Early Warning

Around the first of October, the crying started. Claire and Ruth went to a movie called I Thank a Fool, expecting that Susan Hayward was going to be good, but the movie was irritating and confusing, not sad. Nevertheless, at the point when the villain broke through the fence he was leaning against and fell over the cliff, Claire felt herself seize up, and then there were tears off and on all the way back to the apartment she and Ruth were sharing. They made popcorn, and she forgot about it. In the morning, more tears came when she ran her stocking, and then tears again when, after lunch break, her boss told her that she had to retype a letter she had given him, because she had misspelled “receipt” three times. Two days later, she froze in that weird way again and cried over a chicken sandwich in the commissary, and the day after that, Paul called her late at night, and when he hung up without saying, “I love you,” she cried again, even though he had called her “honey” three times and “sweetheart” once.

Crying was a little time-consuming when you were going to the florist and the bakery and calling the justice of the peace on the phone about last-minute arrangements and reading Lois’s list of what she was making (finger sandwiches with tiny shrimp and rémoulade sauce, Swedish meatballs, sliced apples smeared with blue cheese from Kalona). She cried on the phone with Rosanna while they were talking about where the Darnells were going to stay the weekend; Rosanna was suspicious and reluctant to drop the subject of why she was crying.

Ruth thought the crying was charming and appropriate — she was getting married! She would be with Paul for the rest of her life! That could be fifty or sixty or seventy years, and much sadder if it were not that long than if it was! Obviously, it was sad to leave Ruth herself behind, but Ruth had hope, because there were three men she knew now, and one had gone to Grinnell.

After five days of the crying, she decided that it was just another thing to organize, so she equipped herself with plenty of Kleenex and continued about her business. October 14 barreled toward her; soon enough, Lillian and Arthur and Tim and Debbie and Dean and Tina and Frank and Andy and Janny and Richie and Michael and that woman Nedra, who had to come along, and Henry (no girlfriend) were wandering in and out of Rosanna’s house and Joe and Lois’s house, and there were two boys from the high school, too, whom Minnie had hired to hand around trays, put out chairs, and empty ashtrays. Eloise couldn’t come, but she’d sent a set of dessert plates with seashells painted around the rim that were Claire’s favorite present, and reminded her of that New Year’s trip to California with Granny Elizabeth, who had died this past spring (and the only thing sad about her passing, at almost ninety, was that she had never made it to Hawaii). Claire thought Granny Elizabeth would have said that she had done a good job — just what she herself advised, waiting this long, and choosing Paul.

Debbie got the younger girls dressed, and when they stood up in a row to have their picture taken, Claire thought that the way their velvet dresses shaded in color from green to gold made a beautiful effect. Lillian, Ruth, and Paul’s sister, Irene, looked nice, too, and Lillian, of course, made much of Claire’s own dress — how lovely it looked on Claire; the one thing she, Lillian, would never have in this lifetime was a wedding; of course, the war had made everything different, but what a luxury, and Claire had done such a good job planning all of this — Lillian just kept talking, in spite of the hairpins between her lips, as she buttoned all of the buttons down Claire’s back, and secured her bun and pulled out the curls on either side of her forehead so that they framed her face for when Paul would lift the veil and kiss her. Lillian had never understood the idea of a morning wedding — late-afternoon weddings, like this one, gave you such a warm, cozy feeling.