The Privileges Read Online Free PDF

to wait with him at the emergency room for three hours afterward, soldiers through his unprecedented recital of a poem by Juvenal. The words carry no specific meaning in this context; the hymns and Bible verses, too, are only appurtenances of meaning, but no less heartfelt for that. The trappings of belief are themselves a kind of belief, just as the priest’s cassock is his office.
    For this reason they are all suddenly united in the expectation that the priest, who does not know them, who won’t see them again after today, who has even less experience with intimacy than they do, who has probably said the same thing to thirty other anonymous couples this year, has something crucial to impart to them. With majestic unself-consciousness, he blots the very top of his bald head with what is presumably a handkerchief.
    “It is good,” he says, “that your life together has begun in conditions that suggest a test.” He pauses to appreciate the small laugh that ripples through the pews; the faces right in front of him, those of the bride and groom, are locked in sobriety. “There will be great joys in your life together, of course, but there will also be tests, maybe even severe ones, and the joys and the tests will not always appear in such a way as to seem to offset one another. We may lose sight, at such difficult moments, of the path, the promise, the blessedness of our lives, because we grow too close to ourselves; our purpose here is something that surely we too could begin to make out, if it were given to us to see as God sees. But we do not possess the farsightedness of God. Trust that He sees what you cannot, and that will enable you to go on trusting in each other. And if ever you should doubt yourselves, if ever there comes a time when you doubt your ability to endure hardship, remember that God, on this day and for all time, has given you to each other. He hath made all of us. And He will never ask us to shoulder more of a burden than He knows we have the strength to bear.”
    The vows they have chosen are the traditional ones. The kiss is more of a relief than anything else; shyly they proceed out the door and down the church steps into the odiferous haze and climb directly into the back of a limo for the one-minute drive around thepark to the reception. The guests can see the limo pulling up at the hotel entrance as they trudge back across the park themselves. The bells are ringing, evening is approaching, and though it’s still ninety-two degrees, the solemn air has lifted; there’s a party at the other end of this walk, and an air-conditioned one at that.
    When they reach the end of the receiving line they are at the doorway to the ballroom, where the empty tables glitter and it’s as cold as a skating rink. Three idle bartenders smile helpfully. Within minutes they are working like coal stokers, as the younger guests try to recover the buzz they had going in their hotel rooms before the ceremony sweated it out of them. At the head table, a long dais perpendicular to the bandstand, the groom’s mother finds that she and her husband have been seated in between their new daughter-in-law’s natural parents, perhaps to keep them from killing each other. She tries gamely not to be offended by the idea that the role she has been given to play, on this momentous day in the life of her firstborn son, is that of a human shield. She has an idea who’s behind it, even if now is not the time, even if it will never be the time; besides, Sandy feels, the fault is ultimately hers anyway. She went through a rough patch when the boys were little and had to leave home for a while. Literally doctor’s orders. Maybe not surprising, then, that her son winds up with a girl who makes every decision, who calls all the shots. Who treats him like a child. But this isn’t an appropriate moment for Sandy to start losing herself in the past; for one thing, she needs to remember to count her husband’s drinks. Historically, in