James Salter - All That Is

William Anders and Flore, his wife, liked Anet very much. She was a little reserved, he felt, but perhaps it was only towards him. He was a lawyer of the utmost probity. He was not a man of rash actions. He was the trustee of large estates and had clients that he had represented for years and were his friends, but with his son’s girlfriend something had passed between them from the first all-telling look. He might have chosen her himself and perhaps it was this she sensed and was wary, but at the wedding that day it seemed to him that she returned his look without caution.

Several of the guests had already seated themselves in the rows of chairs, including Christine and her husband. She was wearing a hat with a wide brim that shaded her face and a print dress with a pattern that looked like blue leaves. Everyone noticed her. In the wedding party photograph she appeared to be a woman of thirty standing with one foot forward of the other like a model. In fact she was forty-two and not yet entirely prepared to let youth have the stage.

Some taped music was playing, a string quartet. Anet was usually bored by string quartets but had felt that one was right for the occasion and anyway in the house she could barely hear it. Tommy had caught a glimpse of her in one of the rooms as he came through the house into the garden. She was standing in her white wedding gown and they were pinning it in places. She was too involved to notice or smile at him, too nervous, but proud to be marrying in front of her parents, especially her mother with whom she had been on bad terms for quite a while although by now that had been largely forgotten, that is to say, no longer talked about.

It was Christine who had met her on her arrival back at Kennedy. In the taxi they had sat in tense silence. Christine was seething. It was not that she thought her daughter was innocent although in a way she did, but she had never imagined anything as sordid as Anet sleeping with her former boyfriend. Finally she said,

“So, tell me what happened. I know what happened, but I want you to tell me.”

“I don’t want to right now,” Anet said in a subdued voice.

“Whose idea was it to go to Paris? Was that your idea?”

Anet didn’t answer.

“How long had it been going on before that?” Christine demanded.

“Nothing had been going on.”

“Nothing? Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Yes.”

“So, how did it happen that he left you? What caused it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Well, I know.”

Anet was silent.

“He wanted to show you were a little slut. He didn’t have to try very hard. You know, he’s thirty years older than you are. What did he do, tell you he loved you?”

“No.”

“No. Does anyone else know about this?”

Anet shook her head. She began to cry.

“You are stupid,” Christine said. “You’re a stupid little girl.”

That was six years before, and now her father came in to ask if she was ready. He was giving her in marriage, he was bringing her into the garden on his arm. As they stood together the music of the quartet stopped and was replaced by the familiar opening chords of the wedding march. All heads turned as Anet, almost magical in white, walked with her father from the house. She had a look of calm and even pleasure on her face although she felt her lower lip quivering. She lowered her head for a moment to gain control of it. Her husband-to-be was smiling as she came towards him, Sophie was smiling, nearly everyone was.

During the ceremony when it came to the crowns that seemed woven of cloth with tails of ribbon, the minister said,

“Oh, Lord, crown them with glory and honor.”

They put them on and then exchanged them and did the same with the rings, three times, from bride to groom and groom to bride to symbolize the weaving together of their lives as everyone watched in rapt silence. At the end they drank together, husband and wife, from a single cup of wine. There was applause and congratulations and embraces before the party made its way indoors where champagne and a buffet were waiting.

He had asked her, more or less on impulse, if she would like to come to dinner with Kenneth Wells and his wife, neither of whom she had met, who were down for a few days to talk about the book he was writing and to break the boredom of the country. It seemed the right occasion.

“Have you met them?” Bowman said. “I think you’ll like them.”

He had not been able to conceal that he had been for a while attracted to Ann, he was not sure how greatly. But he did not want a romance, an episode. Their work was too closely related for that. He felt it would be crude. On the other hand, there she was, he now saw, in her heels and quiet manner permitting him to think about her.

She arrived at the restaurant that night wearing black pants and a white, ruffled shirt and Wells stood up like an obedient schoolboy when she joined them.

“I love your books,” she told him.

Michele Wells was drinking a glass of wine. Wells had ordered a bourbon old fashioned.

“What’s that?” Ann asked.

He described it briefly.

“My father used to drink them,” he explained.

“I’ll try one.”

“Do you drink them?” he asked with some pleasure.

“No, this will be the first time.”

“I haven’t heard that for a while,” Wells said. “Actually when he died my father was drinking scotch. He’d had a heart attack and one evening he asked for a drink. He wanted a scotch with a little water and he asked the nurse if she would have one with him. They sipped their drinks and talked a little and when he’d finished my father said to her, how about one for the road? She poured it and he was drinking it, and he died.”

Wells was stimulated by the presence of another woman. His combed-back gray hair and glasses made him look Germanic. There was nothing much to do in Chatham in the evening except watch television.

They’d been watching Brideshead Revisited , Michele said. “The actor who plays Sebastian is wonderful.”

Wells made a vulgar remark.

“I thought this was going to be a clean in body, clean in mind night,” she said.

“Ah, yes. I remember,” he admitted.

In fact she liked obscene talk, in private, especially if it had some literary or historical flavor. He sometimes referred to her pussy as the French Concession and went on from there. He had fallen in love with his wife before he ever saw her, he said. He saw a pair of legs beneath some sheets being hung up next door to dry.

“You never know what they’re drawn to,” Michele said. “The next thing, we were off to Mexico.”

When the waiter brought the menus, Wells took off his glasses in order to examine his more closely. Later he asked a number of questions about the dishes and how they were prepared, unwilling to be hurried. There was something about his homeliness and manner that allowed him to do this.

“What’s everyone want, red or white?” Bowman asked.

It was decided red.

“What’s your best red?”

“The Amarone,” the waiter said.

“We’ll have a bottle of that.”

“Very good wine,” Wells said. “It comes from the Veneto, probably the most civilized part of Italy. Venice was the great city of the world for centuries. When London was filthy and sprawling, Venice was a queen. Shakespeare laid four of his plays there, Othello , The Merchant , Romeo and Juliet… ”

“ Romeo and Juliet ,” Ann said. “Isn’t that in Verona?”

“Well, that’s nearby,” Wells said.

When the food came, he turned his entire attention to what was on his plate. He ate like a favored priest and he responded while chewing.