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and becoming a separate person with quirks and foibles and special ways of doing things, like half breaking her neck when he hugged her, and turning the dog’s ears inside out, and pretending to mistake his little sister for Betty Grable.
    She also said that when she first heard they’d found Joe’s body, she had felt a bolt of something she would almost have to call anger. They made it sound as if he’d just been thoughtlessly mislaid, she said. Like somebody’s cast-off toy. When she herself had been so careful, all these years, to keep him safe and healthy.
    Nowadays so many couples were marrying in a hurry that people had grown accustomed to abbreviated, slapdash weddings. In the past there would have been months of sewing, weeks of cooking, a giant party afterwards where the guests tossed envelopes of money into the bride’s scooped apron, but lately it seemed that getting married required no more forethought than going to the movies.
    So when Mrs. Anton told her customers, on a Friday in late September, that Michael’s wedding would take place the following afternoon, they weren’t completely scandalized. And when she said they were welcome to come if they wanted, eight or nine women accepted. No men, as it happened. The men claimed they couldn’t see themselves entering a Protestant church, but that was just an excuse. You know how men are about wearing ties on a Saturday.
    Even though people talked as if Pauline hailed from the moon, her neighborhood was barely a twenty-minute walk from St. Cassian Street—a very pleasant walk, if the weather was good. And the weather on Michael’s wedding day was beautiful. The air was crisp and fall-like, and as the women left their own neighborhood behind they began to see little fenced trees that were turning lipstick red or egg-yolk yellow. They strolled at a leisurely pace, commenting on the houses they passed, which were row houses still but wider and somehow messier—the fronts not perfectly uniform, the curtains all different colors, the stoops surrounded by disorganized bits of green. The church, when it came into view, was clapboard, and the windows were not stained glass but a monotone pink, pebbled like the windows in bathrooms. About this the women said nothing. They were determined to behave impeccably. They all wore their most American clothes, dark and severe, with dark hats and spotless white gloves, and they carried wrapped and ribboned gifts because where Pauline lived, brides were given items from Hutzler’s. Everybody knew that much.
    Leading the way was Wanda Bryk—the youngest by twenty years or more, but clearly the one in charge. She instructed them as they climbed the church steps. “Pauline’s parents will be here, of course, and her three sisters, and her oldest sister’s husband who’s got asthma so don’t say anything, I mean don’t ask why he hasn’t enlisted because he feels just awful about it . . . No, no bridesmaids, no best man . . . not even a real procession! We’ll just all sit near the front and the minister’s going to—oh, there she is! There’s Pauline now!”
    Pauline? Herself? Yes, that was who it was, all right. She was standing in the foyer, big as life, wearing a disappointingly plain ivory-colored street dress and talking to an old man. When she saw the women she said, “Oh! How nice of you all to come! Michael, look who’s here!”
    Good Lord, yes, there was Michael, too, leaning on his cane not a yard away from his bride. Apparently they saw no harm in meeting before the wedding. Michael wore his pinchy suit and a white shirt and a red tie. He looked so handsome! The women were proud of him. They kissed him, patted his arm, pretended his collar needed straightening. “Mama’s on her way,” he told them. “She’s coming with Uncle Bron.” Then he introduced them to Pauline’s mother. “Mom Barclay,” he called her; goodness, that was fast! Mrs. Barclay was trim and attractive, with Pauline’s