She looked at him, pleasure filling her like water pouring into a vase: her grown son just back from his first two weeks of college, all smooth white teeth and rangy limbs, his eyes glowing with champagne. How had it happened? Why did she miss him so, when he was standing right there? She hadn’t cried during the wedding but now it seemed she was about to; it was possible she would begin to cry and never stop, so she let him take her to the dance floor, place his hand at the small of her back, and steer her into and through the music-when had he learned to do this?-then spin her out to the ends of his fingers, catching her before she flew away. She saw herself, as if from the corner of her eye: a blur of blue dress, arcing like a comet’s tail away from the sun’s bright heat and light; the boy in his gray suit, taller by far than she, hurling her outward and reeling her in again. As the song’s last bars approached he folded his arms over her somehow, catching her weight as he tipped her back on one foot; her other foot rose, and before she knew what had happened her full weight was in his arms. Her hair skimmed the floor, blood filling her skull in a dizzying rush; O’Neil, her boy, had his mama in a full dip. As he returned her to a standing position she detected, around her, a smattering of jokey applause.
As the next song began he tipped his head across the floor toward his sister and Jack, who was wiping the lenses of his heavy eyeglasses on a handkerchief.
“Aw, he’s not so bad, Ma,” O’Neil said. He handed her a glass of ice water; she hadn’t even seen him get it. “You know? So it’d be okay to lighten up a little. At least for Kay.”
The remark startled her. Had she been so obvious? And it was true, about Jack: he seemed rigid and fusty to her, not at all like the boys Kay had dated in high school and then college-clever, flirtatious, quick with a joke-and not at all like O’Neil or his friends, whom Miriam adored. She drank the water O’Neil had handed her, surprised to find how much she wanted it. No, she couldn’t quite bring herself to like him, much as she’d tried. From the first day Kay had brought him home to visit, she had thought it; his life was a train he expected her to board. She saw it alclass="underline" the old station wagon strewn with toys and the sacks of groceries in back, the dry dinners with deans and visiting economists, the burrowing claws of life on the margins of some small college town. (And wasn’t it also true that she, Miriam, had never really gotten along with Kay? That love was one thing but getting along was something else, and there had been, well, certain difficulties, certain unnameable tensions, between them? That this gap was the very one Kay had chosen to fill with Jack? Making it, in the end, Miriam’s fault?) So, no. She didn’t like him, not one bit. But more than this, she had forgotten-actually forgotten, if for a moment-that the party was her daughter’s, not O’Neil’s. The yellow stripes of the tent, the band’s silly music, the crispness of the autumn air, and the calming presence of the waiters and waitresses gliding through the company with trays in their hands-she had forgotten that all of this has been called into being by her daughter’s decision to marry Jack.
“Mom? Come in, Mom.”
She looked up to find O’Neil, grinning and wagging his eyebrows. A waiter moved past, and she placed the empty water glass on his tray, trading it for a full one of champagne.
“Ammunition,” she said then, and drank; she smiled back at O’Neil, who was drinking too. She thought about telling him to go easy on the champagne, but decided quickly not to. Beyond the walls of the tent it had begun to grow dark, blue afternoon bruising to black. One of the caterers was firing up the propane heaters that hung on poles in each of the tent’s four corners.
“All right, hon.” She put down the empty champagne glass. “The mother of the bride will go ask her son-in-law to dance.”
“Now you’re talking.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that will be, you know, interesting. Jack is an interesting guy.”
“Very,” she agreed, and touched his sleeve. “But I’m not doing it to make you laugh. For Kay, like you said.”
And so she danced with Jack (O’Neil, solving a problem, appeared at that moment to take Kay by the arm and whisk her off across the floor); she danced with him not once but twice, and though he talked her ears off-all nonsense about his dissertation and his theories of wage and price controls, and which uncle was a partner in which St. Louis investment firm, as if she might someday have some serious money to spend in St. Louis-she found herself, for that time, liking him, almost, just as O’Neil had hoped. He was just a nervous boy, not really a man at all, uncertain how to dance with a grown woman or where to place his gaze and what to say to her while he did so (nothing; Say nothing, she thought). He was doing his very best, in other words, and what else was there to wish for? When it was over, he made a little bow, awkwardly hugged her; looking over her shoulder, he might have actually called her Mom.
The sound of a car horn: Arthur, idling at the curb, is waving to her from the wheel of the mud-spattered Peugeot. Miriam buttons her coat again and heads outside to meet him. Their suitcases are in the backseat, as promised, and a surprise: beside them she sees their old wicker picnic basket, with a wool blanket folded neatly on top. Greasy diesel fumes huff out the tailpipe and are whisked away into the autumn air.
“Sorry.” He makes a flustered gesture with his hands. “I decided to pack a lunch. And I couldn’t find the goddamn cat again.”
“You and Nestor need to work some things out.” She arranges herself in the front seat. “Anyway. You did find him? And left him some food? We’re not abandoning him to the foxes, in other words?”
“He was under your dresser.”
“Ah.” She nods. “I see. My dresser. Sounds like a conspiracy.”
“Mimi, I just got held up.” His voice, though apologetic, is impatient too. He has been late for nearly everything his entire life; his voice says she should be used to it by now. “I said I was sorry. I had some work to do.”
“So you did.” She hears herself sigh; the urge to fight has passed. “Oh, it’s all right, Art. I should be, but I’m not really mad at all.” She leans over the gearbox and-why not?-kisses her husband’s cheek. She knows this will surprise him, and it does; as she pulls away, Arthur reaches with his hand to the place on his face where she has kissed him.
“Now,” she says, slapping her knees to tell him it’s over and to get the car in gear, “let’s go rescue our boy.”
Arthur and Miriam, on the road; an hour of winding country lanes-woods and towns and gas stations floating by, everything denuded and bathed by a thin autumnal light-and then they join the interstate, a pulsing artery of commerce headed east into New England. In Albany they change places in the parking lot of a McDonald’s-it is just after two o’clock-continue into Massachusetts and the Berkshires, and stop at a state park near Great Barrington to eat the sandwiches and drink the soup that Arthur has packed.
They arrive at the college after six, its great buildings ablaze with light. Despite the cold, students are everywhere. Doors and windows are open; music pours forth across the little town. They check into their hotel on the edge of campus and then telephone O’Neil in his dorm room. In the background Arthur can hear something like a party going on-loud voices, doors slamming, a girl laughing over the sound of a horn section and twanging guitars.