James Salter - All That Is

“Welcome to the family,” he said.

He had small, even teeth that made him seem friendly and worked in the government.

“Very nice wedding,” he said. “We didn’t have one. The pater offered us three thousand dollars—actually he offered it to Beverly—if we’d just go off and get married. He was probably hoping I’d run away with the money. He as much as told me so. Anyway, we eloped. Where are you from?”

“New Jersey,” Bowman said. “Summit.”

He was from the east, too, Bryan said.

“We lived in Mount Kisco. Guard Hill Road—they used to call it Banker’s Row, every house belonged to a Morgan partner.”

They had a four-car garage. Actually there were three cars and a chauffeur.

“Redell was his name. He was also the cook, very spooky kind of guy,” Bryan said amiably. “He used to drive us to school. We had a Buick and a Hispano-Suiza, huge monster with a separate chauffeur’s section and a speaking tube. Every day at breakfast, Redell would ask which car we wanted to take, the Buick or… The Hissy, the Hissy! we’d say. And then when we got away from the house, we would drive.”

“You would drive?”

“My brother and I.”

“How old were you?”

“I was twelve and Roddy was ten. We took turns. We made Redell do it. We threatened him. We said we’d claim he tried to molest us. Death rides, we called them.”

“Where’s Roddy now?”

“He’s not here. He’s out west. He works in construction in the West. He just likes it, the life.”

Beverly joined them.

“We were talking about Roddy,” Bryan explained.

“Poor Roddy. Bryan loves Roddy. Do you have brothers or sisters?” she asked Bowman.

“No, I’m the only one.”

“Lucky you,” she said.

She did not resemble Vivian. She was bigger and somewhat ungainly with a receding chin and a reputation for being outspoken.

“So, what do we make of Mr. Bowman?” she asked her husband afterwards. She was eating some of the wedding cake with her hand cupped beneath to catch any pieces.

“He seems like a nice-enough guy.”

“He’s from Hah-vud.”

“So?”

“I think Vivian made a mistake.”

“What have you got against him?”

“I don’t know. It’s my intuition. I like his friend, though.”

“Which one?”

“The one with the flower. He’s nervous, look at him.”

“What’s he nervous about?”

“Us, probably.”

Eddins was on his second drink but in Virginia he felt more or less at home. He had talked to an ex-colonel and to a not unattractive woman who had come with a judge. Also to Bryan, who mentioned the cars they used to have before the family lost their money and had to move to Bronxville, which was a real shame. Eddins had been watching a good-looking girl who was standing behind the judge and he finally walked her way.

“Do you come here often?” he asked as a try at wit.

“I’m sorry?”

Her name was Darrin, she was the daughter of a doctor. It turned out that she exercised horses.

“Horses need exercise? Don’t they do that themselves?”

She regarded him somewhat scornfully.

Eddins tried to cover it up by talking.

“They said there might be thunderstorms today, but it looks like they’re wrong. I like thunderstorms. There’s a wonderful one in Thomas Hardy. Do you know Thomas Hardy?”

“No,” she said briefly.

“He’s English. An English writer. You can’t top the English. Lord Byron, the poet. Incredible. The most famous man in Europe when he was still in his twenties. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know, I’m trying to model myself after him.”

She failed to smile.

“Died of a fever at Missolonghi. They put his heart in an urn and his lungs in something else, I forget… supposed to end up in a church but they got lost. His body was sent back to England in a coffin filled with rum. Women came to the funeral, former mistresses…”

She was listening without expression.

“I have some English blood,” he confessed, “but mostly Scottish.”

“Is that right?”

“Wild, unbridled people. Wash their clothes in urine,” he said.

“They what?”

“Anyway it smells that way.”

He was making it up, he did that when he drank and to protect himself. She was so plainly not interested in what he was saying, too young to know what anything was about. He had imagined some kind of sophisticated, dissolute wedding, with a bridesmaid drunkenly going off with him, but there were no bridesmaids, there was only the maid of honor to whom he was not attracted. He wandered over to the groom.

“So, this will be your country estate, I take it.”

“I don’t think so,” Bowman said.

“I met your father-in-law. Big landowner. Rich as a goat. Anyway you’re a lucky man. Very lucky,” he said, his eye on Vivian. “Still, I have this flower…” He took hold of his lapel. “I’m going to keep it in remembrance, press it in a book,” he said looking down at it. “Would have to be a big book. I talked to your mother-in-law. Well turned out.”

Caroline had been moving among the guests, a little heavier than she had been when last seen and her cheeks a little rounder. She was in an expensive black dress and managing to avoid being near her former husband.

Beatrice had said little. She had wept at the church. She had embraced Vivian and in return felt a dutiful response. It had all been like that, dutiful, restrained, with only smiles and polite talk.

She was bidding good-bye to her son. She had a chance to embrace him and to say with all her heart,

“Be good to one another. Love one another,” she said.

Though she felt it was love cast into darkness. She had doubts that she would ever know her daughter-in-law. It seemed, on this bright day, that the greatest misfortune had come to pass. She had lost her son, not completely, but part of him was beyond her power to reclaim and now belonged to another, someone who hardly knew him. She thought of all that had gone before, the hopes and ambition, the years that had been filled, not just in retrospect, with such joy. She tried to be pleasant, to have them all like her and favor her son.

George Amussen she felt she knew, the self-possession and manners, the life that the house seemed to represent. He reminded her of her husband, whom she had long tried to banish from her thoughts but who remained in her life, distant and unassailable.

Vivian was happy. She was wearing a white wedding gown, she had yet to change, and though she was not yet used to the idea, she was a married woman. She’d married at home, with her father’s blessing, more or less. It had happened, she had done it. Like Beverly she was married.

Bowman was happy or felt he was, she was his, a beautiful woman or girl. He saw life ahead in regular terms, with someone who would be beside him. In the presence of her family and friends he realized that he knew only one side of her, a side that attracted him but that was not her entire or essential self. Behind her as he looked was her unyielding father and not far away from him her sister and brother-in-law. They were all complete strangers. Across the room, smiling and alcoholic, was her mother, Caroline. Vivian caught his eye and perhaps his thoughts and smiled at him, it seemed understandingly. The unsettled feeling disappeared. Her smile was loving, sincere. We’ll leave soon, it said. That night though, having driven to the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, wearied by the events of the day and unaccustomed to being a wedded couple, they simply went to sleep.

There was a front room and glass doors to a bedroom with a bed by the window. The kitchen was narrow but long and the dishes often unwashed; Vivian was indifferent to housekeeping and her clothes and cosmetics could be found all over. Still, a glorious being emerged from her preparations, even when abbreviated. She had the gift of allure, even when her lips were bare and her hair uncombed, sometimes especially then.