Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“But they’re old enough to have babies, huh?” Mrs. MacLean asked, raising her eyebrows, her face getting redder.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Mr. Harder said. “I refuse to treat my own daughter like a criminal.”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said.

“Even if we can decide among us,” Gottleib said, “that the marriage might work?”

“There are only two people who should decide that,” Mrs. MacLean said.

Mr. Harder smiled at her. “Right! My daughter and your son. The rest of us are just excess baggage. I suggest we break out the whisky and drink to the bride and groom.”

“Alex!” Mrs. Harder said sharply. “This thing is not settled!”

“What do you want to do? Call in the district attorney? Send Linda to jail? For God’s sake, look at her, Patricia. She’s a woman, your married daughter. Kiss her, hold her, Patricia. Love her.”

“I want it annulled,” Mrs. Harder said firmly.

“Could I... could I talk to Eve, please?” Linda asked.

Eve looked up. She was beginning to shake her head, but Linda took her hand and led her from the room. They went directly to the bedroom that had been Eve’s when she lived with the family. The room was now a second television room, but some of Eve’s old decorations were still on the wall — a pennant Larry had bought her at a Randall’s Island football game, a Lexington Avenue Express sign which she and Larry had stolen on a scavenger hunt, a framed photograph of her and Larry taken at Palisades. Amusement Park, a program from the Junior prom Larry had escorted her to at the Astor. Linda closed the door.

There was something of the past attached to the room, something of the innocent teen-ager lingering about the transformed room, something of the memory of Linda coming in to talk to her when she’d been a little girl, to talk to Eve before a date or sometimes when she returned home late at night. And suddenly, in the room that used to be hers, she could remember a Saturday in spring, the window open and the curtains rustling in a mild breeze. She could remember French notes spread open on her desk by the window, could remember the sound of Beethoven in the living room. And she thought...

Linda came to her.

“Eve?” she said.

She embraced her sister with sudden ferocity. “Oh, my baby,” she said. “Are you happy, Linda? Are you happy darling?”

“Yes, Eve. Eve, I love him so much. What’s wrong with Mama? Doesn’t she know we’re in love? Can’t you talk to her, Eve? Can’t you make her see?”

“Darling, darling...” Linda sat on the floor at her feet now, and Eve stroked the long black hair and then lifted Linda’s chin and looked into her eyes. “Does he love you very much, Linda?” she asked.

“Yes, Eve.”

“Are you sure, Linda? Be sure. I feel so old. I feel so goddamn old.”

Linda looked at her, puzzled. She took Eve’s hand and said, “Is something wrong?”

“No. I’m very glad you’re married. It’ll be nice having a married sister. It’ll be nice being an aunt someday.”

“Do you like him, Eve?”

“Do you like him, baby? That’s what counts.”

“Yes, yes. Oh, yes.”

“And you love him? You’re sure? You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

“Linda...”

She wanted to tell her sister about marriage. There were so many things Linda should know about marriage, the wonderful things and the horrible things, the security and the uncertainty, the tenderness and the cruelty, the excitement and the boredom, the ease and the difficulty. She wanted to tell her sister whom she loved very much in that instant, who seemed to her clean and untouched, young and innocent, about this wonderful and terrible thing called marriage. And when she tried to tell her, there was nothing she could say.

She could remember events in her own marriage, remember them as if they were happening right then, but they didn’t seem important enough to transmit; they seemed only highly personal incidents which were a part of her and Larry but which could not possibly apply to anyone else’s life. And again she was confused because an impersonal note had been introduced into the life she shared with Larry, a secretive note which, intruded upon the highly personal and private thing which was marriage. She felt almost complete soaring joy for her sister, and only despondent sadness for herself and her own baffling marriage. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry, and she did neither. She sat in undecided stunned silence, not knowing what to say or what to do. Her sister was starting upon a cycle the very cycle she herself had entered eight years before. What could she tell her? How could she prepare her?

Could she say, “Baby, baby, life isn’t just a bowl of cherries?”

Could she say, “There’ll be ups and downs, Linda. Ride with them.”

Could she call upon all the old clichés, all the banalities, all the tommyrot that was passed from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, from elder sister to younger sister? How could she tell anyone else the proper way to enter the most private and personal arrangement ever devised by human beings for human beings?

Wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, Eve said only, “We’ll talk to Mama. You’ll be happy, darling.”

And she hoped Linda would.

He called Maggie as soon as he got out of the Harder apartment on Wednesday morning.

“My God, Larry, where have you been?” she asked.

He told her about Linda’s elopement, and she told him how frantic she’d been, waiting for him to call. She’d walked past his house yesterday only to find it locked tighter than a vault. She couldn’t imagine what had happened.

“Are we going tomorrow?” she asked. “I haven’t known what to say to Don.”

“Yes, we’re going,” he said.

“But how will you get away?”

“I’ll just leave. Settled or not. They don’t need me here to settle it.”

“What about this thing from Puerto Rico?” she asked.

For a stunned moment he was completely speechless. Then all he could say was “What?”

“Felicia.”

“Who? What are you talking about, Maggie?”

“The hurricane. Felicia. Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to be headed this way,” she said. “It passed a hundred miles north of Puerto Rico, and they think it’s coming toward the coast. The radio said it might hit us tomorrow.”

“What’s that got to do with us?”

“I thought you might not like to drive in—”

“I’ve driven in bad weather before. Where are we going to meet, Maggie? What time?”

“The post office?”

“No, not for this. It’s too risky.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a luncheonette on the edge of town. It’s called the Paradise or something. Right next to the bowling alley. Do you know it?”

“I’ll find it. What time?”

“Eight o’clock?”

“No,” she said, “it’ll have to be much later than that. Don’s mother isn’t coming out until ten. She’s having dinner with some friends and then they’re driving her here.”

“What time then?”

“Eleven?”

“Fine. Maggie, I’ve got to make this short. I’m on my way up to the Altar house.”

“Is it finished?”

“I hope so. This is a final inspection.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

“We’ll be together all weekend,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Eleven at the luncheonette, right?”