Larry’s Party. Carol Shields

way south, heading toward Devon and Cornwall. In a mere day or two he was able to distinguish from the bus window the various species. This easy mastery surprised him, but then he remembered how he had won the class prize back in his floral arts course, that one of his teachers had commented on his excellent memory and another on his observation skills.

      The clues to identifying hedges lay in the density and distribution of thicket, the hue of the green foliage, and the form of the developing leaves. He pronounced the names out loud as he spotted them, and then he wrote them on the inside of the book’s cover. He’d forgotten in the last two or three years that he was like this, always wanting to know things he didn’t need to know.

      Dorrie, seated next to him on the coach, had fallen into the doldrums. She was homesick, she said. And tired of being stuck with all these old biddies. Their teasing at breakfast, always the same old thing, it was getting on her nerves, it was driving her bananas.

      Each day was greener than the one before. One morning, halfway through the two-week tour, Arthur leapt from his seat at the front of the coach and excitedly pointed out a long sloping field of daffodils. “Didn’t I promise you, ladies and gents, that we’d be seeing daffodils on this holiday!” Everyone crowded to the windows for a look, everyone except for Mrs. Edwards, who was sleeping soundly with her head thrown straight back and her mouth open.

      Dorrie pulled her diary out of her purse and wrote a single word on the page: “Daffodils.” (Years later when Larry came across the little book, he found three-quarters of the pages empty. “Daffodils” was the final entry.)

      On the same day that they saw the daffodils Dr. Edwards bought Larry a pint of beer – this was in a pub early in the evening, a ten minutes’ rest stop – and said, out of the blue, “Our sabbatical leave doesn’t actually come up for another two years, but Mrs. Edwards has a problem with prescription drugs, also over-the-counter drugs. It’s a terrible business and getting worse, and so it seemed a good idea for us to get away.”

      Larry peered into the remains of his dark foamless beer. He wished he were standing at the other end of the polished bar where the New Zealand and Australian couples were laughing loudly and arguing about how many miles it was to the hotel in Bath. Full of rivalrous good feeling, they liked to joke back and forth, shouting out about the relative merits of kiwis and kangaroos, soccer teams and politics. Larry was drawn to their good spirits, but felt shy in their presence, especially the men with their bluff, hearty conviviality, so different from Dr. Edwards’ sly, stiff questioning.

      And yet Dr. Edwards, Robin, had seen fit to divulge his unhappy situation to Larry, to a stranger young enough to be his son.

      “She hides them. They’re so small, you see. The pills. So easy to conceal.”

      “Is she addicted to them?” This seemed to Larry a foolish, obvious question, but he felt a response of some kind was required.

      “Yes, addicted, of course. She can’t help herself.”

      “That’s terrible. It must be awfully difficult –”

      “It’s heartening to see a couple like yourself,” Dr. Edwards said, steering the conversation in a more positive direction. “Just starting off in your life, free as a pair of birds.”

      Larry swallowed down the rest of his beer. “We’re going to have a baby,” he said. “My wife, I mean.”

      Dr. Edwards received the news politely: “I see,” he said. His fingers twirled a button on his raincoat.

      “Maybe you’ve noticed that she’s not feeling all that great,” Larry said. “In the mornings especially.”

      “I hadn’t actually noticed.”

      “Morning sickness.”

      He and Dorrie had agreed that the baby was going to be a secret, at least until they got back home and told their families. It startled him now to hear the words running so loosely out of his mouth: the baby. He’d scarcely thought of “the baby” since leaving home. It was hard enough to remember he was a husband, much less a father. He had to remind himself, announcing the fact to the mirror every morning as he blinked away the ghost of his father’s face. Husband, husband – one husband face pushing its way through another, blunt, self-satisfied, but never quite losing its look of surprise.

      Lately he’d found he could dispel the face by filling up his head with the greenness of hedgerows. It was like switching channels. Holly, lime, whitethorn, box, a string of names like the chorus of a popular song. He let their shrubby patterns press down on his brain, their smooth stiff dignified shapes and rounded perfection.

      “We were going to wait and get married in June. But then – this happened – so here we are. March.”

      He could see he had lost Dr. Edwards’ interest, and certainly the opportunity to offer comforting remarks about Mrs. Edwards’ problems.

      “Well,” Dr. Edwards said. He spoke briskly now, more like a sportscaster than a sociology teacher. “Time we got back on the coach or we’ll be left behind.”

      “We’ve been going together for over a year,” Larry explained. He hung on to his beer glass. “We’d already talked about marriage. We’d already made up our minds, so this didn’t make any real difference.”

      Dr. Edwards’ face had pulled into a frown. He put his hand on Larry’s shoulder, bearing down heavily with his fingertips. “About my wife?” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you regarded what I said as confidential.”

      “Why?” Dorrie yelled at Larry. “Why would you go and tell that old professor jerk about us?”

      They were in Devon, in the town of Barnstable, the King’s Inn. Their room was at the front of the hotel overlooking a street of busy shops.

      “I don’t know,” Larry said.

      “We fucking decided we weren’t going to tell anyone. And don’t tell me not to say fuck. I’ll say fuck all I fucking want.”

      “It just came out. We were talking, and it slipped out.”

      “My mother doesn’t even know. My own mother. And you had to go and tell that jerk. Did you honestly think he wasn’t going to tell that snot of a wife? My ‘condition’ she said to me, I shouldn’t be having a beer in my ‘condition.’ And now the whole bus is going to know. I’ll bet you anything they already do.”

      “What does it matter?”

      “We’re on our honeymoon, that’s why it matters. We’re the lovey-dovey honeymooners, for God’s sake, only now the little bride person is pregnant.”

      “No one even thinks like that anymore.”

      “Oh yeah? What about your mother and father? They think like that.”

      “How do you know what they think?”

      “They think no one’s good enough for their precious little Larry, that’s what they think. Especially girls dumb enough to go and get themselves preggo.”

      “They’ll get used to it.”

      “Like it’s my fault. Like you didn’t have one little thing to do with it, right?” She sank down on the bed, moaning, her head rolling back and forth. “I can just see your dad looking at me. That look of his, oh boy. Like don’t I have any brains? Like why wasn’t I on the pill?”

      “We’ll tell them as soon as we get back. It’ll take them a day or two, that’s all. Then they’ll get used to it.”

      She turned and gave him a shrewd look. “What about you? When are you going to get used to it?”

      “I am used to it.”

      “Oh yeah, sure. I’m like sitting there on the bus, day after day, thinking up names. Girls’ names. Boys’ names. That’s what’s in my head. I like Victoria for a girl. For a boy I like Troy. Those kinds of thoughts. And you’re jumping up and down