Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage

Joe Dobek’s body was found and shipped home, and they held a funeral for him on the first cool day in September. Even before the war began, St. Cassian’s cemetery had been running out of room, but they squeezed him between two strangers’ graves from long, long ago when the neighborhood was Irish. The mossy headstones of O’Malley and O’Leary flanked Joe’s pearly white one, and Mrs. Dobek fell into the habit of laying flowers on all three graves when she came to visit Joe. John O’Malley had lived ninety-two years and died at rest in the Lord. O’Leary (no first name) had come into this world and left again in the space of a single day. Mrs. Dobek told her friends that sometimes, when she should have been praying for Joe, she thought instead about the O’Leary baby’s mother — how terribly, achingly sad she must have been to lose her infant, but how much more she could have lost: all the years of his growing up and becoming a separate person with quirks and foibles and special ways of doing things, like half breaking her neck when he hugged her, and turning the dog’s ears inside out, and pretending to mistake his little sister for Betty Grable.

She also said that when she first heard they’d found Joe’s body, she had felt a bolt of something she would almost have to call anger. They made it sound as if he’d just been thoughtlessly mislaid, she said. Like somebody’s cast-off toy. When she herself had been so careful, all these years, to keep him safe and healthy.

Nowadays so many couples were marrying in a hurry that people had grown accustomed to abbreviated, slapdash weddings. In the past there would have been months of sewing, weeks of cooking, a giant party afterwards where the guests tossed envelopes of money into the bride’s scooped apron, but lately it seemed that getting married required no more forethought than going to the movies.

So when Mrs. Anton told her customers, on a Friday in late September, that Michael’s wedding would take place the following afternoon, they weren’t completely scandalized. And when she said they were welcome to come if they wanted, eight or nine women accepted. No men, as it happened. The men claimed they couldn’t see themselves entering a Protestant church, but that was just an excuse. You know how men are about wearing ties on a Saturday.

Even though people talked as if Pauline hailed from the moon, her neighborhood was barely a twenty-minute walk from St. Cassian Street — a very pleasant walk, if the weather was good. And the weather on Michael’s wedding day was beautiful. The air was crisp and fall-like, and as the women left their own neighborhood behind they began to see little fenced trees that were turning lipstick red or egg-yolk yellow. They strolled at a leisurely pace, commenting on the houses they passed, which were row houses still but wider and somehow messier — the fronts not perfectly uniform, the curtains all different colors, the stoops surrounded by disorganized bits of green. The church, when it came into view, was clapboard, and the windows were not stained glass but a monotone pink, pebbled like the windows in bathrooms. About this the women said nothing. They were determined to behave impeccably. They all wore their most American clothes, dark and severe, with dark hats and spotless white gloves, and they carried wrapped and ribboned gifts because where Pauline lived, brides were given items from Hutzler’s. Everybody knew that much.

Leading the way was Wanda Bryk — the youngest by twenty years or more, but clearly the one in charge. She instructed them as they climbed the church steps. “Pauline’s parents will be here, of course, and her three sisters, and her oldest sister’s husband who’s got asthma so don’t say anything, I mean don’t ask why he hasn’t enlisted because he feels just awful about it… No, no bridesmaids, no best man… not even a real procession! We’ll just all sit near the front and the minister’s going to — oh, there she is! There’s Pauline now!”

Pauline? Herself? Yes, that was who it was, all right. She was standing in the foyer, big as life, wearing a disappointingly plain ivory-colored street dress and talking to an old man. When she saw the women she said, “Oh! How nice of you all to come! Michael, look who’s here!”

Good Lord, yes, there was Michael, too, leaning on his cane not a yard away from his bride. Apparently they saw no harm in meeting before the wedding. Michael wore his pinchy suit and a white shirt and a red tie. He looked so handsome! The women were proud of him. They kissed him, patted his arm, pretended his collar needed straightening. “Mama’s on her way,” he told them. “She’s coming with Uncle Bron.” Then he introduced them to Pauline’s mother. “Mom Barclay,” he called her; goodness, that was fast! Mrs. Barclay was trim and attractive, with Pauline’s dark-blond hair, and she made such a to-do over the St. Cassian’s women, complimenting their dresses and their hats and their wrapping paper, exclaiming at how far they must have walked, that they began to feel uncertain. Then a young sailor arrived, and Mrs. Barclay turned her gracious smile on him, and the women were free to go on inside.

The church had baby-blue walls and blond wood pews, which made it seem lacking in mystery. Up front, Pauline’s friend Anna — the girl with the handkerchief that first day in Anton’s Grocery — was playing the piano, her back to the congregation but her smooth brown pageboy and her faultless posture easily identifiable. Already several guests were sitting here and there. None of them was familiar, but shortly after the women had arranged themselves along the length of one pew, Michael’s mother came down the aisle on the arm of her brother-in-law. She wore a navy polka-dot dress they’d never seen before, and a white cloth rose was pinned to the V of her neckline. When Mrs. Serge said “Psst!” Mrs. Anton gave the women a squinty, superficial smile and then instantly sobered, as if she had to keep her full attention on the business at hand. Elsewhere, though, people were talking in normal tones and even getting up to join in other conversations. None of them seemed to have presents. Were presents wrong in some way? The seating appeared to be random, but Mrs. Anton settled in a first-row pew, which the St. Cassian’s women agreed was only proper.

A door opened behind the altar and a pale young man in a black suit emerged. He walked over to the pulpit, set down a Bible, and smiled at the congregation. For a while this had no effect, but gradually the guests who’d risen to converse went into a little flurry of returning to their seats. Then Mrs. Barclay came down the aisle with a worn-looking gray-haired man — no doubt Mr. Barclay — and they settled in the other front pew. Anna stopped playing the piano. The minister cleared his throat. A hush fell. Everyone looked toward the door at the rear.

Nothing happened.

People exchanged glances. Maybe the couple would enter from elsewhere; was that the plan? They faced forward again. The minister started leafing through his Bible, but not as if he meant to read from it.

Whispers started circulating up and down the pews. A child asked a question that was laughingly silenced, after which the atmosphere relaxed. Casual conversations resumed in several spots. Mrs. Anton’s back stayed rigid and she went on looking straight ahead, but Mrs. Barclay kept twisting in her seat to check behind her. Obviously she had no more information than her guests.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Nowak asked Wanda.

Instead of answering, Wanda rose and stepped out of the pew. She started back up the side aisle, her heels clopping briskly, while the women looked at each other.

A glass of water stood at the right-hand edge of the pulpit, and now the minister picked it up and took a token, unconvincing sip. He set the glass back down. He coughed. He really was astonishingly young. “I hope they’re not experiencing any last-minute doubts, ha-ha,” he said.