Phillip clearly had no problem playing his part. During the reception, he strutted around the room, circulating among the tables at dinner without me, accepting the congratulations and best wishes of people who adored him. I only knew half the people there, so after I made a few tentative forays to greet them, I retreated to the head table to eat my dinner alone. It would have been kind of him . . . well, why not say it as it was? He should have taken me with him. He should have introduced me to the people I didn’t know, held me beside him as his wife. But that was not the way Phillip worked. Before the wedding, it had been all about my mother, who had planned the entire thing, right down to the personalized tulle bundles of Jordan almonds and the napkins that matched the bridesmaids’ dresses. And then on the day itself, it was all about Phillip. I wondered how I had lost my place at my own wedding, feeling more and more kinship with the tiny plastic bride sitting on top of the wedding cake, nothing more than a part of the set dressing in The Phillip Show.
Every night on our honeymoon, I slipped into sleep and he went down to the hotel bar and drank until the stars faded, chatting with the patrons, accepting their congratulations on his own, again. I would wake and find him gone, the room empty except for the cold company of the moonlight, and I lay awake, staring into the silvery darkness until the door creaked open and he settled into bed beside me. I never said anything, and he never intimated he thought there was anything wrong with the arrangement. And there wasn’t anyone I could ask. There are a hundred etiquette guides for weddings, and not a single one for marriage.
I had made an awful mistake. And the stupid thing was, I had known. Standing in the vestibule of the church outside the sanctuary, I had looked at the scene inside—that’s what it had felt like, a scene. A red carpet ran down the center aisle from the altar to the door, lolling like an obscene and thirsty red tongue. Walking down the aisle, I had been uncomfortably aware of the audience. Should I be smiling? Or should I be solemn? Should I look at Phillip? Or at the guests?
Looking at the photos, I had been horrified to see my own expression. There was not a single photo in which I looked happy. Instead, I stood, unsmiling, eyes wide and frozen. It was the expression of a woman who had done something terrible and had no idea how she might get out of it.
Phillip didn’t notice. He was entranced by his own appearance. His bachelor weekend had been by the pools in Las Vegas, and he had been slightly, gorgeously tan for the wedding, sun-kissed and healthy. Already unforgivingly pale, I had been encouraged (and by encouraged, I mean forced) into a dress of pure, icy white that washed me out, turning me as frozen and blue as though I were winter itself, even though our wedding had been in June. Phillip didn’t seem to notice. “Look at me,” he had crowed, turning page after page, while I grew more and more shocked and horrified by my appearance in each photo. “I look so tan. These are great pictures,” he said, running a finger along his own face in a portrait of both of our families.
I looked at him, the narcissistic man I had married, so in love with his own reflection he could not see me at all. Beside him in those pictures, I looked like a ghost, as though it was a mourning photograph taken long ago, a family gathered together around the body of a cold, dead bride.
That night, as I looked at myself in the mirror, I had seen the same wide-eyed terror that I had seen in the photos. “What have I done?” I whispered to myself, reaching out a tentative, trembling hand to the woman reflected back at me. “What have I done?”
twelve
MARGIE
1924
Margie’s parents, as she had known they would be, were furious. Even if cables weren’t written in all capital letters, she swore she would have been able to hear them yelling from clear across the Atlantic.
LETTER UNACCEPTABLE STOP
PASSAGE BOOKED CHERBOURG 5/22 FOR NYC STOP
AUNT EDITH HEARTBROKEN STOP FATHER FURIOUS STOP COME HOME IMMEDIATELY STOP
She hadn’t even bothered to reply to the last one, because the only answer she could think of was no. No, she wasn’t leaving Paris. No, she wasn’t coming home. Not now, and maybe not ever.
Because in the meantime, my grandmother had fallen hopelessly in love with Paris, with the city that had had enough of war and sadness and had promised itself it had reached la der des ders—that the Great War would be the last war, and they would not think on their grief and the empty bellies and the wounded and lost husbands and fathers and brothers. They would rebuild from the rubble and drink and celebrate. Margie went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked at the city spread out beneath her feet, and she walked endless miles along the sidewalks, past lovers, past arguments, past families, past drunks reeling their crooked way home, past joy and heartbreak and rages and passions that would not be denied. She went to Napoleon’s tomb, which she found both ghastly and awe-inspiring, and she went to see the Panthéon de la Guerre, a panoramic painting which she knew she ought to object to, as it went against all her pacifistic beliefs, but was so wonderful she couldn’t contain herself from weeping a little bit, for the glory and pain of war and its endless bitter romance. She walked along streets of worn stones, and she stumbled into silent churches full of dust and the flicker of candles she never saw anyone light, and she walked through the galleries at the Jeu de Paume, thinking of when it wasn’t a museum and instead was where Napoleon played tennis, and she wrote a story about an art theft and a daring girl detective and fell asleep in the Tuileries under a tree and when she awoke there was a guard shooing her away, and she ate a crêpe noisette et chocolat on the steps of the H?tel de Ville and licked her sticky fingers as she walked back home.