Like most people I’ve had my share of unexpectedly eventful days, like the time I found myself wandering around a darkened Palm Springs hotel parking lot, in the middle of the night, with only a towel to preserve my dignity. Or, the time I found myself sipping martinis in a backyard hot tub overlooking the California coastline at sunset, also in the buff, while conducting an interview about Walt Disney.
Neither of those events even remotely compared to those of Friday, January 6, 2017.
Editor’s Note: This story contains material which previously appeared in the SoCal Yanquee section of TheStorytellerCafe.com.—Kenneth
Despite its impressive name the International Bridge between Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is only two lanes wide. Two lanes made all the narrower this day by snow banks piling up on either side as plows endeavored to keep the bridge open to cross-border traffic.
After being “allowed” to withdraw my application to enter Canada, Jon and I were headed back to the United States. I was struggling to come up with a way to tell the man I love more than anyone on earth why I had just turned down his proposal of marriage.
At least this time I was fully clothed.
By now Jonny was sobbing and so was I. After what seemed like an eternity, I cleared my throat and said, “You know how I feel about you.”
“But after all the disastrous endings to my previous relationships,” I went on, “I swore I’d never marry anyone out of convenience, or…”
Jonny interrupted and in a sweet, soft, melodic tone said, “I love you.”
Thank God traffic was backed up at and at a standstill at the US point of entry…
And there it was, for the first time in 65 years, in the front seat of 2008 Chrysler, on a cold gloomy January afternoon, bouncing back and forth between two nations, the unconditional words of tenderness and endearment spoken by someone who I meant as much to as he meant to me.
Thank God traffic was backed up at and at a standstill at the US point of entry, for it was then that the tears really began to flow and my vision began to seriously blur.
“I can’t stand the idea of us being apart and you back in the states for months…” Jonny continued his last words lost amid the sobs.
As our friend Brodie likes to say, I was first to drop the “L” bomb; however, for the past year Jonny’s every action left no doubt as to how he felt about me. He just never seemed able to express it in words.
That’s probably what I get for dating men.
To break the tension, Jonny slowly began chuckling the same sweet, endearing laugh that first helped lead me to this point in our relationship, “and besides,” he continued, “you still have six months rent left on the lease.”
Through the tears and the laughter I blurted out, “Yes. Yes, I will marry you.” Truth is I couldn’t bear the idea of being away from him for months on end either.
As I kept inching the car toward the border, Jonny madly surfed the web on his phone looking for Michigan marriage laws. He read me the license requirements from the Sault Ste. Marie, Chippewa County Registrar’s website.
At first glance it didn’t appear to be all that difficult. Two nonresidents could marry, and we seemed to have the required documentation with us: drivers licenses, passports, and such.
“There’s a 72-hour waiting period,” he added.
We pulled up to a POE kiosk and I handed the US border agent our passports and to my everlasting regret, knowing he would soon see I’d been stopped at the Canadian border, my copy of the application to withdraw my request to enter Canada.
That was it.
“Okay, because you gave me this,” he said pointing to the form,” I’m going to need you to please follow this agent, in your car, around the building.”
In an instant I knew what I’d done. I’d broken Rule #1 when speaking with the authorities, “NEVER, EVER offer more information than requested.”
A burly agent, clad yet again in a kevlar vest and utility belt both so heavily laden with “peace keeping” devices they’d give Batman a boner, appeared as if out of nowhere and proceeded to lead us around the structure and into a large garage.
Chatty and pleasant enough, after a few seconds of banter it was abundantly clear this border agent’s seeming jocularity was practiced and about as sincere as a used car salesman’s promises during a summer sellathon.
Once in the garage we were told to leave our cell phones and exit the car. I was instructed to give the key to one of the two young kevlar-clad agents who’d helped me position the car directly over a hydraulic lift.
We entered the building and were escorted upstairs to the primary interview area. Our jovial agent told us to walk in front of a long partitioned counter as he walked behind the counter to his station.
At his interview station we were told being a US citizen there was no problem with my returning to the states; however, when it came to Jon, it was the same “secondary” process I’d just gone through all over again and so the questioning began.
Where was Jon from? Where was he going? What would he be doing in the US? Why was he traveling with an American? Apparently as unusual a circumstance on this side of the border as the other.
In the midst of the same repetitive trick questioning I’d undergone, Jon’s interrogator repeatedly asked him if he had copies of his utility bills with him.
“What the fuck is it with these people and utility bills,” I thought to myself.
“I’m just looking for something that tells me you’re really who you say you are,” the Joe Isuzu of border agents said to Jonny.
As luck would have it, Jon, a big fan of paperless billing, had PDF copies of our utility bills on his phone. After arranging an escort through the secured area, Jon was allowed to return to the car and retrieve his phone.
Upon his return, he was quickly able to produce proof that he was, in fact, a bill-paying Canadian.
Now clearly frustrated, the agent muttered a few things I couldn’t make out before loudly asserting the PDF copies were too small to read. Jon quickly showed him how to zoom in on the images. US Immigration must not spend much time teaching its people the finer points of tech use either.
The look on the agent’s face was like that of a Vegas Black Jack player, with a hot hand, when the house, showing an Ace, turns over a ten.
His last obstacle to admitting Jon to the US overcome, the border agent was not yet ready to throw in the towel.
“I’m still not certain,” he said slowly as if stalling. “I’ll need to take this up with my supervisor.”
With that, he got up, walked across the office to a corridor directly behind him, and waited outside the first open doorway. Within seconds he entered the office and while I could easily make out voices in animated conversation, I couldn’t tell what they were saying. However, it appeared to me that this was the part of the process Canada’s Captain Tight Ass sidestepped by having me sign my request to withdraw.
Less than three minutes after leaving us waiting at the counter, the agent emerged from the office with a well-groomed uniformed (sans kevlar vest, gun, and utility belt) man in his late thirties. They stood behind a low wall of cubicles separating the corridor from the rest of the office.
The senior officer, trying not to appear as if he was checking us out, shuffled some papers, spoke to a couple of agents, re-examined the notes he’d been given by Jonny’s interrogator, then took one look at us, shoved the papers back in the agent’s hands, and barely able to contain his disdain for having his time wasted said, in a voice loud enough to be heard back at the Canadian POE, “Let ’em go!”
With our passports back in hand, we shuffled out of the interview room down some steps to the garage, where my car, its contents thoroughly X-rayed and tossed, for the second time that day, was waiting. We were met by the same two young agents who earlier directed me where to park and taken my key.
The female agent guided Jon past the still humming X-ray machine, while I retrieved my key from the twenty-something male agent.
“Is it true two non-Michigan men can get married here?” the young man asked sincerely.
Chippawa County Courthouse, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
He was referring to an earlier snarky comment, he’d overheard, made by Jon’s interrogator when we told him of our plans to marry and return to Canada.
“I don’t think two guys from outside the state can marry in Michigan,” Jon’s interrogator had said just as dismissively as my Canadian interrogator had disregarded my being a journalist.
“That’s my understanding,” I told the young agent as he handed me the key to my car. “At least that’s what it says on the county registrar’s website.”
“We’re going to the courthouse now for the marriage license,” Jonny added. No sooner had he said that than the young woman volunteered directions to the courthouse.
Well meaning, friendly, and truly sincere, these two young agents clearly had no future in US Customs and Immigration.
As we pulled out of the garage, our heads still reeling from the events of the previous three and a half hours, Jonny and I reaffirmed our determination not to be separated.
Following the directions we’d been given, it took only minutes to descend the hill the US POE is perched on, navigate the small downtown of the city below, and arrive at the Chippewa County Courthouse.
“Can nonresidents get a marriage license in Michigan?” I asked a chipper woman I’ll call Cynthia.
“Yes,” she said in a cheery voice.
“We’d like to get married,” Jonny added.
“Wonderful,” she said. “I’ll need your birth certificates.”
Does everyone in border towns travel with all their official papers, I thought to myself.
“We don’t have them with us,” I said somewhat in shock. “We do have passports.”
It was then we discovered this was Cynthia’s first day as a Registrar’s clerk and she wasn’t completely sure of all the finer points of her new job.
“Let me check with my supervisor,” she said before disappearing into a smaller office at the back of the room.
“Yes, your passports will be fine,” Cynthia said with a smile upon her return.
A few more questions and another trip to check with her supervisor and we were sailing toward securing a marriage license and beginning our 72-hour waiting period.
“Fine,” Cynthia said as pleasantly as ever looking down the license application form, “one last question. Have either of you ever been married before?”
“I was married,” said Jon. “I’ve been divorced for six years.”
“Do you have a copy the divorce decree,” she asked, and then added, “signed by a judge?”
Our hearts sank, the decree was back in our apartment in Sudbury along with Jon’s other important documents.”
“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said, her voice now reflecting genuine sorrow, “but without a signed decree we can’t issue a license.”
I’ve never felt so defeated in my life and, judging by the look on Jonny’s face, neither had he.
I looked out the window in the small office behind Cynthia and noticed it had begun snowing again. As I did I could hear the lyrics from a song in the Stephen Sondheim musical Company running through my mind.
“I’m not getting married today.”
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
Join us again on February 27, 2018 for Goin To The Chap, err, Courthouse.
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