Laura Benedict: The Erstwhile Groom

“Papa?” Mitzy’s voice comes down the stairs.

Kurt goes to answer the frantic knock at the back door.

* * * *

Livia has a satin-bound photograph, hidden, she thinks, in the cedar chest at the foot of their bed. In it, a young Livia, looking unhealthily slender in a narrow-waisted, polka-dot dress, stands close to Danny Kelley, who wears a pencil-thin moustache that rides above a small, almost feminine mouth. His right arm encircles Livia’s waist and appears to Kurt, even over the distance of years, to be pulling her to him, forcing her body against his in an intimate, frankly sexual way. There is a look of casual cruelty in his eyes.

But what of the beautiful Livia, her eyes filled with a tenderness that causes a brief, painful swelling in Kurt’s throat each time he takes the photograph from its hiding place? Her chestnut hair gathers in soft waves across her shoulders and drops a few teasing inches down her back in the style of a sultry Hedy Lamarr. Her arm, graceful in the draped sleeve of the dress, reaches possessively (protectively, perhaps?) across the man’s chest. This is surely not the Livia who stood beside Kurt in the dimly lit Lady Chapel at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, those same fingers pressed into his own large hand as the priest led them through their vows. That Livia’s still-young mouth had acquired new lines and she stood with a stiffness that the girl in the photo would have mocked. An aura of happiness radiates from the photographed Livia, a laughing, confident kind of happiness that his Livia surely could not imagine.

* * * *

Kurt turns on the porch light, illuminating the boy’s face through the glass, and wonders that Livia can bear to see him each time he comes to the house. This boy, this Brent whom Mitzy met at a dance at the armory — but for his smooth upper lip and modern haircut — is the image of the young man with Livia in the photograph. Kurt even asked Livia once if Brent reminded her of anyone. But she just said, “No,” and went on reading her book. It bothered him that she didn’t even ask him why he’d wanted to know.

Kurt opens the door only the width of his body. “Yes?” he says. “What is it?”

Brent stands with his hands shoved into the back pockets of his blue jeans; he wears a bulky green letter jacket that is too hot for the weather. On its breast is the image of a halo shot through with a flaming arrow. He gives Kurt a toothy smile.

“Hey, Mr. R.,” he says. “Is Mitzy here?”

“Mitzy is unavailable. I don’t know the particulars.”

Brent shakes his head. The smile is gone, replaced by a look of intense sincerity. “It’s just a misunderstanding, Mr. R. A miscommunication, you’d call it. Mitzy needs to hear what I have to say.”

The air about the boy smells of flowers. Kurt thinks that perhaps the lilies of the valley on the other side of the porch are releasing their scent, but the smell is stronger, sharper. He realizes that the boy is wearing some kind of perfume.

“If I could come in just for a minute,” Brent says. He lowers his voice, taking Kurt into his confidence. “See, there’s this girl, and she’s been pestering me an awful lot. She won’t leave me alone. She’s just this girl, this kid from the neighborhood.”

“I’m sure Mitzy will call you at some point,” Kurt says. He’s not interested in the boy’s pitiful confessions. He takes a handkerchief from a rear pocket, blows his nose loudly into it, and stuffs it back into his pants.

Out in the yard, a yellow rectangle of light shining down from Mitzy’s window blinks out. Beneath the sound of traffic humming on the road in front of the house, Kurt thinks he hears a window sliding quietly open. He wants this boy to go away so he can start making his way toward bed. If he goes to bed much past nine o’clock, he doesn’t sleep well.

“Look,” Brent says, changing his tack. He takes a step toward Kurt. “Mitzy’s over eighteen. Right? She gets to make her own decisions. And you need to tell her that I’m here and that I want to see her.”

When Mitzy first came home that afternoon, Kurt thought that she and the young man would have to work things out themselves. But he sees that he has made a number of wrong assumptions about the young man. Acutely aware that Brent probably outweighs him by twenty pounds and has at least an inch of height on him, Kurt steps out of the doorway and grabs him roughly by the upper arm. “It’s time for you to leave, now. You’ve got nothing to say to anyone here.”

Brent jerks away, his lip twisted in a sneer.

“Go on,” Kurt says. He’s worried that if he says more his voice will shake.

Brent shouts up to the window above them. “Mitzy! Mitzy, come down and call off your old man!”

The two of them stand frozen in the porch light, each waiting, perhaps, for Mitzy to answer or for the other to move or speak. Kurt is no longer tired — the surge of fear, or anger, whatever it was that prompted him to lay hands on the boy, has energized him and made him feel suddenly younger, more vital.

“Mitzy!”

Above them, the window slams shut.

“Don’t imagine this changes anything,” the boy says to Kurt. “You watch how everything will be just fine, tomorrow.” He gives Kurt a cheerful salute and starts up the steps into the yard. He pauses and leans down to pick up a handful of smooth pebbles from around the steps. Turning back to the house, he throws the pebbles at the window so that they spatter against the glass like fat, noisy raindrops.

Kurt watches the car back out of the driveway, its headlights bouncing clumsily as a single wheel rises up over the curb and then down again. His heart is still pounding as the car speeds down the alley, spewing gravel into the night air. He knows that Eda Hidebaugh in the house next-door is probably watching from her darkened window, but he’s angry enough that he doesn’t care.

* * * *

One Wednesday evening, Livia left her aunt’s shop, but didn’t go to the high school. As Kurt followed almost a block behind, she walked more quickly than usual, despite her high heels. She passed by McSorley’s and turned, heading toward the Irish part of town — a part of town where Kurt didn’t like to go, where there were gangs of young men and teenagers who intimidated him and made him wish he carried a gun, even a small one, in the pocket of his jacket. But Livia walked confidently. The streets were quiet, with few people sitting out on their stoops. When Livia did pass a group of boys on a corner, Kurt was too far back to hear what they said to her. He only heard a shout and a laugh from one of the boys, but Livia kept walking and they didn’t follow her. Relieved that he wasn’t going to have to reveal himself to defend her (With no weapon, what would he have done? He told himself that his fists would have been enough.), Kurt jogged across to the other side of the street for several blocks, still keeping Livia in sight.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw next. Livia stopped in front of a pub he didn’t know and reached out her hand to the man there who was obviously waiting for her. Kurt hurried forward, watching as they embraced, watching as the man wrapped his arms around Livia and slid one hand down her back to rest it just at the top of the swell of her behind. (So many times Kurt had imagined putting his own hand just there. He could almost feel the linen of her dress beneath his own fingertips.) But instead of pushing the man away, Livia seemed to cling more tightly to him, kissing him harder.

* * * *

The next morning, Kurt learns from Mitzy and Livia that things have been decided. Livia calls the priest at St. Mark’s to let him know that the wedding is off, and asks Kurt to drive her to the florist and the dressmaker’s to see about settling the bills even though she knows Thursday is his library day. It looks to him as if the whole foolish affair is going to cost him a least a couple hundred dollars. But he thinks it might almost be worth it not to have that particular young man sitting at his dinner table again, eating his food and drinking his beer. He is glad that Mitzy will not have children with Brent, attractive, sneaky children whom he would have to guard against, to prevent them from stealing his small treasures, like the tiny jade turtles his godfather had brought him from Japan, or doing noisy things out in the yard that the neighbors could gossip about. Kurt flushes with shame at the thought of having such grandchildren.