Galilee (20 page)

“What's so funny?” she said.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“So I'm fat. And I wish I was dead. So what?”

The smirk had gone now. “You don't wish you were dead,” I said. “Surely.”

“What have I got to live for?' she replied. “I've got nothing. Nothing I want anyway.” She put down her fork, and started on the cherry pie with her fingers, picking out the syrupy fruit. “Day in and day out, it's the same story. Serving Mama. Eating. Serving Mama. Eating. When I sleep I dream I'm up there with her, while she talks about the old days.” With sudden vehemence she said: “I hate the old days! What about tomorrow? How about
doing something about tomorrow?”
Her face, which was as I mentioned, flushed to begin with, was now beet red. “We're all so passive,” she said, the vehemence mellowing into a sadness. “You got your legs back but what did you do with them? Did you walk out of here? No. You sat exactly where you'd been sitting all these years, as though you were still a cripple. That's because you still are. I'm fat and you're a cripple, and we're going to go on, day after day after
day living our useless lives, till somebody from out there—” she pointed out toward the world “—comes and does us the kindness of putting a bullet through our brains.”

With that, she rose from the ruins of the pies, and made her exit. I didn't attempt to delay her. I just sat back in my chair and watched her go.

Then, I will admit, I sat for a while with my head in my hands and wept.

A
ssaulted by both Marietta and Zabrina, feeling thoroughly uncertain of my talents, I returned to my room, and sat up through the rest of the night. I'd like to tell you that I did so because I was agonizing over the literary problems I had, but the truth was rather more prosaic: I had the squirts. I don't know whether it was the baked ham, the braised aubergine, or Zabrina's damn conversation that did it: I only know I spent the hours till dawn sitting on my porcelain throne in a private miasma. Somewhere around dawn, feeling weak, raw, and sorry for myself, I crawled into bed and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. By the time I woke my slumbering mind seemed to have decided that I'd be best writing about Rachel and Mitchell's wedding in a rather curter style than I'd been employing so far. After all, I reasoned, a wedding was a wedding was a wedding. No use belaboring the subject. People could fill in the pretty details for themselves.

So then: the bare facts. The wedding took place on the first week of September, in a little town in New York State called Caleb's Creek. I've already mentioned it in passing, I believe. It's not far from Rhinebeck, close to the Hudson. A pretty area, much beloved of earlier generations of American royalty. The Van Cortandts built a home up here; so did the Astors and the Roosevelts. Extravagant houses where they could bring two hundred guests for a cozy weekend retreat. By contrast, the property George Geary had purchased in Caleb's Creek was a modest place, five bedrooms, colonial style: described in one book about the Gearys as “a farmhouse,” though I doubt it was ever that. He'd loved the place; so had Deborah. After his death she'd many times remarked that the best times of her life had been spent in that house; easy, loving times when the rest of the world was made to wait at the threshold. It was actually Mitchell who had suggested opening the house up again—it
had been left virtually unvisited since George's death—and holding the wedding celebrations there. His mother had warmed to the idea instantly. “George would like that,” she'd said, as though she imagined the spirit of her beloved husband still wandering the place, enraptured by the echoes of happier times.

To clinch the deal, Mitchell drove Rachel up to Caleb's Creek in the middle of July, and they stayed over at the house for one night. A couple from the town, the Rylanders, who had been housekeeper and gardener during the halcyon days, and had kept the place clean and tidy during its years of neglect, had worked furiously to give the house a second chance at life. When Mitchell and Rachel arrived it looked like a dream retreat. Eric Rylander had planted hundreds of flowers and rosebushes, and laid a new lawn; the windows, doors, and shutters had been painted, so had the white picket fence. The small apple orchard behind the house had been tidied up, the trees pruned; everything made orderly. Inside, Eric's wife Barbara had been no less diligent. The house had been thoroughly aired, the drapes and carpets cleaned, the woodwork and furniture polished until it shone.

Rachel was, of course, completely charmed. Not just by the beauty of the house and brightness of the garden, but by the evidence everywhere of the man who'd fathered her husband-to-be. At Deborah's instruction the house had been left as George had liked it. His hundreds of jazz albums were still on their shelves, all alphabetically arranged. His writing desk, where according to Mitchell he'd been making notes for a kind of memoir about his mother Kitty, was just as he'd left it, arrayed with framed family photographs, which had lost most of their color by now.

The visit had not only served to confirm Mitchell's instincts that this was indeed the place to have the wedding; it had turned into a kind of tryst for the lovers. That night, after a splendid supper prepared by Barbara, they'd stayed up sitting out watching the midsummer sky darken, sipping whiskey and talking about their childhoods; and of their fathers. It had got so dark they couldn't even see one another's faces, but they kept talking while the breeze moved in the apple trees: about times they'd laughed, times they'd lost. When, finally, they'd retired to bed (Mitch would not sleep in the master bedroom, despite the fact that Barbara had made up the old four-poster for them; they slept in the room he'd had as a child), they lay in each other's arms in the kind of blissful exhaustion that usually follows lovemaking, though they had not made love.

When they went back to New York the following morning, Rachel held Mitchell's hand the whole way. She'd never felt the kind of love she felt for him that day in her life; nothing even close to it.

On the Friday evening, with the whole place—house, garden, orchard, grounds—overrun with people (lantern-hangers, sign-posters, bandstand-erectors, table-carriers, chair-counters, glass-polishers; and on, and on) Barbara Rylander came to find her husband, who was standing at the front gate watching the trucks come and go, and having sworn him to secrecy, said she'd just been out in the orchard, taking a break from the commotion, and she'd seen Mr. George standing there beneath the trees, watching the goings-on. He was smiling, she said.

“You're a silly old woman,” Eric told his wife. “But I love you very much.” And he gave her a great big kiss right there in front of all these strangers, which was completely out of character.

The day dawned, and it was spectacular. The sun was warm, but not hot. The breeze was constant, but never too strong. The air smelt of summer still, but with just enough poignancy to suggest the coming fall.

As for the bride: she outdid the day. She'd felt nauseous in the morning; but once she started to get dressed her nerves disappeared. She had a short relapse when Sherrie came in to see her daughter and promptly burst into happy tears, which threatened to get Rachel started. But Loretta wasn't having any of that. She firmly sent Sherrie away to get a brandy, then she sat with Rachel and talked to her. Simple, sensible talk.

“I couldn't lie to you,” Loretta said solemnly. “I think you know me well enough by now to know that.”

“Yes I do.”

“So believe me when I tell you: everything's fine; nothing's going to go wrong; and you look . . . you look like a million dollars.” She laughed, and kissed Rachel on the cheek. “I envy you. I really do. Your whole life ahead of you. I know that's a terrible cliché. But when you get to be old you see how true it is. You've got one life. One chance to be you. To have some joy. To have some love. When it's over, it's over.” She stared intently at Rachel as she spoke, as though there was some deeper significance in this than the words alone could express. “Now, let's get you to the church,” Loretta said brightly. “There's a lot of people waiting to see how beautiful you look.”

Loretta's promise held. The service was performed in the little church in Caleb's Creek, with all its doors flung wide so that those members of the congregation who weren't able to be seated—fully half of them—could either stand along the walls or just outside, to hear the short ceremony. When it was over the whole assembly did as wedding parties had done in Caleb's Creek since the town's founding: they walked, with the bride and groom hand in hand at the head of the crowd, down Main Street, petals strewn underfoot “to sweeten their way” (as local tradition had it), the street lined on either side with local people and visitors, all smiling and cheering as the procession made its triumphant way through the town. The whole affair was wonderfully informal. At one point a child—one of the Creek kids, no more than four—slipped her mother's hand and ran to look at the bride and groom. Mitchell scooped the child up and carried her for a dozen yards
or so, much to the delight of all the onlookers, and to the joy of the child herself, who only began to complain when her mother came to fetch her, and Mitchell handed her back.

Needless to say there were plenty of photographers on hand to record the incident, and it was invariably an image that editors chose when they were putting together their pieces on the wedding. Nor was its symbolism lost on the scribblers who wrote up the event. The anonymous girl-child from the crowd, lifted up into the strong safe arms of Mitchell Geary: it could have been Rachel.

O
nce the pressures of preparation and the great solemnity of the service were over, the event became a party. The last of the formalities—the speeches and the toasts—were kept mercifully short, and then the fun began. The air remained warm, the breeze just strong enough to rock the lanterns in the trees; the sky turned golden as the sun sank away.

“Perfection, Loretta,” Deborah said, when the two women chanced to be sitting alone for a moment.

“Thank you,” Loretta said. “It just takes a little organization, really.”

“Well it's wonderful,” Deborah replied. “I only wish George were here to see it.”

“Would he have liked her?”

“Rachel? Oh yes. He would have loved Rachel.”

“Unpretentious,” Loretta observed. She was watching Rachel even as she spoke: arm in arm with her beloved, laughing at something one of Mitchell's old Harvard chums had said. “An ordinary girl.”

“I don't think she's ordinary at all,” Deborah said. “I think she's very strong.”

“She'll need to be,” Loretta said.

“Mitchell adores her.”

“I'm sure he does. At least for now.”

Deborah's lips tightened. “Must we, Loretta . . . ?”

“Tell the truth? Not if you don't want to.”

“We've had our happiness,” Deborah said. “Now it's their turn.” She started to get up from the table.

“Wait—” Loretta said. She reached out and lightly caught hold of Deborah's wrist. “I don't want us to argue.”

“I never argue,” Deborah said.

“No. You walk away, which is even worse. It's time we were friends, don't you think? I mean . . . there's things we're going to have to start planning for.”

Deborah slipped her arm out of Loretta's grasp. “I don't know what you mean,” she said, her tone making it perfectly clear that she did not wish the conversation to continue.

Loretta changed the subject. “Sit down a moment. Did I tell you about the astrologer?”

“No . . .” Deborah said, “Garrison mentioned you'd found someone you liked.”

“He's wonderful. His name's Martin Yzerman; he lives out in Brooklyn Heights.”

“Does Cadmus know you go to one of these people?”

“You should go to Yzerman yourself, Deborah.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Advice like that's very useful if you're trying to make long-term plans.”

“But I don't,” she said. “I gave up trying. Things change too quickly.”

“He could help you see the changes coming.”

“I doubt it.”

“Believe me.”

“Could he have predicted what happened to George?” Deborah said sharply.

Loretta let a moment of silence fall between them before she said: “No question.”

Deborah shook her head. “That's not the way things are,” she said. “We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Nobody does.” She rose from her chair. This time Loretta didn't try to stop her. “I'm astonished that a smart woman like you would put faith in that kind of thing. Really I am. It's nonsense, Loretta. It's just a way to make you feel as though you're in control of things.” She looked down at Loretta almost pityingly. “But you're not. None of us are. We could all be dead this time tomorrow.”

And with that, she walked away.

This odd little exchange wasn't the only crack in the bliss of the day. There were three other incidents which are probably worth remarking upon, though none of them were significant enough to spoil the celebrations.

The first of the three, perhaps inevitably, involved Margie. Champagne was not her preferred mode of transport, so she'd made sure that the bar was stocked with good whiskey, and once the first round of bubbly was drunk she switched to Scotch. She rapidly became a little testy, and took it into her head to tell Senator Bryson who, along with his family, had flown up from Washington, what she thought of his recent comments on welfare reform. She was by no means inarticulate and Senator Bryson was plainly quite happy to be chewing on a serious issue rather than nibbling small talk; he listened to Margie's remarks with suitable concern. Margie downed another Scotch and told him he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. The senator's wife attempted a little leavening here, remarking that the Gearys weren't likely to be needing welfare any time soon. To which Margie sharply replied that her father had worked in a steel mill most of his life, and died at the age of forty-five with twelve
bucks in his bank account; and where the hell was the man with the whiskey anyway? Now it was Garrison who stepped in to try and bring the exchange to a halt, but the senator made it perfectly plain that he was enjoying the
contretemps
and wished to continue. The man with the whiskey duly arrived, and Margie got her glass refilled. Where were they, she said; oh yes, twelve bucks in his bank account. “So don't tell me I don't know what's going on out there. The trouble is none of you high and mighties gives a fuck. We've got problems in this country, and they're getting worse, and what are you doing about it? Besides sitting on your fat asses and pontificating.”