by Anita Shreve
Once a month, Sydney and Jeff flew to Montreal to visit Julie, who appeared to be thriving. In the late spring, she exhibited one painting in a group show at a crafts fair. It was clear that Julie had considerable talent and would go far, and Sydney believed the painting she was entering would sell in minutes. (Not true: it didn’t sell, and Julie gave it to Sydney. Five pears lay in a blue Delft bowl, a sliced lemon on the table in the foreground. The juice of the lemon seemed real enough to lick.)
Ben had visited Julie twice, Julie freely announced, perhaps having no inkling of the rift between the brothers, though she might have wondered at Thanksgiving when Ben did not show for the meal, disappointing his parents. Sydney, too, was dismayed and had to let go of her imagined dialogue with Ben as well as the hoped-for reconciliation between the brothers. Sydney wondered if Ben would have come if she hadn’t, but Jeff, who grew quiet whenever Ben’s name was mentioned, thought not. It was Jeff with whom Ben was furious.
At Christmas, Ben went on a cruise.
Sydney could not get Jeff to say how much the rift hurt him, nor how angry it made him, anger fueling anger. But she could see on his face the slight moment of apprehension whenever he entered a restaurant in Boston and the way he quickly scanned the crowd, looking for his brother. Not once in the year since Sydney and Jeff had met had they visited Boston’s waterfront or the North End or the financial district, areas where they might have encountered Ben.
Sydney had been fascinated, during her first visit to Needham, to see the family seat and to view some of Mr. Edwards’s work. The man seemed pleased that Sydney took an interest. It had been some time since anyone had asked about the framed architectural drawings that hung here and there, most remaining modestly in Mr. Edwards’s study.
The family homestead was a stucco colonial on a hill, a house with many rooms, the building too large for the yard, as were all the homes on the street. It had been erected in the 1930s and had lovely touches: a long butler’s pantry with glass cupboards on both sides; arched entrances to each living room; an out-of-the-way niche in which one could read on a love seat; and spacious porches, both glassed-in and screened. Dinner was served on a highly polished Hepplewhite—a relic from Anna Edwards’s family, from whom, Sydney deduced, most of the money had come. The meals were elaborate and formal, Mrs. Edwards cooking them herself. Sydney sometimes wished for a maid, however; the preparation of the meals made Mrs. Edwards tense and uncommunicative once the food was on the table.
In truth, the matriarch was looking more and more windblown, as if having been wildly buffeted by the vicissitudes within the family.
Julie came always with Hélène, Jeff with Sydney, everyone working slightly too hard, Sydney thought, to make the evenings successful. From time to time, she would look up to find Mrs. Edwards staring at her as if searching for telltale signs of Jewishness, much like examining a room one had recently dusted for a place one had missed.
Mrs. Edwards never said Sydney’s last name, introducing her only, when introductions were absolutely necessary, as “Jeff’s friend Sydney.”
One night, shortly after Sydney had moved into Jeff’s apartment in Cambridge, Jeff stood on a chair to replace a lightbulb. He had on boxers and a T-shirt, and Sydney, remembering that first boat ride with Jeff and Ben, impulsively kissed his thigh. Jeff looked down at her.
“Marry me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Would you let me marry you?”
Startled, Sydney took a step backward and sat on a kitchen chair. “I’ve been married twice,” Sydney said.
“I know that.”
“You’ve never asked me much about my husbands.”
“I didn’t want to have to imagine them,” he said. “Besides, I can’t compete with an air racer.”
“Of course you can.”
“Is he still racing?”
“No. He had an accident and broke his leg.”
“How do you know that?”
“A friend told me.”
“Oh.” Jeff was silent a moment. “What’s he doing now?”
“Teaching.”
“My point exactly,” Jeff said.
That night, as Sydney lay in bed listening to Jeff breathe beside her, she trembled, much the same way she had done the day Jeff had run his finger along her thigh. That gesture, like his asking her to marry him, seemed spur-of-the-moment, impetuous, perhaps even possessive. Yet she did not doubt Jeff’s feelings for her. Hadn’t he told her, again and again, how much he loved her? Hadn’t he declared, never wavering, that he had been certain about her since the first day they had met? Sydney had felt love before, and though she thought comparisons unfair and fickle (could anyone accurately remember love?), she was certain her feelings for Jeff were just as solid as they had been for either Andrew or Daniel.
Perhaps, then, it was the act of marrying itself that troubled her. Twice she had made plans, invited guests, participated in a ceremony and partied afterwards; both times, these ceremonies had produced marriages that had ended badly. It must be a kind of posttraumatic marriage syndrome, she thought, like having been sprayed with a toxic agent or having participated in a misguided mission in which there had been casualties. Would therapy be useful?
She rolled over to Jeff and woke him by kissing him on the shoulder. He half turned toward her, struggling for consciousness.
“Yes,” Sydney said.
Jeff looked at her with one eye open. “Did I just ask a question?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He seemed confused. “You already said that.”
“Yes, I did.”
He nodded and then shook his head.
“I needed to say it again,” she explained.
The following week, Sydney and Jeff drove to Needham to tell the Edwardses.
“This should be fun,” Jeff said behind the wheel.
“Your mother will be thrilled.” Sydney used the visor mirror to check her lipstick. “You could have called.”
“Too cowardly,” Jeff explained as he made the turn onto the steep driveway.
“At least your father will be happy,” Sydney reminded him as she pulled on her gloves. Though Christmas was long over, a wreath hung from the front door.
Jeff yanked the parking brake. “I think he sees us as his last best hope.”
There were greetings, warm on Mr. Edwards’s part, distant on Mrs. Edwards’s, as if they already knew what Jeff and Sydney had come to say. Not once had Jeff and Sydney initiated a visit to Needham, though they had gone willingly whenever invited. This time, however, Jeff had called and asked to come.
Coats were dispensed with, Mrs. Edwards letting Sydney’s slide off its hanger onto the closet floor. Sydney was not surprised when Mrs. Edwards merely shut the door.
The four moved silently under an arch into one of the two living rooms, the one filled with chintz-covered, oversized sofas and chairs, the ottomans massive. Off-white side tables with faux nicks held antiques, all white. Stone birds. A filigree candelabra. A stack of books. Sydney wondered if anyone had ever read them.
No tea or drinks were offered. Jeff and Sydney sat together on one of the sofas, Sydney with her legs together, feet flat on the floor, her hands folded into her lap, a guest who’d never met Jeff’s parents and wanted to make a good impression. It was the posture she had settled into, and to dismantle it would only call attention to herself.
Jeff sat with elbows on his thighs, fingers linked.
“Sydney and I are getting married,” he said at once, getting it out of the way.
Mr. Edwards stood. Again, Sydney noticed the slight hitch in his back. He walked directly to Jeff, who stood as well.
“Congratulations,” Mr. Edwards said, beaming. Jeff, suddenly moved, embraced his father as men do, patting each other hard on the back.
Mrs. Edwards crossed her arms over her stomach, warding off yet another blow.
Mr. Edwards leaned toward Sydney, who stood and welcomed his kiss on
her cheek. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “My dear,” he said, but he was unable to continue.
Sydney quickly hugged the man, noting over her shoulder how small Mrs. Edwards looked in the oversized chair. As Sydney was released, she endured Mrs. Edwards’s stare. Sydney imagined the woman calculating the percentage of Jewish blood in grandchildren.
“We’re so pleased,” Mrs. Edwards said.
She did not get up.
Sydney clinked glasses of champagne with Mr. Edwards, who kissed her again on the cheek. For a few hours, she reveled in his happiness and in Jeff’s happiness at his father’s happiness. But she noted as well a kind of falseness in the celebration, as if those who would be happy, even Jeff, were listening to a low vibrating note, such as one from a tuning fork, a note that at any minute might turn harsh and screeching.
Over dinner, a date was set. The beach house was decided upon. Julie, reached in Montreal, crowed into the phone, “I’ve never had a sister!” Julie mentioned wistfully a double wedding, a fact Sydney kept to herself, though she could see the moment when Julie proposed the same to her mother. Mrs. Edwards visibly shuddered and said, “Don’t be silly.” Her voice rang with finality.
The woman might well look windblown, Sydney thought. One child would marry a Jew. A second was a lesbian. A third, by all accounts heterosexual, had absented himself from the family indefinitely.
All this she blamed on Sydney.
Less fraught was the trip first to western Massachusetts to introduce Jeff to Sydney’s mother and then to Troy to tell her father the happy news. Both parents had heard such bulletins from their daughter twice before, which took the edge off any sense of celebration. But if their own views of marriage were jaundiced, each wanted Sydney settled and happy after the trauma of Daniel.
Sydney’s mother was much impressed with the fact of MIT.
“You must be very smart,” she said to Jeff. “He looks smart, doesn’t he?” she added to Sydney.
“Very,” Sydney said, smiling in Jeff’s direction.
The man for whom Sydney’s mother had left her father was long gone—a salesman transferred to Minneapolis—but her mother’s circumstances had improved considerably following an unexpected inheritance from her own mother. Sydney’s mother now worked part-time as an administrative assistant in the admissions office at a community college.
“I can always spot them,” she said knowingly.
Sydney’s father, in New York, served them a spaghetti dinner he’d made himself. He seemed impressed by very little.
“My daughter is resilient,” he said to Jeff after the meal.
Because it was late, Sydney and Jeff slept in her old attic room, the pink curtains and lavender shelves still intact, a fact that might have broken Sydney’s heart had she not been so happy. She and Jeff spooned chastely in the narrow bed.
“I like your father,” Jeff said into Sydney’s ear, the two of them sharing a single pillow that promised a miserable night’s sleep.
“I think we’ve been lucky in our fathers.”
“Your mother seemed nice,” he added.
“I’m not sure I’ve forgiven her yet for taking me away.”
Jeff kissed her ear. His body was long and chilly behind her. In another bed, in other circumstances, she’d have felt him harden and press against her, but that night he was as soft as a boy.
Shortly after having delivered the news to all of the parents, Jeff and Sydney sat at a café near MIT, waiting for Ivers. The food was Indian and cheap, and the takeout lines were long. The Formica tables and pedestal chairs seemed mere receptacles for mountains of coats and scarves and backpacks. The glass window beside Sydney, lit by neon on the outside, steamed on the inside, producing a chartreuse fog.
“We’ll have to tell Ben,” Sydney said.
Jeff, sitting sideways to the table, rhythmically tapped the blunt end of a knife against the Formica as they waited for their food. He wore a navy sweater over an unironed dress shirt. He had let his hair grow out some, and it curled over his collar in the back, a look she liked. She wanted, right now in fact, to touch his hair at the nape of his neck.
She shifted her legs under the table, trying to cross them. She had on jeans and a black sweater, a kind of February uniform. Her hair, which had been pulled back into a ponytail, was filled with static from the cold. Her nose was running in the sudden warmth of the café. It was twenty degrees outside at best.
“I’m sure Dad’s already told him,” Jeff said.
“We should invite him, then,” Sydney suggested, reaching into her backpack for a tissue.
“Should we?” Jeff asked, mocking her. “Should we?”
Sydney blew her nose and waited. She hated this habit of Jeff’s when they were arguing.
“He wouldn’t come anyway,” Jeff said in a gentler tone.
“Does who started it really matter so much to you?” she asked.
Jeff planted his elbows on the table. “As I recall, you were there.”
“He was drunk.”
“He meant it.”
“I disagree.”
“Has he called?” Jeff asked. “Did he call and apologize when I wasn’t home?”
Jeff sat back in his chair and allowed his chicken tikka to be set in front of him. A plate of roasted cauliflower was put in front of Sydney. Over her head, Jeff spotted Ivers in the doorway. “Ivers is here,” Jeff announced.
“We’ll talk about this when we get home?” Sydney suggested.
“Will we?” Jeff asked.
The following Wednesday, Jeff had a meeting at school that would run through the dinner hour. Sydney took a taxi to the financial district. She waited in the snow outside a building on State Street. When Ben exited, she approached him.
He stood still, as if he wasn’t sure he recognized her. His mouth was rigid, his eyes unblinking.
“Sydney,” he said finally.
“Hello, Ben.”
“This isn’t a coincidence.”
“No.”
“It’s an ambush.”
“Sort of.”
Ben nodded slowly. He hiked the collar of his navy overcoat against the snow. “Come on, then,” he said.
In silence, the pair tilted into the weather. They walked a block in the slush. Ben stopped and opened the door to a bar. He held it for her, allowing Sydney to step inside.
Already the room was half filled with men dressed in suits, woven scarves hanging from their necks. The men were drinking fast and hard. The snowstorm had lent a sense of abandon.
Ben and Sydney were led to a small table, wet underfoot. Ben, shedding his overcoat in the warmth of the room, ordered a complicated martini. Sydney asked for a glass of water, her sudden thirst overwhelming.
“You’re not drinking. You want to keep your head. So you’ve come to tell me something,” Ben guessed.
Despite his initial shock, Ben was looking remarkably fit. He had a tan.
“Ask you something,” she amended.
Ben, loosening his tie, assessed her as if he were calculating the selling price of a new loft in the leather district. His scrutiny unnerved Sydney so much that she wished she’d ordered a drink after all. She tried to return the scrutiny but couldn’t hold his gaze.
Though Ben looked fit, he seemed older about his eyes. Something hard in them that hadn’t been there in the summer.
“I feel responsible,” she began.
“Stop.”
Sydney, daunted, paused. “Whatever happened, it can’t be reason enough to break from your brother,” she said.
“With all due respect,” Ben said, watching as the cocktail waitress set down his martini and Sydney’s glass of water, “I don’t think you have the slightest idea of what goes on between brothers.”
This was true. She did not.
“You’re getting married,” he said after a time. “Congratulations.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. Sydney did not join him.
“I hear you’ve already moved
into his apartment,” Ben added.
“I want you to come to the wedding,” Sydney said, taking advantage of what she saw as an opening.
“So that’s why you’re here.”
Sydney was silent. Was that why she had come?
“And Jeff?” he asked.
“Jeff?”
“What does Jeff want?”
Sydney took a drink of water. “I can’t speak for Jeff.”
“No, I didn’t think so,” Ben said, sipping his green martini. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to get hitched without me.”
“What is it?” she asked, leaning toward him and flattening her palms on the table. “I don’t understand this from any point of view—not yours, not Jeff’s. Don’t you care about your father? How much this is hurting him?”
“I care,” Ben said, looking away.
“Then why not just forget the whole thing?”
Ben was silent. “I can’t,” he said.
“Why?” Sydney asked.
“I don’t want to.”
Ben drew away, rested against the back of his chair. They sat, neither moving, in the convivial noise. It was a mistake to have come, Sydney thought. Jeff would be furious if he knew. But Sydney would not tell Jeff. This had been her mission, and she need not tell him she had failed.
“We’re going to Africa,” she announced.
“Really,” Ben said.
“Jeff has to go for his research.”
“Where in Africa?”
“Nairobi. I’ve never been.”
“Not even with your aviator?” Ben smiled over the rim of his glass.
He made a small motion with his hand to signal to the bartender that he wanted another drink. Sydney could see how Ben might be a regular, how he might, each night after work, stop by the bar for a pair of green martinis, perhaps sharing the second one with a woman who’d caught his eye. Sydney briefly pondered Ben’s sex life. She was surprised to realize how little she knew about him.
