A Wedding in December

by Anita Shreve

  "About. . . maybe five miles from here?"

  "How will you get home?" Innes asked, his words making blunt puffs in the icy air.

  "My uncle will fetch me. He has a carriage. How about you?"

  Innes laughed and pointed back toward the hospital. "My humble abode."

  "You live at hospital?" she asked, surprised.

  "Many of us do. There are quarters. We are well fed." He left unsaid the fact that he had nowhere else to go.

  "I convinced myself that you had not died," Hazel said. "I thought perhaps you had gone back to your family."

  Innes felt again a sense of elation. Hazel had thought about him. She had hoped he had not died. "There is so much work to do here," he said. "My place is here. I have cabled my family. They do not expect me."

  "Will you make Halifax your home then?" she asked, skirting a pile of slush.

  "If Halifax should ever again become a home for anyone."

  "I've heard they will erect housing. My uncle is with the council."

  "There are thousands homeless."

  "One would do well to be a carpenter just now," she said.

  Innes laughed, and they turned a corner.

  "Did you think it was the Germans?" she asked.

  "I did for a moment. Until I got outside and saw the devasta­tion. No bomb could have produced that."

  "You were not in the wreckage of the house?" she asked.

  "I think I landed in a textile factory."

  Hazel thought a moment. "The Looms. You'd have landed there. It was behind our street and one building over. Not a tex­tile factory. More of a crafts organization."

  "Would you like to stop for something to eat?" Innes asked.

  Hazel shook her head. "I will have a meal waiting for me at my aunt's house. Really, I am just enjoying the fresh air."

  The air smelled clean for the first time in days. The scent of death seemed to have vanished.

  Hazel stopped short and faced Innes. "My sister," Hazel said. "I don't see how I can visit her again in the near future."

  "It would seem unwise at the moment," Innes said, surprised by the abruptness of Hazel's pronouncement. "I do believe that she will calm down. I have seen many other patients accidentally blinded. Few can maintain the fever pitch of terror that seems to grip her now."

  Hazel was standing so close to Innes that he could feel her breath.

  "I wish to go away," she said. "I wish to leave all this."

  Innes wasn't sure of her meaning. "Leave Halifax?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "I don't want to be here. It's heartless, I know, when so many have suffered. When my sister is suffering."

  "But where would you go?" Innes asked, aware of a pressure building in his chest.

  Hazel tore off her hat. She shook her head, and her hair fell loose. "Perhaps to America," she said. "I don't know. When the war is over, I could go to Europe. I know only that I can't tolerate this city. I felt this way before the blast."

  "Yes, I sensed it," Innes said.

  "And now there's nothing for me here."

  Innes was stung by the remark. "You don't feel the need to be near your sister?" he asked.

  "Of course, I shall take care of her," Hazel said. "There is money. And I will visit her — when she will have me. But, no, I don't feel the need to be near her every minute. I think both of us would do better to be apart for a while."

  Innes was not surprised by Hazel's admission. Nor even the heartlessness of it.

  "But what about your fiancé?" he asked. "Will he not shortly return from France?"

  Hazel played with the hat in her hands. "I have written to him," she said.

  "You have written to him," Innes repeated, not at all sure what was meant by the statement.

  "I won't marry him." She glanced up at Innes. "A calamity, a catastrophe — it changes everything, doesn't it? It makes you aware that you cannot be indifferent toward your life. You can­not simply give away your life. I didn't want to marry before the blast. This only makes it easier."

  "Not for him, I should think," Innes said.

  "He must remain in Halifax when he returns. All of his com­panies are here."

  "Some destroyed, I imagine."

  "Yes. But all the more reason. They will have to be rebuilt."

  "Hazel," Innes said, and her eyes flickered away from him. "It would make me sad to see you go."

  "You don't know me," she said.

  "I don't think you believe that," Innes said, aware that he had to choose his words carefully. An unwelcome urgency had made it necessary.

  "I flirted with you that night," she said. "And I'm sorry. I had no right to do that."

  "But you must have felt something," Innes said.

  "I imagined," Hazel said simply.

  "Would you not then give your imagination free rein?" he asked. "Hazel. Look at me."

  Hazel turned her face to him. "I have to leave this city," she said evenly.

  If she would leave her sister, surely she would leave a man she hardly knew.

  "We only had an evening," Hazel said. "Not really even that. What can be learned in an evening?"

  "I think time is of little consequence in and of itself," Innes said and heard the vaguely pedantic note in his voice. "In an in­stant, an entire city was leveled. Who'd have thought that pos­sible? Might not love be possible in an instant as well?"

  Innes was glad for the darkness. His face was hot, his words unpracticed. Surely he had not intended to use the word "love" so soon. There had been no rehearsal in his life for this moment of reckoning. He had meant only to walk with Hazel, to secure another date. Had he known that his future hung in the balance, be might have practiced his words before they'd met at the door.

  "You cannot believe that you love me," Hazel said. "It's sim­ply not possible."

  "You can't speak for me," he said.

  "No, of course not," Hazel said. "I'm sorry. You've been only kind."

  "'Kind' is a cruel word at this moment."

  "Yes," she said. "I imagine it is."

  Innes knew that he had lost. Unprepared, the battle thrust upon him without warning, he was defeated before the contest had begun. That Hazel had imagined them together in some way, had even debated it within herself, might have given Innes some joy had hope not been snatched away so quickly.

  "I shall miss you," he said simply. "I shall miss the possibility of you."

  "One has many possibilities," Hazel said. She rose up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss, brief and papery, suggested an entire universe he would never know. "I must go," she said, putting on her hat as if the kiss were but one more fact of her long and busy day. "I must be in my regular spot when my uncle picks me up. It would be inconvenient for him to have to leave the carriage and go inside to find me."

  "Hazel," Innes said. "Please."

  Hazel shook her head. She put her gloved fingers to her eyes, as if to blot out the sight of him. "This is hard," she said.

  Innes reached for her shoulder, but already she had turned away. She ran back the way they had come. Innes watched until Hazel was swallowed into the dark. He made a sound that was part anguish, part frustration. His voice, he knew, would carry for quite a distance.

  Innes returned to the hospital for the evening shift. He had, of course, missed the opportunity of a meal. An exhaustion he had kept at bay overwhelmed him now, and he performed his duties as if bludgeoned. Another physician asked him if he was feeling poorly. Innes answered that he was tired, but so was everyone else. The colleague agreed, nodding his head.

  Innes worked until he was dismissed. Despite his fatigue, he didn't head for his sleeping quarters, however, but rather to the third floor. It was, he knew, an attempt to detain Hazel a mo­ment longer. In seeing Louise, he might see the sister. His hands in his pockets, he shouldered his way through the double doors. He stopped on the other side.

  In a corner, by a lantern, Louise was sitting in her wheelchair. Innes wondered why she
was not in bed. He meant not to an­nounce himself, merely to watch her sleep. More surprising was the utter repose of her posture. She was sitting erect in the chair, face forward, as if she could see. The features that were visible were preternaturally calm. He wondered if Louise had been given opiates and, if so, why. He took a few steps forward, mov­ing stealthily so that she wouldn't hear him. When he was twenty feet away from her, he saw, with some astonishment, that she was crying. She was very calm, but she was crying.

  Innes remembered the small white breasts, the taut stomach. He thought about his mother, who had been blind and who had often needed him.

  He took another step forward and bumped into a metal tray on wheels. The sound rattled through the ward, and Louise turned in his direction.

  Harrison was first down to the dining room, having been un­able to sleep despite the late hour he'd gone to bed. He picked up a New York Times on a low table and was led to a seat by the window. The view beyond the glass revealed a vastly different geography from the day before: the blue of the mountains in the distance had been replaced by the whiteout of a thick snowstorm, considerably heavier than when Harrison had left Nora just a few hours ago. The roads would not be good, he thought, and he wondered if Bridget's relatives, who were scheduled to arrive today, would be able to make it to the ceremony. Harrison hadn't seen a weather forecast. Perhaps the snow was slated to end soon.

  Harrison needed coffee and a large breakfast. What had been an incipient headache had now settled into his frontal lobes. He glanced at the headline: Taliban abandon last stronghold: omar is not found. He turned to the page where the Times was still running its "Portraits of Grief" section, the short bios of those lost in the World Trade Center. He read about a man who had graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsyl­vania and had developed a proprietary mathematical model for yield curve analysis. He read about another man who had worked evenings at Spazzio's restaurant on Columbus Avenue and had re­cently bought a house in Union City, New Jersey. Harrison tried, as he did from time to time, to imagine the reality of being trapped in the building, perhaps knowing one was going to die. The fly­ing glass and blocked passageways. The advancing flames and the smothering smoke. The bodies piled in window frames and the cell phone calls to relatives — first to ask for help and then to say good­bye. The fear would have been unendurable. And these images led Harrison to thoughts of Jerry last night at dinner with his odd in­sistence that if one hadn't been in the vicinity of the disaster one had little right to speak of it. In some small way, Harrison agreed with him. It would have been nightmarish to watch people falling from the towers, and then later to have to breathe in the ashes of the catastrophe. One literally had been made to take it in, absorb it, a unique sort of ownership. If it hadn't been Jerry who'd been ar­guing the point, Harrison might have jumped in with his support, but Jerry’s very tone of voice — his presence even — made Harri­son grit his teeth. He didn't like the man, though he had liked the boy well enough. Jerry had been something of a braggart at Kidd as well, but then it had seemed funny rather than annoying. And, of course, the guy could pitch.

  A waitress, not Judy, informed Harrison that on Saturday morn­ings, there was a buffet. She pointed in its direction. Harrison could order a la carte if he chose, but she confided that the spread was really pretty good. She poured him a cup of coffee that tasted watery compared to the rich espresso in the library. After breakfast, Harrison decided, he would wander in there and have a second cup and read the paper. He'd never really had much success trying to deal with a newspaper at a breakfast table not his own — no room to spread out.

  Harrison headed for the buffet. He chose baked eggs, well-done bacon, a dish of strawberries (he couldn't help but look for a fly), and a carrot muffin. If this didn't cure his headache, nothing would. As he was returning to his table, he spotted Bill at the entrance.

  "Bill," Harrison called out in that louder-than-normal voice

  men reserve for addressing each other.

  "Harrison," Bill said. He advanced toward Harrison and exam­ined his plate. "Looks good, looks good."

  Harrison gestured with his bowl to the table by the window. "I'm over there," he said.

  "Join you in a minute. Gotta get my daily mg's of cholesterol."

  Harrison set his plate and bowl on the table. He folded up the newspaper and slid it into the space between his chair and the wall. In a few minutes, Bill, in plaid shirt and gray sweater-vest, took the seat across from Harrison. Harrison noted a slight paunch under the vest, the thinning steely colored hair (iron filings on a balding pate), more evident in the morning light than at the cocktail party. Bill had chosen berries only.

  "So where's the cholesterol?" Harrison asked.

  "Trying to lose fifteen."

  "On your wedding day?"

  "Have to fit into the tux."

  "Little late for that."

  "I'm saving myself for the dinner," Bill said. "You should see the menu. And the wines." Bill put his hand to his forehead in disbe­lief. "I'm glad I didn't overdo it last night. All I'd need today would be a hangover."

  "That's all right," Harrison said as he spooned the last bit of baked eggs from the white ramekin, "I've got one big enough for the both of us. How's Bridget?"

  "Great." Bill paused. "Great," he repeated. "She's sleeping now. The boys won't be up until noon, unless I wake them." Bill glanced out the window. "Doesn't look as though we'll be having a game today."

  "Not likely."

  "The boys were looking forward to it. They've been listening to me rave about our old team for weeks. I'm afraid you and Jerry and Rob have taken on the status of icons."

  Harrison laughed.

  "I'm serious. You'll have to sign a couple of the balls I brought for Matt and Brian."

  "Sure," Harrison said. "I'll sign 'Nomar."'

  "Bridget's doing amazingly well," Bill said, spearing a strawberry. "They say the worse the chemo, the better the result. It was brutal watching her go through it, though. I kept wishing it was me in­stead."

  Harrison sat back in his chair. "Billy Ricci. I honestly think that might be the definition of true love."

  "Years from now, people will look back upon chemotherapy as barbaric, inhumane, a legalized form of torture. At best, as mis­guided medicine."

  "Leeches," Harrison said.

  "Worse. But each day, I see more and more of her strength re­turning."

  "That's great."

  "Yeah, she's fine." Bill paused. "Really fine."

  And Harrison heard in the second repetition a chink in the bravado, a man reminding himself to be optimistic. Bill poured half a pitcher of heavy cream over the berries and sprinkled them with sugar.

  "Some diet," Harrison said as he watched Bill tuck into the berries.

  "I was worried you'd be upset about Jill and Melissa."

  "One always thinks about the kids first. I can't say I was all that fond of Jill."

  Bill hitched himself forward in his chair. "You're not the first person to tell me that. It's a little disconcerting to find out after the fact that no one liked the woman you were married to."

  "It's not that so much," Harrison said. "I just didn't think the two of you were a good fit." Harrison watched another couple take a table not far from theirs. Both the man and the woman appeared to be slightly fogged, and Harrison guessed that they, too, might have had too much to drink the night before. Perhaps they be­longed to the other wedding party.

  Bill took a long sip of coffee. "How's Evelyn?"

  Harrison had the sense that Bill's question was more polite than curious. "Evelyn's very well," Harrison said. "She has a huge case coming up. Otherwise, she'd be here."

  "What about?"

  "The case? Greed and human frailty."

  Bill smiled. "Thanks for making the trip down for the wed­ding."

  "Actually, I think the direction is over, but I'm glad to be here."

  "I always think of Canada as up. This whole thing
is a little weird, isn't it? Jerry? Agnes? Rob?"

  "Very weird," Harrison said. "There's some trick of time and memory at work here that I haven't quite figured out yet."

  "And Nora."

  "And Nora," Harrison said.

  "She's been great with Bridget. God, B's been through some tough times, and not just the cancer. With her ex-husband leaving her and now trying to raise a fifteen-year-old. Matt's a good kid, but, you know, he's fifteen."

  Harrison nodded.

  "I feel so lucky," Bill said.

  Harrison looked up from his muffin. He pondered the bad luck of marrying a woman with advanced cancer.

  "Finding Bridget again," Bill explained. "I very nearly didn't go to that reunion. I can't imagine life now if I hadn't gone."

  "The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us," Harrison said.

  "The nonstories."

  "The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours." Harrison took a bite of buttery muffin and thought about his next cholesterol test.

  "The woman you didn't meet because she couldn't get a taxi to the party you had to leave early from," Bill added. "All of life is a series of nonstories if you look at it that way."

  "We just don't know what they are," Harrison said.

  Bill scraped the sweet cream from the sides of his bowl. "Melissa won't be at the wedding."

  "So I heard," Harrison said.

  "Why does everything have to be so complicated?" Bill asked. "When I'm with Bridget, I have no doubt I did the right thing. I found Bridget again, and we're together. Period. It feels as right as" — Bill looked around the room as if an object there might prompt an appropriate simile — "as, I don't know. . . rain." He wiped his mouth with his napkin. "But then I look at Melissa, and I feel sick. How does a grown man do this to his kids?"

  "Last I looked, Melissa was nearly a grown woman."

  "You know what I mean."

  "You just have to go with your gut," Harrison said, not at all sure he actually believed this.

  "Been doing that for quite a while," Bill said, gazing down at his paunch.

  "How's the software business?" Harrison asked.