by Anita Shreve
Sydney’s vision splits—one camera on Ben, the other on Jeff, still deep in conversation with Sydney’s mother, still strenuously ignoring the newcomer’s presence. Julie leaps up in her smart backless dress and hugs Ben. Mr. Edwards introduces him to the minister and to Sydney’s parents, who smile and nod their greetings to the wayward brother. Anna Edwards frantically waves Ben over to sit in the chair next to her. If one didn’t know better, one might think it was Ben and not Jeff who was the bridegroom.
Jeff can no longer pretend to be otherwise engaged. When he turns to Sydney, his eyes are glassy and opaque.
The dinner is served by a woman in black pants and a white shirt. A lobster stew is presented in sturdy crocks that Sydney doesn’t think came from Emporia. The roses on the table mix with the humidity from the sea air to produce an intoxicating ether that seems pumped in for the occasion.
Sydney is acutely aware of Ben to one side of her, Jeff to the other. She hardly dares to breathe lest her body escape the rigid space allotted her. To touch Jeff, which ought to be ordinary and even called for, seems, now, a gratuitous gesture that would remind Ben of the reason for the gathering, which, in turn, might remind him of the fraternal rift, of a year of injured feelings.
Touching Ben is out of the question.
Occasionally, Sydney feels that she is losing her bearings, that she is not as sharp or as observant as she used to be, that somehow in the previous year, she has substituted, in incremental degrees, emotion for intelligence. In cooler moments, she wonders if this is an altogether profitable trade.
Mr. Edwards stands and proposes a toast. “Tonight,” he begins, “we add another chapter to the history of this wonderful house—a joyous chapter, for it brings into our family the lovely and lovable Sydney Sklar. Good fortune has smiled upon our son. There is a Yiddish word that means, roughly translated, ‘fated to be together.’ I hope I can pronounce it correctly. Beshert.” Mr. Edwards raises his glass. “Beshert,” he says again.
The guests, Mrs. Edwards wanly, raise their glasses and repeat the word. Sydney wonders if she will be the first Jew to take partial possession of the house, however in-lawed and tenuous that possession might be. She also wonders something else: Are she and Jeff really fated to be together? And by what or whom? Brought together by a complex set of circumstances to put Jeff on the porch at the precise moment Sydney emerged from the water? Who could believe in such an unseen hand? Did Daniel have to die to allow fate to have its way? What a cruel, indifferent, and whimsical god to have done such a wanton thing. And for what purpose?
Jeff does not rise to thank his father. A strained silence lengthens.
Ivers stands and skewers the groom, listing, for the bride’s benefit and before it is too late to cancel the wedding, a few little-known facts about Jeff Edwards. The groom, Ivers reveals, once urinated on a statue of John Harvard after losing to his competitors in Cambridge a breathtakingly close debate regarding the validity of NATO. After he was caught, he was brought before a disciplinary committee at his own college (Brown), the members of which stood and applauded when he walked in. Ivers also wishes Sydney to know that her fiancé once sank into a state of mesmerized reverence bordering on the spiritual when watching synchronized swimming at the last televised summer Olympics. Jeff declared the sport to be “really difficult.” And, finally, does Sydney know that her husband-to-be is a secret gambler, once betting on the Yankees to win over the Sox by a margin of four runs in a play-off game? Because of these unforgivable and grievous flaws, Ivers is more than a little happy to bequeath the man to Sydney in less than twenty hours. And, in case anyone wants to know, the score is Boston 3, Yankees 0.
Cheers go up, and Ivers sits down.
A second course, Thai shrimp, is served. Jeff seems wholly concentrated on his meal, as if he were a restaurant critic. Beside her, Ben reaches often for his water glass and surveys the gathering. Sydney is reminded of the day Victoria first came to the house, the way Ben stood on the landing taking in the entire scene.
Because of her earlier conversation with Mr. Edwards, Sydney cannot help but think of the people who might or might not have eaten dozens of meals in this very room. The sisters in their dark habits (did they not freeze in winter?). The man of letters (would he have had distinguished guests with triple-barreled names to his dinner table—Edward Everett Hale and John Greenleaf Whittier?). The unwed mothers with their infants (or were the infants gone before the mothers rose from their beds?). The Marxists (would they have had formal meals or would that have seemed too bourgeois for them?). And what of the playwright? Or of the artist with three sons gone to war? Sydney sees him alone at a large table, the seats empty, a wide expanse of cherry or mahogany covered with maps of the Rhine and of Belgium. And then, of course, there was the widow with her daughter. No, they would not have eaten in the dining room, Sydney decides. Meals, if there were any, would have been had at a table in the kitchen, the press shouting at them from the street.
Sydney takes a sip of wine. It seems to her, as she surveys the current occupants of the walnut table with the uneven bevel, as though the personal history of the house has thinned out, that it is now less dramatic, less consequential, than it used to be. So little seems to matter when stacked up against plane crashes, a murder, unwed mothers, a war. Sydney’s time in the house will not be spoken of in years to come, will not make for a single impressive anecdote.
And yet, she wonders, setting her glass on the table, are there not stories at this table, each with its own dramatic arc, the ends of the tales not yet known? She thinks of the young daughter who ran away from home for love. Will her unlikely happiness last? Of the feud, seemingly ancient, between the two benign brothers. Will one forgive the other? Of the matriarch who can barely conceal her jealousy and disdain for the young woman who will enter her family, the mother who even now is touching her eldest son as if he might vanish at any moment. And Sydney thinks, too, of her own parents, who once made a family, who presumably loved each other, and who now separately watch a daughter, their only child, marry for the third time.
And what of the minister swooning over the Thai shrimp? Is he a secret cross-dresser? A pool shark? Or is he merely what he seems, a modestly pious man not immune to the pleasures of a good bedroom on the sea and a remarkably fine meal?
“Checked the weather just before I came down. Supposed to be beautiful tomorrow afternoon,” Ben says, consciously making a positive contribution to the gathering. Or has the comment been offered as proof that he is now taking the higher ground?
Dessert and coffee will be served on the porch, Mrs. Edwards announces. Sydney rises and waits for Jeff, who, in turn, waits for Sydney’s mother, who is having a hell of a time extricating herself from her chair. Arthritic knees, she explains, an ailment about which she complains often, though she seems disinclined to do anything about them. It is understood that the “young people,” as Mr. Edwards has lightly dubbed them, will stay for a time on the porch with the “old folks” before changing their clothes and descending to the beach, where there is to be a bonfire and, one assumes, considerably more fun.
Jeff excuses himself to go out to greet Peter and Frank, who have been stuck in traffic. Purely by circumstance, Ben seats himself next to Sydney in a hard teak chair. Not to have chosen the empty seat would have called even more attention to the fraternal tension than there is already, not Ben’s style. For a time, Sydney and Ben listen to the banter, none of it important, a sense of real life being lived elsewhere. In tandem, they raise their cups and drink, Sydney embarrassed by the gesture.
In a moment of noisy laughter, Sydney asks Ben if he has spoken to Jeff.
“We talked.”
“What did you say?”
“We called each other assholes and then shook hands.”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
In her room, Sydney exchanges the blue sundress for a pair of linen shorts and a sleeveless white shirt. She ties a navy sweater arou
nd her shoulders. Already, she can hear laughter on the beach, can see the fire from her second-story bedroom. Replacing the dress in one of the two shallow closets, Sydney thinks again of the French Canadian sisters. Were the closets built for them? Shallow because they had so little to wear?
As promised, Jeff and Ivers and Peter and Frank throw Sahir onto the sand and divest him of his shoes. He protests, but helplessly. Julie makes s’mores and hands them out one by one, the sticky concoctions devoured rapidly, as if everyone hadn’t consumed a heavy meal an hour earlier. Most have changed into shorts and T-shirts, distinguishing themselves from the old folks, who can still be heard on the porch, even though they are fewer in number, and their laughter is dwindling. Sydney half expects Anna Edwards in culottes and halter top to descend the stairs, refusing to be left out of an event that includes her sons.
Sparks spray the air. Occasionally, the wood emits sharp reports. Sydney feels warm in front, cool at her back. Ben, arms behind his head, one knee raised, has commandeered the only chaise and thus has achieved his usual position of comfort. Jeff and Sydney share a log. Periodically, friends of the brothers stop by, having emerged from the gloom surrounding the fire, to congratulate the couple. Word of the impending marriage has traveled down the beach. Other young men and women, regulars on the summer circuit, arrive with beers in hand, arms linked, repositories of childhood memories repeated now and hooted at. Sydney, apart from greeting these strangers, is required to say little, having not been present during the precious events being recounted. Instead, she eats marshmallows and watches the sparks write messages she cannot read on the dark air above.
Sydney buries her feet in the cool sand. Near her, Julie and Hélène sit cross-legged. Earlier, Julie fed Hélène a s’more, the older woman laughing like a bridegroom at a wedding. Perhaps, Sydney thinks, this is the closest they will ever come to a ceremony of their own.
Sydney feels a finger trailing along her shoulder.
“I’m going up,” Jeff says.
“Now?” Sydney asks, surprised. “So soon?”
“Ivers will take care of the fire,” he says.
When Sydney rises, Ben looks away, as if something out at sea had suddenly snagged his complete attention.
“Good night, all,” Sydney calls, raising both hands and waving. It would be unseemly for her to stay on the beach if her husband-to-be is going up. “Thank you for coming. The groom needs his beauty sleep.”
Sydney smiles at the boos.
“Don’t forget, you can’t sleep with Jeff the night before your wedding,” Ivers says. “Bad luck forever. The score is ten–two, by the way.”
Sydney raises a fist in victory. She bends and kisses both Julie and Hélène. “You’ll come in at ten tomorrow?”
“Is that too soon?” Julie asks.
“No, it’s perfect,” Sydney says.
The porch is abandoned, the old folks having achieved their beds. In silence, she and Jeff pass through the house and climb the stairs. In the bedroom, Sydney sits and brushes the sand from her feet.
“I’m going to sleep here if that’s okay,” Jeff says.
“I assumed that,” Sydney says, though it is hard to ignore the vestigial sense of bad luck that Ivers mentioned.
“I can’t do the Ben thing,” he adds.
“What’s the Ben thing?”
“Pretend.”
Through her window, Sydney can see a shower of sparks, as if someone had poked a log. “What about Ivers and Sahir and the others?” she asks. “We invited them here. I think we’re being rude.”
“They’re all set.”
“They know about you and Ben?”
“Of course they know.”
“You’re a little sharp with me tonight.”
“I’m sorry, Sydney. I’m spoiling this for you, aren’t I?”
“A bit.”
Jeff moves to the other twin bed and sits once again beside her suitcase.
“I’ll get that,” Sydney says, rising to fetch her luggage, surprised when Jeff allows her to do so.
Jeff, seemingly poleaxed, lies down fully clothed.
Sydney stands beside his bed and for a moment is consumed by tenderness. She kneels, her forehead pressed against the side of his chest. Idly, Jeff plays with her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I asked him to come, and now I wish I hadn’t. It’s ruining the whole thing for you, too, isn’t it?”
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
From the opened window, Sydney can hear laughter. Shouldn’t she and Jeff be where the laughter is?
“Do you really hate him so?” she asks.
“Sometimes I do. Actually, I think it might be more the other way around.”
“That can’t be true.”
Jeff is silent.
“Your father was telling me about the history of the house,” Sydney says, propping her chin on the edge of the bed. “About the nuns and the Marxists and the unwed mothers. I was thinking that tomorrow you and I will become a part of that history.”
“To hear my mother tell it,” Jeff says, “she practically knew the nuns.”
Sydney lifts herself up and kisses his arm. “I love you,” she says, conscious of the fact that she doesn’t say it as often as he does. She sometimes wonders if this is because she doesn’t need to, that Jeff knows all too well how she feels.
“Come here,” he says.
Sydney raises herself even further and straddles the man who is now her lover. Tomorrow, with a few words and the merest of gestures, he will become her husband.
“I love you, too,” Jeff says. The words seem weightless, airborne.
Tempting fate, Sydney unbuttons her sleeveless white shirt.
“I’m going kayaking,” Jeff announces in the morning. He slips on his bathing trunks.
Sydney rises up on one elbow. After they made love, she retreated to her own bed, both agreeing a good night’s sleep could not be had together in such a narrow twin. “On your wedding day?” she asks.
Jeff parts the curtains to check the weather, which, from where Sydney lies, still appears to be “iffy.”
“The wedding isn’t until three.”
“Yes, but. . .,” Sydney begins. She sits up in bed, the sheets just covering her breasts. She has never had a successful discussion while naked.
“It’ll probably be the last time we’ll be up here until, I don’t know, late August, September.”
The wedding trip will consume three weeks. After that, they have another wedding to go to, in North Carolina, and following that, a conference at Johns Hopkins.
Still, it feels wrong for Jeff to go off on his wedding morning. Sydney cannot say why and doesn’t.
“I can’t stay here,” Jeff says.
Jeff will not remain in a house in which he might inadvertently find himself alone in a room with Ben.
“Enough of this,” Sydney says. “You’re behaving like two schoolboys,” she adds, when actually she means that Jeff is behaving like a schoolboy. Ben has seemed agreeable enough.
“Won’t be gone long,” Jeff says, bending and kissing her. “I’ll come back, get my things, and dress in my parents’ room. Stay out of your hair.”
“Be careful,” Sydney says.
Jeff shrugs her off. “Love you,” he says as he opens the door.
Sydney cannot help but notice his quick glance into the hallway before stepping outside. Under normal circumstances, she might interpret his darting glance as one of not wanting to be caught leaving his lover’s room—a charming, if anachronistic, gesture. But Sydney knows its true intent: to make sure Ben is nowhere in sight.
Sydney lies back on the pillow. She wished for sunshine when she woke. There is, she supposes, always the hope of some sun later, sublimely timed. “Just for the ceremony,” she says aloud, bargaining with whoever will man the lights for that particular bit of theater.
She stands and looks for her robe. Her mother might even now be in the kitchen, searching fo
r the silverware, not knowing where the cereal is kept.
The morning seems intolerably long. Ivers sits in the dining room and listens to sports talk on the radio, the volume low, intermittently gesturing or speaking to unseen voices. Sahir reads the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Barron’s, which he drove into Portsmouth to buy. Sydney’s mother, unoccupied, is invited to join Sydney and Julie and Hélène in Sydney’s room while the latter fixes Sydney’s hair.
Sydney enjoys Hélène’s delicate hands and is lulled by the voices behind her. When she is asked by Hélène to turn, she glances out at her ocean-liner view for a glimpse of Jeff—neon orange life vest atop a neon yellow kayak, a bright signal on a gray day—but he has not returned. It is, she tells herself, still early. He has hours yet to remain free, if indeed that is what he wanted, a last breath of freedom. The thought depresses her, for she prefers to think of marrying as a freeing-up, a passport to a country she once visited and now wishes to return to.
“So I said to him, ‘Did you not get my e-mail? Did you not open it?’”
Emily, Sydney’s friend, recently arrived, has joined the assembled in Sydney’s cramped room. “And he said, get this, ‘I don’t consider e-mail to be a valid mode of correspondence.’ I said, ‘You don’t?’ and he said, ‘No, I don’t,’ and I said, ‘Well, how about this? Fuck off. Does that work for you?’
“You should have seen his face, the pompous prick.”
Women complaining to women about men, some of it heartfelt, most of it not, some anecdotes amended as soon as the words have been uttered. Julie and Hélène cannot, of course, complain about men, and Sydney cannot really complain about the man she is about to marry, so that leaves mostly Emily and Sydney’s mother, who tells stories that might embarrass Sydney in another venue.