The Story of a Marriage

by Andrew Sean Greer

  I looked at my husband’s silhouette against the window; it had not changed. A memory; another knot to untie quietly: “Holland, you remember your room back in Childress?”

  He turned to face me, saying nothing. His hair spiral-gleamed with pomade. The radio began to talk about a movie star.

  “I don’t know what made me think of that,” I said, my face warm as he stared at me. “You remember how there was that one rip in the shade and we’d tell the time that way?”

  “I don’t know I do …”

  I touched his arm and smiled. “You took your mumblety-peg knife and you stabbed it in the desk and drew a little sundial around it and we’d watch it to know when the piano lesson was supposed to be up. And I’d stop reading to you. And your mother would come upstairs. You don’t remember that?”

  Sonny started talking to his soldiers.

  Holland looked down at my hand and covered it with his. “I remember you reading to me.”

  “Mommy,” Sonny said. “It broke.”

  “I’ll fix it,” I said, taking the belt and slipping it into the pocket of my dress.

  “Poetry,” he said. “Countee Cullen.”

  I asked which one.

  “About the box of gold.” Then my husband did an amazing thing. It was akin to having the moon, which has lit every night of your young life, revolve in the sky and smile down at you. He stared at the floor in deep concentration and murmured: “I have wrapped my dreams …” I was a girl again.

  His bronze face beamed with the pride of having memorized those poems in his long days of hiding. He began another: “I have a rendezvous with life—” then closed his eyes with sudden pain, leaning away from me into his armchair. He handed the soldier he had mended to Sonny, who threw him high into the air. The name “Yreka Bakery” floated above us for a breathless moment. Sonny was overjoyed, and wanted to try it again, but Holland said, “I don’t feel so well.”

  “Is it your heart?” I asked very sharply.

  All those years I asked about your heart, did you guess the harmless lie I had invented for myself? Or did you simply accept it as a quirk of mine? As full of wonder at my mysteries as I was of yours, forgiving them as willingly: two veiled people, leading each other hand in hand. Perhaps this is a marriage. You said, “I’m going to lie down for a minute. You think Lyle wants to join me?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Lyle, you crazy thing, you want a lie-down?”

  You deserved your rest. Men like you, who had risked their lives and seen the worst of human life, never wanted to talk about fear or think about it; you had fought for the freedom never to mention such things, not even to your private self. The shame I had felt; it must have pierced you deeper, letting the ocean water in. I had tried to understand it, and mistook for a transposed heart something either very simple—the secret of your life with that white man—or something far harder to comprehend. A search for some relief; a respite from the life you had.

  A little lie-down. No more than any of us wanted—after the Depression, and the war. After all we had been through together, sacrificed for each other. This offer Buzz had made me. This man now falling asleep on our marital couch. Perhaps this was the all clear we had been waiting for.

  But tell me—what scene played before your eyes when you lay with your mute dog, arranging himself at your feet? What comforted you on your way to sleep? Was it the shade drawn over your boyhood window with the glow of a shut eyelid? Or a hospital window, its shade pulled up to light a man in love?

  Sonny was the kind of boy who held my hand as we walked, every day, to the playground, where babies cloudgazed from black old-fashioned prams and older children beat at the cold hard sand of the sandbox until it was soft as silk. Sonny never took part in any of this. He approached the park as cautiously as if it were a lake. A few steps and he was in up to his knees, then his waist, stopping to get used to the sensation (half in a dream, imagining waves softly soaking his clothes), then he would smile and produce a toy from his pocket—a soldier, a pig—and set it on the grass before him. All the time, his eye was on the other children. He never came close to their orbit. He would not be drawn in. He sensed, as the only child who wasn’t white, an unvoiced law, and (still an obedient boy) he would abide by it.

  The hundred dollars Buzz gave me was quickly spent. I treated Sonny to trips to the zoo, the park, to an adventure on the L line: the tram, with its buttery shell and carved-out windows, seemed to him a rolling jack-o’-lantern. It took us a few blocks down Taravel to an upscale candy shop that I had spotted, near the Parkside movie theater. At the front, where a carved-wood Indian might have guarded a cigar store, stood an iron-and-glass gumball machine. A little boy took a penny from his fat, friendly mother and dropped it in, clearly hoping for a “ringer” that would set off a bell and win him a full-size candy bar. “Dang it,” he murmured as another ordinary ball clinked down, bumblebee-striped. The mother’s arms were crossed; they had been at this for some time.

  The elderly shop owner was a relic: ruddy and mustachioed, chewing his dentures, pants suspendered above a round belly. He asked if he could help us and I smiled and said we were getting something for my son; the man frowned at me over his glasses. I leaned down to Sonny and asked, “Which do you want?” I caught the mother’s prying eye as Sonny took in the store and its expanse of wonders.

  Luminous jars along the counter offered a seemingly endless supply of delight: long ropes of Bub’s Daddy gum in nuclear-age reds, greens, and purples; wax lips, fangs, and mustaches that could be worn only for a hilarious minute or two before puncturing and leaking an odious liquor into your mouth; flying saucers made of crisp tasteless wafers; Saf-T-Pops with the handle made into a ring (so kids might trip, but not choke) nestled among the real McCoys of bright handmade lollipops suffocating in their loose cellophane hoods; bubble-gum cigars and pistols for young hoodlums; lipstick candies that no boy would dare purchase; and, looped in their clean glass jar like nooses, my father’s favorite and his grandson’s horror, coils of blackjack licorice.

  Sonny studied the jars carefully, like a Chinese physician examining his potions. He stared for a long time at the sugared fruits before choosing some cherries, the bland saucers, a pyramid of caramels, and others. They were delicately pulled from their jars (rare fish from a tank) until at last they lay glowing on the wax paper before him. Sonny, hands clasped, regarded them with awe.

  The owner did not move at all but just said, “Those are fancy ones, you realize.”

  “I can pay.”

  “I hope you can.”

  A long stare that neither of us broke. I slammed a five-dollar bill onto the counter, making the candy canes shake.

  My son paused then whispered: “Which one can I keep?”

  I wish I had a photograph of his face. The stunned look, within which one could easily see, like the developing details on a photographic plate, the image of his father. Which one? All of them, I meant to tell him, all of them from now until forever. There will be enough of everything. But my child had not yet comprehended his mistake, nor had the horrible man, so I looked up at that white mother, stuffed into her blue cloth coat, and caught her staring, entranced, at my cautious son, while her ungrateful lout dropped one accursed penny after another into his slot machine.

  I brought myself down to the level of my son’s eyes, so serious, full of his prudent question, and I waited, savoring the moment, imagining those eyes brightening at what I was about to say.

  If you went to a soda fountain today and said “I’ll have a Suicide,” the owner would probably call the police. But in an earlier day the soda jerk, his Adam’s apple working hard with every swallow, would have pistol-pointed his finger and said, “Sure thing, pardner.” A fluted glass under the fountain, the release of carbonated Coca-Cola, and then, going down the row, a trickle of poison from every flavor—chocolate, cherry, vanilla—until you had an ink-black beverage set before you, ruffled with foam and smelling like a potion. For
this, a nickel.

  That is what William the Seltzer Boy made for Annabel DeLawn at Hussey’s Colonial Creamery, a black flap of hair falling over his left eye, big hands resting on the pulls as he watched her drop a dime on the counter and make her way to a booth where her friend was waiting. Carbonation sparkled in the soda-shop air. Tacked to the wall, an auto-supply calendar left open to a month in 1943; possibly the man who used to tear the pages had gone to war and not come back, the modern version of those pocket watches in murder mysteries that always crack and fail at the hour of death.

  I sat two pews behind Annabel, quiet as a widow in church, in the back of the shop where Mr. Hussey preferred his Negroes. A weary soldier smiled across from me, nursing his root beer as if it were real beer. What was I drinking? A lemon phosphate, thank you, William—tablet in a glass, quickly drowned by a flood of fizzing water. A decent married woman’s order. I forced myself to ignore William, the ugly term he muttered as I left. And there I sat, hidden in the shadow of a column, in my best hat and coat with the phosphate pricking my nose and glowing like an antidote. I had planned my confrontation only to realize we are as cowardly with rivals as with those loved from afar.

  She was not beautiful. I decided that immediately as I saw her puckering her lips over the stiff red tip of the straw. But she had managed, with her sharp nose, her filbert-shaped face visibly freckled beneath the powder (flecks of vanilla in the cream), to create an illusion of beauty. A plain white girl who had learned to act as if she were pretty. The way she sat: mermaid-like, with her legs drawn up beneath her, and her voice modulated with a delicate ring that rose, now and then, into laughter the way my grandmother’s porch chime often broke into a wind-busied clangor. Her charm bracelet also rang, mostly with light, as its various hearts, books, and anchors caught the sun, and a single silver ring hung gleaming on her breast like an acrobat’s hoop. All the time, as she chatted with her friend, she drummed on her ziggurat of schoolbooks with a brush-tipped eraser.

  “White with navy polka dots, and the top is navy with white polka dots.”

  “Sounds lovely, doll.”

  “I hope so, it cost a pretty penny.”

  She was not what I’d thought she would be, nor what I’d hoped. I had imagined a cute, simpering airhead, not a bright girl desperate for something greater than life in our Sunset. Overhearing her conversation, I learned Annabel was studying chemistry at State in an astounding fantasy that a woman could be a scientist in 1953. That is what she talked about, as her friend tried to tempt her with sillier topics, as her straw went in and out of her Suicide: those chemistry classes, and the professors who ridiculed her, her disapproving father and the male students who pinched her. She talked about it all with humor, but the strain was already showing in the tired circles that her makeup could not hide.

  “You won’t guess what they put in my lab notebook.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to know.”

  “Dirty pictures of course. Filthy, filthy pictures.”

  “Annabel, what did you do?”

  “Said it was hilarious, of course. What else could I do? You can’t let them know they’ve got you.”

  A burst of birdlike laughter: a young married white couple across from Annabel, the bride very pregnant, the groom very dusty. They were clearly passing through; I could see their road-mangled car sleeping by the curb, bags tied to the top. Inside, a dog readjusted its position of longing. They had come far to escape the Nebraska of their license plate, and who knows what surefire plan they’d cooked up in Mexico or Alaska? Seeing them, I could not help but feel an American stab of hope.

  From the booth, a familiar name.

  The friend produced a waterfall of mirth: “Isn’t that rich?”

  “Where did you hear that?” Annabel asked, looking around but not catching sight of me. “There’s nothing to it, I’m sure.”

  “I thought you’d know all about it!” and more silvery laughter followed. “A married woman carrying on beneath her husband’s nose—”

  “Hush, I’ve never even met his wife.” Annabel DeLawn turned to her dark cupcake and, picking at its pleated silver skirt with her nails, began to undress it on the table like a doll. William ran past me to get something from a back room.

  Then her friend added, in a whisper: “A Negro, of all things.”

  “I said hush.”

  “And that husband of hers so gorgeous like a movie star.” Giggling: “Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Annabel?”

  “Let’s change the topic.”

  The silver foil of Annabel’s cake caught the light in a kind of fireworks, tossing blue sequins around the room. I thought I heard her sigh.

  I felt the broken belt in my pocket and a brief, embarrassing fantasy occurred to me: at Playland again, following my husband and Annabel out to the Limbo ride—that tunnel of love—where they would board the hearse-shaped cars and enter, hands clasped, its great gaping mouth. Wildly, absurdly, I imagined I sat in the car behind them, listening to their whispers and echoed laughter. A scream—a giant spider above them. And then, all at once, the power would go out. Darkness, silence. Bird in the hand. I imagined a perfect crime: that of climbing from my car, pulling the belt from my pocket and slipping it around her neck. It felt, in the innocence of my daydream, like a passionate embrace; it was the struggle I had never had: that of never-letting-go, not for something that you want so much, not until the thing is done. Never-letting-go.

  We should forgive ourselves the cruelty of our youth. I wasn’t that much older than Annabel, though I thought of myself as a grown-up married woman. I was young and in anguish, and she was young and struggling to make the best of her lot as a woman, and of the times she lived in. Glittering with charm and keeping that bitter smile as wide as she could. Surely she was as afraid as I was. And who knows what those rides with my husband meant, in truth—a husband casting about for options, finding it perhaps in this poor girl—and what Buzz’s jealousy, like an imp taking the form of our worst fears, had summoned.

  From the booth: “Oh, Annabel, you tease. Tell me about him.”

  “I won’t! I’m sure you know I’m promised to someone else!”

  “But you’re not married yet.”

  “Why should we? We’re keeping it secret, and I want to finish my studies first.”

  “You’re a riot, Annabel, a regular riot!”

  In irritation: “Gotta go, hon.”

  Across from her, the bride gave out a gasp; from a tipped-over canister flowed the pink lava of a shake. William Platt ran from the back and grabbed a rag at the fountain.

  Annabel passed a hand through her hair and the little charms on her bracelet tinkled like bells; the promise ring on her breastbone caught the light. Then, for a moment, I thought she saw me. Her body went straight and clean as a lighthouse, her eyes moving across the room, and her gaze seemed headed right for me. I felt that I might do it; I might talk to her. But her eyes moved over me and around the room until they settled on William, running by with his rag. He grinned and she smiled back, brightly, like a switch he had flicked on with his finger. Then with a bell she was through the door and gone, just a ghost haunting the window as she stopped outside to ask a policeman a question, her finger tracing the glowing French curve of her hair.

  “’Scuse me folks.”

  It was William, arriving with his bar rag, quickly wiping up the tabletop with the same circular caress I had seen him use to wash the family Ford, dotingly, soapily, on semi-sunny days. The pregnant girl held both hands up in a gesture of compliance, smiling, not as her husband smiled (with embarrassment) but with the pleasure some pregnant women have at being a bit of trouble to the world, and she watched the soda jerk as he cleaned. Around and around he went. And all the time his happy gaze was on the window, on Annabel. After a minute, she flashed her teeth at the helpful policeman and fled, her progress down the street reflected now only as a smirking glint in the cop’s girl-watching eye and a glowing one in Willi
am’s.

  When he was done, handsome William (the basketball star) threw the rag into a distant bucket, wiped his hands on his apron, and, turning around and seeing my foam-ringed glass, picked up the empty thing—one finger of his right hand whitened by an absent ring—and looked right at me with the doomed sweet smile of a boy in love.

  Buzz invited me to his office for our next meeting. We toured vast aviaries of chirping apparatuses, where workers lowered heavy patterns onto bolts of cloth and others fed huge blind cutting machines their daily feast of fabric. Buzz explained that during the war his father had altered the corset factory to sew parachutes for flares. “War is never what you think it will be,” he said, leading me across a high catwalk made of metal strips—like walking on the teeth of a comb—and when at last we had completed our circuit, he turned to me with his hands on his hips and grinned broadly. “That’s it!” he shouted. “What do you think?”

  The machines entered a new round of gonging and Buzz shouted something else I could not hear. I shook my head and he repeated it.

  “I’m selling it, I’m selling everything!” he shouted, grinning, then took a breath as if puzzled, perhaps hurt I had not divined his purpose. He had shown me his empire. The whirring menagerie his family had brought to life. He looked at me for a long moment, his lips slightly open, with the machines buzzing and clanging all around, waiting for me to understand.

  “For you!” he exclaimed at last over the noise, his hands flying out before him.

  We stood, facing each other, as the battle noise rose around us. Like allies in a fairy tale, each with half of a broken locket, now Buzz and I had shown each other the depths of our sacrifice, the treasures we were willing to surrender so they might fit together. Mine was a story of my youth, the home I had lost for my husband. And here was his: bright and oiled and twittering around me. Not just the brick aerodrome and the machines it enclosed, the precision instruments for making precision garments, but the family history he was willing to part with forever—no less than what I, myself, had relinquished. Buzz said it was for me, but that was not exactly true. It was for Holland.