Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

I said, “I want. .” What a lousy way to start. I dropped my hands and stared at my shoes. I wanted to cry. I hadn’t even kissed her yet. “I don’t know,” I said. “I feel ridiculous. I can’t believe—”

“What do you want, Mr. Sharp?” asked Jessica.

I said, “I want you to marry me.”

At the piano Joseph burst into laughter. He must have overheard ten proposals a month; it was liable to get comic. All right. My hat was on the Victrola cabinet by the door. I’d just get it and leave.

But Jessica was looking at me. Her eyes were cherrywood brown. “That’s it?” she asked. She took my hands again, businesslike. “That’s easy. The way you were going on, I thought you wanted the moon.”

I wondered whether I’d heard her right. She seemed to be proceeding with the lesson, even though her brother had stopped playing. Instead he stroked the keys in a mumbling way, as though the piano was their father, who didn’t approve of the match.

“It’s easy?” I said cautiously.

“Perfectly easy,” Jessica said, and for a moment lifted her right hand to my cheekbone — she was still dancing — and said, “We can make plans later.”

“Oh, brother,” said Joseph, still laughing, still playing with the piano keys. “I suppose these things get easier with practice. But him ?”

So I stopped dancing again, and Jessica frowned in a teacherly way. I’d thought he liked me. I kept expecting him to run out of the room, but he didn’t. It was his house too. He suddenly began to play something fancy and classical, which was what he preferred to play anyhow, he said, not this ridiculous popular stuff where you had to listen to the words to know whether it was a happy or unhappy song.

Where do you take a total stranger, once you’ve proposed to her? We went to the screened porch, listening to Joseph pummel the ivories. In half an hour Jessica had a group tap-dancing lesson.

“He won’t forgive me,” she said, and then, “Of course he will.”

“Of course he will,” I said. I was holding her hand.

She turned it over to look at her wristwatch. “Oy. The tap dancers will be here any minute.”

I turned her hand back over. “Cancel them.”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” she said. “Bad business.” But she was smiling at me, smiling at me, out in the sun for me, both of us sitting on the back steps. Inside, Joseph played music to go mad by.

“Tomorrow’s lessons, I’ll cancel,” said Jessica. “California?”

“If that’s okay with you.”

“I’m portable,” she said.

“We could take Joseph, with us, you know.” I didn’t want to take him, but I lived in a big house, and he could play piano at Rocky’s parties. We’d cheer the guy up some, find him jobs, then move him out.

“No,” said Jessica. “Joe should be leading his own life. He lives too much for me these days.”

“But you won’t change your mind?” I said. “You can change your mind. But please, please, don’t change your mind.”

She was holding my hat in her free hand; she twirled it around and around. The dog was asleep. The outside of her right foot just touched the outside of my left foot. I had been engaged to be married for fifteen minutes, and I still hadn’t kissed her, and I could not imagine how I got here, her knee swinging back and forth and sometimes hitting mine. She tossed the hat in the air and caught it by the brim. “I once did a dance with a hat, a Chinese one. I never change my mind,” she said. “Ask anyone. I’ll give you references.” Then she put the hat on my head, and kissed me on the cheek. Time for you to go . Just then I heard the clatter of taps on the brick walk in front of the house.

“I want you to know I’m very happy,” she said. “I’m sad that Joe’s sad, but mostly I’m happy. You’re very dear to me, all of a sudden.”

I didn’t think she loved me then, exactly. My feelings for her were so grand they couldn’t possibly be mutual. Maybe she was making a mistake. Still, I’d take advantage. I’d bring her to California. I’d build her a dance studio, buy a piano. We’d go to hear the best music. Joe would come for visits. We’d redecorate my house with things she liked, posters of bullfighters and Balinese masks and dark wallpaper full of birds. I’d trick her, slowly, into loving the air around me, and she could work her way in. In other words, I hoped — as Rose had said — that if Jessica was making a mistake, I could turn it into a lovable blunder.

Grief, guilt, true love — I didn’t know whether love was a hole you’d have fallen into anyhow, or a trapdoor that sprung open only under certain conditions. A hole, I think now: an orchestra pit. An ungodly canyon that makes an ugly noise something like music when you tumble in. Your job, then, is to make it seem as though you did it on purpose.

I hadn’t told Rocky about Jessica. I had a feeling he might be jealous; he’d always adored my devotion to him. In the past, I’d toss aside any girl if he wanted to go out drinking. I didn’t think Jessica had anything to do with how I felt about Rock, but I well knew he was a guy who compared the slices of cake on an arriving dessert tray and got disappointed, really disappointed, when the largest was delivered to somebody who wasn’t him. He measured everything that way, glasses of liquor and applause and billing. Just a little more, please. Give me a little more than you think I could possibly want.

Love, like a hanging, concentrates the mind. Rocky would tell you it’s for the same reason.

I told my sisters they’d have to get ready for a wedding. I cabled Rock: Am engaged to be married but don’t worry will be taking the girl out of Iowa you know the rest .

He cabled back: A wife? Only Moses Sharensky could sit shiva with a girl in his lap .

All week long I’d been wearing the hodgepodge of clothing I’d managed to toss into my suitcase in California; the only good suit I’d brought still had cemetery mud across the knee. Who else to help me with my wedding duds: I went to Sharp’s to talk to Ed.

“No time for alterations,” I told him. “Wedding’s tomorrow.”

“You always do things suddenly,” Ed told me, “and I always get you dressed in time. Look at the way the jacket bags at the waist! I’ll take it in tonight.”

I looked around the store. The old-fashioned headless mannequins wore some pretty slick jackets. “You’ll be making some changes around here, huh?”

“Some,” he said, turning back my cuffs, chalking them. The pins threaded through his lapel looked like medals of valor for service in some parismonious war. “It’ll still be your father’s shop. It’ll still be Sharp’s.”

“No,” I said. “You’re going to buy it. If it were up to me, I’d give it away, but there’s my sisters to worry about. Hey,” I said suddenly, “how ’bout I buy it and give it to you?”

Ed tugged at my lapels affectionately. “Silly. No. But thank you.”

“There’s no dishonor to it. If I’d inherited the store outright, I’d give it to you.”

“Go like this.” He flapped his arms and I imitated him. The jacket felt fine. “I’m going to buy the store,” he said. “There’s something else I want to do, but I have to ask your permission. I’ll probably do it anyway, but I need to ask.”

“Anything, Ed. You know that.”

“Stop flapping,” he said, catching me by the elbows. “Does it fit? Good. I’m going to marry your sister.”

This made me flap one more time, to escape the hands still holding my arms, so I could clap him on the shoulders. “No kidding! My sister! One question?”

“Oh!” he said. “Rose!”