The From-Aways Read Online Free Page B
Author: C.J. Hauser
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Sea stories, Contemporary Women
Henry’s stories never included three-car garages or summering city people.
“Bye,” Henry says, kissing me.
“Later,” Batman says. Both men climb into a red F-150 that has ARDEN stenciled across the cab door and two cherry trees bungee-corded to the bed. They drive away.
N OT LONG AFTER I met Henry, we spent a day in the park. We’d stopped at a bodega and bought fruit to eat. We sat on protruding roots beneath a tree bordering Sheep Meadow, and as Henry ate his orange sections he spat the seeds into a blue paisley bandanna he’d pulled from his back pocket. I almost shook him when he did that. I almost shouted, Don’t you know you’ve made me love you now? That was the moment. Those seeds in his pocket.
We thought about having a honeymoon, Henry and I. The fuss of a wedding we weren’t much for, and I was afraid what sort of bridemonster my parents might make of me. I didn’t want to think about tablecloths, flowers, or whose drunk uncles would fight with whose angry cousins.
A honeymoon, though, that sounded like something Henry and I would be good at. I’d been thinking of Rome. I’d seen Roman Holiday a dozen times and I was thinking about Henry renting a moped and buying me an ice cream cone and taking pictures on an Instamatic camera. Henry was thinking of a hot island somewhere. With cocktails, he said. With class injustice, I said. Henry groaned.
We kept talking but nothing seemed right—until we thought of Niagara Falls. We both loved the idea of shacking up in some cheap motel and writing dozens of postcards in our underwear, the pictures showing all the things we didn’t do. Niagara Falls was big and dangerous and getting married was like going over it in a barrel. We bought our tickets. We thought we’d go on that boat, the Maiden of the Mist. We would not wear ponchos. We would stick our heads in the flume.
But then, so close to the wedding, I started thinking about the falls. Dreaming about them. I saw a picture in the brochure of a place where you could walk close to the railing at the top and peer over. I kept thinking about that picture, about the railing.
I panicked. I said, We can’t go to Niagara Falls .
Why not? Henry said. What are you talking about, we already booked our tickets.
I just can’t, I said.
And he was so nice to me. Okay, he said. Okay. Let’s just get married, huh? We don’t need any honeymoon.
Yeah, I said. We don’t .
And Henry said, Let’s do it right now.
Now? I said.
Sure, he said.
So we did.
I’d been crying a little, about Niagara and how I wouldn’t see it after all because there was clearly something wrong with me. But I washed off my face. I wore a white dress. A sundress, eyelet cotton. Henry put on his nice jeans, and a nice shirt, and he looked so good. And that was how we did it. We already had our license, so we went to city hall and had this woman with a rubber stamp tell us that we were bound together for the rest of our lives, which was a long time considering we were both twenty-four.
And in our own bed that night we had such sex that I almost didn’t care about Niagara anymore. We didn’t need the falls to have a honeymoon after all.
I didn’t tell Henry any more about Niagara and he never said anything. This was what good marriages were made of, I imagined. Knowing which things not to ask.
If he’d asked I would have had to say, I am pretty sure that if we go up to Niagara I will wind up tossing myself from the falls. When I looked at that picture in the brochure I just knew I would have gone right over the railing. I wouldn’t have been sad, it wasn’t that. I would have been ecstatic, so in love on that night, everything exactly the way I imagined it. But staring down at the falls, thirty-five million gallons a minute . . . who could resist a temptation like that? Imagine it, honeymoon eve, standing there almost touching the spray, ecstatic with love, who would not think: The only place to go from here is
“Bye,” Henry says, kissing me.
“Later,” Batman says. Both men climb into a red F-150 that has ARDEN stenciled across the cab door and two cherry trees bungee-corded to the bed. They drive away.
N OT LONG AFTER I met Henry, we spent a day in the park. We’d stopped at a bodega and bought fruit to eat. We sat on protruding roots beneath a tree bordering Sheep Meadow, and as Henry ate his orange sections he spat the seeds into a blue paisley bandanna he’d pulled from his back pocket. I almost shook him when he did that. I almost shouted, Don’t you know you’ve made me love you now? That was the moment. Those seeds in his pocket.
We thought about having a honeymoon, Henry and I. The fuss of a wedding we weren’t much for, and I was afraid what sort of bridemonster my parents might make of me. I didn’t want to think about tablecloths, flowers, or whose drunk uncles would fight with whose angry cousins.
A honeymoon, though, that sounded like something Henry and I would be good at. I’d been thinking of Rome. I’d seen Roman Holiday a dozen times and I was thinking about Henry renting a moped and buying me an ice cream cone and taking pictures on an Instamatic camera. Henry was thinking of a hot island somewhere. With cocktails, he said. With class injustice, I said. Henry groaned.
We kept talking but nothing seemed right—until we thought of Niagara Falls. We both loved the idea of shacking up in some cheap motel and writing dozens of postcards in our underwear, the pictures showing all the things we didn’t do. Niagara Falls was big and dangerous and getting married was like going over it in a barrel. We bought our tickets. We thought we’d go on that boat, the Maiden of the Mist. We would not wear ponchos. We would stick our heads in the flume.
But then, so close to the wedding, I started thinking about the falls. Dreaming about them. I saw a picture in the brochure of a place where you could walk close to the railing at the top and peer over. I kept thinking about that picture, about the railing.
I panicked. I said, We can’t go to Niagara Falls .
Why not? Henry said. What are you talking about, we already booked our tickets.
I just can’t, I said.
And he was so nice to me. Okay, he said. Okay. Let’s just get married, huh? We don’t need any honeymoon.
Yeah, I said. We don’t .
And Henry said, Let’s do it right now.
Now? I said.
Sure, he said.
So we did.
I’d been crying a little, about Niagara and how I wouldn’t see it after all because there was clearly something wrong with me. But I washed off my face. I wore a white dress. A sundress, eyelet cotton. Henry put on his nice jeans, and a nice shirt, and he looked so good. And that was how we did it. We already had our license, so we went to city hall and had this woman with a rubber stamp tell us that we were bound together for the rest of our lives, which was a long time considering we were both twenty-four.
And in our own bed that night we had such sex that I almost didn’t care about Niagara anymore. We didn’t need the falls to have a honeymoon after all.
I didn’t tell Henry any more about Niagara and he never said anything. This was what good marriages were made of, I imagined. Knowing which things not to ask.
If he’d asked I would have had to say, I am pretty sure that if we go up to Niagara I will wind up tossing myself from the falls. When I looked at that picture in the brochure I just knew I would have gone right over the railing. I wouldn’t have been sad, it wasn’t that. I would have been ecstatic, so in love on that night, everything exactly the way I imagined it. But staring down at the falls, thirty-five million gallons a minute . . . who could resist a temptation like that? Imagine it, honeymoon eve, standing there almost touching the spray, ecstatic with love, who would not think: The only place to go from here is