Love and Glory

Chapter Fourteen

Jennifer Grayle became Mrs. John Merchent in a gray stone Episcopal church on a small hill in Marblehead in August of 1954. I was there, the recipient of a civilized invitation in formal engraving. Two weeks home from Korea and I wore my white linen jacket and gray slacks and a black knit tie. Only the tie fit, the rest was too big because I was down under 150 pounds, wiry and thin from carrying a radio and a rifle for long distances at a time. The collar of my button-down shirt was about a size big. My belt was pulled three notches tighter and made the tops of my slacks bunch. I still had a G.I. haircut, and looking at my reflection in a car window as I walked toward the church, I thought I looked consumptive. The back of my jacket stood away from my neck.

Jennifer was in white, her bridesmaids in yellow. The groom and his party wore white dinner jackets and black watch cummerbunds. Everything fit them. I was afraid, sitting blankly in the back nearly anesthetized. What if I fainted? What if I went crazy when I saw her? What if I cried? When she came down the aisle she looked as she always had, tanned, perfectly made up, poised, and full of controlled power. My deep numbness worked. I sat without expression and almost without feeling; the part of me that could feel was already beginning to dwindle, more and more of me was callus tissue. Inside my thickness I watched them meet at the altar, watched them kneel, watched them rise, watched him take the ring from his brother and put it on her finger, watched her brush her veil back, watched them kiss, and watched them walk up the aisle together.

The reception was in a long, rambling, wasp, white country club on the Marblehead-Swampscott line. The orchestra played things like “The Anniversary Waltz,” and the leader sang “Because God made thee mine,” with his mouth very close to the microphone. There was an open bar. I ordered a shot and a beer. Jennifer stood with her husband in a receiving line. I didn’t go near it. I drank my shot and washed it down with beer and ordered another one. Merchent was tall and blond with a golden tan and athletic shoulders. Someone told me he’d been captain of the tennis team at Cornell. He had blue eyes and a cleft in his chin like Cary Grant. The diamond he’d given Jennifer looked like a paperweight. All the guests looked like their clothes had been made in Paris, and all the older women talked with that Northshore honk that distinguished broads whose husbands were successful. I had another shot.

“Friend of the bride?” the bartender said.

“What makes you think so?”

“I work a lot of weddings. Most people drink champagne. A shot and a beer ain’t happy drinking.”

I didn’t answer him, I just held out the empty shot glass. He shrugged and put some blended whiskey in it. The bottle had one of those little chrome spouts in it, and he turned it nicely when the glass was full so none dripped.

There were flowers banked around most of the room — huge arrangements spilling out of big vases, roses, and a bunch of others that I didn’t know the names of. The bridesmaids in their yellow and the ushers in their white splashed among the crowd. The bride and groom danced. The son of a bitch danced so well that he was able to make Jennifer look good. I knew she couldn’t dance a step. Or she didn’t used to be able to. Things change. I leaned my back against the bar. Without looking, I stuck my shot glass back at the bartender. No one else was at the bar. They were all drinking champagne and nibbling canapés from trays that circulated.

“ ’Nother beer too,” I said.

The hot booze was insulating the small feeling part, layering in more protection. I felt full of novocaine. Here comes the fucking bride, I murmured to myself. All dressed in white. Christ, I never even fucked her. As they danced, Jennifer looked up at her husband. She looked at him just as she had looked at me, and I knew he felt just like I had, that he was all that Jennifer was interested in. She must have looked at Nick Taylor that way. Poor bastard, no wonder he’d been walking around with a ring in his pocket. Like me. He believed her. Even drunk I knew it wasn’t quite fair to Jennifer. We were talking about different things when we talked about love, my definition didn’t have to prevail.

There were tall windows around the open dance floor. Outside, trees moved in the summer wind and beyond them people played golf on a green rolling course that seemed eternal. The room was air-conditioned and cool, and high-ceilinged. The rich are different than we are. Yeah, they’re cooler. The colored dresses and the flowers were beginning to blur and the room was starting to look like an impressionist painting. I better stick to beer. No more shots. The beer had lost most of its taste. I sipped it from the bottle.

“Boonie, how nice of you to come,” Jennifer said. She was in front of me with the groom. He hadn’t loosened his tie. His jacket was buttoned. Neat, I thought. The fucking asshole.

“Thanks for inviting me,” I said. I drank some beer.

“Boonie, this is John Merchent. Boone Adams.”

He stuck out his clean, strong, tan hand. “Glad to meet you, Boone, I heard a lot about you up at school.”

I shook his hand briefly. “Yeah,” I said.

“Understand you were in Korea,” he said.

“World safe for democracy,” I said.

“My roommate at the deke house was in Korea.”

“You a deke?”

“Absolutely. I was a deke at Cornell and when I transferred I moved right in. Great house.”

“Cornell,” I said, “a deke, and a perfect asshole.”

“Boonie,” Jennifer said.

“Line from The Naked and the Dead,” I mumbled.

“You’re drunk, fella,” Merchent said. “Better get yourself under control.”

“Whyn’t you get me under control, twinkletoes?”

Merchent’s brother walked over and two of the ushers. They all looked like Merchent. Everybody at the wedding looked like Merchent. Except me.

“A whole collection,” I said. “A quartet of perfect assholes.”

Merchent jerked his head at me and his brother said, “Come on, fella, I think you should leave.” He put his hand on my arm. I yanked my arm away.

“Whyn’t he throw me out,” I said, and lunged at Merchent. He slid me past him almost negligently and his brother and the ushers rushed me out through the hall and into the parking lot. I sprawled on the pavement and scraped my hands.

“Don’t come back,” Brother said. “We’ll have you arrested.”

“How ’bout one at a fucking time,” I said. I was on my feet, but the parking lot seemed insubstantial. I was having a little trouble standing steady. Brother and the two ushers laughed a little, shook their heads, and walked back into the reception.

I stood alone in the parking lot. The sun was setting. The knee of my pants was ripped. I had gotten blood from my scraped palms on my white jacket. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. I started walking. Behind me, I heard Jennifer say, “Boonie.” I stopped and looked back. She was standing in the door of the club in her wedding dress. “Boonie,” she said. “I’m sorry.” I nodded and turned back toward the street and kept walking.

She called after me. “Boonie, I know it’s corny, but we could be friends.” I shook my head and didn’t look back.