A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [123]
A white limo made its way up the curved driveway. Jerry and Julie stood at attention at the foot of the front stairs. The car stopped, and a driver emerged. Immediately he opened the rear driver’s-side door, and Jerry, with a spring in his step—as if he were delighted to be leaving—rounded the back of the car and slid smartly inside. Julie waited patiently for the driver to open the rear passenger’s-side door. Her fur rolled over her arm, she slipped gracefully in. Before the driver closed her door, Agnes could see Julie pushing the fur onto the seat, a small animal separating husband and wife.
Harrison had stopped in the middle of what might be a lawn. What on earth was he doing? Perhaps he didn’t want to have to say good-bye to Jerry and Julie as they drove away from the inn. Agnes would say good-bye to Nora. She wanted to thank her for the weekend, for the dinners and the lovely room. But might it be possible to leave without having to see anyone else? Bill and Bridget would know Agnes wished them well. She would write to them when she returned to Kidd. Yes, a good idea. So much more could be said in a letter than in a brief farewell.
Harrison still had not moved. He seemed poleaxed, just staring out at the Berkshires. Agnes could hear the dripping from the eaves, the occasional slide and thump of snow from the roof. The glare was almost blinding, and Agnes knew it must be warm out. The snow seemed to disappear even as she watched. Was that possible? Could one actually observe snow disappearing—melting and evaporating?
Harrison—Innes—took a step forward. The doctor wouldn’t be at an inn in the Berkshires, however, but he might be in a city. Not Toronto, Agnes decided. New York City. She could see Innes walking along Madison Avenue, pushing Louise in a wheelchair. The year would be—Agnes calculated—1934. Had the Empire State Building been built then? Agnes changed the venue to Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, where the tallest building in the world had recently been erected. Perhaps Innes and his wife had come to New York precisely to see this astonishing sight (well, not Louise, of course, who could not see). Louise and Innes were on a small vacation from Toronto, from his practice, from their children. Or might their children—Angus, fourteen, and Margaret, eight—be with them? Well, not with them, but back at the hotel room with Louise’s maid?
It was a warm day in early December, a day close to the seventeenth anniversary of the Halifax blast, about which neither Innes nor Louise ever spoke, as if Louise had sprung, fully blind, from the streets of Toronto, to which the couple had emigrated after having been hastily married—much to Louise’s delight—in Halifax. Louise needed the wheelchair, not because she was blind, but because she was both blind and lame, her ankle never having healed as it should have. With her husband’s attention and a considerable amount of help (yes, definitely, a maid back at the hotel), Louise had borne and raised two children, established herself as the wife of a well-known eye surgeon (Innes’s reputation preceding him to Toronto), and even, upon occasion, appeared in society, such as it was in the early 1930s in Toronto. (Had the Depression affected that Canadian city as it had American cities? Well, yes, it must have, Agnes decided.)
Despite these achievements, however, Louise had, upon closer inspection, the look of a woman who