Helen and I had got in the car that day and traveled a hundred miles to be at the wedding of her cousin Eliza.
Eliza Rayfield, a young teacher, much younger than Helen, taught music at an upstate middle school. She was marrying a forest ranger named Ben Gorman in a church ceremony. It was that era when young people arranged their own programs. The bride, the bridegroom, and the attendants were dressed in a twentieth-century adaptation of Elizabethan garb. Ben, an art student in college, had designed the costumes—velveteen pantaloons with silk slashings, silken hose and short jackets with ruffles at the neck and cuffs for the men, ruffles and stiff lace and puffed sleeves for the women.
In the wing chair that had been my father’s, thinking of the books where I was sure I could find pictur
