by Walter Blum
The mood of the wedding was unfailingly upbeat. Lou Bernstein was able to take a few days off from work and he and Sylvia came down from Queens to share their son’s happiness. The Mellow Tones played through dinner, often drowning out what passed for conversation, and afterwards for dancing, fox trots and rumbas and a round of klezmer music that sounded like the stuff meant to accompany a Jewish vaudeville act, ending up with the inevitable hora where everyone joined hands in a circle and whooped and hollered and the band went on and on, doing endless repeats until the dancers were ready to plotz.
After that, everyone who meant anything to the couple was required to make a toast and say a few complimentary things about them. Adam wore a white tuxedo, rented from a store down the street from Goldman’s. Susan was allowed to put on her mother’s wedding gown, saved all these years for this occasion, then trimmed and refashioned and let out a size and a half, for Susan was taller and bit more zaftig than her mother had been. A gold wedding band now embraced the third finger of her left hand, a perfect match for the tiny diamond ring he had presented her when they became engaged, his grandmother’s ring, a glittering reminder that each generation passed itself down to the next, just as their children would bear the genes of those who had lived and made love in another world, in another time.
Most of the people at the station turned out in a group to celebrate. Wally had foregone his standard bow tie for a four-in-hand and managed to be agreeably subdued for the occasion. Larry looked elegant in his tuxedo and shiny patent leather shoes. Station owner Hunter Baines wore a blue suit and nodded at everyone like a kindly uncle. One by one the guests stopped by Adam’s table to congratulate him.
And so it went, in a kind of daze—the ceremony, the reception, everything else. Adam felt himself growing limp as the evening wore on. His tuxedo shirt was too stiff and choked him at the throat, and the air had that still, humid warmth that often descended on places like Canelius in mid-September. There were too many people, there was too much to eat, he had allowed himself too much wine because every time a toast was made, a glass was drunk, but for the first time in his life, he acknowledged himself to be truly happy. The loneliness was gone, that persistent malaise of the soul that seemed to haunt him, often for no reason, and every time he looked at Susan, radiant in her white gown, he thought how incredible it was that he, of all people, should be getting someone so pure, so absolutely wonderful.
They traded partners on the dance floor five or six times before the evening was over. Susan danced with Roger, a former high-school suitor, a gawky young man with thatched yellow hair, raw knuckles and a mass of freckles; Adam took a turn with Gwen, who had just completed her third diet of the year and was proudly displaying the figure that would enable her to climb into a size six gown.
The Lowenthals, who came originally from Charleston, were in the dry goods business, which was what it was called until Woolworth’s and Kreske’s stepped in and spotted a thousand five-and-dimes all over the landscape. The family were originally from Central Europe, which in the Canelius pecking order put them slightly higher than those from the East—Russia, Lithuania, Romania—the belief being that, having crossed the ocean first, they were entitled to top spot, while those with names ending in “sky” or “off” were thought to bring up the rear.
“Well, anyway, you’re one of us now,” Gwen said.
“I guess that’s what being married means,” Adam said.
“But you’re different,” she said, pulling herself closer to him. “You aren’t really like us, are you? You haven’t had time to be condescending or stuck up, the way some people in Canelius are.”
“Who are you talking about?” he wanted to know.
“Oh, come on, Adam,” she said. “You know who I mean. We’re as snobbish and ingrown as the WASP families—and I’m glad you’re not that way. Don’t change, Adam. Now that you’ve come into your own, you should be able to beat everyone else at their own game.”
Adam didn’t know what Gwen was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She was simply, to him, a nice, somewhat soft and puffy young lady who spoke a fair amount of nonsense, batted her eyelids and grabbed him a little too tightly around the waist. She had caught the bouquet after the ceremony and the symbolic act, orchestrated by Susan, wasn’t wasted on anyone in the room. Gwen was not the kind to stay single the rest of her life, everyone said. The dancers changed partners again, and at this point Adam found himself standing alone, watching Susan and the other dancers swirl by. Max came over and stood beside him.
“Well, what do you think?” the older man asked.
“It’s lovely,” Adam said. “Thank you for a really nice wedding.”
“You deserve every bit of it,” Max said. Once more, Adam sensed the stiffening, but Goldman made every effort to put on an affable front.
“I’m certainly lucky,” Adam said.
“We both are,” Max said, intercepting the look at the last moment and pressing an envelope into Adam’s hand, which Adam knew must contain a check for some immodest sum—probably a thousand dollars, maybe more—to help start the newlyweds on their way. He muttered a small thank you and slipped the envelope into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket, along with several others that had been thrust on him in the same mock surreptitious way.
“I only wish Susan’s mother was here to see it,” Max went on. Adam thought he spotted a small tear in Goldman’s left eye, which could be honest, although Max also had a reputation for manufacturing emotion when necessary. It was part of the psychological arsenal he kept armed for any occasion, but this time there was no need for subterfuge. “You know what first attracted her to you?”
“What?”
“Your voice.”
“Oh, come on, now!” Adam protested.
“No, it’s true. She fell in love with your voice on the radio.”
“That’s not possible.”
“But it is,” Max insisted. “She told me so herself. She was listening to you one night—I could hear the radio playing upstairs in her room, very softly—and suddenly she decided, ‘That’s the one.’ That’s what she said. ‘He’s the one.’ After that, she was determined to meet you.”
“We met by accident.”
“That’s what she’d like you to believe,” Max said slyly. “But the truth is, she had her eyes on you from the start. She wanted you, and what Susan wants she usually gets.”
“She never said anything like that.”
“Well, women are that way. A little shy, I suppose. Didn’t want to admit that she was the one in pursuit, but that’s how it happened. Take my word for it.”
Susan shy? Not possible, he thought. It would come out during those long talks, those intimate meals and quiet moments on the sofa when they’d opened up to each other. Could it be that Max was taking a long walk around the truth? Damn it! Whenever he felt completely comfortable with his situation, the snake reared up and flicked its tongue at him. He could never trust Max, not completely.
Nevertheless, when the dance set ended and she returned to him, he thought of bringing it up. “Happy?” he asked as he steered her across the floor—on these occasions, it was always the Anniversary Waltz.
“It’ll always be like this,” she promised.
“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it,” he warned her.
She drew him closer, defying the bulk of the gown and the whispered attention of everyone around them. He felt as though he were back in the Bell Tower, floating across the sky, detached, looking down on the landscape, commenting silently on what he saw. He had become an anthropologist of weddings. The whole ritual unfolding before him was wonderfully droll: the raucous band, the cutting of the cake, the toasts, the Anniversary Waltz, fathers bending awkwardly to dance with their pre-pubescent daughters, the atmosphere of gaiety stirred up by the sober and the non-sober alike.
Everything he’d meant to say, everything that might stand in the way of their happiness, was quickly forgotten.
L
ater, Max sent them to Paris for the honeymoon, paying for the plane tickets, the hotel and everything else. It was the least he could do, he said, the kind of gift a man like Max Goldman was happy to give his daughter, who meant more to him than anything else in life. They were now the twin apples of his eye, Adam and Susan. There might even be grandchildren, although he didn’t say it.
And there would be more gifts to come, he said. On that they could depend.
***
Three weeks after they’d returned from their honeymoon, he and Larry managed to squeeze in a little time together. It was a Tuesday morning, and there was a lot to talk about.
Larry’s final divorce decree had just arrived, ending months of waiting and angry negotiation and oceans of bad feelings. For Larry it was as though a weight had suddenly been lifted from his back, although he wasn’t sure whether the moment called for a celebration or a wake, but hell, celebration or wake, either way a drink was in order, and who better to share it with than one’s best friend? Adam protested that he didn’t drink. “You do now,” Larry said, and dragged him off to the Magpie, his favorite bar, for a round of margaritas.
The long ordeal exhausted all of Larry’s emotional resources, but he put on a good front. Few knew what had been going on behind the scenes with the urbane, genial host of Kellin in Canelius. Smooth, unruffled, his persona was a perfect foil for the bawdy country singers and pickers who appeared regularly to whoop it up on the show. The manufactured Larry Kellin hid inside a carefully crafted fiction, a gem buffed and polished until it sparkled in the sun. The real Larry Kellin had pain scars all over him, but no one knew that.
It was a risky game. Adam thought about the one time the facade had cracked. He wasn’t at the station—this was before his arrival— but people told him about it. A costly error. Larry had been delivering a newscast and dropped a page of the AP teletype script he was reading. For an instant he lost his composure and, under the impression that he’d hit the pause button on his mike, let fly with an angry “Shit!” The forbidden word went out over the airwaves, lighting up telephones and reddening faces. He was suspended without pay for a week, but it wasn’t so much the monetary loss that stung him as the embarrassment of having been caught without his wall to hide behind. Nobody ever mentioned the incident again, and only Adam knew how much it had cost his friend in repressed memory.
For Larry, marriage itself was one long mistake. The sheer effort of having to keep shiny an image of sophistication left his ex-wife Nancy with almost no access to the real man inside. Her Larry might be sweet and considerate. He might seem to be the ideal husband, but there was something remote about him she could not penetrate. Who could blame her for wanting more than just a voice on the radio?
But today Larry was in excellent humor. He could hardly wait until they were shown to a table for the inevitable questions to begin.
“Well, how does it feel, being married?”
“Surprising.”
“In what way?”
“I thought after all the buildup and hungering and wanting it so badly, that the real thing would be something of a letdown.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t. It’s everything I wanted it to be—and more.”
“Thank God for that,” Larry grinned, “because I don’t think I could have taken much more of you, the way you were. You can’t believe what you were like. It’s as though you’d come down with some sort of nameless disease, and nobody had the foggiest idea how to cure it. You were completely obsessed with her—you know that, don’t you?”
Adam nodded contritely.
“Well, marriage seems to be the magic bullet. Too bad it didn’t work that way for both of us.” Larry waved his hand in anticipation. “No, no. I don’t want to hear any words of sympathy for the fallen. We got what we wanted, and that’s all that matters.”
It occurred to Adam that, in a sense, they were two friends heading in opposite directions, one life coming apart, the other coalescing as it was meant to since the beginning of their acquaintance. A beginning and an end, as it was on New Year’s Eve amid the pouring of champagne and a popping of balloons, while couples kissed and Guy Lombardo played Auld Lang Syne with those syrupy saxophones of his. He glanced around the Magpie bar, at the businessmen in their blue and gray suits, their white shirts and cufflinks, cigarettes fuming, identical striped ties, sensitive to the sheer loudness of all those male voices crowding the air, and wondered how many of them had arrived at the same place.
“I’m glad we have each other,” he said.
“So am I,” said Larry. “And now it’s my turn to initiate you into the world’s largest, most vocal, most non-exclusive fraternity.”
“What’s that?”
“Married people. America is famous for being a land of minorities, but the marrieds will always be in the majority wherever you go. Despite my own failure, I have absorbed enough wisdom to qualify as a marital authority.”
“I thought you already gave me the benefit of your advice.”
“That was pre-nuptial. This is post-nuptial. Now that you’ve tied the knot and had your first faint encounter with the experience, it’s time to add a few more lines of advice to the marriage manual.”
“Oh no!” Adam groaned. “Not more rules.”
“Yes. Listen carefully. Rule Number One—make sure she’s always surprised. The minute she thinks she has you pegged, the minute she knows where you are and what you’re about to do and she can take bets on your next move and probably win, the battle is lost.”
“Larry, for God’s sake! Marriage isn’t a battle.”
“But it is, and you have to take steps to overcome your natural disadvantage. Surprise her, delight her. Bring her flowers, buy her presents—they don’t have to be expensive, a bit of costume jewelry is as good as a diamond. Take her places she’s never been before. Get a new car. That dusty little gas-guzzler of yours will never last the decade. How can you expect your dream princess to ride in a broken-down Chevy?”
“I’ll remember that,” Adam said wryly.
“Rule Number Two: Remember that you’re not just getting a wife. A lot of men make that mistake, and the next thing you know there’s a family crowding around—aunts and uncles and cousins—not to mention a father-in-law who still thinks his daughter is only three years old.”
“I think Max Goldman is beyond that.”
“Don’t fool yourself. He’s had her to himself all these years, and now you come along. Believe me, Adam, he’s not going to give up without a fight. Oh, I know you hate my making marriage sound like a war zone. It’s just that, when it comes to the little girl he loved and raised and treated to candy bars and played tea party with, your classic father-in-law has a tendency to forget that she is now all grown up and ready for the marriage bed.”
“Max knows it.”
“Intellectually, maybe. But there’s a part of him, on an emotional level, that still sees your Susan as she used to be, and you’re going to have to put up with that. Max Goldman may say he’s willing to let you have the field, but deep down he’s not ready, so don’t press it.”
“Isn’t that just a little bit too Freudian?”
“Well, Sigmund wrote the original text, so we can’t pass him by. I gather you’re getting along with your father-in-law?”
“Things were a bit tense for a while,” Adam admitted. “But we’re on better terms now. The only problem is that he’s a little over-generous.”
“How?”
“Well, the honeymoon was his idea, you know. He paid for it. And now he says that once we get settled, he’s going to see that we get a complete set of furniture. He’s started a trust fund for when we have children, and after that there’s the house.”
“A house?” Larry frowned. “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. I thought you said you were satisfied with the apartment you have.”
“We are, but Max insists. He won’t be satisfied until we move into a house. He’s mentioned a couple of pl
aces in the Huntington area that are up for sale, but that neighborhood is just too fancy for me. Frankly, it’s all a little premature. I told him, ‘Max, we’re just married. It’s just a few weeks after the wedding, and we won’t need a house. We’re only the two of us. If things change, we can always go house-hunting then.’ But he won’t hear of it.”
“And you’re afraid you might become obligated to him, is that it?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you’re right. That’s what led to my breakup with Nancy—at least one of the things. Her parents wouldn’t let go, and in the end she was spending as much time with them as with me.”
“That’s your experience?”
“Sorry, it’s the only experience I have to go on.”
“I appreciate it,” Adam said, “and I understand, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with Max Goldman.”
“Why not?”
“Because he knows when to lend a hand and when to stay out of things. He’s smart. If I had to pick a father-in-law out of all the people in Canelius, he’d be the one. I’m probably luckier than most prospective bridegrooms.”
The waiter chose that moment to bring their drinks. Larry paid, insisting that it was his treat. He raised his glass. “Well, here’s to you and Susan—and your father-in-law, if you please. A long and happy life, and may you never want for love.”
