"Maybe there's a compromise," I interjected.
Anna and Jane turned to look at me.
"I know your heart is set on next weekend," I said to Anna, "but would you mind if we invited a few extra people, in addition to the family? If we help with all the arrangements?"
"I don't know that we have enough time for something like that . . . ," Anna began.
"Would it be all right if we try?"
The negotiations continued for an hour after that, but in the end, a few compromises resulted. Anna, it seemed, was surprisingly agreeable once I'd spoken up. She knew a pastor, she said, and she was sure he would agree to do the ceremony next weekend. Jane appeared happy and relieved as the initial plans began to take form.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about not only my daughter's wedding, but also our thirtieth anniversary. Now, our anniversary--which I'd hoped to make memorable--and a wedding were going to occur on the same day, and of the two, I knew which event suddenly loomed largest.
The home that Jane and I share borders the Trent River, and it's nearly half a mile wide behind our yard. At night, I sometimes sit on the deck and watch the gentle ripples as they catch the moonlight. Depending on the weather, there are moments when the water seems like a living thing.
Unlike Noah's home, ours doesn't have a wraparound porch. It was constructed in an era when air-conditioning and the steady pull of television kept people indoors. When we first walked through the house, Jane had taken one look out the back windows and decided that if she couldn't have a porch, she would at least have a deck. It was the first of many minor construction projects that eventually transformed the house into something we could comfortably call our home.
After Anna left, Jane sat on the couch, staring toward the sliding glass doors. I wasn't able to read her expression, but before I could ask what she was thinking, she suddenly rose and went outside. Recognizing that the evening had been a shock, I went to the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine. Jane had never been a big drinker, but she enjoyed a glass of wine from time to time, and I thought that tonight might be one of them.
Glass in hand, I made my way to the deck. Outside, the night was buzzing with the sounds of frogs and crickets. The moon had not yet risen, and across the river I could see yellow lights glowing from country homes. A breeze had picked up, and I could hear the faint tings of the wind chime Leslie had bought us for Christmas last year.
Other than that, there was silence. In the gentle light of the porch, Jane's profile reminded me of a Greek statue, and once again, I was struck by how much she resembled the woman I first saw long ago. Eyeing her high cheekbones and full lips, I was thankful that our daughters look more like her than me, and now that one was getting married, I suppose I expected her expression to be almost radiant. As I drew near, however, I was startled to see that Jane was crying.
I hesitated at the edge of the deck, wondering whether I'd made a mistake in trying to join her. Before I could turn, however, Jane seemed to sense my presence and glanced over her shoulder.
"Oh, hey," she said, sniffing.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yes." She paused, then shook her head. "I mean, no. Actually, I'm not sure how I feel."
I moved to her side and set the glass of wine on the railing. In the darkness, the wine looked like oil.
"Thank you," she said. After taking a sip, she let out a long breath before gazing out over the water.
"This is so like Anna," she finally said. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but still . . ."
She trailed off, setting the wine aside.
"I thought you liked Keith," I said.
"I do." She nodded. "But a week? I don't know where she gets these ideas. If she was going to do something like this, I don't understand why she didn't just elope and get it over with."
"Would you rather she had done that?"
"No. I would have been furious with her."
I smiled. Jane had always been honest.
"It's just that there's so much to do," she went on, "and I have no idea how we're going to pull it all together. I'm not saying the wedding has to be at the ballroom of the Plaza, but still, you'd think she would want a photographer there. Or some of her friends."
"Didn't she agree to all that?"
Jane hesitated, choosing her words carefully.
"I just don't think she realizes how often she'll think back to her wedding day. She acted like it's no big deal."
"She'll always remember it no matter how it turns out," I countered gently.
Jane closed her eyes for a long moment. "You don't understand," she said.
Though she said no more on the subject, I knew exactly what she meant.
Quite simply, Jane didn't want Anna to make the same mistake that she had.
My wife has always regretted the way we got married. We had the kind of wedding I'd insisted on, and though I accept responsibility for this, my parents played a significant role in my decision.
My parents, unlike the vast majority of the country, were atheists, and I was raised accordingly. Growing up, I remember being curious about church and the mysterious rituals I sometimes read about, but religion was something we never discussed. It never came up over dinner, and though there were times when I realized that I was different from other children in the neighborhood, it wasn't something that I dwelled upon.
I know differently now. I regard my Christian faith as the greatest gift I've ever been given, and I will dwell no more on this except to say that in retrospect, I think I always knew there was something missing in my life. The years I spent with Jane have proved that. Like her parents, Jane was devout in her beliefs, and it was she who started bringing me to church. She also purchased the Bible we read in the evenings, and it was she who answered the initial questions I had.
This did not happen, however, until after we were married.
If there was a source of tension in the years we were dating, it was my lack of faith, and there were times I'm sure she questioned whether we were compatible. She has told me that if she hadn't been sure that I would eventually accept Jesus Christ as my Savior, then she wouldn't have married me. I knew that Anna's comment had brought back a painful memory for her, for it was this same lack of faith that led us to be married on the courthouse steps. At the time, I felt strongly that marrying in the church would make me a hypocrite.
There was an additional reason we were married by a judge instead of a minister, one that had to do with pride. I didn't want Jane's parents to pay for a traditional church wedding, even though they could have afforded it. As a parent myself, I now view such a duty as the gift that it is, but at the time, I believed that I alone should be responsible for the cost. If I wasn't able to pay for a proper reception, my reasoning went, then I wouldn't have one.
At the time, I could not afford a gala affair. I was new at the firm and making a reasonable salary, but I was doing my best to save for a down payment on a home. Though we were able to purchase our first house nine months after we were married, I no longer think such a sacrifice worthwhile. Frugality, I've learned, has its own cost, one that sometimes lasts forever.
Our ceremony was over in less than ten minutes; not a single prayer was uttered. I wore a dark gray suit; Jane was dressed in a yellow sundress with a gladiola pinned in her hair. Her parents watched from the steps below us and sent us off with a kiss and a handshake. We spent our honeymoon at a quaint inn in Beaufort, and though she adored the antique canopy bed where we first made love, we stayed for less than a weekend, since I had to be back in the office on Monday.
This is not the sort of wedding that Jane had dreamed about as a young girl. I know that now. What she wanted was what I suppose she was now urging on Anna. A beaming bride escorted down the aisle by her father, a wedding performed by a minister, with family and friends in attendance. A reception with food and cake and flowers on every table, where the bride and groom can receive congratulations from those dearest to them. Maybe even music, to wh
ich the bride could dance with her new husband, and with the father who had raised her, while others looked on with joy in their eyes.
That's what Jane would have wanted.
Chapter Four
On Saturday morning, the day after Anna's announcement, the sun was already stifling as I parked in the lot at Creekside. As in most southern towns, August slows the pace of life in New Bern. People drive more cautiously, traffic lights seem to stay red longer than usual, and those who walk use just enough energy to move their bodies forward, as if engaging in slow-motion shuffle contests.
Jane and Anna were already gone for the day. After coming in from the deck last night, Jane sat at the kitchen table and started making notes of all that she had to do. Though she was under no illusions that she would be able to accomplish everything, her notes covered three pages, with goals outlined for each day of the following week.
Jane had always been good with projects. Whether it was running a fund-raiser for the Boy Scouts or organizing a church raffle, my wife was usually the person tapped to volunteer. While it left her feeling overwhelmed at times--she did, after all, have three children engaged in other activities--she never refused. Recalling how frazzled she often became, I made a mental note to keep any requests of her time to a minimum in the week to come.
The courtyard behind Creekside was landscaped with square hedges and clustered azaleas. After passing through the building--I was certain Noah wasn't in his room--I followed the curving gravel pathway toward the pond. Spotting Noah, I shook my head when I noticed that he was wearing his favorite blue cardigan despite the heat. Only Noah could be chilled on a day like today.
He'd just finished feeding the swan, and it still swam in small circles before him. As I approached, I heard him speaking to it, though I couldn't make out his words. The swan seemed to trust him completely. Noah once told me that the swan sometimes rested at his feet, though I had never actually seen this.
"Hello, Noah," I said.
It was an effort for him to turn his head. "Hello, Wilson." He raised a hand. "Thanks for dropping by."
"You doing okay?"
"Could be better," he replied. "Could be worse, though, too."
Though I came here often, Creekside sometimes depressed me, for it seemed to be full of people who'd been left behind in life. The doctors and nurses told us that Noah was lucky since he had frequent visitors, but too many of the others spent their days watching television to escape the loneliness of their final years. Noah still spent his evenings reciting poetry to the people who live here. He's fond of the poems of Walt Whitman, and Leaves of Grass was on the bench beside him. He seldom went anywhere without it, and though both Jane and I have read it in the past, I must admit that I don't understand why he finds the poems so meaningful.
Studying him, I was struck anew by how sad it was to watch a man like Noah grow old. For most of my life, I'd never thought of him in those terms, but nowadays, when I heard his breath, it reminded me of air moving through an old accordion. He didn't move his left hand, a consequence of the stroke he'd suffered in the spring. Noah was winding down, and while I'd long known this was coming, it seemed that he finally realized it as well.
He was watching the swan, and following his gaze, I recognized the bird by the black spot on its chest. It reminded me of a mole or birthmark, or coal in the snow, nature's attempt to mute perfection. At certain times of the year, a dozen swans could be found on the water, but this was the only one that never left. I've seen it floating on the pond even when the temperature plunged in the winter and the other swans had long migrated farther south. Noah once told me why the swan never left, and his explanation was one of the reasons the doctors thought him delusional.
Taking a seat beside him, I recounted what had happened the night before with Anna and Jane. When I finished, Noah glanced at me with a slight smirk.
"Jane was surprised?" he asked.
"Who wouldn't be?"
"And she wants things a certain way?"
"Yes," I said. I told him about the plans she had outlined at the kitchen table before discussing an idea of my own, something that I thought Jane had overlooked.
With his good hand, Noah reached over and patted my leg as if giving me the okay.
"How about Anna?" he asked. "How's she doing?"
"She's fine. I don't think Jane's reaction surprised her in the least."
"And Keith?"
"He's fine, too. At least from what Anna said."
Noah nodded. "A good young couple, those two. They both have kind hearts. They remind me of Allie and myself. "
I smiled. "I'll tell her you said that. It'll make her day."
We sat in silence until Noah finally motioned toward the water.
"Did you know that swans mate for life?" he said.
"I thought that was a myth."
"It's true," he insisted. "Allie always said it was one of the most romantic things she'd ever heard. For her, it proved that love was the most powerful force on earth. Before we were married, she was engaged to someone else. You knew that, right?"
I nodded.
"I thought so. Anyway, she came to visit me without telling her fiance, and I took her out in a canoe to a place where we saw thousands of swans clustered together. It was like snow on the water. Did I ever tell you that?"
I nodded again. Though I hadn't been there, the image was vivid in my mind, as it was in Jane's. She often spoke of that story with wonder.
"They never came back after that," he murmured. "There were always a few in the pond, but it was never like that day again." Lost in the memory, he paused. "But Allie liked to go there anyway. She liked to feed the ones that were there, and she used to point out the pairs to me. There's one, she'd say, there's another one. Isn't it wonderful how they're always together?" Noah's face creased as he grinned. "I think it was her way of reminding me to stay faithful."
"I don't think she needed to worry about that."
"No?" he asked.
"I think you and Allie were meant for each other."
He smiled wistfully. "Yes," he finally said, "we were. But we had to work at it. We had our tough times, too."
Perhaps he was referring to her Alzheimer's. And long before that, the death of one of their children. There were other things, too, but these were the events he still found difficult to discuss.
"But you made it seem so easy," I protested.
Noah shook his head. "It wasn't. Not always. All those letters I used to write to her were a way of reminding her not only how I felt about her, but of the vow we'd once made to each other."
I wondered if he was trying to remind me of the time he'd suggested that I do such a thing for Jane, but I made no mention of it. Instead, I brought up something I'd been meaning to ask him.
"Was it hard for you and Allie after all the kids had moved out?"
Noah took a moment to think about his answer. "I don't know if the word was hard, but it was different."
"How so?"
"It was quiet, for one thing. Really quiet. With Allie working in her studio, it was just me puttering around the house a lot of the time. I think that's when I started talking to myself, just for the company."
"How did Allie react to not having the kids around?"
"Like me," he said. "At first, anyway. The kids were our life for a long time, and there's always some adjusting when that changes. But once she did, I think she started to enjoy the fact that we were alone again."
"How long did that take?" I asked.
"I don't know. A couple of weeks, maybe."
I felt my shoulders sag. A couple of weeks? I thought.
Noah seemed to catch my expression, and after taking a moment, he cleared his throat. "Now that I think about it," he said, "I'm sure it wasn't even that long. I think it was just a few days before she was back to normal."
A few days? By then I couldn't summon a response.
He brought a hand to his chin. "Actually, if I remember right," he went o
n, "it wasn't even a few days. In fact, we did the jitterbug right there in front of the house as soon as we'd loaded the last of David's things in the car. But let me tell you, the first couple of minutes were tough. Real tough. I sometimes wonder how we were able to survive them."
Though his expression remained serious as he spoke, I detected the mischievous gleam in his eye.
"The jitterbug?" I asked.
"It's a dance."
"I know what it is."
"It used to be fairly popular."
"That was a long time ago."
"What? No one jitterbugs anymore?"
"It's a lost art, Noah."
He nudged me gently. "Had you going, though, didn't I."
"A little," I admitted.
He winked. "Gotcha."
For a moment he sat in silence, looking pleased with himself. Then, knowing he hadn't really answered my question, he shifted on the bench and let out a long breath.
"It was hard for both of us, Wilson. By the time they'd left, they weren't just our kids, but our friends, too. We were both lonesome, and for a while there, we weren't sure what to do with each other."
"You've never said anything about it."
"You never asked," he said. "I missed them, but of the two of us, I think it was worse for Allie. She may have been a painter, but she was first and foremost a mother, and once the kids were gone, it was like she wasn't exactly sure who she was anymore. At least for a while, anyway."
I tried to picture it but couldn't. It wasn't an Allie that I'd ever seen or even imagined possible.
"Why does that happen?" I asked.
Instead of answering, Noah looked over at me and was silent for a moment. "Did I ever tell you about Gus?" he finally asked. "Who used to visit me when I was fixing the house?"
I nodded. Gus, I knew, was kin to Harvey, the black pastor I sometimes saw when visiting Noah's property.
"Well, old Gus," Noah explained, "used to love tall tales, the funnier the better. And sometimes we used to sit on the porch at night trying to come up with our own tall tales to make each other laugh. There were some good ones over the years, but you want to know what my favorite one was? The tallest tale Gus ever uttered? Now, before I say this, you have to understand that Gus had been married to the same gal for half a century, and they had eight kids. Those two had been through just about everything together. So anyway, we'd been telling these stories back and forth all night, and he said, 'I've got one.' So then Gus took a deep breath, and with a straight face, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'Noah, I understand women.' "