The Progress of Love

son she was most angry at. She hadn’t had time to recover from Ross’s not being shot when she had to wonder if she would ever see Colin again. Some party guests were drunk or tactless enough to wonder out loud if he could have jumped into the Tiplady River.
    The constable stuck his head out of the car and told them to remove the roadblock. Then he drove through and shone his headlights on the bridge.
    The top of the bridge did not show up very well in this light, but they could see somebody sitting there.
    “Colin!”
    Colin had climbed up and settled on the iron girders. He was there.
    “Colin! I can’t believe you did that!” Sylvia yelled up at him. “Come on down off that bridge!”
    Colin didn’t move. He seemed dazed. He was, in fact, so blinded by the lights of the police car that he couldn’t have climbed down if he had wanted to.
    Now the constable ordered him, and others ordered him. He wouldn’t budge. In the midst of the orders and reproaches, it struck Sylvia that of course he didn’t know that Ross wasn’t dead.
    “Colin, your brother isn’t shot!” she called to him. “Colin! Your brother is alive here beside me! Ross is alive!”
    Colin didn’t answer but she thought she saw his head move, as if he was peering down.
    “Get those stupid lights off him,” she said to the constable, who was a sort of boyfriend. “Turn the lights on Ross if you want to turn them on something.”
    “Why don’t we stand Ross out in the lights?” the constable said. “Then we can turn them off and let the boy climb down.
    “Okay, Colin,” the constable called out. “We’re going to show you Ross standing here—he isn’t hurt or anything!”
    Sylvia pushed Ross into the light.
    “Open your mouth, for crying out loud,” she said. “Tell your brother you’re alive.”
    Colin was helping Glenna clean up. He thought about what his mother had said, about plastic dishes and tablecloths that you could just scoop up and throw in the garbage. There was not a chance in a million that Glenna would ever do that. His mother understood nothing about Glenna, nothing at all.
    Now Glenna was exhausted, having created a dinner partymore elaborate than necessary that nobody but herself could appreciate.
    No, that was wrong. He appreciated, even if he didn’t understand the necessity. Every step she took him away from his mother’s confusion, he appreciated.
    “I don’t know what to say to Ross,” he said.
    “What about?” said Glenna.
    She was so tired, he thought, that she had forgotten what Nancy told her. He found himself thinking of the night before their wedding. Glenna had five bridesmaids, chosen for their size and coloring rather than particular friendship, and she had made all their dresses to a design of her own. She made her wedding dress as well, and all the gloves and headdresses. The gloves had sixteen little covered buttons each. She finished them at nine-thirty the night before the wedding. Then she went upstairs, looking very white. Colin, who was staying in the house, went up to see how she was and found her weeping, still holding some scraps of colored cloth. He couldn’t get her to stop, and called her mother, who said, “That’s just the way she is, Colin. She overdoes things.”
    Glenna sobbed and said, among other things, that she saw no use in being alive. The next day, she was angelically pretty, showing no ravages, drinking in praise and wishes for her happiness.
    This dinner wasn’t likely to have worn her out as much as the bridesmaids’ outfits, but she had reached the stage where she had a forbidding look, a harsh pallor, as if there were a lot of things that she might call in question.
    “He is not going to want to go hunting for another engine,” Colin said. “How can he afford one? He owes Sylvia for that one. Anyway, he wants a big engine. He wants the power.”
    Glenna said, “Does it make that much difference?”
    “It makes a difference. In the pickups and the power. Sure. An engine like that makes a difference.”
    Then he saw that she might not have meant that. She might not have meant “Does the engine make a difference?” She might have meant “If it’s not this, it’ll be something else.”
    (She sat on the grass; she polished the caps. She sniffed at the door panels. She said, “Let Lynnette choose the color.”)
    She might have meant “Why don’t we just let it go?”
    Colin shook the garbage down in the plastic bag and tied it at the neck.