The Amateur Marriage

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anne Tyler
budge . . .
    “Always does what? Never wants to go where? ” Mrs. Serge asked from the far end. “Wait, I didn’t catch that.”
    Mrs. Zack said every bride felt that way. That was what weddings were all about! Wanda said Michael had said the same thing. He’d said, “Now, Poll, you’re just overwrought,” and Pauline had said, “Don’t tell me I’m—”
    “Ssh!” Mrs. Serge said.
    Seated closest to the aisle, she was the first to notice the stir at the rear of the church. The women turned. The other guests turned. The piano came to with a start and started playing “Here Comes the Bride” as Michael and Pauline walked toward the altar hand in hand. Not arm in arm, the way people did at snootier, more stilted weddings, but tightly holding hands and wearing radiant smiles.
    They were such a perfect couple. They were taking their very first steps on the amazing journey of marriage, and wonderful adventures were about to unfold in front of them.

2. Dandelion Clock
    Pauline said, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a birthday.”
    Michael stopped pouring his cereal and looked across the table at her.
    “It was January fifth,” Pauline said. “The woman was twenty-three.”
    “Why, that’s your birthday, too!” Michael’s mother told her. “That’s how old you turned, only yesterday!”
    “And because this woman happened to be at a low point in her life,” Pauline went on, “she was feeling very sensitive about her age.”
    Michael said, cautiously, “A low point in her life?”
    Pauline rose to reposition the baby in her high chair. The baby had reached the stage where she could sit up, but just barely. Left on her own, she tended to slide gradually downwards until her chin was resting on her chest.
    “Yes, she wasn’t awfully attractive just then,” Pauline said, taking her seat again. “She was two months pregnant and sick as a dog, and she still hadn’t got her figure back from the last time she was pregnant. Also, her husband was a quarter-year younger than she was. For three months after every birthday, she was an Older Woman. Can you imagine how that felt? She was old and fat and ugly, and her bosom was starting to sag.”
    Pauline herself was prettier than ever, in Michael’s opinion. This early in the morning, unrouged and unlipsticked, wearing a flowered chintz housecoat, she looked as fresh as a child. The second pregnancy had not begun to show yet, whatever she might imagine, and the only apparent effect of the first was the thrilling new roundness and weightiness of her breasts. Michael could almost feel them filling his hands as she spoke. He smiled; he tried to catch her eye. But Pauline was saying, “More coffee, Mother Anton?”
    “No, thank you, dear. You know what it does to my stomach,” Michael’s mother said.
    “Luckily for this woman,” Pauline continued, “her husband was very understanding. He hated for her to feel bad! He decided he would devote himself to making her birthday perfect.”
    Michael stirred uneasily. He had certainly not forgotten her birthday—nothing so unforgivable as that—but neither could he say he had devoted himself to making it perfect. (It had fallen on a weekday this year. He did have a business to run.)
    “He got up in the morning,” Pauline said, “he tiptoed out to the kitchen, he fixed her French toast and orange juice. He came back with a tray and said, ‘Happy birthday, darling!’ Then he brought her the flowers that he’d stowed earlier on the fire escape. A dozen long-stemmed roses; never mind the expense. ‘You’re worth every bit of it, darling,’ he said. ‘I just wish they could be rubies.’”
    Pauline was bright-eyed and her voice had a cheery ring to it, so that Michael’s mother was fooled completely. She gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Wasn’t that romantic!” she told Michael. (Since those two dizzy spells last summer, she had seemed less quick-witted.) But Michael watched Pauline in silence,

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