up—you think that’s the legacy they wanted? Perfect for Stalin or Mao. Which should tell you what these fellows would have thought of it.” He feels, beneath his argument, something more significant pawing at him. There is a kind of obscenity to this glorification of the individual juxtaposed against the numberless and nameless, the only ones who would remember them lying alongside them.
“The Avenue of Flags. Fifty-six states and territories. The Presidential Trail. The Shrine of Democracy.” She is joking now, tossing out terms from her handful of lobby brochures. She knows she has lost. She never expected to win. “Stanley Peke, are you an American, or aren’t you?”
They both know it is a question larger than her joke. He is. He isn’t. He is a firm believer. He kisses the soil, weeps in gratitude. And yet he doubts it all. Looks on his adopted land with narrow-eyed suspicion. Watches closely for the next human disaster. Inevitable as a storm.
He hears, beneath their exchange, their annoyance with each other. He knows her frustration with his inflexibility and willfulness. He feels his irritation at her teasing, her disrespectful, mocking challenge. They both hear attributes they know will not change in their lifetimes, and perhaps this gives them special resonance. At their age, the argument is never the argument. There is always a meaning beneath it. A half century into marriage, this much they understand. They just don’t know exactly what the meaning is.
Yes
, Rose thinks, lying there in the motel room’s preternatural quiet and dark.
Yes, godlike.
Stone, inflexible, immutable. Mutely heroic. Unknowable and inalterable . . . blindly admired and out of reach. And a mountainside of frustration. Frustration that rises into the sky. She doesn’t need the Rushmore visit, she realizes. She has Stanley.
Her doubts are no greater, no less, her questions no more or less answered, than when she stood at their wedding in a Manhattan hotel lobby almost fifty years ago. It was an assertively nondenominational event: a justice of the peace; a two-minute ceremony. And yet: he had the place swimming in flowers. Towering arrangements. Wrapping the columns. Overflowing from the window boxes. Garlanding the banisters and balustrades. He’d located a swing band in the seediest bowels of downtown, whose black female vocalist was a phenomenon. The night rode a crest of their friends’ high spirits undimmed and undiminished into morning. And the point was clear. Creating their own life. Making their own choices. Her proud, wealthy, fifth-generation Congregationalist parents stooddemurely by, masking their disappointment behind brave smiles. It was a spectacular, high-spirited night, but more than that, it was fully, inarguably, inviolately theirs. And who was this man standing next to her in the lobby, smiling warmly and securely on the dais, this man swinging her on the dance floor, laughing helplessly? This handsome man, self-assured, powerful, infinitely patient, unpredictably brusque? Who was he, exactly? But she understood, then and there, even as the justice of the peace spoke: He was who he would be. He was the future—his, hers, theirs. And he was as clearly committed to that future as to her. So she accepted not knowing, experienced her questions as part of an energy: swirling and spinning like the newly married couple on the dance floor.
Now she was not so blithe. Not so sure. A half century had inevitably provided, if not answers, exactly, then a
sense
of answers, circuitous and indirect. Which made the remaining questions feel starker and the questioner more exposed.
Driving west through South Dakota, amid the startling sparseness, the Mercedes is becoming more and more conspicuous, claiming too much attention. For significant stretches, it is the only car to be seen, which makes it more noticeable than Peke would like. Peke sees a farmer point to it from his dusty pickup.
Selling it, though, will be
“The Avenue of Flags. Fifty-six states and territories. The Presidential Trail. The Shrine of Democracy.” She is joking now, tossing out terms from her handful of lobby brochures. She knows she has lost. She never expected to win. “Stanley Peke, are you an American, or aren’t you?”
They both know it is a question larger than her joke. He is. He isn’t. He is a firm believer. He kisses the soil, weeps in gratitude. And yet he doubts it all. Looks on his adopted land with narrow-eyed suspicion. Watches closely for the next human disaster. Inevitable as a storm.
He hears, beneath their exchange, their annoyance with each other. He knows her frustration with his inflexibility and willfulness. He feels his irritation at her teasing, her disrespectful, mocking challenge. They both hear attributes they know will not change in their lifetimes, and perhaps this gives them special resonance. At their age, the argument is never the argument. There is always a meaning beneath it. A half century into marriage, this much they understand. They just don’t know exactly what the meaning is.
Yes
, Rose thinks, lying there in the motel room’s preternatural quiet and dark.
Yes, godlike.
Stone, inflexible, immutable. Mutely heroic. Unknowable and inalterable . . . blindly admired and out of reach. And a mountainside of frustration. Frustration that rises into the sky. She doesn’t need the Rushmore visit, she realizes. She has Stanley.
Her doubts are no greater, no less, her questions no more or less answered, than when she stood at their wedding in a Manhattan hotel lobby almost fifty years ago. It was an assertively nondenominational event: a justice of the peace; a two-minute ceremony. And yet: he had the place swimming in flowers. Towering arrangements. Wrapping the columns. Overflowing from the window boxes. Garlanding the banisters and balustrades. He’d located a swing band in the seediest bowels of downtown, whose black female vocalist was a phenomenon. The night rode a crest of their friends’ high spirits undimmed and undiminished into morning. And the point was clear. Creating their own life. Making their own choices. Her proud, wealthy, fifth-generation Congregationalist parents stooddemurely by, masking their disappointment behind brave smiles. It was a spectacular, high-spirited night, but more than that, it was fully, inarguably, inviolately theirs. And who was this man standing next to her in the lobby, smiling warmly and securely on the dais, this man swinging her on the dance floor, laughing helplessly? This handsome man, self-assured, powerful, infinitely patient, unpredictably brusque? Who was he, exactly? But she understood, then and there, even as the justice of the peace spoke: He was who he would be. He was the future—his, hers, theirs. And he was as clearly committed to that future as to her. So she accepted not knowing, experienced her questions as part of an energy: swirling and spinning like the newly married couple on the dance floor.
Now she was not so blithe. Not so sure. A half century had inevitably provided, if not answers, exactly, then a
sense
of answers, circuitous and indirect. Which made the remaining questions feel starker and the questioner more exposed.
Driving west through South Dakota, amid the startling sparseness, the Mercedes is becoming more and more conspicuous, claiming too much attention. For significant stretches, it is the only car to be seen, which makes it more noticeable than Peke would like. Peke sees a farmer point to it from his dusty pickup.
Selling it, though, will be
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