She doesn’t budge. She just sighs, and rolls her shoulders back, and stretches her long neck from side to side. Paul watches as taut skin stretches over vertebrae. Down some distant medieval street, a car honks.
“Do you remember the Warners?” she asks him. “The neighbors who lived over on Bluebird Court in St. Charles? There were four kids—Nick and Robbie were the boys; Jill and Heather were the girls.”
“Yeah, we called them Aryan Youth. Said they were fueled by sunshine and superiority instead of food and water.”
“I loved them.”
A june bug crawls a few inches away from the toe of Paul’s left shoe. Reaching his leg out, he lightly nudges it, and it rolls over on its back.
“I still trade Christmas cards with Heather, actually,” Eloise says.
“You’re kidding.”
“They all still live in Chicago. Within blocks of each other.” She leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. New folds appear in the dress’s skirt. “Heather says they all get together for dinner once a week.”
Paul licks sweat from his upper lip. “Those poor, wretched things.”
Eloise sits up straight again and turns to face him. “I thought that’s what this was going to be, Paul. That’s what’s so crazy. I thought that this wedding was going to turn us into the Warners. You and Alice always had each other, and I never had either of you. I thought that this was going to change all that. Like, suddenly we’d all stop acting like such idiots and start loving each other and, fuck, I don’t know, take a family portrait in matching shirts at the brunch tomorrow.”
She’s crying a little harder now. Paul folds his hands together and looks down at the june bug, which is still struggling on its back, its legs flailing in six directions at once. Its underbelly glows iridescent in the sunlight.
“That’s never going to happen, Eloise.”
“But why not?” She says this louder than Paul suspects she intends, and her voice ricochets off the buildings across the street. At the pub, drunk Brits turn their heads. “I’m serious,” she pleads, now with her voice lowered. “Why can’t we be like that? Why can’t we be like the Warners?”
“Because we’re not the Warners. That’s just … that’s not who we are, okay?”
He reaches forward and turns the june bug upright again. Fazed, it scrambles in erratic circles before hiding in the shade beneath the bench.
“And besides,” he says, “I bet they all hate each other, anyway. I bet they all go home at night and tell their spouses how awful their siblings are, and then drink a bunch of wine and feel guilty about it and cry themselves to sleep.” He brushes his hair out of his face. “At least we have the dignity and respect for one another to do all that in public.”
A man flicks a cigarette from the pub’s patio out into the street.
Pigeons flock to the abbey’s belfry, and their coos echo in great iron domes.
Eloise says, “I think you’re wrong. The Warners have got it figured out. Somehow they’ve managed to hold onto something that we lost. I mean, you should read these Christmas cards, Paul.”
“Yeah? Maybe you’re right. Maybe they really do all sit around on Sunday nights and make tacos and play Pictionary and do whatever the fuck else people like the Warners do.” He goes to fish in the pocket of his morning coat for a cigarette before remembering that the morning coat has no pockets. “But we’re not them, Eloise. You get that? That’s not our tribe. And we can sit here and bitch about it and blame Mom and Henrique or whoever else because we aren’t compelled to call each other every time we, like, bake a batch of cookies, or we can appreciate that when it matters, we’ll do what’s right by our family.”
“We’ll piss on someone.”
“Sure, whatever, we’ll piss on someone.”
She reaches down for the bouquet, and Paul sighs.
“This is why I’m leaving,” she says. “This exact reason is why I’m not going through with this.”
Paul snatches the bouquet from her and hugs it to his chest. One of the lily petals snaps from its stem and floats down to the sidewalk.
“This is batshit,” he says.
“No, Paul, it’s not. Listen. Did I tell you Ollie wants to adopt a kid? Well, he does. He can’t wait to be a dad, he says. We’ve already started talking to some agencies. I’ve been going along with it, but the whole thing makes me sick to think about. Because—no, don’t interrupt me. Just listen. Think about it: If I go in there, if I go through with this and marry Ollie, and in a year, let’s say, we adopt a child, you know what’s going to happen? I’m suddenly going to have a family of my own. Great! you say. Everything you ever wanted! Everything the rich boarding school brat has been pining for! And, okay, maybe I thought that. Up until, like, a month ago. Because guess what, soon that kid’s going to grow up. Soon Ollie and I will start fighting. Soon, I’m going to find myself in Mom’s position—tied, by blood, or you know, whatever, adopted blood, to these people whose job it is to disappoint me. I mean, fuck, Paul. I can’t even bring this family together at a goddamned wedding! Think of what I’ll do with a family of my own!” She shakes her head and wipes away more tears, this time using her whole hand. “No. I can’t fail like that again. I’m sorry you flew all the way here. But I just can’t fail like that again.”
Paul looks directly at her. He grabs her shoulders.
“Of course you’ll fail!” he yells. “Everyone fails!”
“The Warners didn’t fail.”
She’s sobbing now.
“FUCK THE WARNERS! Eloise, look, you’ll be disappointed, okay? Love disappoints. It can’t help itself. That’s why … I don’t know, that’s why Ingrid Bergman gets on the plane and leaves Casablanca, or Maude takes all those sleeping pills at the end of Harold and Maude. But what are we supposed to do? Stop trying? Preemptively say fuck it because we know everything invariably ends? That’s bullshit. You hear me? Bullshit. Love may disappoint, but that doesn’t absolve us from the duty of loving. Of trying to love.”
Eloise covers her face with her hands and breathes into her palms. The abbey’s bells chime, and, disheartened, the pigeons flee their roost. It’s two thirty.
“I don’t think you believe yourself,” she says.
“You’re right. I probably don’t. At least not right now. But I’m going to. One day, at least. That I promise you.”
A cloud passes before the sun, and for an instant the world darkens.
“So what do I do?” she asks.
Paul looks at her—at her clear and desperate eyes—and realizes that she means it.
“I’ve got no idea,” he says. “But I think you’ve got a better shot than most of us, and you’d be a fucking idiot not to try.”
Somewhere in the distance, far from the bench on Half Moon Street, they both hear their mother’s voice calling their names. It’s soft at first, but as she approaches them it grows, filling the space between them.
Paul stands and helps Eloise to her feet. A tendril of blond hair hangs in her face, and he pushes it behind her ear.
Eloise nods, slowly at first, but then with increasing gusto. “Okay. Yes.”