A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [117]
Bill was gentle, for which Bridget was grateful. Her scalp was sensitive, a fact she hadn’t known before she’d lost her hair. He removed his other hand from under her body and held her head in both. He pulled her to him and kissed her, a long and protracted kiss.
This was better, Bridget thought. Why pretend that she was not sick? Why not love her exactly as she was? Wasn’t this what every woman longed for?
Sunday
She said his name, as if in a dream. Harrison drifted back to sleep. He was unconscious only seconds, minutes at best.
The room was dark, the shades drawn. He was curled toward Nora, who was lying on her back. Harrison remembered now, the memories jolting his heart and causing instant heat throughout his body. What had been urgent last night was, in retrospect, astonishing.
He reached for her and found her arm. Her skin was warm and dry.
He saw Nora above him, her knees cradling his body. On her back, her arms flung toward the headboard. He was more than astonished that he and she had made love: he was thunderstruck.
Harrison could just make out Nora’s profile. He must have dreamed that she’d spoken his name, because she was still asleep. His side of the duvet was crumpled near his waist. He brought the covers to his chest. The inn was quiet. Harrison could not hear music or voices. For how long had he and Nora been asleep? Behind closed doors, in other rooms, people lay in beds, restless or dreaming.
Harrison could smell Nora in the bed beside him. Sex, when taken out of context—even when in context, he thought—was both a bizarre and a wondrous activity.
Last night, Harrison had given in to temptation. This morning he sensed another temptation—to view what had happened between him and Nora as a fulfillment. In 1974, they’d kissed each other. Harrison remembered the promise of the hand beneath his shirt. Had Stephen, in his involuntary but macabre scene-stealing way, not ended what had begun that night between Harrison and Nora, would their romance have played itself out by the end of their freshman year in college—Harrison in Boston, Nora in New York City? Might Harrison have one day found himself Carl Laski’s rival?
Impossible thought.
Beyond Nora’s shoulder, at the edges of the shades, Harrison could see the light coming up. It was Sunday morning now. He remembered the wedding, the dinner, Agnes’s confession. It had been, he reflected, a dreadful send-off for Bill and Bridget, who certainly had deserved better. Though, in the end, Harrison knew, the send-off would not matter. Bill and Bridget’s battle would be intensely personal now.
The light grew brighter in the room, and Harrison could make out the armchair in which he had sat. Through the bathroom door, he could see the tub. The sun was making rectangular patterns on the shades. He thought about how he had seen his own reflection in the dark glass. It would be a sunny day, one he did not want to enter.
Harrison had felt some relief in finally telling Nora what had happened that May night nearly three decades ago. To have shared that burden with her and then to have felt her hands on his shoulders, the forgiveness that implied. Harrison had thought, prior to the weekend, that he would never again feel that intense mingling of desire and love he’d known as a young man. He had never been unfaithful to Evelyn, a fact that occasionally had seemed a kind of failure on Harrison’s part, a failure of the imagination. Last night, Harrison had rejoiced in temptation, glad simply to feel alive.
Alive at Evelyn’s expense. He remembered the way in which he had pushed Evelyn from his mind. She would never know, but Harrison would, and that would change everything. He would have new, fresh memories now.
A loud, intrusive sound made Harrison flinch. Nora rolled away from him.
“You set