Chapter 57
WILLIAM
It was difficult to find Joel. There were so many guests beneath the tent, so many waiters, so many tables and wineglasses and forks. “You know what Eleanor would’ve said about this crowd if she were here,” his uncle Michael observed. “ ‘You only want a crowd at the guillotine.’ ”
“I never understood what that meant,” William said, and his uncle just laughed.
He spotted his mother in the crowd. When she saw him, she turned away, as if she couldn’t stand to look at him.
The church had been a reprieve. William was just a reminder of her embarrassment and all of the things he’d said, in the way he sometimes felt he was a reminder of his father: their same slender height, their same Roman nose, though Shay was always a clearer mirror of him.
A photographer wormed his way through the loose circles of bodies, forcing guests to stand close together, to put their arms around one another and smile.
The younger ones happily shook out their hair and wiped their teeth.
The older guests seemed to see it as a grim duty of representation, knowing how the young couple would look at these photos through the years as a record. Tallying the living and the dead.
By the low stage, Shay was crouching to speak to one of their young cousins, who kept trying to remove a satin headband.
Andrew was drinking urine-yellow beer in a tall glass, no longer looking as ill as he had at the church.
William wondered if he himself could be happy after speaking to Joel—if he felt the danger had passed, perhaps he could ride the wedding’s lighter current: joke with his cousins, savor the familiar rhythms of his extended family, appreciate the warm air and the sounds of the ocean.
The reception itself was beautiful. The blush of the roses, the polished cutlery, the cream sweep of the tent. Perhaps Shay had wanted all of it.
The bandleader told everyone it was time to take their seats for dinner.
There was a gradual settling, eyes narrowing at the table’s cursive numbers, some guests thrilled to discover their new neighbors, others making the same tired joke, “So they put us with you lot.” Family was with family, friends with friends.
It was clear the Pruitts were not trying to forge new connections.
Fence posts were hammered deeper into the ground.
William was at a table with his cousins and their parents.
His mother was stationed with the Pruitts—a tradition they all honored but clearly did not enjoy by the set of the women’s mouths.
It was only when everyone was seated that he saw Joel.
His table was at the outskirts of the tent, one of the chairs empty beside him.
He still wasn’t wearing a suit jacket or a tie, his shirt unbuttoned at his tan throat.
A part of William thought Joel might not have come.
One of his tablemates—a girl with fine blond hair William vaguely recognized from Shay’s graduation—was whispering in his ear.
He looked battered. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but there appeared to be a swelling at his left cheek.
Around William, there was a clinking of glasses. Mr. Pruitt was on the stage in his jet-black tuxedo, his bow tie already drooping. He held a full coupe of champagne in one hand.
“It’s your biggest fan,” Oscar said.
“He doesn’t really like you much either,” William said, and Vivian hushed them both.
“I know everyone’s ready to begin eating, so I promise to keep this brief,” Mr. Pruitt began.
The crowd responded with polite titters.
“But I wanted to thank you all again for joining us on our little island, our piece of heaven on earth. Judy and I are so pleased. We couldn’t have asked for better weather, or a more beautiful couple.
We wish them many sunny days ahead. So let’s, ah, let’s all toast to Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Pruitt. ”
Guests raised their coupes, a rambunctious chorus of cheers and hear hears before everyone took a sip.
William brought his water glass to his lips.
Aunt Eleanor had been invited to the last family wedding, Pam and Michael’s, when William had been nine or ten, and to everyone’s surprise, she had given a speech.
May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand, she’d said.
An old Irish blessing. So little of it had made sense to him.
He’d imagined a road bucking like a horse, his aunt and uncle in the palm of a giant.
“That was sweet,” Vivian said.
“And, most importantly, short,” Oscar added.
“He’s not so bad,” she said, and William hoped—for Shay’s sake—that she was right.
At his place setting, a waiter set a plate of fanned iceberg lettuce before him.
He had barely eaten that day, and he told himself Joel wouldn’t move during the meal, that dinner was its own pause, and so he proceeded to clean every dish they put in front of him: the Waldorf salad, the blue crab cakes, even the overcooked fillet, consuming three rolls from the bread basket, nearly crying at their warmth and the softness of the butter.
When he was finished, he looked up from his clean plate and found Joel again, disappearing and reappearing behind a choreographed procession of waiters. No one at his table spoke to him, and he held an empty tumbler to his cheek.
“Excuse me,” William said to his cousins, and he rose.