Free All That Is by James Salter Page B

a bridesmaid drunkenly going off with him, but there were no bridesmaids, there was only the maid of honor to whom he was not attracted. He wandered over to the groom.
    “So, this will be your country estate, I take it.”
    “I don’t think so,” Bowman said.
    “I met your father-in-law. Big landowner. Rich as a goat. Anyway you’re a lucky man. Very lucky,” he said, his eye on Vivian. “Still, I have this flower …” He took hold of his lapel. “I’m going to keep it in remembrance, press it in a book,” he said looking down at it. “Would have to be a big book. I talked to your mother-in-law. Well turned out.”
    Caroline had been moving among the guests, a little heavier than she had been when last seen and her cheeks a little rounder. She was in an expensive black dress and managing to avoid being near her former husband.
    Beatrice had said little. She had wept at the church. She had embraced Vivian and in return felt a dutiful response. It had all been like that, dutiful, restrained, with only smiles and polite talk.
    She was bidding good-bye to her son. She had a chance to embrace him and to say with all her heart,
    “Be good to one another. Love one another,” she said.
    Though she felt it was love cast into darkness. She had doubts that she would ever know her daughter-in-law. It seemed, on this bright day, that the greatest misfortune had come to pass. She had lost her son, not completely, but part of him was beyond her power to reclaim and now belonged to another, someone who hardly knew him. She thought of all that had gone before, the hopes and ambition, the years that had been filled, not just in retrospect, with such joy. She tried to be pleasant, to have them all like her and favor her son.
    George Amussen she felt she knew, the self-possession and manners, the life that the house seemed to represent. He reminded her of her husband, whom she had long tried to banish from her thoughts but who remained in her life, distant and unassailable.
    Vivian was happy. She was wearing a white wedding gown, she had yet to change, and though she was not yet used to the idea, she was a married woman. She’d married at home, with her father’s blessing, more or less. It had happened, she had done it. Like Beverly she was married.
    Bowman was happy or felt he was, she was his, a beautiful woman or girl. He saw life ahead in regular terms, with someone who would be beside him. In the presence of her family and friends he realized that he knew only one side of her, a side that attracted him but that was not her entire or essential self. Behind her as he looked was her unyielding father and not far away from him her sister and brother-in-law. They were all complete strangers. Across the room, smiling and alcoholic, was her mother, Caroline. Vivian caught his eye and perhaps his thoughts and smiled at him, it seemed understandingly. The unsettled feeling disappeared. Her smile was loving, sincere. We’ll leave soon, it said. That night though, having driven to the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, wearied by the events of the day and unaccustomed to being a wedded couple, they simply went to sleep.

5
ON TENTH
    There was a front room and glass doors to a bedroom with a bed by the window. The kitchen was narrow but long and the dishes often unwashed; Vivian was indifferent to housekeeping and her clothes and cosmetics could be found all over. Still, a glorious being emerged from her preparations, even when abbreviated. She had the gift of allure, even when her lips were bare and her hair uncombed, sometimes especially then.
    The apartment was on Tenth Street, where old New York families had long lived and which was still quiet but close to everything, together with the neighboring streets a kind of residential island, ordinary and discreet. There were the photographs Vivian had brought, framed and two of them on the dresser, photographs of her jumping, leaning forward close to the horse’s neck as they cleared, in