But on the morning of the wedding day, July 15, 1905, dark clouds scudded across the sky over the Lazars’ property. Around noon a light drizzle fell, and by the time the first guests were arriving the weather had turned ominous. Then, at the appointed hour of two o’clock, as if the fates were amusing themselves, the rain began in earnest and the ceremony was delayed. The shower continued; the altar stood abandoned like an empty frame. The photographer tried to gather the family for formal pictures, only to be rebuffed by a flustered Harriet Lazar, who had the staff and ushers corral the guests into the ballroom, which had been set up with chairs in the event of bad weather. The string trio played, the processional began, the minister, bridesmaids, and groomsmen took their places, and George walked down the aisle to Handel’s “Largo,” the city’s social register a blur in his peripheral vision. In the ornate room, festooned with vines and white roses, he stood before the soaring limestone fireplace and waited for the bride.
In his mind there was a silver lining to this unfortunate turn of events. The bride’s side had two hundred guests compared to three on the groom’s side, and in the confusion of changed plans he felt less exposed and outnumbered. He had sent twenty invitations to friends from home, and should not have been surprised that so few attended. By leaving he had rejected Winesburg, and though everyone had said they knew he would go, even urged him to set forth and make his way as a writer, now they took his abandonment personally and no longer wished him well. He couldn’t blame them, really, when, to his own regret, he so rarely visited home and with each year ventured less frequently into the attic of his memory.
But Will Henderson, his editor from the Winesburg Eagle, had come. And so had Seth Richmond, once his rival for Helen White’s affections. Of all people he had most expected Seth to send regrets, yet here he was next to the third guest on the groom’s side, George’s father, Tom Willard. Because Margaret had eight bridesmaids, resplendent in pink organdy with tiny wreaths of lilies of the valley in their hair, George had asked his party of three to join the processional and stand nearby for the vows.
By the time Harriet strode down the aisle and took her seat in the front row she had managed to compose herself and put on a face of false serenity. A stout, square-chinned woman, she looked a good deal older than her husband, who went to such pains with his appearance. She wore a dark-gray satin gown with a beaded collar, and her white hair capped her forehead like snow on an imposing peak. “Gracious me,” she said aloud, unable to hold her tongue. Only those up front could hear her. The rest had their heads trained toward the ballroom door, awaiting Margaret’s entrance. “Would you look at the time—” Harriet gestured toward the mantel clock.
She had a curious relationship with the Central Time Zone. A Boston Brahmin, she kept her watch and all clocks in the house set an hour ahead. George and the bridesmaids knew about Harriet’s eccentricity. She was forever complaining about Chicago, calling it “a pestilential bog,” and longing out loud for the better people of Boston and the salt air of Cape Cod. But Tom Willard, upon seeing that the clock read four, double-checked his pocket watch and said, “Has it really been two hours?”
George leaned over to tell his father that he would explain later, and it was at this point that Lazar appeared at the entryway, arm in arm with his daughter. Margaret wore white, a beautiful silk taffeta and crepe de chine gown. A wreath of orange blossoms crowned her head, and her hair fell in plaits down her back. Two flower girls, grandnieces from New England, scattered rose petals before her, and her father looked after her long train as she made her way down the aisle.
Standing in the presence of all those people, his odd assortment of groomsmen shifting from foot to foot, Margaret and her bridesmaids shining in their regalia, George found his attention drifting as he repeated his vows. At some point in the service he followed the minister’s eyes to the bank of ballroom windows, where the clouds parted and the sun cast a shimmer over the wet green lawn. The wedding-goers raised a collective Ah. The minister said Now there is a sign, and for a moment laughter filled the room. Soon the music was playing again, and George was walking out of the ballroom, Margaret’s arm entwined with his. People he had never met before shook his hand—Well done, they said. And Aren’t you a lucky one? Then he was in the parlor with his wife, and surrounded by the Lazars, then with his father, flash-lamps aflame in his eyes. You look stunned, Margaret would later say when they went through pictures to choose which ones to hang.
The newlyweds circulated through the ample rooms, and George caught up briefly with Will Henderson before his former editor wandered off to order another sloe gin fizz. He had an awkward conversation with Margaret’s brother, Charles, a pale and rabbity art dealer who had aggrieved the family by leaving for the East Coast and losing all touch. Charles had come home on this occasion only because he knew Margaret would never forgive him if he missed her wedding. He said as much to George, but when the former reporter asked about life in New York City, he turned chary, then vanished into the crowd, leaving George face to face with the city’s elite. Margaret introduced him to Bertha Palmer, widow of the hotel magnate and grande dame of Chicago society; the great architect Daniel Burnham, who designed the White City at the World’s Fair; and the philanthropist Nettie McCormick, in a similar toque and feathers to the one she’d worn for the portrait now hanging at the Art Institute.
It was all George could do to pull his father away from Mrs. McCormick. Tom Willard was known for being a talker, and he had the kindly philanthropist boxed into a corner in the drawing room. He must have recognized her name, because by the time George swooped in, his father was crying up the growth potential of Winesburg and its proximity to Cleveland and Lake Erie, and enumerating the many improvements needed at the New Willard House.
“I’m looking for an investor,” he was saying. “A town like ours needs a first-rate hotel, but we’re still getting over the depression of ’93.” He twisted his mustache, which he wore with the ends turned up. “We’re right on the B&O line. We’ve had patrons from Maine to California. Canadians. Europeans. We’re just eight miles to the lake, twenty to Sandusky. You’ll find all the recreation you could imagine right at our doorstep, plus the charm and hospitality of a village. I like to say that people are our top attraction.”
He leaned back on his heels and smiled at Margaret, who had met him for the first time at dinner the evening before and seemed not to know what to make of him. His Prince Albert suit looked faded, and some of the threading at the collar had come loose. George recognized the coat as the one his father had worn to his mother’s funeral a decade ago, and felt a mixture of sorrow and pique. Mrs. McCormick congratulated the bride and groom, and Margaret took the opportunity to lead her away, no doubt to apologize once out of earshot.
Tom Willard knitted his brow and seemed about to scold his son for the interruption when Seth Richmond came around. He looked unchanged since George knew him as a youth, still hangdog and melancholy and a conversational challenge. George asked if he was still living in town, and Tom answered for the young man, who spoke in short sentences that trailed off, sometimes unintelligibly. “He’s living in Columbus, went to the state university for a couple years there, didn’t you?” Tom said, and Seth nodded. “And you’re a mechanic, isn’t that right? Working on—what is it? Automobiles?”
“My father-in-law is a motor man,” George put in, trying to find some common topic. “I should introduce you.”
This line of questioning continued for a while until Tom Willard grew bored and began scanning the room, with its profusion of luxuriant fabrics and furnishings, carved moldings and winking crystal. When Tom had slid away, Seth turned to George and without ever making eye contact asked, “Did you invite Helen White? I was sure I’d find her here.”
The idea had crossed George’s mind. On the one hand he had wanted Banker and Mrs. White to come to Chicago and see this house and all his success. And he wanted to impress Helen, as well. But there was a history between the
m, and it didn’t seem fair to Margaret or, more to the point, to George’s memory, where he maintained an image of Helen White as a standard of perfection. “I didn’t invite her,” George said now. “We’ve fallen out of touch. I don’t even know where she lives.”
“Why, she’s right here in Chicago,” Seth exclaimed. “She’s been a year and more. I thought surely you’d have heard.”
“It’s news to me,” George managed.
And as the cocktail hour came to an end his mind began to drift again, while the rain resumed its pitter-pat upon the reception tent in the Lazars’ back garden.
In months to come George would try to make light of the terrible weather that marred the wedding, how the drizzle on the tent grew to a great downpour that muffled the toasts and drowned out conversation. He couldn’t recall the few audible words, only the suspended feeling of his father’s speech dragging on, the tent’s roof growing heavy with rain, the caterers furiously sopping the floor with towels, his new wife reaching her hand to her hair to make sure her tiara of orange blossoms had not fallen.
On their first wedding anniversary, in July 1906, George and Margaret had dinner at Henrici’s on Randolph, in the Theater District. They had spent a pleasant afternoon together, walking in Lincoln Park and reading under an umbrella on North Avenue Beach.
“Why didn’t we have this weather a year ago?” Margaret asked.
“If we had, there wouldn’t have been a story,” George put in, and repeated something he’d overheard a farmer say at Biff Carter’s Lunch Room in Winesburg: “Rain and pain are both for growth.”
“You’re quite the philosopher, George Willard.” Margaret wore an off- the-shoulder evening gown of dark heliotrope and had grown her ginger hair long, some swept up and the rest a cascade of curls down her shoulders and arms.
A year into the marriage, George found himself for the most part content. He had gone into the arrangement in such a headlong manner that the morning after the wedding he had woken up disoriented, wondering how he had materialized in the bridal suite of the Morrison Hotel, his clothes a tangle on the floor and lying next to a girl he hardly knew. He was still just becoming acquainted with Margaret Willard, getting used to his name affixed to hers, and perhaps the gloss of novelty was the key to his well-being. He spent longer hours than ever at the office, steering between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Service and Performance Departments. So he enjoyed coming home, having a late dinner with his wife, and relaxing before bed with the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose writing about self-discipline and “the infinitude of the private man” calmed his whirling nerves. And he looked forward most of all to turning in for the night, having spent the better part of ten years sleeping alone on a straw mattress in a grubby boardinghouse. Though it was still the fashion to sleep apart in twin beds, now George lay down on a horsehair mattress between the finest cotton sheets. For months his nightly ritual was to climb into Margaret’s bed and stroke her hair, touch her hip and shoulders, and more often than not she would take him into her arms. Though lately, it was true, she turned him away with greater frequency, complaining of fatigue or the summer heat or the bed built for one. Wouldn’t you rather talk? she’d ask. I haven’t seen you but for a minute all day.
Margaret’s talk consisted mostly of society matters that didn’t much interest George. She complained endlessly of her mother’s active social calendar but was quick to take up the latest gossip. She knew who’d been prowling the resorts of the vice district, who’d given up children for adoption before marrying well. She knew of fortunes gained on the backs of the poor and of secret memberships in covens and cults. A year out of the university, she had no apparent prospects or plans for the road ahead. She came into the office two days a week as a creative advisor on her father’s campaigns, and George endured the derisive looks of his coworkers. He wished she would find a permanent position in a theater or a gallery—she had a passion for the arts—but as much as she groused about her parents, she could not disentangle herself from their lives.
George had expected that he and his new bride would own a house by now, in Lake View or one of the areas along the Lincoln Avenue streetcar line. He pictured an unassuming greystone with deceptively grand interiors in a neighborhood of new arrivals from Ireland, Luxembourg, Nebraska, Indiana. As a child he used to make believe that the New Willard House was a palace, that he was crown prince and the guests all functionaries of court. But when he stepped into the streets of Winesburg he drifted toward odd-jobbers and millinery-shop workers, those whose best days were behind them or would never come. He felt at times that two different George Willards were battling within him: the striver after money and position and the solitary figure at the margins of the world. Perhaps this explained his restlessness, his enduring dissatisfaction: He wished to be a deserter from his own internal civil war.
Yet he had not so much as escaped his in-laws’ backyard. After the honeymoon in Lake Geneva, he and Margaret moved into the carriage house behind her parents’ mansion on Lake Shore Drive. It was meant to be a temporary solution, since there had been no time to find a house amidst their sped-up wedding planning. Margaret’s father thought nothing of dropping in with an armful of extra work, and her mother had taken up gardening and could be heard spading the dirt and pruning the bushes outside their bedroom window. When George would say We can’t live here forever, Margaret would agree: You think I want my mother pawing through my bloomers? But nothing happened. George would bring home the real estate ads, press the subject too far, and Margaret would call him a nag and walk away. Now should have been a fine time to talk of the future, but George was not going to risk upsetting his wife, who looked ripe as a peach in high summer, on this of all nights.
George ordered the Diamond Jim cut steak and Margaret the whitefish on a plank of fragrant hickory. They toasted themselves with champagne and shared a bottle of Château Margaux with dinner. After the waiter filled their glasses with the last of the bottle, Margaret asked, all at once, “So why did you marry me?”
George took a long drink of water and carved at the gristle of his steak.
“No, really, I want to know,” she said, her mood shifting from chirrupy to earnest. “It occurs to me I’ve never asked you.”
“Well—” George put down his silverware. “The harder question is why you married me.”
“I can answer that without any trouble. These questions aren’t supposed to be difficult in the first place.”
“I thought we were having a fine time. Is this some kind of test?” George asked.
“No, just something I should have asked a long time ago. Why did you marry me?”
George picked Vienna roll crumbs off the table linen and dropped them on his plate one by one. “You shouldn’t have to ask,” he said, then, digging himself in deeper, added, “I don’t know what to think about couples who steal kisses in public and talk of their mutual affection with the regularity of coffee and toast. Speaking of love diminishes it. Holding it in the heart makes it grow.”
“I disagree,” Margaret said. “Do you really believe that?”
“I do.”
“Well, this isn’t any other day.” Margaret tapped her fingers on her wine-glass. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were stalling for time.”
The waiter passed nearby, and George summoned him.
“Another bottle?” the waiter asked.
“Sounds like a swell idea,” George replied, but Margaret said, “That won’t be necessary. You could bring us the dessert menu instead.”
While the waiter was away the couple sat in silence, surrounded by the jocular din of Henrici’s patrons, most coming or going from the theater. Until two nights ago Margaret and George had tickets to see In the Bishop’s Carriage at the Powers, but the show had been canceled without warning, apparently due to a dustup between the playwright and the theater owner over the use of “mistress” to describe a lady friend of the main character. Harry Powers refused to allow such a
word to be uttered on his stage, and the playwright acceded for the first few shows, then defiantly returned to his original script. Margaret and George had run out of time to make alternate plans, in the opening act of what was turning out to be a most disappointing anniversary.
George wondered what had gotten into Margaret to ask such a question, particularly late in the evening, when George’s mind was addled from too much food and drink. He saw nothing wrong with daily confessions of love, fancied himself a converser, even a romantic at times, one who knew his heart’s core. So he couldn’t understand what had come over him, why he hadn’t answered straightaway: You’re smart and beautiful and sophisticated. You’re all this small-town boy ever dreamed of, lying in his room late at night listening to the trains running off to better places. I’m lucky as loaded dice. But his tongue had frozen, as if he didn’t believe what he hadn’t been able to say. Whatever the reason, it was too late to go back and fill Margaret’s ears with sweet nothings; the moment had passed, perhaps unalterably.
He glanced across the table, but she was looking away. He fixed his gaze above and beyond her shoulder, and there, in the distance, talking animatedly to the bow-tied maître d’, stood a woman the very image of Helen White.
The host stepped away for a moment, and the woman turned so that George could see her straight on. He felt a shiver of recognition and grew certain it was the girl, now woman, he had once loved. She had the same slim figure, in a pouter-pigeon blouse and trumpet skirt, her hair combed up and pinned in a bun. George had half a notion to dart over and greet her, but then the host returned, a stack of boxes in his arms. When the woman—Helen, or her double—turned to profile again, George began to wonder if his eyes were deceiving him, or if he were somehow conjuring her. Though striking, she was humbly dressed. It would be unlike Helen to wear the costume of the middle class, especially here, in one of the finest restaurants in Chicago. The host handed her the boxes, she bowed her head to thank him, he held the door open for her, and she vanished into the night.
The End of the Book Page 8