“You made that decision for me?” I responded bitterly. “Even when there were rumors he would be at Dreamland you said nothing to me. Less than nothing, for you lied.”
“Is the truth always the best remedy?” Maureen wondered. Perhaps it was a question she asked herself. As she thought this over, she saw that I had been to the market, and had tarried when I spied Mr. Morris. “You should be at home, miss. The fish must be put on ice immediately or it will go bad and I shan’t be able to make supper tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to be poisoned by a piece of bad fish, would you?”
“It’s stinking already,” I said. “Unlike the flowers for Malia,” I continued, with a meaningful nod to the bouquet in the Wolfman’s hands.
I didn’t wish to hurt Maureen but rather to protect her, for I worried that Raymond Morris might not be as trustworthy as he appeared. For his part, Mr. Morris stammered and said a few words about the splendor of flowers, quoting from Whitman, “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” This may well have been the great Whitman’s opinion, but I knew for a fact that Mr. Morris valued books above all other things. If he might misrepresent his high regard for books, he might be willing to lie about other issues. I wondered if I’d caught him in a clandestine relationship with Malia. Maureen, however, did not share my suspicions. Instead she turned on me, rapping her knuckles on my head, as she used to when I was a little girl and she found me misbehaving.
“Do you think I don’t know who these flowers were meant for?” she said to me. “Are you trying to embarrass Mr. Morris?”
She then hotly announced they were on their way to a wedding, even though Mr. Morris tried his best to hush her. The bride in question, she went on, before her companion could stop her, was none other than Malia.
“That’s what you get for snooping around, miss,” she said to me. “The truth and nothing but.”
“But why wasn’t I invited?” I had tried to befriend Malia from the start, when we were only girls. Despite my attempts, she had always been shy and somewhat standoffish. Still, I was surprised not to be invited to such an important event.
“Don’t you understand? Your father can’t know—he doesn’t believe in such unions. The groom is a regular fellow. Your father would waste no time in letting Malia go. If you had known, there might be a situation.”
I was hurt and mortified that I’d been kept in the dark. “A situation? Do you mean to say I would tell him and betray her?”
Who were we to each other, after all this time? Did she not know where my loyalties lay? I glared at Maureen and briskly moved away from her, as though she were a stranger, for at that moment I thought perhaps she was. Now she was the one to look at me with a hurt expression.
“You weren’t told out of concern for your welfare,” Mr. Morris stepped in to say. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
“Really?” I said, blinking back tears. “When you didn’t know the world, when you’d never spoken to a woman or walked down a street or stood in the rain, that didn’t hurt you?”
Maureen approached and tried to make amends. “Please understand,” she said, but I did not. I was deeply wounded by yet another deception, having been treated as if I were a child who couldn’t be trusted. When Maureen attempted to embrace me, I shrugged from beneath her touch. I wouldn’t say good-bye, and watched sullenly as they went on their way.
I hated to be thought of as my father’s daughter and nothing more. I might have flounced off, but curiosity had always been my downfall, and now it bloomed inside my breast. I left behind the fish I’d bought for some street cats, then followed Maureen and Mr. Morris down Neptune Avenue to Ocean Parkway. It was a long walk. Their destination was the Church of the Guardian Angel, an imposing Gothic stone building. I had never been to a Catholic church before, and this one had rows of beautiful pine pews and carved fittings. It was a space that could accommodate more than three hundred worshipers. Today there were perhaps fifteen attendees, half of them people I recognized from the museum. The Durante brothers, wearing stylish black suits, stood up in place of Malia’s father, a man she’d never known, and walked her down the aisle. There was the moody scent of incense, and dozens of candles were aglow. If an angel were ever to come to earth, I thought this would surely be the place he would choose for his arrival.
I ducked behind a column so that I might remain hidden from view during the service, not that anyone would notice me. All eyes were on Malia and her betrothed, both of whom stood like wondrous statues at the altar while the priest recited prayers in Latin. The prayers were like music, a river of words I didn’t understand, though I recognized them as a blessing. From where I was concealed, Malia looked nothing like the Butterfly Girl, that marvelous creature who perched on a wooden swing in the Museum of Extraordinary Things, resplendent in her orange and black costume, wings fashioned of silk and wire strapped in place of the arms she would have had if she’d been another girl. Now she wore a white taffeta dress, and a stunning veil of Portuguese-made lace tumbling down her back. Her groom stood beside her, a man of average height and appearance, love-struck, unable to take his eyes from his bride. He was a completely ordinary individual, not handsome or tall, and from bits of murmured conversation I overheard, I learned he was a streetcar driver. That was how they’d met, on a streetcar Malia and her mother had taken on an outing to Brighton Beach.
Many people cried during the ceremony, Maureen among them. She downright wept, and I was surprised to see her so emotionally wrought. Afterward, the guests rushed to congratulate both bride and groom before heading off to a small celebration at the groom’s family’s house. By then, I was halfway home. Because I couldn’t bear to go back to my father’s house, I went to the shore instead. I sat on a bench and breathed in the salt air. My gloved hands were folded on my lap, and the cotton fabric felt as if it had been spun from shards of glass. I knew what was inside of me: the green tendrils of jealousy. I wanted nothing more than to be an ordinary girl with the man I’d seen in the woods in love with me, though this seemed a more impossible occurrence than swimming out into Gravesend Bay, across the Atlantic Ocean to my father’s homeland of France.
When Malia came to work the following day, I nodded a greeting. I did not offer my congratulations or ask why she appeared so radiant. I pretended I had never stood behind the column in the church to witness her joy. I noticed that she, too, went about her business as if nothing had changed. Because she could not wear a ring, her husband had given her a simple gold necklace, which was clasped around her throat. She acted as if she had always had this lovely ornament, and made no mention of it. She gracefully slipped on her costume and chatted with her mother in their pretty, birdlike language. If she felt my gaze upon her, I assume she was accustomed to being stared at, just as I was used to wanting what I could not have.
But all things changed, or so it was said. Maureen once told me she believed she was the last person in the world who might find happiness. She believed she didn’t deserve it, she said, and had many times thought of throwing her life away, for it did not serve her well. Perhaps in the great scheme of things, another, more deserving person would be granted her time on earth. But each time she had considered ending her life, she’d had second thoughts. Who would have made your breakfast? she said to me. Who would have met the Wolfman when he first came into our yard, wearing his cloak, beaten by the world? Love happens in such a way, Maureen told me. It walks up to you, and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become.