At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott

Author:Alice McDermott
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

AS HAD THE ARMY in the years before, the post office swept Fred the mailman from the rooms he shared with his mother and gave him a part in the general history of his generation. His first route had been out in the suburbs, not far, he told the children, from the town where they now lived, and so, although he rode bus and subway back to Woodside every night, he was well aware of the way the suburbs were growing and changing, kids springing up all over the place, new schools and houses and grocery stores every time he turned around. He was well aware of another kind of life.

(“What’s your mailman’s name?” he asked the children and the boy said, “George,” and the older girl, “It used to be George but now it’s Bill.” “Last name?” he asked and from the dining room where she was setting the table their mother said, “George was Kelly. George Kelly. I don’t know Bill’s name yet. He looks like he might be German.” Fred paused for a moment, considering, and then shook his head. No, he didn’t know him.)

Winter was his favorite season then, not spring or fall as you might have guessed, and the snowiest days were the ones he most looked forward to. He’d start out snow-blind, highstepping it like a majorette, but soon enough his vision would clear and he would come upon his route transformed—by kids like themselves, off from school for the day, building snow forts and rolling snowballs; by their mothers in galoshes and babushkas, clearing his path. The women would straighten up when they saw him, smile and touch a gloved finger to a runny nose—a gesture that the snow and the light and the children calling made seem as delicate and as flirtatious as a raised fan. “Hello, Fred. What did you bring me?”

He’d gotten to know most of the families pretty well, new babies and old quarrels and changes of fortune up or down. He’d always been a good talker, and a good listener as well, something much more rare, and of course he was never opposed to taking his time.

He winked at the children and raised his voice so that it might reach her in Lucy’s kitchen, “How else do you suppose I got lucky enough to meet your aunt?”

But of course there was more to it than that, more than the simple luck of his garrulousness and her smile when she met him on the street, but in those first delicate weeks of his engagement he hesitated to consider too fully what foundation this new and tentative happiness was built on. He hesitated to recall, for instance, that final year of his mother’s life when at each pleasant pause along his route he would hear himself saying it, saying “It’s my mother, you see. Cancer.” Or, “No, not good today,” or “Yes, thank you, ma’am. She’s a little better than she was.” Hear himself explaining each time he’d been gone

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