Nickel Mountain by John Gardner Page A

and the window where Callie stood—the wedding presents were laid out for show on borrowed card tables covered with linen cloths. With the sunlight streaming in (burning in the great, red, antique bowl from Cousin-Aunt Mary, gleaming on all the silver plate, the silver candlesticks, the cut-glass napkin holders, lacework, china salt and pepper shakers, glass and china bowls, mugs, painted vases, popcorn poppers, TV trays, steak knives, wooden salad forks), the presents seemed too beautiful to be real. Like the gown, they had, to Callie’s mind, a serenity and elegance she could not match. They overwhelmed her—the hours that had gone into the crocheted antimacassars from Aunt Mae, the expense of the candlesticks from Uncle Earle, who had bought them, she knew, without an instant’s hesitation or so much as a fleeting thought of the expense: In all her life she would never crochet as Aunt Mae could, not if she worked at it week in, week out, and she’d never be as rich as Uncle Earle, or as calmly, beamingly confident of all she did. Why had they done it all? Over and over that question had come to her; not a question, really, an exclamation of despair, because she knew the answer, no answer at all: They had sent the presents—hardly knowing her, hardly even knowing her parents any more—because it was her wedding. She thought: Because brides are beautiful, and marriage is holy. Again and again she had watched them come down the aisle, transfigured, radiating beauty like Christ on the mountain, lifted out of mere humanness into their perfect eternal instant, the flowers they carried mere feeble decoration, the needless gilding of a lily too beautiful for Nature; and again and again she had seen them later, making their first formal visits as wives, the lines of their faces softened, their eyes grown shrewish or merry. How she had envied them, she the poor virgin, novice, barred from their mystery! She knew well enough what it was, though not in words. She knew it was not the marriage bed, was only feebly symbolized by the bed. They went up the aisle white forms, insubstantial as air, poised in the instant of total freedom like the freedom of angels, between child and adult, between daughter and wife, and they came down transformed to reality, married: in one split second, in a way, grown-up. It was that that the relatives lifted up their offerings to: the common holy ground in all their lives. But that common beauty would not be for her. Her marrying Henry Soames was almost vicious, an act of pure selfishness: she was pregnant, and he—obese and weak, flaccid in his vast, sentimental compassion—he had merely been available.
    I’ll run away, she thought, standing motionless, knowing she would not run away. Tears filled her eyes. I’ll run away somewhere — to New York City, yes — and I’ll write to Henry later and explain. It’s the only honest thing to do. She closed her eyes, hurriedly composing.
    Dear, Good Henry:
    Forgive me for leaving you and causing you so much embarrassment and expense. Please ask all my friends and relatives to forgive me too. I hope I have not hurt anyone, and I know how disappointed. …
    Dear Mr. Soames:
    Miss Calliope Wells has asked me to tell you (since she is unwell. …
    Because of the presents she couldn’t run away. And because Uncle Russel and Aunt Kate had come from Ohio, and Aunt Anna had altered the dress and was going to play the church organ, which she loved doing more than anything (and had once done beautifully, so people said), and Robert Wilkes had come all the way from the Eastman School of Music to sing “Because.” She slipped her hands up inside the veil and covered her face. In fifteen minutes Uncle John would be here.
    She remembered sitting in the grass as a child, watching Uncle John at work. He was a carpenter, and the tools were like extensions of himself: He was