by Rona Jaffe
"And she used to make fun of Brenda!" April said.
"At least she doesn't bring her underwear to the oflBce," Caroline answered.
For an instant April's smile disappeared, and then she looked amused again. "I suppose it seems funny to us because we're not involved," April said. "I'd probably be as much of a fool about my wedding plans."
Saks Fifth Avenue had all their front windows full of mannequins in wedding gowns, and Caroline knew that April had gone Oiere on her lunch hour every day that week, to try them on, gaze at herself, feel the material, and regretfully take them off. Dexter had never mentioned marriage again since that evening on the ride to the abortionist in New Jersey, and April, who always took silence for consent, at least had the presence of mind not to purchase a wedding dress, only try them on just in case. Caroline was sure that Dexter would never marry April and she could hardly trust herself to talk pleasantly to him on the few occasions they happened to meet, for fear she would lash out and tell him what she thought of him. She had never disliked anyone so much. His handsome face, which still had some of the aesthetic interest of a work of art for her, filled her with distaste because it reflected his expressions and mirrored his words. Caroline imagined she knew how April felt when she was trying on the wedding dresses; she herself had once done a silly thing like that when she was planning to marry Eddie Harris, but then she at least had a promise. The pleasure of trying on a dress you would wear on an unforgettable occasion for someone you adored was so entirely different than even buying your first formal gown for a dance that she could hardly describe it. The saleswomen looked beautiful, the dressing room was roseate, she herself had never looked better. Every dress seemed to cling to her excited hands just before she slipped it over her head, as if to say, Is this the one? Will this piece of cloth and work suddenly turn into the dress you will remember all your life? She felt so sorry for April on her solitary lunch-hour excursions that she couldn't bear to think about it.
"Dexter's taking his vacation in the fall instead of this summer," April told her. "He says the fall is the only time to go to Europe if you can't go in the spring. We'll go there for our honeymoon."
"It's all set then!" Caroline cried, relieved.
"Well . . . not the date or anything. But we discussed it."
"I'm so glad! What did you decide?"
"Well, I said I'd always wanted to go to Europe for my honeymoon and he said he had too. And he said fall was a good time, like I told you, and then he said he was going to take his vacation in the fall. And he said Europe is wonderful in the fall even if you aren't on a honeymoon. That there are lots of girls there."
Oh, God, Caroline thought. "But he said he'd take you there?"
"Well not just like that: I'll take you there. But I know he will. He can certainly afford it."
Caroline tried to keep her face expressionless, not knowing what to say or how to say it, not wanting April to see into her eyes and know that this poor little deception was fooling no one except herself. But suddenly April's smile vanished, as it had so often these days, and her fingers were cold as she took hold of Caroline's arm. "I know he wants to marry me," April said softly and frantically. "He said so. Remember when I told you he said so? He's never said he didn't. If you're engaged you don't get un-engaged unless one of the people actually says so. It's too important. People don't kid about marriage."
"Some people don't," Caroline said, hating herself for having to say it.
"It's his family," April went on. "They're so rich, society . . . and they're kind of social climbers, I have to admit it. I can't understand why people who have all they have need to worry about appearances. But Dexter says his parents need some time to get used to the idea of his not marrying one of the girls he grew up with."
"A horse-faced deb with a hockey-field stride and a tweed suit with a little tweed hat to match," Caroline said, trying to cheer April up. "I know the type, I went to school with some of them."
"Oh, no," April said. "These are pretty. We were having lunch in one of the supper clubs last Saturday—isn't that funny, lunch in a supper club?—and he introduced me to three girls he used to take out. They were terribly pretty, and two of them had fur coats."
"You ought to try to meet some other boys," Caroline said. "If only to scare him a little."
April smiled. "I've met dozens of Dexter's friends. They always dance with me at the club dances, and one of them even asked me to go out in New York with him."
"Then go."
"Oh, I couldn't. I don't know how to describe it, but he sort of scared me. I mean, he was one of Dexter's best friends, and I know Dexter's told him all about us, and yet when he was helping me on with my coat while Dexter was getting the car he put his hand right on my . . . well, right here." She put her palm on her breast.
"Was he drunk?"
"No. Those boys never seem to get drunk, they drink so much I guess they've gotten immune."
"Nobody gets immune," Caroline said, "and that's another thing you'd better learn."
"Well he wasn't drunk," April said thoughtfully. "I know that *
The girls in the typing pool were trying to decide whether to give a shower for Mary Agnes or collect money and give her one large gift. Because Caroline and April had been friendly with her in the bullpen they were invited to contribute. There was much whispering in the thirty-fifth-floor ladies' room and it was finally decided that since Mary Agnes and Bill were both young and just starting to furnish their first home they would appreciate a gift certificate instead of a party.
"I'll appreciate it too," Caroline said to Mike Rice. "If I have to sit through one more 'surprise' engagement luncheon where the bride-to-be just happens to arrive at the oflBce in her best dress and everybody giggles and runs out of the office at five minutes to twelve, leaving the guest of honor sitting alone at her desk as if she had the plague and loving every minute of it, and then one of her cronies says let's have lunch together and they get to the restamrant where all the typists are pie-eyed from half a daiquiri and they all yell 'Surprise!' I'll die."
"Slow down, slow down," Mike said, chuckling.
"Oh, and the gifts!" Caroline went on. "Somebody gives her a toy baby bottle and somebody else thinks it's terribly funny to give her a sex book, and everybody has one more daiquiri which just about tips the boat and then they all start talking about their boy friends, and finally they all come reeling back to the office at three o'clock and the high finance department begins, with division of the check and tip down to the last penny and a half. The worst of it is she'll keep on working for a while after she's married and soon she'll be pregnant and we'll have to start the whole thing over again."
"You're very young to be so cynical," Mike teased.
"I'm not cynical, I'm practical. I'm going to start making a list of all the money I've given out for wedding and baby parties, and when I get married—if I ever do—beheve me, I'm going to get it aU back."
Mike laughed. "It's nonsense to you and to me, but it's very important to that girl out there that she have her little moment of attention. It's hard for you to see that. You know, I think Mary Agnes will be very disappointed that the girls decided not to give her a party."
"Practical Mary Agnes, who's been engaged lo these two years now because she was saving her money? I think she'll be delighted to have the gift certificate instead."
"Engaged two years . . ." Mike said thoughtfully. "When you wait that long for anything you want the getting of it to be very special. While you're waiting, not saying anything, everyone else forgets about it, but you build it up in your mind until it becomes the most important thing in the world."
He looked at her for an instant unguardedly, and as her eyes met his Caroline felt a start, something that was like surprise and pain. He could mean so many other things, none of them having to do with Mary Agnes. It was hard to know what Mike was thinking when he wanted you to know something that was personal and important to him; he would give you a lit
de and then make you reach out to understand the rest.
"I should think just getting it at last would be enough," she said, eyes lowered.
"It is, for us. But we're more imaginative. Mary Agnes needs a little confetti." He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, running his thumb across the bills, counting them. "Look ... tomorrow you ask her to have a Coke with you after work. And tell the other girls. I'll buy some liquor and rent some glasses and all that stuff and we'll have a little party of our own for her. But ask her today so I can know in advance, I'd hate to have to drink up all that Scotch by myself, not that I couldn't do it."
"Mike! You're the most softhearted man I know."
He shrugged. "I like Mary Agnes. Oh, and ask her to invite that fiance of hers. I don't want to be the only man, defenseless, in that mob of girls tomorrow."
Caroline grinned at him. "Why don't you invite Mr. Shalimar too?"
He grinned back at her—if, coming from Mike, it could be called a grin. Everyone had heard the Shalimar story almost as soon as it had happened, it had gone into the realm of office legends by now.
"What? He might decide to look at Mary Agnes' legs this time, and the whole wedding might be called off."
Caroline looked at him affectionately. He was her friend, he was funny, he was wise, he was sad, and he loved her as much as she loved him. She no longer thought of him as a lover, only as an ex-lover, and that as if it had happened to two other people long ago. She remembered that afternoon occasionally with twinges of guilt, and then when she saw him the guilt disappeared and she remembered it with a vague sadness because neither of them had found the magic they had pretended they believed was in the other. "I love you, Mike," she said.
Her friendship for him was in her tone and he did not misinterpret it. "I love you too," he said lightly, smiling at her. "And I always will."
So in the end, Mary Agnes had her party and her present too. Her fiance arrived near the end of the cocktail party, shy, ill at ease, in a cheap tweed overcoat. He seemed awed by all these strange women who were obviously sizing him up, and covered it with a smile of bravado, a Look-at-Me-Girls-I'm-the-Great-Lover smile which was belied by the way he followed Mary Agnes with his eyes. But it was obvious that he, not Mary Agnes, was the boss. She took on a new femininity when she was with him, which made her seem very different from the way she was in the oflBce surrounded by her friends and co-workers,
"I guess Mary Agnes tells you all the oflBce gossip," Caroline said, smiling, trying to make conversation.
Mary Agnes and Bill exchanged a glance, like two high-school children caught whispering in the back row of the classroom by their teacher, and grinned at each other.
"Yeah," he said. "She certainly chews my ear off!"
Mike took him into the corner with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses and after a moment of self-consciousness Bill seemed much happier. Mary Agnes turned to Caroline. "Isn't he cute?"
His dark hair was much too long and he was a little too heavy-set for Caroline's taste but he had a pleasant round face. "Yes," Caroline said. "He's very cute."
Mary Agnes looked pleased. "This is a nice party," she said. "It was awfully nice of Mr. Rice to throw it for me. He does some things
sometimes that really surprise me. I mean, he didn't have to give this party. He hardly knows me."
"He likes you," Caroline said.
"Well, I like him too. I'm sorry for him and the way he lives and everything, but I like him. And now that he's been so nice to me I'm even sorrier for him."
"Just don't get depressed at your own party," Caroline said, smiling.
Mary Agnes picked a potato chip out of a paper bagful with one small prehensile claw. "I wouldn't dream of it," she said. She nibbled at the potato chip, "You're coming to the wedding, I hope. I sent your invitation already."
"I'd love to."
"I sent Mr. Rice one too." She looked rakish. "You can come to the wedding with him if he accepts. Unless, of course, you're going with someone and you'd like to take him."
"I'm not 'going with' anyone," Caroline said.
"You'll find somebody," Mary Agnes said. "Don't you worry."
"I'm not worried. Mother," Caroline said.
"That's a good attitude," said Mary Agnes, licking the salt oflF her fingers. "I admire you for it. Most girls our age are scared to death if there's nobody on the horizon, and that's silly. Because if you look at the girls five years older than we are, why, I don't know one who isn't married."
"I do."
"Are they terribly ugly?"
"Quite the contrary. I've met some at parties who are very pretty and smart, too, with good jobs."
Mary Agnes' eyes widened as if she were about to expound some great and mysterious bit of philosophy. "Well," she said, "perhaps there's something psychologically wrong with them."
Caroline clamped her lips together to keep from laughing and jiggled her empty glass so Mary Agnes could see it. "I've got to get a refill," she gasped, and fled to the desk that was serving as a bar. The whole conversation had been so ludicrous, really, with Mary Agnes smug now that she had landed her man and she herself the adventurous but rather pathetic figure of the attractive unattached girl. It made her want to laugh when she thought of Mary Agnes' comments, and yet, imaccountably, they hurt a little too. Because as
always she could see and hear everything on two levels, the one that told her how silly it was and the one that allowed her to become aflPected and upset. She was only twenty-two, she had been out of college only two years, and she knew she was going to get married someday, just as she had known ever since she was a little girl that she was eventually going to go to college and that she was going to work for a while afterward at an interesting job. These were the things that happened to girls like herself, they were the things one did. But underneath, where lay the things she always had to admit to herself eventually, Caroline knew she had lied to Mary Agnes because one always lied to such people if one intended to survive. But she couldn't he to herself. She was worried about getting married. She knew it was ridiculous, but she was worried. She wondered whether every girl felt the same way she did, or whether it was a personal foolishness.
The days preceding the day of Mary Agnes' wedding were feverish ones. Most of the time Mary Agnes arrived late at the oflBce or left early, and the powers that governed the typing pool, ever respectful of love and romance, pretended not to notice. She and Bill were going to go to Bermuda on their honeymoon and her desk was littered with travel folders depicting pink beaches and couples in long shorts riding bicycles. Caroline could hardly imagine Mary Agnes pedaling a bicycle, and the subject came up, of course, eventually, in the bullpen, with the inevitable giggling comment from someone that Mary Agnes and Bill would return with not a trace of a sunburn and leaving behind a weU-used hotel room. One day Mary Agnes returned from lunch with a paper box containing a bridal veil. It was a short white veil attached to a circlet of waxen-lookdng orange blossoms, and when she tried it on in front of the mirror after very little coaxing it made her look quite bridal. It's strange, CaroUne thought, we've been thinking about Mary Agnes' wedding for so long it doesn't seem real any more, and now in that veil I can see it's all true. Mary Agnes had picked out her wedding ring, part of a set to match her engagement ring and the groom's ring. There was a drawing of it in a magazine advertisement that Mary Agnes had brought to the oflBce—a narrow white-gold band set with infinitesimal diamond chips. For the first time during all these insistent preparations April drew close to Mary Agnes' desk.
"Oh ... let me try your engagement ring on, please," April
breathed. "If you don't have any special feehng for not taking it off, I mean."
"I take it off at night when I go to bed," Mary Agnes said, quite pleased at this new attention. She twisted the ring off her finger. "I always keep it in the little velvet box, on my dresser. I'd hate to go to sleep with such an expensive ring on, it makes me feel funny somehow."
S
he handed the ring to April, a narrow white-gold band with a little round diamond sparkling in the center of it set with four prongs in a sort of square frame that made the diamond look larger. April held it for an instant, looking at it, before she slipped it on her finger. Her eyes were fixed on the blue gleam and her lips moved almost imperceptibly, as if she were speaking to someone. Then she put the ring on her third finger, left hand and held her hand out, looking at it.
"Wow," Mary Agnes said. "I was afraid it'd be too small and then you'd never get it off. You'd have to keep it." She laughed.
"Nah," Brenda said from the next desk. "We'd just cut her finger off!"
April turned and looked at Brenda with a little smile. "I'm going to take it. You cut my finger off." They all laughed. But Caroline didn't like the way April's mouth pulled when she smiled, a false smile, and a laugh that did not sound true. April slipped the ring off her finger and handed it to Mary Agnes on the palm of her hand. "Thank you," she said. "It's beautiful, Mary Agnes."
"I got my going-away suit," Mary Agnes said. "It's navy-blue butcher linen. It's really a sleeveless dress with a little jacket, so I can wear the dress alone in the evenings. Did you get the invitations yet?"
"Yes," Caroline said. "They're very nice." They were just like every other wedding invitation she had ever received in her life.
"They're engraved," Mary Agnes said. "You can feel it with your finger, how it's raised. I hate the other kind."
"They're lovely," Caroline said.
"Well, you have to answer them, you can't just tell me in the office," Mary Agnes said happily. "I want everybody to answer them."
"I did already," Caroline said.
"Me too," said April. She smiled mischievously. "But I won't tell
you whether I'm coming or not, you'll have to wait until my answer comes to find out."
