LITMIR.BIZ

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Solome. She must have seen it in my face because she looked away.

      Where would my mind go? My being? My soul?— if that was the word. What was the soul, other than the term in the long history of inquiry? The soul did not have a map. It dwelled among lions. The soul was arid. The soul was contradiction. It went south when it should go north and north when it should go south.

      Solome Savard

      Where was Stephen going? Solome wanted him back. She didn’t want him to go. Or she wanted him to go quickly, before there was time to suffer. Solome knelt on the floor in front of Stephen in his chair and cried with her head on his knee. He put his hand on her head. When she looked up, she saw the distance in his eyes. It was as though she were on one promontory and he on the next, and there was no way between them.

      Solome cried at her Monday night Bible study group. She had not attended regularly because of the preparations for Gretchen’s wedding. She also had given up her Thursday discussion group and cut back on her hours at the Minnesota Historical Society. She began sifting through her friends, calling those she could be honest with, discarding the others, for the time being anyway. Jane Mead was the only constant. The Faculty Wives Club was out. She had caught their glances toward Stephen at a Christmas party.

      Stephen was going to a place he didn’t want to go. He was facing nothing. But nothing did not stay nothing. It had a ghost. At times, she thought she could hear Stephen in the house. She thought she heard him rush in the door the way he did as a young man when they were first married. Maybe because she wanted him to. Maybe because she longed for him to return to himself and say he was going golfing, or maybe they could go somewhere and eat and she didn’t need to bother with dinner. The phone rang and she wanted it to be Stephen, but it was her daughter, Soos, who wanted her to watch the baby, Susan. She had some errands to do, and by the time she got the stroller from the car and the diaper bag and bottle, she might as well stay home. Solome agreed to watch Susan and felt anger that she agreed. What else was she doing? She had some errands to do herself.

      What about candles for the windows and altar? Gretchen called with more concerns for the wedding. Would they show up in morning sun?

      Dennis had a nephew who would be ring bearer. What about the ring bearer’s pillow? Gretchen liked simplicity. The pillows she looked at were all full of bows. Could Solome sew one? Did Solome want a corsage? No. What would they do with baby Susan? Gretchen didn’t want a baby’s cry interrupting the ceremony. What music would they choose? Gretchen wanted a trio or quartet. Maybe Bach’s Jess. Handel’s Hornpipe and The Rejoicing. Pachelbel’s Canon in D. What order would the family be seated? What about the seating arrangements at the rehearsal dinner? How many Kamrar’s were coming? What about the logistics of changes and maneuvers between church and the club? A limousine? A friend’s vintage car?

      Then there was the buying and wrapping of gifts for bridesmaids and groomsmen, the reader, the ushers, the friends who handed out the programs. What was the minister’s fee? Did they want the woman at the church to oversee? She had a needle and thread and safety pin if needed at the last minute. She knew the timing, when the bridesmaids and maid of honor started down the aisle. The ring bearer. What order and when. Anything to make it easier.

      Stephen Savard

      We met Dennis’ parents a month before the wedding. They were pleasant. They stayed at the St. Paul hotel. We picked them up for dinner before Gretchen and Dennis arrived from school in New York City.

      The children were late because of Friday evening air traffic into the Minneapolis / St Paul. We had to wait twenty minutes at Hudson’s Restaurant. We all felt awkward and tense. We tried to compensate with too much agreeable conversation. Solome had made reservations so Mrs. Kamrar could see if Hudson’s was acceptable for the rehearsal dinner. I talked with Mr. Kamrar while the manager showed the women the banquet room.

      Solome Savard

      Solome didn’t think the Kamrar’s noticed Stephen’s forgetfulness. If he forgot what he was doing, or who the Kamrar’s were, he didn’t ask. Solome had coached him before the evening. “You might forget their names, but don’t ask. We’re having dinner with these people we don’t know, but we’ll act like we know them.” Stephen seemed to understand.

      But Stephen remembered their names. He knew what to say. Solome felt the edge of her worry lift like a lid that had been pushed down too tight.

      Gretchen had arrived tense and stressed. This would not be a pleasant weekend. She had a folder of final papers to grade. She carried another folder of wedding plans.

      Solome felt like she had when a storm came up on Crane Lake and the wind blew in off the water— she remembered she felt the lake was a veneer that would lift. Did Gretchen realize how much work the wedding was for Solome?

      On Saturday, they met with the photographer who wrote down the names for the groups in the photographs Gretchen wanted. There was Solome and Stephen. Soos, the baby Susan and Brian Stiple. Mark. Her mother. Mrs. Kamrar wanted more time to think about her list. It seemed official— like a list of who got into heaven. There was something sacred about the family. She felt it then. She knew there were tears in her eyes. She knew she couldn’t let Gretchen see them. Her father had died just before Soos’ marriage. Maybe Solome was remembering him.

      Solome knew so little about Dennis’ family. His parents. Brothers and sisters. Who would be coming? Their spouses? Children? Grandparents? It seemed unfair to Solome— she had raised Gretchen as her own and now had to give her up to a family she didn’t know—

      Mrs. Kamrar would fax her list the following week. She still wasn’t sure who was coming. Solome wasn’t either. How about Stephen’s sister and a cousin who would bring the sister?

      “How many pictures with the bride’s and groom’s attendants?” The photographer continued his questions. They would look at her wedding pictures the rest of her life. It was an investment they decided to make. They were in it. They would carry through and not stop short.

      Family. That’s what she had. But Mark, her son, didn’t understand how precarious his father was. He didn’t want to know. Neither did the girls. Mark’s life was bound up with his friends at college. Stephen’s and her predicament simply wasn’t in the range of Mark’s interests. She wanted to sit him down and talk to him. She wanted to say how much she needed him, but he was in his life that did not include worry about a father who was losing his memory, his mind, his language, himself.

      At times Solome wanted to be immersed in the details of the wedding forever. It took her mind off Stephen.

      Stephen Savard

      One day shuffled into another. There were more problems with the new student center on campus. Construction would have to be delayed. There were new problems with students. They protested this or that. I couldn’t always sort through what they were disgruntled about.

      Gretchen flew to St. Paul for several showers given by friends and families for whom Solome had attended showers and sent gifts and attended ceremonies. It was fair play. You gave. You got. It was part of our lives to help set the course for our children’s lives also.

      One evening, Gretchen called in a panic, saying her dress didn’t fit. Solome flew to New York and met her for a fitting. There wasn’t time to have it altered in there. Solome brought the dress back to St. Paul and took it to a seamstress she knew.

      When Solome was in New York, she called the night before she returned.

      “Have you fed Brown?”

      There was silence.

      “Go out and do it now.”

      I hung up without thinking to say, good-bye.

      Solome Savard

      Solome and Stephen had new material from the Alzheimer’s Association. Someone to stand by you. The heading read. She looked up from the chair angrily. Where was the someone? Not in her living room. She looked at the sofa. The arm chairs. The small tables. She looked at the lamps. The recessed lighting she’d put in the ceiling to light the corners of the

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