"He's got eyes. 'She's quite a gal,' he said. 'She's got the right stuff to be a Geary.' He's right. You do. And you know what? Once you're a member of this family, nothing can hurt you. Nothing.

You're untouchable. I swear, on my life. That's how it works when you're a Geary. And that's what you're going to be in nine weeks. A Geary. Forever and always."

V.

Marietta just came in, and read what I've been writing. She was in one of her willful moods, and I should have known better, but when she asked me if she could read a little of what I'd been writing, I pa.s.sed a few pages over to her. She went out onto the veranda, lit up one of my cigars, and read. I pretended to get on with my work, as though her opinion on what I'd done was inconsequential to me, but my gaze kept sliding her way, trying to interpret the expression on her face. Occasionally, she looked amused, but not for very long. Most of the time she just scanned the lines (too fast, I thought, to really be savoring the prose) her expression impa.s.sive. The longer this went on the more infuriated I became, and I was of half a mind to get up, go out onto the veranda. At last, with a little sigh, she got up and came back in, proffering the pages."You write long sentences," she remarked.

"That's all you can say?"

She fished a book of matches out of her pocket, and striking one, began to rekindle her cigar.

"What do you want me to say?" she shrugged. "It's a bit gossipy, isn't it?" She was now studying the book of matches. "And I think it's going to be hard to follow. All those names. All those Gearys. You don't have to go that far back, do you? I mean, who cares?"

"It's all context."

"I wonder whose number this is?" she said, still studying the book. "It's a Raleigh number. Who the h.e.l.l do I know in Raleigh?"

"If you can't be a little more generous, a little more constructive..."

She looked up, and seemed to see my misery. "Oh, Eddie," she said, with a sudden smile. "Don't look so forlorn. I think it's wonderful."

"No you don't."

"I swear. I do. It's just that weddings, you know," her lip curled slightly. "They're not my favorite thing."

"You went," I reminded her.

"Are you going to write about that?"

"Absolutely."

She patted my cheek. "You see, that'll liven things up a bit. How are your legs by the way?"

"They're fine."

"Total recovery?"

"It looks that way."

"I wonder why she healed you after all this time?"

"I don't care. I'm just grateful."

"Zabrina said she saw you out walking."

"I go to see Luman every couple of days. He's got it into his head that we should collaborate on a book when I'm finished with this.""About what?"

"Madhouses."

"What a bright little sunbeam he is. Ah! I know! This is Alice." She tossed the book of matches into the air and caught it again. "Alice the blonde. She lives in Raleigh."

"That's a very dirty look you've got in your eyes," I observed.

"Alice is adorable. I mean, really... sumptuous." She picked a piece of tobacco from her teeth.

"You should come out with me one of these days. We'll go drinking. I can introduce you to the girls."

"I think I'd be uncomfortable."

"Why? n.o.body's going to make a pa.s.s at you, not in an all-girl bar."

"I couldn't."

"You will." She pointed the wet end of her cigar at me. "I'm going to get you out enjoying yourself." She pocketed the book of matches. "Maybe I'll introduce you to Alice."

Of course she left me in a stew of insecurity. My mood now perfectly foul, I retired to the kitchen, to eat my sorrows away. It was a little before one in the morning; Dwight had long since retired to bed. L'Enfant was quiet. It was a little stuffy, so I opened the windows over the sink.

There was a light breeze, which was very welcome, and I stood at the sink for a few moments to let it cool my face. Then I went to the refrigerator and began to prepare a glutton's sandwich: several slices of baked ham, slathered with mustard, some strips of braised aubergine, half a dozen sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced, and a dash of olive oil, all pressed between two slices of freshly cut rye bread.

Feeding my face put everything in context for me. What was I hanging on Marietta's opinion for?

She was no great literary critic. This was my book, my ideas, my vision. And if she didn't like it, that was fine by me. Her opinion was a complete irrelevancy. I didn't just think all of this, I talked it through to myself, a mustardy mingling of words and ham.

"Whatever are you chattering about?"

I stopped talking, and looked over my shoulder. There, filling the doorway from side to side, was Zabrina. She was dressed in a tent of a nightgown, her face, upon which she usually puts a little paint and powder, ruddily raw. She had tiny eyes, and a wide thin-lipped mouth; Marietta called her a beady, fat frog once, in a moment of anger, and-cruel though the description may be-it fits.

The only glamorous attribute she has is her hair, which is a deep, luxurious orange, and which she's grown to waist length. Tonight she had it untied and it fell about her shoulders and upper body like a cape."I haven't seen you in a long while," I said to her.

"You've seen me," she said, in that odd, breathy voice of hers. "We just haven't spoken."

I was about to say-that's because you always rush away-:but I held my tongue. She was a nervous creature. One wrong word and she'd be off. She went to the refrigerator and studied its contents.

As usual, Dwight had left a selection of his pies and cakes for her delectation.

"Don't expect any help from me," she said out of the blue.

"Help for what?"

"You know what," she said, still studying the laden shelves. "I don't think it's right." She reached in and took out a pie with either hand, then, pirouetting with a grace surprising in one of her extreme bulk, turned and closed the refrigerator door with her backside. "So don't expect me to be unburdening myself."

She was talking about the book of course. Her antipathy was perfectly predictable, given that she knew it to be at least in part Marietta's idea. Even so, I wasn't in the mood to be harangued.

"Let's not talk about it," I said.

She set the pies-one cherry, one pecan-on the table side by side. Then she went back to the refrigerator, with a little sigh of irritation at her own forgetfulness, and took out a bowl of whipped cream. There was a fork already in the bowl. She lowered herself gently onto a chair and set to, loading up the fork with a little cherry pie, a little pecan, and a lot of whipped cream. She clearly had done this countless times before; watching the skillful way she created these little towers of excess, without ever seeming to drop a crumb of pastry into the cream, or a spot of cream onto the table, was an entertainment unto itself.

"So when did you last hear from Galilee?" she asked me.

"Not in a long while."

"Huh." She delivered a teetering mound between her lips, and her lids flickered with bliss as she worked it around her mouth.

"Does he ever write to you?"

She took her leisurely time to swallow befire abswering. "He used to drop me a note now and again. But not any more."

"Do you miss him?"

She frowned at me, her lower lip jutting out. "Don't start that," she said. "I told you already-"I rolled my eyes. "In G.o.d's name, Zabrina, I just asked-"

"I don't want to be in your book."

"So you said."

"I don't want to be in anybody's book. I don't want to... be talked about. I wish I was invisible."

I couldn't help myself: I smirked. The very idea that Zabrina, of all people, would dream of invisibility was sadly laughable. There she was, conspiring against her own hopes with every mouthful. I thought I'd wiped the smirk off my face by the time she looked up at me, but it lingered there, like the cream at the corners of her own mouth.

"What's so funny?" she said.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

"So I'm fat. And I wish I was dead. So what?"

The smirk had gone now. "You don't wish you were dead," I said. "Surely."

"What have I got to live for?" she replied. "I've got nothing. Nothing I want anyway." She put down her fork, and started on the cherry pie with her fingers, picking out the syrupy fruit. "Day in and day out, it's the same story. Serving Momma. Eating. Serving Momma. Eating. When I sleep I dream I'm up there with her, while she talks about the old days." With sudden vehemence she said: "I hate the old days! What about tomorrow? How about doing something about tomorrow?"

Her face, which was, as I men tioned, flushed to begin with, was now beet red. "We're all so pa.s.sive," she said, the vehemence mellowing into a sadness. "You got your legs back but what did you do with them? Did you walk out of here? No. You sat exactly where you'd been sitting all these years, as though you were still a cripple. That's because you still are. I'm fat and you're a cripple, and we're going to go on, day after day after day living our useless lives, till somebody from out there-" she pointed out toward the world "-comes and does us the kindness of putting a bullet through our brains."

With that, she rose from the ruins of the pies, and made her exit. I didn't attempt to delay her. I just sat back in my chair and watched her go.

Then, I will admit, I sat for a while with my head in my hands and wept.

VI.

i A ssaulted by both Marietta and Zabrina, feeling thoroughly uncertain of my talents, I returned to my room, and sat up through the rest of the night. I'd like to tell you that I did so because I was agonizing over the literary problems I had, but the truth was rather more prosaic: I had thesquirts. I don't know whether it was the baked ham, the braised aubergine, or Zabrina's d.a.m.n conversation that did it: I only know I spent the hours till dawn sitting on my porcelain throne in a private miasma. Somewhere around dawn, feeling weak, raw, and sorry for myself, I crawled into bed and s.n.a.t.c.hed a couple of hours of sleep. By the time I woke my slumbering mind seemed to have decided that I'd be best writing about Rachel and Mitch.e.l.l's wedding in a rather curter style than I'd been employing so far. After all, I reasoned, a wedding was a wedding was a wedding. No use belaboring the subject. People could fill in the pretty details for themselves.

So then: the bare facts. The wedding took place in the first week of September, in a little town in New York State called Caleb's Creek. I've already mentioned it in pa.s.sing, I believe. It's not far from Rhinebeck, close to the Hudson. A pretty area, much beloved of earlier generations of American royalty. The Van Cortandts built a home up here; so did the Astors and the Roosevelts.

Extravagant houses where they could bring two hundred guests for a cozy weekend retreat. By contrast, the property George Geary had purchased in Caleb's Creek was a modest place, five bedrooms, colonial style: described in one book about the Gearys as "a farmhouse," though I doubt it was ever that. He'd loved the place; so had Deborah. After his death she'd many times remarked that the best times of her life had been spent in that house; easy, loving times when the rest of the world was made to wait at the threshold. It was actually Mitch.e.l.l who had suggested opening the house up again-it had been left virtually unvisited since George's death-and holding the wedding celebrations there. His mother had warmed to the idea instantly. "George would like that," she'd said, as though she imagined the spirit of her beloved husband still wandering the place, enraptured by the echoes of happier times.

To clinch the deal, Mitch.e.l.l drove Rachel up to Caleb's Creek in the middle of July, and they stayed over at the house for one night. A couple from the town, the Ryland-ers, who had been housekeeper and gardener during the halcyon days, and had kept the place clean and tidy during its years of neglect, had worked furiously to give the house a second chance at life. When Mitch.e.l.l and Rachel arrived it looked like a dream retreat. Eric Rylander had planted hundreds of flowers and rosebushes, and laid a new lawn; the windows, doors, and shutters had been painted, so had the white picket fence. The small apple orchard behind the house had been tidied up, the trees pruned; everything made orderly. Inside, Eric's wife Barbara had been no less diligent. The house had been thoroughly aired, the drapes and carpets cleaned, the woodwork and furniture polished until it shone.

Rachel was, of course, completely charmed. Not just by the beauty of the house and brightness of the garden, but by the evidence everywhere of the man who'd fathered her husband-to-be. At Deborah's instruction the house had been left as George had liked it. His hundreds of jazz alb.u.ms were still on their shelves, all alphabetically arranged. His writing desk, where according to Mitch.e.l.l he'd been making notes for a kind of memoir about his mother Kitty, was just as he'd left it, arrayed with framed family photographs, which had lost most of their color by now.

The visit had not only served to confirm Mitch.e.l.l's instincts that this was indeed the place to have the wedding; it had turned into a kind of tryst for the lovers. That night, after a splendid supper prepared by Barbara, they'd stayed up sitting out watching the midsummer sky darken, sipping whiskey and talking about their childhoods; and of their fathers. It had got so dark they couldn't even see one another's faces, but they kept talking while the breeze moved in the apple trees: about times they'd laughed, times they'd lost. When, finally, they'd retired to bed (Mitch wouldnot sleep in the master bedroom, despite the fact that Barbara had made up the old four-poster for them; they slept in the room he'd had as a child), they lay in each other's arms in the kind of blissful exhaustion that usually follows lovemaking, though they had not made love.

When they went back to New York the following morning, Rachel held Mitch.e.l.l's hand the whole way. She'd never felt the kind of love she felt for him that day in her life; nothing even close to it.

ii On the Friday evening, with the whole place-house, garden, orchard, grounds-overrun with people (lantern-hangers, sign-posters, bandstand-erectors, table-carriers, chair-counters, gla.s.s- polishers; and on, and on) Barbara Rylander came to find her husband, who was standing at the front gate watching the trucks come and go, and having sworn him to secrecy, said she'd just been out in the orchard, taking a break from the commotion, and she'd seen Mr. George standing there beneath the trees, watching the goings-on. He was smiling, she said.

"You're a silly old woman," Eric told his wife. "But I love you very much." And he gave her a great big kiss right there in front of all these strangers, which was completely out of character.

The day dawned, and it was spectacular. The sun was warm, but not hot. The breeze was constant, but never too strong. The air smelt of summer still, but with just enough poignancy to suggest the coming fall.

As for the bride: she outdid the day. She'd felt nauseous in the morning; but once she started to get dressed her nerves disappeared. She had a short relapse when Sherrie came in to see her daughter and promptly burst into happy tears, which threatened to get Rachel started. But Loretta wasn't having any of that. She firmly sent Sherrie away to get a brandy, then she sat with Rachel and talked to her. Simple, sensible talk.

"I couldn't lie to you," Loretta said solemnly. "I think - you know me well enough by now to know that."

"Yes I do."

"So believe me when I tell you: everything's fine; nothing's going to go wrong; and you look...

you look like a million dollars." She laughed, and kissed Rachel on the cheek. "I envy you. I really do. Your whole life ahead of you. I know that's a terrible cliche. But when you get to be old you see how true it is. You've got one life. One chance to be you. To have some joy. To have some love. When it's over, it's over." She stared intently at Rachel as she spoke, as though there was some deeper significance in this than the words alone could express. "Now, let's get you to the church," Loretta said brightly. "There's a lot of people waiting to see how beautiful you look."

Loretta's promise held. The service was performed in the little church in Caleb's Creek, with all its doors Sung wide so that those members of the congregation who weren't able to be seated- fully half of them-could either stand along the walls or just outside, to hear the short ceremony.When it was over the whole a.s.sembly did as wedding parties had done in Caleb's Creek since the town's founding: they walked, with the bride and groom hand in hand at the head of the crowd, down Main Street, petals strewn underfoot "to sweeten their way" (as local tradition had it), the street lined on either side with local people and visitors, all smiling and cheering as the procession made its triumphant way through the town. The whole affair was wonderfully informal. At one point a child-one of the Creek kids, no more than four-slipped her mother's hand and ran to look at the bride and groom. Mitch.e.l.l scooped the child up and carried her for a dozen yards or so, much to the delight of all the onlookers, and to the joy of the child herself, who only began to complain when her mother came to fetch her, and Mitch.e.l.l handed her back.

Needless to say there were plenty of photographers on hand to record the incident, and it was invariably an image that editors chose when they were putting together their pieces on the wedding. Nor was its symbolism lost on the scribblers who wrote up the event. The anonymous girl-child from the crowd, lifted up into the strong safe arms of Mitch.e.l.l Geary: it could have been Rachel.

VII.

i Once the pressures of preparation and the great solemnity of the service were over, the event became a party. The last of the formalities-the speeches and the toasts-were kept mercifully short, and then the fun began. The air remained warm, the breeze just strong enough to rock the lanterns in the trees; the sky turned golden as the sun sank away.

"Perfection, Loretta," Deborah said, when the two women chanced to be sitting alone for a moment.

"Thank you," Loretta said. "It just takes a little organization, really."

"Well it's wonderful," Deborah replied. "I only wish George were here to see it."

"Would he have liked her?"

"Rachel? Oh yes. He would have loved Rachel."

"Unpretentious," Loretta observed. She was watching Rachel even as she spoke: arm in arm with her beloved, laughing at something one of Mitch.e.l.l's old Harvard chums had said. "An ordinary girl."

"I don't think she's ordinary at all," Deborah said. "I think she's very strong."

"She'll need to be," Loretta said.

"Mitch.e.l.l adores her.""I'm sure he does. At least for now."

Deborah's lips tightened. "Must we, Loretta...?"

"Tell the truth? Not if you don't want to."

"We've had our happiness," Deborah said. "Now it's their turn." She started to get up from the table.