“What I want isn’t the point,” I said harshly. “It’s the only sensible thing. We don’t have any money, or haven’t you noticed? Would you like us to be thrown out on the street?”

“We could get jobs,” she said. My cologne was on the window ledge beside her; she sprayed herself with it, absent-mindedly. It was Liu, by Guerlain, a present from Richard. (Chosen, as she’d let me know, by Winifred. Men get so confused at perfume counters, don’t they? Scent goes right to their heads. )

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “What would we do? Break that and your name is mud.”

“Oh, we could do lots of things,” she said vaguely, setting the cologne down. “We could be waitresses.”

“We couldn’t live on that. Waitresses make next to nothing. They have to grovel for tips. They all get flat feet. You don’t know what anything costs,” I said. It was like trying to explain arithmetic to a bird. “The factories are closed, Avilion is falling to pieces, they’re going to sell it; the banks are out for blood. Haven’t you looked at Father? Haven’t you seen him? He’s like an old man.”

“It’s for him, then,” she said. “What you’re doing. I guess that explains something. I guess it’s brave.”

“I’m doing what I think is right,” I said. I felt so virtuous, and at the same time so hard done by, I almost wept. But that would have been game over.

“It’s not right,” she said. “It’s not right at all. You could break it off, it’s not too late. You could run away tonight and leave a note. I’d come with you.”

“Stop pestering, Laura. I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.”

“But you’ll have to let him touch you, you know. It’s not just kissing. You’ll have to let him…”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Leave me alone. I’ve got my eyes open.”

“Like a sleepwalker,” she said. She picked up a container of my dusting powder, opened it, sniffed it, and managed to spill a handful of it onto the floor. “Well, you’ll have nice clothes, anyway,” she said.

I could have hit her. It was, of course, my secret consolation.

After she’d gone, leaving a trail of dusty white footprints, I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my open steamer trunk. It was a very fashionable one, a pale yellow on the outside but dark blue on the inside, steel-bound, the nail-heads twinkling like hard metallic stars. It was tidily packed, with everything complete for the honeymoon voyage, but it seemed to me full of darkness—of emptiness, empty space.

That’s my trousseau, I thought. All at once it was a threatening word—so foreign, so final. It sounded like trussed —what was done to raw turkeys with skewers and pieces of string.

Toothbrush, I thought. I will need that. My body sat there, inert.

Trousseau came from the French word for trunk. Trousseau. That’s all it meant: things you put into a trunk. So there was no use in getting upset about it, because it just meant baggage. It meant all the things I was taking with me, packed away.

Here’s the wedding picture:

A young woman in a white satin dress cut on the bias, the fabric sleek, with a train fanned around the feet like spilled molasses. There’s something gangly about the stance, the placement of the hips, the feet, as if her spine is wrong for this dress—too straight. You’d need to have a shrug for such a dress, a slouch, a sinuous curve, a sort of tubercular hunch.

A veil falling straight down on either side of the head, a width of it over the brow, casting too dark a shadow across the eyes. No teeth shown in the smile. A chaplet of small white roses; a cascade of larger roses, pink and white ones mingled with stephanotis, in her white-gloved arms—arms with the elbows a little too far out. Chaplet, cascade —these were the terms used in the newspapers. An evocation of nuns, and of fresh, perilous water. “A Beautiful Bride,” was the caption. They said such things then. In her case beauty was mandatory, with so much money involved.

(I say “her,” because I don’t recall having been present, not in any meaningful sense of the word. I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view—I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can’t see me at all.)

Richard stands beside me, admirable in the terms of that time and place, by which I mean young enough, not ugly, and well-to-do. He looks substantial, but at the same time quizzical: one eyebrow cocked, lower lip thrust a little out, mouth on the verge of a smile, as if at some secret, dubious joke. Carnation in the buttonhole, hair combed back like a shiny rubber bathing cap, stuck to his head with the goo they used to put on back then. But a handsome man despite it. I have to admit that. Debonaire. Man about town.

There are some posed group portraits, too—a background scrum of groomsmen in their formal attire, much the same for weddings as for funerals and headwaiters; a foreground of clean, gleaming bridesmaids, their bouquets foaming with blossom. Laura managed to ruin each of these pictures. In one she’s resolutely scowling, in another she must have moved her head so that her face is a blur, like a pigeon smashing into glass. In a third she’s gnawing on a finger, glancing sideways guiltily, as if surprised with her hand in the till. In a fourth there must have been a defect in the film, because there’s an effect of dappled light, falling not down on her but up, as if she’s standing on the edge of an illuminated swimming pool, at night.

After the ceremony Reenie was there, in respectable blue and a feather. She hugged me tightly, and said, “If only your mother was here.” What did she mean? To applaud, or to call a halt to the proceedings? From her tone of voice, it could have been either. She cried then, I didn’t. People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible. But I was beyond such childishness; I was breathing the high bleak air of disillusionment, or thought I was.

There was champagne, of course. There must have been: Winifred would not have omitted it. Others ate. Speeches were made, of which I remember nothing. Did we dance? I believe so. I didn’t know how to dance, but I found myself on the dance floor, so some sort of stumbling-around must have occurred.

Then I changed into my going-away outfit. It was a two-piece suit, a light spring wool in pale green, with a demure hat to match. It cost a mint, said Winifred. I stood poised for departure, on the steps (what steps? The steps have vanished from memory), and threw my bouquet towards Laura. She didn’t catch it. She stood there in her seashell-pink outfit, staring at me coldly, hands gripped together in front of her as if to restrain herself, and one of the bridesmaids—some Griffen cousin or other—grabbed it and made off with it greedily, as if it were food.

My father by that time had disappeared. Just as well, because when last seen he’d been rigid with drink. I expect he’d gone to finish the job.

Then Richard took me by the elbow and steered me towards the getaway car. No one was supposed to know our destination, which was assumed to be somewhere out of town—some secluded, romantic inn. In fact we were driven around the block to the side entrance of the Royal York Hotel, where we’d just had the wedding reception, and smuggled up in the elevator. Richard said that since we were taking the train to New York the next morning and Union Station was just across the street, why go out of our way?

About my bridal night, or rather my bridal afternoon—the sun was not yet set and the room was bathed, as they say, in a rosy glow, because Richard did not pull the curtains—I will tell very little. I didn’t know what to expect; my only informant had been Reenie, who had led me to believe that whatever would happen would be unpleasant and most likely painful, and in this I was not deceived. She’d also implied that this disagreeable event or sensation would be nothing out of the ordinary—all women went through it, or all who got married—so I shouldn’t make a fuss. Grin and bear it had been her words. She’d said there would be some blood, and there was. (But she hadn’t said why. That part was a complete surprise.)