Going on a Picnic “Henry?” Anthony asked, reluctantly glancing away from the hall mirror and toward where his cousin sat in the living room.
Henry frowned at the interruption, but looked up from the very heavy, very dull-looking book he was reading. “What?” he asked.
Anthony fought the temptation to bite his lip. “Do I look all right?” he asked.
Henry looked him over. His brown eyes reflected no comprehension of the question behind the round lenses of his glasses. “You look healthy enough to me, but you should ask Uncle Adam if you’re worried about something,” his cousin said. “You sound okay, too,” he added. “Do you not feel well?”
Henry almost always spoke in the same even, subdued tone. Just then, Anthony caught something that might have been real concern polluting it. Anthony waved it aside, though, too short on time to listen to Henry mumble again about how Anthony studied too much. Compared to Jay and Arnold and Arthur, Anthony knew he did not even know the meaning of the word ‘overworked,’ so he always felt as though Henry was implying he thought Anthony was a weakling when he talked like that, and since Anthony did not want to snap at him without really meaning it, it was better just to avoid the topic right now. “I mean, I don’t have any – stains on my sleeves, or anything? Any wrinkles or – or dust, or – I don’t know? My hair isn’t doing anything weird?”
Henry looked him over again. “Your hair’s too short now to do anything weird,” Henry pointed out, this time with his usual lack of expression. “And I don’t see any stains or wrinkles or dust or je-ne-sais-quoi, either.”
The monotone remained in place throughout that comment. Only the unnecessary pretentious French gave away an inkling of Henry’s thoughts, specifically ones about being asked stupid questions by a cousin acting as vain as a girl when Hen was trying to read, and made Anthony scowl at him.
“I’m being serious!”
“So am I!”
Still scowling, Anthony took one last look in the mirror just to make sure Henry wasn’t exaggerating the neatness of his new haircut, an innovation Anthony liked to think made him look at least three years older and more mature and authoritative than he really was. His hair had always been a source of annoyance for him – it was darker than it had been when he started Sonora, but it still took a generous eye to call it anything other than a mousy, dull shade of brown, a disappointing contrast to the thicker, darker hair both of his brothers possessed – so it doing something helpful for his overall appearance was a welcome development. He grabbed his coat. “I’m going out,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I’ll send the cavalry if it’s not by a respectable one,” Henry said.
Henry sighed as the apartment door closed behind Anthony. For someone who otherwise seemed like he was going to grow up to be everything the family had ever wanted him to be, his cousin was certainly a fool about his girl. Henry supposed he should understand – he and complete sentences got along even more like fire and water than usual whenever he had to speak to witches he found attractive; words could barely express how glad he was that his brother and cousins liked pretty blondes and not the dark, imperious types that Henry preferred – but he was…him, not Anthony. Anthony was smart and good with people and getting better now that Uncle Anthony had really started working on him. Going on a date wasn’t supposed to make Anthony start acting like Theresa on a bad day –
Henry considered that analogy for a minute. Theresa on a bad day ranted about holding whole families hostage, or had. He thought his sister had mostly been broken from that now. Now Theresa on a bad day was weepy and hopeless and made Henry want to run screaming from the room. Neither version was much like Anthony, though. Maybe Anthony, when he was preening, was more like Theresa on a moderate day now, one where she was really determined to catch any husband she could get by any means that wouldn’t make her situation worse….
Grumbling a little, he looked back at his book and tried not to think any more about the sudden gloomy end his train of thought had led to. He and Theresa were really not that much worse off than the others, he assured himself. The only real difference was that they just knew how bad it was and the others didn’t yet.
Never have an important discussion in a garden or at a costume party, his father had instructed Anthony when he moved out. Clandestine meetings in the gardens are for storytellers, not real people. In real life, anyone could eavesdrop, and if it’s a costume party, you might not be completely sure who you’re speaking with. The only good reason to extend a conversation beyond small talk in those circumstances is if you’re framing one of your rivals for something, and there are better ways to frame a rival.
All of that made perfect sense, too. The only problem was that no matter how hard Anthony tried, he couldn’t think of a more private-but-respectable way to have a conversation with Effie than taking her on a picnic. Going somewhere really private, at least long enough to have a conversation of any substance, was out of the question while they weren’t married, so the best he could do was a semi-public place, one where they were only close enough to other people for those other people to see that they both had all of their clothes on and where Anthony could get away with a little magic that would at least make any animagi who wanted to spy on him work hard and get close to do it. A picnic was the only solution, or at least the only reasonably discreet - and, if he was to be honest, also at least reasonably romantic, or so he hoped - solution that wouldn’t draw attention and gossip, that he could devise, so after a short, informal enchanted flute and harp concert in a magical park – a performance Anthony barely heard a note of, though he had been looking forward to it – a picnic was what he had arranged for them to have.
He tried to make small talk about the performance, but suspected it was obvious that he was distracted. Finally, he decided to get to the point.
“I’m sorry if I don’t seem as – attentive as usual,” he said. “I was just thinking that I don’t know if, this time next year – “ after he finished school, that was – “if I’ll be asked to move back to South Carolina right away, and how many things I'll miss here if I am - and how I don't want one of those things to be you.” He’d said that much. He might as well keep going now, even though he had the horrible feeling that he sounded too much like a romance novel. “My family knows that, too, and how much you mean to me and - Effie, I think my father - may speak to yours soon.”
Not least because they had discussed Effie and Anthony’s intentions for the future when he’d gone home last weekend. It had been a difficult year for the family and for his father in particular – Malcolm’s arrival at the table had increased the number of open quarrels in the family from one to three and Anthony the Seventh had spent most of his time running between family members at a frantic pace trying to smooth down tempers, keep some peace at the table, and keep the rest of the family in the dark about the several near-failures of Anthony the Fourth’s health – but his father seemed to think things were stable enough now to think about what happened next. He had asked Anthony a lot of questions but had not seemed to notice Anthony was slightly exaggerating how much Effie had talked about French marriage prospects for her sister Delphine - he had seemed more interested in that than Anthony had expected, muttering a few times about their cursed lack of contacts in Europe to match Europe's increasing number of contacts in America and something, once, about 'damn Father for putting ideas in my head' - and had only given him a mild talking-to about letting love cloud his view of Effie herself when Anthony had slipped up and spoken too emotionally about her virtues. Anthony had asked him to wait at least a week before anything was decided officially, though, and his father had agreed.
Now, here they were. Effie didn't know everything, of course, but he knew she knew he had been given more and more responsibility over the past year and that that had happened because nobody lived forever and that his whole life was going to change the very hour his grandfather inherited. He assumed she had deduced that the next few years might not be the smooth, easy adjustment to adult life in the family that his brother and sister-in-law had enjoyed. He didn't know if the thought of it all becoming real and concrete, something binding, might finally be the thing that scared her off. It had certainly scared him, even if nowhere near enough to make him want to back out. The future was a big thing even under the best of circumstances.
"I - I've never thought 'will you marry me' is a very good question," he continued, hazarding a small smile. "Sometimes there's a big difference between what I'm willing to do and what I want to do. So - it's just us now. Nobody can hear us," he assured her, acknowledging for once that they weren't really always the free agents they liked to act like they were. "So - do you want to marry me?"