“I did not know that.”
“You’re wearing a morning suit, by the way. The gray will look so good with your blue eyes. My mother says I cut a picture of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor out of Life magazine when I was in high school—this was before I knew they were Nazi sympathizers. Anyway, he wore a morning suit to everything, even the beach. He wasn’t a looker like you, and let’s face it, she had a face like an old hammer, but together, they were sartorially splendid.”
Nicky pulled into the parking lot of the church.
“What is going on, Nick? A church setting? Something is up with you, or something is going down. It’s either good news or bad news. You’re either giving me a piece of jewelry, or you’ve got a brain tumor.”
“It’s neither.” He opened the car door, helped Peachy out of the car, took her by the hand, and walked her to a bench.
“Thank you, Jesus.” Peachy leaned back on the bench. She held her hands to the sky. Then she turned and looked up at the statue of Mary. “And you, Blessed Lady. Back me up here. I don’t need any bad news.”
“Peachy, we shouldn’t get married.”
Peachy turned to him. She placed her hands on his face and turned it toward hers. “What?”
“I’ve thought about this and prayed about this, and we shouldn’t get married.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not right for each other.”
“How do you figure?”
“Take away all the details of planning the wedding, and what have we got?”
“Each other?”
“We don’t think about each other.”
“When I’m picking swatches, I’m thinking about you. When I’m choosing which hors d’oeuvres to pass during the cocktail hour, I’m thinking about you. When I’m thinking should my dress have a round collar or a sweetheart neckline, I’m thinking, ‘What would Nicky like?’ When I’m choosing flatware at Wanamaker’s for the registry, I’m thinking about you eating breakfast every day for the rest of your life and what fork would you like to eat your eggs with. I’m always thinking about you.”
“I didn’t come to this decision overnight.”
“You’ve been carrying this around like a hump on your back?”
“No. Things happened, and I came to a place of understanding.”
“Speak English.”
“I’m trying. It became clear at the theater.”
Peachy’s legs went akimbo, and she slid down low on the bench. “You are breaking up with me over that stupid play?”
“Partly. It didn’t help that you hate the thing I love to do. But I hated myself more for not telling you. I didn’t share something that was important to me for three years. That’s almost half our engagement. I worked there all that time, and I didn’t tell you.”
“And I told you I didn’t care. My dad keeps girlie magazines under his mattress. My mother acts like she doesn’t see them when she flips it. Everybody has secrets.”
“Not me. Not anymore. It was wrong of me not to tell you. I kept it a secret because I knew it would make you unhappy or angry or I believed you would judge it. And when I told you, you were all three of those things.”
“Can you blame me? What if I had a wooden leg, and on our wedding night I came out of the bathroom in my nightie and snapped the leg off and said, ‘Hey Nick, oops. Forgot to tell you. I have a wooden leg.’ ”
“This is different.”
“How? You chose not to share something with me for three years, and then you want to break up with me because I had a reaction to something I didn’t see coming. That’s not fair. But I don’t even care about that. You blindsided me. But I got over it. I’m resilient. You took a part in the same play without asking me, and I didn’t make a fuss. Instead I brought my parents and we toasted you with champagne.”
“Your father told me he hoped I got it out of my system.”
“Well, did you?”
“No.”
“So for the rest of your life, you want to drive a cab all day and be in plays at night?”
“I don’t know. I’m just sure I don’t want to be married.”
Peachy made fists with her hands, closed her eyes, and inhaled. “You are cutting a twenty-eight-year-old”—she said deliberately—“a thirty-four-year-old woman loose in 1949?”
“Thirty-four?” Nicky gulped. He had never questioned Peachy’s age. Her family had moved to Philly right before the war. He had no idea she was older than he. It’s so hard to tell the age of an extremely thin person.
“You’re not the only one with a secret. That’s right. I’m thirty-four, on my way to crashing into thirty-five, which is the death of everything when you’re a girl. You might as well murder me by bludgeoning. Go ahead. Find a shovel and beat me into the ground like a nail until all that’s left is my hat. I’m an old maid—worse, an old maid who waited for her soldier boy to return—and he comes back all right, he returns without a scratch, and he still waits three years to marry me and then decides right before the cake is baked that he has changed his mind? At least if you died overseas, I would’ve mourned you already. Three years later, I’d be myself again.”
“I would hope so.”
“Every girl that waited through the war is married except me!”
“We shouldn’t marry each other just because everybody else is taken.”
“Why not? You think there’s a better choice out there? Open your eyes! I’m an exotic! What is wrong in that thick head of yours? You got goldfish up there? Is your brain an attic room of dry rot? An empty space with a For Rent sign? You break it off with me, and I have to live with the sight of you forever in South Philly like the sign over the zoo? I see you driving around in a cab, and I wave at what? Not my husband? Who? The man I went with for seven long years and then nothing?”
Peachy slid off the bench and dropped to the ground with a thud like a sack of flour.
“What will happen to me? I’ve run out the clock. How could you do this to me? You’ve thrown me away like an old tire. I’m like a knife without the blade. A machine whose purpose has been lost. Please just kill me, because I cannot face my parents. This will kill my mother! And shortly thereafter my father! They’ll probably choose to go together! They’ll drive off the Delaware Water Gap in the Ford Fairlane and burst into flames.”
“You don’t love me, Peachy,” Nicky said calmly.
“How can you say that? What have I been doing all this time other than loving you? I make you happy.”
“But what about you? What do I do for you?”
“You love me back. You’re my man. You dance with me at everybody else’s weddings. I don’t know. What does a woman get from a man?”
“Think. You don’t love me. If you loved me, you would want me to be happy.”
“Is this about my job? About the fact that I have an office job and went to college?”
“I’m proud of your accomplishments.”