Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [88]
“I don’t,” she said.
No one breathed. Elizabeth’s father snapped his book shut.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t,” she said.
Then she turned around, and the organ gave a start and wheezed into Lieutenant Kije again. Elizabeth came down the aisle slowly and steadily with her nosegay held exactly right and her head perfectly level. Oh, why didn’t she just turn and run out that little door at the front? How could she bear to travel all that long way by herself? Margaret thought of leaping up and shouting something, anything, just to pull people’s eyes from Elizabeth. But she didn’t. She stayed silent. After one glance at Dommie, frozen before the pulpit, she stared down the aisle as hard as anyone.
It took several minutes for people to realize what had happened. They just sat there—even the fat lady. Then the organ dwindled out in the middle of a note, and whispers and rustles started up. Mrs. Abbott rose and marched firmly toward her husband. She looped one arm through his and the other through Dommie’s, and led them back out the little door.
“Did you ever?” all the women were asking, rising and clustering together. “Did you ever hear of such a thing?” the fat lady said. “I always did want to see somebody do that,” a man told Margaret. She smiled and sidled out of the pew. In the doorway, Elizabeth’s sister stood circled by more flowered hats. She looked dazed. “I don’t understand, I just don’t understand,” she kept saying. A woman with feather earrings said, “Now tell me this, Polly. Had they had a little quarrel or something?”
“Dommie wouldn’t quarrel,” an old lady said.
“Did they—”
“She told us she’d changed her mind,” Polly said. “Told us just as we left the house. Father said no. He said, ‘Liz, now all the guests are here,’ he said, ‘and you owe them a wedding,’ and she said, ‘Well, all right, if a wedding’s what you want.’ But we never thought, I mean, we thought she meant—and Father said she was sure to feel differently, once she was standing at the altar.”
“Well, of course. Of course she would,” someone said. “All brides get cold feet.”
“That’s what he told her,” Polly said. “ ‘And they forget about it an hour later,’ he told her, but Liz said, ‘How do you know? Maybe they’re just saying that, and they regret it all their lives. It’s a conspiracy,’ she said—oh, but still I never thought—Mother asked if there were anyone else. I mean, anyone, you know, but she said no, and you could tell she meant it, she looked so surprised—”
“Excuse me,” Margaret said. She slid sideways through the crowd until she reached the front steps. Then she shaded her eyes and looked all around her. The sun had bleached everything—the grass, the walk, the highway—but in all that whiteness there was no sign of Elizabeth’s wedding suit. She had vanished. All she had left behind were two high-heeled shoes placed neatly side by side on the bottom step.
Margaret walked to her car very slowly. She wanted to give Elizabeth a chance to catch her, in case she needed a ride. But no one called her name. By the time she reached the highway she was feeling a letdown. Now I suppose I’ll never hear from her again, she thought, I’ll never know how this turned out. Then she opened her car door, and there was Elizabeth on the front seat.
She was slouched so far down that she couldn’t be seen from outside, but she didn’t have a fugitive look. She seemed flattened, exhausted, as if her sitting so low were merely poor posture. “Hi there,” she said.
“Elizabeth!”
“You think you could get me out of here?”
Margaret slid in and slammed the door and started the car, all in one motion. When she pulled onto the highway she left streaks of rubber. Anyone watching would have known it was a get-away car. “Elizabeth,” she said, “are you all right?”
“More or less,” said Elizabeth.
But from the stoniness of her face, Margaret guessed that she wanted to be left in peace.
They flew down the highway, across mirages of water that streaked its surface. Margaret wanted to make sure where they were going, but she was afraid to break