When Uncle John’s green Buick appeared (all at once, as if out of thin air, nosing tortuously into the driveway), she felt dizzy. The same instant there came a soft knock on the door and a child’s voice — Linda’s — calling her name. “Callie,” she said, “your mom says to tell you it’s time.”
3
When she opened the door, her mother and the bridesmaids and all the aunts who hadn’t left for the church were standing with their faces turned toward her, beaming. Prince got up slowly, with an old-dog sigh, and came over to stand at her feet. Uncle John was standing at the front door, watching too. When he saw her he took off his hat. No one moved or spoke for an instant (except the children, as indifferent to what was happening as Callie was unaware of their indifference) and Callie was overwhelmed by her sense of their mutual helplessness: They had done everything they could, had swarmed to her side as they might in a time of tragedy, some of them hardly knowing her, from Cobleskill and Rochester and Cleveland, Ohio, and even, one of them, California, bearing gifts that would make her house beautiful and give it its solid anchor in tradition, and they would join her celebration of the ancient forms — the ride to the church with her mother’s oldest brother, the lighting of the symbolic candles, the pure white runner now walked on, stained, her father’s words, signifying to all the world (she understood now for the first time, in alarm) that she had lost forever what she’d never realized she had. There would come the magical exchange of rings, the lifting of the veil, the kiss, and then Aunt Anna would play that organ maniacally, tromping the pedals, not caring how many of the notes she missed, for Callie (poor Callie whom we all knew well) had died before her time and had been lifted to Glory — and the rice would rain down (Uncle Gordon ducking, trying to snap pictures, shielding the expensive camera he’d bought for taking pictures of the flowers in his garden and the prize turkeys he raised for the Fair) — rice and confetti raining down like seeds out of heaven, numberless as stars or the sands of the seashore, shining like the coins that dropped from Duncan’s pockets — and then the symbolic biting of the cake, the emptying of the fragile glass (Uncle Gordon taking more pictures, frenetic, even George Loomis the eternal bachelor smiling, joyful, quoting scraps of what he said was Latin verse): They would join her in all this, yet could no more help her, support her, defend her than if they were standing on the stern of a ship drawing steadily away from her, and she (in the fine old beaded and embroidered white gown, the veil falling softly from the circlet on her forehead), she, Callie, on a small boat solemn as a catafalque of silver, failing away toward night.
I will love him, she thought. I don’t know whether I love him or not, but I will.
It was suspicious, now that she thought of it, that they’d left her there alone for half-an-hour, knowing where she was, surely having things to say to her but not saying them, waiting, gathered at the door: Not even one of the children had violated the room. Not even Prince. But now they were all of them talking at once, saying, “Callie, you’re beautiful, beautiful, an’t-it?” Saying, “Hurry, hurry! Just fifteen minutes,” and “Children, out to the cars! Quick about it!” And now Uncle John was beside her, giving her his arm.
Neither of them spoke on the way to the church. She sat very still, hands folded in her lap, looking out at brilliant yellow wheat stubble on hills pitched or slanting away into tree-filled glens where spring water ran and brightly dappled guernsey cows could go to drink or lie down in the heavy shade. They came to the maples and beeches of the slope, the nearer mountains bright with twenty shades of green (in a month it would all be gold and red), the higher mountains in the distance clean blue. They passed the little store — Llewellyn’s American Eagle Market — with its sharply pitched roof and long wooden porch where in her grade school days she’d played jacks or sat with her lunchpail eating sandwiches and black bean salad, sometimes going in to buy an Orange Crush with a dime she’d earned picking up sticks from the yard or with a handful of pennies that had spilled out of one of the thrashing men’s overalls. They passed the cottage-like house where David Parks lived once, the house crudely snow-fenced, set back from the road, shaded by pine trees and jutting out from the mountain’s bank like a granite boulder, and she remembered sitting in the swing in her yellow dress the day of his birthday party, shyly watching his older sister Mary holding hands with her boyfriend from Slater. Uncle John slowed down, pointing up into the woods with his bent first finger, and she saw a deer. She smiled. It was a lucky omen. And then the church steeple came in sight, and then the whole church, white and old-fashioned, the paint peeling, the shingled roof newly patched with yellow-red cedar, and all around the church and all along the highway more cars than she could remember having seen in one place in all her life. (They’d be hustling Henry away from the window, because he mustn’t see her until the moment all of them saw her at the end of the aisle. George Loomis would be there beside him, looking him over, telling him he looked like Good King Jesus (for the Preacher’s benefit), and keeping one eye on where the car was hidden, actually believing he’d be able to protect it.) Everywhere she looked there were birds — orioles, robins, blue jays, waxwings, nuthatches, sparrows — bright as the red and yellow roses climbing the bank at the foot of the church lawn. The sky was bright blue, the bluest sky in the world, with just one white cloud, so precisely outlined it looked like a picture in a child’s book of fairy tales.
Uncle John nosed the car up the drive and right to the steps. There were dozens of people there, mostly friends and relations who bowed and waved when they saw her, a few conspicuously strange to her, queerly stiff and peculiar, friends or relatives of Henry’s. Uncle John said, “Here we are, Callie.” He smiled, and the smile summoned memories, so many in an instant that she couldn’t single one out, no more than she could have separated the rays of the sun: as if all her past happiness were poured together into one silver cup and the cup was overflowing. She said, “Uncle John,” all the meaning of her life flowing into a name, and he reached for her hand, formally. “Gras fyddo gyd â chiwi” he said. Grace be with you. Mary Lou and Susan Cooper came running to the car, Dorothy Carrico a little behind them, shining like all summer in their bridesmaids’ dresses, and Mary Lou reached through the window to hug her. She said, “Quick, quick!” then backed away while someone — one of the Griffith boys (how tall he’d grown!) — opened the car door and helped her out.
Inside, downstairs in the third grade Sunday school room, fiery with memories and sunlight from the casement windows, she stood patiently while they fussed with the dress and admired the bouquet, every few minutes shushing Tommy and Linda, who were to carry the cushions with the rings. She answered them all when they spoke to her, politely admired their dresses, but she felt as though she were not there. She felt weightless, mysteriously separate from the cream-colored walls and the dark oak doors, the windows with sunlight streaming in, the faded wine-colored plush chairs in front, the wooden folding chairs all around, the pictures of Jesus and Lazarus, Jesus and the children, Jesus praying. Beams creaked over her head and she could hear feet shuffling, voices talking, a rush of indistinguishable sounds, the music of the organ playing hymns, a steady murmur of sound that seemed to come from all directions like the sound of a waterfall heard from up close, but not loud, gentle, almost comforting, saying. … The feeling of weightlessness grew on her. She gave her mother her cheek to kiss and heard her whisper strange syllables, saw her wiping her eyes (all far away, far, far away, the kiss, the whispered words); she saw Linda and Tommy being led to the stairs, Mary Lou and Susan and Dorothy Carrico tripping away, blowing kisses to her; she felt Cousin-Aunt Tisiphone taking her hand. The hum around her began to die out. Then silence, complete and terrible as a silence in a busy dream. She heard the organ, suddenly loud as thunder in her ears, and her mind sang wildly, hurled back to childhood: