There was champagne, of course. There must have been: Winifred would not have omitted it. Others ate. Speeches were made, of which I remember nothing. Did we dance? I believe so. I didn't know how to dance, but I found myself on the dance floor, so some sort of stumbling-around must have occurred.
Then I changed into my going-away outfit. It was a two-piece suit, a light spring wool in pale green, with a demure hat to match. It cost a mint, said Winifred. I stood poised for departure, on the steps (what steps? The steps have vanished from memory), and threw my bouquet towards Laura. She didn't catch it. She stood there in her seashell-pink outfit, staring at me coldly, hands gripped together in front of her as if to restrain herself, and one of the bridesmaids-some Griffen cousin or other-grabbed it and made off with it greedily, as if it were food.
My father by that time had disappeared. Just as well, because when last seen he'd been rigid with drink. I expect he'd gone to finish the job.
Then Richard took me by the elbow and steered me towards the getaway car. No one was supposed to know our destination, which was assumed to be somewhere out of town-some secluded, romantic inn. In fact we were driven around the block to the side entrance of the Royal York Hotel, where we'd just had the wedding reception, and smuggled up in the elevator. Richard said that since we were taking the train to New York the next morning and Union Station was just across the street, why go out of our way?
About my bridal night, or rather my bridal afternoon-the sun was not yet set and the room was bathed, as they say, in a rosy glow, because Richard did not pull the curtains-I will tell very little. I didn't know what to expect; my only informant had been Reenie, who had led me to believe that whatever would happen would be unpleasant and most likely painful, and in this I was not deceived. She'd also implied that this disagreeable event or sensation would be nothing out of the ordinary-all women went through it, or all who got married-so I shouldn't make a fuss. Grin and bear it had been her words. She'd said there would be some blood, and there was. (But she hadn't said why. That part was a complete surprise.)
I did not yet know that my lack of enjoyment-my distaste, my suffering even-would be considered normal and even desirable by my husband. He was one of those men who felt that if a woman did not experience sexual pleasure this was all to the good, because then she would not be liable to wander off seeking it elsewhere. Perhaps such attitudes were common, at that period of time. Or perhaps not. I have no way of knowing.
Richard had arranged for a bottle of champagne to be sent up, at what he'd anticipated would be the proper moment. Also our dinners. I hobbled to the bathroom and locked myself in while tie waiter was setting everything out, on a portable table with a white linen tablecloth. I was wearing the outfit Winifred had thought appropriate for the occasion, which was a nightgown of satin in a shade of salmon pink, with a delicate lace trim of cobweb grey. I tried to clean myself up with a washcloth, then wondered what should be done with this: the red on it was so visible, as if I'd had a nosebleed. In the end I put it into the wastepaper basket and hoped the hotel maid would think it had fallen in there by mistake.
Then I sprayed myself with Li, a scent I found frail and wan. It was named, I had by this time discovered, after a girl in an opera-a slave girl, whose fate was to kill herself rather than betray the man she loved, who in his turn loved someone else. That was how things went, in operas. I did not find this scent auspicious, but I was worried that I smelled odd. I did smell odd. The oddness had come from Richard, but now it was mine. I hoped I hadn't made too much noise. Involuntary gasps, sharp intakes of breath, as when plunging into cold water.
The dinner was a steak, along with a salad. I ate mostly the salad. All the lettuce in hotels at that time was the same. It tasted like pale-green water. It tasted like frost.
The train trip to New York the next day was uneventful. Richard read the newspapers, I read magazines. The conversations we had were not different in kind than those we'd had before the wedding. (I hesitate to call them conversations, because I did not talk much. I smiled and agreed, and did not listen.)
In New York, we had dinner at a restaurant with some friends of Richard's, a couple whose names I've forgotten. They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as if they'd covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills. I wondered how they'd made it, this money; it had a fishy whiff.
These people didn't know Richard all that well, nor did they yearn to: they owed him something, that was all-for some unstated favour. They were fearful of him, a little deferential. I gathered this from the play of the cigarette lighters: who lit what for whom, and how quickly. Richard enjoyed their deference.
He enjoyed having cigarettes lit for him, and, by extension, for me.
It struck me that Richard had wanted to go out with them not only because he wanted to surround himself with a small coterie of cringers, but because he didn't want to be alone with me. I could scarcely blame him: I had little to say. Nonetheless, he was now-in company-solicitous of me, placing my coat with tenderness over my shoulders, paying me small, cherishing attentions, keeping a hand always on me, lightly, somewhere. Every once in a while he'd scan the room, checking over the other men in it to see who was envying him. (Retrospect of course, on my part: at the time I recognised none of this.)
The restaurant was very expensive, and also very modern. I'd never seen anything like it. Things glittered rather than shone; there was bleached wood and brass trim and brash glass everywhere, and a great deal of lamination. Sculptures of stylized women in brass or steel, smooth as taffy, with eyebrows but no eyes, with streamlined haunches and no feet, with arms melting back into their torsos; white marble spheres; round mirrors like portholes. On every table, a single calla lily in a thin steel vase.
Richard's friends were even older than Richard, and the woman looked older than the man. She was wearing white mink, despite the spring weather. Her gown was white as well, a design inspired-she told us at some length-by ancient Greece, the Winged Victory of Samothrace to be precise. The pleats of this gown were bound around with gold cord under her breasts, and in a crisscross between them. I thought that if I had breasts that slack and droopy I'd never wear such a gown. The skin showing above the neckline was freckled and puckered, as were her arms. Her husband sat silently while she talked, his hands fisted together, his half-smile set in concrete; he looked wisely down at the tablecloth. Sothis is marriage, I thought: this shared tedium, this twitchiness, and those little powdery runnels forming to the sides of the nose.
"Richard didn't warn us you'd be thisyoung," said the woman.
Her husband said, "It will wear off," and his wife laughed.
I considered the wordwarn: was I that dangerous? Only in the way sheep are, I now suppose. So dumb they jeopardise themselves, and get stuck on cliffs or cornered by wolves, and some custodian has to risk his neck to get them out of trouble.
Soon-after two days in New York, or was it three?-we crossed over to Europe on the Berengeria, which Richard said was the ship taken by everybody who was anybody. The sea wasn't rough for that time of year, but nevertheless I was sick as a dog. (Why dogs, in this respect? Because they look as if they can't help it. Neither could I.)