The words.
They left and returned, several times, and now, in the kitchen, stood Rory; like he’d climbed right out of the oven, directly from Bernborough Park, and the storied 300-meter mark:
Gotta give it to you, kid…
The exact same words he’d said to him.
And Clay was unable to stop himself.
He rushed down the hallway and sat on the bathroom floor. In his hurry he’d slammed the door, and—
“Clay? Clay—you okay?”
The interruption was like an echo, like being shouted to, underwater; and he came up gasping for air.
As far as weddings go, there wasn’t much to organize, so it came to them pretty fast. At one point, Michael wondered what to do with the artwork—the Abbey paintings—whether to keep, destroy, or throw them away; Penelope, at first, was certain.
“You should keep them,” she said, “or sell them; they don’t deserve to be destroyed.” She calmly reached out and touched one. “Look at her, she’s so beautiful.”
It was then, incidentally, she felt it:
A flicker of fire, of jealousy.
Why can’t I be like that? she wondered, as she thought once again, of that long and distant terrain in him—where sometimes he vanished from next to her. At times like those she wanted it desperately—to be more and better than Abbey—but the paintings were proof in the making: everything once equaled her.
It was a relief, in the end, when they sold them:
They displayed one of the bigger ones on a roundabout, near Pepper Street, with a sign and date for the art sale—and by nightfall the painting was stolen. In the garage, on the day itself, it took an hour; they went quickly because people liked them; both Abbey and Penny alike.
“You should be painting this one,” said many of the buyers, and gestured toward Penelope; and Michael could only smile at them.
He said, “This one’s much better in person.”
* * *
—
From there, the next hurdle was Penelope’s familiar luck:
It wasn’t so much what happened—for it was a mistake of her own judgment—but that it had to happen then: the morning before they were married. She was making a turn off Lowder Street, onto Parramatta Road, in Michael’s old sedan.
She hadn’t driven at all in the Eastern Bloc, but her eye was still trained to that side. Here she’d done the exams, she’d passed with reasonable confidence, and often drove Michael’s car. There were never any problems, but on this day it counted for nothing. She made the perfect right-hand turn, onto the wrong side of the road.
On the back seat, the wedding dress she’d just picked up lay modest and fluent, and the car was crashed into from the side, like a demon had taken a bite. Penelope’s ribs were ruptured. Her nose was slapped, and broken; her face hit the head of the dash.
The man from the other car was swearing, but stopped when he saw the blood.
She said sorry in two different languages.
* * *
—
Next came the police, and competitive men in tow trucks, who negotiated, sweated and smoked. When the ambulance arrived, they tried convincing her to go to the hospital, but said they couldn’t force her.
Penny insisted she was fine.
There was a long strange shape down her front: