A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [125]
“I needed the scarf after all,” Louise said.
“You’re cold? It seems such a warm day. Unseasonably warm, in fact.”
“Yes, but I am sitting and you are walking. I might be expected to be somewhat colder than you.”
Innes did not answer, having learned years ago that Louise would seldom let a thing go.
“Talk to me,” she insisted.
“The streets are crowded,” he began.
“Yes, yes, I can hear that. The buildings. The windows.”
“Well, here, let me back up a bit.”
Innes parked in front of a Dickensian diorama and described the “burning” fireplace, a lighted Christmas tree, and the nineteenth-century costumes on the family members gathered around it. He glanced at another window. “There are some pretty robes for sale,” he said. “Margaret might like one of them.”
“Describe it.”
“It can’t be wool,” Innes said, “because it looks too soft. Very plush. I’m not good with fabrics.”
“Can we go inside? Is it manageable? I could feel the fabric for myself.”
“Yes, of course,” Innes said, though he did not want to leave the open air, the melting snow, the masses of vehicles on the streets, the words that floated out to him from the crowds. Forbearance. Much at stake. Scandalous.
Innes shouldered the door, putting his back to it. A young woman with a fur scarf smiled at Innes, a moment that added to the day’s sum of unexpected pleasures.
Innes asked a salesgirl in a green silk suit behind a glove counter where he might find the blue robe in the window.
“Lingerie on seven,” she replied with an indifferent nasal twang.
Innes negotiated the wide elevator without difficulty and emerged onto seven, a universe of slips and girdles and peignoirs and negligees. He searched for a rack of robes and steered Louise in that direction. He placed the skirt of the robe in her hand.
“Chenille,” she said at once. “What colors?”
“Pink and white and pale blue and . . . let me see . . . yellow.”
“Which would look the best on Margaret?”
Louise had never seen her daughter.
“The pale blue, I think,” Innes said. “Her eyes.”
“Joan said they’ll do a bang-up job with the wrapping. Be sure to get the smallest size.”
Innes waited patiently in line at gift wrapping, his wife parked against a wall, ear cocked to the women around her. The package, when delivered, presented a challenge to Innes, who had to ask Louise to hold it on her lap. He could not maneuver the chair and manage the large box at the same time.
Negotiating the elevator once again, Innes pushed his wife past the perfume counter and the glove counter and out into the bright sunshine, which Louise could feel on her face. He turned the corner to head up the sidewalk.
The throng was thicker than it had been just a half hour before. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to experience the warmth of the day. Across from Innes, a crowd of people stood at the curb, waiting for the traffic to pass. Innes stopped short.
She had stepped off the curb and was crossing the street in his direction. She had on a felt hat with a short brim, a wool coat with a fur collar. She was oblivious to his presence, instead making her way carefully through the slush. The several seconds Innes watched Hazel come toward him seemed the most intensely felt of his life.
It was the wheelchair that caught her attention, as it did for almost everyone who passed by. The quick glance at the occupant. Then another up at the companion. Hazel did the same, her eyes sliding over the woman with dark glasses, once, twice, and then stopping. Innes watched Hazel’s expression change from one of mild daydreaming to shock. She glanced up at Innes.
He hadn’t seen Hazel since the day she’d walked away from him in Halifax. Louise, jealous since childhood, had found reason to be furious with her sister, who wasn’t blind or disabled. Louise would not tolerate even a mention of Hazel’s name in the house. In the beginning, there had been letters