Body Surfing (22 page)

"Come here," he says.

Sydney raises herself even further and straddles the man who is now her lover. Tomorrow, with a few words and the merest of gestures, he will become her husband.

"I love you, too," Jeff says. The words seem weightless, airborne.

Tempting fate, Sydney unbuttons her sleeveless white shirt.

"I'm going kayaking," Jeff announces in the morning. He slips on his bathing trunks.

Sydney rises up on one elbow. After they made love, she retreated to her own bed, both agreeing a good night's sleep could not be had together in such a narrow twin. "On your wedding day?" she asks.

Jeff parts the curtains to check the weather, which, from where Sydney lies, still appears to be "iffy."

"The wedding isn't until three."

"Yes, but. . .," Sydney begins. She sits up in bed, the sheets just covering her breasts. She has never had a successful discussion while naked.

"It'll probably be the last time we'll be up here until, I don't know, late August, September."

The wedding trip will consume three weeks. After that, they have another wedding to go to, in North Carolina, and following that, a conference at Johns Hopkins.

Still, it feels wrong for Jeff to go off on his wedding morning. Sydney cannot say why and doesn't.

"I can't stay here," Jeff says.

Jeff will not remain in a house in which he might inadvertently find himself alone in a room with Ben.

"Enough of this," Sydney says. "You're behaving like two schoolboys," she adds, when actually she means that Jeff is behaving like a schoolboy. Ben has seemed agreeable enough.

"Won't be gone long," Jeff says, bending and kissing her. "I'll come back, get my things, and dress in my parents' room. Stay out of your hair."

"Be careful," Sydney says.

Jeff shrugs her off. "Love you," he says as he opens the door.

Sydney cannot help but notice his quick glance into the hallway before stepping outside. Under normal circumstances, she might interpret his darting glance as one of not wanting to be caught leaving his lover's room--a charming, if anachronistic, gesture. But Sydney knows its true intent: to make sure Ben is nowhere in sight.

Sydney lies back on the pillow. She wished for sunshine when she woke. There is, she supposes, always the hope of some sun later, sublimely timed. "Just for the ceremony," she says aloud, bargaining with whoever will man the lights for that particular bit of theater.

She stands and looks for her robe. Her mother might even now be in the kitchen, searching for the silverware, not knowing where the cereal is kept.

The morning seems intolerably long. Ivers sits in the dining room and listens to sports talk on the radio, the volume low, intermittently gesturing or speaking to unseen voices. Sahir reads the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Barron's, which he drove into Portsmouth to buy. Sydney's mother, unoccupied, is invited to join Sydney and Julie and Helene in Sydney's room while the latter fixes Sydney's hair.

Sydney enjoys Helene's delicate hands and is lulled by the voices behind her. When she is asked by Helene to turn, she glances out at her ocean-liner view for a glimpse of Jeff--neon orange life vest atop a neon yellow kayak, a bright signal on a gray day--but he has not returned. It is, she tells herself, still early. He has hours yet to remain free, if indeed that is what he wanted, a last breath of freedom. The thought depresses her, for she prefers to think of marrying as a freeing-up, a passport to a country she once visited and now wishes to return to.

"So I said to him, 'Did you not get my e-mail? Did you not open it?'"

Emily, Sydney's friend, recently arrived, has joined the assembled in Sydney's cramped room. "And he said, get this, 'I don't consider e-mail to be a valid mode of correspondence.' I said, 'You don't?' and he said, 'No, I don't,' and I said, 'Well, how about this? Fuck off. Does that work for you?'

"You should have seen his face, the pompous prick."

Women complaining to women about men, some of it heartfelt, most of it not, some anecdotes amended as soon as the words have been uttered. Julie and Helene cannot, of course, complain about men, and Sydney cannot really complain about the man she is about to marry, so that leaves mostly Emily and Sydney's mother, who tells stories that might embarrass Sydney in another venue.

"Oh," Sydney says, getting a look at herself in the mirror as Helene has her sit facing it. Her hair is done up, as promised, but the knot is so artful as to appear to be coming loose, though any number of pins and a prodigious amount of hair spray have been necessary to accomplish it.

"Put these on," Helene says.

Sydney unwraps a box in which lies a pair of pearl earrings. "These are for me?"

"They're your wedding present," Helene says.

"But I assumed the hair was the wedding present," Sydney says, fingering the tear-drop-shaped pearls.

Helene kisses her cheek. "Put them on," she repeats.

And, of course, Helene might have known the effect of the earrings with the loose bun. Sydney's face is flatteringly framed, her jawline and throat prominent, the pearl earrings two lights at her ears. The earrings will be all the jewelry she will need.

"Thank you," Sydney says, standing and embracing the Canadian woman.

"I envy you," Helene says.

Sydney will not put on the dress that still hangs from the closet door until the last minute. Her sandals and shawl have been set upon a chair. The other women have left to tend to themselves, and from the hallway, Sydney can hear showers running. She imagines steamed mirrors, dresses hanging from bathroom hooks, makeup arranged on the lip of a sink.

Downstairs, men are pacing. They remain convivial, though Sydney can hear questions asked twice, three times, worry apparent only in the repetition. Sydney looks again at the clock on her bureau, a glance that incorporates a view through which no neon yellow kayak has yet passed. In minutes, Sydney thinks, the questions might become more pressing, the tone more urgent, worry laced with anger.

When the showers stop, the voices downstairs raise themselves a notch, not enough to worry the bride upstairs, whom they might imagine blissfully oblivious, but enough to gather the men together. A search party must be formed, Mr. Edwards says.

Oh god, Sydney whispers in her room.

Mr. Edwards addresses the guests. Sydney, in her robe, listens from her open doorway. She has tucked Julie's handmade handkerchief into her bra. She wants to have it on her for the ceremony.

"I'm sure he's all right," she hears Mr. Edwards say. "Maybe he beached himself and is looking for a way to get back here. He wouldn't have taken his cell phone because he'd have known he could easily flip the kayak. My guess is that he went for the islands. It's his usual destination. What in god's name possessed the man, today of all days? Ben, you go with Ivers and Peter in the Whaler, check out the islands. The three of you." And here Mr. Edwards addresses Sahir and Frank and Sydney's father. "You come with me. We'll drive into the village. We may have to split up. I'm not sure how to go about this. Good god, what was the boy thinking?"

Jeff, Sydney notes, instantly demoted.

The men, in tuxes, white boutonnieres in place, leave the house. Sydney is embarrassed for the fuss. At the very least, all the village will know of the groom who was so careless and so casual as to go kayaking on his wedding day. Of the flock of man-birds who descended upon the town to scour it for traces of the wayward fiance. The embarrassment, however, is nothing compared to her fear. Sydney imagines. And then she imagines again. She cannot censor her thoughts.

Feeling a nearly unbearable urge to lie down, Sydney does so, propping her head up on the pillows so as not to destroy Helene's work. The news will be good, she decides. Jeff has simply forgotten the time. Or Mr. Edwards was correct--Jeff had to beach himself and is even now frantically looking for a way back. Any minute, everyone will come home, Jeff good-naturedly taking a ribbing, mounting the stairs two at a time, looking for his tux and his shoes, blowing a kiss at Sydney and telling her he will explain all after the ceremony.

From time to time, Sydney hears the doorbell ring. Guests have begun to arrive, Julie and Helene charged with occupying them without revealing the fact that the groom is missing. In time, however, the guests are bound to suspect that something is wrong. Sydney bites down on her lip.

A prisoner in her room, Sydney puts on her dress and shoes so that she can go to the landing and wait. She will not, however, mingle with the guests.

"There you are," Emily says, running up the stairs and giving Sydney a hug.

"This is insane," Sydney says.

"It's going to be all right."

Emily has on a gunmetal-green silk sheath. Her glasses frame and enhance her dark eyes. "In a few minutes, we'll all be laughing about the son of a bitch and how he got lost."

"Will we?" Sydney asks.

"You bet."

Sydney, slightly light-headed, puts a hand on the railing. "Your dress is stunning," she says to her friend.

"I was just about to say the same to you."

"Is everybody here?"

"Becky was stuck in traffic, but she's here now. Everyone is eating and drinking and, frankly, could care less when the ceremony starts. You know a wedding is only an excuse for a great party."

Sydney is silent.

"But when Jeff walks through that door," Emily says evenly, "I'm going to wring his fucking neck."

Sydney retreats to her room and sits on the bed. She reviews her marital history. Twice married: once divorced, once widowed. She hoped to make another entry today, but who can say what that entry will read?

Sydney hears car doors slamming, raised voices from below. An energy seems to tumble up the stairs and spill into her room. Sydney runs to the railing and watches as the front door opens. Mr. Edwards walks in, his face rigid.

"Is Jeff back?" Sydney, breathless, calls.

But Mr. Edwards appears not to have heard her.

Sahir and Ivers immediately follow Mr. Edwards through the door. "Is Jeff all right?" Sydney asks from above.

Ivers glances up, his face unnaturally pale. "We've got him," he says. Ivers stops and turns toward the door.

Jeff enters the hallway, a burst of garish color, the orange life vest unclasped but hanging from one shoulder. He stands barefoot. His hair and body are still wet, his bathing trunks clinging to his body. His feet are nearly blue.

Sydney laughs and weeps together. "Thank god," she cries. "Thank god you're all right." She holds on to the railing, relief weakening her legs.

"I'm fine," Jeff says in a quiet voice. Not the quiet of the chastised, Sydney suddenly notes, but the quiet of someone who has already removed himself, has set himself apart.

His voice chills her. She does not understand.

She looks at the stony face of the father, the wet trousers of the brother.

"Asshole," Ben says.

Guests begin to spill into the hallway.

It is as if they are in costume for different plays: Jeff in clinging bathing trunks, the life vest tossed to the bedroom floor; Sydney, who has shut the door behind them, in salmon-colored silk and pearl earrings.

"Where did you go?" she asks, a hand to her chest.

"One of the islands."

"You made it that far? Who found you?"

"Sydney, I can't do this. I'm sorry."

"What?"

Jeff is silent.

Sydney shakes her head, bewildered. "You don't love me anymore?"

"I love you," he says.

She opens her palms. "You don't want to marry me?"

"No, I don't."

And Sydney knows right then that it is all over.

From downstairs, she can hear exclamations of surprise, the front door opening and shutting. The sun comes out, which strikes her as unnecessarily cruel.

"Did you think I was happy?" Jeff asks.

"I thought you were"--Sydney searches for the word-- "anxious."

"I was. I am."

Sydney cannot move.

"I'll go back to the apartment," Jeff says. "Clear my things out. It would be best if you could stay here for the night. I'll be out by tomorrow afternoon."

That already he can think about clearing out the apartment stuns Sydney. But then again, Jeff has always been so far ahead of her.

He turns toward the window. He puts his hands flat against the glass. Sydney gazes at his long back, his tanned legs. Is he crying?

"Would you have done this to Victoria?" Sydney asks.

Jeff is a long time in answering. "No," he says finally.

Something lurches inside Sydney's chest. "Why not?"

"It would have been a bigger deal," he says.

Sydney is amazed that Jeff has no intention of softening the blow.

Jeff puts his hands on his hips. "I suppose you could say I did this to Ben."

Once again, Sydney doesn't understand. "To Ben?" she asks.