Free A Bigamist's Daughter by Alice McDermott Page A

stubborn. Then, softer. “I waited all my life. I mean, how many times did we play bride? And have weddings for our Barbie dolls? Remember I had the five-dollar gown with the veil and the bouquet and the little blue garter? And I’d always pretend her husband got hit by a car or drowned or something so she could get married again?” She laughs a little; not a real laugh, but one that tells Elizabeth that she knows all this is beginning to sound a little silly. “Jesus, Liz, I’ve been planning my wedding since I was three years old!”
    Elizabeth laughs, touches her arm again. “Oh, Joanne,” she says. “Everybody probably goes through some kind of depression after they get married. They probably even have a name for it, like post-partum blues.”
    “That’s what my mother told me. She said she had it too. But I still just can’t accept that my wedding is over. I feel like somebody died. Maybe even me.”
    Elizabeth laughs again, patting her hand. “Oh, really,” she says kindly. “Come on, it’s not that bad. At least you’ve had your wedding. Look at me, I’ll probably never have one. Having your wedding over is better than never having one at all.”
    At least. It could be worse. Don’t complain.
    Joanne smiles a little, somewhat sheepishly. “I know,” she says. “I’ll get over it.”
    Elizabeth knows Joanne is only trying to appease her, Joanne doesn’t believe it herself, and suddenly she regrets being so rational. But, she wonders, what else can she do for her? Moan with her for the impossible? Cry with her over the irretrievable? Joanne is lucky to be married to someone like Tommy. They’d all said so at the wedding, they’d all envied her. She has no reason to be so unhappy now.
    She looks into the dark bar behind Joanne, the tables filled with young women and businessmen of all ages. The blue glow of the jukebox. She looks again at Joanne, and sees thebeginning of those changes they’d promised each other would never occur.
    Joanne finishes her drink and checks her watch. “I’d better go,” she says.
    Out in the bright station, they embrace again.
    “You have to come over,” Joanne says.
    “I know, let’s arrange something. I’ll give you a call.”
    They kiss again and Joanne heads toward her train. The announcer is calling it already and she jogs a little, somewhat awkward in her high heels. From the back, she could be ten, nine. A little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s shoes. There’s a crowd at her gate, moving slowly through it. She joins them, pauses. A tall man beside her turns, looks at her, and then bends to say something into her ear. Two more men come up behind her so Elizabeth can’t see if she replies.
    She goes up the stairs, out of the station. It’s darker now, and the crowds have thinned. The bums and shopping-bag ladies are stationed in their doorways. Women gather at the windows of various shoe stores. The streets are littered with pamphlets and newspapers.
    The air is growing colder but it’s refreshing after the bar in the station. She can feel the drinks at the back of her throat and she decides to walk most of the way home. It will be good exercise and she’ll still have plenty of time to prepare for Tupper Daniels. She wonders if she’ll sleep with him, decides not to. Wonders what Joanne would have done, before. Fallen in love and then slept with him? Slept with him and then fallen in love? For Joanne, the two had always gone together. She’d been in love so many times before Tommy.
    She crosses Fifth Avenue, pauses in front of Altman’s windows. Sleek manikins in sheer silk dresses. One wears a narrow yellow gown, slit to her thigh, mandarin collar. On her rightside there are three rows of silver sequins from shoulder to hem. One hand is placed seductively just over her bare thigh.
    “Must be cold in that window,” the man beside her says to the woman on his arm. “Look at their nipples.”
    The woman laughs, pulls him away. He is fair,