The Amateur Marriage (34 page)

“Do I really have to go to Anna’s? I’m missing all the fun! I bet Keith and them are already out in this!”

“
I’ll
bet they’re sound asleep,” Michael said, “if they’re anything like you.” He unlocked the passenger door and then went around to the driver’s side.

Most of the main streets had been plowed by now, and the sun was high enough so that the surfaces were black. “See there?” Pagan moaned. “It’s melting!”

“It’s no such thing. Every bit of it will still be there long after you’ve eaten your waffles and thanked your hostess politely for inviting you.”

Michael had given Anna a waffle iron for Christmas; that was why she was doing this. He had also given her an electric percolator, a toaster, and a mixer. “So you’ll have too many belongings to move around anymore,” he’d told her. She had laughed, but he was speaking in earnest.

By the time they parked in her driveway, it was ten twenty-five. She came out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron, and Michael called, “Sorry we’re late!” as he was stepping from the car.

“Don’t apologize. I just worried you’d got stuck in the snow.”

“It was Pagan who was stuck. Stuck in bed.”

“Sure, blame me,” Pagan grumbled. He slammed his door shut and called to Anna, “Like I could wake
myself up,
on a Sunday! Grandpa was out shoveling Grandma’s sidewalk and I didn’t have a clue; for all I knew it was the middle of the night.”

Michael hadn’t planned to admit that he’d gone to Pauline’s. Not that it was a secret, exactly, but he certainly wouldn’t have volunteered the information. He glanced toward Anna, trying to read her reaction, but her face showed nothing.

Anna’s own sidewalk was cleared and bone-dry. She must have shoveled it very early. Even her driveway was cleared, and the last traces of snow had been removed from her car. As Michael climbed the porch steps, he said, “If I’d only gotten here sooner I could have shoveled for you, too.”

“Oh, well,” she said, accepting his kiss on her cheek. “I think I can still manage to shovel my own snow, thank you!”

She sounded matter-of-fact, but he wondered why she’d turned her cheek to him instead of her lips.

Inside the house, a fire was burning in the fireplace and the air smelled of hot maple syrup. “You two sit at the table and I’ll start the waffles,” she said. “Coffee? Orange juice? Pagan, I’ve made cocoa.” She moved between the kitchen and the dining room, looking uncharacteristically domestic in the white pinafore apron that covered her sweater and slacks. Pagan, meanwhile, was still on the topic of sledding. “Everybody’ll be out on Breakneck Hill by now,” he said. “By the time I get there they’ll have used up all the snow.”

“You can’t
use up
snow, Pagan,” Michael said.

“Sure you can! You just watch! Keith and Rick and them will be making all these sled tracks, and pretty soon there’ll be nothing but bare ground.”

Michael studied him a moment. It was true that these days, Pagan was at a disadvantage—shuttled between two homes, not entirely a part of either neighborhood. In fact, you couldn’t call Michael’s area a neighborhood at all. His apartment building was inhabited by elderly widows and young married couples just starting out, and everything around it was commercial.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “As soon as we’ve finished eating, I’ll run you by Grandma’s to pick up your sled and then I’ll drop you at Breakneck Hill.”

“Really? Great! I’ve
already
finished eating.”

“Well, I haven’t,” Michael said, and he reached deliberately for the syrup pitcher. “So I suggest you fortify yourself with another waffle.”

To his surprise, Pagan took his advice. The prospect of joining his friends had put him in a better mood, apparently, because he ate two more waffles and drank a second mug of cocoa, and when Anna asked him what kind of sled he had, he embarked on a lengthy monologue about various types of snow equipment. “Rick, now, he’s got this really cool number from Sweden that’s a whole different shape—thinner, like—and you should see the speed he makes! But it cost a bundle, I bet.” Anna listened, smiling, taking occasional sips of coffee. She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners; she asked questions about their habits, their music, their leisure activities as if she were writing a guidebook, and even Pagan—now a socially clumsy fourteen-year-old—warmed up and grew expansive once the conversation got going. He gestured widely with both hands as he outlined the shapes of different sleds, often narrowly missing the syrup pitcher or his cocoa mug.

But Michael thought Anna was looking only at Pagan and not at him, and he worried this meant she was mad at him.

Then after breakfast, when he suggested she come with them to Breakneck Hill, she said she couldn’t. “It’s the day of Ed’s concert, remember?” she said.

Michael didn’t remember. He suspected her of making it up. He said, “A concert at this hour?”

“At one p.m. He’s giving a cello recital. So I guess we should just get together afterward, don’t you agree? You’ll drop off Pagan at, what, it will be noon by then, I imagine; and since you’ll have to pick him up again in just another hour or two, it makes sense that we go our separate ways and then meet later.”

“Fine,” Michael said. “Right. Might as well do the sensible thing, here.”

She drew in a breath to speak, but he turned away briskly and went to fetch his jacket.

At Pauline’s house the front walk was dry now—a satisfaction. Pagan bounded up to the door and disappeared inside while Michael waited at the wheel. A few minutes later Pagan reemerged, wearing black nylon gloves and big rubber boots with the clasps unfastened. He set off, jingling, toward the carport, and Pauline opened the storm door and called after him, “Don’t forget your scarf!”

“I can’t wear a scarf when I’m sledding!”

He vanished into the carport just long enough for Pauline to shrug helplessly at Michael, and then he came out with his sled, a sturdy old Flexible Flyer that used to belong to George. “You’ll catch pneumonia!” Pauline called. She was in her stocking feet but stepped onto the front stoop anyhow and stood shading her eyes as she gazed at Pagan.

“A scarf would get caught in the runners and I’d die a gruesome death by strangulation,” Pagan said, not breaking his stride.

Pauline turned to look at Michael again. Michael just grinned.

When the sled was safely stowed in the trunk and they were driving toward Breakneck Hill, Michael said, “How long do you expect to be sledding?”

“Long as I can, I guess.”

“I have to know when to come and get you, Pagan.”

Pagan thought about it. Then he said, “Why don’t I just walk back to Grandma’s whenever I’m done. Me and the guys might go to Keith’s house after, and you’d have to drive me to Grandma’s all over again this evening. So why not say you’ll just leave me off now for the week.”

“What about your things?” Michael asked.

“Everything I need is at Grandma’s. It’s just clothes and stuff at your place.”

“Okay.”

Michael stopped at the foot of the hill. It was a long, gentle slope—not really breakneck at all—leading from a wooded ridge to the northern boundary of Elmview Acres. Colorful little figures dotted the expanse of white, climbing up or coasting down on sleds and plastic saucers and sheets of cardboard. It looked like a scene from a Christmas card, and after Pagan had set off with his sled Michael sat a while taking it in.

Now where?

Anna would be getting ready to leave for her concert. He still had time to drive back to her house and offer to go with her, if he wanted. But he didn’t. Let her go by herself, if she was miffed with him. Let her be as independent as she liked!

He shifted gears and pulled onto the road and headed for home.

She could be off-putting, on occasion. She could be almost too honest; not that honesty was a flaw. “What did you used to think of me, back when we were young?” he’d asked once, and she had said, “Why, I didn’t think anything, really.” He had been offended, although he knew that was unreasonable of him. Of course she hadn’t thought anything! He was merely a chance acquaintance, the boyfriend of a casual friend. But he almost wished that she had lied; or not lied, exactly, but fooled herself. “I always did sense that there was something special about you.” Anna Grant, however, was not a woman who fooled herself.

He turned into his parking lot and parked on the bare rectangle his car had occupied during the night. Most of the other cars were still buried in snow. It was a Sunday, after all; people hadn’t needed to get out. He pictured those young married couples sleeping late, eating in, snuggling close on the couch as they read or watched TV. But he himself had more in common with the widow ladies, he thought as he stumbled through the snow, all alone, to his empty, echoing apartment.

When he walked in his front door it seemed that the smell of sleep had spread from Pagan’s room throughout the entire place. And Pagan’s history homework still lay scattered across the coffee table; so it wasn’t true that he had all he needed with him at Pauline’s. Now Michael would be expected to gather it up and make a special trip to Pauline’s before school. Damned if he would, though. Let Pagan deal with that on his own! It was no affair of Michael’s.

He sat a while in the armchair, looking out the living-room window even though all he could see was sky. It occurred to him that he had no hobbies. No interests. Nothing to do. How had he filled the time before he met Anna?

Forget about Anna.

He was used to bringing home a newspaper from his store and therefore had none today, when the store was closed. And the effort of standing up to switch on the TV seemed insurmountable.

At three-thirty, when the phone rang, he was still sitting idle in the armchair. He started and then stared at the phone while it rang again and then again, six rings in all without his lifting a finger. Served her right. But when the phone went silent he thought, Wait! He sat sharply forward. He’d made a terrible mistake. He stood up, already moving toward the phone to dial her number—”Did you call? I was in the bathroom,” he’d say—when it started ringing again. He lunged for it. “Hello?”

“Michael?”

“Oh, hello, Anna.”

“Where are you?”

“Obviously, I’m at home.”

“I mean . . . I was expecting we’d get together after the concert.”

“I had something to do.”

“Oh.”

A little pause.

“Well, should I come to your place?” she asked. “Have you collected Pagan yet?”

“No, I won’t need to. He’s going to walk to Pauline’s when he’s done sledding,” Michael said.

So that Anna was forced to ask again, “So should I just . . . come to your place?”

“I’ve got an awful lot to catch up on,” he said. “Why don’t we skip it.”

“Oh. All right.”

“The world won’t end if we fail to get together every single evening!”

“That’s true,” she said, after a moment.

“Okay, then. Bye,” he said, and he replaced the receiver.

Then he went into his bedroom and settled at his desk and paid his bills. Sealed the envelopes. Pounded stamps onto the corners. Jerked out all his drawers and cleaned them, throwing away old circulars and paper clips and rubber bands and business cards.

After that he went to the kitchen and cooked himself an actual, time-consuming meal. He boiled rice and he blended several canned soups and stews to form a sort of goulash that he ladled on top. He cut up vegetables for a salad—unfortunately a larger salad than he needed, once he’d combined what he’d chopped, but he ate every bit of it anyhow. He ate standing at the counter, forking the salad straight from the salad bowl and the goulash straight from the saucepan. Then he cleaned the kitchen. Then he went back to the living room and turned on the TV.

Shortly after eleven, while he was watching the late news, his doorbell rang. He rose to peer through the peephole. Anna’s face was small and distinct and, he thought, expressionless, but when he opened the door he saw that tears had made shiny trails down her cheeks. He said, “Anna?”

“I don’t know why you’re behaving this way,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s made you angry.” She stepped inside, wearing a quilted red jacket that he hadn’t seen before, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. “I thought we were having a perfectly nice Sunday together, and now you don’t want to be with me!”

He said, “That’s not true, Anna. Of course I want to be with you.” Then all at once he was horrified. “My God,” he said, “what have I done? I didn’t mean to hurt you! Anna, don’t cry. Please,” he said. He’d never seen her cry before. He wrapped his arms around her and led her into the room. “Please, Anna . . . here, have a seat. Oh, God, where’s the Kleenex? Please don’t cry!”

He placed her on the couch and settled next to her, trying to take her hands except that she was digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Please. Please,” he kept saying. He hugged her. “You have to listen to me. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I’ve been just sort of crazy all day; I jumped to all kinds of crazy conclusions. I think maybe I’m just . . . unsure of you. We’re in such an unsure relationship. Always juggling our time, spending our nights apart when Pagan’s here . . . I think we ought to get married.”

Anna gave a little snorting laugh as if she didn’t take him seriously, but he said, “No, I mean it.” And he did. “Just so this won’t happen anymore!” he said. “These strains, these misunderstandings, each of us not certain of the other . . . Please, Anna. Marry me.”

She lowered her hands and drew away and looked at him. Her face was wet and her lashes were damp and the whites of her eyes were pink. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Well. Maybe you’re right.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I guess,” she said.

“You’ll marry me?”

“I guess.”