Red Hook Road (52 page)

“Look how tiny she was,” he said.

Iris came over and knelt on the floor by the door, studying the mark she had made to record the height of her eldest child on the day she turned two. She ran her finger over the name, and then moved up the panel of the door, tracing the course of Becca’s flourishing. She ended up on her tiptoes, reading the final entry.

“Jane, come see.” She pointed to a mark at the very top of the door, six inches or so beneath the lintel.

Jane brought over a candle, and they all peered up to where John had recorded, in his flawless draftsman’s print, his own name. Iris had never noticed it before. It bore the date of the rehearsal dinner; he and Becca must have done it before the guests began to arrive.

“Funny,” Jane said. “I remember him much taller than that.”

The group photograph finally accomplished to his satisfaction, the photographer dismissed the members of the wedding party. It took a few minutes for them to disperse, for the bridesmaids to kiss the air next to the bride’s cheek, for the bride’s parents to hug both her and the groom close, as though in a few minutes they were not all going to see one another down the road at the reception, for the bride’s grandfather to be helped down the church steps, for the disgraced flower girl to be bundled into the backseat of the car belonging to the mother of the groom.

Once everyone was gone, the photographer led the bride and groom to the far end of the churchyard, to an opening in the hedge of thickly blooming rugosa.

“Mind your dress,” the photographer said. He slipped through the opening and down the short steep slope to the beach, hustling a little, eager to catch the money shot: the bride stepping through the hedge, a burst of pink flowers on either side of her.

She was about to leap the few feet from the break in the hedge down to the beach when the photographer called, “Why don’t you let him go first and lift you down?” The photographer had shot four weddings at this church this summer alone, and he knew this was not only the best way to avoid damage to the dress but would also make for two more pretty pictures, one of the groom lifting his pretty bride, and the other of him setting her down gently on the beach.

He had underestimated this bride, however, and thus was caught off guard when she did not wait for her groom’s hands to gently span her waist, but leaped, laughing, into his arms. They tumbled backward, and the groom landed on the rocks, the bride splayed out in his lap. The photographer
managed to press the shutter a few times before rushing to help them to their feet. The bride and groom laughed. They took no notice of the wet stain on the seat of the groom’s pants, or of the ribbon of seaweed that trimmed the hem of the bride’s dress.

When they were on their feet the photographer pointed a few yards up the beach. “If you stand there,” he said, “I can get the church spire in the frame.”

The bride and groom obediently went to the indicated spot. They resisted, however, his efforts to position them with the bouquet between them, the bride staring up into the groom’s face, her veil trailing over her shoulder. Instead, the groom nuzzled the bride’s neck, making her laugh again, and the photographer took the picture, even though he knew that in the end she would not like seeing herself with her mouth open so wide you could see her back teeth.

For the next fifteen minutes or so he had them move this way and that, until he was finally satisfied that he had what he needed. “Okay,” he said. “We’re all set. Let’s head over to the reception.”

“Why don’t you go on ahead,” the groom said. “We’ll catch up in a minute.”

When he reached the churchyard the photographer snapped on his telephoto lens and, crouching so that he was shooting through the opening in the rugosa hedge, took one last photograph of the bride and groom. This photograph—the couple in the distance on the rocky beach, the bride’s dress and veil blowing out in the sudden gust of breeze, the whole picture framed by the blurry pink of the out-of-focus rugosa blossoms—won him first prize and one thousand dollars in the annual photography contest sponsored by
New England Bride
magazine. On his entry form he declined to mention, not wishing to adversely affect his chances, that behind the pretty picture, though you could not see or guess at it, there lay a tragic tale.

The bride and groom took the long way around and back up to the church, both so that they would not have to scramble up the steep slope to the churchyard in their wedding finery and so that they could spend a few more minutes alone before they were thrust into the adoring throng of their friends and family. The bride hitched up her wide skirt with one
hand, and with the other clasped her new husband’s hand. She held his hand the way she and her sister had always held their father’s, grasping his ring and middle fingers and letting his pinkie, index finger, and thumb rest on the outside of her closed fist.

The groom lifted their joined hand to his lips and kissed her knuckle. “I love you,” he said.

The bride smiled. “I love you, too.”

“I know,” the groom said.

They reached the church, where their limousine waited for them, taking up two parking spaces and even so thrusting its rear bumper halfway into the road. The groom helped the bride into the back of the limousine, taking care not to close her voluminous gown in the door. They backed out onto Red Hook Road.

Four minutes later, the bride and groom heard the sound—the explosive boom, the metallic shriek—but what they saw was only a froth of lace and tulle, swirling in the air around them. The wedding dress, its crinolines, the veil, clung to their faces, wrapping them in a soft, white cocoon.

The Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Mesa Refuge, and Hedgebrook.

Mary Evans and Sylvie Rabineau. Devin McIntyre, Kevin Sparks, Shahrzad Warkentin, and David Ivanick.

Phyllis Grann, Alison Rich, Jackeline Montalvo, Adrienne Sparks.

Dan Smetanka, Julie Orringer, Ryan Harty.

Pam Johann, Nat Stookey, Ellen Werner, Alicia Anstead, Elizabeth Weisser, Cory Lee, Joshua Robison.

Molly and Eric Blake, Brian and Karen Larkin, Maynard Bray, Lucy Benjamin and Clifton Page, Heidi Julavits and Ben Marcus, Michelle and Michael Keyo, Jonathan Lethem and Amy Barrett, Chris Doyle and Tim Houlihan, Posie and Doug Cowan, David Ziff and Alan Bell, the Brooklin Boat Yard.

Robb Forman Dew, Nancy Johnson, Meredith Maran, Peggy Orenstein, Sylvia Brownrigg.

Nancy Kuhl, Rosie Levy Merlin, and the reference libraries of the Berkeley Public Library and the Blue Hill Library.

Sophal Ear, Jaed Coffin.

Cheri Hickman, Teresa Tauchi.