...airports... I like how you’re neither here nor there. And how there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be while waiting. You’re just sort of… suspended...
...“It sounds like it’s weddings you don’t believe in,” he says finally. “Not marriage.”
“I’m not such a big fan of either at the moment.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think they’re kind of nice.”
“They’re not,” she insists. “They’re all for show. You shouldn’t need to prove anything if you really mean it. It should be a whole lot simpler than that. It should mean something.”
“I think it does,” Oliver says quietly. “It’s a promise.”
“I guess so,” she says, unable to keep the sigh out of her voice. “But not everyone keeps that promise.” She looks over toward the woman, still fast asleep. “Not everyone makes it fifty-two years, and if you do, it doesn’t matter that you once stood in front of all those people and said that you would. The important part is that you had someone to stick by you all that time. Even when everything sucked.”...
...“Favorite animal?”
“I don’t know,” she says, opening her eyes again. “Dogs?”
Oliver shakes his head. “Too boring. Try again.”
“Elephants, then.”
“Really?”
Hadley nods.
“How come?”
“As a kid, I couldn’t sleep without this ratty stuffed elephant,” she explains, not sure what made her think of it now. Maybe it’s that she’ll soon be seeing her dad again, or maybe it’s just the plane keying up beneath her, prompting a childish wish for her old security blanket.
“I’m not sure that counts.”
“Clearly you never met Elephant.”
He laughs. “Did you come up with that name all by yourself?”
“Damn right,” she says, smiling at the thought. He’d had glassy black eyes and soft floppy ears and braided strings for a tail, and he always managed to make everything better. From having to eat vegetables or wear itchy tights to stubbing her toe or being stuck in bed with a sore throat, Elephant was the antidote to it all. Over “time, he’d lost one eye and most of his tail; he’d been cried on and sneezed on and sat on, but still, whenever Hadley was upset about something, Dad would simply rest a hand on top of her head and steer her upstairs.
“Time to consult the elephant,” he’d announce, and somehow, it always worked. It’s really only now that it occurs to her that Dad probably deserved more of the credit than the little elephant...
...Even when she was old enough to read herself, they still tackled the classics together, moving from Anna Karenina to Pride and Prejudice to The Grapes of Wrath as if traveling across the globe itself, leaving holes in the bookshelves like missing teeth.
And later, when it started to become clear that she cared more about soccer practice and phone privileges than Jane Austen or Walt Whitman, when the hour turned into a half hour and every night turned into every other, it no longer mattered. The stories had become a part of her by then; they stuck to her bones like a good meal, “bloomed inside of her like a garden. They were as deep and meaningful as any other trait Dad had passed along to her: her blue eyes, her straw-colored hair, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose.
Often he would come home with books for her, for Christmas or her birthday, or for no particular occasion at all, some of them early editions with beautiful gold trim, others used paperbacks bought for a dollar or two on a street corner. Mom always looked exasperated, especially when it was a new copy of one that he already had in his study.
“This house is about two dictionaries away from caving in,” she’d say, “and you’re buying duplicates?”
But Hadley understood. It wasn’t that she was meant to read them all. Maybe someday she would, but for now, it was more the gesture itself. He was giving her the most important thing he could, the only way he knew how. He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses...
...“But you still don’t want to marry Harrison.”
Mom nodded.
“But you love him.”
“I do,” she said. “Very much.”
Hadley shook her head, frustrated. “That makes absolutely no sense at all.”
“It’s not supposed to,” Mom said with a smile. “Love is the strangest, most illogical thing in the world.
“I’m not talking about love,” Hadley insisted. “I’m talking about marriage.”
Mom shrugged. “That,” she said, “is even worse.”...
...He looks at her and smiles. “You’re sort of dangerous, you know?”
She stares at him. “Me?”
“Yeah,” he says, sitting back. “I’m way too honest with you.”...
...“You say you can be honest with me?” Hadley asks after a moment, addressing Oliver’s rounded shoulders, and he twists to look at her. “Fine. Then talk to me. Be honest.”
“About what?”
“Anything you want.”
To her surprise, he kisses her then. Not like the kiss at the airport, which was soft and sweet and full of farewell. This kiss is something more urgent, something more desperate; he presses his lips hard against hers, and Hadley closes her eyes and leans in, kissing him back until, just as suddenly, he breaks away again, and they sit staring at each other.
“That’s not what I meant,” Hadley says, and Oliver gives her a crooked smile.
“You said to be honest. That was the most honest thing I’ve done all day.”...
...“Tell me everything.”
“I will,” she says, stifling a yawn. “But it’s been a really long day.”
“I bet. So just tell me this for now: How’s the dress?”
“Mine or Charlotte’s?”
“Wow,” Mom says, laughing. “So she’s graduated from that British woman to just Charlotte, huh?”
Hadley smiles. “Guess so. She’s actually sort of nice. And the dress is pretty.”...
...At the door to the ballroom Hadley pauses, tugging on his hand.
“Are you sure you’re up for a wedding right now?”
Oliver looks down at her carefully. “That whole plane ride, you didn’t realize my father just died. You know why?”
Hadley isn’t sure what to say.
“Because I was with you,” he tells her. “I feel better when I’m with you.”
“I’m glad,” she says, and then she surprises herself by rising onto her tiptoes and kissing his rough cheek.”...
No comments :
Post a Comment