At Elizabeth’s house, now, they would all be gathered around and fussing over her, straightening her veil and brushing her suit. Margaret imagined her standing like a totem pole, dead center, allowing herself to be decorated. But she couldn’t picture her coming down this aisle. She turned in her seat, looking toward the doorway, and saw the ushers just stepping inside with carnations in their buttonholes. They looked back at her, all out of the same perplexed brown eyes. Was she on the correct side of the church? Which was the bride’s side? She couldn’t remember. She stayed where she was, to the right of the altar, and whisked her fan more rapidly.
People began filing in — old ladies, a few awkward men, women who took command of the church the moment they stepped inside. They clutched the ushers’ arms and beamed at them, whispering as they walked (“How’s your mama? How’s that pretty little sister?”), while the ushers stayed remote and self-conscious, and the women’s husbands, a few steps behind, carried their hats like breakable objects. The organ grew more sure of itself. A fat lady slid into Margaret’s pew, trailing long wisps of Arpege. “I finally did make the Greyhound,” she said.
“Oh, good,” said Margaret.
The fat lady frilled out the ruffles at her elbows, touched both earlobes, and pivoted each foot to peer down at her stocking seams. Margaret turned and looked out the window. If she ducked her head, she got a horizontal slice of grass, ranch-house, and the lower halves of several pastel dresses and two black suits heading toward the church. In the center was Elizabeth’s white skirt, drawing nearer — a sight that startled and scared her, as if she herself were involved in this wedding and nervous about its going well.
The fat lady had started talking, apparently to Margaret. “You knew Hannah couldn’t make it,” she said. “She’s having such a lot of trouble with Everett. But Nellie will be here. ‘Oh,’ she told me, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Been waiting a long time to see that boy get married.’ Well, you know. It came as quite a surprise. I had always thought he would marry Alice Gail Pruitt. I expected to see Liz Abbott die an old maid, to tell you the truth.”
“Why is that?” Margaret asked.
“Well, she’s been mighty difficult. Wouldn’t you say?” She kept looking around the church while she spoke, as if she had lost something. “Didn’t they do a nice job with the flowers, now. A few more wouldn’t hurt, but—we had thought she’d lost Dommie forever, but then he broke off with Alice Gail and came right back here where his heart had been all along. Talk about patient! That boy has the patience of a saint. I just hope Liz knows how lucky she is. And her parents! They’ve been angels to her. I said to Harry, I said, speaking for myself I just don’t know how John and Julia do it. ‘If it were me, Julia,’ I told her once—”
As if on cue, Mrs. Abbott started up the aisle on the arm of an usher. She was an older, heavier Elizabeth, but her speech was a continuation of the fat lady’s. Margaret could hear her clearly as she passed. “That child’s hair!” she told the usher. “Oh, I begged her to leave it long. ‘Just till after the wedding,’ I told her, ‘that’s all I ask.’ But wouldn’t you know …” She passed on by, a whispering blue shadow wearing white roses and absently patting the usher’s hand. He kept his eyes on his shoes.
Then the organ paused, and a door at the front creaked open and the minister came out. If she hadn’t known ahead of time, Margaret would never have guessed that he was Elizabeth’s father. He was tall and handsome and frightening, dressed in black with a small black book between his clasped hands. He was followed by two young men. When they had arranged themselves at the front, so that Margaret could tell which was the groom, she sat forward to take a closer look. She had noticed how Elizabeth described him. “Sweet,” she had said — not a word that Margaret would have expected from her. But now she saw that nothing else would have been accurate. Dommie Whitehill’s face was the kind that would stay young and trusting till the day he died; his eyes were wide and dark, his chin was round, his face was pale and scrubbed and hopeful. His short brown hair was neatly flattened with water. If he had any last-minute doubts, none showed in the clear, shining gaze he directed toward the back of the church.
The organ started up, louder this time. What it played was not the traditional march, but then it couldn’t be what Margaret thought it was either — the wedding music from Lieutenant Kije. She looked around her; no one else seemed to find anything funny. She looked toward the aisle and saw a frilly blonde in pink — Elizabeth’s sister, it must be, but softer and prettier — keeping pace with some more dignified music in her head and carrying a nosegay. Behind her came Elizabeth, on the arm of a young man whom Margaret assumed to be the brother-in-law. Elizabeth’s white suit was crisp and trim, but without her dungarees she seemed to lose all her style. She walked as if her shoes were too big for her. A short veil stuck out around her face like a peasant’s kerchief. Her escort scowled at the carpet, but Elizabeth’s face was serene and the music had brought out one of her private half-smiles. They passed Margaret and continued forward, beyond a multitude of flowered hats and whisking fans.
When everyone was in place, Margaret sat back and wiped her damp palms on her skirt. “Things are going to be all right, I believe,” the fat lady whispered. Margaret watched Elizabeth’s father open his black book and carefully lay aside a ribbon marker. “Dearly beloved …” he said. He was one of those ministers who develop a whole new tone of voice in front of a congregation. His words rolled over each other, hollow and doomed. Margaret forgot to listen and watched Elizabeth’s straight white back.
But Elizabeth wasn’t listening either. The moment her father started reading she turned toward Dommie, as if the ceremony were some commercial she already knew by heart. She spoke, not whispering but in a low, clear voice. Margaret was too far away to hear what she said. Dommie turned toward Elizabeth and parted his lips; Elizabeth waited, but when he said nothing she went on speaking. Her father’s voice crashed above their heads, unnoticed.
Now no one was listening. Everyone watched Elizabeth. Whispers traveled down the pews. “You would think just this once—” the fat lady said. Even Elizabeth’s father seemed to have stopped hearing what he was saying. He spoke with his eyes on Elizabeth, his finger traveling lower on the page, line by line, without his following it. He was going faster and faster, as if he were running some sort of race. “Do you, Dominick Benjamin …” Dommie’s face turned reluctantly from Elizabeth. “I do,” he said, after a pause. He had the strained, preoccupied look of someone interrupted in the middle of more important things. “Do you, Elizabeth Priscilla …”
Elizabeth’s pause was even longer. A fly spiraled toward the ceiling; someone coughed. Elizabeth drew herself up until she was straight and thin, with her elbows pressed to her sides and her feet close together.
“I don’t,” she said.
No one breathed. Elizabeth’s father snapped his book shut.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t,” she said.