Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

“Are we supposed to be the Indians or the white men?” a fat boy asked.

“Both. The truth lies in between. Now make art,” she said. She picked up a piece of orange paper and scissors, cut it into the shape of an indistinguishable animal. “Art,” she proclaimed. She must have seen the questions in the children’s faces because her neck reddened. “Anything is art,” she said. “Don’t you get it? Everything in the world is art.”

Cricket picked up a piece of paper and held the scissors to its edge. Miss Nolan walked over to a record player on her desk and laid the needle down. Relentless harpsichord music filled the room. For an hour, the teacher stood above her pupils silently, while they tried their very best to make art. They were afraid. They cut and glued and pressed and glued again. They did not understand what they were making, or why. It was not the paper-plate turkeys they were used to, the holiday cards, the steps one through four. Cricket was just as confused but she loved the feeling, her fingers tacky and feather-stuck. The children ended up with crazed messes: a clothespin covered in pink fabric, a rat’s nest of construction paper, everything glue-soaked. At the end of the hour, the children let go of the breath they had all been holding. The teacher lifted the needle and the room fell silent. She laid the messes out in a line with a sign that said, “Pilgrims, Indians.”

“See,” she said. “You actually made something. You.” She pointed to Jack Bishop, who was good at football. She turned to Birdie Breyer who was small for her age, whose front teeth were bigger than her eyes, who must have weighed hardly more than a fawn, and Miss Nolan picked her up and brought her to her own briny face. “Even you, little girl. Art.” Cricket was in love.

* * *

ONE OF THE NEIGHBORS, Louise, had called Fern in the morning with a request. “I need a bride. Today,” she said. She explained that she volunteered at the old folks’ home where the Alzheimer’s patients had forgotten almost everything. They no longer remembered the faces of their own children and everyone had given up trying to make them happy. So, Louise said, she had had an idea: a wedding. White dress, tuxedo, half the room for the bride’s side and half for the groom. An altar. It would not matter that no one in the congregation knew these people; they did not know anyone. They would feel good, and maybe they would even see something familiar in the bride or groom, maybe they would have the sensation of being in a room full of family. No one invited them anywhere anymore because they might wander off, might walk into traffic, might say something unfortunate. Yet Louise felt that they deserved a celebration, deserved to go to bed with feet sore from dancing. Fiction, in this case, made it possible. “My original bride got the stomach flu,” she said. “It’s at one o’clock today. You’ll be done before your kids are out of school. Can you do it?”

“Edgar isn’t in town,” Fern said, not ready to admit what was happening.

“No, no, not Edgar. I have a different groom. Someone cheerier.”

The instructions were: attain a cheap dress (the other bride was three sizes smaller than Fern), whatever hair and makeup she could manage in time. After last night, Fern was glad to seek out this small revenge. Edgar had been the one to kiss another woman but now she was the one to be someone else’s bride. Fern looked in the phone book for dress shops and it was a young feeling to run her finger down the listings, to dial, to say, “I need a wedding dress right away. Do you have any sample sizes available now?” At the dress shop she tried on the options, chose the most expensive. It had long sleeves and a high neck, a ruffle around the collar. The silk was heavy and cool on her body. Fern wrote a check so that Edgar would see what she had done. She wanted to punish him by spending everything that was left.

Fern went to the beauty parlor and had her girl curl her hair into big feathery layers, Glory Jefferson layers. She sat in the chair watching her head turn prettier, thumbing a fashion magazine two seasons out of date. Fern had not said she was getting fake-married and she did not mention what her real husband had done or the fact that she might be poor.

Fern thought of her real wedding, which had been covered in the local paper and reported, as all weddings joining two good families, as perfectly charming. In the pictures: the older ladies in wide skirts puffed with tulle, beehives and cat-eye glasses. The younger ladies in shift dresses and pumps and heavy black eyeliner. It had seemed peculiar to Fern that the grown-ups all condoned this event, which would mean the end of their ownership of her and Edgar. It seemed like they ought to have put up more of a fight to keep the children whom they had birthed and raised. Just like that? Married and gone? But everyone had seemed so pleased.

It had been warm in the sun. The guests were all parent-friends, not Fern’s or Edgar’s. To Fern’s parents the guests had said, Congratulations and Good match and Such a beautiful day . To the bartender they had said, Gin and plenty of lime. To each other they had said, Tell me more about that gorgeous pheasant-shaped brooch you’re wearing , and, Where are you having Bill’s trousers hemmed now that Henning’s is closed? and I should think that the coloreds would rather join a country club of their own making. Glasses had been drained, noses had been powdered, the day had grown a little hotter.

To the music, Fern, in a dress with an empire waist and a huge skirt, white gloves up to her elbows, her hair frozen in place and a bouquet of primroses, had walked with her father down the grass aisle. Everyone had smiled at her, predicting her future: four children, a lifetime of parties, the yearly vacation, a long retirement and a quiet death, announced in the same newspaper as the wedding would be (a good woman saw her name in the paper three times: when she was born, when she was married and when she died; she should otherwise make no news). All according to plan, the guests’ smiles had said. Fern had felt something turn in her stomach. She had wanted those things, most likely. She had wanted Edgar and babies and the feeling of summer returning each year, the smell, and setting up the hose for the children to spray each other, and then autumn and the trees turning riotous and orange and she would bake something for everyone to have after supper. The rotations, everything returning again and again, each time just enough the same to feel like coming home, but so different too.

There Edgar had stood, waiting for her, his posture his own and his thick glasses clean and reflecting light. Promises had been promised, dances danced, toasts sealed with clinking flutes. Every time Fern had seen Edgar’s parents, they had been laughing. Her own mother smiled, but Fern knew she was disappointed — wifedom was not something Evelyn held in regard. Paul had seemed truly happy, but he had gone inside with a migraine before the ceremony was over.

To Fern, Edgar had said, “Now that we’re married we never have to go to a party like this again.”

The bride and groom had been released finally into their life. His parents had rented a car for them to drive away in, a white convertible Rolls-Royce with a huge chrome grill and whitewall tires and white leather seats. The car had been packed, the chauffeur was at the ready, the hotel had been paid for by one father or another, and the couple had kept looking at each other but then looking away again. They had held hands in the backseat as they were driven out into their future. Fern had felt the very specific warmth of Edgar’s skin, different from anyone else’s. Suddenly, the car had slowed and they had both jolted forward. The road ahead of them had turned all silver, shimmering and slippery, like mercury had spilled over it. It had smelled like the sea.