A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [6]
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Nora rested her chin on the back of her hand. “What else?”
Harrison thought a minute. “Before I left to come here,” he said, “I watched my wife get dressed for work. She had on two different socks. One long and one short. She hadn’t shaved her legs.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I was faintly repulsed,” he admitted. “I love my wife, by the way.”
“But you see,” Nora said, “you didn’t include these facts. You edited. You would have omitted those details. If you’d been asked to give an account of yourself. And then I would have . . . I would have a very different picture of you.”
“How so?”
“I now know that you’re willing to share small secrets. You might be a closet coward. You probably don’t like to get too involved. You’re capable of being faintly repulsed by someone you love.”
“Didn’t you know these things already?”
“We were children then,” Nora said. “We’re . . . we’re entirely different now.”
Are we? Harrison wondered.
“What’s that over there?” he asked, pointing. “That plume of smoke? It looks lethal.”
“A paper bag factory. They say it’s perfectly safe. But I don’t believe it.”
“Quite a forest,” he said.
“It’s deceptive. You can see only the tops of the trees from here. Below them, there are houses and roads and power lines. Even a McDonald’s.”
“Say it isn’t so,” Harrison said with mock horror.
“Afraid it is. There’s a real forest behind the inn, though.”
He craned his neck, but the roof blocked any view of the woods behind the inn. “The inn does well?” he asked.
“Surprisingly. It works the way I hoped it would work. There are . . . there are always problems—the too-low toilet seats being the most frequent complaint.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“But many of our guests have returned. And they’ve told their friends about it. This year we’re booked through to the end of February.”
“Well done.”
“I hadn’t meant to compete. It hadn’t ever really crossed my mind. I just wanted something of my own. But I am. Competing. With a whole string of B and Bs throughout the Berkshires.”
“Who makes up your clientele?” he asked.
“Mostly people from Boston and New York. Looking to escape the cities. They profess to come for the charm—a sort of New England charm I find hokey. So I don’t offer it. Apart from these L.L.Bean rockers we’re sitting on. Or they come with an ideal of family togetherness that invariably unravels as the weekend progresses.”
“You sound a bit cynical.”
“What people really come for is the promise of sex and food and material goods. Not necessarily in that order. The outlets are just ten minutes away.”
“Under all those trees.”
Nora nodded.
“I’m actually hot sitting here,” Harrison said with some surprise.
“Take off your sweater.”
“I think I will. If we were primitive people, we’d be frightened by this, wouldn’t we? This freakish weather.”
“The inn was reviewed last year in New York Magazine,” Nora said. “The reviewer wrote that one could sit on the porch in December. He meant sit on the porch in a parka, but this year you can do it in shirtsleeves. The sun bakes the clapboards.”
“The lawn is still green,” he said.
“By this time of year, there’s usually snow on the ground. Men who haven’t been on sleds in years like to show off to their wives and children before their knees give out.” She glanced at her watch. “I really have to go,” she said, standing. “I have a rehearsal lunch. There’s another wedding tomorrow. Agnes and Rob should be here by one. We’ll have a private room for the dinner tonight. And of course one for tomorrow evening.”
“Is that usual?” Harrison asked. “To have more than one wedding a weekend?”
“Oh, yes,” Nora said. “I’ve sometimes had four in a weekend, all with rehearsal dinners. The trick . . . the trick is to keep the brides from running into one another. Each wants to think herself unique.”
“Don’t we all?” he said.
Nora smiled.
“I thought I might go for a walk,” he said, standing as well. “I had breakfast on the way here.”