Searching for Caleb (14 page)

   Though it seemed to all of them, now, that they should have thought of it long ago. Those visits Justine had paid him! Those trips!

   Everyone knew she hated traveling as much as any other Peck. Yet day after day this winter she had packed a lunch in Sulie's kitchen and said she wouldn't be home till night. "I'm going on a trip with Duncan. Out to the country somewhere." "Yes, yes, go," they told her. "Keep an eye on him for us." She had cut classes, missed important family gatherings, stopped seeing Neely, grown distant from her cousins-"But it's good she's with Duncan," they told each other. "She's sure to be a good influence on him." How she had deceived them!

   Only Sam Mayhew, slow of mind, seemed unable to make the mental leap the Pecks had just accomplished. He looked all around the table, from one person to the other, with his face set to laugh as soon as he saw the joke. "What? What's that?" he said.

   The others waved him aside, too busy adjusting to the shock. But Duncan came over and stood squarely in front of him and spoke very quietly, as if to a child.

   "Uncle Sam, I'm marrying Justine."

   "But-you can't!"

   "I'm telling you I am. I'm telling you, not asking you. Nothing is going to make me change my mind."

   "You can't."

   "Why, it must not even be legal!" said Caroline.

   "Yes, it is," Duncan told her.

   "Oh yes," his grandfather said.

   "But-" said Caroline.

   "Who's the lawyer here, you or me? Boy's right. It's true. And yes, I know, there's a lot to be said against it. But look at it this way. What nicer girl could he have picked? She's sure to settle him down some. And this way there's no adjustment for them to make, no in-law problems-"

   "You ought to be locked up," Sam Mayhew said.

   "Sir!" said Grandfather Peck.

   "Haven't you heard of inbreeding?"

   "Not at the table, Sam."

   "Haven't you heard of genes?"

   "Now, we come of good solid stock," the grandfather said. "No worries there." He picked up the carving knife. "Care for a slice of ham, Duncan boy?"

   "He's a blood relative," said Sam Mayhew. "And he's only twenty years old, and he hasn't got a responsible bone in his body. Well, I'm not going to allow it. Justine won't marry Duncan or any other Peck."

   "Then we'll elope," Duncan said.

   "Elope!" cried Justine's mother. "Oh, anything but that!"

   "You are a fool, Caroline," Sam Mayhew said. Then he stood and took Justine by the wrist and pulled her up and toward the door. But she was still calm and so was Duncan. Nothing seemed to disturb them. As Justine passed Duncan he gave her a slow, deep stare that caused the rest of the family to avert their eyes. "Come, Justine," her father said. He led her through the living room and up to her bedroom. She went without a protest. He set her in her room and shut her door and locked it, and put the key up on the ledge again before he went back to the others.

   In her ruffled rocker, Justine sat and waited. The pointlessness of being locked in her room seemed more comical than annoying, and she was not worried about her family. Hadn't Duncan predicted everything? "Your father's the one who'll be upset. The others will get over it. Anyway, it's always been a bother adapting outside wives. Then your father will give in because he has to. There won't be any problems."

   "I know there won't."

   "There would be even less if you would just run away with me."

   "I want to do this right, I said."

   "Does it matter that much? Justine, why does it matter? They're just a bunch of people, just some yellow-haired, ordinary people. Why do you have to ask for their approval?"

   "Because I love them," Justine said.

   He didn't have any answer for that. Love was not a word he used, even to her.

   She rocked and gazed at the wintry gray sky, while downstairs the battle went on and on. Great-Grandma soothed everyone, a dry brown thread weaving in and out. She thought this marriage was a wonderful idea; she had never heard of genes. When Sam Mayhew stormed, Grandfather snapped and cut him short. Uncles rumbled and aunts chirped and burbled. And over it all rode Duncan's level voice, sensible and confident. Justine could tell when he began to win. He continued alone, the others fell behind.

   The worst of the battle was over. All that was left was for the losers to regain face.

   Justine felt suddenly stifled and bored. She went into her bathroom for her toothbrush, and took a pack of matches from her bureau drawer. She had not grown up with Duncan for nothing: heating the toothbrush handle very slowly, she pushed it little by little into the lock of her door and then turned it and walked out free. When she re-entered the dining room, they didn't seem surprised to see her. Only Duncan, noticing the toothbrush in her hand, tipped back in his chair and looked amused, but he sobered up when Justine's father rose and came around the table to face her.

   "Justine," he said.

   "Yes, Daddy."

   "It has been pointed out to me that there's nothing I can really do to stop you. All I can hope is that you'll listen to reason. Justine, look.

   Don't you see why you're doing this? It's merely proximity, the two of you had no one else, no one in this family has anyone else. You were thrown too much together, at an age when naturally . . . and you were afraid to turn to some outsider. Admit it. Isn't that correct?"

   Justine thought it over. "Well," she said finally, "it does sound correct, yes."

   "Well, then."

   "But then, both sides sound correct. I always agree with who I'm listening to."

   He waited, expecting more. All she did was smile. "Aah!" he said suddenly, and turned away, throwing up his hands. "You even sound like him. You're a puppet. I've learned something today: set a bad and a good person down together and the bad wins every time. I always wondered."

   "Say that again?" said Aunt Lucy. "Is it Duncan you're calling bad?"

   "Who else?"

   "Duncan's not a bad boy."

   Even Duncan looked surprised.

   "Justine's the one who kept the rest of us away from him. Justine wouldn't tell his own mother where he was staying! Blame your daughter!"

   "Why, Lucy!" Justine's mother said.

   Duncan let his chair tip forward. This might turn out to be interesting.

   But no, they were distracted by a new development: Sam Mayhew buttoning his suit coat. He worked with his elbows out and his clock-shaped face set impassively toward some point above their heads. They knew at once that something important was going on.

   "I won't be attending this wedding," he said finally.

   "Oh, Sam!" his wife cried.

   "And I won't be living here."

   "What?"

   "I'm moving out to my parents'. I'm going to look for a house in Guilford."

   He finished the buttons. He began pulling his shirt cuffs down, neat bands of white above his chubby red hands. "You may come too, of course, Caroline. And Justine if she decides against this marriage. But I warn you: if you come, we will only be visiting your family once a month."

   "Once a month?"

   "The first Sunday of every month, for dinner. We'll go home at three."

   "But Sam-" his wife said.

   "Make your choice, Caroline."

   He continued to gaze above her head. Caroline turned to her family. She was still baby-faced, although the years had worked like gravity pulling on her cheeks. Her weight had settled in upon itself. She looked like a cake that had collapsed. To each brother and sister, to her father and her grandmother, she turned a round lost stare while twisting the pearls on her fingers.

   "What's your decision, Caroline?"

   "I can't just leave them like that."

   "All right."

   "Sam?" she said.

   He walked over to Justine. Duncan rose instantly to his feet. "Justine,"

   Sam Mayhew said, "you have been a disappointing daughter in every way, all your life."

   Then Justine rocked back as if she had been hit, but Duncan already stood behind her braced to steady her.

   The wedding was to be held in a church. All the family insisted on that.

   Duncan had not been to church in several years and detested Reverend Didicott, a fat man who came from Aunt Lucy's hometown and had a Southern accent that would surely double the length of the ceremony; but he said he would do whatever Justine wanted. And Justine, half willing anyway, went along with the others, submitting to a long satin dress, Sarah Cantleigh's ivory veil, and a little old lady consultant with an emergency cigar box full of pins, white thread, spirits of ammonia, and a stick of chalk for stains. "Oh, Duncan!" Justine said, as she sped by him on the way to the photographer. "I'm sorry! I know how you must hate this!" But he was surprisingly tolerant. He had agreed to give up his room and move home for the month preceding the wedding; he went without a word to buy a black suit that turned him stern and unfamiliar. During lulls in the excitement, he seemed to be observing Justine very closely.

   Did he think she would change her mind? Reading Bride's magazine, she felt his eyes upon her, weighing her, watching for something. "What is it?" she asked him, but he never would say.

   Her mother was everywhere. She bustled and darted, giving commands, trilling out fitting schedules in a voice so gay it seemed about to break off and fly. "Really, no one would guess her husband's left her," Justine told Duncan.

   "Don't speak too soon."

   "Why?"

   "Now she's got the wedding to keep her busy. What about later?"

   Later Justine would be far away. One thing Duncan would not agree to was living in Roland Park. Nor even in Baltimore, not even long enough for Justine to finish school. And he would not go back to school himself. So they were renting a little house and a plot of land an hour's drive out in the country, where they used to go on their trips. Duncan planned to start a goat farm. It was what he had always wanted, he said. It was?

   Justine had never heard him mention it before. But he couldn't go on forever looking up facts for professors; and anyway, he kept losing those jobs, he gave in to a temptation to rewrite their material, making it more colorful, adding his own startling scraps of knowledge and a few untruths. And he and Justine each had a share of old Justin's trust fund. Because of the proliferation of heirs it amounted to almost nothing, but they could manage till the dairy started paying off. "You're strapping yourself in, boy," his grandfather said. "You want an education. And renting's no good, it's a shoddy way to do things."

   "Sure, Grandfather."

   But Duncan went on reading the Dairy Goat Journal, rummaging through his shocks of hair as he always did when he was absorbed in something. And a week before the wedding he helped supervise the loading of a Mayflower van containing ancient, massive furniture from the relatives and rolled-up rugs, crates of crystal stemware, gifts of silver and china, linens monogrammed by Aunt Laura May and heavy damask curtains, all meant for their three-room cabin. Justine wasn't entirely sure that everything was suitable, but how else would you furnish a place? She didn't know. Duncan made no comment, only watched without surprise as she directed the movers toward a claw-footed bureau, a tasseled floor lamp, a bedstead with pineapple knobs.

   "Prepare your mother, now," he told her. "I mean it. Get her ready for doing without you, because it's going to be a shock for her once it happens."

   "I will."

   "Prepare yourself, Justine."

   "Prepare for what?"

   "Do you really understand that you'll be leaving here?"

   "Of course I do," she said.

   Well, naturally she would rather not be leaving. It made her sad just to think about it. But nothing mattered as much as the lurch in her stomach when she saw him. When they sat apart in Great-Grandma's study, some inner selves seemed to rise up and meet while their bodies remained seated. In halls and pantries and stairwells, they kissed until they were sick and dizzy. She missed Duncan's room downtown: his jingling bed, the warm pulse in the hollow of his throat, the leathery arch of his right foot curving exactly to the shape of her calf when they fell asleep.

   "Still," Duncan said, "I wish I could be sure you know what you're getting into."

   At the rehearsal, Esther took the part of the bride for good luck. It was terrible to see her up there so close to Duncan. Her emerald-green sheath showed off her figure, which was better than Justine's. "Tell me," Justine said to Duncan later. "Did you ever think of marrying Esther?"

   "No."

   "But why me?" she asked.

   "Why me, for that matter?"

   "I don't know," she said.

   "Why are you marrying me, Justine?"

   "Oh, well, Claude is too fat and Richard's too young."

   She didn't understand the strange look he gave her.

   On Justine's wedding morning, a pale cool day in April, her mother woke her by pulling open the curtains in her bedroom. "Justine," she said, "listen. Are you awake?"

   "Yes."

   "I want you to listen a minute."

   She was wearing a slithery pink silk dressing gown and already her doll-like face was made up perfectly, her curls precisely flattened. She carried a torn scrap of paper. She sat on Justine's bed and held the paper out to her, smiling a coaxing smile like someone offering medicine.

   "Your daddy's telephone number," she said.

   "My what?"

   "Hear what I say, now. I want you to go out in the hall to the phone. I want you to dial this number. It's your grandmother Mayhew's. Ask to speak to your daddy. Say, 'Daddy, today is my wedding day.' "

   "Oh, Mama."

   "Listen! Say, 'Daddy, this is supposed to be the happiest day of my life.

   Won't you make it perfect and come give me away?' "

   "But I can't talk like that," Justine said.

   "Of course you can. And he has that fine suit that's still in the cleaner's bag, I know he took it with him. Why, it wouldn't be any trouble at all! Justine? I beg you, Justine."