The Amateur Marriage (3 page)

“Call for her?”

“At her folks’ house.”

“But why—?”

“He wanted to spare his mother’s feelings. You know how his mother can be. He told Pauline to meet him here; they’d act like it was just happenstance when they ran into each other. And first she said okay, but then I guess she reconsidered because when I phoned her this evening, she told me she wasn’t coming. She said she was the kind of girl a fellow should be proud to be seen with, not all ashamed and hidey-corner.”

Wanda moved off toward the dessert table, leaving a silence behind her. “Well, she’s right,” Mrs. Golka said finally. “A girl has to set some standards.”

“He was only thinking of his mother, though.”

“And what good will that do him, might I ask, when Dolly Anton’s dead and gone and Michael’s a seedy old bachelor?”

“For mercy’s sake,” Mrs. Pozniak said, “the boy is twenty years old! He’s got a long way to go before he’s a seedy old bachelor.”

Mrs. Golka didn’t seem convinced. She was gazing after Wanda. “But does he know,” she said, “or not?”

“Know what?”

“Does he know that Pauline’s miffed? Did Wanda tell him?”

Now several of the women began to show some sense of urgency. “Wanda!” one called. “Wanda Bryk!”

She turned, her plate in midair.

“Did you tell Michael that Pauline’s not coming?”

“No, she wants him to worry,” Wanda said, and she turned back and plucked a pastry from a tray.

There was another silence. Then, “Ah,” the women said in unison.

The Dulcetones stopped playing and Mr. Kowalski tapped the microphone, sending a series of furry-sounding thwacks through the hall. “On behalf of myself and Barbara . . .” he said. His lips were too close to the mike and each
b
was an explosion. Several people covered their ears. Meanwhile, the children were getting up a game of Duck, Duck, Goose, and the babies were fussing themselves to sleep in nests of their mothers’ coats, and several young men near the beer kegs were growing loud-voiced and boastful.

So nobody noticed when Michael slipped away. Or maybe he didn’t slip away; maybe he walked out openly. Even his mother was absorbed by then in the goings-on, the speeches wishing Jerry well and the prayer from Father Pasko and the cheers and the rounds of applause.

But they noticed when he returned, all right, later in the evening. Here he came, brave as you please, leading Pauline by the hand through the big plank doors. And when he helped her take her coat off—which no one had even realized Michael knew to do—it emerged that she was wearing a slim black dress that set her apart from the other girls in their lace-up waistcoats and drawstring blouses and flouncy embroidered skirts. But it was her eyes that caused the most comment. They were wet. Each of those long lashes was a separate, damp spike. And the smile she gave Wanda Bryk was the rueful, wan, chastened smile of someone who had just come through a crying spell.

Oh, plainly she and Michael had been having words of some kind.

She turned from Wanda and looked at Michael expectantly, and he gathered himself together and squared his shoulders and took hold of her hand again. He led her further into the hall, past the microphone where Jerry himself now stood, foolishly grinning, past the accordionist who was flirting with Katie, over to the women on their cluster of folding chairs. “Mama,” he said to his mother, “I know you remember Pauline.”

His mother held a plate in both hands on the very tip end of her lap—a single beet swimming in horseradish sauce. She gazed up at him bleakly.

“Pauline is sort of . . . my girl,” he told her.

Even this late, the noise was deafening (all those overtired children on the loose), but where Mrs. Anton sat, the silence spread around her like ripples around a stone.

Pauline stepped forward, and this time her smile was heartfelt, her dimples deep as finger pokes. “Oh, Mrs. Anton,” she said, “we’re going to be such good friends! We’re going to keep each other company while Michael is away.”

Mrs. Anton said, “Away?”

Pauline went on smiling at her. Even with her damp lashes, she had a natural kind of joyousness. Her skin seemed to radiate light.

“I’ve joined the Army, Mama,” Michael said.

Mrs. Anton froze. Then she stood up, but so unsteadily that the woman next to her stood up too and took away her plate. Mrs. Anton relinquished it without a glance. It appeared that she would just as soon have dropped it on the floor. “You can’t,” she told Michael. “You’re all I’ve got left. They would never make you join.”

“I’ve enlisted. I report for training Monday.”

Mrs. Anton fainted.

She fell in an oddly vertical manner, not keeling over backwards but slowly sinking, erect, into the folds of her skirt. (Like the Wicked Witch melting in
The Wizard of Oz,
a child reported later.) It should have been possible to catch her, but nobody moved fast enough. Even Michael just watched, dumbstruck, until she reached the floor. Then he said, “Mama?” and he dropped sharply to his knees and started patting both her cheeks. “Mama! Talk to me! Wake up!”

“Stand back and give her air,” the women told him. They were rising and moving their chairs away and shooing off the men. “Lay her flat. Keep her head down.” Mrs. Pozniak took Pauline by the elbows and planted her to one side. Mrs. Golka sent one of her twins off for water.

“Call a doctor! Call an ambulance!” Michael shouted, but the women told him, “She’ll be all right,” and one of them—Mrs. Serge, a widow—heaved a sigh and said, “Let her have her rest, poor soul.”

Mrs. Anton opened her eyes. She looked at Michael and closed them again.

Two women helped her to a sitting position, and a moment later they lifted her onto her chair, all the time saying, “You’ll be just fine. Don’t rush yourself. Take it easy.” Once she was seated, Mrs. Anton bent double and buried her face in her hands. Mrs. Pozniak patted her shoulder and made soft clucking sounds.

Michael stood at a distance, now, with his palms clamped in his armpits. Various men kept slapping him reassuringly on the back, but it didn’t seem to do any good. And Pauline had simply vanished. Not even Wanda Bryk had seen her go.

The Dulcetones were drifting helplessly among their instruments; some of the children were quarreling; Jerry Kowalski was standing slack-jawed at the microphone. Cigarette smoke hung in veils beneath the high rafters. The air smelled of pickled cabbage and sweat. The tables had a ravaged look—platters almost empty and puddled with brownish juices, serving spoons staining the linens, parsley sprigs limp and bedraggled.

Everybody said later that the party had been a mistake. You don’t throw a celebration, they said, when your sons are leaving home to fight and die.

The windows above Anton’s Grocery stayed dark all the next day, not even a glimmer showing behind the lace curtains. The store, of course, was closed, since it was a Sunday. Neither Michael nor his mother came to church, but that was not unusual. After Danny got sick, the Antons appeared to have fallen away somewhat from their faith. Still, people said, in view of the situation, wouldn’t you think Michael’s mother would want to offer up a prayer?

This was not a neighborhood of drop-in visits—or any visits, really, other than from blood relatives. Houses were too small and too close together, too exposed, without so much as a shrub to shield them from prying eyes. Best to avoid becoming overfamiliar. But toward evening, Mrs. Nowak from across the street called Mrs. Anton on the phone. She planned to inquire after Mrs. Anton’s health and maybe bring by a casserole if she received any encouragement. Nobody answered, though. She told Mrs. Kostka later that she had a definite sense that the ringing was being
listened
to, in silence. You know how you get that feeling sometimes. Eight rings, nine . . . with a kind of watchfulness in between. But that could have been her imagination. Maybe the Antons were out. Mrs. Anton did have a brother-in-law, an unsocial sort who ran a dry-goods store over near Patterson Park. It seemed unlikely, however. Surely somebody would have noticed them walking.

Several times during the evening, Mrs. Nowak glanced across the street again. But all she could see were those secretive curtains and the display window below them, ANTON’S GROCERY in curly gold letters in front of fifteen Campbell’s soup cans neatly arranged in the pyramid style that Michael was so fond of.

The Army hired a special bus to take recruits to Virginia. It was a school bus, from the looks of it, repainted a matte olive drab, and at eight o’clock Monday morning it stood waiting on the designated corner within eyeshot of the seafood market. By fours and by sixes, families approached in a lagging, hanging-back manner, always with at least one young man in the lead. The young men carried suitcases made of cardboard or leather. Their relatives carried lunch boxes and cake tins and thermoses. It was a raw, windy day, but no one seemed in any hurry to pack the young men onto the bus. They stood in small groups clutching their burdens, stamping their feet for warmth. A few of the families knew each other, but a lot more didn’t; the bus served a fairly wide area. Still, people made a point of exchanging greetings even if they were strangers. They sent quick, searching smiles toward the young men and from then on averted their eyes, giving the families their privacy.

The Kowalskis came with Jerry and Jerry’s girlfriend and Mrs. Sweda, who was Mrs. Kowalskis sister. The Witts came. Mrs. Serge and Joey came.

Mrs. Anton and Michael came.

Mrs. Anton looked even drearier than usual, and she barely responded when her neighbors said hello. She wore a gray tweed overcoat and thin, short socks half swallowed by her brown oxfords. Her hands were thrust deep in her pockets; it was Michael who carried his lunch, in addition to a mildewed black gladstone bag. Around his neck he had wound Pauline’s scarf—broad bands of navy blue and white, a pattern any neighborhood girl would have considered too simple.

Just as they arrived, a beefy man in uniform lumbered down the steps of the bus with a clipboard under one arm. No one had even known he was there; all they had seen was the driver, who sat staring ahead expressionlessly with the motor loudly idling.

“All right, men,” the man in uniform called. “Line up here to my left.”

People began milling in his direction, the relatives as well as the recruits. Michael, however, stayed where he was. He gazed northward, straight up Broadway to where it crossed Eastern Avenue.

“Move along, men. Say your goodbyes.”

Mr. Kowalski raised his Kodak and snapped a picture of Jerry grinning stiffly and unnaturally. Jerry’s little sister blew on a painted tin horn. His girlfriend threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.

“Let’s get going, men, double-time.”

But it was from the east, from St. Cassian Street, that Pauline came running. She had her red coat on, which was how they could all spot her from such a distance. They said, “Michael! Look!” and Michael turned at once in the right direction, although Pauline herself had not called out. When she came nearer they could see why. She had no breath left, poor thing. She was gasping and tousle-haired and flushed—really not at her prettiest, but who in the world cared? She was holding out her arms, and Michael dropped his belongings and started running too, and when they collided he swooped her up so her feet completely left the ground. Everybody said “Ah” in one long, satisfied sigh—everybody except his mother, but even she watched with something close to sympathy. How could she not? They were hugging as if they would never let go, and Pauline was speaking in broken gasps: “. . . thought you were leaving by train, but . . . went to your house . . . went to Wanda’s . . . finally asked a man on the street and . . . Michael, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“All aboard!” the man in uniform bellowed.

Michael and Pauline tore apart. He turned and went back for his belongings. He ducked his head to let his mother kiss him. He sent one last look toward Pauline and then he climbed onto the bus.

When it pulled out, Pauline and Mrs. Anton were standing side by side, both waving with all their hearts.

Now carved wooden creches and plaster Santas and ten-inch-tall, cone-shaped green straw Christmas trees blobbed with soap-flake snow stood among the flags in the parlor windows. Mrs. Szapp’s famous angels—a dozen of them, handblown glass—fought for space beneath the palm fronds. Mrs. Brunek marched eight china reindeer straight across her map of Czechoslovakia.

Almost none of the boys who’d enlisted returned for the holidays. They had left too recently; they were confined to their various posts. In theory, this was something that their families had been prepared for, but still it came as a shock. The streets all at once seemed so quiet. Their sons’ bedrooms seemed so empty. The dinner tables were too sedate and orderly—no long-armed, greedy boys pouncing on the last chicken wing or gulping down milk by the quart.

Instead, there were mere letters, all of which might have been written by the same person. “Got a ‘grand’ bunch of guys in my unit” and “You wouldn’t believe the tons of gear we have to lug” and “Sure do miss those Sunday evenings with you folks around the radio.” These identical lines, with only minor differences, were read aloud in the grocery store by Mrs. Witt, Mrs. Serge, Mrs. Kowalski, Mrs. Dobek . . . and yet their sons were not alike in any way, or at least had not seemed so till now. “Could take my weapon apart blindfolded and put it together again,” Michael Anton wrote—Michael! so peaceful, so unmechanical!—as did Joey Serge and Davey Witt. It wasn’t just their similar experiences (the KP duty, tetanus shots, blistered feet) but the way they worded things—the slangy, loping language, with too many sets of quotation marks and not enough commas. “Took a 20 mi. hike yesterday and I can tell you my ‘dogs’ are the worse for it . . . Wish you could see how neat I make my bed mom now that I’ve got a ‘sarge’ standing over me watching.”