“Gave us what?”

“Her blessing.”

“Gave us what?”

“All right, she gave us a check.”

“A check? Let me see it.”

“Frank—”

“Let me see it.”

I took it from my purse and handed it to him. He stared at it, then calmly tore it up.

“That’s just wonderful,” I said. “You won’t even allow her that pleasure.”

“She’s not going to buy her way into our lives.”

“That wasn’t what she was doing.”

“That’s exactly what she was doing. This is the kind of thing I’d expect from her.”

“I don’t understand it. If it’s a matter of pride—”

“It’s more than that. All I’m asking of you is that you respect my feelings.”

“Even when you won’t explain them?”

“You didn’t grow up in my family, Irene, and I didn’t grow up in yours. Would you like it if we moved far away from your parents and your brothers?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“All right, so we won’t. I’ll respect your wishes. All I ask is the same in return.”

It sounded reasonable, yet I couldn’t feel it was reasonable. But there was nothing I could say.

“I want nothing to do with any of them,” he said. “I don’t want to live near them, I don’t want to hear from them—no birthdays, no Christmas cards, nothing.”

“All right, all right. Let’s not fight over it.”

“Let’s not, ever again. I don’t want them to have the power to make us fight.”

The next day, all my father’s reservations seemed to slip away with the smile and the kiss he gave me before we started down the aisle. After the ceremony, the reception was loud and festive. My mother had two glasses of champagne and had to sit down. Lazily, she rested her head on my father’s shoulder. He whispered something in her ear, she smiled, then turned and kissed him tenderly on the cheek. Frank saw it too, and he said to me: “That’ll be us in twenty years.”

When we were ready to make our escape through one of the rear doors, I saw Gloria sitting alone in a far corner of the room. The sight of her made me hesitate a moment. She was sagging forward, her head bowed; and in my brief glimpse I could see her hands lying in her lap, limp and curled like a pair of dead birds.

The first three years of my marriage I was recklessly happy. I wore my happiness like a badge, oversized and well polished, ostentatious in every way. And I was most ostentatious whenever I was around Gloria. For a long time, I was haunted by that single glimpse of her at the wedding reception, and I wanted to refute any unspoken predictions she might be making about my marriage. She went on being propitiously polite to Frank and guarded around me when he was present. I knew her disappointment in me struck more deeply than she let on, and that alone cast the first solid shadow on the turn my life had taken. I resented that shadow; to eliminate it, I chose to pity Gloria for her blindness.