A Wedding in December

by Anita Shreve

  The two women seated themselves at either side of Innes. Mrs. Fraser would not be joining them. Mention was made of a mild stomach upset. Louise kept up a running commentary on the war. A thousand British ships lost. John Ferguson killed. Mary's father had made a bundle in munitions. Hazel seemed unmoved by her sister's insensitive pronouncements.

  Innes noted, even in the low light, a shabbiness to the room he hadn't before, not in its furnishings, which seemed too grand for the homely simplicity of the room, but rather in the absence of moldings, the narrow floorboards, a place just above a door where a chunk of plaster had been dislodged. Through the win­dow at his back, there was a draft. Innes felt the house shudder as a motorcar rumbled by.

  Innes won for Louise, the card game a stream running below conscious thought, his play automatic and deft, even when he intentionally lost the next game to Hazel. In medical school, they had played for pennies, earning or forfeiting beer money. Innes had been trained to think methodically and precisely on one level, intuitively on another, a trick his mentor had made him practice evenings in his office. A skill available to anyone, but consciously retrieved and employed when interviewing patients for surgery.

  The sullen manservant who had hoisted Innes's luggage up the stairs as if it had contained dead cod appeared at a distant door asking for Louise. Louise left the table to speak to the man, and immediately Innes and Hazel exchanged glances — she raised her eyes just as he looked away. A thrumming began in his chest as Hazel stood to see to Louise at the door. Innes heard the sisters murmuring, then Louise's mild distress. She disappeared with the sullen servant.

  Hazel, stopping by the fire, said, "My mother is not well and needs Louise. My sister has a tonic she makes that alleviates my mother's discomfort."

  Innes diagnosed constipation. "I'm sorry she's feeling poorly," he said, standing up from the hexagonal table.

  "You don't love cards, do you?" Hazel asked, putting her back to the fire.

  "Under some circumstances, but not tonight."

  "I work with my father in the clinic."

  "Do you?" Innes asked with genuine surprise.

  "Would you like another drink?"

  "Not if I'm to be alert in the morning," Innes said as he moved toward the fire.

  Hazel sat at one end of the leather sofa. Innes, not sure where to put himself, chose a chair near the sofa's opposite end. He had a view of Hazel's face in the firelight. "What do you do at the clinic?" he asked.

  "I roll bandages. I soothe frightened patients."

  "I would find your presence soothing," Innes dared to say.

  "Why did you not stay on in America?" Hazel asked, ignoring the compliment.

  "I felt my place to be here," Innes said. "There's a keen sense of nationalism everywhere now, isn't there? Also, it is a great honor to train with your father."

  "The war is taxing his reserves," Hazel said, frowning. "And his spirits. He has seen many die of their wounds. I should warn you that he will be a hard taskmaster."

  "I look forward to the challenge," Innes said.

  "I'm sure you do, Mr. Finch."

  "Would you consider," Innes asked, "since I am to live here for the duration, calling me by my given name?" Not waiting for the answer, he added, "Shall I stoke the fire?"

  "I'm off to bed soon, but do if you plan to remain here."

  Innes, too, would be off to bed soon. He hoped a fire had been made up in his room. If not, the sheets would be frigid. At school, ice had sometimes formed in the pitchers beside the beds.

  "Louise has a slight nervous condition," Hazel said.

  Harrison nodded, wondering if this was treachery on Hazel's part, quashing Louise's chances, or was it merely a warning? Innes did not say what he thought, that Louise was desperate to love whomever might love her in return. Attention, Innes could see, had all been given to the older sister. "I gather you're en­gaged," Innes said.

  There was a kind of dull anxiety about Halifax evenings. The knitting of socks. The rubbers of bridge. The shipboard dances. An officer in France, if he made it back, would offer an escape.

  You wouldn't be a suitable candidate for medicine had you not deduced that," Hazel said.

  "Tell me about him."

  "In a sentence? He is a lieutenant commander with the British Royal Navy."

  Innes, thinking that if he loved someone, a sentence would never do, asked, "He's not a surgeon then?"

  "No," Hazel answered, glancing away from Innes and toward the fire. "He's in manufacturing."

  Money or good looks must have attracted, Innes thought, knowing even as he had this thought that attraction defied logic, just as it was doing now in the Fraser sitting room.

  "Will you settle here?" Innes asked.

  "That is a decision for Edward to make," Hazel answered, raising her chin.

  Hazel would move away then. Even Young Street, with its better sort of person, would not suit. Already, Innes found he minded Hazel's future absence. Halifax, full of possibility just hours ago, would seem empty without her.

  "Mr. Finch — Innes — I think you will do well in your pro­fession."

  "I hope you are right."

  "You have intuition and empathy. I saw it at dinner and again at cards."

  "Thank you."

  Hazel gestured toward the windows. "I hate the curtains,' 'she said with feeling. "There's a lovely view out there of the harbor and the ships in the moonlight. When the war ends, and I have my own house, there will be no curtains on the windows. I'll want to see the lights, the stars." She stood. "I'm off to bed now."

  Innes, jealous of that future house with its naked windows, rose with her.

  "I'll see you at breakfast," she said. "Ellen, our cook, will do a Scottish breakfast in your honor."

  "I will be honored then."

  "Do you miss your family?"

  "More so as the years pass," he confessed. "In the beginning, I was impatient to be away. I was cruel in that, I think. I have a brother in France."

  There was a pause while each imagined the brother in France, a country neither of them had ever seen.

  "Did you ever think of medical training yourself?" he asked.

  "It was not encouraged," she said, moving toward the door. "Louise will be sorry not to have said good night to you. My mother must be worse than I thought."

  "I hope to see them both at breakfast."

  "I hate this war," Hazel said, turning. "Hate it."

  Innes was surprised by the ferocity of the statement. "We all do," he said.

  "No. Not all. Some prosper."

  Innes wondered if she was thinking of Edward, who was in manufacturing. "One could say that physicians prosper," Innes offered. "Careers can be made."

  "For physicians, I believe it exhausts more than it enhances," she said.

  "Is your father exhausted?"

  Yes, and I worry about him. But he is a man of discipline." And are you?" Innes asked, opening the door for Hazel. She crossed the threshold, moving close to him.

  "Not at all," Hazel replied. "No, not in the slightest."

  Soon Innes would go to bed, Agnes thought. He would sleep be­tween frigid — no, warm — sheets. In the morning he would have his Scottish breakfast, and then the unthinkable would happen. Sorne of the Fraser family would die. One would be blinded. The Power that Agnes had over Innes and Hazel and Louise — Agnes, who was powerless to affect her own life — was both frightening and quietly thrilling.

  Agnes returned to the inn with little memory of the trip down the hill. It was nearly dark when she crossed the threshold, shutting the door behind her. She took the stairs two at a time, not wanting anyone to see her in her sweater, her stringy hair. She shut the door behind her like a fugitive and caught her breath. She peeled off her clothes as she made her way to the shower. She looked at the Jacuzzi. Did all the rooms come with a Jacuzzi? Her first thought was one of pleasure. Her second one of pain. Must everything in life be referential? Was there nothing that would not remi
nd her of Jim?

  Agnes stepped out of her underwear and studied her face in the mirror over the sink. Her eyes were clear. Her skin was slightly flushed. She would not, under any circumstances, cry. She would, in fact, disregard the tub entirely. She saw, on a silver tray on the shelf under the mirror, containers of shampoo and shower gel. She twisted off the cap of the shampoo and inhaled. She smelled rose­mary, grapefruit.

  Harrison returned to his room, the treble note of Nora's palm on his shoulder drowning out thought, intention, rest. Unwilling yet to go in search of Agnes, though that would have been the plan, he stood at the window and saw intermittently, as it appeared and disappeared from view around curves and below hillocks, a stretch limo making its way up the drive. The limo snagged his at­tention, for he thought it had to be Bill and Bridget, that they had arrived in grand style (good for Bill, Harrison thought). Harrison crossed his room so that he could have a view of the front of the inn. A woman, not Bridget, emerged from the right rear door of the limo. She was smartly dressed in a black sweater and black pants, the solid line accentuating her height, which must have been near six feet. The woman had sleek blond hair, though Harrison could see, when she turned around, that she was nearing forty if not there already. From within the dark expanse of the car, the woman was handed a fur, which she draped over one arm. Harri­son watched as she walked directly into the inn without a backward glance.

  From the other side of the limo, a man Harrison recognized —-for his height, for his trim build, for the head of tamed reddish curls — stepped out onto the gravel and surveyed the property as if he might buy it. It was not entirely illogical that Jerry should have come by limo — he lived in Manhattan and clearly didn't want the fuss of a car — but had the stretch really been necessary?

  There would be no grand entrance for Jerry, however, no door­man, no porter for that matter. The limo driver took out the luggage — camel leather, supple, and impressive — and set it neatly on the first step of the inn, his task completed. The chauf­feur had the air of a man whose strict business code barely masked his impatience to be away. (Was he hungry? Did he need a bath­room? Had Jerry been obnoxious in the car?) Jerry would be an­noyed at having to manage his own luggage (or would Judy have to fetch the bags and haul them up the stairs?), and Nora, in Jerry's book, would be down a point or two before she'd even begun. Har­rison was tempted to open his door and walk to the top of the stairs simply to overhear what Jerry had to say when he stepped into the lobby and there was no one there to greet him. Or would the sight of the limo have roused the troops?

  Harrison supposed he ought to go for another walk. He needed to order his thoughts. The prospect of seeing faces one had known intimately in another universe — the unsettling illusion that these people were truly his closest friends, though he had not seen some of them in twenty-seven years — as well as the notion of present­ing oneself to one's peers for judgment (was Harrison doing well? was he happy in marriage? did he look forty-four?) disturbed him. Though not as much as Nora's quick touches, on the knee and on his shoulder, surely meaningless at their age, merely a way of mak­ing a point, and yet sounding that note that was still quivering in the air. And then there was the twice-mentioned Stephen, whose ghostly form was filling in like a special effect in a B movie. There would be talk of Stephen, and Harrison would have to prepare himself for it. Men and women Harrison hadn't seen in more than two decades would look at him and think, Stephen. It was natural. It was to be expected. Harrison had been, after all, Stephen's best friend and roommate.

  Harrison sat at the desk with its lamp and blotter and telephone.

  He removed the inn cards (the promotions, the list of local attrac­tions) so that the desk was as uncluttered as he could make it. He'd have liked a second cup of coffee and thought about the espresso machine in the library, but he might meet Bridget or Agnes or even Jerry there, which he was not yet ready to do. No, now he needed to make a connection to his family — to Evelyn — however tenu­ous, however quixotic (Harrison would arrive home before the let­ter did). He could call, but he didn't want to hear his wife's rushed voice, her perfunctory questions: How are you? How was the flight? What's the inn like? Rather he would like to see Evelyn in repose, curled up on the leather couch in what passed in his house for a li­brary, a third of the shelves filled with children's books, sitting with a cup of coffee (lucky girl) while she read Harrison's words. The ef­fort of a letter seemed atavistic in an age of e-mail — deliberately Luddite and time-consuming — and yet it was this image of Eve­lyn, one he hardly ever saw in real life, that inspired him to rum­mage through the desk drawer to find the inn's stationery: large sheets of heavy white paper with the name of the inn embossed white on white on the back flap of the envelope so as not to intrude commercially upon the letter writer's thoughts. Pure Nora, Harrison thought.

  Dear Evelyn,

  How long has it been since I sat down to write to you? A year? That trip to London? I'm inspired to do so again and hope you don't mind this rambling letter, nor the fact that I'll be within Toronto's city limits when you receive it. As always, I think back to the days when you were living in Toronto and I was in Montreal, and we wrote incessantly. I remember listen­ing for the postman's steps along the sidewalk (I was like a dog in that; I could tell his gait three houses away) and bound­ing down the stairs to snatch the envelope — always gray — from him, and carrying it with care, as if it might crumble, to my squalid room. I'd fall into a swoon of pure emotion as I read. Possibly it's that feeling I'm trying to recapture now: rare as I grow older. More likely to happen when watching the boys, I think. By the way, how are they? (Absurd to be asking a question I'll already know the answer to when you read this.) Not too annoying while I'm gone, I hope. Though secretly I think both they and we like the holiday of an absent parent, any novelty being preferable during the school year to the same old.

  I arrived at the inn this morning. It's quite unique — all gables and porches and improbable rooflines, which might sound Gothic but isn't really. Maybe it was in the days when Carl Laski lived here, but Nora, his widow, the woman who owns the inn and has arranged for Bill and Bridget's wedding (you remember I mentioned Nora) has made the place terrifically inviting — very up-to-the-minute with espresso machines and Jacuzzis in the bathrooms. The rooms feel calm, and one has a sense of "having arrived." I think Nora's a genius at this. Perhaps she's found her true calling. Certainly she seems happy, if distracted, and we are all amazed by this incredible weather — sunny and seventy degrees. Is it glorious there as well? I see this as a good omen for Bill and Bridget, for whom I wish only the best. Bridget has a fifteen-year-old boy I'm looking forward to meeting. Wonder if Bill's put a glove in his hand yet.

  I've never talked much about my days at Kidd. You once asked me why. I think — no, I know — it's because my time there ended so badly. I told you that my roommate died a month before graduation, but I'm not sure I ever told you how.

  All of us were friends. Stephen (who was my roommate), Bill, Jerry, Bob, and I had been on the varsity baseball team since our sophomore year. Stephen, among us, was truly gifted, the one who would have gone to college on a baseball scholarship — a better college than he deserved, I might add, since he was only an average student, sliding through mostly on his dazzle and debating skills. As you can imagine, this was a constant source of tension between us, I being the plodder, the one who did all the reading, probably three or four days before it was due. But we were tight despite our aca­demic differences. Stephen was unique, a guy who could see the bigger picture, who made us think. And, of course, we all wanted to be him. Handsome doesn't really do him justice. The word is too static, I think. His face could come alive in an instant, and his smile was truly encompassing. You wanted to be standing somewhere within its perimeter. He had money, which not all of us did (Kidd wasn't that kind of school). His father had made a fortune in the early years of telecommunications and had an enormous house in Wellesley. I believe it had se
ven bathrooms. His father had di­vorced and remarried a younger woman — Angelica, I think her name was. She was only ten years older than we were, which was always slightly disconcerting (I may have had a crush on her my freshman year). It was in Stephen's father's house that I had my first drink (decidedly not Stephen's first), sneaking down one night during our junior year and unlocking his father's liquor cabinet and together putting away nearly a fifth of Jack Daniel's. Not sure I've ever been that sick since.

  Bill and Jerry were roommates. You remember Bill from the two skiing trips with the kids. At school, Bill was quiet and unassuming, while Jerry was "in-your-face" long before we even knew what the term meant. He was a terrific sinker-ball pitcher, though, and if he could keep the ball down, the other team couldn't get a hit out of the infield. When Jerry was at school, he was half a blowhard, half a genuinely inquisitive kid. I always hoped the genuinely inquisitive kid would win out, but I met him about five years ago in New York for lunch and was disappointed to see that not only had the blowhard won out but it had taken over like a virus. I'm not sure much has changed, since I just saw him pull up to the inn a few minutes ago in a stretch limo. I thought it was the bride- and groom-to-be until Jerry, with his long neck and gangly limbs (now cosseted in expensive tailoring), stepped out of the car. For all his braggadocio, though, he's the smartest among us, and look forward to seeing what he does to the mix tonight.

  Rob, a tall, skinny kid, played right field, but probably shouldn't have. We didn't know it then, but he was headed for Juilliard on the strength of his virtuosity at the piano. I'm sure once he got in (it took him two or three tries after we graduated from Kidd), they told him he could never catch a ball again. I wonder now if he even follows the games. He was an insane Red Sox fan. It's a miracle, really, that he didn't jam a finger during his time at Kidd. It happens all the time.