The End of the Book (10 page)

“There you have it,” Lazar said. “First I cried out, ‘What's the future?' and an echo came back: ‘Prove They Need It.' Now, with the Performance Department, we'll have all the evidence necessary to reach the most consumers. We'll know who they are and what they want. It's not the craftiest driver that wins the race, but the best-built machine.”

After the meeting George knew he should have felt relieved. He hadn't lost his job, and though Lazar never gave his consent for George to marry his daughter, he didn't refuse, either. In fact, he was oddly silent on the subject, more invested in the firm than his family. Perhaps he chose to ignore George's impending role in his life, or George's position at the firm was indeed never in jeopardy. Kennison had told him that among the boss's errands in New York was discussing the Nuvolia contract, but when George asked about this, Lazar said all seven hundred contracts were being revised to include the Performance Department. It was just like Kennison to mislead a perceived adversary, but George was going to be part of the family—heir apparent, untouchable.

Despite Harriet Lazar's protestations, the wedding was set for July. Seven months seemed an unusually short time to plan, but Margaret was graduating from the University of Chicago in spring and saw no point in waiting around for the rest of her life to begin. Harriet spread the rumor that her daughter was speeding up the schedule out of fear she might come to her senses, and George had a similar worry, accompanied by another: that
he
might change his mind. He wondered if he ever would have proposed had he known his job was safe. Or, perhaps, it had not been safe, and Lazar only kept him on grudgingly after learning of the engagement. Regardless, George had committed to marriage, and even while he told himself he could love this woman and spend the next half century by her side, bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, there were days when he thought of catching a train east and going where no one knew him, to start another life.

The months blurred by like a blizzard off the lake. Winter dragged into May; ice ensnarled the river, and pedestrians crowded over sidewalk grates to warm themselves in the steam. George had planned to move to better lodgings for the swan song of his bachelorhood, but hadn't found the time. Talk at the boardinghouse turned from the weather to the factory protests, the strikes by the garment unions against Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. By spring, picket lines, ten thousand bodies long, snaked around the city, up Rush Street to Huron, just short of Ma Kavanagh's door. And on a bitter day in April, riots broke out between the strikers and armed police. Ostrinski and Tiptoe Joe and other labor men in the building knew George worked high in a corporate skyscraper and had heard from Nellie Kavanagh, who read all the society papers, about his engagement to Margaret Lazar. At the breakfast table and passing on the stairs, George felt the hostility of his neighbors and wanted to remind them where he came from, let them know that he was one of them. But instead he took the grip to the Monadnock and the elevator to fourteen, and when the scorn grew intolerable he finally moved his few belongings to a well-appointed room in the Palmer House, an easy walk to work.

Margaret seemed of two minds about his new accommodations. Now she could tell her mother that her betrothed had a
soigné
address. But at the same time she claimed to support the strikers, even those who slugged nonunion workers for crossing picket lines. George felt off-balance around his fiancée, who was proud of her privilege, aflutter at the public portraits of her wealthy friends, and also quick to declare her allegiance with the man in the street. George had promised himself that sometime before the wedding he would ask Margaret what she saw in him, but May gave way to June; the labor strike moved from the streets to the courts; the Performance Department put the firm on high alert; and George's soon-to-be wife and mother-in-law were so embroiled in their contentious wedding planning that he could barely get a meeting with Margaret, and certainly not alone.

Before he had come to Chicago, the biggest house George had ever seen belonged to Banker White—a new stone mansion on Buckeye Street that was the pride of the town. But the Lazar estate on Lake Shore Drive was grander still, with its rusticated walls, masonry arches, three stories, two towers, and front yard of vast blue sparkling lake. Harriet had tried to insist on a traditional church wedding at Lincoln Park Presbyterian, but Margaret refused and after much debate rallied her father to her side, convincing him to host the ceremony on North Avenue Beach, with cocktails in the house and the reception on the back lawn. Harriet was furious and said her friends would be scandalized:
Home weddings?
Outdoor
weddings? They simply don't happen in our society; you didn't grow up among gypsies, you know
. Margaret called her mother a mid-Victorian, accused her of knowing nothing of modern customs, and seemed to relish the victory, as Lazar made arrangements with the Twenty-First Ward alderman to set up a temporary altar on a bulkhead so the bride and groom could be married with Lake Michigan at their backs.

But on the morning of the wedding day, July 15, 1905, dark clouds scudded across the sky over the Lazars' property. Around noon a light drizzle fell, and by the time the first guests were arriving the weather had turned ominous. Then, at the appointed hour of two o'clock, as if the fates were amusing themselves, the rain began in earnest and the ceremony was delayed. The shower continued; the altar stood abandoned like an empty frame. The photographer tried to gather the family for formal pictures, only to be rebuffed by a flustered Harriet Lazar, who had the staff and ushers corral the guests into the ballroom, which had been set up with chairs in the event of bad weather. The string trio played, the processional began, the minister, bridesmaids, and groomsmen took their places, and George walked down the aisle to Handel's “Largo,” the city's social register a blur in his peripheral vision. In the ornate room, festooned with vines and white roses, he stood before the soaring limestone fireplace and waited for the bride.

In his mind there was a silver lining to this unfortunate turn of events. The bride's side had two hundred guests compared to three on the groom's side, and in the confusion of changed plans he felt less exposed and outnumbered. He had sent twenty invitations to friends from home, and should not have been surprised that so few attended. By leaving he had rejected Winesburg, and though everyone had said they knew he would go, even urged him to set forth and make his way as a writer, now they took his abandonment personally and no longer wished him well. He couldn't blame them, really, when, to his own regret, he so rarely visited home and with each year ventured less frequently into the attic of his memory.

But Will Henderson, his editor from the
Winesburg Eagle
, had come. And so had Seth Richmond, once his rival for Helen White's affections. Of all people he had most expected Seth to send regrets, yet here he was next to the third guest on the groom's side, George's father, Tom Willard. Because Margaret had eight bridesmaids, resplendent in pink organdy with tiny wreaths of lilies of the valley in their hair, George had asked his party of three to join the processional and stand nearby for the vows.

By the time Harriet strode down the aisle and took her seat in the front row she had managed to compose herself and put on a face of false serenity. A stout, square-chinned woman, she looked a good deal older than her husband, who went to such pains with his appearance. She wore a dark-gray satin gown with a beaded collar, and her white hair capped her forehead like snow on an imposing peak. “Gracious me,” she said aloud, unable to hold her tongue. Only those up front could hear her. The rest had their heads trained toward the ballroom door, awaiting Margaret's entrance. “Would you look at the time—” Harriet gestured toward the mantel clock.

She had a curious relationship with the Central Time Zone. A Boston Brahmin, she kept her watch and all clocks in the house set an hour ahead. George and the bridesmaids knew about Harriet's eccentricity. She was forever complaining about Chicago, calling it “a pestilential bog,” and longing out loud for the better people of Boston and the salt air of Cape Cod. But Tom Willard, upon seeing that the clock read four, double-checked his pocket watch and said, “Has it really been two hours?”

George leaned over to tell his father that he would explain later, and it was at this point that Lazar appeared at the entryway, arm in arm with his daughter. Margaret wore white, a beautiful silk taffeta and crepe de chine gown. A wreath of orange blossoms crowned her head, and her hair fell in plaits down her back. Two flower girls, grandnieces from New England, scattered rose petals before her, and her father looked after her long train as she made her way down the aisle.

Standing in the presence of all those people, his odd assortment of groomsmen shifting from foot to foot, Margaret and her bridesmaids shining in their regalia, George found his attention drifting as he repeated his vows. At some point in the service he followed the minister's eyes to the bank of ballroom windows, where the clouds parted and the sun cast a shimmer over the wet green lawn. The wedding-goers raised a collective
Ah
. The minister said
Now there is a sign
, and for a moment laughter filled the room. Soon the music was playing again, and George was walking out of the ballroom, Margaret's arm entwined with his. People he had never met before shook his hand—
Well done
, they said. And
Aren't you a lucky one?
Then he was in the parlor with his wife, and surrounded by the Lazars, then with his father, flash-lamps aflame in his eyes.
You look stunned
, Margaret would later say when they went through pictures to choose which ones to hang.

The newlyweds circulated through the ample rooms, and George caught up briefly with Will Henderson before his former editor wandered off to order another sloe gin fizz. He had an awkward conversation with Margaret's brother, Charles, a pale and rabbity art dealer who had aggrieved the family by leaving for the East Coast and losing all touch. Charles had come home on this occasion only because he knew Margaret would never forgive him if he missed her wedding. He said as much to George, but when the former reporter asked about life in New York City, he turned chary, then vanished into the crowd, leaving George face to face with the city's elite. Margaret introduced him to Bertha Palmer, widow of the hotel magnate and grande dame of Chicago society; the great architect Daniel Burnham, who designed the White City at the World's Fair; and the philanthropist Nettie McCormick, in a similar toque and feathers to the one she'd worn for the portrait now hanging at the Art Institute.

It was all George could do to pull his father away from Mrs. McCormick. Tom Willard was known for being a talker, and he had the kindly philanthropist boxed into a corner in the drawing room. He must have recognized her name, because by the time George swooped in, his father was crying up the growth potential of Winesburg and its proximity to Cleveland and Lake Erie, and enumerating the many improvements needed at the New Willard House.

“I'm looking for an investor,” he was saying. “A town like ours needs a first-rate hotel, but we're still getting over the depression of '93.” He twisted his mustache, which he wore with the ends turned up. “We're right on the B&O line. We've had patrons from Maine to California. Canadians. Europeans. We're just eight miles to the lake, twenty to Sandusky. You'll find all the recreation you could imagine right at our doorstep, plus the charm and hospitality of a village. I like to say that people are our top attraction.”

He leaned back on his heels and smiled at Margaret, who had met him for the first time at dinner the evening before and seemed not to know what to make of him. His Prince Albert suit looked faded, and some of the threading at the collar had come loose. George recognized the coat as the one his father had worn to his mother's funeral a decade ago, and felt a mixture of sorrow and pique. Mrs. McCormick congratulated the bride and groom, and Margaret took the opportunity to lead her away, no doubt to apologize once out of earshot.

Tom Willard knitted his brow and seemed about to scold his son for the interruption when Seth Richmond came around. He looked unchanged since George knew him as a youth, still hangdog and melancholy and a conversational challenge. George asked if he was still living in town, and Tom answered for the young man, who spoke in short sentences that trailed off, sometimes unintelligibly. “He's living in Columbus, went to the state university for a couple years there, didn't you?” Tom said, and Seth nodded. “And you're a mechanic, isn't that right? Working on—what is it? Automobiles?”

“My father-in-law is a motor man,” George put in, trying to find some common topic. “I should introduce you.”

This line of questioning continued for a while until Tom Willard grew bored and began scanning the room, with its profusion of luxuriant fabrics and furnishings, carved moldings and winking crystal. When Tom had slid away, Seth turned to George and without ever making eye contact asked, “Did you invite Helen White? I was sure I'd find her here.”

The idea had crossed George's mind. On the one hand he had wanted Banker and Mrs. White to come to Chicago and see this house and all his success. And he wanted to impress Helen, as well. But there was a history between them, and it didn't seem fair to Margaret or, more to the point, to George's memory, where he maintained an image of Helen White as a standard of perfection. “I didn't invite her,” George said now. “We've fallen out of touch. I don't even know where she lives.”

“Why, she's right here in Chicago,” Seth exclaimed. “She's been a year and more. I thought surely you'd have heard.”

“It's news to me,” George managed.

And as the cocktail hour came to an end his mind began to drift again, while the rain resumed its pitter-pat upon the reception tent in the Lazars' back garden.