The wedding we walked into was long over, as was the dinner that followed. By the time we arrived, the cake had been cut, and the layered white slices trimmed in ganache rosebuds were lined across a long table like the sugared shingles for a candy house. Some of the guests had taken a slice back to their table, but most of them were dancing. Whoever had gotten married at the Plaza had hired an entire orchestra for dancing, as well as a structural engineer to erect the floral arrangements, as the flowers spiked to extraordinary heights before spreading out in lacy canopies. Were the sprinkler system tripped, we could all seek refuge beneath the stephanotis. This was the magic hour, when the music played at a humane decibel and the parents and uncles and aunts were dancing, grandparents were dancing, a smattering of elderlyamong the glorious youth. Countless young women in sherbet-colored slip dresses leaned against the broad chests of so many handsome men, some of them in white dinner jackets, others in tuxedos of midnight blue.
“Look!” Eddie whispered.
And sure enough, the bride danced past us—either in the arms of her father or the arms of her much older husband, it was impossible to know—her bare shoulders emitting light, her long black hair loosely configured and pinned with orange blossoms, the white silk of her hem dusting the impeccable floor. She smiled at the man she danced with, husband or father, with so much love it would have been enough to sustain him for the rest of his life. In another minute the crowd had shifted and she was gone again. I thought of my seatmate, the lepidopterist, and how he must have felt in the jungles of Costa Rica, having witnessed an insect so impossibly beautiful and rare, a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.
“Come on,” Eddie said, and then he was holding me in his arms as we joined in that swirling river of life, every body in sway to the time of music, everyone glad to have been asked to bear witness to such happiness. The bridesmaids and groomsmen, siblings and cousins, friends from work and from school, each one abloom with radiant life. They loved the bride and the groom. They rejoiced in their happiness. They hoped to find such happiness themselves one day, or maybe they already had: she was there in his arms, he was there in her arms. Despite all the fires in the world, on this night, in this room, they believed the whole thing might work.
“It’s the perfect antidote to a fiftieth wedding anniversary dinner,” I said to Eddie. “I hope every single couple at theHotallings’ party found a wedding to crash on their way home.”
“A requirement,” Eddie said.
“Look, look, there she is again.” We both stopped dancing, and the people around us stopped as well, as if the moon had split the clouds to bathe us in light. Twice we had seen her. We couldn’t believe our good fortune.
We stayed on the floor for a few more songs. Eddie knew all the words, and he sang them quietly so only I would hear. “People stop and stare, they don’t bother me, for there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe, 1956. In the recitation of Broadway musical lyrics I cannot be beaten.”
Jonathan didn’t like to dance, and Eddie was a wonderful dancer. After we stopped, Eddie set out to find champagne. I was at the dessert table picking up a slice of cake and two forks when a young woman draped in salmon-colored satin, one of the glorious bridesmaids, came up to me. “Mrs. Fuller?” she said. “Oh my god, I thought that was you! Oh, you look so beautiful!”
Repair people and students and former students were the only people who called me Mrs. Fuller, and since I didn’t remember her fixing my roof, she must have been in my English class. So many bright young women had passed through my teaching life that I dreaded running into them. They receded so quickly after graduation, replaced by the fall’s fresh crop. I was smiling stupidly as Eddie returned with the champagne. He put the glasses down on a small table and I put down the cake.
“Ed Triplett,” he said, holding out his hand to her.
“Kathy Schultenover,” she said, taking his hand. “Oh mygosh, are you Mrs. Fuller’s husband?”
“I’m Daphne’s father,” he said, as if this were a common mistake.
“Father!” she said. “Oh, I love that. You brought yourfather!”
The father-husband business tripped me up, and as a result I was both slow and stupid in my response. “What a beautiful wedding.”
“Right? We’re having thebesttime. I think everyone’s having the best,besttime, and it’s so wonderful that you came, both of you. Livi must be over the moon. And look, I’m engaged!” She raised her delicate hand, the twinkling stone a not insignificant burden. “I’m going to invite you to our wedding. Would you come, both of you? You should come, Mr. Triplett.”
“That’s a wonderful invitation, but I won’t hold you to it,” Eddie said.
Then, without warning, Kathy Schultenover put her arms around me and pressed her head against my neck. “I’m a tiny bit drunk,” she said, “but I love you. You were my favorite teacher. I readMadame Bovarybecause of you.”
I kissed the top of her head and said she might have been my favorite student. When she stepped away, there were tears caught in the mascara of her lashes. Then a young man appeared out of the mass of dancers and took her in his arms. She waved to us as they danced away.
Eddie shook his head. “I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”
“The bride was mystudent?”
“It’s hard for me to imagine forgetting a girl like that.”
I shook my head. “There were so many of them.”
“Did you remember Kathy Schultenover?”
“I remember the name Schultenover, but I don’t remember what year she graduated or what she read for her senior thesis.” I shook my head. “You remember all the lyrics to musicals and I can’t remember my own students. I’m terrible.”
“The songs stay the same while the people cycle through,” Eddie said. “It’s madness to think you could remember all of them.”
“I remember you,” I said.
“Well, see, that’s plenty.”
