“You threw a little high.”
“You’re taller than me. I sometimes overestimate by how much.”
She picks up the box from the floor and opens it.
“It’s for you,” A.J. says. “It’s . . .” He gets down on one knee, clasps her hand between his, and tries not to feel phony, like an actor in a play. “Let’s get married,” he says with an almost pained expression. “I know I’m stuck on this island, that I’m poor, a single father, and in a business with somewhat diminishing returns. I know that your mother hates me, that I’m quite obviously crap when it comes to hosting author events.”
“This is an odd proposal,” she says. “Lead with your strong stuff, A.J.”
“All I can say is . . . All I can say is we’ll figure it out, I swear. When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”
She knows that what he says is true. He is, for the reasons he’s said, a terrible match for her or anybody else for that matter. The travel is going to be murder. This man, this A.J., is prickly and argumentative. He thinks he is never wrong. Maybe he never is wrong.
But he had been wrong. Infallible A.J. had not sniffed out Leon Friedman as a fraud. She’s not sure why this matters at this moment, but it does. Maybe it is evidence of some boyish, delusional part of him. She cocks her head. I will keep this secret because I love you. As Leon Friedman (Leonora Ferris?) once wrote, “A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy.”
She furrows her brow, and A.J. thinks she is going to say no. “A good man is hard to find,” she says finally.
“Do you mean the O’Connor story? The one on your desk. It’s an awfully dark thing to bring up at a time like this.”
“No, I mean you. I’ve been looking forever. It was only two trains and a boat away.”
“You can skip some of the trains if you drive,” A.J. tells her.
“And what would you know about driving?” Amelia asks.
THE NEXT FALL, just after the leaves have turned, Amelia and A.J. get married.
Lambiase’s mother, who has come as his date, says to her son, “I like all weddings, but isn’t it particularly lovely when two grown-ups decide to get married?” Lambiase’s mother would like to see her son remarry some day.
“I know what you mean, Ma. Doesn’t seem like they’re going in with their eyes closed,” Lambiase says. “He knows she isn’t perfect. She knows he definitely isn’t perfect. They know there’s no such thing as perfect.”
Maya has chosen to be ring bearer because the job has more responsibility than flower girl. “If you lose a flower, you get another flower,” Maya reasons. “If you lose the ring, everyone is sad forever. The ring bearer has much more power.”
“You sound like Gollum,” A.J. says.
“Who’s Gollum?” Maya wants to know.
“Someone very nerdy that your father likes,” Amelia says.
Before the service, Amelia gives Maya a present: a small box of bookplates that read this book belongs to maya tamerlane fikry. At this stage in her life, Maya is fond of things with her name on them.
“I’m glad we’re going to be related,” Amelia says. “I really like you, Maya.”
Maya is occupied with pasting her first bookplate into the book she’s currently reading, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. “Yeah,” she says. “Oh, wait.” She takes a bottle of orange nail polish from her pocket. “For you.”
“I don’t have any orange,” Amelia says. “Thank you.”
“I know. That’s why I picked it.”
Amy turns the bottle over and reads the bottom: A Good Man-darin Is Hard to Find.
A.J. had suggested inviting Leon Friedman to the wedding, an idea Amelia rejects. They do agree on a passage from The Late Bloomer to be read at the service by one of Amelia’s college friends.
“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
None of Amelia’s other college friends recognize the woman who is reading the passage, but none of them find this particularly odd either. Vassar is a small college, though certainly not the kind of place where everyone can know everyone, and Amelia has always had a knack for making friends with people from a variety of social circles.
The Girls in Their Summer Dresses
1939 / Irwin Shaw Man watches women besides his wife. The wife doesn’t approve. Lovely twist, more like a turn, at the end. You’re a good reader, and you’ll probably see it coming. (Is a twist less satisfying if you know it’s coming? Is a twist that you can’t predict symptomatic of bad construction? These are things to consider when writing.)
Not particularly apropos of writing but . . . Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you’re the only person in the room.
—A.J.F.
Ismay waits in the foyer of her house. Her legs are crossed so that one foot is wrapped around the calf of her other leg. She once saw an anchorwoman sit that way, and it had impressed her. A woman needs skinny legs and flexible knees to accomplish it. She wonders if the dress she’s picked for the day will be too light. The material is silk, and summer is over.
She looks at her phone. It’s 11 a.m., which means the ceremony will have already begun. Perhaps she should leave without him?
As she is already late, she decides that there is no point in going alone. If she waits, she can yell at him when he arrives. She finds pleasure where she can.
Daniel comes through the door at 11:26. “Sorry,” he says. “A few of the kids from my class wanted to go for a drink. One thing led to another, you know how it is.”
“Yes,” she says. She doesn’t feel like yelling anymore. Silence will be better.
“I crashed in my office. My back is killing me.” He kisses her on the cheek. “You look fantastic.” He whistles. “You still have great legs, Izzie.”
“Get changed,” she says. “You smell like a liquor store. Did you drive here yourself?”
“I’m not drunk. I’m hungover. Be precise, Ismay.”
“It’s amazing you’re still alive,” she says.
“Probably so,” he says as he goes up the stairs.
“Would you grab my wrap when you come back down?” she says, but she isn’t sure if he has heard her.
THE WEDDING IS, as weddings are, as weddings will always be, Ismay thinks. A.J. looks sloppy in his blue seersucker suit. Couldn’t he have rented a tuxedo? It’s Alice Island, not the Jersey shore. And where had Amelia gotten that awful Renaissance Faire dress? It’s more yellow than white, and she looks hippy in it. She’s always wearing vintage clothes and she doesn’t exactly have the right body type for them. Who’s she kidding with those big gerbera in her hair—she’s not twenty, for God’s sake. When she smiles, she’s all gums.
When did I get so negative? Ismay wonders. Their happiness is not her unhappiness. Unless it is. What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the world at any given time? She should be nicer. It’s a well-known fact that hate shows up on your face once you’re forty. Besides, Amelia is attractive, even if she isn’t beautiful like Nic. Look how much Maya is smiling. Lost another tooth. And A.J. is so happy. Watch that lucky bastard try not to cry.
Ismay is happy for A.J., whatever that means, but the wedding itself is a trial. The event makes her younger sister seem even deader and also leads to unwanted reflection on her sundry disappointments. She is forty-four years old. She is married to a too-handsome man, whom she no longer loves. She has had seven miscarriages in the last dozen years. She is, according to her gynecologist, in perimenopause: So much for that.
She looks across the venue at Maya. What a pretty girl she is, and she’s smart, too. Ismay waves to her, but Maya has her head in a book and she doesn’t seem to notice. The little girl has never particularly warmed to Ismay, which everyone thinks is odd. In general, Maya prefers adult company, and Ismay, who has been teaching for twenty years, is good with children. Twenty years. Jesus. Without even noticing it, she has gone from the bright new teacher whose legs all the boys stare at to old Mrs. Parish who does the school play. They think it’s silly how much she cares about these productions. Of course, they are overestimating her investment. How many years can she be expected to go on, one mediocre production blending in with the next? Different faces, but none of these kids ever turns out to be Meryl Streep.
Ismay pulls her wrap tighter around her shoulders and decides to take a walk. She heads down the pier then takes off her kitten heels and walks across the beach, which is empty. It is late September, and the air feels like fall. She tries to remember the name of the book where the woman swims out to sea and kills herself in the end.
It would be so easy, Ismay thinks. You walk out. You swim for a while. You swim too far. You don’t try to swim back. Your lungs fill up. It hurts for a bit, but then it’s over. Nothing ever hurts again, and your conscience is clear. You don’t leave a mess. Maybe your body washes up some day. Maybe it doesn’t. Daniel wouldn’t even look for her. Maybe he would look for her, but he certainly wouldn’t look very hard.
Of course! The book is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. How she had loved that novel (novella?) at seventeen.
Maya’s mother had ended her life in the same fashion, and Ismay wonders, not for the first time, if Marian Wallace had read The Awakening. She has thought a lot about Marian Wallace over the years.
Ismay walks into the water, which is even colder than she thought it would be. I can do this, she thinks. Just keep walking.
I may just do this.
“Ismay!”
Despite herself, Ismay turns. It’s Lambiase, that annoying cop friend of A.J.’s. He is carrying her shoes.
“Cold for a swim?”
“A little,” she replies. “I came out here to clear my head.”
Lambiase walks over to her. “Sure.”
Ismay’s teeth are chattering, and Lambiase takes off his suit coat and puts it over her shoulders. “Must be hard,” Lambiase says. “Seeing A.J. married to someone other than your sister.”
“Yes. Amelia seems lovely, though.” Ismay begins to cry, but the sun has mostly set and she is not sure if Lambiase can see it.
“The thing about weddings,” he says, “is that they can make a person feel lonely as hell.”
“Yes.”