A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [129]
She would finish the story when she got home. Perhaps she might even send it out to be published. Why not? For what was the point of fiction, Agnes wanted to know as she hoisted her duffel bag to her shoulder, if not to edit reality? If not to rewrite history? If not to soothe one’s fevered dreams?
Bridget was ravenous, having had little to eat the day before—the wedding, her nerves, the ironclad underwear—but she hadn’t wanted to wake Bill. She opened the dining room, taking a seat by the window, the sun beginning to scorch its way up the hill. After a time, Bridget caught the eye of a woman she’d seen around the inn performing various chores: waitressing, registering guests, and, once, carrying a suitcase.
“Can I get you something?” the woman asked.
“I know you’re not ready,” Bridget said, “but if you could just bring me whatever is easiest. Coffee, juice? Cereal if you’ve got it?”
“You’re the bride,” the woman said.
“Yes, I am,” Bridget said.
There ought to be a word, Bridget reflected, for “bride-who-is-forty-three.” It was the sort of word the Inuit might have.
Bridget watched with fascination as the woman placed the order on a dumbwaiter and sent it down to the first floor to the kitchen. Had Matt and Brian seen the contraption? It wasn’t so long ago that one of them would have dared the other to get in and take a ride.
Bridget would wake the boys at 10:00 so that they could dress and pack. She hoped they still possessed all the various parts of their tuxedos. She imagined cummerbunds and studs and bow ties sprinkled over the floor of the basement room in which the pool table apparently was located. Bridget would pack up her own things and let Matt and Brian take all the bags out to the car. And then she would go in search of Nora to thank her. For her kindness, for the extraordinary meals, for all the arrangements. Nora had been more than generous. Bill was paying something (he had not told Bridget the precise sum), but she knew that Nora had heavily subsidized the cost of the weekend. Not just for Bridget and Bill, but for all of them.
Bridget thought of Jerry and Julie. Would their marriage survive the ride home? She thought, too, of Agnes’s surprising confession (truly surprising, there had been nothing to suggest it) and wondered what the woman’s future would hold. Having revealed the affair, would it now be over, or might it spur Jim Mitchell to action? It was hard not to dislike the man for having kept Agnes on a string all these years. Or was one meant to admire Jim for his loyalty to the family he had made? Bridget worried that her wedding might inadvertently have caused the dissolution of two other couples. How potent these reunions were. Was that why so many refused to go?
And then there was the mystery of Nora and Harrison. Clearly a charge there—anyone could see it. Nora had sat next to Harrison at the ceremony. Did that mean anything? Bridget couldn’t ask. She didn’t know Nora well enough. She thought about the way Nora had left the room after Agnes’s extraordinary challenge to the table.
Bridget could remember some things about that night so long ago. She recalled making out in a corner with Bill (it had been too cold, they had agreed, to go down to the beach), keeping it discreet, occasionally getting up to get another Coke. She remembered that the party was loud, that the boys seemed to be getting drunk faster than usual. There was a sense of everything coming to an end. In a week they would have exams, and in two weeks they would all be gone. Bill to his family in Albany, Bridget to her family in Foxboro. Weeks might go by without her seeing Bill, and if he did manage to come visit Bridget, her parents would keep a close eye on them. In September, Bill would be off to college.
Bridget remembered hearing the news that Nora and Harrison had been seen kissing in the kitchen. Bridget had thought at the time, as it should be, not having previously recognized the fact, but knowing that Harrison and Nora were a good fit, a more comprehensible fit than Nora had ever been with Stephen. That