Richard Yates

by Easter Parade (v5. 0) (epub)

  Mr. and Mrs. Martin S. Gregory

  Have the honor to announce the marriage of their daughter

  Carol Elizabeth

  to

  The Reverend Peter J. Wilson

  On Friday, the eleventh of October, nineteen sixty-nine

  St. John’s Church

  Edwardstown, New Hampshire

  She remembered being slightly hurt at not having been invited to the wedding, but Howard had said ‘Oh, that’s silly; nobody gives big, fancy weddings any more.’ She had sent an expensive silver gift and received a nice, touchingly young-sounding note of thanks from Peter’s bride, written in a bold little private-school hand.

  It took what seemed hours to find the second item, which was a good deal more recent.

  The Reverend and Mrs. Peter J. Wilson

  Announce the birth of a daughter

  Sarah Jane

  Seven pounds, six ounces

  December third, nineteen seventy

  ‘Oh, look, Howard,’ she had said. ‘they named her after Sarah. Isn’t that nice?’

  ‘Mm,’ he’d said. ‘Very nice.’

  But now that she had the two announcements she wasn’t certain what to do with them. To hide the uncertainty from herself she spent a long time cleaning up the spilled, strewn letters on the floor and stuffing them back into the box, which she heaved and skidded back into the shadows where it belonged. Then she washed the dust off her hands and sat quiet with a cold can of beer, trying to think.

  It was four or five days before she worked up the courage to place a person-to-person call to the Reverend Peter J. Wilson in Edwardstown, New Hampshire.

  ‘Aunt Emmy!’ he said. ‘Wow, it’s good to hear from you. How’ve you been?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been – all right, thanks. And how are all of you? How’s the little girl?’

  And they went on that way, talking of nothing at all, until he said ‘You still at the advertising agency?’

  ‘No, I – actually, I haven’t been doing that for some time. Actually, I’m not working at all now.’ She was keenly aware of having said ‘actually’ twice, and it made her bite her lip. ‘I’m just sort of living alone now, and I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, which I guess is why’ – she tried a little laugh – ‘which I guess is why I just decided to call you up out of the blue.’

  ‘Well, great,’ he said, and the way he said ‘great’ made it clear that he’d understood what ‘just sort of living alone now’ meant. ‘that’s great. You ever get up this way?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Do you ever get up this way? New England? New Hampshire? Because I mean we’d love to see you. Carol’s always wanted to meet you. Maybe you could come up for a weekend or something. Wait, listen: I’ve got an idea. How about next weekend?’

  ‘Oh, Peter—’ Her heart was beating rapidly. ‘Now it sounds like I’ve invited myself.’

  ‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘Don’t be silly – it doesn’t sound like that at all. Listen. We’ve got plenty of room; you’d be perfectly comfortable – and it doesn’t have to be just for the weekend, either; you can stay as long as you like…’

  It was arranged. She would ride up to Edwardstown on the bus the following Friday – it was a six-hour trip, with an hour’s layover in Boston – and Peter would meet her at the station.

  For the next few days she moved with a new authority, a sense of herself as someone important, someone to be reckoned with, someone to love. Clothes were a problem: she had so few that were suitable for New England in the spring that she toyed with the idea of buying more, but that was silly; she couldn’t afford it. On the night before her journey she stayed up late to wash out all her underwear and pantyhose under the weak yellow light of the bathroom (the landlord had economized by installing twenty-five-watt bulbs in all the bathrooms) and after that she couldn’t sleep. She was still frazzled with lack of sleep when she carried her small suitcase into the raucous labyrinth of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, early Friday morning.

  She had thought she might sleep on the bus, but for a long time all she could do was smoke many cigarettes and stare through her blue-tinted window at the passing landscape. It was a brilliant April day. Then a spasm of sleep took her by surprise in the early afternoon; she awoke with a cramp in one arm, with her dress badly wrinkled and her eyeballs feeling as if they’d been sprinkled with sand. The bus was only a few minutes from Edwardstown.

  Peter’s greeting was enthusiastic. He grabbed up her suitcase as if the sight of her carrying such a load offended him, and led her off toward his car. It was a pleasure to walk beside him: he moved in an easy, athletic stride and held her elbow with his free hand. He was wearing his clerical collar – she thought he must be a very high-church Episcopalian, if he wore it all the time – with a rather natty light gray suit.

  ‘The country’s beautiful up here,’ he said as he drove. ‘And you really picked a beautiful day to arrive.’

  ‘Mm. It’s lovely. It certainly was – nice of you to ask me.’

  ‘It was nice of you to come.’

  ‘Is your house far from here?’

  ‘Only a few miles.’ After a while he said ‘You know something, Aunt Emmy? I’ve thought of you often since this Women’s Lib movement began. You’ve always struck me as the original liberated woman.’

  ‘Liberated from what?’

  ‘Well, you know – from all the old, outmoded sociological concepts of what a woman’s role should be.’

  ‘Jesus, Peter. I hope you do better than that in your sermons.’

  ‘Better than what?’

  ‘Using phrases like “outmoded sociological concepts.” What are you – one of these ‘hip’ priests?’

  ‘Oh, I guess I’m fairly hip, yes. You have to be, if you’re working with young people.’

  ‘How old are you now, Peter? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?’

  ‘You are out of touch, Aunt Emmy. I’m thirty-one.’

  ‘And how old is your daughter?’

  ‘Going on four.’

  ‘I was – very pleased,’ she said, ‘that you and your wife named your daughter after your mother.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, pulling out into the passing lane to overtake a fuel truck. When he’d drawn back into the driving lane he said ‘I’m glad you were pleased. And I’ll tell you what: we’re hoping for a boy next time, but if we have another girl we might name her after you. What would you think of that?’

  ‘Well, I’d be very – that would be very—’ But she couldn’t finish because she was collapsed and crying against the passenger’s door, hiding her face with both hands.

  ‘Aunt Emmy?’ he inquired shyly. ‘Aunt Emmy? You okay?’

  This was humiliating. She hadn’t been with him ten minutes, and already she had let him see her cry. ‘I’m fine,’ she said as soon as she could speak. ‘I’m just – tired, is all. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

  ‘Well, you’ll sleep tonight. The air is very thin and very pure up here; people say it makes them sleep like the dead.’

  ‘Mm.’ And she busied herself with lighting a cigarette, the ritual she had relied on all her life to restore an illusion of composure.

  ‘My mother used to have trouble sleeping,’ he said. ‘I remember when we were kids we were always saying “Be quiet. Mom’s trying to sleep.” ’

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said. ‘I know she had trouble sleeping.’ She was keenly tempted to say How did she die? but controlled herself. Instead she said ‘What’s your wife like, Peter?’

  ‘Well, you’ll meet her soon enough. You’ll get to know her.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Oh, wow, is she ever. She’s beautiful. I guess like most men I’ve always had fantasies of beautiful women, but this girl’s a fantasy come to life. Wait’ll you see her.’

  ‘All right. I’ll wait. And what do you do, the two of you? Do you sit around talking about Jesus all the time?’

  ‘Do we what?’

  �
��Do you stay up late talking about Jesus and resurrection and stuff like that?’

  He glanced briefly at her, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I’m only trying to get some picture of your – of how you – of the way you spend your time with your fantasy come to life.’ She could hear hysteria rising in her voice. She rolled down the partly opened window and snapped her cigarette away into the windstream, and all at once she felt strong and exhilarated, the way she’d felt in confronting Tony. ’so all right, Mr. Wonderful,’ she said, ‘let’s come clean. How did she die?’

  ‘I don’t even know what you’re—’

  ‘Peter, your father used to beat your mother all the time. That’s a thing I happen to know, and I know you know it too. She told me all three of you boys knew it. Don’t lie to me; how did she die?’

  ‘My mother died of a liver ailment—’

  ‘—“complicated by a fall she took in the house.” Oh, I’ve heard that song and dance before. You kids must’ve really memorized that line. Well, it’s the fall I want to hear about. How did she fall? How was she hurt?’

  ‘I wasn’t there, Aunt Emmy.’

  ‘Christ, what a cop-out. You weren’t there. And you never even asked?’

  ‘Of course I asked. Eric was there; he told me she stumbled over a chair in the living room and struck her head.’

  ‘And do you really think that’s enough to kill somebody?’

  ‘It could be, sure, if the person falls badly.’

  ‘All right. Tell me about the police investigation. I happen to know there was a police investigation, Peter.’

  ‘There’s always an investigation in a case like that. They didn’t find anything; there was nothing to find. You sound like some kind of — why’re you grilling me, Aunt Emmy?’

  ‘Because I want to know the truth. Your father is a very brutal man.’

  Trees and neat white houses streamed past the car window, with a blue-green range of mountains high in the distance, and Peter took his time in answering her — so much time that she began to be afraid he was looking for a place to turn the car around, so he could drive her back to the bus station and send her home.

  ‘He’s a limited man,’ he said at last, speaking carefully, ‘and in many ways an ignorant man, but I wouldn’t call him brutal.’

  ‘Brutal,’ she insisted, trembling badly now. ‘He’s brutal and stupid and he killed my sister – he killed her with twenty-five years of brutality and stupidity and neglect.’

  ‘Come on, Aunt Emmy; cut it out. My father’s always done the best he could. Most people do the best they can. When terrible things happen, there usually isn’t anyone to blame.’

  ‘What’s that, for God’s sake? Is that something you learned in your seminary, along with “Turn the other cheek”?’

  He had slowed down and signaled to make a turn, and now she saw a short concrete driveway, a neat lawn, and a small two-story house of exactly the kind she had imagined. They were here. The inside of the garage, where he brought the car to a stop, was tidier than most people’s garages. Leaning against the wall were two bicycles, one with a padded baby seat attached behind its saddle.

  ‘So you bicycle!’ she called to him across the top of the car. She had gotten out quickly, still trembling, and snatched her suitcase from the back seat; then, because a good loud sound was needed to punctuate her rage, she slammed the car door with all her strength. ‘That’s what you do. Oh, and what a lovely sight it must be, the two of you out bicycling with little what’s-her-name on a Sunday afternoon, all tanned and leggy in your sexy little cut-off jeans – you must be the envy of all New Hampshire…’ She had started around the back of the car to join him, but he was only standing there and looking at her, blinking.

  ‘…And then you come home and take showers – do you take showers together? – and maybe you play a little grab-ass in the kitchen while you’re fixing drinks, and then you have dinner and put the baby to bed and sit around talking about Jesus and resurrection for a while, and then comes the main event of the day, right? You and your wife go into the bedroom and shut the door, and you help each other take off all your clothes, and then oh, Lord God – talk about fantasies coming to life—’

  ‘Aunt Emmy,’ he said, ‘That’s out of line.’

  Out of line. Breathing hard, with her jaws clenched tight, she carried her suitcase down the driveway toward the street. She didn’t know where she was going and she knew she looked ridiculous, but it was impossible to walk in any other direction.

  At the foot of the driveway she stopped, not looking back, and after a while she heard a jingle of pocketed coins or keys and a rubber-heeled tread; he was coming down to get her.

  She turned around. ‘Oh, Peter, I’m sorry,’ she said, not quite looking at him. ‘I can’t – I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  He seemed very embarrassed. ‘You don’t have to apologize,’ he said, taking the suitcase from her hand. ‘I think you’re probably very tired and need some rest.’ He was looking at her in a detached, speculative way now, more like an alert young psychiatrist than a priest.

  ‘Yes, I’m tired,’ she said. ‘And do you know a funny thing? I’m almost fifty years old and I’ve never understood anything in my whole life.’

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘All right, Aunt Emmy. Now. Would you like to come on in and meet the family?’