A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [1]
Harrison had followed signs from the center of town to the inn and then had taken the long drive up the hill to the top. When he’d reached the parking lot, the view of the Berkshire Mountains had opened up and stopped his heart in the same way that, as a boy at Cinerama, his heart had always paused as the camera had soared up and over a cliff edge to reveal the Grand Canyon or the Rift Valley or the ice fields of Antarctica.
He’d walked with his suitcase to the front steps, noting along the way the pruned bushes, the raked lawns, and, in a maze that had perhaps lost its challenge, the expertly trimmed hedges. The inn was sheathed in white clapboards and shingles and sported a chimney that tilted slightly forward. The windows, unadorned, shone in the morning light. Like many houses built at the turn of the century, it had gables of differing widths and porches sprouting unconventionally at odd angles. The outline of the roof, Harrison thought, would be almost impossible to draw from memory.
Inside, the inn had a crisp edge that had been accomplished in part, Harrison thought, with a great deal of white paint and chrome. Much as he admired the inn, however, he wondered if visitors ever lamented the lost house, the one Carl Laski had inhabited.
“This used to be an inn. Years ago,” Nora said. “After World War II, it became a private home. There’s an early photograph. Behind you on the wall.”
Harrison stood and leaned in toward the wall, balancing himself with his hand on the back of the couch. The photograph, framed in dark walnut, was remarkably detailed and clear, every blade of grass and twig made distinct with a kind of vision denied the naked eye. The picture was of a white shingled building with a cupola on its roof. It looked to be November or early March, to judge from the light dusting of snow that outlined the furrows of a garden. At the river’s edge, there was a trail of mist, but he saw, on closer inspection, that it was really smoke from a moving train, the train itself a blur, merely a shadow.
“The photograph dates from 1912,” Nora said. “It was made from a glass negative. There’s a rose garden there. And a racetrack.”
Harrison sat again on the couch and wondered if anyone else had arrived yet. He had wanted to be the first, to see Nora without the noise of the others. “It was an inn, then a house, and then an inn again?” he asked.
She smiled at his confusion. “When Carl and I moved here, it was a private house. We lived here for fifteen years. After he died . . . after he died, I had the idea of reconverting it to an inn. It had always wanted to be an inn. Even when it was a house.”
“How many rooms are there?”
“There used to be twenty-two.”
“How did you manage?”
“We closed most of the rooms off. Would you like more coffee?”
“No thanks. I’m fine. Any of the others here yet?”
“Agnes said she’d be here by lunch. Bill and Bridget, too. Rob . . . Rob won’t be here until later.”
“Rob’s coming?” Harrison asked with pleasure. He hadn’t seen Rob Zoar in . . . well, in twenty-seven years. Harrison was startled by the number and recalculated. Yes, twenty-seven. “He’s in Boston now, isn’t he? I think I read that.”
“He performs all over the world. He gets wonderful reviews.”
“I was surprised to hear he was a pianist. He kept it quiet at Kidd, didn’t he?”
“I think he tried to resist it.”
“It seems like this wedding came together very fast,” he said.
“It did.”
Too fast for Harrison’s wife, Evelyn, to rearrange her schedule. Bill had sent Harrison an e-mail saying that he and Bridget were getting married—at the inn—and he wanted Harrison and Evelyn to come. Harrison and Bill had for a time kept in touch (their families had gone skiing together twice), but Harrison had had no idea at all about Bill and Bridget.
“Bridget’s sick,” Nora added. “It’s why Bill wants to do it now.”
“How sick?” Harrison asked.
“Very,” Nora said, her face tight. “Do you remember them together?”
“At school? Of course.” Bill had been a muscular catcher, a consistent hitter with power