Sick Of Shadows

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. & Mrs. Robert Gray Chandler request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Eileen Amanda to Mr. Michael Satisky on Saturday, the nineteenth of June at one o’clock in the afternoon at the home of the bride Long Meadow Farm Route One Chandler Grove, Georgia

May 31

Dear Bill,

Thank you very much for the graduation present. It was the only I.O.U. I received and I shall treasure it always.

No, I haven’t decided what I want to do yet. There isn’t much you can do with a liberal arts major these days. Mother’s bridge club keeps asking me when I’m going to get married, so they have a pretty firm grasp of the situation at least. It seems careless of me to have broken up with Austin in my senior year. Now I have to think up something to do! I have given myself until the end of the summer to decide.

How are things with you? Is Tax Law 307 still putting you to sleep? Your new roommate Milo sounds interesting. Do archeologists make much money? What does he look like?

You may have noticed the enclosed invitation to Cousin Eileen’s wedding. I enclosed it partly at Mother’s insistence and partly as proof of martyrdom.

They want me to be a bridesmaid. Well, I don’t suppose “want” is exactly the right way to put it. I expect I’m a necessary evil: the poor cousin drafted in lieu of friends, because of course Eileen hasn’t got friends-unless she made some at Cherry Hill; and Aunt Amanda would never let this affair degenerate into a reunion of mental patients. Though of course it will be anyway, with all those Chandlers present. I myself will probably have to be taken away after a week of their collective presence. I never saw why they had to send her away, did you? All Chandlers considered, they could have just cordoned off the place and sent in ten nurses. Did you know that Aunt Amanda still refers to Cherry Hill as a “finishing school”?

The real purpose of this letter is to appeal to your better nature (assuming you have one) to persuade you to accompany me to this blessed event. I do not want to suffer alone. In fact, I feel that since you are older than I, you should be the one sacrificed (firstborn son, and all that), but then I can see that you’d make a terrible bridesmaid.

I know already that you are either going to ignore this letter or write back some tripe about your law courses keeping you too busy to go. Well, I will give you forty-eight hours to answer, and then I’m writing Aunt Amanda that we will be delighted to come to dear Eileen’s wedding.

Your atavistic sister,

Elizabeth

June 2

Dear Bill,

I was kidding about the forty-eight hours. You did not have to send a Mailgram. Anyway, since I am your sister, I am not likely to believe that you have to go to your grandmother’s funeral.

Please thank Milo for the description of himself, but tell him I didn’t find it very enlightening. I am not thrilled by the fact that he has a “cranial capacity of 1,350 cc, a foramen magnum facing directly down, and a pyramidal-shaped mastoid process.” Does he still leave bones scattered on the kitchen table? You two deserve each other.

Mother is worried about your dietary habits. She wanted me to ask if you are eating anything green and leafy. (Dad looked up from the newspaper and said: “Money.”)

By the way, I most certainly will not give your message to Eileen. I looked up Hamlet, Act III-Scene I, lines 63-64: “ ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Most unfunny. Aunt Amanda still hasn’t forgiven you for referring to Eileen’s release from Cherry Hill as her “coming-out party.”

I am going alone to the wedding-hereafter to be referred to as The Ordeal. Mother was willing to go, but Dad said he’d rather be staked out on an anthill. So I’m going by bus. If you had gone, we could have driven down.

I hope your law books fall on you.

Elizabeth

June 2

Dear Aunt Amanda,

We are delighted to hear about Eileen’s wedding. Thank you for inviting me to be a bridesmaid. I’ll be happy to accept, but I’m afraid I’m the only MacPherson who can come.

Dad and Mother had already arranged to go to a sales convention in Columbia, and Bill is simply prostrate with grief that he can’t make it, but he has tests that week in law school.

I’ll be arriving on Wednesday afternoon about two-thirty at the bus station in Chandler Grove.

Looking forward to seeing you all again,

Elizabeth

P.S. I think you will have to alter that bridesmaid’s dress. I did not, as you predicted, grow up to be a size sixteen.

THE CHANDLER GROVE bus station was a dingy yellow waiting room whose openings and closings were probably dictated by TV Guide. Flies hovered lazily about the torn screen door, some drifting over to the faded drink machine, whose dents testified to its dubious honesty. Near the counter was a rack of travel pamphlets that Elizabeth might well have to read if someone did not turn up soon to claim her. She picked up the least dusty brochure (Florida, of course) and sat down in the plastic chair to wait.

She decided that she would be disappointed if the first circle of hell were not a bus station waiting room where you waited forever for people you didn’t like who weren’t going to come for you anyway.

Her blue suitcase rested within inches of her foot, in case the crazed felon Aunt Amanda always swore inhabited bus stations should dash through the room and snatch it on the run. If he did, she hoped the dress would fit him-and if he would consent to take her place at The Ordeal, he was welcome to it.

She glanced at the suitcase, imagining the permanent wrinkles it was grinding in the yellow bridesmaid’s dress. Yellow. Aunt Amanda had either remembered or surmised that Elizabeth looked ghastly in yellow. No, more likely she hadn’t given it a thought. The Chandlers would scarcely consider the country cousin in their choice of wedding colors for dear Eileen.

So here I am, thought Elizabeth, the sacrificial lamb of the MacPherson Clan, shunted down to Chandler Grove and decked out in malarial yellow to see Eileen married off to What’s-His-Name.

At least it would be a distraction. Anything would be better than the postpartum depression of having received a degree in sociology and no job prospects. Her father wanted her to go to graduate school, but she couldn’t face that decision just yet. It felt too much like postponing life. She stared at the rack of travel brochures-there was always the Peace Corps. Reconciling with Austin out of sheer panic suddenly seemed dangerously easy.

After all, Austin was well on his way to becoming an architect. He would soon be so well established that Elizabeth could postpone life-determining decisions indefinitely. Though, of course, marrying Austin would have been a life-determining decision. It would lock her forever into the world of tailgate picnics and country club dances. “You just know there’s always an alligator somewhere on his person,” Bill had said. But she had been able to overlook his conventionality; much is forgiven of tanned, wiry blonds.

Her disenchantment had been gradual. She began to see the birthday and Christmas gifts of Bermuda bags and add-a-beads as a tacit reproach of her own taste. The feeling culminated on a golden April afternoon as they strolled along the path by the campus duck pond. Austin had gazed tenderly into her eyes and said: “If you lose ten pounds, I’ll marry you.” Elizabeth pushed him into the pond and walked off without a backward glance.

“I come from haunts of coot and hern,” said a solemn voice behind her.

Elizabeth turned around to see what was obviously a Chandler. He was in his early twenties, and he had the look of a faun in country tweeds.

“You must be Geoffrey,” she said, after a moment’s study.

“I know. I must. I once thought of being Caligula, but when Alban came back from Europe as Ludwig of Bavaria I gave it up.”

“Alban? Aunt Louisa’s son? I haven’t heard of him since she sent him off to William and Mary to become a ‘suthen’ gentleman.”

“My dear, you are quite out of it,” Geoffrey assured her. “After he graduated-KA with a B.A.-Aunt Louisa took him on the grand tour. The castles and churches of Ye Olde Worlde. Unfortunately, they visited Bavaria, and Alban became smitten with that fairy-tale thing that looks like the Disneyland castle. Built by King Ludwig, who was crazy.”

“And?”

“You’ll know soon.” He sighed theatrically. “Far too soon. Is this blue suitcase yours? Shall I carry it for you and further impress you with my good breeding?”

Elizabeth stood up. “I’m so glad to be rescued, I don’t care who carries it.”

Geoffrey raised one expressive eyebrow. “The prospect of going to Long Meadow strikes you as a rescue?”

There didn’t seem to be an answer to this one. After all, Geoffrey was Aunt Amanda’s son, so it wouldn’t do to tell him the truth-but he seemed to have no illusions about the place. They walked out to the car. Elizabeth decided to change the subject.

“We’ve been so out of touch for the past couple of years that I’m afraid I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” she said brightly.

“People are always afraid they don’t know what I’ve been up to,” Geoffrey replied.

“I mean, are you in school?”

“Hardly. I do have a degree. I hear you’ve just acquired one from the family alma mater.”

“Yes. I majored in sociology.”

“Of course you did. Are you about to ask me what I do?”

“I guess I was.”

“Well… one has one’s hobbies-the theater and so forth. But my main function is that of critic.”

“Of drama?”

“Of life.”

They had passed through Chandler Grove’s downtown, a dozen shabby storefronts, several minutes before, and were now speeding along the county blacktop, which curled through rolling hills, dividing Hereford pastures from Holstein. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do either, Elizabeth thought. But the Chandlers have so much money it doesn’t matter. I, on the other hand, will need either a job or a husband by the end of the summer. The only other alternative is to go to graduate school, which will postpone the whole issue for another couple of years.

“Of course, Captain Grandfather keeps insisting that I join the navy. He says it would make a new man of me. ‘Not unless you believe in reincarnation,’ I told him.”

Elizabeth laughed, filing the military away for further consideration.

“You’re not by any chance an actress, are you?” asked Geoffrey.

“Me? No. I’m too self-conscious. But Bill played in the Shakespeare Festival on campus last year. Why?”

“We have quite a decent little theater group in Chandler Grove. Our director actually had a bit of Broadway experience ages ago, but he’s retired now, and only does this to keep busy. We did Camelot last winter, and I was Mordred. I just thought you might be interested.”

“What are you doing this summer?”

“Sinclair has got it into his head that we must do a classic, though I assure you it will be wasted on the audience in Chandler Grove, who think that Madame Bovary is a type of dairy cow.”

“Are you doing Shakespeare?”

“No. Even more obscure. The Duchess of Malfi. I am to play Ferdinand. It’s very handy, really. Our Camelot costumes can be reworked and used again this time. I am beginning to feel quite at home in a sweeping black cloak.”

“I’d love to see your production,” said Elizabeth politely. “When will it be?”

“Well, we’re not sure. It was going to be in three weeks, but we’ll have to postpone it. With all the uproar at home, I haven’t been able to learn all my lines. We’ve had to cancel a few rehearsals, and Mother has commandeered the only local seamstress, so instead of altering costumes, she is turning out unspeakable yellow dresses!” He shuddered.

“I guess things must be pretty hectic with the ceremony so near…”

“Well, they are for Mother, of course,” Geoffrey replied. “She’s ringmaster of this show. Father confines himself to his study and pretends to be writing his book on colonial medicine; Captain Grandfather affects a masculine disdain for women’s matters; and Eileen is mooning about like a Vogue Ophelia, working on a painting. I myself am bearing up remarkably well.”

“And Charles? Did he come home for the wedding?”

“Yes, dear brother Charles is on exhibit. Fresh from his commune. You know, I used to think that a commune was sort of a twentieth-century version of a monastery, but if Charles is any example, I think it must be a twentieth century version of a leper colony.”

“Well, he’s always been a changeling, hasn’t he?” asked Elizabeth.

“Always,” Geoffrey agreed. “When we played Civil War as kids, he always wanted to be Harriet Tubman.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “Bill always says that Charles is either going to be famous or notorious before he’s thirty.”

“Sorry Bill couldn’t come. He would have made a nice change.”

“Oh, I know, but he had these tests in law school…”

“Spare me,” said Geoffrey. “I am not a cretin. I have made enough excuses to know one when I hear it.”

“How is Eileen?” Elizabeth blurted out. She had wanted to change the subject, but the subject of Eileen didn’t seem safe either.

“Eileen is vague,” Geoffrey said thoughtfully. “She moons about, and doesn’t say anything significant. She’s lucid, of course, but you can have a conversation with her and come away not knowing anything about what she thinks or feels.”

Elizabeth considered this. “You know, there’s somebody you haven’t mentioned.”

“Captain Grandfather? I told you-”

“The groom,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh.”

“Well? Don’t you like him?”

Geoffrey was quiet for a few moments. To keep from staring at him, Elizabeth turned to look out her window at the sweep of pine forest and pasture. Wild mustard flashed yellow against the red clay ditches, and dark wooded hills framed the sky.

Finally Geoffrey broke the silence. “What do you want to know? Whether he’ll fit in? Doubtful. He doesn’t have our particular brand of insanity.”

“Could you manage a description?” prompted Elizabeth.

“He is the sort of liberal who affects an Afro. He has a New Jersey accent, and he is a graduate student in English literature-specializing in quotation without analyzation, I think.”

“That sounds just like you,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t dislike him because of Eileen. You dislike him for some obscure literary reason. But does he really care about her?”

“It’s hard to tell. Everybody that Eileen ever brought home proposed-we always assumed it was the house. We’d find them wandering down corridors counting the bathrooms.”

“I guess you’re not looking forward to the ceremony.”

“ ‘Such weddings may more properly be said to be executed than celebrated,’ ” Geoffrey intoned.

“Is that from your play?”

“Yes. I revel in Ferdinand. He is most apt at times.”

The car rounded the last bend in the road.

“Oh, well,” sighed Elizabeth, “I’m sure everything will-Good Lord! What is that?”

“I knew I should have warned you,” said Geoffrey sadly.