Bright and Distant Shores (54 page)

The rooftop became not only a mecca for tourists and the infirm but also a place for insurance workers to unwind. Actuaries played handball in their shirtsleeves. Girls from the typing pool skipped rope and read racy novels in the sunshine. Salesmen ran bets on the exploits of the falcons and even competed with commission men and brokers on opposing rooftops. Whenever a pigeon was plucked from its roost by a raptor an echo of huzzahs ran back and forth across the gorge of La Salle Street.

Hale witnessed all this and let it unfold. New policies were being added, that was true, but he couldn't help feeling that he'd been duped, that Owen Graves had brought him a pair of half-bloods, the brother a messianic troublemaker. He closed the lobby museum—it remained of marginal interest to the sight seers—and waited for Jethro to clear out his curios so that he could have the repairmen get the cigar store ready for its new tenant. Jethro continued his nocturnal bird watch and sometimes fell asleep with binoculars in hand, slumped against the railing, just feet away from the abyss.

E
piscopalians are a stiff mob, Owen thought, standing at the front of the church on his wedding day, the tailored suit plumb against his shoulders. The Cummings tribe and the Boston onslaught sat on both sides of the aisle. Owen's turnout spanned a single pew—two of Porter's old pals from the wrecking days and their desiccated little wives. The retired housewreckers had lingered as long as possible on the church steps, racing form guides in back pockets, missing four half-fingers between them, lighting each smoke with the previous until they were dragged inside, stiff and lank-legged in their suits, pulling tie knots off Adam's apples. Margaret Cummings sat resplendent in her parade float of a hat, beaming up at her imminent son-in-law. Argus and Malini sat up the back, under the choir balcony, and Owen gave them a nod.
At least they aren't wearing loincloths
was the matriarch's quip for her guests; it demonstrated clearly that their presence had been her daughter's impetuous idea.

An uncle on the dead father's side began walking Adelaide down the aisle as the organ moaned a wobbly anthem from the varicose fingers of a very old lady in roseprint. Owen's bride smiled, coming toward him under a veil, ethereal and lovely, but with a look of chagrin as the organ faltered and fell flat. Margaret bustled to her feet, shot a death-stare at the raised organ bench. The congregation stood, mouthing well-wishes and tearing up. Adelaide arrived, still smiling, and Owen swallowed at her veil-scrimmed beauty. A Boston cousin stood by with the rings and a prep school friend of Adelaide's served as bridesmaid. The priest
gave the welcome, various relatives read lessons from the Old Testament and the epistles, then came the Declaration of Consent. Objections were begged of the church pews but none came. Owen half expected someone to stand up and block the union— an industrialist uncle or society wife—for no other reason than the groom's guests could be numbered on one hand and included an old wrecker who'd fallen asleep, mouth open, head propped on the back of the pew. A sharp elbow from his wife brought him
humph
ing back to consciousness. With each item passing, the readings and the sacraments, Owen felt himself being marched toward his lucky—but complicated—fate.

. . . until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.

Her right hand was in his.

Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.

They were going gladly into battle.

The people said
Amen
—none louder than the old demolitionists, both of them suddenly bright-eyed, raising their voices as if a dynamite fuse had been lit.

The newlyweds walked out into the summery June air, under the newly fledged cottonwoods and horse chestnut, into a cloud of cheering and tossed rice.

The wreckers and their wives weren't coming to the reception at the Palmer House. The Loop and all its hoopla wasn't for them anymore, they said, shaking Owen's hand.

“Porter Graves's kid in a wedding suit. Makes me feel a hundred,” said one of them.

“Thank you for coming,” said Owen.

“She's worth it,” said the other wrecker, of Adelaide, then gave his own wife a nudge.

Owen watched them walk down the street, toward the streetcar. They disappeared around the corner, the last thread to that time suddenly vanished.

Margaret practically had a floor named after her at the Palmer House by this point and the hotel spared nothing in lavishing the
ballroom with fine silver and crystal, silk bunting, flower arrangements as tall as a child. A chandelier drizzled its light on an ice sculpture of a swan. There came a marathon of speeches, toasts, stringed quartets, champagne, arias, lobster. The new couple had to slice through a skyscraper of wedding cake and portion it out before being released into the night.

Owen had the ribbon-braided carriage take them to the newly renovated house and they crossed the river, lamps burning, passing on to the North Side with a few hoary cheers from barge pilots and fishermen. Owen made Adelaide close her eyes when they came within half a block. The house, once clobbered by rot and weathered paint, once sagging along the roofline, reared up now, windows lit, the oyster and ruby trim getting a second gloss from the streetlamps. Owen led her up the stone walkway as she bunched the train of her dress in one hand. “Will you always have me close my eyes before anything good happens? What if I don't like it?”

He told her to be quiet and squared up her shoulders. She opened her eyes onto the swooping verandah, the balustrades painted fresh and twined with flowering vines, the porch swing suspended from two chains, the big front door, varnished and inset with panels of rose glass.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” he said.

She shook her head; she was afraid she wouldn't do it justice. He sighed, took her hand, led her up the front steps. From under the doormat he retrieved the key, opened the door, and stepped aside so his bride could enter.

Adelaide said, “You're going to carry me across the threshold because if I trip on this ridiculous dress then it might bring bad luck on the marriage.”

“Did Margaret tell you that?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, and on that score her superstition is right. She says it dates back to the Romans.”

Owen scooped her under the legs, turned her sideways,
entered the house. He said, “My only suggestion is to imagine the house with furniture. A bed, that's the only thing I've managed to provide at this present moment.”

“My mother has a barn full of decrepit heirloom furniture that she's threatening to send by rail. We need to buy furniture before she sends it.”

Owen set her gently down and put his hands in his pockets.

“And we have books in the library,” she said. “What more do we need besides a bed and books?”

He kissed her gently, nervous.

She said, “I may not say anything until I've seen it all. Don't be offended.”

“Of course. And remember our deal. If you don't like it then we sell it off or rent it out and move elsewhere. I was going to give you a tour but I think I'll let you wander. I'll wait out on the porch swing. Otherwise I'll be watching your face for twitches and sighs.”

She gave him a little wave and headed off, taking in the downstairs first. The hardwood floors had been sanded and refinished to a waxy sheen, the mantel replaced in the parlor with inlaid mosaics around the grate. The daguerreotype of Owen's mother, her hair long and braided, hung above the fireplace. The wainscoting and picture rails were new and in the hallway dropped a light fixture of wrought iron and frosted glass. She passed through the library and dining room to stand in the kitchen. He'd made pantry shelves from Michigan pine and the cabinets were lined with new maple. The hinges, the handles, and the doorknobs were all of a vintage finish, a kind of workmanship she hadn't seen since her grandparents' house. She would need to go on a rug-buying spree—the empty house was cavernous and prone to echo. A little out of breath, she went upstairs and into the nursery. He'd lied. There was more than just a bed somewhere in the main bedroom—he'd made a crib with iron and spruce, a crescent moon sawn into the little headboard. She walked down the hallway and
began to notice odd fixtures and mountings—carved lintels and pediments, brass door handles that looked to be from old banks, stately and oversized, a Gothic window that was surely from a razed church. In the main bedroom, as she looked on the hand-chiseled bed, hewn from rosewood and teak, it came to her that Owen had revitalized the house from his store of rescued objects. The decades of accumulated fixtures and boards, the ornamental and strange trophies of demolished banks, warehouses, salons, and theaters, were now distributed throughout the rooms. Had he hauled wagonloads of salvaged wood and bricks and brassware from the scrapyard across the river? The overall effect was unmistakably beautiful, as if someone had contemplated the smallest detail—the kind of handle one should touch when opening a door to a bedroom (brass, magisterial and stately); the kind of window one should look through to the garden (Venetian); the kind of tiles one should set foot on when rising from a bath (tessellations from an old bathhouse). She noticed the skylight above the bed and couldn't contain herself any longer. She raced down the staircase and out onto the verandah, collapsing in his lap on the swing.

“I take it you like it,” he said.

She kissed him on the mouth.

They went inside and he locked the solid front door—revived from a South Side inn, its brass fixtures something from a medieval keep. Owen told her to go on up and began extinguishing the lights—his new neighbor had been kind enough to keep an eye on all those burning lamps while the nuptials were going on, just so he could have the house ablaze when she first saw it. Married, he thought, dimming the living room. He laughed to himself when he saw the Malekula effigy, standing sentry beside the fireplace, a few feet beneath his mother's portrait. How could she have missed it? He had made them a house of such burnished detail that she would have no choice but to let him keep the monster where it was, in all its spiderwebbed and human-haired grotesqueness. Maybe he'd hide it when guests came over. Technically pilfered
from the coffers of Hale Gray, the effigy was Owen's now and it would get pride of place. It was his grim reminder, he thought, climbing the darkened stairs, a candle in hand, his shadow spilled on the wall. It stood for all that waited beyond the brink. All that could arrive without invitation. He reached the top landing and turned into the hallway. In the bedroom she was already in her negligee, lying with her hands behind her head, looking up through the skylight. He'd made them a stateroom, no less well-appointed than the one on the burning ship. He closed the door, undressed, lay beside her under the bedlam of stars.

With Margaret safely back in Boston, they killed off days in bed. They made love in every room, picnicked on chocolate and cherries in the gnarled orchard. She read him overblown poetry and deliberated about furniture while he reclined in the bathtub, blowing bubbles of protest. They came upon each other in the hallway and for minutes at a time pretended to be strangers, asking about the other's biography before undressing. Owen thought it was obscene, this degree of contentment. The morning sun flashed off the lake, filling the empty rooms, and for hours they sat behind the Gothic church windows, amid the courtroom fixtures and theater doors, watching the day burn itself up.

Eventually, Adelaide dug her heels in, plucked up some resolve, and began to make garden beds in the back. She planted flowers and herbs. They ventured into the city—dazed and slow, as if leaving quarantine—to pick out furniture. With each new arrival, each chair, table, and rug, the house began to fill out, the echoes retreating to a spot above the stairs. On warm nights they slept outside on the verandah, to the puzzlement of their neighbors. They listened to the lake, its murmurous lappings buoyed above the tree crowns, the bellow of an occasional barge rising above the braying of the lions at the zoo.

They learned each other's annoying domestic habits by the end of the first week: Owen crumbed and cluttered up the kitchen
counter and Adelaide never blew out a lamp. She said nothing about the effigy and knew this was the sweetest kind of revenge; her martyred, quiet disdain for this hideous intruder. They fought ardently and briefly, forged truces within the hour. They took walks at night, holding hands, around the neighborhood, into the brewery district that smelled of hops and yeast. They happened upon the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, just a few blocks from the house, where they would come back during daylight to make enquiries on Argus's behalf.

Some afternoons they walked over to the zoo, where the foxes had shed their winter coats and yipped at the perimeter of their enclosure, where rival circus lions—who'd been fallowed at the zoo all through the cold months—roared at each other through blacked-out fences. They became regulars at the zoo, before the noon rush, and were given a discount on admission. They were shown into a back room where, in a dry goods box, five black wolf whelps twitched and slept. Owen hadn't seen that particular smile of Adelaide's face in a long time. Unguarded, an open embrace to everything alive. He wanted to grab her hand and run her back through the streets to their little wooden fortress. She said she wanted a dog and then, weeks later, just as the orchard began blooming, just as knobby stone fruit bulbed in the upper branches, peaches and apricots, she told him she was pregnant. They told no one at first, not even Margaret, and the discussion of furniture became a discussion of first and middle names, boys on the left, girls on the right, the candidates penciled on a kitchen wall that would be painted fresh when the Graves kid finally arrived.

Then one night she asked the question that had been idling beneath the surface ever since his return—“Will you go to sea again?”