When Amanda’s plane landed in Charlottesville in one piece, the passengers applauded. Safe in her hotel room, she telephoned Olivia. “Want help getting ready? I can get dressed and over there in five minutes.”
“Are you kidding? Sterling won’t leave me alone. She’s having fits because you, the third bridesmaid, can’t get here until the last second. I’ll meet you by the tent at two. With luck, you’ll be walking ahead of me before anyone stops us.”
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“You know, traditionally, O, it’s the bride walking down the aisle who’s a wonder to behold. It’s supposed to be your day.”
“Reuniting you and Dad? That’s my day. So don’t you start in about how I’m not serious enough. Keith’s only twenty-one and so Sterling and his mother, Liz, are like, ‘uh-oh, cradle-robbing.’ And, though she doesn’t tell Liz this, my mom has a thing about the man being smarter.”
Olivia had asked Amanda to choose any knee-length ivory-colored dress. And Sterling requested that the bridesmaids wear pink shoes.
Amanda’s friend Farrah had found an ivory dress of tissue weight silk. She claimed that the natural waist and tapered hemline flattered Amanda’s slender build. Everything else in the stores was smocked and shapeless, like a nursery-school dress. This dress showed some cleavage, but nothing compared to the three hundred others Amanda had tried.
Farrah had campaigned for pink ankle-straps on stilts, but Amanda chose little pink flats. She highlighted her hair that honey color and combed it smooth so it dipped just below her shoulders.
At exactly two, she stood self-consciously at the entrance of a pink and white striped tent. Spectacular Olivia wore a shimmery gown that clung to her generous curves. She lunged at Amanda, squealing with glee, and a long dark tendril fell loose from its pins. The music started.
Walter appeared in a tuxedo and bent to whisper, “My God, Amanda!”
After the ceremony, Amanda watched the guests form clusters around the bar. In the big green field, she gazed at the cloudless sky, and then Walter was walking toward her. He looked the same as when she saw him sixteen year ago. His hair was white but otherwise he looked the same. She had figured out their ages on the plane. Last time she saw him, he was forty-three. Now he was fifty-nine.
Approaching her, his bright eyes stayed with hers. How could he possibly look the same on Olivia’s wedding day, as he had, dropping Amanda off at middle school?
But he did. He was the same man as in the photograph of them waiting to get on Space Mountain. As he walked toward Amanda, he glided the same way he had through the Connecticut malls, when they avoided those in Westchester where someone might recognize them.
Amanda returned his smile slowly and shyly. She stepped backwards and balanced on her tiptoes. And that—that answered all her questions. She had stepped back to get momentum. She looked at Walter and struggled with an overwhelming impulse to leap into his arms. The magnetic pull thrilled and frightened her. Her arms burned to fly up and wrap tightly around him. Her legs ached to squeeze his torso.
He hugged her tightly, stroking her hair and whispering her name. The smell of his skin and breath sent her pulse racing. So many tender, tense, freighted images turned in her mind. Her stomach dropped and clenched. At age eleven, she had jumped into Walter’s arms without hesitation. She’d wrapped her legs around him without invitation. And, she’d begged every night to rub his naked shoulders so she could straddle his waist and press her chest into his back while the TV flickered.
Pre-pubescent but not asexual, she had rested her face against his. She’d whistled silently in his ear and run her hands all over his body, and he had never once succumbed. He’d protested but never reciprocated. “Honey,” she remembered him saying, “you’ve no idea what you do to me.” That’s all.
She embraced him in sorrow and desperation. Her cheek pressed into his chest, her tears dampening his shirt’s stiff pleats. “I’m so sorry, Walter. So, so sorry.”
Guiding her so he could hold her hands at arms length, he laughed at how absurdly beautiful she’d grown.
The air behind them churned. A boxy woman constricted inside a tight, flowered suit yanked Walter’s shoulder, spinning him around.
“What the hell?” It was Sterling. “I told you not to go near her! Amanda, I don’t know what Olivia was thinking, but you’ve got to go—now.”
“Let me say good-bye to Olivia and Keith.”
“I’ll give them your regards.”
Walter said, “I’ll walk you to your car, sweetheart.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Sterling yanked his shoulder again. “Five years in jail weren’t enough?”
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