A Wedding in December
By Anita Shreve
Little, Brown
Copyright © 2005
Anita Shreve
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-316-73899-9
Chapter One
The glaciers are receding," she said. Nora peered through the window
as if she could see the progress of said glaciers some ten thousand
miles north. "I read it in the paper. This morning."
The view, Harrison had noted before he'd sat down, was of
still-green lawns and dormant rosebushes, of a wrought iron fence
and a garden bench, of ornamental grasses and white pines. Beyond
the considerable acreage was a steel ribbon of river and beyond that
a range of mountains, blue-gray in the morning light.
"The birds must be confused," he said.
"They are. I ... I see them flying north all the time."
"Is it bad for business?"
"No. Not really. No one's canceled. Though the ski areas are
suffering."
Nora left the window and moved to the chair opposite. He watched her
cross her legs, a cuff riding just above the edge of a black leather
boot and making a slim bracelet of smooth white skin. Harrison
superimposed the woman he saw now over the memory of the
seventeen-year-old girl he'd once known, a girl with a soft face and
large almond-shaped eyes, a girl who had been graceful in her
movements. The woman before him was forty-four, and some of the
softness had left her face. Her hair was different, too. She wore it
short, swept behind her ears, a cut that looked more European than
American.
When they'd met just moments earlier at the foot of the stairs in
the front hallway, Nora had been standing at a small reception desk.
She'd glanced up and seen Harrison, and for a moment she'd examined
him as an innkeeper might a guest one had not yet attended to.
Harrison, she'd said then, advancing, and his own smile had begun.
As Nora had embraced him, Harrison had felt both unnerved and
buoyant-a cork floating in uncharted waters.
"Your ... your room is comfortable?" she asked.
He remembered this about her. The slight stutter, as if hesitant to
speak. No, not a stutter; more a stutter step.
"Very," he said. "Great views."
"Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?"
"Coffee would be fine. That's quite a machine there."
"It makes espresso with a lot of crema," she said, standing. "It's a
draw, actually. Some of the guests have said they've come back for
the coffee in the library. Well, for that and for the dumbwaiter. I
put the dining room upstairs. To take advantage of the views."
On either side of the bookshelves were half columns, and below those
shelves were cabinets. On one wall, there was a built-in bench
upholstered in lichen stripes. The windows-a set of three facing
west-had panes in the tops only, so that from the leather couch on
which Harrison was seated he had an unobstructed view of the
mountains.
"How long has this been an inn?" he asked.
"Two years."
"I was sorry to hear about your husband."
"You sent a card."
He nodded, surprised that Nora remembered. There must have been
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cards for such a distinguished man.
"Renovations," she said, making a gesture so as to take in the
entire building. "Renovations had to be made."
"You've done a terrific job," he replied, slightly jarred by the non
sequitur.
Harrison had followed signs from the center of town to the inn and
then had taken the long drive up the hill to the top. When he'd
reached the parking lot, the view of the Berkshire Mountains had
opened up and stopped his heart in the same way that, as a boy at
Cinerama, his heart had always paused as the camera had soared up
and over a cliff edge to reveal the Grand Canyon or the Rift Valley
or the ice fields of Antarctica.
He'd walked with his suitcase to the front steps, noting along the
way the pruned bushes, the raked lawns, and, in a maze that had
perhaps lost its challenge, the expertly trimmed hedges. The inn was
sheathed in white clapboards and shingles and sported a chimney that
tilted slightly forward. The windows, unadorned, shone in the
morning light. Like many houses built at the turn of the century, it
had gables of differing widths and porches sprouting
unconventionally at odd angles. The outline of the roof, Harrison
thought, would be almost impossible to draw from memory.
Inside, the inn had a crisp edge that had been accomplished in part,
Harrison thought, with a great deal of white paint and chrome. Much
as he admired the inn, however, he wondered if visitors ever
lamented the lost house, the one Carl Laski had inhabited.
"This used to be an inn. Years ago," Nora said. "After World War II,
it became a private home. There's an early photograph. Behind you on
the wall."
Harrison stood and leaned in toward the wall, balancing himself with
his hand on the back of the couch. The photograph, framed in dark
walnut, was remarkably detailed and clear, every blade of grass and
twig made distinct with a kind of vision denied the naked eye. The
picture was of a white shingled building with a cupola on its roof.
It looked to be November or early March, to judge from the light
dusting of snow that outlined the furrows of a garden. At the
river's edge, there was a trail of mist, but he saw, on closer
inspection, that it was really smoke from a moving train, the train
itself a blur, merely a shadow.
"The photograph dates from 1912," Nora said. "It was made from a
glass negative. There's a rose garden there. And a racetrack."
Harrison sat again on the couch and wondered if anyone else had
arrived yet. He had wanted to be the first, to see Nora without the
noise of the others. "It was an inn, then a house, and then an inn
again?" he asked.
She smiled at his confusion. "When Carl and I moved here, it was a
private house. We lived here for fifteen years. After he died ...
after he died, I had the idea of reconverting it to an inn. It had
always wanted to be an inn. Even when it was a house."
"How many rooms are there?"
"There used to be twenty-two."
"How did you manage?"
"We closed most of the rooms off. Would you like more coffee?"
"No thanks. I'm fine. Any of the others here yet?"
"Agnes said she'd be here by lunch. Bill and Bridget, too. Rob ...
Rob won't be here until later."
"Rob's coming?" Harrison asked with pleasure. He hadn't seen Rob
Zoar in ... well, in twenty-seven years. Harrison was startled by
the number and recalculated. Yes, twenty-seven. "He's in Boston now,
isn't he? I think I read that."
"He performs all over the world. He gets wonderful reviews."
"I was surprised to hear he was a pianist. He kept it quiet at Kidd,
didn't he?"
"I think he tried to resist it."
"It seems like this wedding came together very fast," he said.
"It did."
Too fast for Harrison's wife, Evelyn, to rearrange her schedule.
Bill had sent Harrison an e-mail saying that he and Bridget were
getting married-at the inn-and he wanted Harrison and Evelyn to
come. Harrison and Bill had for a time kept in touch (their families
had gone skiing together twice), but Harrison had had no idea at all
about Bill and Bridget.
"Bridget's sick," Nora added. "It's why Bill wants to do it now."
"How sick?" Harrison asked.
"Very," Nora said, her face tight. "Do you remember them together?"
"At school? Of course." Bill had been a muscular catcher, a
consistent hitter with power who had routinely sent the baseball
over the fence. Bridget, a serious girl, was pretty in a slightly
plump way. In another era, she'd have been a beauty. The couple used
to cross the campus so entwined it was as if they were one creature.
Harrison recalled how disillusioned he had been when he'd heard that
each had married someone else.
"How did they reconnect?" he asked now.
"Our twenty-fifth. Did you ever go to any of the reunions?"
He shook his head. He'd told himself that he hadn't gone for
Evelyn's sake. She was Canadian, she wouldn't have known anyone, the
journey would have consumed too many of her precious days off. But
Harrison couldn't satisfactorily explain why he hadn't gone by
himself. The simple answer, he supposed, was that he hadn't wanted
to. The sight of the invitations had produced in him an anxiety he
had no intention of exploring. Even this small reunion-this hasty
wedding-had made him hesitate.
"You?" he asked.
Nora shook her head, and Harrison was not surprised. He could not
imagine Carl Laski at a Kidd reunion.
"Have you seen any of the others?" Nora asked. "Since school, I
mean?"
"Well, Bill," he said. "And I met Jerry in New York about five years
ago. We had drinks."
"He's coming with his wife, Julie," Nora said. "What was it like,
meeting Jerry?"
"He mostly wanted me to know how successful he'd become," Harrison
said and then shrugged to take the edge off the unkind comment.
"You're staying until Sunday?" Nora asked.
"I think that's the plan."
Harrison had flown from Toronto to Hartford, rented a car, and
driven to the Massachusetts Turnpike, which he had followed west.
He'd realized, as he'd driven, that he'd never been to western
Massachusetts. When he had visited New England before, it had always
been to Boston and then straight on to Kidd in Maine. Never inland.
He'd known of the Berkshires, of course. Tanglewood, the summer home
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was world famous. Edith Wharton
had summered in Lenox. Melville had written
Moby Dick in Pittsfield.
"There are some good walks," Nora said, gesturing toward the
windows. "The weather ... the weather is amazing."
"It's been unseasonable in Toronto as well. Very mild."
"Each day has been more beautiful than the last," she said. "I think
Nature means to mock us."
"How so?"
"9/11."
Harrison nodded slowly.
"All that horror. All that grief." She paused. "People ... people
are stopping one another on the streets and saying,
Can you imagine?
and
Isn't this extraordinary? and
Enjoy it while you can."
"They say the temperature is breaking all records."
"I think it will reach seventy-two today," she said.
"Surely a record for the first week in December."
"I wonder ... I wonder if the idea is that the sins of man, more
terrible than anyone's ability to imagine them, are nothing in the
face of Nature's bounty and serenity," Nora said.
"Nature a supreme being?" Harrison asked, puzzled.
"Entity?"
"A terrible one at times."
"Not today."
"No, not today," Harrison said.
"Or ... or are we meant to be reminded of a reason to stay alive?
To savor each day as if it might be the last?"
"Nature capable of grace?" Harrison asked. "I like that."
Nora laughed, reached forward, and touched him lightly at the tip of
his knee. "Listen to us," she said. "We're so pretentious. We used
to do this all the time in Mr. Mitchell's class, didn't we?"
"We did," he said, glad that she remembered, more gladdened by her
sudden touch.
"It's great to see you," she said with seemingly genuine pleasure.
"Where were you when it happened?" he asked.
"Here. In the kitchen. I turned on the TV just before the second
plane hit. Judy, my assistant-you're bound to meet her-came in and
told me. What about you?"
"I was in Toronto," he said. "I was eating breakfast. I had a cup of
coffee and the newspaper. On the television, the announcer's voice
changed in pitch, and I looked up in time to see a plane hit the
second tower."
The images of that day had played and replayed for hours, Canadian
television more willing to air the most horrific images-those
falling bodies-than American stations had been.
"Were you frightened?" he asked.
"Here? No. Not really. Upset. Very upset. But not frightened. I
thought of Carl. I was glad he wasn't alive. To see it."
Nora began to nibble at the skin at the top of her index finger.
Abruptly she stopped, putting her hands in her lap with a decisive
gesture. From behind the shut door of the library, Harrison could
hear a vacuum cleaner.
"They say it's the death of literature," she added.
"I think that's a little extreme," he said, shifting his position on
the couch. In the days following the tragedy, he'd been greatly
annoyed by such dramatic remarks. "I admired your husband's work
very much," he added, feeling remiss that he hadn't mentioned this
earlier.
"He ... he was a wonderful man," Nora said. "A wonderful poet and
a wonderful man."
"Yes."
"I was the helpmeet," Nora said, surprising Harrison with the
archaic word. "I've ... I've never understood what that means
exactly. Helpmeet.
Help. Meet."
"I'll look it up for you," he offered.
"I could do it myself. I must have a dictionary. Somewhere ..."
She gazed at the spines of the books that lined the shelves.
For Harrison, the brilliance of Carl Laski's work lay in its oblique
nature, the way the point of a poem was often a glancing blow: a
glimpsed headline across the breakfast table while a woman tells her
husband she has a lover, or a man berating his wife on a cell phone
in an airport lounge as he passes a small child sitting alone with a
bright red suitcase. Later it will be the memory of the child with
the suitcase that will bring the man to his knees in his hotel room.
Harrison, of course, knew of Laski's reputation. The poet had won
numerous international prizes, had been the recipient of honorary
degrees, had been-when he'd died-professor emeritus at St. Martin's
College, at which he had founded the celebrated St. Martin's Writers
School and from which he had sent out into the world a
disproportionate share of poets. Laski, Harrison had read, regarded
the writing of poetry as man's highest calling and therefore worth
the inevitable squandering of happy marriages and good health, to
say nothing of sound finances. Largely due to his efforts, poetry
had been enjoying something of a renaissance when he'd died, though
one so mild as to barely register on the North American
consciousness. Not one man in forty could today name a living poet,
Harrison thought. Not one in a hundred could say who Carl Laski had
been.
Harrison had also read the Roscoff biography, a book that purported
to be literary but showed almost no interest in the work itself.
Rather, Roscoff had focused on the more lurid aspects of Laski's
life: his abusive father, his early drinking problem, his nearly
obsessive womanizing while a professor at New York University, his
disastrous first marriage, the loss of his sons in a bitter custody
battle, and his subsequent self-imposed (and somewhat misanthropic)
exile to the backwater college of St. Martin's in western
Massachusetts. "Your husband should have won the Nobel Prize,"
Harrison said.
Nora laughed. "If he were here, he'd agree with you."
"Was it difficult for him, being passed up year after year?"
"It ... it was an
event each time it was awarded. I mean that it
would register. Like a small seismic shudder. He'd hear the news or
read it in the newspaper, or someone would call and tell him, and
his face, for just a moment, would cave in. Even as he was ranting
about the winner or reading another part of the paper. The only time
... the only time he didn't mind personally was when Seamus Heaney
won. He loved Seamus."
Harrison set down his cup. Laski had been thirty years older than
Nora. The two had met when Nora was nineteen; Laski, forty-nine.
"Was it ever an issue between you-the age difference?" he asked.
"Only that he had to die before me."
Harrison listened for a note of bitterness or grief.
"We always knew it would happen," she added.
Harrison nodded.
"We just didn't know it would be so awful. One night ... one night
when it was really bad, Carl said, 'It's so easy.' I thought he
meant the pain. That somehow the pain had eased up. But he meant
dying. That he'd found an easy way to die."
Laski had filled his bathtub, plugged in the hair dryer, and let it
drop. Harrison remembered precisely where he'd been when he learned
the startling news. An editor Harrison had once worked with in
Toronto had walked by his table in a New York City restaurant, bent
down, and murmured,
Have you heard about Carl Laski?
"A terrible end to a magnificent life," Harrison said now.
Nora was silent.
"The courage to do that," he added.
"Carl ... Carl would have said 'cowardice.'"
"He had throat cancer?"
"He kept saying that he could never have described the pain. Not
even at the height of his powers. That it defied words."
"It's hard for the healthy to imagine pain like that."
"But what was truly horrible, Carl always said, was the knowing.
Knowing he was going to die."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Wedding in December
by Anita Shreve
Copyright © 2005 by Anita Shreve.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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