Another Marvelous Thing (11 page)

“I think this should not be a little parting,” said Billy, whose command over her voice was far from total. Their previous separations had lasted a month at best.

“It's probably for the best,” Francis finally said. “I guess this couldn't go on indefinitely.” He did not say it with conviction.

The raw weather had turned to rain. Francis and Billy sat on the sofa side by side in the dim light. Love made strange bedfellows, Billy thought, and then did absolutely nothing to help them out.

Five miles off the country blacktop was the dirt road called Old Wall Lane. It began in the state forest and ended on the border of old Mrs. Stern's property. Grey felt there were two ways to take this road: to whip around its corners at rather high speed raising a cloud of dust, or to slide down it in neutral since it was downhill all the way. Grey took the gentle course.

Halfway down, he stopped the car.

“Head out and up,” he said. “Quick!”

They unrolled their windows and stuck their heads out. Sailing toward them was a red-tailed hawk. It floated over the car, low enough to see its speckled breast. The sight of a hawk up close always made Billy's heart pound. She and Grey, each autumn, climbed Mirage Mountain in western Connecticut to watch the annual hawk migration. It was a childhood longing of Grey's to own and train a kestrel, and for their first wedding anniversary, Billy had gotten him a first edition of
The Goshawk
.

At the bottom of the road was Wall Swamp, where Grey had proposed. Since then they had explored the swamp extensively by canoe. Grey stopped the car and got out to stretch his legs. Billy got out, too.

“Don't crush me,” she said as Grey put his arm around her. They embraced as from a distance so as not to mess up Billy's dress.

“This is a pretty fancy business,” Grey said. “Not like
our
wedding.” Billy and Grey had gotten married in London, with their parents and siblings as witnesses in a registry office, and, after lunch, taken off in a rented car and driven to Dorset to explore the coast and search for anomites and other fossils.

“I like ours better,” Billy said. “I actually don't care if this dress gets creased.”

They stood in the middle of the road, closed their eyes, and kissed like teenagers.

Parting had been the sensible thing to do. A love affair could be compared to a cellar hole. Old Mrs. Stern's property had several such holes, remnants of eighteenth-century households. After a long while, without a map of the property, it was impossible to tell where they were. Standing on a road kissing your husband, taking the car to be serviced, letters, meals, telephone calls, arrangements, and errands filled up the hole of a love affair so well that after a while it would be possible to stand comfortably on top of it.

A tent had been pitched on the lawn next to the house. As they drove up the long driveway, Billy could see waiters with baskets of flowers dressing the tables. Penny's mother stood in the center of the tent wearing a lilac dress and directing waiters and maids.

On the steps of the house stood Penny's grandmother, the ferocious old Mrs. Stern. She had declared that this would be the last wedding she would live to see, but she looked far from frail. She was a stout old lady with white hair and stark, piercing blue eyes. She wore a yellow dress and leaned on a cane that looked more like a bishop's crozier, an effect of which she was not unaware.

“Josephine, my dear one,” she said, clutching Billy's hand. “And Grey. How lovely to see you so nice and early. Have you had breakfast? No? Well, Grey, do go sit with David. He's all alone and lonely in the sun room. No one is paying any attention to him at all. As for you, my dearest, go instantly up to Penny, who is having some sort of nervous crisis. She sent her father down to the pharmacy to buy some emery boards, and she knows perfectly well that we have dozens of them in the supply cupboard. Oh, well. She hasn't had breakfast. Do make her eat.”

Upstairs in her childhood bedroom, Penny sat in her long white wedding dress, staring into the dressing table mirror. A wreath of flowers hung over the back of the chair. Penny was tall and pale, and she wore her pale hair pulled back in a chignon. She and Billy had been friends since they were ten. In the summer, both families came home to America for a holiday, and Billy and Penny always spent a month together at old Mrs. Stern's. In this room they had sneaked cigarettes, drunk purloined beer, read love comics, written unsent love letters, plotted revenge on their school enemies, and read under the covers with flashlights after they had been told to go to sleep.

“Is David still alive?” she said to Billy by way of greeting.

“I'm afraid he's dead,” said Billy. “The wedding is off. Here's a cigarette.”

“What a relief,” said Penny. “God, this is hell. This would never have happened if we had been allowed to run off to city hall like you guys.”

“Oh, come on,” Billy said. “You wanted to get married here. Besides, your gran says it's her last wedding.”

“She's been saying that for thirty years,” said Penny. “She'll be saying that when my as yet unborn children get married.” She blew a smoke ring and watched it float toward the ceiling and dispel. She sighed. “The end of my girlhood. The end of all good things. Why am I doing this?”

“It's nice,” said Billy. “It's not so bad.”

Penny looked up. She was suddenly in a very dark mood. “
You're
a fine one to talk,” she said.

“That's over,” said Billy.

“Really?” Penny said. “You didn't tell me. Did it just happen?”

“It happened the day we went shopping, as a matter of fact,” said Billy.

“Gee,” Penny said. “Do you realize that the plans for this bloody wedding have kept me from having a real talk with my oldest friend? Or did you keep it from me.”

“I kept it from you because I felt so awful,” said Billy. “I felt awful about feeling awful. Now I feel very light and free and
right
and truly awful once in a while.”

“You poor little duck,” Penny said. “Hand me another of them smokes. Whether it's over or not is not the point. The point of course is that it existed at all. It proves
my
point: marriage is unlivable.”

“He's a fine young laddie you're marrying.”

“Really?” Penny said. “I can't seem to stand the thought of him at the moment.”

A sweet breeze blew in through the window. Billy lit her cigarette and watched the breeze bat the smoke around. She and Penny never smoked except when they were together. It was a childhood tradition. Neither of them inhaled but both blew very beautiful smoke rings, a skill they had been perfecting for years.

“Did you feel sick on your wedding day?” asked Penny.

“I can't remember,” said Billy. “But I don't think so. After all, I didn't have to go through all this.”

“I wasn't at your wedding,” Penny said gloomily.

“I noticed that.”

“I'll never forgive myself,” Penny said.

“If you remember correctly,” Billy said, “you were taking exams and it was
very
spur-of-the-moment. You did, however, throw us a big party.”

“I will never forgive myself for not seeing your sickly, ashy face on the morning of your wedding. God, this dress is uncomfortable. I now see why you hate clothes. By the way, they won't let me wear a watch in this getup. What's the time?”

“You have forty minutes before they throw the switch,” said Billy. “Do you require a last meal?”

“I'm starving, now that you mention it,” Penny said. “Bring me something. Toast. Coffee. Anything.”

Billy returned with a tray of coffee, buttered toast, and some cheese puffs stolen off the caterer's tray, along with two oversized linen napkins provided by Penny's mother lest the bride get crumbs or butter on her dress.

“What's going on down there?” Penny said.

“People keep showing up. Grey and David are planning a fishing trip. Your father forgot the emery boards and says they're not necessary anyway. Hawks and Ricardo are here chatting up your gran.”

Dr. Hawks was the local Congregationalist minister and Dr. Ricardo was the rabbi of Mrs. Stern's New York congregation. They would jointly perform the ceremony.

“I could eat fifteen times this much toast,” said Penny. “These cheese puffs are top rate. I don't suppose you'd hop downstairs and get more.”

“I have strict instructions not to bring you anything else.”

Penny sighed and sipped her coffee. “I'll be very happy once this is over. I have to keep remembering that it only lasts a couple of hours.”

“It lasts a lifetime,” Billy said.

“There's always divorce, my girl,” said Penny. “Is your entanglement really over?”

“It better be,” Billy said. “When I look back over the last two years, I can't believe the person who lived that life is me. You can't imagine how exotic I felt to myself. I never had interesting romances like you.
That
was my interesting romance. I thought if I gave it up I would be my same old self, but I seem to be some other old self.”

In Penny's room Billy was her old self. Francis did not know anything about her real life, her past, her childhood. They were each other's exception, and had nothing to do with each other at all.

“You'll get over it,” said Penny.

“That doesn't seem to matter,” Billy said. “Maybe I will and maybe I won't. But now it's part of me. It's history. It's my own historical event. In some way it doesn't matter what I
feel
. It's what I remember.”

After the ceremony, the party sat down to lunch. Waiters hovered with trays of champagne. Plates were filled, emptied, refilled, and taken away. The three-tiered cake was cut amidst cheers and toasts. Between courses, the bride and groom table-hopped, making sure they talked to everyone.

Right before the ceremony Billy had switched the place cards so she and Grey could sit together. This did not go unnoticed by old Mrs. Stern, who did not like things to be changed without her say-so, but Billy and Grey were exempt. Billy took Grey's hand under the table. The ceremony, unlike their own spare vows, had affected them both. They sat with their knees touching. Billy felt as if she had been on a long, perilous journey and had come back with a grateful heart to everything she belonged to.

When the waiters appeared with coffee, Penny knocked Billy's elbow.

“Let's go for a ride,” she said.

Arm in arm they ran down the hill through the apple orchard, through a gate in the low stone wall and past the rock garden. Penny wound her wedding dress around her middle. On the bank of the pond lying on its back like a giant turtle in the sun was the Old Town canoe Penny and Billy had played Indian scouts in as children.

Billy flipped the canoe over. “I've splattered my dress,” she said.

“It's only water,” Penny said. “It won't stain.”

They hiked up their skirts, slipped off their shoes, and Penny hopped in. Billy gave the canoe a shove and jumped in too.

“I filched a couple of cigs,” said Billy, taking one from behind each ear. She had stuck a pack of matches into her bra.

They paddled across the pond. There, beside a willow, they stopped and lit their cigarettes.

“Do you think they think we've bolted?” Penny said.

“They think we're going for a spin. Your grandmother waved to us,” Billy said.

“Then they probably think this is some charming part of the day's events,” Penny said.

“It is, isn't it?”

“This is the end of my girlhood,” Penny said again glumly.

“We haven't been girls for years,” said Billy.

They sat smoking and watching the water spiders jump from ripple to ripple. There was an occasional flutter on the surface as a brown trout rose to snap at a mayfly.

Across the pond, the house sat securely on its rise, a big white and yellow clapboard house with six chimneys. From a distance it looked secure, remote. If she squinted Billy could see Grey talking to Penny's father.

The sun came through the willow branches speckling the water with light. Billy could have conjured up Francis in a flash if she had wanted to. She could have imagined him sitting on the bank waiting for her to float back to him.

“I guess we've had it,” Penny said. “I mean we ought to paddle home.” She sighed. “Doesn't everything feel
unknown
to you?”

“It's as plain as the nose on your face,” Billy said.

“I feel as if life is all spread out in front of me but I don't know what's there,” said Penny.

“That's what life is like,” Billy said.

They flicked their cigarettes into the water and, sitting up straight as Indian scouts with their wedding clothes billowing behind them, they paddled back, shooting across the water in that swift, determined way of long ago.

Another Marvelous Thing

On a cold, rainy morning in February, Billy Delielle stood by the window of her hospital room looking over Central Park. She was a week and a half from the time her baby was due to be born, and she had been put into the hospital because her blood pressure had suddenly gone up and her doctor wanted her constantly monitored and on bed rest.

A solitary jogger in bright red foul-weather gear ran slowly down the glistening path. The trees were black and the branches were bare. There was not another soul out. Billy had been in the hospital for five days. The first morning she had woken to the sound of squawking. Since her room was next door to the nursery, she assumed this was a sound some newborns made. The next day she got out of bed at dawn and saw that the meadow was full of sea gulls who congregated each morning before the sun came up.

The nursery was an enormous room painted soft yellow. When Billy went to take the one short walk a day allowed her,