The bridesmaids were coming down the aisle singly now, somewhat drizzle-dampened in peach-colored gowns, each carrying small bouquets of tea roses and baby’s breath, Nancy’s younger sister Meg first, a silly bewildered grin on her face, followed by Adelaide Moore, who had been voted Dairy Queen of the state three years back, before we’d entered the war, but who still hadn’t caught herself a husband. Behind her, in the identical peach gown was Brigitte Rabillon, who was keeping steady company with Danny Talbot, it was said they would be married in June as soon as he became executive sales manager of his father’s furniture company. He had already asked me if I would do him the extreme honor of being his best man, but by June I would be in the Loire Valley, one of France’s most discriminating wine tasters, but he is an American, they would say! Ah oui, monsieur, but he knows wine like no other man on earth, it is said he can tell a good vineyard from the road as he approaches in his automobile, ah oui, monsieur, he drives one of those Stutz Bearcats, he is trés formidable, vraiment. Then came Felice Clark (no relation to my intended bride), who, it was rumored, had had numerous exciting things done to her dawn-peninsula during our great American adventure, while all the town bloods were away in Europe, the party having been thrown by several forty-year-old members of the Republican Club, who decided in private smoke-filled conclave that this might be a good time to explore the virtues of some of the younger ladies around, they being deprived of company of their own age and all, hence the sad story of Felice Clark, who had lost it repeatedly down-peninsula one starless night last October on the back seat of a flivver, and who now marched down the aisle looking hardly sullied or blemished, had Nancy ever done anything with anybody anywhere anytime? Suppose, no, the thought was unthinkable, not here with Reverend Boland at my side, but suppose, ah suppose, well, are we any of us perfect? but suppose in that Chicago hotel room tonight (will we be there tonight, did I check the train schedule?) suppose there is no blood? the blood on the straw pallet under the thirteen-year-old girl in that French farmhouse and the blood of her mother on the floor of the second bedroom and the blood of the horse in the courtyard outside, the flies eating blood, suppose there is no blood from my Nancy, will it matter? I do not love her, how can it matter?
Clara, Nancy’s older sister and her maid-of-honor, came through the doors radiantly happy in a pale blue gown, yellow roses crushed in a bouquet against her bosom, dear Clara who had written to me of her sister’s illness during those dread weeks so many centuries ago, I must have loved Nancy very much then, I cried for days when I thought I might lose her.
Oh Jesus God, I love her now, too, with all my being! I love her desperately, I would kill any man who touched her, who even dreamt of touching her. I pledge to you, Nancy, my life, my troth, my undying devotion, I love you, Nancy, I will never stop loving you!
Or perhaps an automobile agency on the Avenue Neuilly, strictly American cars, bring the old Ford over there, put the nation on wheels. Ah, oui, madame, you may well ask who that strikingly
handsome American is! He is Bertram A. Tyler, he is the man who brought the Ford automobile to France, ah, oui, and put the nation on wheels. (Has someone already brought the Ford automobile over there and put the nation on wheels?) I’ll drive him out of business, I’ll fluently make speeches in the Bois de Bologne, I will stand on the equivalent of a French soapbox, make speeches the way the Bolsheviks are doing here in America, only I will extol the merits of buying a Ford automobile from the Bertram A. Tyler Agency on the Avenue Neuilly, where the owner himself, the proprietor, the boss, mesdames et messieurs, speaks fluent French, why even colloquial French, and where you will get the squarest little deal on the continent, bar none, buy your car from me, my friends, make me rich, I want to be a rich American bum, I want to gamble the night away at Monte Carlo, and dance the waltz in the grand ballroom of the Alhambra in Cimiez, and take my yacht to Cannes, I want to be Bertram A. Tyler, the notorious American bachelor tycoon, bachelor, do you hear? I don’t want to get married, not today, not any day, not ever, ever, ever!
She came through the doors on her father’s arm.
My heart stopped.
Her hand rested ever so delicately on the sleeve of his black coat, her eyes behind the veil were downcast as though she were carefully watching the toes of her white slippers, the white lace gown seeming to float of its own slow volition down the church aisle, suspended around her tiny figure as she came closer to me and the organ notes floated from the loft in fat and mellow accompaniment, my Nancy’s triumphal music. She was beside me now, standing on my left, the minister before us, her father having stepped back and away, symbolically mine already though her father had not yet given her in marriage, not really mine as yet because the words had not been spoken. “Dearly beloved,” Reverend Boland said, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God,” perhaps not even mine after the words were spoken, perhaps not to be mine for a long long time to come, “to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate.” We were both so very young, I felt our exposed youth glaringly out of place in this old people’s church, they who knew so very much, but who watched this ancient ritual in silence now, saying nothing, eyes wet, watching, “not to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons come now to be joined,” Nancy’s eyes still downcast behind the veil, I wanted to see her eyes, I wanted to read what was in her eyes, did she want this marriage any more than I did?
I thought of a forest at dusk and the lone barking of a dog against the approaching night, the laughter of a lumberjack booming from the bunkhouse, “or if there be any present who can show just cause why these parties should not be legally joined together, let him now speak or forever hold his peace.”
I wanted to say Yes, I can show very just and reasonable cause why we should not be joined. I hardly know this girl. I’ve known her forever, but I don’t know her at all, why are you all rushing us into this? Why are you insisting that I become a man when I’m still not done being a boy, a father when I want to remain a son? Stop them, somebody, I thought, stop them! Papa, tell them I’m still your son, tell them there are still a boy’s worlds to conquer, there are still hoptoads to catch.
“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” Reverend Boland asked, and Nancy’s father said, “I do,” gruflly, his two seconds on stage after eighteen years and one month of caring for his Nancy, feeding her, clothing her, loving her, all finished in the two words, “I do,” I give her to be married to this man, I do, his chance to stop it gone, wasn’t anyone going to stop it? Reverend Boland put Nancy’s right hand into my own right hand, and suddenly looked very solemn and frightening.