by Anita Shreve
After a time, Bridget straightened up. A momentary lull? She waited a minute and then dared to open her eyes. She took a fistful of toilet paper and wiped her forehead and face. She lifted the back of the wig and mopped up the sweat that had accumulated there. She felt distinctly better. Had she won a reprieve? On her wedding weekend? She tossed the tissue into the bowl.
She emerged from the stall and stood before a mirror to wash her hands. Her face was pale and undefined, the extra pounds (ounces on her face) blurring her jawline. The wig had been washed this month and blown into a flip. Bridget never knew when she opened the small square cardboard box from Brooklyn exactly who she'd be that month. A matron with a turned-under pageboy? An aging ingénue with curls? Or someone more hip, the hair falling straight to her shoulders? Bridget had written "no flip" on her notes when she returned the wig for cleaning each month (FedEx: if Bridget sent it out at 6:00 p.m. on Monday night, she got it back before 10:00 on Wednesday morning — forty hours without her wig, during which she sometimes wore a synthetic backup), but the word "flip" must not translate well into Yiddish, she had decided. Bridget had been mildly distraught, a week ago, to see that she would have to be married in a flip, but she knew enough not to try to wash it herself, which she had once done, the outcome disastrous and resulting in a shoulder-length Afro.
When she left the ladies' room, she found the boys sitting at the table with their chairs tipped back. They were satiated and would sleep again. Bill had been watching for her, but it was possible she hadn't been gone long enough to worry him. She put a smile on her face, one that grew more genuine with gratitude for the reprieve. (Grateful to whom? God? Could he possibly care about Bridget and her nausea with 9/11 and terrorists to think about? She could hear her father say, he used to say it all the time — we don't amount to a hill of beans — a phrase that could disturb or soothe, depending upon one's point of view.)
"Guys," she said, stopping short the question she knew was on Bill's tongue. "Ready?"
The boys shrugged their chairs away and stood with their trays. Bill wiped up a spill and took his trash to the container. They would all travel on to the Berkshires and find their rooms at the inn. The boys would wear tuxedos, and Bridget would squeeze herself into her pink boucle suit. Agnes and Harrison and Rob would raise a toast, and tomorrow Bill and Bridget would be married.
The two adults and two boys stepped out into the sunshine. Bridget felt soft air on her throat and at the back of her neck. She was relieved — so relieved! — not to feel sick at this moment. She took Bill's arm, which he freely gave. Was there anything better, she wanted to know, than feeling well? Simply feeling well?
Harrison set out on foot up the slope behind the inn. The bare trees suggested winter, the warm air felt like spring, and it was pleasantly disorienting to have to remind himself that Christmas was less than three weeks away. He followed a well-worn path that meandered through birch groves and around rocky outcroppings and occasionally was steep enough to warrant a handhold. The sun bathed the woods, and, for a time, Harrison was entranced by the mild midwinter light.
The hill grew gentler as he climbed. He came to a stone wall that reached to his knees and was remarkably intact despite the appearance of age. He followed the wall for a time and was surprised to discover that it simply ended, giving no indication of what it had once enclosed. He turned and sat on its rough edge and saw that he had an exceptional view not only of the inn but also of the Berk-shires in the distance. Perhaps the wall had been designed for this purpose.
He wondered where Nora was, what she was doing at that very moment. He remembered the image he had had earlier, of the first time he'd ever seen her up close. The way the picture had come to him with vivid clarity.
It was a Sunday, he recalled, and he'd been walking in the village as he sometimes did when he'd been studying for several hours and needed a break. Late October of his junior year, he thought, because there was the smell of burning leaves in the air. Unlike his roommate, Stephen, Harrison woke early on Sunday mornings and tried to get as much of the week's homework out of the way as he could. Harrison was not a skilled sleeper, whereas Stephen had a knack for it, as, indeed, he had for nearly everything else. Harrison remembered Stephen hanging upside down from his bunk explicating Randall Jarrell's "The Death/of the Ball Turret Gunner" even though he'd only glanced at/the poem. He recalled Stephen making the entire senior class laugh at his brilliantly timed jokes during his pitch to become class president — and this to a student body who valued cool and irony above all other qualities. He could still picture Stephen nodding respectfully, even eagerly, at a few words his father had to say about finding the talent one was truly good at and making something of it — pitcher of old-fashioneds at Dad's side, glass in hand — Harrison having the sense that direct attention from father to son had been in short supply and was therefore all the more coveted.
So it had to have been before the Sunday meal, Harrison decided, that he took that walk. Yes, absolutely, because there was a short but steady stream of cars starting their engines and leaving the Congregational church. 11:15? Was Nora coming from church? Odd that he'd never thought of that before.
Harrison walked often then — on Sundays, occasionally at dusk after practice, sometimes in the early morning before his first class — not for exercise, because he had plenty of that with the mandatory sports at Kidd. No, it was more to clear his head and to be in nature. He had always, even at a young age, understood himself to be a lover of the natural world, and he had often wondered if he hadn't gravitated to it to assuage some great loss — a longing for his father perhaps? — though he had not followed the hypothesis much further than that.
The girl, Harrison remembered now, was walking across the street, slightly ahead of him. Harrison could see the pale blue of her cloth coat, the way her woolen scarf was wound around her neck several times, pushing her hair into a chestnut bubble that rocked gently from side to side as she strode. Unlike Harrison, she didn't seem to notice the cottages and the piles of leaves around her. She didn't look into windows or into backyards. Rather, she seemed instead to be staring at a spot perpetually five feet ahead of her on the road.
Harrison increased his pace, ratcheting it up from stroll to walk. He wanted to overtake the girl, if only to see her face. He thought he knew who she was. She was new to his class that year. She had come from somewhere in the Midwest. He'd seen her crossing the campus and in the dining hall. Her name was . . . Sarah? No, something else. Nora.
She walked with her hands in the pockets of her coat, and she never broke her stride. Harrison easily drew even with her but was reluctant to close the gap. If he glanced over at her, and she at him, he would then have to speak to her and possibly even walk with her. And though he found the prospect of that conversation and walk exciting, he sensed that the girl might not welcome the intrusion.
Harrison was near enough now to see her chin and a fan of dark eyelashes. The carbon-laden smoke was thick and delicious in the cold air. She was the girl he had imagined. Nora. Nora what? He wondered what so preoccupied her thoughts that she did not even glance up.
As he drew closer to her, it occurred to Harrison that the girl could not possibly be unaware of his presence. At the very least, she had to have heard his footsteps. He could not remain slightly behind her and not speak to her, because to do so might seem as though he were following her. The girl would be bound to increase her own pace, or, worse, whip around and confront him. Harrison had a dilemma.
In the end, he had little choice. Reluctantly, he drew even and glanced across the street. He said hello, hesitated a second, and then kept walking.
Aware of her gaze on his back — a gaze that burned and seemed to cause a concavity there — Harrison moved with a false sense of purpose, as if he had a destination. He had had just a glimpse of her face (the dark eyes not startled but slightly wary; she had not returned his greeting), and too soon he reached the gate at Kidd. He did not
want to enter the school grounds, and only a tremendous physical effort kept him, as he paused at the gate that was not really a gate but more of a wrought iron arch, from turning around to look in her direction. He ought to have done so, he thought now. What would have been the harm? He might have pretended to have to tie a shoelace. However lame and transparent the excuse, the delay might have given him a chance to speak to her. He would have asked her what dorm she lived in. If she ever walked the beach instead of the road. And (screw Stephen) they'd have gone together to the dining hall and had their lunch, sitting across from each other and, he imagined, finding connections — teachers they might have shared, classes they liked or did not.
Of such momentary decisions, Harrison thought now, were entire universes constructed. Had he spoken to Nora that day, she might have become his girlfriend instead of Stephen's. There would not have been the scene at the cottage-He got up from the stone wall and searched for the place where the path headed back to the inn. Chance constructions could not be undone, Harrison knew. Momentary decisions could not be disowned.
Though the trip up the hill had taken nearly forty minutes, it was only fifteen down, and Harrison returned to the inn with sore knees and a good appetite. He wondered if he'd missed lunch. He noted a sign in the lobby for another wedding (had it been there earlier?): karola-jungbacker rehearsal dinner, pierce room, 7:00. When he entered the dining room and sat down, a waitress appeared with a menu. The lunch entrees were few but varied: Raclette with Cornichons and Roasted Potatoes; Baked Eggplant Crepes; Misty Knoll Free-Range Chicken Livers. He ordered a spinach-and-fig salad to start, followed by the raclette. He sipped a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Through the windows, he had a pleasant view of the mountains to the west. Three other tables were occupied, one by a couple who seemed inured to the boundless enthusiasms of a boy who looked to be about Tom's age, who was coloring with Magic Markers and pressing his parents repeatedly for assurances that they would go up a certain gondola and visit the North Face Outlet Store and make it back to the inn in time for a predinner swim. Harrison tried to catch the father’s eye, hoping to convey a kind of parental empathy.
Harrison's good mood was marred only slightly with the arrival of the salad and the presence of a dead fly lurking at the perimeter under a spinach leaf. The waitress had missed this at first, and since Harrison did not want to embarrass her (or Nora, for that matter), he decided not to point it out. It wasn't until the girl came to clear the mostly uneaten salad away that she noticed the fly.
"Oh God," she said at once, "you should have said something."
"No trouble," he said.
"Can I bring you another salad?"
The waitress had blond hair pulled tight to her head and fastened at the back. A prominent eyetooth was smudged with lipstick. She seemed so flustered that Harrison wished he had hidden the fly simply to save her the confusion.
Really," he said, "it's no trouble at all. You could bring me another glass of the cabernet, though, if you really want to."
The girl seemed relieved and whisked away the offending plate, which had given little offense, Harrison thought, the presence of the fly in mid-December but one more indication of the freakishness of the season. Almost immediately, she brought another glass of wine, which he took his time enjoying as he ate his raclette. He thought again about the day he'd met Nora.
Without a backward glance, Harrison had entered the gate, returned to his room, and waited until 1:oo so that he could wake Stephen. Harrison was beset with a nagging sense of irresolution. He longed to crawl back into the moment he'd passed Nora and do it over, to choose not to walk straight past the girl in the blue cloth coat but to begin a conversation, or, even less subtly, to wait for her at the gate. But having missed his chance, he did not, as another boy might have, seek immediate redress. Harrison saw Nora in the dining hall that afternoon but did not speak to her, the sheer dazzle and demands of Stephen's presence gradually obliterating Harrison's view of her in the corner (when Harrison looked up, she was I gone). And later, as the day progressed, there was the weekly poker game at 3:00, then a quick supper followed by study hall at 8:00, during which time Harrison read The Old Man and the Sea, having finished all of his homework that morning.
Harrison could remember that day well, but he could not see the next or the next, and whole months were lost to him now. He could recall certain key moments at Kidd, most having to do with sports and later with Nora, and if pressed and given a few hints, he could recall a given incident — but huge segments of his last two years at school remained a blur. He remembered another girl, Maria, with whom he'd gone skiing during Christmas break of his junior year, staying at Maria's parents' condo at Sunday River. Much to Harrison's surprise, he'd been awakened shortly after 1:00 in the morning by an athletic Maria slipping into his bed. He'd at first been hyper alert to the sounds of parents waking and walking along the corridor, an alertness that had competed with and lost out to the excitement of the girl in his bed and to the thrill of her remarkable expertise, not, as it happened, much needed, since Harrison was a willing if bumbling partner, eager to relieve himself of his virginity. And having done that together, Harrison and Maria were for a time something of a couple, though Harrison sensed that Maria, with her long blond hair and overdeveloped breasts, might at any moment slip into someone else's bed. The girl in the blue cloth coat — which had given way to a denim jacket as winter moved toward spring — receded even further into the past, that past now growing fat with missed opportunities, lost chances, and mild regret.
In early April, at the beginning of the baseball season, Harrison remembered a game against North Fenton High School, a tough team, though a game Kidd was supposed to win. Harrison's memory intercepted the game in the fourth inning, the play before that a blur, though he recalled that Kidd was down by five. Jerry Leyden, on the mound, was an exercise in pure frustration. Earlier, in the dugout, the pitcher had snapped, "Guys, let's get it together," the rest of the team having given him no run support. For once, Harrison hadn't blamed the defense that day. In his opinion, it was all down to lousy pitching, Jerry leaving the ball up, unable to make his sinker sink. North Fenton knew it, too, and had gotten their five runs with patience: two walks, a triple that brought in two runs, a hit batter, and a homer. When Harrison's fickle memory interrupted the game, he was playing second and there was a man on first, the guy driving Harrison nuts, he was so far off the bag. If Jerry would just whip around with the ball, the first baseman could make the pickoff easy.
Harrison wondered why Coach D. hadn't made his way out to the mound yet, why he hadn't put another pitcher in. Stephen, in the hole between second and third, was thwacking his fist into his mitt. The only one who would hate this loss more than Jerry would be Stephen. The shortstop bent, put his hands on his knees, and swayed from side to side, keeping loose. Harrison was hovering behind the base path, wanting some action. Baseball in Maine was a winter sport, with its muddy fields, freezing temperatures, and fierce winds straight off the Atlantic sending any decent hit over the fence in right field, though Rob Zoar was as good an outfielder as Harrison had ever seen.
A gust rattled over the mound. Jerry stalled, waiting for a lull. The ump told him to play ball. Jerry went into his windup, his leg kick theatrically high, and, Harrison thought, uneconomical. Any decent runner on first could steal second before the ball hit the catcher's mitt. The ball stayed up, and the batter hit a line drive through the gap between second and third. Harrison watched Stephen arch over at a seemingly impossible angle, glove the ball as it bounced in the dust, and whip it across his body even as he was rising in the air, a play that no high school kid should have been able to make. Harrison, waiting for it, got it out of his glove as he leaped over the runner and snapped it to first, getting the batter there. Two out. Their patented double play, the one Harrison and Stephen had fine-tuned the year before, had talked about all winter, and had practiced incessantly, Stephen being the key, t
he pivot, his spin making it work. It was the first time they'd had a shot at it all day.
Stephen, lighter on his feet now and pumped, his blond hair blowing straight back from under his cap, his uniform flattened against his chest, gave Harrison the thumbs-up, a gesture undetectable to anyone else. If Jerry could keep the ball down this last at bat, they could retire the side and start again at the top of the order: Harrison, leadoff batter; Rob Zoar batting second for his uncanny ability to make contact; Billy Ricci, catcher, phenomenal hitter with power, batting third; and then Stephen, batting cleanup. There was still a chance to get into the game.
Harrison could see the fat pitch as it left Jerry's fingers. The batter knew a good thing when he saw it. The ball went high and long and so far over the fence into the dense scrub brush that there was no point even trying to retrieve it.
0-6.
Jerry was yanked, and a new pitcher came to the mound to warm up. Harrison glanced over to the small hillock on which the fans sat — fewer in April than in May, many more at home games than away — and saw a smattering of parents, some of whom he knew had driven more than a hundred miles to see their sons play baseball. And set apart, resting on the steepest part of the slope, her elbows dug into the new grass as she half reclined, was Nora in her denim jacket, a pink scarf loose at her neck. Harrison made note of the khaki skirt, the long black boots, the heels of which she was ruining. She had a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes, but Harrison could see clearly her line of sight. She had come for Stephen.