A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [115]
Before the wedding, Bridget had set aside the tissue-wrapped lingerie to have ready when she and Bill returned to the suite. She shut the bathroom door, leaving Bill to light the candle beside the bed. They were both exhausted from the long day of waiting and then the service itself (Bill nearly collapsing with Melissa’s unexpected arrival), and then the dramatic finale of Agnes’s astonishing announcement (which certainly explained the woman’s tears during the ceremony), but Bridget knew that Bill would not fall asleep until she was in the bed with him. It was, after all, their wedding night.
She wondered how Matt and Brian and Melissa had got on playing pool. She and Bill had said good night shortly after Agnes’s exit, assuring everyone that they would see one another in the morning for a farewell breakfast. By the time Bill and Bridget had left the room, only Jerry, Rob, Josh, and Harrison remained, and whether the men repaired to the library for more drinks, Bridget didn’t know. She thought not, that like Bill and her, they had gone back to their respective rooms to ponder the essential opaqueness of their fellow man.
Bridget glanced quickly in the mirror. She unclipped the wig, shook it a bit, and set it back on her head to unsettle the hair, give it more of a tousled look. Her face was pale in the overbright light—good for putting on makeup, frightening when catching a glimpse of oneself late at night. She divested herself of the hideous pink suit and hated underwear, enjoying for a moment her physical freedom. She would lose the weight after the chemo. Her doctor had said not to worry, that he had patients who had returned to size two with little trouble. Bridget would never be a size two, but an eight would be lovely.
She unwrapped the pink tissue paper and held up the antique silk nightgown, cut on the bias, nipped in slightly at the waist. This was a treasure for a bride, a young bride, but when Bridget had seen the elegant black gown in the window of the vintage clothing store, she had thought, Why not? Why should she deprive Bill of something that would please him? Why should she not treat this wedding night as she’d have done had they married in their twenties?
She tried on the gown and examined herself in the mirror. The lace-trimmed slip-dress gently shaped her breasts and hid the fact that her nipples, as a result of the surgery on her right breast, were pointing in different directions. She brushed her teeth and put on gloss that would undoubtedly get all over Nora’s lovely linens. She blotted her mouth. She still had her makeup on, and that might smear itself all over the pillows, too, but what was a girl to do? Some mess ought to be expected in the bridal suite, no?
She opened the door from the bathroom and was surprised to find all the lights still on. When she turned the corner, she saw that Bill was perched at the edge of the bed, dressed in his shirt and socks and boxers. Had she come out from the bathroom too soon? Had he been busy, calling Matt’s or Melissa’s room to see if they had had a good time? She took a step further into the room, and he looked up at her. He was crying.
Bill was crying.
“I didn’t have you for so long, and now I might lose you,” he said simply.
With a chill, Bridget realized that Bill thought she would die. Possibly, he had had this thought all along.
It was one thing to imagine one’s own death, quite another for someone else to imagine it. Worse, for someone to say it out loud.
Bridget wished she had a robe. But she couldn’t leave her new husband crying at the edge of the bed to go