Isn't It Romantic? (14 page)

Bert Slaughterbeck asked Orville, “You don't s'pose it's poltergeists, do ya?”

Orville stated, “It's the hobgoblin company of love.”

The townspeople paused to stare at him.

Inside the house, Iona's bedroom door flew open and Opal hauled in Owen by his ear. Mrs. Christiansen grandly entered, and Dick escorted Natalie, a hand gently riding her shirred lower back. When Carlo slunk in, he held his shirt collar high to hide his face, like a criminal avoiding cameras on his way to jail. And then, for no good reason, Onetta and old Nell walked in. Pierre watched the parade with mystification and was about to shut the door to insure that no one else would crowd in when the Reverend Picarazzi crowded in, wearing a purple stole over his party clothes and toting his Extreme Unction kit.

Silence.

Looking around, he took off his stole and muttered, “I must've been misinformed.”

Pierre glanced at his Piaget watch and saw it was three in the morning. He stood on his tiptoes to see over everyone's head, and waved to his fiancée, who was wedged between Carlo and Owen. Because of the hubbub he had to yell. “I have only one thing to say to you!”

She yelled back, “What?”

“Nine hours!”

Onetta surprised the crowd by shooting a starter's pistol out the screenless window and shouting, “Quiet!” Shredding gunsmoke straggled out on a gentle August breeze.

Mrs. Christiansen nodded thanks to Onetta and became teacherly. “Hands out of pockets,” she instructed, and Carlo and Pierre complied. “Nell, is that gum?”

Old Nell spit her Wrigley's into a tin wastepaper basket. It clanged.

Mrs. Christiansen delivered her first chastisement by turning to the cattleman. “And you, Dick Tupper! I'm surprised at you!”

“You know, Mrs. Christiansen, I'm sorta surprised at myself.”

“Men! On the second floor!”

All the males hung their heads in shame.

Iona said, “We're sorry, Grandma.”

Dante Picarazzi said, “When you think about it, it's not so bad, really.”

“Syncretism!” Owen's Aunt Opal exclaimed.

Who knows where she got the word?

There was another knock on the door. Pierre, finding this beyond belief, struggled his way between bodies to open it. The grinning trucker from Sidney was standing in the hallway, hefting a pony beer keg on his broad shoulder, in his free hand stacked plastic cups.

Ursula walked up behind him, her orange hair newly spiked, wiping sleep from her eyes. She asked, “Did someone hear a door slam?”

Critical mass was reached when the trucker from Sidney invited Ursula to join him in Iona's bedroom and the thirteen tried to sort themselves out. Owen directed traffic with a bullhorn rolled from Iona's
Cosmopolitan
magazine. “Plenty of room here, plenty of room. Men, stay against the walls! Women on the bed!”

Carlo petted his Dick Tracy mustache as he snickered and said, “Hubba hubba.”

Natalie, Iona, Mrs. Christiansen, Opal, Onetta, Nell, and Ursula obeyed Owen's instructions. Mrs. Christiansen got to a tottering stand on the mattress as she shouted, “There seems to be some contention over who is marrying Mademoiselle Clairvaux.”

Immediately half the room pointed to Pierre, and the other half pointed to Dick. They felt accused. They shrank.

And then Iona's double bed gave way from the weight, its wooden frame fracturing with a shriek.

Confusion ensued.

Reverend Picarazzi sidled up to Owen and confided, “I think the floor could go next.”

Owen shifted his weight from his right foot to his left and heard an elephant groan from the joists. He raised his
Cosmo
. “Uh, people? We have a situation here.”

In the mass exodus, Mrs. Christiansen told Iona, “Let's see: we have Cracker Barrel cheese left. There's still some of that good ambrosia . . .”

Opal said, “I could cook up something.”

And all yelled in unison, “No!”

30

O
utside Mrs. Christiansen's rooming house, the confederacy of onlookers had doubled in number. Lawn chairs and picnic tables had been teamstered over. Orville Tetlow's wife was filling coffee cups from a chuffing urn on a card table. A girl was walking along and holding out a pastry box and people chose donuts from it. Inquiring minds had congested around Bert Slaughterbeck as he held forth. “Whereas if it was poltergeists, I think you'd see some of that levitation and telekinesis, plus those little red pig eyes and books flying across the room.”

And now there was a buffet in the upstairs hallway. Mrs. Christiansen brought out her best silver coffee service and china. Toasts and pastries were in white-napkined baskets. It looked like a catered affair.

Carlo moonily stared at Iona's room, still thinking,
One heart, one bed, one troth,
and he said to no one in particular, “I just hope she learns to love again.”

Owen hauled a chair up to the buffet table and was ravening with great relish as he told the priest, “What I did was combine about sixty percent cabernet sauvignon grape and about thirty percent merlot, plus some cabernet franc and malbec to keep it true to the soft and fruity . . .”

Natalie interrupted to fill Owen's coffee cup.

Owen asked her, “Any progress on your end?”

“Two say I should marry Pierre. Two say Dick. Two say it is usually hotter in August. Iona is abstaining. What do you think?”

“We
could
be a little cooler this year.”

The Reverend Picarazzi kicked his shin.

“Oh that,” Owen said. “Well, I'm a silent partner in ‘Smith et Fils' now, so my choice would be whatever makes Pierre happiest.”

And then the Reverend Picarazzi spoke and the river of his sentences was so slowed by his tiredness that she understood many words. “You and your fiancé,” he said, inter-locking his fingers, “you fit together, you mesh. You accessorize each other, so to speak. And Iona and Dick: peas in a pod. Hand in glove. But you switch the parties around—if you don't mind my saying—it's a shtickl crazy. You find yourself thinking,
What shoes do I wear with this?
I haven't any wisdom; I just call 'em like I see 'em.”

She smiled and got up and went to Iona's room, where six women gathered to dispassionately list Pierre Smith's good and bad points.

Iona said, “He's French, number one.”

Opal asked, “I forget: Was that a good or bad point?”

Iona smiled. “
C'est bon!
”

Ursula said, “He's a hunk.”

Mrs. Christiansen said, “He'll be a good provider.”

And old Nell said, “He's always carrying around that duck.”

She was stared at.

Iona said, “You're thinking of Chester.”

“Oh.”

Opal folded her arms with finality. “I have it on good authority that he's a philanderer.”

“Oh, he is not,” Iona said.

“You say that like it bothers you,” Ursula said.

“Are we talking about Chester?” Nell asked.

They all shouted, “No!”

 

Cigars made Natalie's quarters as gray as a political back room as Dick straddled a Shaker chair he'd spun around and Pierre hunkered on the floored mattress, his head in his hands, his jacket and bow tie off.

With some heroism, the rancher said, “You know, actually a guy like you couldn't make a better choice for a wife. She's smart, fun to be with, beautiful, and you can tell in an instant what a good person she is. And it's as plain as the nose on your face that she loves you . . .”

Pierre jerked his head up, his door-damaged nose heavily bandaged and no longer noble. “She loves
you
!”

Dick held his cigar in his mouth as he gave that solemn thought. Cigar smoke lengthened toward the ceiling, waving like seaweed, and he said, “She was trying to make you jealous.”

“She's crazy!”

Skinny Carlo was stooping to tap cigar ash into a plastic cup on the floor when he noticed the Ferragamo loafer Pierre tore on his Wednesday walk into Seldom. “Whose shoe you s'pose this is?”

Pierre turned, struck by her tenderness for him. “She
kept
it?”

Dick said, “See there?”

 

In Mrs. Christiansen's many slept. Ursula was on Iona's floor, a hand slung over her boom box. In the hallway, the guys with the scuba tanks were hugging them against the main staircase railing. Owen was next to the hallway food table on a dining room chair, balancing precariously on its hind legs as he snored. Carlo was underneath the hallway table, jam dripping onto his cheek. The trucker from Sidney was sitting upright against his pony keg, in his hand Natalie's gift of a mallard wine decanter, now half-filled with beer.

Even though it was nearing sunrise, Dick was still awake and soldierly on the Shaker chair, paging through the heirloom journal of Bernard LeBoeuf that he'd given Natalie.

The Reverend Picarazzi was face down on the yellow sofa downstairs, his sneakers off, his Volkswagen van's keys fallen to the floor beside a limp hand.

In the upstairs bathroom Pierre was washing up. Water ran in the sink as he shook back his wild blond hair, straightened his bow tie, gently touched his bandaged nose, and for a long time looked haggardly into the mirror. “
Tu es un imbécile
,” he said. (You are a fool.) Then he turned off the water and exited the bathroom.

At the far end of the peopled hallway, Natalie was facing him like a gunfighter. She held high Reverend Picarazzi's Volkswagen keys. “
Allons-y
,” she said. (Let's go.)

And Pierre asked, “
Ou?
” (Where?)

 

Sunrise in Nebraska. The indigo skies high overhead were lightening to electric blue and magenta just above the inky tree canopy and to a soft mist of rose and gold at the eastern horizon. The old Volkswagen van was stalled on an iron-girdered bridge high above Frenchman's Creek as two side doors winged open and Natalie and Pierre got out, their clothes off. Sun rays streaked through the woods and the golden sun rose like something wet and molten behind them as she got up onto the bridge frame's sidewall and then he. They looked down to the sun-painted creek twenty feet below as she counted, “
Un, deux, trois
,” and they flung themselves naked into the chill water. They gasped when they broke the surface, but soon got used to the morning cold as they swam. She told him, “We have too many hindrances to our marrying.”

“
C'est vrai
,” he said. “
Par exemple
. . .”

“English, Monsieur.”

“There is this madness in you.”

“And you are shifty.”

“You have no head for business,” he said.

“And you?”

“Bad example,” he said. “But you get up too early and put on as music your Fred Astaire, your Gene Autry.”

“You stay up too late. And you yack.”

“What is ‘yack'?”

“
Bavarder
,” she said. She halted her swim, put her hands on his head, and dunked him into the medicine of Frenchman's Creek, counting as she held him under, “
Un . . . deux . . . trois . . . quatre . . . cinq . . . six . . . sept . . .
” She let him up.

Pierre gasped for breath and whipped his long hair as Natalie blithely floated away. Swimming after her, Pierre admitted, “I'm forgetful of you.”

“In which way?”

Wiping his hair sleek against his skull, he floated on his back. “Well, I never think about how you are feeling.”

She floated too, her pert breasts rising just above the water, her dark hair trailing out and undulating. Seriously considering him, she said, “Actually, in your own way, you never think about anyone else.”

Pierre seemed relieved by the revelation. “But yes! It is true!”

“Wait,” Natalie said. She held onto his head and dunked him again. And then she went down alongside him. And they were all ardor as they broke the surface, holding each other and kissing.

“I'm an idiot,” Pierre said. “I'm a brute. I'm a beast.”

“No more than most men,” Natalie said.

“You are too beautiful for me!”

She smiled. She touched his handsome face. “You will perhaps get less ugly as you grow older.”

She felt the tolling of her heart as each stared at the other for a moment. And then each independently went underwater.

Small ripples traveled away. Water flattened. There was silence. And then both of them slowly rose up until just their eyes were above Frenchman's Creek. After some cautious consideration, they raised their heads to talk and Pierre became a hard and terse Western outlaw. “Let's do it.”

And mimicking him, Natalie said, “Why not.”

They heard Dick yell, “We're joining you!” and they turned to see him and Iona, naked on the iron bridge, their hands linked, their hearts united, and then plunging with screams of joy.

31

T
he grand ball that ended The Revels at the Seldom fair-grounds on Saturday night became a glorious wedding banquet for Mr. & Mrs. Clairvaux-Smith, and Mr. & Mrs. Christiansen-Tupper. Carlo's feast was defrosted and laid out on side tables, with each course described on little cards held up by origami swans. Thousands of colored balloons filled the roof of the open-air livestock tent, American and French flags hung at the entrance, and a wooden floor was laid on the earth. Even the children wore eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French costumes, and hundreds of Nebraskans from as far away as Valentine and Omaha were smiling as the lovers strolled onto the dance floor and the deejay played Ella Fitzgerald's version of “Isn't It Romantic?”

Owen and Carlo were at a side table in jaunty berets and hunching over the high school gym's microphone. “We see that Natalie and Iona have favored the chignon hairstyle,” Owen said. “And both are wearing jeweled tiaras.”