A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [4]
Laski had filled his bathtub, plugged in the hair dryer, and let it drop. Harrison remembered precisely where he’d been when he learned the startling news. An editor Harrison had once worked with in Toronto had walked by his table in a New York City restaurant, bent down, and murmured, Have you heard about Carl Laski?
“A terrible end to a magnificent life,” Harrison said now.
Nora was silent.
“The courage to do that,” he added.
“Carl . . . Carl would have said ‘cowardice.’”
“He had throat cancer?”
“He kept saying that he could never have described the pain. Not even at the height of his powers. That it defied words.”
“It’s hard for the healthy to imagine pain like that.”
“But what was truly horrible, Carl always said, was the knowing. Knowing he was going to die.”
Harrison agreed. He could think of few things in life worse than knowing when one was going to die, for it seemed to him that all the days in between—between the now and the then—would be tainted, poisoned by that bitter knowledge. “In the end, he picked his own time,” he said.
Nora stood, smoothing the hem of her blouse across the flat of her stomach. She had the body of a woman who had not had children, and Harrison thought briefly of his wife’s body: muscular and elongated from swimming, yet still there was the small curve of her belly, a swelling he loved to touch. “Want to sit outside?” Nora asked, opening the double doors.
Harrison expected a sudden chill, but the air that came in from the small veranda outside the library was warm. “You and Agnes have stayed friends, I take it,” he said as he stood.
“Yes. We . . . we don’t see each other much, but we write. She’s kind of old-fashioned. Our Agnes. She stayed on at Kidd. She teaches there.”
Harrison remembered Agnes’s sturdy body, her dreamy nature, her fascination with history.
“She finally bought a computer when the school put a gun to her head,” Nora said. “She hides it under the bed and takes it out only to post her grades.”
Harrison laughed.
“Bridget’s mother and sister will come for the wedding. Bill’s family won’t come. They’re angry with him for . . . well, for leaving his wife and daughter for Bridget. Bridget’s son is bringing a friend to keep him company. They’re fifteen. It’ll be a small wedding. More a wedding supper than a wedding. Though Bill is intent upon the details. I’ve helped him plan the flowers and the menu. He wants it to be . . . perfect. For Bridget.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Harrison asked.
“Breast cancer.”
Harrison sucked in his breath. The mother of a fifteen-year-old boy. He didn’t want to think about it.
He shaded his eyes with his hand. “What’s that over there?” he asked.
“It’s the top of a roller coaster,” Nora said cheerfully. “In the summer, with binoculars, you can see the people in the cars. You can watch them make the long, slow climb to the top and then hurtle out of sight below the trees. Then, as if by magic, you can see them emerge again. They seem to spin off into the air.”
“I’ve never been on a roller coaster,” Harrison confessed. “The closest I’ve ever come is when my mother used to take me to Cinerama when I was a kid.”
“I don’t think I ever went to Cinerama.”
“It was the first of the wide-screen movies. It made you feel as though you were right there—sitting in the car of a roller coaster, or climbing a mountain. It was meant to give you the thrill and sensation of movement.”
“I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “The roller coaster. Carl did though. He’d snatch at any excuse to go. He’d borrow children if necessary.” She looked at her watch, and Harrison thought about the notion of borrowing children. “Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Not much to tell.”
“You’re married.”
“Yes. My wife and I live in Toronto with our two boys, Charlie and Tom. Evelyn, my wife, is an estate lawyer.”
“How did you end up there? In Toronto?”
“Evelyn is from Toronto.”
“You’re . . . in publishing?