Read Online She Poured Out Her Heart by Jean Thompson - Free Book Online

rushed and undone.
    This was now her life, her world, herself. So much had changed. Even the air in her lungs felt different, breathing in so much busy newness.

    T hey had been married in cold December, the week before Christmas. December was the only free time she and Eric had to get married and move seven hundred miles away, given all the complications of Eric’s work schedule. The date was the closest they could come to obliging everyone else’s travel and holiday plans. Still, their families greeted the invitation with an undercurrent of exasperation. No one said it quite this way, but a wedding was one more claim on their time during this busy season.
    â€œDon’t come if you can’t fit it in,” Eric told his relatives, meaning it. One of the things Jane admired about him: he said what he thought, he wasn’t forever worrying about what people thought of him, like she did. Jane assured her family that it was only a little old wedding, nothing grand, and would not seriously inconvenience anyone. They were paying for everything themselves. Jane was twenty-five, Eric twenty-six. It had not seemed right to ask her parents for a wedding at this age, although it was true they did not have much money. Eric’s medical school loans were going to be around for a while. But Jane did not want battles over what things cost, or her many mistaken choices regarding dress, music, food, and so on. It was surely not the last occasion her family would feel entitled to boss her around, but one of the big ones. Eric, like most grooms, just wanted to get things over with.
    In the end, everyone came. They found a Methodist chapel that was available to the unchurched, along with a pastor who made the most tactful references to God, along the lines of God equals universe. There were not enough guests to fill the sanctuary, so they were seated in the choir stalls on both sides of the altar, and eyed each other like the fans of two opposing football teams. A guitarist and a fiddler, friends of theirs, served up winsome Appalachian tunes. Eric wore a suit, Jane a lace skirt and a frilled blouse. She carried a bouquet of evergreens and Christmas roses. She had one attendant, a nineteen-year-old cousin.
    Bonnie had been emphatic about not standing up at the wedding. “I’ll do whatever else you want. I’ll laugh at your dad’s jokes. I’ll dance the Hokey Pokey—”
    â€œNo one will be dancing the Hokey Pokey.”
    â€œâ€”but I’m sorry, you know weddings make me itch. People should just go to the courthouse and recite the ordinance. Weddings are all about the commodification of women, with these awful subtexts of submission and subordination. I’m really happy for you, by the way.”
    â€œThanks,” Jane said. “Just show up, OK?” It was actually something of a relief not to have Bonnie as a member of the wedding party, since now she would not have to worry about Bonnie drinking too much, or wearing something with fringe or feathers, or flirting with a randy old uncle, or rather, she might still worry about such things but they would not have official, ceremonial status.
    As it happened, Bonnie was no problem. She wore a printed jersey dress, drank her portion of domestic champagne from a plastic glass, and did indeed laugh at Jane’s father’s jokes. True, she did ask Jane, as she was making herself ready in the church basement, “Want me to talk you out of it?” But that was just another joke, ha ha, meant to steady Jane as she was being fussed over by her female relatives.
    â€œNow Bonnie, don’t even say such a thing,” said Jane’s mother, dabbing at Jane’s face with a Kleenex. “What was that horrible movie? With what’s-her-name?”
    â€œ
Runaway Bride
,” Bonnie said. “Julia Roberts. It’s all right, she really did get married in
Steel Magnolias
. Of course, later she