bellboys, so it was Jasper who took up the bags. In a moment I was alone upstairs with mine and a feeling of utter panic.
*
We had agreed to meet in the lobby, and he was waiting when I got down. So was Jasper, and we went out and got in the car. When I asked where we were headed he said: “Lab-we have to have blood tests. If they take their samples now we can get the report in the morning and get our license at once without waiting around.” I said: “Oh,” and Jasper stopped at an office building. The receptionist seemed to know what we wanted without being told, and was so coy it made me uncomfortable. The doctor was smiling too, and made quick work of us both, having us sit with our dab of cotton, holding it to our arms, and then telling us: “Just ask the girl in the morning- she’ll have your certificates ready.” Back in the motel, we went at once to the dining room, and all during dinner he talked of how happy he was, just to be with me at last, without having to get up and go, “or seeing that bartender eye me as though I were some kind of thief for occupying a table without ordering something pricier.” I told him Jake didn’t mean any harm, and that he’d been very nice to me from the first day, but it didn’t do any good, as Jake, something I had not known, was obviously his pet aversion. After the dinner we went back to the lobby to talk over cups of tea in a little sitting area they had. Around nine I said I was tired and would like to turn in, and he took me to my room. For one horrible moment there in the hall I wondered what I would do if he tried to come in, but he didn’t. He stood there, though, as if expecting something, and as I had in the car I knew what it was. I raised my mouth and he kissed me. “Good night, Earl,” I whispered and ducked inside, too jittered to ask if my lips were warmer than they had been, or to care.
I’ll remember that night as long as I live, for its gray, dry tastelessness, and endless length. And yet not once, at least to remember it, did I tell myself I could still back out, or have any impulse to. I would like to make that clear. I could have backed out, packed my bag, turned my key in to the desk, taken a cab to the bus station, and gone home — no new thing for me, as that’s what I’d done with Tom. But, frightened though I was, and jittered, and numb, it didn’t enter my mind. So far as I was concerned, I had what I wanted, and never once doubted I wanted it.
In the morning I dressed for my wedding, putting on the suit I had bought, a simple sharkskin thing, in the dark green I always liked, with a beige blouse and dark tan shoes, with gloves and hat to match. I didn’t want a hat, but felt I should have one, out of respect for him. So I wore a tiny velvet one, that took up no space in my bag but gave me a formal look. He got the idea at once, telling me: “I was hoping you’d put on a hat-you have beautiful hair, but it’s kind of a special occasion. Oh well, I might have known you would. You don’t have to be Social Register to know what’s what and what’s not.”
“But I
“… You’re-what did you say, Joan?”
By his reaction I knew he thought I was kidding him, and also that for all his and his father’s and his grandfather’s wealth he was not Social Register himself. But I was, one of the only legacies remaining from my parents-that, and the bag I’d packed for this trip, and worth just about as much in my eyes, or less. But I saw what it meant to him that his new wife, best known to him until this moment for serving him tonic water with her breasts half revealed, was higher on the social ladder than he, and just for a moment I let this thing that meant nothing to me give him his moment of torture.
“Oh-I’m in, in Pittsburgh, of course. My father and mother are, and I’m listed as one of their children-or was. I guess I’m still in. Not that I very much care.”
“I didn’t know that.”
All during breakfast he kept shooting glances at me, as though trying to readjust to something that to me was barely worth mentioning, but to him was apparently a staggering piece of news. At least it made a break in the talk, so I could eat my eggs in peace. Then, back to the lab to pick up our blood reports, and then to the courthouse for our license. When the woman saw Mr. White’s name she was excited at once, telling him: “We got your letter, Mr. White, and the judge is ready when you are.” Then a middle-aged man was there, shaking hands and congratulating us, and asking if we’d like two of the girls to be our witnesses. “Just one,” answered Mr. White. “We brought one witness with us.” He put his arm around Jasper, who seemed very pleased.
Then Mr. White, a girl, Jasper, and I all went in the judge’s office. He was the least bit fussy telling us how to stand. Then he started the service and I suddenly felt suffocated, knowing what it meant. Then Mr. White was slipping a ring on my finger and repeating after the judge, “With this ring I thee wed,” and I was promising to love, honor and cherish. Then Mr. White was kissing me, and I was hoping my lips weren’t as cold to him as yesterday. To me, they felt colder.
Then we were out on the street, and Jasper was trotting off to bring up the car. I looked down, and pinned to my jacket were flowers, a beautiful corsage of orange blossoms-I hadn’t the faintest idea, and haven’t to this day, how it got there, or when. Then we were in the car, headed north, I didn’t know where. Then I could see New York in the distance, and then, after tunnels, knew we must be headed for Kennedy Airport. By then I knew he had some surprise for me, but we were in front of the airline counter, and he was off to one side, whispering to Jasper and giving him money, before I was sure we were headed for London.
22
My seat was next to the window in a row of three, and his was in front of me, but he moved to the one beside me and I tried to act as though pleased, though on a plane I like to be left to myself, as the clouds and the sky and drone of the motor all make me feel dreamy, and dreams are a solo enterprise. However, his intentions were clearly friendly and I responded as well as I could. I suddenly realized, though, as he kept asking how I liked it, and if it made me nervous at all, that he assumed I’d never been on a plane before. So, once again, as when he brought up the Social Register, I had to cut him down to size. I said: “Oh no-I don’t mind flying at all-never did. Even when I was little, and we flew to St. Louis each year, I loved it even in rough air, when the plane would go down and everyone was scared to death. Once I yelled ‘Whee!’ and my mother spanked me but quick. And then naturally my father had to make made out like he was really annoyed too.”
“I find myself wondering about this father of yours. Who was he, Joan?”
“Lawyer. As I’ve told you.”
“… He still living?”
“I don’t really know-and don’t care.”
He took the hint and cut off the questions-for a while. But then after we’d been flying perhaps two hours he resumed, and I thought it best to cover the subject, of my parents and the falling out we’d had, once and for all, so once it was done, I’d not have to do it again. “I had a brawl with my mother,” I explained, “over a boy she’d picked out for me, a rich boy from one of the steel families. But he bored me to tears, and when I refused even to consider marrying him, she put me out, and instead of standing up for me my father stood beside her. I’ve made my own way since, with what results you already know. If I don’t seem as refined as a girl with my background should, it’s being on my own from seventeen on, and not in the best of situations, that’s done it.” I shrugged away the sympathetic look he was giving me. “I wrote my mother when I got pregnant, but never heard from her-or him, as perhaps should go without saying. That was when I knew for sure I’d been cut off but good. Of course, no parent can be expected to respond with enthusiasm to the news that their unmarried daughter is pregnant. It’s not as though anyone else was too excited either-Ron’s enthusiasm for it wasn’t visible to the naked eye, his parents’ bordered on nausea, his sister’s on galloping lockjaw. If that’s why he drank I don’t know, but it could have been, and eventually it was drinking that cost him his life, so you might say there were bad outcomes all around. But I did get one good thing out of it: my darling little Tad.”
“You’ll be pleased to know I’ve made arrangements for him, Joan- had a nursery fixed up, next to your suite, in the house.”
It was the first moment since the ceremony-no, longer, since the day he’d returned from his business in New York and said he’d marry me-that I felt warmly toward him. I caught his hand, pressed it in both of mine, then lifted it and kissed it, and meant it.
We had left Kennedy at noon, so it was something like seven New York time when we got to Heathrow Airport, but late at night in London, on account of the time differential. We’d just had dinner on the plane, and in
