The funeral was barely two months before her wedding. The D’Alfonsos assumed a postponement—a wedding so soon would be disrespectful. Anna cried bitter tears on her father’s neck.
“What on earth are you crying about, Anna? She was an old woman.”
Anna said, angrily: “Not her, not her. I wanted a June wedding.”
A pause while her father understood her. “Anna, if you want a June wedding, and you’ve got the man, I don’t see a reason in God’s earth why you shouldn’t have one.”
“They say …”
“They say all sorts of things.”
“They say they won’t come.”
“They’ll come,” the Old Man said. “There’s nothing they love more than a big wedding. Better even than a big funeral. Have it the way you want it, Anna, and to hell with the rest.”
THE D’ALFONSOS grumbled a bit, but soon stopped. The Old Man was right about his in-laws: they loved a big wedding. And, as they learned bit by bit of the plans, they realized that Anna’s wedding, supported by great amounts of the Old Man’s money, was going to be the biggest event in the family’s history. More glorious, even, than the old women’s tales of long-vanished Sicilian opulence.
There was to be a week of festivities, some not mentioned above a whisper. Like the two-day drinking party on the Old Man’s farm at Abita Springs—men only, with special whores from Chicago. While their men were gone, the ladies went on a quiet cruise through the lakes to an elaborate picnic on the Gulf Coast. There were gambling parties with the Old Man’s entire casino reserved for them. There were dances and concerts and occasional quick visits to church to remind everyone that matrimony was a sacrament. The Old Man was rarely seen, but nobody missed him. Robert went to one dance, got drunk, and left early. Anna seemed hardly to notice the crowds: without apology she avoided most of the gatherings. She was following her own schedule, her own plan.
THE DAY before her wedding, Anna took out the pictures of her mother, that ghost of the empty room, in her wedding dress. The photographer had placed his lights to catch the gleam of her finery, the sheen of the satin, the glitter of the tiny glass beads around her neck. Too brightly lit, the bride’s face appeared as vague as shadows. Patiently Anna studied the glazed indistinct features, the cloud of black hair, trying to find some link between her mother and herself. A resemblance—there, around the eyes, the angle of the cheekbones. It was so little, so very little. For almost an hour, Anna looked at the pictures, trying to see if the dead had any message for her. Nothing. It might have been a stranger. But then, she thought slowly, it was a stranger. Her mother was dead, nothing of her left any more, except maybe some blood. Anna closed the album slowly. That was all. Her mother was gone, she was floating in heaven, propelled by the everlasting Masses of her family. …
Anna put the pictures away. She felt vaguely annoyed, as if a promise to her had been broken. You’re being childish, she told herself severely; you are nervous and silly and childish. You’re behaving just like every other bride. How foolish you are.
After she’d lectured herself, she felt better. She always did. Because she knew that she was not like anybody else. Not like anybody else at all.
TO CLEAR away the feeling of disappointment the pictures left with her, Anna decided to drive to her house, her own house, the one she had remodeled according to her exact wish.
Why, she thought, do I always get angry at my mother? For not leaving me a memory, for being so vague and gentle and so busy with her job of procreating that she hardly noticed her children once they left her womb. … She would ask her father about this obsession to breed; had he wanted a son that much? He had one now, she thought smugly, in Robert. …
The lush green June shade washed over her house, softening the crisp white lines, blurring the sparkling paint. Even the harsh smell of turpentine disappeared in the heavy scent of Sweet Olive and Cashmere Bouquet bushes. The entire block was wrapped in layers of different fragrances—such a wonderful neighborhood, she thought. It seemed to hang in time; all the houses were nearly a century old, the street itself was cobblestoned. A circle of time, she thought, a perfect circle of time.
Her mother’s family disapproved of the house. For weeks the cobblestones echoed as they streamed by, clucking their displeasure. Her second cousin Bernadette, who was building a new house in a suburb called Metairie, said: “Anna, there is a marvelous lot across the street, it would be a lovely place to build.” Her husband Andrew, who was a state senator and in the slot-machine business, flashed his professional smile. “We’d be proud to have you for a neighbor. I hear Mike’s coming out our way too, all the young families are.”
Anna smiled right back at him, conscious suddenly of her own will, her own ability to decide. I can say no, she thought, I can control what happens to me now. I’m no longer a child. I control myself. …
“How sweet of you, Andrew.”
“Tell your father to build you a fine house. He can afford it. …”
Anna went on smiling, the soft vague smile that masked a definite and final refusal. “I’ve found a house I like very much.”
“But a new house …” Baffled by her smile, his voice trailed away.
The day before her wedding, Anna looked at her house and thought: It’s what I wanted, and I have it. I will live there with my husband and we will be happy. It is mine, it is like me, and I love it.
How many times will I do this, how many times will I open this gate, this old-fashioned iron gate? Along the walk, slippery and mossy underfoot; old bricks always are. Up the wood steps punctured by drainage holes, black eyes staring up from the ground. Open the door, key heavy and cool in my hand. Lovely door, oval leaded glass, cut facets to catch the light. I like the door most of all about the house.
She stood in her front hall, so clean and crisp and waiting. This is me; I make things belong to me.
Not like my mother. If I died, people could see my reflection in these things. My mother left no reflection. Nothing but some clothes hanging in the closet. And me. And Margaret.
She crossed the hall, dragging her fingers across the polished surface of the small mahogany table. Peeped into the living room, pale green walls and green curtains and heavy dark furniture. Waiting. Even the cigarette boxes were filled. She opened one to be sure. Yes. Would she learn to smoke? Perhaps. She pictured herself sitting at the fireplace, looking out the window at the bushy spread of Sweet Olive, gold holder between her fingers, gold case open on the table before her. …
She put a cigarette to her lips, testing. The sour tobacco taste seeped into her mouth, she savored its sting carefully. That was the taste of the adult world.
Dangling the unlit cigarette from the corner of her mouth, she walked through the house. Not a speck of dust on the polished floors, not a smear on the shining windows. In the kitchen she dropped the cigarette, unlit, into the brand-new trash can. The kitchen smelled of wax and new paint and crisp linoleum underfoot. The stove was untouched, the refrigerator held only ice. No soot or food smoke had brushed along these walls. No smell of sweat. It was perfect and unused. Soon the stove would be speckled with grease, the pots would lose the first of their sparkle, there’d be food on the refrigerator shelves, footsteps would begin to wear the shine from this waxed floor. There’d be smells of cooking and echoes of movements even late at night, when everyone was gone. Kitchens were places where a house’s echoes concentrated. …
She glanced into the small back yard. Against the wood fence ginger lilies drooped their pink waxy flowers. If I opened the door I would smell them, she thought. But she did not. Dust might blow in.
The house was perfect, except for the second bedroom, which she had furnished as a kind of study. The big Scott radio was in there, and a couple of bookcases with glass fronts. She’d done that room hurriedly, with no special plan. It would eventually be the nursery. Then she would have organdy curtains and mounds of ruffles, and in the corner, an old-fashioned cherry-wood cradle. She could see the
baby asleep there, near the window where the crib would catch the sun, where the curtains would swing lightly in the breeze. She could see the slate-blue eyes strain to focus. … She’d considered leaving the room completely empty with its door closed, but that reminded her too much of her dead mother’s room. She’d also considered doing it right away as a nursery. That would have been most practical, she thought, because when she was actually pregnant, she could devote all her attention to her swelling womb. … But you couldn’t furnish a nursery before you were married. …
She hesitated at the bedroom door: all pale coral—curtains, walls, rugs—the room glowed at her, it smoothed her skin, it flattered her. Even the lampshades were tinted. This is better for a wedding night, better than a hotel, a strange place I’d never see again.
She had planned that too; they would come here after their wedding reception, and begin their honeymoon the following day.
“Does that seem silly?” she asked Robert.
“Whatever you want, honey.”
She rubbed her lips together nervously. “Robert, do you remember in Little Women, when Meg is married to John Brooke, they walk across the common to their cottage and that’s the beginning of their life together? Simple and, well, dignified.”
(Her sister Margaret said sourly, “That was just because they couldn’t afford anything else.”)
“I never read Little Women,” Robert said.
“So many things are cheap, don’t you see, Robert?” Her voice shook just a little.
“Honey, any kind of wedding and any kind of honeymoon is fine with me.”
“I’m nervous, Robert.” She half-smiled. “I’m just nervous.”
But it was something else. She had tried to talk about something that was very important to her; she had tried to put her thoughts into words. And whenever she tried to express herself, she felt a loss.
Her invisible arms reached out, scooping up her words, carrying them back inside. It was quite a while before she was certain that she had found all of them, collected them from the floor of air where they scattered like broken beads, and put them back inside herself where they belonged. It was quite a while before she felt secure.
(More than anything else now she wanted to be left alone, without advice or help. If she could not exactly imagine the marriage act—she turned that phrase over and over in her mind: the marriage act—it was nobody’s business but her own. She resented Aunt Cecilia’s nervous little talk: “It’s something all women go through, my dear. Put an extra pad under the sheet, don’t forget.” Aunt Cecilia, such a good housekeeper; her own house shone and glistened, her sons left their shoes in the front hall and changed to slippers. …
Anna gave a final shake to the potpourri hidden in little china jars around the bedroom. She had made that herself, a lemon-rose mixture. Half tiptoeing, she left the room.
When she got home, at least a dozen of her family were waiting. As she parked the car in the driveway, her Uncle Joseph called: “Hi, little bride!” And she thought again: I must do something about my family after I am married. I must be rid of them, so there is just Robert and me. And Papa, she added. She felt sad for having forgotten him for even a minute.
She waved vaguely at her uncle and his sister-in-law, who was rocking on the porch. She grinned at her two young cousins crouched on the steps. She pushed past the others and went inside.
“Where were you?” Aunt Cecilia’s forehead, ordinarily smooth as paper, was crinkled.
Anna smiled, deliberately not answering. “I didn’t know you’d be looking for me.”
“When not even your father knows where you are …” The Old Man was sitting in his chair, the one he always preferred, next to the window. His face was perfectly serious; only a slight change in the color of his eyes showed his amusement. “I admitted to your aunt I didn’t have the slightest idea where you were.”
“Oh my,” Anna said.
“We even called your new house,” Aunt Cecilia said, “and when you weren’t there, I could just see you lying in a hospital somewhere.”
The phone had not rung, Anna was sure. “Do you suppose that phone is out of order?” Everything had to be perfect.
“Well,” her father said slowly, “I wouldn’t really worry about it. It’s just possible I dialed the wrong number.”
“Oh,” Anna said, “oh.” She kissed him briefly on the cheek. “I wish I were as patient as you, Papa,” she said softly.
He rubbed his finger across her cheek. “It comes of practice, child.”
Perversely, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She refused to let them fall.
AND WHAT DID YOU expect of a wedding? The bluest skies. The most transparent sunlight. A rainbow reaching from one horizon to the other in full prismatic simplicity. Crowds to line the streets, smiling, bowing: “The beloved couple, how beautiful they are.” Castles and turrets and knights on horseback. Silent cheering, effortless movement, pageants, kings and popes and emperors, pomp and glory. And even more. A sign. A sign of favor … the essence, the memory. Dear God, let me remember. The most wonderful day, the loveliest day, let me remember it all. Holy Virgin, let me remember from the moment I wake up. I’ve been to confession and I’m free of sin, state of grace. Does that help? Total recall, that’s what I want. I want to keep one day with me totally until the day I die. …
What did you find at a wedding? Clouds of sounds and blurs of faces. Breaths full of alcohol and coffee and sugared cakes. Fetid smell of sherry and paregoric smell of anisette. A dress surprisingly heavy with the weight of its satin, the weight of its pearls. (And somebody whispering: “Pearls are tears, how terrible for her, such bad luck.”) Back that ached and shoulders that had to be braced against sagging, legs that had to be kept from shaking and staggering. And over everything, a mist, a fog of exhaustion. At times her drooping eyelids turned everything hazy, gold-dusted.
Those moments she thought: How exquisite it all is.
THE DAY started early. Precisely at five o’clock, with a discreet knock and cough, the fitter and the hairdresser arrived. Behind them her sister Margaret came whistling, drawing curtains, rattling windows.
“Oh my,” Anna opened her eyes. Against the shimmering square of blue-white window, Margaret’s face appeared—round dark head, eyes too close together, mouth too wide, too curved at the corners, a comedian’s face, a puppy’s face.
“Up, oh lovely one,” Margaret said. “The day breaketh, the birds singeth, the bridegroom cometh.”
“Oh my,” Anna said again.
“Come on.” Margaret pulled at the covers. “They’re going to do my hair after yours. My hair, imagine.” She yanked one of her short crisp black curls derisively.
“The hat is very becoming.”
“Bet anything my kinks push it right off the top of my head.”
She drifted away. When Anna next saw her, she was quietly standing on her head. Her sturdy dark legs, shadowed by black hair, stuck thin toes toward the ceiling; her pink pajamas tumbled around her hips. Her wide bright smile was upside down. That grubby little upside-down figure haunted Anna all the long morning. It followed her into church, hung grinning in the clouds of organ music. It dangled over the altar, shiny and gold; swam among the musty incense and the stiff vestments.
(All through her life whenever Anna thought of her sister she thought first of her grin: the wide melon slice, the square harsh teeth.)
Anna was relieved when the shadow finally disappeared. She wanted nothing to cloud her wedding day. She wanted only the ritual, the Mass, and her husband. Together forever, one flesh, death do us part. Death—other Masses all black, other music, other sounds. The soul goes to face its judgment, drums and fire and thunderings. Dear God, not soon, not for Robert and not for me. … Such stupid images. First, Margaret standing on her head. Then, death. Why think of dying? Because I’m tired. My bones hurt like an old woman. Aching. Feeling the pull down toward the earth. … Not today. Think about Robert.
I want
to touch him I want to kiss him I want to feel the way the hairs on the back of his neck grow down into his collar. Today he’ll have a haircut and be all smooth. I’ll have to wait a couple of days to feel the crispy new hairs. … And the way his hair smells, the lotion he uses to keep his hair straight; Cajuns always have curly hair. … Was it true that his mother never knew who his father was? Terrible. No, he said, it wasn’t terrible; she was good to me, she didn’t have anything herself to be giving to me. … Robert little, Robert poor and hungry.
She was ready now. Bathed and combed, wrapped all around by luxury and expense. The choir sang, the organ roared its waves of sound for her. As she walked carefully up the church steps, hand lightly on her father’s arm, she felt serene and glowing.
FOLLOWING CONVENT tradition, Anna went immediately after her wedding Mass to pay a formal call on the nuns. Her dress gleamed and sparkled in the dim parlors of damp furniture polish and unmoving air. Robert waited patiently beside her, black-habited nuns crowded around her, admiring. With a tiny flash of fear, Anna thought: I am the only white thing here. All these figures are black and even Robert is wearing black. Even he.
The Mother Superior kissed her cheek, the harsh starched wimple crackled against her shoulder. “The very first of this year’s girls.” Two real tears ran down the nun’s cheeks. “The very first of our girls to get married this year.”
The first of this year—Anna stiffened. She did not quite like that, though it was true. She didn’t like the vaguely sour smell that rose from the folds of the Mother Superior’s robe either.
The Condor Passes Page 15