French Braid(53)

Oh, and now a new addition: Grandpa Wellington in person, glaring disapprovingly downward at a very small David, who was clinging to his grandfather’s trouser leg as if that were all that kept him upright. And a new voice in Robin’s head, Grandpa Wellington’s own, finding fault every Sunday afternoon when Robin stopped by to report on the past week’s sales. By then the old man was housebound, forbidden after his first heart attack to so much as climb the stairs or take a walk around the block and reduced to holding court in this very recliner, where he chain-smoked Lucky Strikes while peppering Robin with what-about-this and you-should-have-done-that and “What were you thinking, for God’s sake?”

Who had filmed this scene? Robin wondered. Not Mercy, because here she came, tripping across the grass to link arms with her father and smile down at little David. So it could only have been Robin himself, although he had trouble believing he’d been entrusted with the precious camera. “Oh, Lord, would you look at me?” Mercy cried from across the room. “My hairdo’s like a…floral arrangement!” And Robin shifted his gaze to where she sat and discovered that she had grown old. Still pretty, even now, but her hair had faded to an ivory color while all these years he had been seeing it as blond, and it was no longer a piled-up tumble of curls but a knot on the back of her head.

Had there been some kind of limit, in those days, on how long a scene could last? Each one was so brief. Here’s so-and-so! And then pouf, here’s such-and-such! Pouf—and then goodbye. Goodbye to all of it, in fact. It was over in a matter of minutes. Darn, he’d have liked to see more. Lily dressed up for a prom, maybe, looking like a princess with Jump Watkins standing next to her. Or David tussling on the floor with their good old dog, Cap. Especially, he’d have enjoyed some footage of that nice week at Deep Creek Lake. It had flown by way too fast, he thought as the screen went blank. And he didn’t mean only the movie.

“Well!” Kevin said. “Very interesting!” And Morris said, “What’d you think, kids?” and there was a general stirring—the children released to mill about again, the women gathering purses and cast-off sneakers and asking where Candle’s sleepy-doll was. No, it emerged, David would not change his mind about staying over. No, none of them wanted the last of the cake, or the potato salad, or the tulips from the dining-room table. And just like that, they were gone.



* * *



—

But Mercy wouldn’t leave too, would she? He didn’t think he could bear it if she left. He stood next to her on the back porch, after they’d seen the last car off, and he felt almost scared to look over at her. He did, though, finally. He found her smiling at him. “You were very sweet to do that,” she told him.

“Oh, good,” he said, letting out his breath.

“But promise me something,” she said.

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“You don’t want any more surprises.”

“Never, ever again,” she agreed.

“I promise,” he told her.

“But if you already knew that,” she said, “then why did you do it?”

“I don’t know why,” he said. “It was a miscalculation.”

Although it occurred to him, after the fact, that he did know why. Greta had had it right: he’d worried that Mercy would say no to celebrating their marriage.

She was still smiling at him, though.

And when he said, “Shall we go inside?” she didn’t say anything about needing to get back to her studio.

The women had cleaned the kitchen to a fare-thee-well, he saw. All the counters were wiped down, and the dishwasher was humming. In the dining room, the tulips had started hanging their heads over the rim of their vase as if they were admiring their own reflections in the polished tabletop.

When he and Mercy reached the living room, he headed toward the couch rather than his recliner. He was hoping Mercy would sit down next to him. But instead she crossed to the foyer doorway and bent for her pillowcase of laundry. “Do you have any whites in the hamper?” she asked him, and he said, “No, no,” even though he did. She went off to the rear of the house with her pillowcase, and he heard her a moment later descending the basement stairs.

From his place on the couch he gazed around him at the empty chairs, the dented cushions, an almost-full champagne glass abandoned on the mantel—all those signs of vanished life. The VCR was still on, he noticed; he could see a red dot glowing, but he made no move to rise and turn it off.

He heard Mercy climbing the basement stairs and then pausing in the kitchen. He worried she had found something to distract her, but no, she appeared now in the dining-room doorway. Crossed to the couch. And sat next to him, finally.

“You’re running low on Tide,” she told him.

“Oh, okay.”

“I put it on your grocery list.”

“Thanks,” he said.

A silence. He had thought she might want to say a little more about the party, but she didn’t. So finally he asked, “Can you believe it, hon? Can you believe it’s been fifty years?”

“In one way, no, I can’t,” she said. “But in another way, it seems like forever.”

“I know what you mean,” he said.

“We were just kids, in those movies!”