Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,30
was no persuading Sheila that she didn’t want a drink or that the reason she was picking a fight was her need for the booze. As much as he wanted to remind her that it was dangerous to drink with a sprout the size of his pinky growing inside her, she wouldn’t listen to him. All he could do was distract her, the way he dealt with alcoholics on tours.
“I take it back,” he said. “I don’t want to marry you.”
She glanced up. “Make up your mind.”
“I did want to, but now I don’t.”
“You teasing with me?”
“Do I look like I’m teasing with you?”
She stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her fork, and ate a bite of the green beans. Behind her head, an empty bottle of Dawn rested on a sill under a window. The dirty pots from the meal listed in the sink.
“I’ve got a tour,” he said, checking his watch.
“What? It’s Friday night.”
“A probie called in sick.”
“You mean there’s someone greener than you?”
Webster pushed his chair back. He felt something drain from his chest as he did so.
“You’re lying,” she said.
He was but said nothing.
“It’s because I don’t want to talk about getting married, isn’t it?” she asked, sipping her water.
The sight of the candles made Webster sad. Why play house?
He went into the bedroom to change. He had nowhere to go, but he put on his uniform anyway. He grabbed his radio and his utility belt.
When he emerged from the bedroom, she was blocking the front door. In her hand, she held a Tupperware container in which she’d put the rest of his dinner.
He stood ten feet from her.
“You need a fork and knife?” she asked.
“They’ve got forks and knives at Rescue.”
“Will you marry me?” she asked.
“No.”
“Please?”
“What about all the rules?” he asked. “And the smothering?”
“Fuck the rules,” she said. “We’ll make our own rules.”
“Such as?”
“We could get married on that piece of land of yours with just a few dogs for witnesses.”
“The land’s not mine.”
“Details,” she said, though he could see in the way she turned her gaze aside that she was just this minute registering the results of an equation Webster had solved weeks ago. Webster + Sheila + Baby = No Land. The land by itself was meaningless without Sheila and the baby. And he would need whatever was left of his savings to help support the three of them when the baby came. He would take twenty-four-hour shifts if he had to.
He watched her glance from the corner of the room to the floor to his face. “You can’t do this,” she said. “You’ve been saving for that land all these years.”
He didn’t remind her that she had let him pay the cop. “Hey, no rules, remember? I can do whatever I want.”
“This isn’t funny, Webster. This is serious.”
“Asking you to marry me was serious.”
She stared at him, then gave a half smile. “So where’s the ring?” she asked.
He pulled the blue jeweler’s box from his pants pocket. He hadn’t wanted her to find it while he was gone. She took it from him and opened it. It was a small diamond set flat in a gold band.
“Jesus Christ, Webster,” she said. “I was kidding.”
They were married by the minister at the Congregational church where Webster had been confirmed just before he gave up on religion. The soul was an entity he felt ambivalent about.
Webster’s parents came to the ceremony, along with Burrows and his wife, Karen. Two of Webster’s cousins drove down from the Northeast Kingdom. No one from Sheila’s side showed up, and it felt to Webster, for a moment during the service, that his soon-to-be wife was standing on air, as if she might tumble into oblivion for lack of roots. Sheila’s sister, the only relative who might have made the trip, was near her ninth month of pregnancy and couldn’t travel. Sheila didn’t seem to mind. “I wish it was just me and you,” she’d said the night before.
She wore a high-waisted black dress, which surprised Webster, who hadn’t been consulted and who’d assumed white. After the ceremony, when he complimented her on the dress—it was fluid and elegant and made her skin light up—she explained that she’d wanted to buy a dress she might be able to wear again.
“To your next wedding?” he asked.
She cuffed him with her bouquet, one his mother had picked out.
After the ceremony, the eight celebrants walked in the July sunshine to a wedding luncheon in a private room at the Bear Hollow