“No, she didn’t.”
“So maybe that’s Richard in Caroline. But nothing of him in Julia. And—I can’t get over it—not a hint of Katherine or my father in either Caroline or Julia…. It makes me wonder about myself. Is there anything in them that reminds you of me?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“It’s strange…. Do you think we’re blanking out on purpose?”
“No, my love, I don’t think so.” He kissed her. “Now about tomorrow. Julia and Caroline go back to Philadelphia after lunch—”
“Come here—around four?”
“Yes. At four.”
4 Now
Getting to, arriving at, achieving the firm matrimonial ground on which they would freely walk was at some moments heart-stopping; poignant. At all moments, fascinating.
Regard the change! The changes: the plurals and combinations of astonishment and adjustment! Think of, and wonder at, all the intersecting lives, starting with his life as it intersected Sylvia’s life, as his and Sylvia’s lives intersected Julia’s and Caroline’s, and Miss Sly’s, and Ansel Shurtliff’s, and Letitia and Lewis Grant’s, and Lillie Ruth’s, and Tessa’s, and Lucy Blackett’s, and Geoffrey Barrows’s, and Alan Litt’s, and Sidney and Linda Aronov’s, and Lawrence and Pamela Cuyler’s, and Doctor Leigh’s, and of the intersectings with Sylvia’s friends who stood ready, beckoned by her, to meet him: to come to know him.
Hear those certain voices; see those certain faces—
—Caroline’s and Julia’s, when, in early March of 1960, he told them that he and Sylvia were going to marry. How they looked at him, as if they were seeing him for the first time. (Make that the second time: the first time had been when he returned from the war and was seen by them as real, and to their amazed eyes, in the flesh, had stood on his head…. That kind of really seeing him)…Caroline’s voice and face: “She’s not going to try to step-mother me and Julia, I hope.” “No, Callie, Sylvia hasn’t it in mind to do that.” And Caroline’s next question, earthed (it amused him) in Sex: “You and Sylvia—you’re not thinking of having a kid, are you?” “No, Callie.” And the way, then, Julia looked at Caroline and told her: “Come off it, Callie.” And the way, next, Julia looked at him and said: “I think you and Sylvia are perfect for each other, Morgan.”
—Ansel Shurtliff’s voice and face: “It’s thrilling.”
—Lucy’s voice and face: “Out of memory for Maudie, I wish I didn’t like Sylvia, but I do, immensely. And how great for you, Morgan, that you won’t have to hack through the rest of your life alone.” The way, in that last sentence, Lucy anticipated the rest of her own life’s loneliness. But that she would go on, hoping with her own eyes to spot in a night sky, a UFO. And the way, over Lucy’s clean candor, he and she had embraced: intact.
—Geoff’s voice and cognizant face: “It’s right, Morgie.”
—Alan’s voice and face and straight words: “Maud was incredibly Maud. Sylvia is incredibly Sylvia.”
—Lewis Grant’s voice and face: “Bravo! Brava!” And Letitia’s: “I have that framed set of gemstone intaglios—Greek gods and goddesses. I want to give them to Sylvia.”
—The unsurprised look on Lillie Ruth’s face.
—Tessa’s face: the little white berry-spots on her cheeks as they converged over her smile.
—Sidney’s voice and face as he murmured: “Ashre ayin ver hot dos geshn.” “What does that mean, Sidney?” Sidney wrote out on a slip of paper what he’d said. “It’s Yiddish. It means—‘Fortunate the eye that has seen this.’”
—Lawrence’s voice and face, in some way perpetually afrighted by change. Always hoping, though, for the best. “Blue skies, Morgan. Blue skies.”
—Doctor Leigh, ever the stunner! “Well, well, Morgan! What a coincidence! I’m thinking of marrying too. Mrs. Kerr. You may have met her. She moved to Hatherton about six years ago. She’s been a widow since 1951. She likes to travel. Now that I’ve begun to slow down a bit—professionally, I mean—I’ll have the time to go places with her. There’s Athens to be visited. And Mandalay, where the flying fishes play. Mrs. Kerr hasn’t been to Mandalay.”
—And Miss Sly. Zee. She was the one person unknown to any of the intersecting others. By her desire, she would remain to all the others unknown. “I shall be the loose thread,” she said to him and Sylvia, then added: “And properly so. It is enough that I know you, Sylvia, and you, Morgan, and that you know me.”
(And: as in memory they are alive, think of the ghosts: Katherine; Richard Hamilton; Sylvia’s father; Sylvia’s mother; Maud.)
About their impending marriage, Sylvia had but one proviso: “That I keep my apartment, Morgan…. Oh, no! No. I won’t let you. S. K. P. Dobson will pay all the bills relating to my apartment. It’s where I’ll work, and when I’ve finished a day’s work, I’ll go home to you.”
By the time April rolled around, Julia and Caroline were already deep in their separate excitements about the up-coming summer. Julia would be in England, at Oxford; she had sought and won a coveted place in an English literature college-exchange program. Caroline was going to “tour” Europe as a member of a group organized by a Bryn Mawr professor of European history. (And more about Caroline, in the form of her “announcement” to one and all: “I’ve made up my mind. I am going to be an anthropologist.”)
Morgan and Sylvia beat their six months’ imperative of “soon” by about two weeks.
They were married on Saturday, the twenty-third of April, 1960—four days before Julia’s and Caroline’s twentieth birthday.
It would be redundant to list the names of those who were present when they spoke their vows. Suffice to say that everyone vital to Morgan, everyone vital to Sylvia, was there.
Ah. Except Zenobia Sly. Yet that they did conjure her, looking at each other as they spoke their vows, did think of her—the binder who called herself—“the loose thread.” Miss Sly; Zee: As in zed.
Today is the twenty-fifth of April, two days after their marriage, and they are in London. They flew across the Atlantic on a relatively new type of airplane—a so-called jet. They will return to New York in two weeks. The Forbes case is going to go to trial; Sylvia has started a new book, this one a novel. But right now, this morning, they are walking in St. James’s Park. It is a fine, a beautiful day. The trees are in fresh green leaf, the grass shines in the sunlight. They hear a tinkling sound coming from behind them. They turn, then step quickly to the edge of the path to give greater passage-room to two red-turbaned Sikhs who are carrying—strung from a sturdy pole held horizontally at shoulder height—a huge crystal chandelier!
They stand in place, Morgan and Sylvia, gleeful and astonished. A moment. An intense moment. They know about the moment that it is in the process of becoming a beloved memory. A few seconds tick by.
Now they resume their walk.
About the Author
JEANNETTE HAIEN is well known in the United States and Europe as a concert pianist and teacher. She and her husband, a lawyer, live in Manhattan and at their summer home in Connemara, Ireland. She is also the author of The All of It, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
More Praise for
MATTER OF CHANCE
“Sumptuous…. This is a novel you live with rather than race through.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Matters of Chance is a big, fat, wonderful, absorbing novel reminiscent of Anthony Trollope. If it’s not the best novel you’ve read this year, then you’ve been in pretty tall cotton.”
—Detroit Free Press
“This beautiful novel is not only about matters of chance, but about what we do with them, how they unfold into matters that test the limits of passion and civility, becoming eventually matters of choice, which shape the moral parameters of behavior. Because of its clarity and its intelligence,
its scrupulous observation of character, its concern with the uncertain negotiations between the demands of decorum and those of intimacy, and finally because of its careful, even stately, prose, very few books I have read in recent years will bear comparison with it.”
—Mark Strand
“A marvelous new novel…. Elegant…. Exquisitely written…. One of Haien’s greatest gifts as a writer is her power to capture moments of heightened consciousness and sear them into a reader’s imagination.”
—National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air”
“Chances are you haven’t read a novel like Jeannette Haien’s Matters of Chance in quite a while. That’s because they just don’t write them like this anymore, which is a pity. Haien, a generous, intelligent writer, immerses us in Morgan’s life and world almost to the exclusion of our own. This is a book in which to lose yourself—and emerge all the better for it.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“It is refreshing to read a novel with such a solid moral center and such generous vision, especially if one believes, as I do, that fiction can teach one how to live.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Haien’s remarkable evocation of war at sea, her nuanced perception of the complexities of a good marriage, and the grand sweep of her tale remind us of the deep pleasures of an old fashioned read.”
—Elle
ALSO BY JEANNETTE HAIEN
The All of It
Copyright
MATTERS OF CHANCE. Copyright © 1997 by Jeannette Haien. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-197829-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
1 Now called Maputo.
2 Constancy is the basis of the virtues.
Matters of Chance Page 50
