The Wedding by Dorothy West Page B

could not afford to dress up in diamonds and go to expensive places. Their faces fell apart before the evening was half over, and everything rebelled, their feet, their heads, their backs, even their smiles that had to work harder and harder to amount to anything.
    Corinne had been there, as she usually was, though Clark always seemed to take these occasions to have a last-minute emergency call. He and Rachel would drive somewhere distant and dine and dance in some little roadhouse where the management would make the prudent decision that it was better to serve a mixed couple, as the two appeared to be, than face a lawsuit the defendant would probably lose. The other diners invariably found more of interest in Clark and Rachel than in the dinners they were letting dry up on their plates. They were pretty sure what the score was with these two. They knew where they would go when they left, and what they would do when they got there. It was written on their faces.
    It was true that something was written on their faces, but it was not the obscene leer of desire but a deep relishing of the intimacy of dinner for two in a place where no one knew them and no one would run and tell. They were grateful for whatever their love was allowed. It had not been allowed a beginning before that uncertain hour on a day without a date in a year they could never agree on when Rachel’s doorbell rang and there was Clark, a drink or two inside him but not drunk.
    He had come inside her door and stood there staring,taking in the beauty of her brownness, which was like no other. A paler woman pales by comparison. Not everyone can see it, but those who can know there is no beauty like that of a brown-skinned woman when she is beautiful: the velvet skin, the dark hair like a cloud, the dark eyes like deep wells to drown in. He said her name softly, caressing her with it, and she was helpless. She began to tremble, and she could not hide it. It was like nakedness. He saw it, and he took her in his arms, and all the yielding that Corinne had denied him was in her incredible softness as if her body had melted into his. So it began, without a beginning, even if afterward they told each other that there had been a period of courtship, each wanting so much to believe that there was more to it than an hour of undammed physical lust. Not flags waving, perhaps, but perhaps other signs, secret yet unmistakable, and building up like an orchestra tuning up, each instrument unrelated until the fusion of triumphant sound established an eternal empathy, reechoing through time.
    Meanwhile, at the charity dance Corinne had given most of her dances to dark men. She liked it best when the lights were dim and the tempo slow, and the dark hand on her back pressed into her bare flesh, drawing her closer, audaciously closer, to the point of contact. And the ball of fire would burn between them until the music stopped, the lights came up, and Corinne walked decorously back to her box, her escort’s hand lightly touching her elbow. Many eyes would follow her because she was one of the Coles wives, and thus in this small circle truly above reproach.
    Clark would soon come to fetch her, and he and Corinnewould ride home with their minds miles away. Both of them would hear other voices, and neither of them could reach out to the other for any understanding of their common compulsion.
    Liz was a realist and could therefore accept the truth of her parents’ infidelities, but Shelby could not. “What makes you think Mother doesn’t know?” she scoffed. “Wives know what their husbands are made of better than trusting daughters. Until last summer I never suspected that Dad’s been dividing his vacation between Mother and Rachel ever since we discovered that boys were more fun than fathers and didn’t need a month of Dad to have a happy summer. But I never did believe that he went off on a two-week fishing trip with some white sawbones each year just because he liked to go