Stiltsville: A Novel by Susanna Daniel Page A

smiling so you could see our teeth. I love this photograph. All these years, I’ve loved it. And one day my daughter found it in a chest filled with other old photographs, and she framed it and propped it up on her bookcase, first in her dorm room and then in her home. Once I overheard her pointing it out to a friend: “These are my parents,” she said. “This is my aunt Bette, and this is my mother’s best friend Marse.” In the way that old photos sometimes do, looking at it makes my heart ache a bit. But also I enjoy remembering my younger self this way: as an adventurer, as carefree. Mostly, I don’t think I was these things, but I guess sometimes, in Miami, I could be.
    O n the morning of Bette’s wedding, Dennis and I drove from South Beach to his parents’ house with the windows down, trying to dry our hair by the time we arrived. We’d gotten up late, after making love in the warm patch of sun that came in through his bedroom window. Gloria had specifically asked me to be there early to help set up, and I’d promised we would be—in matters of timeliness and politesse, the woman is always held more accountable than the man—and I was panicked to think I would disappoint her. But when we arrived, Gloria was upstairs with Bette and the caterers had commandeered the kitchen and backyard. Flowers were already in vases on the tables, and a row of silver chafing dishes lined the buffet. A bartender was arranging liquor bottles on a table down by the water. Grady called up the lawn from the pier, waving, and Dennis squeezed my arm and took off down the green expanse, his hands in his suit pockets. When I turned toward the house, I saw Benjamin sitting in a chair on the back deck, facing the water. He didn’t seem to notice me. I climbed the deck stairs, and when I stood right beside him he looked up, shading his eyes with one hand. “Hello there,” he said.
    “What are you doing out here?”
    “Bad luck to see the bride, or some such. The pastor’s late—car trouble.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “We were going to practice.”
    “Maybe you don’t need to practice.”
    “Maybe.” He reached over and opened his palm. In it was a plain gold band: Bette’s wedding ring. “This is it.”
    He seemed to want me to take it, so I did. “Very pretty.”
    “It’s what she wanted. All of this, even the dress, is what she wanted.”
    “The dress is lovely,” I said. The dress Bette had chosen was actually a suit, a fluted skirt and fitted jacket made of creamy brocade. I’d seen it hanging on the back of a closet door at her apartment, and I’d complimented her taste. “I’m airing it out,” she’d said, and I’d said, “Is it wet?” I was always confusing things she said, taking her literally. “It’s soggy with starch,” she’d said, and again I wasn’t sure if she was speaking figuratively. It was an experience I would continue to have for as long as we knew each other.
    “But it’s strange,” said Benjamin. “Don’t you think it’s strange? Don’t you want more?”
    “No,” I said. I didn’t think it was strange to not want gowns and diamonds and fancy parties on one’s wedding day. I didn’t think in itself this was alarming at all.
    “Frances, I can afford a diamond. I want to buy my girl a diamond.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t want a diamond.”
    He looked at me for a long moment, then forced a laugh. “Girls with heads on their shoulders—a mixed blessing.” His hands twitched around each other in his lap. He was not nervous about marriage, of course: he was meant for marriage. He would be content in its warm headlock. But Benjamin knew, as I knew, that Bette was not made for marriage, and that if she didn’t know it that afternoon, she would figure it out one day, perhaps in the grocery store while choosing a melon, or at the tennis courts on a sunny Saturday, or outside their child’s school before the ringing of the final bell. He wiped his face. “Ignore me.