Another Marvelous Thing Read online

  “We’ve had enough swan songs to populate all the lakes in Maine,” Billy said.

  “I don’t care,” said Francis.

  As they walked up the stairs to Billy’s study, Francis’s step was light with anticipation. His heart was pounding. He was no longer a husband, a father, a householder, a provider, or a friend. He felt as if he had little wings on the heels of his feet like the god Mercury. He was his elemental self—a lover.

  The preliminaries were always the same. Billy closed her study door. Francis knew it was not necessary to lock it because this only happened when Grey was away. How fortunate that Grey’s job involved travel! How lucky for Francis that young men worked so hard!

  From the arm of her ratty couch, Billy took a quilt and unfolded it. It was made of faded blue cotton and had been washed a great number of times. She opened this no matter what the weather, a gesture of propriety that touched Francis’s heart. Her study faced north and, without any lamps on, it was very dim. In this perpetual dusk they got undressed, and when undressed they lay down on their sides—they could barely fit any other way.

  It was not the last time they would find themselves together, Francis knew in his heart. How could they separate when they were so connected? Francis knew these things troubled Billy. For his part he did not like to think of them at all. He did not care why they were together. He simply wanted what he had: his own specific Billy in his arms.

  Francis, for a moment, was in a state of perfect happiness. He heard his beloved say: “Shove over, Frank, will you? You’re crushing my arm.” This sentence was as music to his ears.

  He held her all the more tightly. He felt he wanted to breathe her in—her field glasses and bird books, her herp catalogs, her history, all her secrets: everything.

  She nestled against him and he hoped ardently that they would part and rejoin over and over, into the future. After all, they had parted before. Surely it would not be final. They would find their way back to one another as swans are said to come back each year to the same still pool.

  A Country Wedding

  On a cool, misty morning in early June, Billy and Grey Delielle drove into the country, toward the town of North Wigsall, where Billy’s oldest friend, Penny Stern, was going to be married from her grandmother’s country house.

  A band of fog hung over the Hudson River. Billy, who was beginning to feel damp under her hair, could see a red smudge in the hazy sky: when the sun broke through, it was going to be hot.

  Grey drove, his cuffs carefully folded back. His suit jacket was hung from a hook in the back of the car—it was the suit he had worn to his own wedding eight years ago. Next to him, Billy sat poised as if encased in eggshells. She was not much of a dresser; her lack of interest in personal adornment was well documented among her friends. The bride-to-be had taken Billy in hand and the result was the blue-and-white-striped linen dress in which Billy felt imprisoned. Afraid to move or blink or sweat, she feared that the mere act of sitting in the car was wrinkling her in the back. She felt like a child trapped in a party dress, a feeling she could remember exactly. She slipped off her shoes and propped her feet on the dashboard, as she was sure a seat belt would ruin the front of her dress.

  Grey was more used to being dressed than Billy, but he did not like it any more than she did. His closet was half full of sober-looking suits. The other half was full of walking shorts, hiking boots, old blue jeans, and waders for the trout season. He had been Billy’s guide to nature, which she had previously experienced mostly through books. As a child she had read endlessly about bats, birds and frogs, and the life of swamps, but her parents were entirely urban, and no one had taken her into the outdoors until she met Grey. Together they had hiked, trekked, climbed, explored swamps, gone for owl walks, and kept life lists of birds. When the trout season opened Billy was perfectly happy to sit on a bank swatting midges and reading while Grey stood up to his hips in cold water. On their honeymoon they had gone to Dorset to search for fossils.

  Billy, Grey, and Penny Stern had all grown up together in London, the children of American parents who had sent them to a slightly progressive, coeducational day school in Westminster. Billy had known Grey most of her life. He was three years her senior, and she could remember herself as a rather messy ten-year-old girl watching the thirteen-year-old Grey on the football field, or staring at him through the window of the science room. He was a very brainy and popular boy who played baseball in Hyde Park with his American friends. When she looked at him now, she could see the boy he had been, and she could not remember a time when she had not loved him.

  After college they both came back to London where they finally re-met, at a party. The moment she saw him, Billy knew that she had found what she was looking for. It was not love at first sight. It had been love all these years. “We were imprinted on each other early, like ducks,” Grey said. “They always love the first person close to them.”

  She remembered with perfect clarity how he looked: standing in a corner with an empty glass in his hand, his sleeves rolled up, his glasses slipping slightly down his nose, looking abstracted and slightly puzzled in the middle of a hot, noisy party. At the sight of him she felt her vision clarify, as if she had been living in a kind of half light. Suddenly everything seemed clear as if under a wide blue sky. Her destiny was plain before her: things made sense. She had never felt this way before, and she knew that if she didn’t marry Grey she probably wouldn’t marry anyone.

  Billy was not a pursuer, but she grabbed Grey’s sleeve. She was entitled, because they had known each other as children and had never been strangers to one another.

  He turned around and she saw he was somewhat of a stranger—a grown man. Suddenly she was as shy as a child. For an instant she thought he didn’t remember her, but he held her hand and said her name. Then they both smiled with amazing happiness, as if they had just gotten away with an entirely ingenious prank. They were married within six months.

  Billy knew the road to Penny’s grandmother’s by heart. She had stayed there as a child and visited frequently as an adult. In fact, Grey had proposed to her near a swamp off Old Wall Lane, less than a mile from Mrs. Stern’s house. Billy remembered that day clearly: not only had she been proposed to, but she had seen the great blue heron for the first time.

  They turned off the highway and onto the country road. The sun had not yet dried off the dew, and the fat green leaves looked moist and velvety. When they unrolled the windows, the air smelled mild and sweet, of newly cut grass and chamomile.

  Billy leaned back carefully. To be in a car with your husband, going to the wedding of your oldest friend, to visit a place you knew every corner of made life seem as correct, upright, and proper as a Quaker meeting house. The fact that her lawful wedded husband had not, for example, been the first man to set eyes on her new dress was the thorn in the rose, the termite lurking under the wooden porch steps.

  Months ago Penny had taken Billy shopping, dragging her through a number of overheated, very expensive shops and department stores and sending her home with a beautiful blue-and-white-striped linen dress in a fancy box. Once at home alone, Billy climbed out of her teaching suit and back into her old clothes.

  No sooner had she thrown her suit over a chair than the doorbell rang, and Francis Clemens appeared. He looked tenderly at her and remarked: “As always, a vision of radiant loveliness.”

  He closed the door behind him and took her into his arms. He was thirsty for her, but he found her reluctant. Instead of kissing him back, she led him to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

  Their usual pattern was tea and then a trip upstairs to Billy’s cheerless little study to lie in each other’s arms on Billy’s not very comfortable couch. But something final was in the air, and they did not go upstairs. Instead, at Billy’s suggestion, they sat in the living room and drank their tea.

  On the coffee table was the dress box. Francis, who knew one fancy shop from another, recognized it at once.

  “Did someo
ne leave this here by mistake?” he said.

  “It’s mine,” Billy said. “It contains an expensive dress.”

  “Really,” Francis said. “But that means you intend to wear it somewhere and we know what you think of social life.”

  “It’s a poisoned well,” Billy said. “This is for Penny’s wedding in June. You know who I mean.”

  “The one with the formidable grandmother.”

  “The very one,” Billy said. Penny’s grandmother was the only person in the world who called Billy by her given name of Josephine.

  “Well,” said Francis, stretching his legs. “It certainly would be nice to see you in it.”

  Billy sat on the edge of the couch. The idea of trying on this dress, which she would wear to the wedding of her oldest friend, who was one of Grey’s oldest friends, struck her as very wrong. It was a violation of something. She attempted to explain this to Francis, who looked very dark.

  “A woman absolves herself of guilt by brushing her teeth in the morning,” he said.

  Billy had never seen him angry before.

  “Is that a quote?”

  “It’s a quote from some misogynist Spaniard whose name escapes me at the moment,” said Francis. “I must say, I’ve never suspected you of being quite so sentimental. After all, we’ve been to bed together countless times and suddenly you get proprietary about a dress because you’re going to wear it on some sacred occasion.”

  Billy opened the dress box and pulled out the dress. She shook it out and held it up in front of her.

  Francis surveyed her without expression.

  “Quite a departure from your usual garb,” Francis said.

  “You’ll have to help me fold it back up,” said Billy. “If I do it myself, I’ll crease it.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying,” Francis said, “I think you’ll want to hang it up. And you might think of putting it in a dress bag so your other garments don’t smudge it.”

  “Very funny,” said Billy. She draped the dress carefully over the box and put it on the dining room table. Then she came back and sat down on the sofa. Francis sat down next to her.

  “This has to stop,” Billy said. “My life is being ruined.”

  “I knew it,” Francis said. “A nuptial rears its ugly head and suddenly you want to break up.”

  “I always want to break up.”

  “Is that really true?” Francis said.

  “Yes,” said Billy. “Isn’t it true for you?”

  Francis was silent. It was not, in fact, true for him. “That’s a terrible thing to say,” he said.

  “Truth is not always lovely,” quoted Billy. Francis regarded her.

  “Sometimes I’d really like to pop you one,” he said. He took her warm hand and they sat on the sofa feeling desolated.

  Francis did not like long periods of silence. To lighten the gloom, he said, in a voice not devoid of cheer: “You’re quite right. I knew this was coming. A little parting is probably in order. It’s always done us good in the past.”

  “I think this should not be a little parting,” said Billy, whose command over her voice was far from total. Their previous separations had lasted a month at best.

  “It’s probably for the best,” Francis finally said. “I guess this couldn’t go on indefinitely.” He did not say it with conviction.

  The raw weather had turned to rain. Francis and Billy sat on the sofa side by side in the dim light. Love made strange bedfellows, Billy thought, and then did absolutely nothing to help them out.

  Five miles off the country blacktop was the dirt road called Old Wall Lane. It began in the state forest and ended on the border of old Mrs. Stern’s property. Grey felt there were two ways to take this road: to whip around its corners at rather high speed raising a cloud of dust, or to slide down it in neutral since it was downhill all the way. Grey took the gentle course.

  Halfway down, he stopped the car.

  “Head out and up,” he said. “Quick!”

  They unrolled their windows and stuck their heads out. Sailing toward them was a red-tailed hawk. It floated over the car, low enough to see its speckled breast. The sight of a hawk up close always made Billy’s heart pound. She and Grey, each autumn, climbed Mirage Mountain in western Connecticut to watch the annual hawk migration. It was a childhood longing of Grey’s to own and train a kestrel, and for their first wedding anniversary, Billy had gotten him a first edition of The Goshawk.

  At the bottom of the road was Wall Swamp, where Grey had proposed. Since then they had explored the swamp extensively by canoe. Grey stopped the car and got out to stretch his legs. Billy got out, too.

  “Don’t crush me,” she said as Grey put his arm around her. They embraced as from a distance so as not to mess up Billy’s dress.

  “This is a pretty fancy business,” Grey said. “Not like our wedding.” Billy and Grey had gotten married in London, with their parents and siblings as witnesses in a registry office, and, after lunch, taken off in a rented car and driven to Dorset to explore the coast and search for anomites and other fossils.

  “I like ours better,” Billy said. “I actually don’t care if this dress gets creased.”

  They stood in the middle of the road, closed their eyes, and kissed like teenagers.

  Parting had been the sensible thing to do. A love affair could be compared to a cellar hole. Old Mrs. Stern’s property had several such holes, remnants of eighteenth-century households. After a long while, without a map of the property, it was impossible to tell where they were. Standing on a road kissing your husband, taking the car to be serviced, letters, meals, telephone calls, arrangements, and errands filled up the hole of a love affair so well that after a while it would be possible to stand comfortably on top of it.

  A tent had been pitched on the lawn next to the house. As they drove up the long driveway, Billy could see waiters with baskets of flowers dressing the tables. Penny’s mother stood in the center of the tent wearing a lilac dress and directing waiters and maids.

  On the steps of the house stood Penny’s grandmother, the ferocious old Mrs. Stern. She had declared that this would be the last wedding she would live to see, but she looked far from frail. She was a stout old lady with white hair and stark, piercing blue eyes. She wore a yellow dress and leaned on a cane that looked more like a bishop’s crozier, an effect of which she was not unaware.

  “Josephine, my dear one,” she said, clutching Billy’s hand. “And Grey. How lovely to see you so nice and early. Have you had breakfast? No? Well, Grey, do go sit with David. He’s all alone and lonely in the sun room. No one is paying any attention to him at all. As for you, my dearest, go instantly up to Penny, who is having some sort of nervous crisis. She sent her father down to the pharmacy to buy some emery boards, and she knows perfectly well that we have dozens of them in the supply cupboard. Oh, well. She hasn’t had breakfast. Do make her eat.”

  Upstairs in her childhood bedroom, Penny sat in her long white wedding dress, staring into the dressing table mirror. A wreath of flowers hung over the back of the chair. Penny was tall and pale, and she wore her pale hair pulled back in a chignon. She and Billy had been friends since they were ten. In the summer, both families came home to America for a holiday, and Billy and Penny always spent a month together at old Mrs. Stern’s. In this room they had sneaked cigarettes, drunk purloined beer, read love comics, written unsent love letters, plotted revenge on their school enemies, and read under the covers with flashlights after they had been told to go to sleep.

  “Is David still alive?” she said to Billy by way of greeting.

  “I’m afraid he’s dead,” said Billy. “The wedding is off. Here’s a cigarette.”

  “What a relief,” said Penny. “God, this is hell. This would never have happened if we had been allowed to run off to city hall like you guys.”

  “Oh, come on,” Billy said. “You wanted to get married here. Besides, your gran says it’s her last wedding.”

  “She’s
been saying that for thirty years,” said Penny. “She’ll be saying that when my as yet unborn children get married.” She blew a smoke ring and watched it float toward the ceiling and dispel. She sighed. “The end of my girlhood. The end of all good things. Why am I doing this?”

  “It’s nice,” said Billy. “It’s not so bad.”

  Penny looked up. She was suddenly in a very dark mood. “You’re a fine one to talk,” she said.

  “That’s over,” said Billy.

  “Really?” Penny said. “You didn’t tell me. Did it just happen?”

  “It happened the day we went shopping, as a matter of fact,” said Billy.

  “Gee,” Penny said. “Do you realize that the plans for this bloody wedding have kept me from having a real talk with my oldest friend? Or did you keep it from me.”

  “I kept it from you because I felt so awful,” said Billy. “I felt awful about feeling awful. Now I feel very light and free and right and truly awful once in a while.”

  “You poor little duck,” Penny said. “Hand me another of them smokes. Whether it’s over or not is not the point. The point of course is that it existed at all. It proves my point: marriage is unlivable.”

  “He’s a fine young laddie you’re marrying.”

  “Really?” Penny said. “I can’t seem to stand the thought of him at the moment.”

  A sweet breeze blew in through the window. Billy lit her cigarette and watched the breeze bat the smoke around. She and Penny never smoked except when they were together. It was a childhood tradition. Neither of them inhaled but both blew very beautiful smoke rings, a skill they had been perfecting for years.

  “Did you feel sick on your wedding day?” asked Penny.

  “I can’t remember,” said Billy. “But I don’t think so. After all, I didn’t have to go through all this.”

  “I wasn’t at your wedding,” Penny said gloomily.

  “I noticed that.”

  “I’ll never forgive myself,” Penny said.

  “If you remember correctly,” Billy said, “you were taking exams and it was very spur-of-the-moment. You did, however, throw us a big party.”