A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [124]
Agnes could see clearly this pair who had been together for seventeen years. Dr. Finch in a long brown coat and hat walking behind the wooden wheelchair with the rubber wheels, pushing his wife, who had grown heavier with the years, up the slight incline. Innes didn’t show the strain. He looked, in fact, almost happy. Not necessarily because he was with his wife, Agnes decided. More because of the adventure of the trip, because of the simple delight of being away from Toronto—from Canada, if Innes were to be entirely truthful. There was a vitality in New York City, even in the midst of the Depression, that could not be, and was not, reproduced in Toronto, however civilized that northern city might be.
Louise was saying (Agnes listening intently) that they ought to visit Macy’s. Joan had told her the department store was marvelous. Did she and Innes have time? When did the concert at Carnegie begin? For Louise, who could not see, a concert was just the ticket.
Agnes moved toward the desk.
Innes answered her questions, always unfailingly polite to his disabled wife, even when she spoke in querulous tones, which seemed to Innes to be happening more often lately. He could see and she could not, which she was inclined to remind him of from time to time. Her voice had a touch of the querulous in it today, in fact, despite this lovely trip. Louise was tired. She was often tired. It was such a strain being blind. One had to listen so intently. One had to imagine. As always, Innes felt sorry for his wife, who could not view the breathtakingly beautiful spire of the Empire State Building. Who could only hear the crowds that surrounded them. Who could not admire the holiday window displays, marvelously ornate and detailed.
Innes stepped carefully through the slush, not only minding where he put his own feet but steering Louise out of the path of the spray from the oncoming buses and taxis. Innes and Louise seldom took taxis. The sheer struggle to get Louise into an automobile made the enterprise a fraught and time-consuming one. They walked when possible. Innes had developed strong arms, a firm upper torso. He was aware, as most were not on this crowded street, of the five-degree incline, which one experienced when pushing a 150-pound woman in a wheelchair. Innes did not complain. He minded only when a passerby stared at Louise, at first with distaste and then with pity, the boldness of the stare not only rude but uncomfortably reminding Innes of barely buried feelings of his own.
Innes idly wondered if Louise and he might have been better off living in New York City, the society less closed, less insular. In Toronto, Louise had her friends and her family, but she was often unoccupied, the unemployment creating a constellation of unpleasant symptoms: boredom, irritability, occasional whining, a tendency to drama. She could not while away the hours the way other middle-class women could, with needlework or with reading. Louise had at first resisted Braille but now understood it about as well as a normal seven-year-old knew how to read.
But these were thoughts for later, for the return trip by train to Toronto. For now, Innes wanted to enjoy his short vacation. The hotel, with its fascinating model of itself in a glass case in the lobby. The dinners out with Margaret and Angus, Margaret in a grown-up dress with a black beaded belt. A lunch with a colleague from medical school followed by a tour of the city in