“Your life doesn’t end when you get married. That’s actually when it starts. Your home, your decisions—and Tim is obviously going places. Dad will make sure of that. You’ve got plenty of excitement to look forward to.”
“Not if I’m stuck at home,” Peggy said. “And you’re not exactly an advertisement for the exciting world of marriage, with that apartment and your ‘just iced tea for me’ and never going dancing or—”
“I have the girls to look after.”
“But don’t you want—”
“You’ll understand when you’re a mother.”
“I don’t want to understand. Not yet.”
A waitress, her face sheened with perspiration, appeared with their salads. She set down each plate and dabbed her wrist across her forehead. A pointed paper cap sat perched like a crown on her head. Beneath the cap, her hair was combed tight at the sides and pulled into an elaborate bun. Stylish—the hair, not the cap. Rosemary had seen more and more women wearing their hair in that way. Were they imitating some movie star, from a film she had not seen?
“Can I bring you girls anything else?” the waitress said.
Not until she said “girls” did Rosemary take a closer look at the waitress. She was thirty-five, perhaps forty. Threads of gray hair were visible at her temples.
“I’ll have a milk shake,” Peggy said. “Vanilla, with whipped cream.”
The waitress took a pad from her apron and looked to Rosemary. Perspiration stained the armpits of her uniform. This, Rosemary caught herself wondering. Could I do this? It might become necessary if Martin was out of work for long. But who would watch the girls? Was there someone—Angela Videtti, someone else—whom she could pay to watch the girls while she worked the lunch shift at one of the diners on the Grand Concourse? Assuming she could find someone who would charge less than a waitress’s wages? But that was nonsense. She had been to college. She could do better than waitressing, couldn’t she? Typist? Bookkeeper? Could she turn to her father to make an introduction? Her parents would be horrified, of course. The final nail in Martin’s— “Ma’am,” the waitress said, one eyebrow lifted.
“Nothing else for me,” Rosemary said.
“I’m famished.” Peggy speared a grape with her fork.
The clatter of silverware against plates. The clink of ice water poured into a glass. The murmur of conversation—You won’t believe… Never in a million years… I told her you play with fire and you’re gonna—spiked with a stifled laugh, or a table for four sharing one bad joke. Rosemary had stopped wondering if the talk was about her. She was old news. There had been other sudden engagements and hurry-up weddings since hers. But she was reminded of why she had moved out of Woodlawn. She missed the neighborhood—she knew every storefront, knew its parks and people—but it was too much her father’s place. Her mother’s place.
The waitress set down the milk shake, the glass beaded with moisture. A maraschino cherry sank into a dollop of whipped cream. “That will get everyone talking,” Rosemary said. “‘How in the world is she going to fit into her dress?’”
“If I have to wear it.”
“Yes, if.”
“Here’s the thing,” Peggy said. “You think I’m a child—no, I know you do. And that I don’t want to get married because it doesn’t look like fun. Which, thanks for nothing. I thought you had a better opinion of me than that. But if I call this off, or put a stop to it for now, maybe everyone will stop taking me for granted. I know this is a chance for Daddy to show off. And Tim expects me to stick with the plan, this weekend and happily ever after. But when I’m at the fair, or out with Francis, it isn’t just fun, it’s exciting, it’s new. On Sunday night, everyone was happy, and beautiful, and Francis wanted to be there with me and I wanted to be there with him. I swear that half the time I’m talking to Tim, he’s thinking about the office, and half the time when he’s telling me about his work, I’d rather be out with the girls. I want more of that feeling—the feeling of being exactly where you want to be and nowhere else.”
“Oh, Peggy. You’re about to marry a man who you say you love and who we all know loves you. If he wants to—and that means if you want him to—he could make more money than even Dad has ever seen. And he has Dad in his corner, so if he wants to, let’s say, be a congressman, he can get there easier than most. Wife of a congressman. You have no idea what you’re giving up.”
Peggy wouldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. All of her attention seemed focused on extracting the cherry from the bottom of her glass. “Wasn’t that supposed to be your life?” she said.
Rosemary wasn’t going to say, for the umpteenth time, that she loved Martin and was happy with the way her life had turned out. Peggy would never believe it, and Rosemary did not need her sister’s pity. “Whatever Tim does,” Rosemary said, “you will have your own house, your own family, and enough money to get the things you want. It’s more than most people could ever dream of—and you want more? Excitement? Applause? To be giddy and half drunk and swept off your feet by handsome strangers? You have more than enough already. You don’t get to ask for more.”
Not until she stopped talking did Rosemary see the faces turned their way. Perhaps she had been louder than she intended. Perhaps she had pounded her fist on the table. Perhaps the silverware had jumped on the Formica. A few tables over, one of their mother’s neighbors had paused in the dissection of a club sandwich. Peggy gave her a prim, patient smile. She might even have rolled her eyes.
“And this just proves my point,” Peggy said. “Married people always want to tell you how it’s supposed to be, but it’s only because—”
“Peggy, stop talking and listen.” The waitress had their bill in her hand, but when Rosemary made the silverware jump, she had turned back toward the kitchen. “I’m sure you had a wonderful time on Sunday night. Quite sure, actually. But the whole thing was a fantasy. Francis is a charmer, but a month ago he was in jail, and now here he is, pretending to be a millionaire on vacation. You cannot throw away a life that’s right in front of you—a life you wanted with all your heart and soul just last week—” Rosemary stopped. Fantasy. Jail. Millionaire. What would Woodlawn make of this?
Peggy leaned in over the table. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I keep telling you that, but you won’t listen.”
“I have listened,” Rosemary said. “You’re tired of getting pushed around about the wedding—I understand that—and you’re willing to throw away something you actually want to prove a point. But a wedding is not a marriage.”
Peggy sucked the last of her milk shake through the straw. “And maybe there’s more to life than marriage,” Peggy said. “And maybe there’s not. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
CENTRAL PARK