Everything We Ever Wanted (23 page)

S ylvie took a deep breath and took photos at her first wedding job. She and Tabitha, a round, chatty woman who immediately put Sylvie at ease, took pictures of the wedding at the family’s farm, in a pumpkin patch. And she did more after that. Weddings that were simple lunches in people’s backyards. Ones that were traditional, where the family prayed before the meal and the bride wore white without irony. There was one that was more like a sorority party, the eleven bridesmaids climbing into an enormous white limo, posing for pictures with little plastic shot glasses raised, all of them smoking cigarettes and fixing one another’s hair. At a few weddings she photographed, the wedded couple didn’t seem very happy, the marriage quite possibly forced. Those were always the hardest to do; when sorting through their images, she wished she knew how to use Photoshop. If she could create smiles on their faces, maybe they’d change their minds and decide to be happy.

The weddings got to her. She cried as the bride walked down the aisle with her father; she encouraged single girls to rush to the front and catch the bouquet. She found herself wishing that she and James had had a traditional wedding instead of going off to Italy and getting married there alone, estranging their families even more. She sometimes felt such strong pangs for James that she had to duck into the bathroom and press her forehead against the cool, tiled walls. Sometimes she penned letters to James in her head, explaining her new job. She wondered what James would think of her if he suddenly walked back into her life, robustly alive. Would he think she’d changed? Would he recognize her?

And what would Scott say, if, or when, he came back? She hoped he would think she’d changed. She wondered if some of these changes she’d made were with him in mind.

After the sixth or seventh wedding she worked, she woke up and realized that the heaviness in the base of her stomach had lifted. She folded James’s old clothes and sent them to the Salvation Army. She bought new sheets and pillows for her bed. She drove to Philadelphia and walked to Jeweler’s Row, dropping her ring onto the counter of the first store she came upon. The jeweler, a large Hasidic man, used a loupe to check the color and the carat weight and called everyone else on the street trying to come up with an accurate price. She enjoyed the anonymity of it. No one gawked at her, asking why she was getting rid of something so large and pretty.

Then she went into James’s old office and put all of his books in boxes. She called an antiques dealer to appraise James’s desk and bookshelves—a mid-century designer had made them, so they were probably worth some money. When the dealer walked into the house, his eyes boggled at her grandfather’s items, the furniture in the living room and the oil paintings on the walls. It wasn’t the first time someone had done this; Sylvie could practically see him making calculations in his head, already counting the money. She’d always balked at selling anything of her grandfather’s, but something in her slowly began to turn. She called an appraiser named Florence, who had known her parents and had helped Sylvie sell off some of their furnishings when both of them died. Florence wandered around the house, making notes in a book, pressing her pencil eraser to her lips. She ran her fingers over his books and paintings. She opened drawers in the kitchen and smiled at their old dishes and silverware. There was no point in moving all of this stuff out of the house and breaking up what was here, Florence concluded. It all was worth more together, an encapsulated life.

“It is amazing how preserved this place is,” Florence said with a sigh when Sylvie saw her out. “Your grandfather would be very proud.”
After Florence left, Sylvie sat in the empty living room with the lights off, feeling almost as though she was saying her good-byes now. As she heaved another sigh, she sensed a presence behind her and turned. The light shimmered and shifted, and suddenly he was there, really there, all cigar smoke and mustache and twinkling eyes.
“Hello, Charlie Roderick,” Sylvie whispered. He lingered there, light waves and ozone, watching her. Tears came to her eyes. It had been so long since she’d said his name out loud. She hoped he thought she’d done the right thing. She hoped he would forgive her, too. But before she could ask him, he was gone.

S ylvie saw the same wedding industry people again and again— Frankie-the-DJ, who line-danced with the crowd, Hattie-the-florist who drove a big van painted yellow and black like a bumblebee, the same string quartet, made up of three Asian women and a tall, reedy black man who always wore three-piece suits. He waved at her every time he saw her, and finally, at a fire-hall wedding in Elverson, Sylvie waved back. His name was Desmond, and he lived in Villanova. His wife had died fifteen years ago of pancreatic cancer, and he’d been alone ever since. His voice was just what she expected—deep and resonant. Years ago she would’ve shied away from Desmond, wary of his upright self-composure. But that felt like a long time ago. The first time Sylvie danced with Desmond, at the end of one of the weddings when the band was playing their last song, she fully understood how different she’d become.

Sometimes Christian and Warren snuck into her thoughts. By the time Labor Day rolled around, she’d almost let that go, too. She hadn’t expected to work a wedding that long weekend, but Tabitha called her and said that a photographer needed an emergency appendectomy, and a bride who was getting married this evening had just called in a panic. Can you run out and get film for me, Tabitha pleaded—she liked to use both film and digital.

Sylvie threw on some clothes and got into the car. She didn’t go to the camera store she usually frequented, whose owners she’d gotten to know, but to the photo shop next to the new Target that had sprung up near her house.

Inside the shop smelled like developing chemicals. Sylvie waited in line, gazing blankly out the window at the families going into Target. “Oh,” said the person in front of her in line. “Well, hello.”

It took a moment before she realized the man was talking to her. She turned and then pressed her fingers to her throat. Warren Givens didn’t look nearly as ragged as she remembered. His hair was combed, his face had more color to it, and he was wearing a clean, snazzy green Windbreaker and crisp dark jeans. “H-hi,” she stammered, her chest seized with apprehension. She hadn’t seen him since the MRSA news broke out. Since she’d resigned.

“How are you?” Warren asked. His eyes were still that watery blue.
One of his front teeth was gray, maybe dead. The overhead lights beat down on her head. “Listen,” she started, shuffling through the possibilities of how she could broach the subject. I’m so sorry about what happened. Or, I hope the school took care of you. Or, I want you to know I have nothing to do with that place anymore. It’s just terrible that it happened.
But before she could say anything, Warren interrupted. “So you hear about the new management?”
She blinked. New management … where? Here in this little photo shop?
“They’re doing landscaping and everything,” he went on. “Cleaning up that park. Finally, right? Making that playground actually safe for kids.” He gave her a weary smile. “My five-year-old grandson fell off the monkey bars in that playground. I turned my back for one minute and he was flat on the ground. Broke his back, can you imagine? They were worried he’d be paralyzed. Bitch of a thing. But he’s okay now. He dodged a bullet, so to speak … gonna be fine.”
Sylvie frowned, scrambling to understand. Warren had a grandson as well as a son? Did that mean Christian had a much older brother or sister, perhaps? There had been so little information about the Givens family.
The salesman behind the counter reappeared with a thick packet. “Verona?”
Warren Givens raised one finger and stepped to the counter. He was hunched over, signing his name on a receipt. Sylvie crept forward, even more puzzled. She peeked at the name on the packet of film. Sam Verona, it said. The handwriting was clear and round with little margin for mistake.
Sam Verona?
He palmed the packet of photos and smiled at her. “Pictures of my grandson,” he announced. “He’s in rehab. He loves rehab. Best friends with everyone. Helps the clown make balloon animals.” He opened the flap and pulled one out. A chubby-cheeked kid with blond curls sat on a hospital bed, a spongy brace around his neck. He had a gaptoothed smile.
“How long will he have to be in rehab?” Sylvie asked.
“Oh, a couple of months. Pretty soon it’ll be outpatient.”
“He’s beautiful,” Sylvie said with a sigh. “I’m glad he’s okay.”
“You said it.” He put his wallet in his back pocket. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Sylvie,” she said. “Sylvie Bates-McAllister.”
“Right,” Sam said. “And I’m Sam Verona. Well, see you around, Sylvie. Maybe on the benches, huh?”
She nodded, everything moving much too fast. One second later, the photo shop bells were ringing and he was out the door. A few seconds after that, he was stepping off the curb and crossing to his car. It was a white car, a car she was pretty sure she recognized from the Feverview Dwellings parking lot.
It should have occurred to her, really. She’d never asked his name, and when she’d given him her name at the apartment complex, he hadn’t shown any recognition. Nor had she ever seen a picture of Christian’s real father, whoever he was. This man had stumbled out of the apartment complex and put his head in his hands, and she’d assumed that the world was very small, that everything was connected. But this man, Sam, was crying about something else. About his injured grandchild, maybe, and some misguided guilt he felt for it. Or maybe he was upset about something else. His life could include a wide range of things to grieve over, just as it could encompass a vast range of things to be happy about.
Christian’s father had an apartment at Feverview Dwellings, too, and yet he’d never made himself known. It was possible he’d passed her as she and the man she thought was him were talking. But he’d grieved differently, in a way she hadn’t anticipated. His whole life was probably wildly different than what she pictured.
Something else struck her. Did you hear? Sam asked. We have new management. They’re going to landscape and everything.
We have new management. He thought she lived at Feverview Dwellings. She’d been there, after all, and who loiters around a place like that? She glanced down at herself, alarmed. Did she look as though she lived there? Hadn’t he noticed the label on her purse, the kidskin leather of her gloves, the quality of her shoes, her ring? And yet he must not have. He’d only seen her proximity. He had misjudged her just as she had misjudged him. She pressed her hand to her forehead. And then she smiled.
The wedding she and Tabitha were photographing was in Philadelphia on a big clipper-ship restaurant that sat in the Delaware River harbor. When Sylvie climbed aboard she realized she’d once been here with James a long time ago, back when the boys were still in high school. She fought to remember the mood of the dinner, but she couldn’t recall a single thing they’d talked about, a single thing they’d eaten. It was possible James had been seeing the woman back then. It was possible he had already bought that bracelet for her. He could have already been carrying the secret around by then, doing everything he could so that she would never find out.
She loved him, despite all of it. That was real love, she supposed— overlooking even what was ugly. But it made her sad, too, to realize that the ugliness was there. The blinders were off her now, and she couldn’t put them back on no matter how badly she wanted to. Some days, she really wanted to. Some days, she didn’t feel better off. She didn’t feel cleaner, purer, wiser; instead it felt like she was constantly standing naked into a raw, whipping wind. She envied her past self, purposeful, oblivious, and naive. But she also felt a battle-worn trueness that hadn’t been there before. She felt like she could really do things now. Really change things. Even things she’d thought she’d never dare.
One side of the boat was pitched down slightly. The tables on that side were bolted down, the legs cut to uneven lengths so they’d be level. The ceremony was to take place in front of a mural of a bearded Poseidon holding a trident. The same string quartet was setting up shop on the slanty side of the room, and there was Desmond. His face lit up when he saw Sylvie, and she waved. She decided she would tell him about Sam Verona. And about what had happened, and who she thought Sam had been, and even the letter she’d written to him, the letter she’d never given him. It was crazy—she barely knew anything about Desmond except for the broad, sweeping things everyone told strangers about their lives when they first meet—but she knew she’d tell him anyway, and weather whatever response he had.
There was commotion in the lobby; the wedding party began to file in. The groom walked down the aisle to the Poseidon mural. He was older than she was—maybe James’s age, around seventy. As he got closer, she saw there was a small hearing aid in his ear. The groom noticed the camera around her neck and came over. “Thanks for helping us out at such short notice,” he exhaled, grasping her hand. “We thought we were stuck.”
The bride walked alone down the aisle. She had shoulder-length white hair. Her drop-waist dress hit at the knee, and she wore ivory pumps. When she saw the man she was marrying, tears came to her eyes. She waved at him giddily, as if she was a kid on a merry-go-round and had just rounded past her parents. They exchanged rings and kissed, then hugged their respective children, six in all.
Not long ago, Sylvie might’ve thought the ecstatic, hopeful looks on the couple’s faces were impractical. Why go through all that trouble to get married at that age? It’s not as if they were naive teens. But now, she was sympathetic to their exuberance. It was kind of beautiful how regenerative optimism was, how people could hurl themselves headlong into the same situations again and again.
Felicia and Graham, the bride and groom, got up for their first dance. His big, craggy hands clutched her waist, and they both took small, careful steps. They smiled into each other, delighted. It was a look Sylvie had seen on so many other faces this summer—the look that said this day set the tone for their entire marriage and that every day henceforth would be as beautiful as this one. They didn’t bother worrying about the curveballs life would throw at them, the difficult decisions they’d have to make, or even the disappointments. Right now those things didn’t exist.
Sylvie crouched down and took another picture. And she silently said the same thing she always said to all the couples she’d met. Keep holding on to that, she told them. Keep holding on and don’t let go.