The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [122]
Judge Antone Bazil Coutts
The Veil
AFTER THE WEDDING we got into the car bannered Just Married. White balloons, cans, and plastic fringe dragged from the bumpers. I took Geraldine’s hand and held it on the seat between us as we rattled all the way to the Knights of Columbus hall. We’d been allowed to rent it even without a church wedding and now, I knew, from the KC kitchen ovens great roasters of meat soup, baked beans, frybread, potatoes, and roasted chicken were being lugged to the serving table. We’d pass by and fill our plates, eat in an exciting good-natured garble of cheer. Our wedding cake was four white-on-white layers embellished with glittering sugar roses. When it came time to cut the cake, I put my hand over Geraldine’s fist as she gripped the knife. We smiled for pictures as the knife melted through the base of the cake.
Clemence removed the top for us to take home—a cakelet. The plastic groom was painted into a judge’s robes and the bride wore a white suit. Her shoulder-length hair was black and waved like Geraldine’s. Evelina had made the souvenir. “I’d like to keep this on my desk,” I said, plucking the tiny couple off the cake and stashing it in my pocket.
So Geraldine and I began married life, at last.
WE HAD DECIDED to save our money for a real honeymoon and go somewhere exotic later on—it was enough that we’d just be allowed to reassume our domestic life. We had the weekend before us. Someone, probably Evelina, had taped a sign on the front door. No Visitors. We left the sign up and entered our house, closed the door, stood in the little hallway. I removed Geraldine’s white boxy hat with its pretty mesh veil. Then I put her hat back on, suddenly, and drew her veil down over her face and kissed her through the veil. The stiff little holes printed on her mouth then caught between our lips and tongues. In that moment, we coveted each other so intensely that we walked straight into the bedroom and did not emerge until late in the evening, dizzy and at peace. She remembered the little cake and fetched it. We froze the cake top to eat on our first anniversary. We made toast and tea and brought our plates and cups back into the bedroom, which wasn’t in its usual order. Geraldine’s suit was crumpled across a chair, the coat splayed open to reveal the glossy satin lining. Her small wedding hat had whirled into the corner and the veil seemed to have dissolved like sugar icing. Geraldine took a bite of toast and a light sift of crumbs scattered across the yoke of her robe and her naked collarbone. I leaned over and brushed the crumbs off; my hand lingered and then slipped inside, to her dark nipple.
I don’t think, said Geraldine, I really don’t, but then she gave me that smile, close up, and slid over me, opening the robe.
I WONDERED IF we’d ever leave that bed. I didn’t want to. Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness. I lay beside her in the dark. She was a silent sleeper, grave and frowning through her weighty dreams. As I do sometimes to fall asleep, I imagined myself hovering above ourselves, then rising, dissolving through the roof and taking a dark ride over the reservation and the neighboring towns. It did not work this time, but had the opposite effect. My brain became too alert. The adrenaline and unaccustomed naps had revved me. My thoughts spun. Life crowded in, the trivial and the vast. I thought of everyone who’d come to our wedding. I was moved all over again by how the Milk family had embraced our marriage. Their happiness had been genuine and there was nothing held back, nothing of the faint disapprobation I had feared, not even from Clemence. My long involvement with