed out. “I met you earlier. But I think I startled you when I stood up.” “No, no,” he said haltingly. “The date is not with me.” She was stunned, somewhat taken aback. “What did you have in mind, then?” “My brother,” he said. “Larry. He’s tall, too. I think he’d like you.” “Because I’m tall?” “No! Well, maybe that too. But you’re beautiful. You’re just Larry’s type.” She laughed a bit at the situation and the direction of the conversation. “What’s your brother’s type?” she wanted to know. “Is he like you? A gift-giver, a number-dropper? Or was the music box your idea?” “Larry? He’d never dream of being so forward,” David said. “The music box was my idea. Larry’s kind of backward . . . but in a good way. Listen, he’s a nice guy. Thirty-two. Never been married. Has enough college degrees to get any job he wants.” “And does he?” she found herself asking. “Does he what?” “Have any job he wants? Or does he even have a job?” “He works in a lab. Chemical engineer. Top secret stuff I can’t tell you about, otherwise I’d have to kill you.” She furrowed her brow, thought about hanging up. “Just kidding!” he exclaimed. “No, really. He’d love to see you. Doesn’t have to be dinner. He could just drop by some Saturday when we’re playing Rugby at the park, come over and talk.” “Why wasn’t he at the park today?” she wondered. “Or doesn’t Larry play Rugby? “He’s not into sports,” David said. “Numbers, crossword puzzles, books, movies. That’s his bag. But he’s not a nerd. I mean, he’s a nice guy. Really.” She sighed at the thought of heading into the unknown. She’d gone this far, however. “I’ll be at home tomorrow,” she said. “Perhaps he could drop by the park around eleven? I’ll be at the picnic area reading Doctor Zhivago.” “What?” “A book.” “Swell,” he said, adolescent-like. “You’ll really like Larry. He’ll be there.” After she hung up the phone she sat on the edge of her bed for the longest time, counting the flowers in the window box, wondering how many meetings it would take before she finally met a guy worth meeting. *** The next morning, Liza strode across the street and into the park fifteen minutes early. He was waiting for her at the picnic area, sitting with his hands folded neatly across his chest, a thin pile of books at his side. He was immense. She approached cautiously, yet carried herself with such dignity, as she always did, stretching out her hand at the last minute in order to greet him. “I’m Liza,” she said shyly. “You must be Larry.” He stood, all seven and a half feet of him, and for the first time in her life, she found herself looking up at another person—a kind of Orwellian face with wire-rimmed glasses and a pleasant smile. “Yes,” he said. “I’m Larry. It’s nice to meet you, Liza.” He offered her a seat at the picnic table. “You brought Zhivago,” he observed. Liza sat at one end of the table and quickly assessed his personality. Quiet, unassuming, yet courageous in a confident way. “Yes,” she said. “And be sure to thank your brother for the music box. That was very nice of him.” He shrugged, casting a gargantuan shadow across the table. “David’s a bit impulsive,” he said. “But I can give nice things, too. “I see you brought books?” “Poetry mostly. You know . . . this is my letter to the world kind of stuff.” “Dickinson,” she said. “You know?” “Some. You have a favorite?” He handed her a book. “Yeats,” he said. “Not too sweet, good texture, dry, the perfect after-dinner read.” Liza found herself laughing as she thumbed through the book. She asked him about his work. He asked her about hers. They discussed the usual get-acquainted topics in an all-together tall manner, sharing ethereal ideas every now and then as several Sunday morning pedestrians gawked from the sidewalk near the playground. “I usually don’t like blind dates,” Liza admitted after an hour and a half of engaging conversation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My brother sometimes has his own ideas. He’s forward, much more outgoing than I am.” “It worked out,” she said. “Really?” “For a date based purely on inches, it went well.” He smiled at her in a way she had never noticed before. It was as if she had been invited into some part of his life he had never revealed to anyone. “I think I’m going to ask you for an honest-to-God date,” he said. “You’ve met the height requirement. We’ll start at seven feet and work our way up.” “I’m not that tall,” she admitted. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.” She wanted to kiss him, not for her own sake really, or because she thought she would enjoy it, but for the cause of the mysterious experiment. For the first time in her life she could tell a tall joke to someone who could understand. Sensing Liza’s predicament, Larry leaned forward and allowed her to touch him. Their lips met momentarily, a feathery tap that lingered as they sat gazing at one another. “Tonight?” he asked. “Dinner?” “You’ll bring the poetry?” “Always. Do you have a favorite?” “It’s an oldie,” she said. “But nothing I want to recite right now. It’s too soon. I’ll keep it a secret. Like Dickinson’s stash in the trunk.” “If you let me in on your secret,” he said, “I’ll recite one of my favorites, too.” She had never risked so much before. The light was growing taller in the morning and the park was filling with ordinary people. Passing eyes had already fixed upon them, and they were now the center of attention. “It’s hokey,” she said. “A syrupy poem.” “Go ahead,” he prodded. “I can take anything.” She knew Millay by heart. “I cannot say what loves have come and gone; I only know that summer sang in me a little while, that in me sings no more.” “Edna St. Vincent,” he nodded. “A classic.” She was ready to flee. Her heart raced. There was no room in her life to be embarrassed by his knowledge, or by her own sentiment. The mystery had gone out of the day, and she knew where this was going. Liza stood, stretching her frame. He rose with her, looming over her, expressing his hope for a good evening. “I’ll pick you up around six,” he said. “I know a good restaurant.” She finally smiled at him—the guy named Larry—and he pushed another book into her hand. “It’s marked in there,” he said. “What’s that?” “My part of the bargain.” She watched him walk away, the other books stashed under his arm, and noticed how his stature produced the kind of awkward looks from ordinary people which she had rejected so often. He was grand, she thought, this guy named Larry, with his warm poetry and his intelligent face. She could hide in his shadow for a long time. Eventually, she sauntered across the street to her house, sat down on the sofa and opened the book. He had marked the place with a bit of yellow paper shaped like the state of Indiana. The page had been worn smooth in the corners, slick at the edges where his fingertips had paused many times. She eased back in the sofa and tried not to cry. It was one she knew herself, though only from a distance, and the words hurled themselves off the page. When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book . . . *** A moment passed between them at dinner that night, Larry sitting across from her, his fitted suit filling the space, vast as a navy blue sea. They had dined on crab legs and oysters and shared the better part of a fine wine between them. She knew about his work now, his family, his thoughts on politics, religion, and the greenhouse effect. She’d opened up, too, and told him about herself in honest terms—of her childhood, her goals, her achievements—the kind of talk which made common men tremble with inferiority. “You’ve lived a big life,” he told her. She understood that he understood what he meant and what he wanted to say. That was all that mattered. “You’ve lived, too,” she said softly. “A life of high ideals. Elevated.” They kissed again, this time across the table, without the strain of leaning over something so small and insignificant as wine glasses. “You’re beautiful,” he had to admit when they parted. “Your eyes. Your hair. You’re something.” What could she say about a guy named Larry? “I’m speechless.” She tapped her throat and swallowed hard. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with someone like you. This is—“ “—too big to handle?” he said, finishing her thought. They laughed until tears rolled from the corners of their eyes and everyone at the bar turned to stare at them—this immense couple, heads nearly touching the ceiling. They kissed again. Then he reached out and took her hand, beckoning her to reveal more of herself to him, as if there was so much of her to know, and so little time, and not nearly enough evening to fill the spaces in between. *** He sent her letters. She was impressed with any man who knew how to put his thoughts into words. But his letters were elegant. These are my tall tales, he wrote. For exaggerated times. Every letter was an excavation, as if the layers of his life were being uncovered bit by bit, and she was the archaeologist. I tell you things, he wrote, that I tell no one else. All ignorance toboggans into know. And history is too small for even me; for me and you, exceedingly too small. She recognized cummings, but she knew herself as well, and there were moments which betrayed her quickening feelings for him. She found herself calling him on her cell phone during her lunch break, talking to him while buying new clothes at the Big-N-Tall Store, asking him what colors he liked. Something was being extracted from her, but she did not want to fall too quickly from her height. Once, she found herself writing his name on a napkin at the lunch counter. When she folded it and slipped it into her purse, it felt like a slender thread holding onto her heart. *** He wrote to her, it seemed, at least twice a day. Whenever they met, he had put something on paper—a poem, a statement, or simple observations he had composed on note cards—and he gave these to her wrapped in ribbon or lace. Their hands touched often. Liza found that Larry was a man of subtle wit, and it was his charm that was most attractive. He loved children, and did not look down on the people who made crude comments about his size, but usually humored them with a joke. Later, when she was alone with him in the car, he would cut them down with an intellectual barb, a quip about the inferiority of the small brainpan and the superiority of breathing the sweet, clean air of the stratosphere above the common yokels. Slowly, she discovered a part of herself in him, and found that she was learning more about her dreams than she had anticipated. She hoped that, somehow, he was beginning to feel the same about her. *** They kept company every night for a month, most often at her house, with him stretched across the sofa, his shoes off, revealing a pair of feet that darkened his face like an eclipse when she entered the room with tall glasses of iced tea. He was no longer an enigma, and it was no mystery to Liza why she found him so immensely attractive and enjoyable. They had their work; they had each other. One evening, in the final days of August, he came to her door bearing a new book of poems. It was a thick tome, heavy with the weight of many years. “Auden,” he said. “Collected Poems.” She kissed him immediately, forced to stretch ever so slightly on her toes to reach his lips, their faces pressed together somewhere near the ceiling. “Are you getting taller?” she joked. “No, you’re getting shorter,” he quipped. He sat down in his usual place and opened the newspaper. “Haven’t had a chance to read all day,” he said. “What’s the word? Madness? Mayhem? More destruction?” “Think good thoughts,” she reminded him, having regarded such joy throughout the day: the sound of his voice, the Yeats poem, their first meeting in the park. Rarely, in the past week, had she entertained a distressing moment. Everywhere she looked, she saw possibilities. There was promise. It was as if the world was floating on a cloud and all her days were doorways. They talked again, always of big things, large concepts and momentous events--turning points of civilization. Outside, the cicadas kept a constant drone in the trees. They sipped tea, read, and spoke to each other with perfect timing. “Would you like to take a walk?” he suggested before sundown. “Stretch a bit?” “I think there’s a park nearby,” she laughed. He took her hand and led her out the door, across the street to the place where the trees opened beyond the playground into a wide expanse of grass. Nothing beyond was as tall as they were, together walking across the evening lawn under the expanding sky. “I like it here,” he told her. “This is the spot where we should have it.” “Have it?” “The wedding,” he said dryly. She fell into him before he had a chance to take her hand and offer her the ring. Hugging his neck, she tried to jump into his arms. The neighbors along the street all turned to watch, hoping for a memory to tell their grandchildren—the day they witnessed two giants embracing in a sea of green. At last, after the initial outburst, he felt compelled by tradition to kneel. He gazed, slightly upward, into her eyes. “Will you?” he asked. “Will you marry me?” She’d never considered the question in its full context until now, her life before the moment filling with unexplained joy, as if her body could not contain all that was to come. “Yes,” she answered, kissing him deeply. They embraced for a long time, admiring the color and shape of the diamond ring, unwilling to speak until there was something that needed to be said. “And our wedding,” he said finally. “Do you want it to be a big affair?” “The biggest,” she said, imagining at once the green lawn sprinkled with tables and chairs, their myriad guests happy and toasting their prosperity as the two of them approached the altar together: he in black tuxedo, she in a satin gown of elegant white, carrying a bright bouquet of red, aromatic roses. There would be a velvet cake, musicians with violins and cellos nestled in a corner of shade, and gifts. There would be attendants, at least twelve, each dressed in hues of blue and cream, their accompanying groomsmen dapper in black tie and silver. And afterwards, a delicate dance with dinner and Champaign, a first kiss, a long drive to the airport, and a honeymoon in Hawaii. But none of these dreams would be big enough. Even these would be too ordinary for the two of them. A love such as theirs could only be celebrated in the grandest way. She would have to find a way to enlarge the details. He cleared her mind with his Auden. “When shall we learn, what should be clear as day, we cannot choose what we are free to love? . . . How much must be forgotten out of love.” “On second thought,” she said, “I think that big is a relative term.” “Couldn’t agree more.” That was what she loved most about Larry—the fact that he could read the largest thoughts in her mind. She didn’t have to tell him that their wedding would actually be a small affair—just the two of them and a few guests. They didn’t need an army of people to be spectacular. And besides, their wedding would be an even grander event without the little people. After all, she would be there. So would he. The two of them, and their love, would be big enough. |
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