I Propose Part 3: The Prestige

The bad news on the caller ID really needs to be set aside for right now.  Indeed, it was bad but I don’t think I really illustrated how bad it could be.  In order to do this, I need to take you back to three days prior to this particular evening, otherwise I would reveal something that you would deem to be “no big deal”.  It is a big deal.

As much as I was getting paranoid about Wendy finding the ring or that I was about to ask her to marry me, it paled in comparison to how Wendy was starting to feel about the two of us moving in together without a real commitment.  The marriage talk and the engagement/future/commitment subjects would come out of nowhere.  This was rough for Wendy, but because I knew we were about to get engaged, my flippancy or disregard for the subject only magnified the discourse for her.

Her biggest concern was that I needed to ask her to marry me, and my biggest concern was that she would figure out that I was about to.  As I had nightmares about the secret getting revealed to Wendy, she had dream after taunting dream about wedding cakes and dresses.  I of course could not tell Wendy about my nervous, nighttime visions; but Wendy couldn’t wait to tell me about hers, both to get them off of her chest and to once again open up discussions of the possibility of perhaps, maybe, you know, what if we just did something crazy and promised each other we would get married so we don’t become another stupid statistical argument for not moving in together before you’re married.

Everything on the television, radio, in the movies we saw, in the windows we walked by, in the billboards on the roads we drove on seemed to have a conversation starter about marriage.  You know how it goes, for instance, we were watching Toy Story, and Slinky Dog voiced by the late, great Jim Varney says: “It’s too short! We need more monkeys!”  Wendy would hear that and turn to me and say, “Are we just not going to get married?  Is that the plan?”  It’s like Pixar had some kind of stake in the engagement ring business.

It was the less subtle ads that we would hear on the radio that provided the best openings.  We would be riding along, listening to a little Bad Company on the radio and then a telephone sound effect would clang away before being picked up by an eager plumber or whoever ready to sell their wares.  Wendy would ask and answer her own question, “You know what else has a ring? Every other girl I know.”  Unfortunately, this would make me laugh, because I knew, hidden in my best friend’s underwear drawer, my wife had a ring waiting for her.  The laugh wouldn’t score me any points, and probably make the car ride much more unpleasant (seemingly), but I just had to keep up the façade.

My paranoia met her frustration one day (three days before I asked Wendy’s parent’s permission to marry her), while I was at work and my wife and I spoke on the phone.

“Steve, I had to call you, I had the craziest dream last night,” she said over the phone. 

“Oh, it’s an emergency,” I said loudly and stepped away from my desk, “tell me more.” I didn’t want my job to think I was taking a personal call that wasn’t important.

“It’s not an emergency,” Wendy said confusedly.

“Please tell me,” I asked with measured concern.

“You’re weird, whatever, I had a crazy dream last night that we were getting married,” She said as though this were the very first time the subject had ever come up.

“REALLY?!?!” I said, trying to convey importance to my workplace, but instead only gave Wendy the impression that I was pouring on the sarcasm to an unacceptable level.

“What is wrong with you today? Do you want to hear about my dream or not?” She asked. 

I didn’t.  But if I said that, I would be insensitive and the call would not only go on longer than I wanted it to but would also end badly.  “Of course I do,” I said with concern, “tell me everything.”

For a moment on the phone, I could hear Wendy weighing my sincerity against her need to tell me about her dream.  My genuine interest must have registered as acceptable because Wendy launched into her dream about our wedding.

“Our families were there with us and we were on an island.  I kept looking for my dress because I didn’t have it and the ceremony was about to begin,” She continued as I, now back in my work station, typed away at an email to a client, half listening to the nocturnal vision my girlfriend was describing.  “Someone told me they had the dress and they brought it to me in a beautiful dark red box.”

“Uh, huh,” I said as I typed away.

“They opened the box and it was lined with white satin.  On the ceiling of the box, written in gold on the satin were the words ‘Bain Bridge’,” she said as she began to continue with rest of the detail.

I about pulled a Denmark Pond and had an accident in my pants right there at my work desk.

“Did you say, ‘Ben Bridge’? Like the box had ‘Ben Bridge’ written on the silk on the ceiling?” I asked as calm as I could muster.

“Ben Bridge? I thought it said Bainbridge, like the island, but you know, I think it did say Ben Bridge with two capitol B’s.  That’s weird, how did you know that about my dream?” She asked.

Had she just tricked me into telling her about the ring?  Did she suspect I had purchased it from there?  Had she gone back to her apartment now hosting our friends and found the ring box and now this was how she was going to get me to admit I was going to ask her to marry her?  Or was she just telling me about her dream?  No way!  She’s a psychologist!  She’s in my head now.  How could I think I could pass a surprise off on somebody this smart?  She eats wee little brains like mine for breakfast.  Of course she’s messing with me.  She knows something about Ben Bridge but what…

“Hello?” She said, seeing if I was still on the line.

“Hold on, I’m trying to think,” I told her hastily, “…uh… about your dream.”

OH, SHE’S TRICKY!  What does she know?  How much?  Dave?  Did he let it slip?  Tessa?  No, they’re solid and would have told me… Would have told me if they knew they gave the secret away, but what if Wendy was pumping them for info as hard as she interrogates me?  They might not suspect?  No, that’s crazy.  Could Wendy simply have the ability to absorb telepathic thought then manifest that data into dreams that gives her a glimpse into the minds of others?  …OH MY GOD… Wendy must be a telepath.  My girlfriend can read minds.  If that’s true, I can’t let her know that I know she can read minds.  But couldn’t she be reading my thoughts right now?  Not over the telephone, that’s nuts.  No telepath can read minds that far away, not without some kind of telepath enhancement device, but those devices only exist in comic books.  I’m sure she wouldn’t have the kind of telepathic power, capable of reaching through a phone line.  Don’t telepathic people have to be fairly close?  What I need to do is use my brain so that she doesn’t.  She’s waiting on the line.  I need to tell her something.  Call this bluff.  Let her know who Ben Bridge is and what they do.  See what happens next.  BUT DON’T TELL HER ANYTHING BUT COMMON KNOWLEDGE.

“Well babe, you said island and Bainbridge is an island,” I began as if I was analyzing her dream, “but there’s also Ben Bridge jewelers, and they probably do lots of wedding rings and stuff.”

“But why would I be dreaming about that?” She asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“I don’t know, have you ever been to a wedding on Bainbride Island,” I asked, with a suddenly bright idea, “Hey, didn’t your last boyfriend live on Bainbridge Island?”  I asked that last question to throw her off a bit, knowing full well that her last boyfriend lived on Whidbey Island, which is just North of Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound.

“No, he was from Whidbey, and I don’t remember going to a wedding on Bainbridge, at least it wasn’t like anything from the dream.  Ben Bridge sounds right, why would I dream about Ben Bridge jewelers?” she asked.

“Oh you tricky little she-devil, you totally know why Ben Bridge is significant!  YOU KNOW I GOT YOUR RING THERE AND YOU WANT ME TO FESS UP!  WELL I WON’T, AND YOU CAN JUST STOP TORTURING ME WITH YOUR DIRTY PSYCHOLOGIZING!”  I thought to myself.

“I have no idea,” I said calmly, “but the box the dress was in sounds like one of those ring boxes we see on the commercials for Ben Bridge on television, you know with the satiny lining and the logo written on it.”

“Does Ben Bridge have TV commercials?” Wendy asked.

“Tons of them, they are all over the tube,” I never remembered seeing one.

“I don’t remember seeing one,” she said.  Was she pushing me? 

“Well, you’ve certainly seen something because it is manifesting itself into your dreams.  Look, I have to get back to work, did we get married in your dream or what?” I asked with a hint of exasperation in my voice.

“Yes, we did, so it must have been a dream…” she said, turning my exasperation into venom.  Her words would have stung, had I not been planning our engagement in less than two weeks.  But I had to play along and fire something back that would stall, yet get me off the hook.  It had to be the perfect comeback, otherwise we would end up going a couple rounds when we returned home from work.  I just had to resist trying to be funny.

“Well, it must have been a destination wedding because it sounds like I’m on a guilt trip,” DAMN IT!  That isn’t going to work at all.

We went a couple rounds that night because on the phone I was both of the things my wife does not find charming, I had been inappropriate AND disrespectful.  However, I had to remember that if I didn’t get myself into trouble and exchange angry words, I would never figure out if Wendy did, in fact, know that I was going to ask her.  By the end of the evening, it was clear to me that my wife’s “dream” was just the product of wedding season over-marketing, because she didn’t think we I was ever going to ask her to marry me. 

Three days later when I entered my apartment with Wendy right behind after I had successfully and sneakily received the nod from her parents, I went straight to the kitchen for a cold drink, and figured we would watch a movie before heading for bed.  Wendy went into the living room area to sit down. 

I don’t know how long she was in there, a minute, ninety seconds, but I do know that it was dark and the only artificial light in the room was coming from the LED screen of the caller ID device about ten feet away from her.  When I entered the room and looked down to see if the answering machine had any messages, I saw, scrolling across the backlit device, the words: BEN BRIDGE JEWELERS, and then two other numbers. 

I grabbed for the tiny device and immediately pushed the reset button.  The other two numbers could have been from the Publisher’s Clearing House prize people and a phone number to David Geffen who called wanting to give me a record deal, I didn’t care, I just needed to wipe the whole machine clear before Wendy saw the incriminating Jewelry store number.  The paranoia in me rose once again.

“Did you see that?” I asked her.

“See what?”  She answered slyly.

“You know what,” I said, stone faced and staring into her eyes as if I was a human lie detector.

“No, I don’t,” she replied now a bit suspicious.

I didn’t know what to do.  It sounded like she hadn’t seen the words, but was she once again waiting for me to mess up?

“Big spider… on the caller ID, just perched there ready to bite me,” I said in an extremely unconvincing way.

“Well, don’t kill it, just put it outside,” she said, convincing me that she bought my lie. 

Had she though?  Had she seen the message from Ben Bridge?  Would I be able to sleep that night, second guessing whether my girlfriend knew that I was going to ask her to marry me? 

…

We were less than two days away from the moment of truth.  We were packed up for our week long vacation getaway with my family for the Independence Day holiday.  Dave and Tessa had come over to my apartment to see us off.  Dave slipped the ring to me and I placed it carefully into some rolled up underpants in the side of my duffle bag, you know, where you put engagement rings that you’re convinced are no longer a secret because your psychologist girlfriend can read minds. 

None of that mattered though because within 48 hours, I will have proved to her that I respected her and that I was incredibly committed to us becoming one single entity of love and companionship.  OR that I was a fool and she knew all along.

The first part of the trip was a four hour car ride to my sister’s place.  Wendy and I sang a few songs and made each other laugh for the first part of the trip, but when a song came on the stereo that got Wendy thinking about marriage and commitment, “Wipeout” by the Surfaris, we were back in the heated debate about whether or not we should get married again. 

These discussions were MY FAULT.  I cannot stress this point enough.  I had been dragging Wendy, a bright woman with a bright future, around for several years and although I told her I loved her very much, I was also a little boy that didn’t want to grow up and commit to being on a bona-fide team.  Wendy had been more than patient and deserved to know that she had a person guaranteed to be in her corner, instead of a guy that had one foot in and one foot out of her life.  She deserved that respect, and she was trying to let me know that she respected me that way too.  The discussions weren’t nagging or because she wanted me to save her by marrying her.  HA!  HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Far from it!  She was showing me the kind of patience you show a child learning how to read.

The problem was, I was quickly running out of her patience for me and the discussion became heated for at least an hour.  I don’t want to use the word ultimatum, because that implies coercion.  But the discussion was getting dangerously close to boiling over even though we were just hours from me proving to Wendy that all the things she was talking about were things I believed in too.  My simple replies for us to wait just a little bit longer were just too vague to count.  My credibility had started to run dry, much like our gas tank.  So, needing gas and a breather from the cockpit, I hopped out of the car to tank up at the next Freeway exit. 

Tired of the conversation, with the woman I loved sitting tormented and upset from my seemingly lack of lack of ability to commit, I opened the hatch to the luggage in the back of my station wagon.  As the gas pumped into the tank, I found my duffle bag and extracted the engagement ring box and stealthily pushed it into the left front pocket of my jean shorts.  … Like you never had jean shorts.

Fully fueled, we got right back out onto the Freeway and right back into our conversation.  No amount of apologies or assurances could keep Wendy from arriving back to the same point again and again.  Steve was not going to ask Wendy to marry her anytime soon.  This made Wendy tremendously sad, and when you’re tremendously sad, you hurt and become angry.  When you’re angry, you lash out and say hurtful things.  Wendy was justified to be sad, and I couldn’t take it anymore.  I wanted her suffering to be over even if I had to pull off and propose at the next truck stop mini-mart. 

We sat in silence as we drove at what Wendy believed was an impasse.  There was nothing more to say.  I could hear Wendy’s mind racing in her head.  Tears were streaming down her face as she was surely contemplating whether to continue to foster the love of a man who wished to remain a boy, or just give up and find someone who wasn’t this kind of trouble.

Wendy was confused when I pulled off on another exit so soon after the last one where we re-fueled.  The ring box was warm against my leg. 

“Trust me,” I said, hoping she understood that I meant “trust me, I’m going to make you so happy, so much sooner than you expect,” rather than, “trust me, I think I forgot to remove the nozzle from the last gas station and the hose has been dragging behind our car for thirty miles.”  But seeing as how she twisted in her seat to look behind us, I knew it was the latter.

I parked the car in front of the mini-mart.  This was it.  End her pain.  Take out the ring and ask her to marry you, don’t make her suffer anymore. 

I sat there for a minute, next to Wendy, feeling the ring in my pocket, so ready to end this pain for both of us by proposing to my girlfriend at a… at a place that smells like corndogs cooked with cigarettes.  I was seriously thinking about proposing to the woman I love in front of a place where people take a key attached to a hubcap to use to get into a restroom.  A place where any meal you purchase will have some part of it either fried or made of candy.  No.  No I will not.  I will stick to the plan. 

Instead, I purchased a mental Band-Aid.  I went in and picked up an audio book on cassette to occupy our minds until we reached our destination and then, the next day, the plan would come together as it should, as Wendy deserved.  I stashed the ring back in the duffle bag. 

The detective story seemed to work.  We both listened closely and it carried us all the way to my sister’s where Wendy and I exchanged apologies and kisses and turned in for some much needed shut eye.  Apologies and kisses aside, I figured I conveniently had only one more day worth of credit before Wendy called in my marker and severed ties with me forever.

My sister, Somer, was in on the surprise and a key part of the misdirection, though after our car ride, I didn’t think there would need to be much in the way of subterfuge.  Her job was to suggest a destination off the beaten path to our rendezvous with my parents at a vacation rental.  After a delicious breakfast at my sister’s favorite pancake house, we followed her to a gas station that served as a crossroads for where we needed to go.  The three of us debated as we gassed up.

“We have about six hours to kill before Mom and Dad show up to the house and get the keys,” said Somer, “why don’t we go out to the cape?” She did exactly as I instructed.

“Nah, I’d like to get into town early in case Mom and Dad show up,” I protested, but Somer wasn’t ready for me to disagree.

“I’ve never been out to the cape,” Wendy said, eager to see something new in time that we had enough of, “what’s out there?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Lots of stuff,” my sister said annoyed that I was going off-script.

“Please? We have time, I haven’t ever been out there.  Is this the place with the tree?” Wendy asked.

“Okay, fine.  Let’s go,” I said with false assertion, “sure, we can see the tree.”  I was now certain that there was no way my girlfriend would figure I was going to propose to her at a place I didn’t even want to go to.  My confidence was back.  I was so glad I didn’t propose to my girlfriend at a place that sold caffeine in pill form.

The drive to the state park was winding but very beautiful.  The sun was breaking through the early morning mists and pushing the clouds far away.  Wendy held my hand and smiled up at me as I pointed out several historical points of interest.  The scenery was appearing to me as if it had been filmed through a romantic filter on a wide angle lens and then projected back across my field of vision.  I was capturing every moment with delicate care.

We turned off the main road to the state park access road that led us through a lush, evergreen forest.  Rays of sunshine pierced the coniferous branches and dotted the ferns and moist soil of the forest floor.

“Steve, I’ve been here before,” Wendy said to me, not really believing it herself.

“No you haven’t,” I said casually.

“Yes, I have, I’m having the craziest Déjà vu moment here,” Wendy exclaimed. 

Did she know what was about to happen?  Is she messing with me?  Of course she knows.  The Ben Bridge dream and then the caller ID.  She knew I almost proposed to her last night too.  She knows and she’s just trying to let you know before you pop the question. 

My face soured a little as I let these dark thoughts take hold of me.  “No!” I thought, “Impossible!  Stick with the plan!”

We parked the cars and got out to do some exploring.  I had the ring in my pocket and I only had to keep her from noticing.  I brought a disposable camera too.  It was a park that I had been introduced to by an old girlfriend’s family and I had always been fond of its beauty.  I had always held in the back of my mind that it would be the perfect place to get engaged, as long as it wasn’t socked in with fog, which it frequently was.  On this particular day, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

The three of us walked down a short inclined path to the big destination of the park and we marveled at the view.  We went in the structure and milled about the gift shop until the upstairs was completely empty.  I nodded casually at my sister to take her position at the base of the stairs and she made her way over there to run interference.

“What do you say? Do you want to go up?” I asked Wendy, gesturing to the staircase.

“Sure,” she said and made her way with me up the very steep, narrow staircase of the small Oregon Coast Lighthouse at Cape Mears. 

We reached the conical glass room where the lenses were polished to an impossible shine.  Although the lighthouse is short, we felt as if we towered over the crashing waves on the rocks below us.  The sun warmed our faces and the blue to white haze of the sky met the enormous Pacific Ocean in a panoramic vision that had inspired souls both before and after us that day.

I was alone with Wendy and stood behind her with my arms wrapped around her.  I pressed my face into the hair behind her ear as we looked out over the amazingly perfect scene.  She pressed back and squeezed my arms. 

“Are you happy?” I asked her. 

Her eyes were closed and she answered from a satisfied smile, “yes.”

“Wendy, I love you.  You’re the most important person to me.  You’re the only person I ever want to be with for the rest of my life.  I want you to know that I will always be true to you because you’re my best friend,” I said to her.

“I love you too Steven,” She began, but turned to see why I had let go of her.

I knelt before her and began to speak as I lifted the box with the ring up for her to see, “Will you do me the honor of marrying m…” I said, almost completing the sentence.

Upon seeing the ring exposed and realizing her surroundings, Wendy snatched the ring from my hand as a hungry, hungry hippo would snatch a little white marble off of a smooth plastic game board.

She wrapped her arms around me and said, “Yes! YES! Of Course!” all the while clutching the ring box in both hands.

“Would you mind telling me why you grabbed the ring out of my hands?”  I asked her after a moment of embracing.

“The grating on the floor.  I didn’t want the ring to fall through the grating and get lost,” she said. 

“Ah, I understand,” I said, “would you like to take a look at it?”

“Let’s be careful,” she said opening the box and marveling at the humbleness of the stones and letting me know that she thought it was beautiful.  “It’s perfect,” she said as I carefully slipped it onto her finger.

We stood there together and both cried as we soaked up the last few private moments in the top of the lighthouse.  A couple had muscled their way past my sister, too impatient to wait another minute for us to head down ourselves.

They arrived on the deck and looked at us as we finished our “I love you’s” to each other. 

“Been there, done that,” said the woman as she turned away from us.  It was a wonderful first blessing of our engagement.

We arrived back down in the gift shop to applause and my sister who was waiting to fight the slightly older couple that had interrupted us.  “I told them that you were getting engaged, and they didn’t care, they just pushed on past me,” said Somer.

Not only had the sky cleared up from all the morning clouds, but with the simple request for a commitment to love each other, all of the doubts or questions about the relationship between Wendy and me seemed to drift away.  Doubt was replaced with trust and the emotional credit that I had been borrowing against was almost wiped completely clean. 

When I think back to that perfect day with my wife, I’m always reminded of her patience and how she believed in me even when I did not believe there was anything that needed to be believed in.  I expressed my love with my commitment to Wendy, and Wendy expressed her love with her commitment to gain my commitment.  She’s still my biggest believer, and that’s the Damm truth.