Real Life (26 page)

“Do you want any of these?” Dorrie held out the pan of eggs to Hugo.

“No. And I don't want to be made fun of, either.”

“Hugo, no one's making fun of you,” Dorrie said. He saw her pull some kind of face at Alex, some unfathomable smirk.

He said, “Well, I've got to go, anyway.”

He escaped down the stairs and outside. Behind him, he heard Alex say, “I tried,” and then a clatter of dishes. Raisin bread and eggs and bacon. Such extravagances were only for weekends, when
he
was there. Hugo would have liked another helping, but he couldn't stand the way Alex talked to him, as if he were something from another planet and Alex a scientist trying to make contact. The comparison amused him and he slowed down and changed his course. He had been running toward the garage, but instead went down to the water and got the boat out of the shed. The pond was paved with the blue of the sky, but it was harder and colder than the blue of summer, in spite of the sun. He rowed across the water, imagining it turned to ice. Winter wasn't far off. Where would he be then? He shivered, and rowed fast.

The Garners were at breakfast, reading the newspaper. Mrs. Garner wore a pink bathrobe buttoned up to the neck; Mr. Garner was all dressed, in neat brown pants and a V-neck sweater. They welcomed him with happy surprise, made him sit down and eat a corn muffin with apple butter on it, asked him about school and his kitten. Without his even having to worm it out of them, they told him they were going to Albany to see the grandchildren next weekend. There was a new one—had Dorrie told him? A little girl named Alison. They were so nice that he almost felt they wouldn't mind if he took away a bottle or two for a good cause. He could see the cupboard where he knew the wine rack was, crammed with bottles lying like corpses in a vault. He wouldn't take anything good, nothing French or old; he knew that much. Mrs. Garner offered him another muffin, and refilled his milk glass. In English class they discussed the stories in their book, and Mrs. Dean was always asking things like “Where in the story did Nick go over the edge? Where is the point of no return?” That was where Hugo was, poised on the cliff, ready to go over. He was a rat, he was no better than Shane or Monty, he wished he wasn't going to do it, but he knew he was, he was.

7

At the wedding reception, Rachel insisted on throwing her bouquet. She tossed it straight at Dorrie: an autumnal arrangement of chrysanthemums, purple and white, that would have hit her in the face had she not, reflexively (in the act of remarking to Alex on the absurdity of Rachel's enslavement to tradition), caught it. There was laughter and applause. Margo Cornell, there with the divine Charles, clapped harder than anyone. Dorrie blushed and thrust the bouquet at Alex, who hugged her and whispered, “I guess that settles it. We'd better do the proper thing and get married.”

Rachel whisked Dorrie away with her—upstairs, for the ancient ritual in which the maid of honor helps the bride change out of her finery and into her traveling clothes. The wedding had taken place at city hall, with Dorrie and Alex, and Leon's brother and his wife, acting as witnesses. It had been done in a minute, an emotionless ceremony they had had to wait in line for. When it was over, there were kisses all around, and handshakes, and smiles, and then they stood there in the brightly lit corridor looking at one another. Outside, it was raining, and they dashed under umbrellas to their cars. Rachel's white shoes got muddy. They arrived at the reception far too early and had to sit at the bar drinking until people began to arrive.

“I knew what a city hall ceremony would be like. That's why I didn't want to be done out of all the rest of it,” Rachel explained to Dorrie, apologizing for the bouquet, the white woolen dress and impractical shoes, the hat with its little veil, the lavish reception at a country inn outside Boston, with champagne and a tiered cake. They were sitting in one of the inn bedrooms, finishing a bottle of champagne—Rachel in her slip, Dorrie still bemused by what Alex had said. She had left him holding the bouquet, smiling at her over the blossoms, the purples garish against his shabby, inappropriate tweed jacket. Another answered prayer. After all these years of futile yearning, what did it mean? What crucial conjunction of planets had taken place that the man she loved could say, with the trace of an English accent that she loved so much, “We'd better get married”? Or had it been a joke—an extension of her comment about Rachel's silliness? What was she to say when she emerged with Rachel and faced him again?

“I had to make it real, Dorrie,” Rachel said. “And of course I missed out on all this traditional crap with William.”

Dorrie remembered Rachel's first wedding with affection: a mid-seventies affair, with fruit and cheese and homemade carrot cake set out on trestle tables in someone's rural backyard. Dorrie had met a nice man there—Philip something? A friend of William's, tall, fair, and (it turned out after a disastrous night) sexually confused.

“That wedding was such fun,” Dorrie said. “We danced on the lawn, and there were roses in bloom, and people playing guitars. And you had that gorgeous Mexican wedding dress.”

“You were necking with Philip Lerman,” Rachel said, and sighed. “Poor Philip.”

Dorrie didn't ask for details: AIDS, drugs, death, disaster—she didn't want to hear about it. “And you and William actually wore vine leaves in your hair,” she said.

“Were we really that young and silly?” asked Rachel. She smiled, remembering, and in the next moment her face distorted and became a mask of sorrow, the face of an old woman. She lowered her head into her hands and began to cry. “Oh, God,” she said. “I want to be back there, I don't want to be here, I don't know why I'm doing this.”

Dorrie thought instantly of Leon, downstairs, jubilantly pouring champagne for his friends and relatives—Leon, whose adoration of Rachel was already legendary. “He's so happy, he's like a teen-ager,” his brother had said. “Only Leon was never like this as a teen-ager. I honestly think this is the first time that son of a gun has taken the time to fall in love!”

“I don't love Leon,” Rachel said. “I just don't want to be alone. I can't be alone anymore, Dorrie. I'm thirty-nine years old.” She raised her head, gave a harsh sob, and covered her mouth with one hand—the left one, where Leon's mammoth diamond and the new wedding band gleamed. “I need to be with someone,” she said. The words came muffled through her fingers, and the tears ran fast from her eyes. Black makeup streaked down from the corners. “But I shouldn't be doing this. I don't love him, Dorrie, I just don't.”

“Rachel, Rachel,” Dorrie said. She got up and found tissues in her purse, and gave one to Rachel. Rachel stopped crying and blew her nose, then started again. Dorrie was horrified. She felt Rachel's outburst was somehow her fault: she never should have mentioned the vine leaves. “It's postwedding jitters,” she said desperately. “Everyone has them. So they say.” Who said? It didn't matter. “It's perfectly natural, it happens all the time.”

“They're not just postwedding, they're prewedding and during wedding.” Dorrie handed her another tissue; she wiped at her nose violently and took a deep, shaky breath. “He's a dear, sweet man, but it's just not the same. I know what it's like to be in love. It's not like this. Oh, I don't know—maybe I can't do it anymore, the ecstatic bit. Maybe I'm too old.”

“Of course you're not,” Dorrie said, thinking of herself and Alex. But Rachel's face, streaked with tears and makeup, did look old—worn out and battered. Her crying spell had done away with the blooming bride.

“Well, maybe I should have hung on longer,” Rachel said. “What I'm doing is settling, I know I am. I'm doing it with my eyes wide open because I need to be married to someone and Leon is all there was.”

“Oh, Rachel,” Dorrie said. She didn't know what else to say. It seemed a tragedy to marry for anything but love—the ecstatic bit. And yet the deed was done, and Leon was a nice man, he loved Rachel, surely they would have a good life. She leaned over and took Rachel's hands away from her face, and looked her in the eye, feeling like someone in a movie: Katharine Hepburn, the sensible one, giving advice to Olivia de Havilland, who was weak and flighty. “Rachel, listen to me.” Rachel's face stayed crumpled, the tears flowing again. Dorrie said, “Rachel, you are going to be happy with Leon. Yes, you are. I know you are. You are very lucky to have found him. You think you don't love him, but you do. You do, Rachel.” She felt like a hypnotist, she felt ridiculous and stagy, but Rachel's tears stopped, and she slumped in her chair quietly, holding Dorrie's hands.

“It's not going to be like with William,” Dorrie went on. “It's different, it's another way of being in love. And don't forget what a bastard William turned out to be. Leon will never make you unhappy, Rachel. You live with him for a year, and then try and tell me you don't love him. You'll be the happiest couple on earth. You'll lick his shoes, you'll love him so much.” Rachel snickered, and freed one hand to wipe her eyes. “I mean it,” Dorrie said. “It's not like fiction—life isn't. It's much messier and more confusing, and it's not like it is in your stories. Not often, anyway,” she added quickly. “I mean—well, you write about these young things having wacky romances, and here's Leon, a nice, solid middle-aged man, and you're in a situation without much plot or conflict, I admit, but—hell, Rachel, isn't that better? Maybe not in fiction, but in life. You had plenty of plot with William. Now you'll have character, with Leon.”

She smiled at her metaphor, and Rachel, through fresh tears, giggled. The tears, Dorrie knew, were no longer despairing. Rachel reached awkwardly across the space between their chairs to hug her. “Dorrie, you are wonderful,” she said. “What would I do without you? You're right, you're always right, you've always been able to set me straight.” She blew her nose one last time—a resolute honk—then stood up and went over to the mirror. “Oh, God, what a hag I look like,” she said cheerfully. “Never cry after thirty—doesn't that sound like a book title? Something by Jean Rhys? I guess I'd better go wash my face and start over.”

She went into the bathroom and ran water. Dorrie poured herself the rest of the champagne. She wondered if Rachel had engineered the tearful scene as part of the wedding drama—a variation on the tradition of the blushing bride going reluctantly to the altar. Dorrie listened to the merry, purposeful sound of water splashing in the sink. Rachel was as ebullient as one of her own jolly heroines—all her charm risen to the surface like cream. Any minute she would emerge, looking radiant again, and get into her knit dress and tweed jacket and beautiful new boots, and drive with Leon to Logan Airport for a night flight to Paris. What a life. And Dorrie and Alex would go back to East Latimer.… The ride there was unimaginable to Dorrie. Rachel's bouquet would lie wilting on the seat between them. What would they talk about? Their own wedding? What if Alex didn't mention it again? Could she actually bring herself to ask him if he had really meant it, or if it had been one of his ironic jokes? And if it had been a joke, was she supposed to laugh? Ha ha, very funny, Alex, you're such a card.

She drained her glass. She had undoubtedly had too much champagne. Something about the scene was beginning to make her feel middle-aged and depressed: the empty champagne bottle, the little pile of crumpled tissues on the floor, Rachel's carefree mangling, from the bathroom, of “Some Enchanted Evening.”

“Once you have found him, never let him go,” Rachel sang. Right. Good advice. An omen? The second of the day, maybe. Just that morning, before she left the house, she had received in the mail the proofs for the
Ceramic Arts Quarterly
interview. She had liked it, had thought that, for someone who really had very little to say about her work, she had spoken pretty well—except for one exchange. The interviewer, a preppy young man named Hal, had asked her, “This may be none of my business, but why do you live alone? Do you find that necessary for your work?” She had answered, “No. It just happened that way. It has nothing to do with my work. I'm certainly not temperamental. I could work whether I lived with someone or not; it really doesn't matter.” She would pencil through the question and answer when she got home, and scrawl, “Delete this,” in the margin. Bad luck, to say it didn't matter. Or would it be bad luck, to anticipate?

“Ne—ver—let—him—go-o,” Rachel warbled from the bathroom, going up, off key, at the last words.

“Rachel, come on,” Dorrie called. She couldn't sit forever in this stuffy hotel room, sifting through good omens and bad while she waited for her fate to be revealed.

Hugo had arranged to meet Nina after dark, down on the dock. He saw her flashlight wobbling along the track by the water, and then the light disappeared, and a moment later her voice in his ear said, “Gotcha!” and she clutched his arm.

“I knew it was you,” he said, and clutched her back, but she pulled away to turn her flashlight back on and shine it in his face. Her guitar, in a canvas zip-up case, was slung over her shoulder.

“I'm staying overnight at my sister's,” she said. “Isn't that brilliant? Where's your auntie?”

Hugo shielded his eyes. “At a wedding, in Boston. She won't be home until late.”

“A wedding. Not her own, I assume.”

She turned the light away from him, and he saw her smile. “No—her friend Rachel.”

“The writer.”

“Right.” He was pleased that she remembered this trivial, peripheral detail of his life.

“Well,” Nina said. “Let's get going. Christ, it's cold. I sure could use a drink, ha ha. Is it going to rain again?”

“Maybe it won't,” he said. He felt apologetic about the weather. It was a chilly night, and a drizzly rain had fallen, off and on, all day. He had on his best sweatshirt and a wind-breaker and his new black jeans that made him look thinner. Nina was wearing a thick white sweater and jeans; she had tied a plaid scarf around her hair. She looked tinier than ever lugging the guitar. He considered offering to carry it, but knew she would refuse. “Maybe it's let up for good,” he said. “We'll be inside, anyway. All we've got to do is get over there.”