1981, Niagara Falls, Canada

By Felice Prager

Sam and I aren’t married yet. We will be married someday; we just aren’t married yet. We haven’t even discussed marriage. I’m not in a hurry. He’s not in a hurry. Things are good. Things are so good that Sam has moved in. I’m happy. He’s happy. His cats are happy. My dog is happy. The bills are paid. The refrigerator is full. The sky is blue. Life is good.

But there is a little problem: Marriage is on Sam’s mind. I seem to be oblivious to his hints. I’m in a cloud. We are still learning about each other and I can’t always tell what he’s thinking. I am in love and thrilled that this relationship is so easy.

We’ve both arranged for the same vacation time and have planned our first trip together. Our itinerary is to drive through New York state to Niagara Falls, then drive up to Toronto, head south through the Thousand Islands area, and then drive back to New Jersey through the Finger Lakes. I’m thinking of it as a romantic adventure with Sam; Sam is looking at it as a pre-honeymoon, and I miss all the signals.

I have not yet developed the intuition of a wife or mother. That comes with time and stretch marks. I know nothing about signs, hunches, or gut feelings. At least I do not recognize them. Things don’t gnaw at me yet. Things don’t play themselves over and over in my mind until I have to wake Sam up in the middle of the night because something pissed me off six hours earlier. Sam has a plan, and I’m lost in dense fog as we head north to our winter wonderland.

When we leave for our trip, there is snow piled on the side of roads and salt stains are on cars. Our heavy jackets are thrown onto the back seat, and the heat is roaring inside the car. Yet I am so oblivious to Sam’s plan that traveling NORTH in the WINTER to CANADA where it is COLD doesn’t even make me raise an eyebrow.

We are headed in the general direction of Niagara Falls. Our plan is to drive through the New York side, and then drive to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

Sam is driving; I’m navigating.

For the record, the Niagara Falls are blow-your-eardrums-out loud. They are powerful. As you approach Niagara Falls, you can hear the noise. You hear pounding, rushing forces of water pushing off a mountain, crashing into the rocks below. They are raging, screaming loud. Imagine trying to talk while a subway screams past you in your living room. Imagine having a conversation while 20 million buffalo run through your bathroom. I have read that people who are deaf can feel Niagara’s vibrations.

So when Sam pulls over and says I picked the wrong turn-off to Niagara Falls, I tell him I didn’t. He sits there with the sounds and vibrations of Niagara Falls booming behind him, and Sam screams, “YOU MISSED THE TURN!” He continues screaming, “You are not always right, you know!”

I look up from the map, amazed. “Don’t you hear anything?” I scream, calmly.

“Give me the map,” he says.

“You are ridiculous,” I reply, continuing to cup my hands around my ears.

“You know, I was going to propose to you this week, but I don’t think I can live with such a know-it-all,” he mumbles under his breath, loud enough for me to hear, even with Niagara Falls thundering in the background.

“Just drive for a few more minutes,” I say.

The rest is history. Five minutes later, we are driving past Niagara Falls. Sam is saying, “I knew we were almost here. Good thing I didn’t listen to your directions!” I ignore him.

We continue driving, watching the beauty of nature from our frosted-over windows. Horseshoe Falls. Bridal Veil Falls. “Interesting name,” I think. Nothing registers.

In the winter, Niagara Falls has a different appearance than it does on postcards and in travel brochures. The water freezes, forming beautiful ice creations on many precipices. Also, there are NO tourists this time of year, except us. It’s too cold for tourists. You have to be crazy to visit Niagara Falls in the winter.

There is also something else very different.

Now, I know Sam’s ulterior motive for the trip. The secret is out! Sam has, in his moment of moronic rage, spilled the beans. I’m not sure if Sam remembers what he said in his side-of-the-road temper-tantrum, but I certainly do. I heard it loud and clear over Niagara’s pounding, ear-shattering, deafening cacophony.

Suddenly, to me, this trip is different. Before, I was traveling with my boyfriend, my roommate, my best friend. Now I’m with someone who wants to live with me for better or for worse, forever after, until death us do part. Before I was relaxed; now I’m wheezing.

We find and check into our motel. On the surface, everything looks acceptable. It looks clean and things match. Bedspread and curtains are of the same color family. I am afraid to look under the bed. I will not stretch out on the carpet to do my sit-ups, but walking across it doesn’t seem to be too disgusting, as long as I have shoes on.

As I get further into the room, I notice the picture over the bed, an oil painting of a hill and a field, and in the distance, Niagara Falls. It makes sense that they put a picture of Niagara Falls in a room near Niagara Falls. It would be silly to put a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Acropolis in this motel room. The hill and field in front of Niagara Falls has me wondering, but, that’s artistic license.

I’m imagining the exact same picture hangs in every room in this motel, when I notice something strange about our picture. There is some dirt or something in the field below the hill. I put on my glasses to get a better look. It seems some previous resident took a pencil to this picture and added little X-rated stick figures, little stick figure characters doing things in positions that defy gravity and the laws of science. There are anatomically-gifted male stick figures and well-endowed female stick figures frolicking on a hillside near Niagara Falls, with their exaggerated teeny-tiny privates sticking way out!

Discovering the stick figures puts Sam and me in much better moods. We’re laughing, and he’s my best friend again. We forget the side-of-the-road argument. We are both hungry. I decide to take a quick hot bath to warm up.

Sam turns on the TV to check out Canadian broadcasts. Sam cannot be in a room without a TV on. It is still the first thing he does when he comes home from work. The TV runs constantly in our home, even when there is no one in the room. I walk through the house turning off the unwatched televisions, only to find them on again five minutes later with, once again, no one watching them.

I wash the bathtub using a lot of disinfectant. I fill the tub and add the scented bubble bath I brought with me. I get in to relax for a few minutes. I have my hair piled high on my head. My eyes are closed as I soak in the moment and relax. I am very comfortable.

Then it happens.

“Honey?” says Sam, who is standing in the doorway. He is not in the bathroom and not in the bedroom but sort of halfway here and halfway there with his eyes on the TV.

“What, Sam?”

“Want to get married?”

Now this is said with the same type of romance as, “Honey, I’m going down the hall to get a bucket of ice,” or “Honey, when was the last time you had the oil changed in the Toyota?” He is not even in the room. He is in the stupid doorway. He is not even looking at me.

“I’m in the tub, Sam!”

“Oh, OK,” he replies. He plops down on the bed to watch a rerun of “One Day at a Time” while I bathe.

I sit in the tub contemplating what just happened. Sam’s romantic nature may be stretching itself to the limit at this point, but no one can be sure. Then again, I could be hallucinating.

A little while later we are at the motel’s restaurant. Everything matches here, too. Tables match the carpet. Carpet matches the window treatment. Window treatment matches the waitresses’ uniforms. In fact, the colors are identical to our room. There is even the same painting over our table, although it lacks the creative anatomically-gifted stick figures. We both notice it.

It’s the level of cleanliness in this place that worries me. I mention this to Sam and he says, “I know it isn’t your mother’s kitchen. Jeez. Stop being such a clean freak. We’re on vacation.”

So I go with the punches. To be safe, I stick with something basic to eat: “Grilled Cheese. Fries. Diet Coke.”

Then Sam orders. “Baby back ribs—the all-you-can-eat special.”

“Are you sure?” I ask Sam.

“I’m really starved. I haven’t eaten since New Jersey.”

Fact of significance: Sam finishes not only one large rack, but two and a half large racks of ribs. My comment that the ribs look a little funny doesn’t impair his appetite.

Then the romantic side of Sam once again shifts into overdrive. Sam decides that we should go for a little walk to work off the meal and to see Niagara Falls. Sam nixes my idea of getting the car and driving over. We walk a few blocks. The closer we get to it, the louder it gets, the windier it gets, and the colder it gets.

Sam mentions something about having an upset stomach. I tell him he ate too much. The more we walk, the colder and crankier I get.

I see the Falls. It looks like Niagara Falls, only semi-frozen. It’s getting dark. Sam snaps some pictures with me and Niagara. I snap a few of Sam and Niagara. There is no one there to preserve this moment for us with the two of us together in one picture with Niagara Falls behind us. No one is crazy enough to visit Niagara Falls at this time of year, this time of day, in this ridiculous cold.

I begin to worry about frostbitten appendages. All I want to do is get back to the motel, to soak in another hot tub, to warm up. My feet hurt. My toes hurt. My fingers hurt. I am imagining blackened toes. My nostrils are frozen together. My ears hurt. I want to leave. I tell this all to Sam. I am not in a good mood. I am not happy.

At this point, romantic Sam, yelling over Niagara’s rage, chooses to ask me once more, “Want to get married?”

I look at him. I am sure I heard him right this time!

First, he threatens not to propose while we fight about directions to Niagara Falls. Next, he proposes through the bathroom doorway while he’s watching TV and I’m taking a bath. And now, while I am freezing alive in subzero weather with my nostrils frozen shut helping me to suffocate, he proposes once again.

I have to answer him, but my teeth are chattering. It hurts when the air goes down my windpipes. My eyes are tearing; icicles are forming on my cheeks and they are not the classic tears of joy one might expect. I’m thinking that this is about as romantic as Sam can muster: Niagara Falls in the background, the two of us together on a vacation, a romantic motel room with pornographic pencil drawings above the bed’s headboard.

As I’m about to chatter out an answer, Sam loses all the color in his face. He turns bright green, and then Sam vomits over the railing into the frozen Niagara Falls below.

Then he vomits some more.

He vomits all the way back to the motel, all through the night, and never once asks me to marry him again on that trip.

The 10-day trip that we so diligently planned and looked forward to suddenly comes to a screeching halt, and we are heading home to New Jersey. Sam is really too sick to have fun. This time I am driving with Sam stretched out on the back seat groaning about how awful his stomach feels and that I should have stopped him from eating the ribs.

And now I am pissed.

Really pissed.

Before this trip I hadn’t given a single thought to getting married. Sam puts the thought in my head and then cruelly pulls it off life support. All the way home I drive, being incredibly angry with Sam. I replay the scene of him calling me a clean freak. Then I replay him vomiting over the railing into the pounding waters of Niagara. I even embellish the story in my mind by having the vomit freeze midway down before it hits the water below.

I have hundreds of miles to drive and aggravate myself about my almost-proposal. I mumble under my breath, while Sam writhes in self-inflicted pain. I have no pity. I manage to drive on every torn up road from Canada to New Jersey, and I speed joyfully over every speed bump. I deliberately swerve and take corners on two wheels.

Twenty-five years later, I still remind Sam that I never actually said, “Yes,” to any of his proposals. Then I suggest going out for ribs.

Felice Prager, a freelance author from Arizona, is seeking representation for her book, Waiting in the Wrong Line - a collection of essays about her adventures with Sam. The Proposal is part of this collection, and Felice swears that not one word of it is exaggerated. Please visit her website, WriteFunny!