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Two days later, we went to the courthouse.
Larry wore a clean blue button-down shirt. Someone at the shelter had given it to him, he said, though it hung loose on his shoulders because he’d lost so much weight. He’d washed his face and combed his hair and he looked, for one afternoon, like a regular man dressed up for something.
I wore my navy work dress. The nice one. I’m not sure why I bothered. Some part of me must have felt it mattered.
The courthouse waiting room was full of couples. A woman in a white jumpsuit was fixing her lipstick in a compact while her fiancé held her little bouquet like it might explode. A toddler was crawling under the plastic chairs, and his father kept diving after him and coming up empty-handed. Everyone looked nervous and happy, the way people look before they promise something big.
Larry and I sat in a row near the back.
He kept rubbing his palms against his pants. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“You’re shaking,” I said.
He looked down at his own hands like they belonged to someone else.
“I’m dying,” he said. “I’m allowed to shake.”
I accepted that. Of course I accepted that. What else would it be? The man was in liver failure. His hands were supposed to shake.
I didn’t think about it again for a long time.
When they called our names, we went into a small room with a wooden arch against one wall. A clerk read us the words. Larry answered when he was supposed to answer, his voice steady even though his hands weren’t.
When the clerk got to the part about rings, Larry patted his shirt pocket.
“Knew I forgot something.”
The clerk smiled. She’d clearly heard it before.
I laughed. A few of the people waiting glanced over.
Then the clerk had us sign. Larry asked twice where his signature went. Twice. A man who, it turned out, had spent twenty-eight years working in that exact building, asking a junior clerk where to sign his own marriage license.