James Salter - All That Is

“Trouble at home?” he asked.

“No. Jus’ habit,” she said, laying her upper body on the bed.

“You get six,” he offered.

“No room for that extra.”

“Here.”

He put it in her hand, into her palm, which he loved.

No one knew of this, it existed by itself, like certain feverish visions of saints.

In 1928, at a dinner party in Washington, George Amussen had met Caroline Wain who was twenty with a slow manner of talking and a provocative smile. She had grown up in Detroit, her father was an architect. Four months after Amussen met her, they were married, and some six months after that, their first child, Beverly, was born. Vivian came a year and a half later.

Life in the country was pleasant for Caroline. She smoked and drank. Her laugh became hoarse and a small seductive roll of flesh slowly appeared above her girdle. She lay in bed with her daughters and sometimes read to them on rainy days. Amussen drove into Washington to work, occasionally coming back late or even spending the night, and his attention to Caroline, in a way that was important to her, dwindled. She brooded on this.

“George,” she said one evening over a drink, “are you happy with me?”

She was not yet thirty but her face was a bit puffy beneath the eyes.

“What do you mean, darling?”

“Are you happy?”

“I’m happy enough.”

“Do you still love me?” she persisted.

“Why are you asking that?”

“I just want to know.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, you love me? Is that what you mean?”

“If you keep asking it, I don’t know what I’ll say.”

“That means you don’t.”

“Is that what it means?”

There was a silence.

“Is it that there’s someone else?” she finally said.

“If there was, it wouldn’t amount to anything,” he said.

“So, there is.”

“I said, if there was. There isn’t.”

“You’re sure of that? No, you’re not, are you?”

“Why don’t you listen to what I say?”

With that, she suddenly threw her drink in his face. He stood and brushed himself off, taking out a handkerchief to do it.

She threw a drink in his face at a party in Middleburg that fall and wept in the car on the way home from several others. She became known as a drinker, that was not so bad—drinking, even too much, was an aspect of character, like courage, in their society—but Amussen became tired of it and of her. Her angry moods were like a disease that couldn’t be treated, much less cured. She had taken her pillow and was sleeping in the guest room. By the tenth year of their marriage they had separated and soon after, divorced. Caroline went to Reno for the divorce and left her two daughters, eight and ten years old, with her husband so as not to disrupt their schooling and routine. Although she retained custody of them, she did not exercise it strictly, and Amussen was content to let things continue this way, as they were.

Bowman met Caroline Amussen—she kept the name, which was worth something—in her apartment in Washington. She was wearing bedroom slippers but she had a somehow gallant air and was warm towards him. She liked him, she said, and later said it privately to her daughter. Bowman forgot the fact that girls, in time, became like their mothers. He felt that Vivian took after her father and would become her own woman.

The waiter came to take their order.

“How is the shad roe, Edward?” Amussen asked.

“Jus’ fine, Mistuh Amussen.”

“Do you have two orders of it?” he asked. “If you’d like to have it,” he said to his guest.

Bowman assumed it was a southern dish.

“Do you do any fishing?” Amussen said. “Shad is bony, generally too bony to bother with. The roe is the best part.”

“Yes, I’ll have it. How do they make it?”

“In a pan with some bacon. They brown it. That’s right, isn’t it, Edward?”

It was at the end of lunch, when they were being served coffee, that Bowman said,

“You know, I’m in love with Vivian.”

Amussen continued stirring his coffee as if he had not heard.

“And I think she’s in love with me,” Bowman went on. “We would like to get married.”

Still Amussen showed no emotion. He was as calm as if he were alone.

“I’ve come to ask for your permission, sir,” Bowman said.

The “sir” seemed a little courtly but he felt it was appropriate. Amussen was still occupied with stirring.

“Vivian’s a nice girl,” Amussen finally said. “She was raised in the country. I don’t know how she’d take to city life. She’s not one of those people.”

He then looked up.

“How do you plan on providing for her?” he said.

“Well, as you know, I have a good job. I like my work, I have a career. I earn enough to support us at this point, and whatever I have is hers. I’ll make sure she’s comfortable.”

“She’s not a city girl,” Amussen said again. “You know, from the time she was just a little thing, she’s had her own horse.”

“We haven’t talked about that. I suppose we could always make room for a horse,” Bowman said lightly.

Amussen seemed not to hear him.

“We love one another,” Bowman said. “I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy.”

Amussen nodded slightly.

“I promise you that. We’re hoping for your permission, then. Your blessing, sir.”

There was a pause.

“I don’t think I can give you that,” Amussen said. “Not and be honest with you.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think it would work. I think it would be a mistake.”

“I see.”

“But I won’t stand in Vivian’s way,” her father said.

Bowman left feeling disappointed but defiant. It would be a kind of morganatic marriage then, politely tolerated. He was not sure what attitude to take about it, but when he told Vivian what her father had said, she was not disturbed.

“That’s just Daddy,” she said.

The minister was a tall man in his seventies with silvery hair who couldn’t hear very well, having fallen from a horse. Age had taken the edge from his voice, which was silken but thin. At the prenuptial meeting he said he would ask them three questions, the ones he always asked couples. He wanted to know if they were in love. Next, did they want to be married in the church? And lastly, would the marriage last?

“We can definitely answer yes to the first two,” Bowman replied.

“Ah,” the minister said, “yes.” He was absentminded and had forgotten the order of the questions. “I don’t suppose it’s so important to be in love,” he admitted.

He hadn’t shaved, Bowman noticed, there was a white stubble on his face, but he was more presentable at the wedding. Vivian’s family was there, her mother, sister, brother-in-law, and some others Bowman had never met and also friends. There were fewer on the groom’s side, but his Harvard roommate, Malcolm, and his wife, Anthea, were there, and Eddins with a white carnation in his buttonhole. It was a bright, cool morning, then afternoon, passing in an excitement that made it hard to remember. He was with his mother beforehand and could see her during the ceremony. He watched with a sense of victory as Amussen brought Vivian down the aisle. He put any misgivings aside, it was like a scene from a play. During the vows he saw only his bride, her face clear and shining, and in back of her Louise smiling, too, as he heard himself say, With this ring, I thee wed. I thee wed.

Eddins proved to be very popular or anyhow well-remembered at the reception, which was held at Vivian’s house—her father had wanted it to be at the Red Fox, the old inn in Middleburg, but had been persuaded otherwise.

The bar was on a table covered with a white tablecloth and tended by two bartenders, reserved but polite, burnished somehow by inequality. In a bow tie and with the round face of good fellowship, Bowman’s new brother-in-law, Bryan, came up to him.