* * *
—
It must be very late. Out the window, the sky is coal-black. The snow has stopped. Peter is in the shower. I know this because I can hear the water running from the Plaza Hotel bed where, apparently, I have just regained consciousness. I’m still in my wedding gown. My two feet poke straight up from the mattress in silk pumps, as if a house has fallen on me. I have no idea how I got here. I close my eyes, trying to remember our wedding reception. A blur of colorful hats. Platters of oysters on crushed ice. Peter’s mother in a plum-tweed Chanel suit talking to Jonas’s mother. A tuxedoed waiter handing me a crystal flute of champagne, me throwing it back in one gulp and grabbing another from the tray. Earth, Wind & Fire. Anna and I slow-dancing together, slugging champagne directly from the bottle. Watching my father sneak out the back before the toasts began. “Once a douche, always a douche,” Anna had said.
* * *
—
“Peter?” I call out now.
“Sec,” he calls back. He emerges from a billow of steam, a plush hotel towel wrapped around his waist. “The prodigal alcoholic returns.” He leaps on top of me and kisses me. “Hi, wife.” He sniffs me. “You smell of baby-sick. Might want to take off those shoes. The splatter.”
“Oh god.”
He reaches down and takes them off me, one at a time, throws them in the wastebasket. “You’ll never wear them again, anyway. White satin heels? You’d look like a hooker at Charing Cross.”
“Did I puke at the party? In front of everyone?”
“No, no. Just the hotel staff and the limo driver. It took three liveried bellhops to carry you into the elevator.”
“They carried me?”
“I insisted you were luggage.”
“I need a cheeseburger,” I groan.
“For my beautiful blackout-drunk bride, anything.” Peter wipes my hair back from my brow.
“It was the champagne. I can’t drink champagne. It’s the sugar. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Watching you throw your garter to my father was the highlight of the day.”
“I’m going to shoot myself.”
“That, and marrying the woman of my dreams.”
I reach up and put my arms around his neck, look deep into his eyes. “I need to brush my teeth.”
* * *
—
When I wake much later, a dream lingers on the tip of my mind. I’m on a cloud, scudding across the sky. Below me the sea is bright blue, infinite. A pod of whales migrates north, grandly oblivious to the smaller creatures in their wake. A white sail appears, riding fast on the chop. There are two children on the boat. Behind them, an enormous sperm whale dives, sounds the depths. I am underwater. I watch as the whale torpedoes toward the surface, aiming for the triangular shadow of the boat. A house floats by. Red ribbons flow through a broken screen door.
The room service tray is on the bedside table. Peter is passed out next to me, a smudge of ketchup on the corner of his mouth. Most of the fries are gone. I am married.
1997. February, the Back Woods.
Two months after the honeymoon I get a call from Anna. At first I’m not certain it’s her—she’s crying so hard I can’t make out what she’s saying, and Anna doesn’t cry.
“Slow down,” I say. “I can’t hear you.”
I listen to her sobs for a moment or two before she hangs up the phone. When I try to call back, it rings and rings until the machine picks up. I call Jeremy at his office.
“She’s good,” he says brightly. “She’s been doing a lot of work on herself.”
My throat constricts in knee-jerk disgust. “That’s great.” I force myself to keep the judgment out of my voice. “She sounded pretty upset when she called me just now.”
“She had group therapy today. That might have loosened up some silt.”
“When you get home tell her to call me, okay?” I loathe him.
“So, how’s it going?” he says, not taking his cue to hang up.
“Fine. Great.”
“You certainly had a good time at your wedding.”
“Tell her to call me,” I say.
* * *
—
The highway is desolate, barren—a cindery streak, salted for black ice, its sandy verges frozen hard and flat. A few dark pines punctuate the woods, but most of the trees here are bare, their last remaining leaves, rattle-dead brown, waiting sorrowfully to be taken by the next icy gust. It’s not even three p.m., but already the winter light is fading. Anna hasn’t spoken since I picked her up at Logan airport in a rental car. She looks haggard, empty, her eyes rubbed red. Anna is tough. A rock. Caustic and funny. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is not my sister. I listen to the swish of tires on wet road, the salt spray. Fiddle with the radio. Nothing but AM. I hate the Cape in winter.