Illustration by Simone Massoni

Laura Hull and Tom McCoy will be married at the Holy Lutheran Church in Roxbury, New York, on Saturday. The ceremony will be officiated by Robert O’Brien, a longtime friend of the groom, who will stammer through a meandering analogy about how love is like a boat, failing to convince anyone in attendance that love is even remotely like a boat.

The bride, thirty, graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth, with a B.A. in education. The groom, thirty-two, graduated magna cum laude from Penn, with a B.A. in economics. This disparity in achievement will be a recurring source of tension for the couple, first rearing its head during their honeymoon, in Belize, when the groom will take a little too long to calculate a tip and the bride will step in to “summa the situation”—a phrase the groom will coin in that moment and continue to employ for years to come, with diminishing amusement.

Two years later, the couple will have a child and name him Robwood. This is not a name that either of them will want but, rather, a hard-fought compromise between two names, and an early indication that their relationship will suffer from weak problem-solving skills. The suffering of the couple will pale, of course, in comparison with that of Robwood.

Soon afterward, they will leave Manhattan for a new home in Rye, New York. The bride’s father, Allan Hull, a partner at the Hull, Victors & Niles law firm, and her mother, Terry Hull, the V.P. of development for Comdex Communications, in Manhattan, will provide the sizable down payment, but it will come at a price, one that the groom will pay each time Allan refers to himself as the groom’s “investor-in-law.”

The couple will underestimate the difficulty of the transition to suburban life. The bride will put her teaching career on hold to care for Robwood, and the unexpected feelings of isolation will hit her like a minivan.

A neighborhood cookout at the Clarkes’ will end badly when the newlyweds arrive with potato salad, unaware that Judy Clarke is famous for her potato salad. Despite Judy Clarke’s attempt to bury the rival dish on a back table, her guests will find it and enjoy it thoroughly. The capers, they’ll say, the capers just make it.

The groom will blame the bride for this faux pas. The bride will tell the groom to go fuck himself, and to go fuck Judy Clarke, while he’s at it. The groom will ask what the hell she means by that. “I think you know what I mean,” the bride will say. The groom, in turn, will question the bride about her frequent trips to the farmer’s market and the bundles of pussy-willow branches that she buys. The bride will tell him that she likes pussy willows. He will ask if she’s sure it isn’t the tank-topped pussy-willow farmer that she likes. The bride will deny having feelings for Diego.

Distrust will fester in the years that follow. The groom will spend longer hours in the city, where he works as a financial analyst at Rowe & Barnes. It is there that he will meet Kate, a young Yale grad whose smile will remind him of the bride’s in the days before she started wearing a night guard.

The groom will kiss Kate in her cubicle during a company party. He will feel young and alive. She will taste like Tic Tacs and Yale.

The bride will return to teaching, at the local middle school. She will develop a puzzling attraction to Ron, a chalk-dusted algebra teacher seventeen years her senior.

All of this will take its toll on Robwood, who at the age of seven will retreat into a world of books. In an effort to reconnect with him, the family will take a trip to Disney World, where, during a Donald Duck brunch, an emotional groom will confess to the bride about Kate, saying that he’s been a fool. The bride will sip the dregs of her third Mickey Mary with an eerily placid smile.

A short time later, the groom will move to a studio apartment in Brooklyn, three blocks from where Kate lives. She will introduce him to her friends. They will go to concerts that start at eleven. His hips will ache. He will dye his beard a shade darker than the Just for Men box recommends—a shade reserved for Wayne Newton and pirates.

A short time later, his relationship with Kate will end outside a photo booth, when the peculiarity of their union will become evident in not one but all four photos.

The bride, still in the house in Rye, will marry Ron, who will provide the stability that a teen-age Robwood will crave. They will have taco night.

At eighteen, Robwood will have his name legally changed to Dan. Two weeks later, he will receive his first hand job.

The groom—the son of Roy McCoy, a retired electrician in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and Eleanor McCoy, a librarian—will, after years of online dating, all but give up on finding love. Then, at a local Y.M.C.A., he will meet Astrid, a Latvian competitive swimmer with lats like a cobra. They will marry and buy a tiny house in New Jersey with a large pool.

The groom will want children—a second chance after the mistakes he made with Robwood. Astrid will claim that she is unable to conceive, faulting her years of chlorine exposure. The groom will not Google the validity of her assertion, because it won’t matter. He will be happy.

A week after the groom’s fifty-first birthday, Astrid will discover his body floating in their pool—a heart attack during his morning laps. Friends and family will gather at St. Augustine’s Church, in Teaneck, New Jersey, where Robert O’Brien will resurface with a eulogy for his old friend, the premise of which will be that death is like a boat.

The bride will be keeping her name. ♦