They energetically matched Graice's talk and snapshots with talk and snapshots of their own, for in marrying a racehorse owner's widow Duke Courtney had married a stable of seven horses of which two or three were consistent winners, in low stakes races at least: Here's Princess Meg, here's Will o' the Wisp, here's Iron Heel, if you have time, Graice, let's all drive out to Oldwick to the farm; I'd love you to see Orion, our new trotter, the first yearling I bought myself at auction last August, he's being trained by one of the best in the business and here's the list of stakes he's entered in already and if things go as Jenny Lou andIhope Graice Courtney was sitting on an overstuffed sofa smiling and admiring and exclaiming over photographs of horses, and after the two hour visit she came away amazed and vengeful thinking that not once had Duke so much as alluded to the fact of Persia, the fact that there had ever been a Persia, and she thought, But I won't invite them to the wedding, and then she thought, a while later, more calmly, re turning to Syracuse and to her life there, that the new Courtneys hadn't asked about the wedding, hadn't shown the slightest interest, for at the very least it would mean a wedding present, wouldn't it.
Duke Crurtney's parting words to his daughter were, Love ya, honey!
Keep in touch!
Graice intends to invite Leslie Courtney to her wedding of course. As for Aunt Madelyn, she hasn't decided.
Not because she's ashamed is she? of her beautician aunt with her cheap colorful clothes and orangish dyed permed hair, but yes perhaps she's worried of how the Savages will respond to her and interpret her, a woman bearing so little re semblance to Graice Court they and to the Persia Courtney whom Graice has described, an aunt who isn't in fact an aunt but a more distant relative, of ambiguous stature.
Graice tells herself nervously, I must invite someone, they will think I am an orphan, or an outcast.
This is the problem, however: in re cent years Madelyn Daiches has become passionately religious, an evangelical convert, sending off $5 and $ 10 bills out of her meager salary to Christian causes, speaking of her RedeemerJesus Christ in familiar, emotional terms, a glisten to her eyes suggesting a true inner light, or madness. Graice had heard of Madelyn's conversion from Leslie but did not know, quite, what it meant, wasn't prepared for the shock of meeting her.
According to Leslie, shortly after Persia's death which upset her greatly , Madelyn went with several women friends to hear the Reverend Billy Graham preaching in Batavia, New York, at a
Christian Revival Festival and has never been the same since. When Graice visited her the first thing she told Graice was that Jesus Christ was the most important person in her life now and the most important person in your life, Graice, if only you would realize.
And she'd hugged Graice, hard. And kissed her. Eyes shut tight.
It was a strange visit, with Aunt Madelyn. Whenever Graice tries to re call it, in bits and pieces, it seems stranger still.
You see, Graice dear, people like Persia aren't re ally dead,' they're with Jesus and the Father. Persia is with her loved ones who have crossed over, all of them, your grandparents and your great grandparents and, oh! all of them, looking down upon us and feeling pity for us in our blindness, Madelyn said. She spoke in spurts, both slowly and eagerly, as if a great pressure were building up inside her that must be contained. Seeing that Graice sat silent, eyes downcast, hands clasped in her lap, and thinking that silence is consent, Madelyn continued speaking in this vein for some min minutes, and in her voice Graice believed she could detect cadences not Madelyn Daiches's own but those of a stranger, an inspired and aggressive stranger. Not Jesus Christ perhaps but one of His earthly emissaries?
Oh, said Graice. I see.
I commune with Persia every day, sometimes twice a day, Madelyn said.
Her eyes were soft, her mouth tremulous. Persia is there for you too, Graice, if you'd give your heart to Jesus Christ. If you'd try.
How do you know I haven't tried? Graice thought.
Aloud Graice said, Well.
'As I want you to, dear.
Graice could not think of an intelligent reply, let alone an made quite rejoinder. Religious fanaticism frightened her less because it was fanatic than because it suggested a reality however interior, however problematic, inaccessible to her; it was a food that, in her mouth, had no taste. gave no nourishment. In Aunt Madelyn's living room she sat for an hour, murmuring Yes and No and Thank you as Madelyn spoke, even re ad to Graice from her Bible as, oddly, yet in an entirely different context, Gwendolyn Savage had once re ad to Graice, newly home from the hospital: And he said unto them, Ye arefrom beneath,' I am from above.
ye are of th is world,' I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins. for ifye believe not that I am he Graice could not help saying, with a child's futile obstinacy, Jesus is always threatening us, isn't he? Always saying, If you don't do this, then this will happen to you. If you don't believe in me you're doomed to hell.
Madelyn blinked at Graice as if Graice had spoken unintelligible words.
She said, Why, of course, dear. That's how it is.
Outside on the street children were playing, calling to one another.
An airplane passed high overhead. Graice felt something tug at her, anger, despair, grief; no, she was wholly in control of herself as always, saying, with a smile, And Persia isn't gone, as if she'd never livedshe's only watching us.
Watching over us.
Waiting for us.
Waiting for you especially, Graice. seeing as how she loved you more than anyone else on earth.
Saying goodbye, Graice and Madelyn had embraced again, and this time they'd both cried. As if knowing they might not see each other for a long, long time.
Graice has decided not to invite Madelyn to the wedding.. and not to examine her conscience about the decision.
Which means she'll have only one relative, Leslie Courtney, as a guest; Leslie, whom she believes she can trust.
In any case, it seems to suit the Savages, the elder Savages in particular, to think of Graice Courtney as an orphan.
But do you re ally love me?
Of course I are ally love you, how could I not?
But do you. forgive me?
You were a victim of circumstances, Graice. You were the victim.
Alan Savage wants to marry Graice Courtney, gave her his mother's heirloom ring, because he loves her.. loves her more than he has ever loved anyone in his life. and is not going to be deterred in loving her. Somehow, Graice thinks, I hadn't counted on that.
Now that the wedding is imminent, less than forty eight hours away, all family conversations are about how a thing should be done, not why. Of course. Life is practicality; life is planning and scheduling; life is a sequence of pleasant tasks. No one ever brings up, or even alludes to, Graice's accident on that terrible day in November 1963.
That terrible terrible day.
Graice had expected to see in Alan Savage's eyes, when he first came to visit her in the hospital alone: the elder Savages had not yet been informed of the assault , a look of distaste, perhaps even revulsion.
but Alan's eyes brimmed simply with tears; it was as if Graice's hurt were his own: he'd gripped her hands in his and laid his head against her; they'd wept together in mutual commiseration.
Graice thought, disbelieving, Does he love me, then?
Blackened eyes. a bloodied nose. a cracked rib.
bruises and bumps and lacerations particularly of her knees and the palms of her hands; she'd been dragged resisting across pavement clumps of hair torn from her head, and a chipped front tooth kicks to her lower belly, and between the legs the assault was sexual obviously though not in the most the clinical sense rape since there had been no actual penetration of the vagina. In her early delirium the patient said she didn't think they'd meant to hurt her as much as they had; it was because she'd fought them, resisted
Eventually missis Savage would say, You must pray for them, dear, you mustn't harbor bitterness.
Oh, yes. Oh, no.
It's the only way. The Christian way. The way of health, forgiveness.
Graice could tell Syracuse police only that her assailants were young black men. She wasn't sure if there had been four or five, hadn't seen their faces clearly, hadn't heard any of them call any other by name, could not identify the car, even its color. Nor was she certain of the location in which she'd been picked up except to know it was somewhere west of the river.
Someone has predicted bad dreams for months, years.
A lifetime of flinching when she sees black skin.
Graice Courtney doesn't think much about it, never speaks of it with Alan any longer, nor does Alan speak of it with her, so many other things to concentrate upon with the wedding Saturday morning and the honeymoon trip by Pullman to New York City where they will stay for six days in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, then re turn briefly to Syracuse in preparation for their move to a handsome eighteenth century brownstone on Delancey Street, Philadelphia for Alan Savage has surprised everyone by accepting a position as assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art instead of an academic position, and Graice Courtney may one day enroll in graduate studies at Penn, in art history, or so it's their plan, once things get settled. Moving into the Delancey Street brownstone, properly furnishing it, taking on the responsibilities of a young curator's wife she'll have a good deal to do.
Please don't laugh when I say I want to be a good wife to you: I want to be worthy.
Alan Savage frames his bride to He's lovely face in his hands, nudges her forehead gently with his, kisses the tip of her nose and then, lightly, her lips. she's a tall straight backed young woman but he's several inches taller and friends of the Savages have been commenting for months on the change in him, his new air of maturity, self assurance, yet playfulness too, he's quick to smile and rarely does he flare up any longer in annoyance at a goading re mark of Byron's; yes, perhaps he has begun to see the wisdom of his father's perspective, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art he'll be in charge of the extensive Duchamp and Modernist holdings in a context he plans of classic European art. for Alan Savage's agenda is to re late Surrealist experimentation to the tradition and not isolate it, as its practitioners demanded, as if it were sui generis.
My Botticelli: how could you not be worthy ?
Kissing her gently, questioningly. they're hidden away in the guest room on the second floor, rear, overlooking missis Savage's rose garden, in which Graice has stayed since the family moved back to town from Skaneateles at the end of August; Graice Courtney has left forever that shabby rooming house on South Salina Street and within weeks all memory of it will have faded from her mind or perhaps has already faded in this fragrant chintz furnished room with the graceful white louver shutters closed now against the humid September sunshine and her trembling bridegroom em braces her, kissing lips, eyes. his mothlike kisses.. bending to press his warm face against her hard little breasts like a child's fists inside her cotton shirt, stooping, finally kneeling, to kiss the pit of her belly, gently between the legs. as she stiffens, just slightly but doesn't close her fingers in his hair and, as if in play, urge him away as she's done many times, so this time he remains kneeling, hugging her around the hips, his warm face pressed against her, his eyes shut.
If it excites Alan Savage to think of Graice Courtney having been the victim of a sexual assault. by young black men, faceless and nameless. it isn't a fact, or even a possibility, he'll articulate.
It's I who must be worthy of you.
Lunchtime but no one wants to sit down and there's the telephone again, it has been ringing ringing ringing for days, and missis Savage's voice lifts another time: Hello? Oh, hell lo!
Twice daily the delivery truck marked UNITED PARCEL SERVICE turns up the looping gravel drive of Savage House, the Chinese import reception room has become a treasure trove of wedding gifts through which Alan Savage and Graice Courtney move, fingers linked, like staring children. in awe, in gratitude, on the verge of mirth. Graice says with a laughing little shudder that she'll be spending the first month of her married life writing thank you notes; Alan runs a hand through his hair confessing with a smile that he had no idea he had so many relatives: a veritable subgalaxy of Savages, Makepeaces, and blood related others.
How will I ever re pay them?
Tugging at his fingers his bride to be amends, We.
They flee from such dazzling sights, the silver alone enough to stagger the eye, wander for a few minutes in missis Savage's rose garden, fingers still linked, and Alan Savage is quiet as if brooding, then says, with that air of sudden perception Graice Courtney so admires in him, like a match suddenly flaring into flame, Freud believed that only the delayed gratification of an infantile wish can bring adult happiness; that's why money, material things, rarely bring happiness.