The Member of the Wedding

Read The Member of the Wedding for Free Online

Book: Read The Member of the Wedding for Free Online
Authors: Carson Mccullers
sorry old liquor-drinker. The next went crazy on Berenice: he did crazy things, had eating dreams in the night and swallowed a corner of the sheet; and what with one thing and another he distracted Berenice so much that finally she had to quit him. The last husband was terrible. He gouged out Berenice's eye and stole her furniture away from her. She had to call the Law on him.
    "Did you marry with a veil every time?" asked Frankie.
    "Two times with a veil," said Berenice.
    Frankie could not keep still. She walked around the kitchen, although there was a splinter in her right foot and she was limping, her thumbs hooked in the belt of her shorts and her undershirt clinging and wet.
    Finally she opened the drawer of the kitchen table and selected a long sharp butcher knife. Then she sat down and rested the ankle of her sore foot on her left knee. The sole of her foot was long and narrow, pitted with ragged whitish scars, as every summer Frankie stepped on many nails; Frankie had the toughest feet in town. She could slice off waxy yellow rinds from the bottoms of her feet, and it did not hurt her very much, although it would hurt other people. But she did not chisel for the splinter immediately—she just sat there, her ankle on her knee and the knife in her right hand, looking across the table at Berenice.
    "Tell me," she said. "Tell me exactly how it was."
    "You know!" said Berenice. "You seen them."
    "But tell me," Frankie said.
    "I will discuss it for the last time," said Berenice. "Your brother and the bride come late this morning and you and John Henry hurried in from the back yard to see them. The next thing I realize you busted back through the kitchen and run up to your room. You came down with your organdie dress on and lipstick an inch thick from one ear to the next. Then you all just sat around in the living room. It was hot. Jarvis had brought Mr. Addams a bottle of whiskey and they had liquor drinks and you and John Henry had lemonade. Then after dinner your brother and the bride took the three-o'clock train back to Winter Hill. The wedding will be this coming Sunday. And that is all. Now, is you satisfied?"
    "I am so disappointed they couldn't stay longer—at least spend the night. After Jarvis being away so long. But I guess they want to be together as long as they can. Jarvis said he had some army papers to fill out at Winter Hill." She took a deep breath. "I wonder where they will go after the wedding."
    "On their honeymoon. Your brother will have a few days' leave."
    "I wonder where that honeymoon will be."
    "Well, I'm sure I don't know."
    "Tell me," Frankie said again. "Exactly what did they look like?"
    "Look like?" said Berenice. "Why, they looked natural. Your brother is a good-looking blond white boy. And the girl is kind of brunette and small and pretty. They make a nice white couple. You seen them, Foolish."
    Frankie closed her eyes, and, though she did not see them as a picture, she could feel them leaving her. She could feel the two of them together on the train, riding and riding away from her. They were them, and leaving her, and she was her, and sitting left all by herself there at the kitchen table. But a part of her was with them, and she could feel this part of her own self going away, and farther away; farther and farther, so that a drawn-out sickness came in her, going away and farther away, so that the kitchen Frankie was an old hull left there at the table.
    "It is so queer," she said.
    She bent over the sole of her foot, and there was something wet, like tears or sweat drops on her face; she sniffled and began to cut for the splinter.
    "Don't that hurt you none?" asked Berenice.
    Frankie shook her head and did not answer. Then after a moment she said: "Have you ever seen any people that afterward you remembered more like a feeling than a picture?"
    "How you mean?"
    "I mean this," said Frankie slowly. "I saw them O.K. Janice had on a green dress and green high-heel dainty shoes. Her hair was

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