Wild Game

by Adrienne Brodeur

  I turned around to see if Jack would join us, but he was already headed to the guesthouse to figure out sleeping arrangements for his groomsmen and the friends who would be spending the week leading up to our wedding there. My fiancé wanted no part of this reunion.

  “You probably noticed the new gravel,” my mother said. “Three tons of stone.”

  “What happened to low-key?” I asked.

  Malabar laughed and shrugged. “Oh, you know low-key isn’t really my style. Besides, this seemed like more fun. No expense must be spared for your big day. Plus, it’s an excuse to expand the guest list and see some friends. Come on, let me show you.”

  For the next thirty minutes, we walked around the property, Malabar pointing out all that was under way: what her landscape designer had suggested in terms of shrubs and plants, the sliding glass doors to be replaced, the new trim, a shade bluer than the old blue-gray. Inside, we looked at photographs of deck furniture, options for arched trellises, samples of folding white wooden chairs. When she brought out the menus and photos of floral arrangements for me to consider, I balked.

  “Let’s wait for Jack on this,” I said, overwhelmed.

  “Jack’s going to have a strong opinion on boutonnieres?”

  “Point taken,” I conceded. “But let’s slow down a bit. I just got here. I’m grateful for all you’ve done, but . . . well . . . it’s a lot. And completely unexpected.” At her look of disappointment, I added, “I’m just exhausted from the visit with the Southers.”

  “No problem. If it makes you feel any better, all this planning has been a wonderful distraction for me.” My mother’s voice wobbled slightly, and she clenched her jaw to prevent further emotion. “Okay, no decisions today.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How about we do something fun,” she suggested. “Shall we talk about the dress?”

  I was excited and nervous to show Malabar the photographs of my wedding gown. My mother hadn’t seemed all that concerned about the La Jolla bridal-boutique debacle. Over the phone, I’d told her how ashamed I felt at having misplaced my trust in the shop owner, how gullible and embarrassed I was at having been played. My mother had seemed uninterested, my wedding-dress trauma frivolous, I imagined, compared to her heartbreak. As we ascended the stairs and headed toward her bedroom, I realized I must have underestimated her interest in the dress. Had I remembered to tell her that the situation had been resolved and I’d found the same gown at a bridal megastore in Los Angeles? I thought I had, but I was no longer sure.

  “The pictures of my dress are in the car,” I said.

  “First things first,” Malabar said, opening the door to her bedroom. A grand sweep of her arm guided my eyes to her bed, swollen with pillows, and there it was, centered on her pristine white duvet: the velvet purple case, opened to reveal its mesmerizing contents. I hadn’t seen the necklace in years. Malabar motioned for me to sit down on the chaise longue by the window and started to tell me, once again, the dreamy story of how her father had given it to her mother as part of a dramatic second marriage proposal.

  I wasn’t paying full attention to her words because I couldn’t take my eyes off the necklace, how it twinkled and danced in the light. I couldn’t believe that she was finally giving it to me, this gemstone-studded collar that I’d been promised for my entire life. Be very good, and this will be yours! I had been a good daughter, devoted and loyal, and yet the necklace always felt out of reach.

  I knew that children who’d been neglected emotionally, as my mother had been by her parents, often formed attachments to objects instead of people. Malabar had been raised by an alcoholic and domineering single mother, so it came as no surprise that her possessions meant everything to her. This necklace symbolized her mother’s love. I understood it; in fact, I felt the same way. My mother was about to give me her most treasured treasure, and the very thought of it made my heart nearly burst. Finally, I would have material proof of her love.

  “Close your eyes,” my mother said.

  I lowered my lids. I heard the rustle of a paper bag and then got a whiff of an unfamiliar earthy scent.

  “Okay, open up.” Malabar’s voice tinkled with excitement.

  The purple box had not moved from its spot on the bed. Confused, I refocused my attention on my mother. She was holding up a bolt of fabric, a luxurious sheet of it draped across her arm. It was a raw silk, an iridescent blue-green with hints of purple shimmering beneath. As Malabar moved, the colors changed and the fabric looked alive. Never in my life had I seen more beautiful material.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I whispered, rising from the chair to touch it. Looking at the fabric was like staring into a mirage, the colors disappearing and reappearing in ripples.

  Malabar slipped out of her blouse and threw one end of the material across her shoulder, tucked a fold into her bra, and brought the rest up over her other shoulder, creating a deep scoop neckline that showed off her bronzed décolletage. “I’m picturing a tight bodice and a full skirt.” She spun so that the fabric wrapped around her small waist, the colors undulating in the late-afternoon light.

  Then it struck me—I’d misunderstood. I had thought we were in her bedroom to talk about my wedding attire, but in fact, we were here to talk about hers. My wedding might be the last chance she would ever have to change Ben’s mind.

  “The fabric is from India. I’m having a gown made especially for me,” she continued. “It’s going to be breathtaking.” She fanned out a half a dozen photographs from fashion magazines and pointed out details she admired.

  “And the pièce de résistance,” Malabar said, reaching for the purple box, “will be this.” She gently removed the necklace and motioned for me to help her put it on. I clasped it behind her neck.

  With her necklace on and tears in her eyes, she told me how she’d gone to New York City the previous month, knowing that Ben would be there for a board meeting and staying at “their” hotel. But he’d rebuffed Malabar when she called and kept his promise to his wife—there was no contact.

  Once my mother composed herself, I stood behind her and we admired her reflection in the mirror as we had done so many times before. The image was something to behold. The gems sparkled, and the fabric looked like the ocean bathed in moonlight, shimmering against her skin in an otherworldly way.

  I finally understood: My wedding would be Malabar’s battleground. She would be radiant, beyond stunning. She would dance with every man and show Ben what he was missing. She would smile, laugh, and flirt—and stand beside my dashing father during their toast. She would be the most glamorous and confident woman in the room. Her secret weapon would be wrapped around her neck, and I wanted her to have it.

  “Mark my words, Rennie,” my mother said, addressing my reflection in the mirror. “Ben Souther will not be able to take his eyes off me.”

  Twenty

  July 21, 1990, turned out to be a picture-perfect day for a wedding on Cape Cod. The sun was brilliant; a few clouds scudded across a clear blue sky; a gentle breeze pushed away the day’s heat. Nauset Harbor, our backdrop, dazzled with reflected light. Skiffs bobbed on their moorings, fishing boats sped homeward, and canoers silently cruised the marshes.

  Upstairs in my childhood bedroom, bedecked in elaborate white underthings and surrounded by my bridesmaids, I observed the spectacle unfolding outside my window as if I were watching a play from the front row of the balcony. My soon-to-be husband, along with my brother, Peter, and the other groomsmen, greeted our smiling guests and ushered them across my mother’s fertilized lawn into tidy rows of white chairs that faced a wedding arbor trimmed with delicate tea roses. Beyond the trellis, the bay, dunes, ocean, and sky expanded to form a colorfully striated panorama.

  My hair was looped in a chignon, my makeup on; I had only to step into my gown and I’d be wedding-ready. From the window, I craned my neck to see if Ben and Lily had arrived, wondering how my mother was doing preparing for her lover’s return. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and put a
hand on the bureau to steady myself. Kyra noticed and bolted downstairs to fetch something for me to drink. My other bridesmaids were busily readying themselves—hunched over mirrors, applying lip gloss, and spraying wisps of hair. I sank down on my bed, and the crinoline of my slip crunched underneath me.

  Rennie, wake up . . . Ben Souther just kissed me.

  I was on the same bed where my mother had roused me out of a sound sleep almost exactly a decade earlier.

  Memory is an odd curator. Sitting on my bed on my wedding day, I slipped back to the moment when I’d ceased being Malabar’s daughter and became her coconspirator and closest confidante. But time didn’t stop there; instead, it kept scrolling backward. All at once, I felt Christopher in the room, a liminal presence I hadn’t experienced in years. And then Charles too. And my three deceased grandparents, all young and vibrant. Time crumpled, and specters whirled around me, stirring their ancient dust. The roiling inside me was physical, as if I were adrift at sea with waves churning beneath me. Was this vertigo? Wedding jitters? Or something else?

  Days earlier, I’d posed the following question in my journal: Would my marriage to Jack suffer for having been based on a lie? The question was underlined. As was a Rilke quote from a collection of poetry Margot had given me as an engagement present: “Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror / Just keep going / No feeling is final.” I wondered if my mother ever stopped to reflect on the remarkable coincidence of her daughter having fallen in love with her lover’s son and if she ever questioned the extent of her influence. Perhaps she was unable to. Time had twisted her love into obsession, and my engagement to Jack had become a lifeline for her, keeping her bound to Ben and providing a hope that he might one day pull her back in.

  If Malabar had doubts on my behalf, if she worried about my tender heart, she didn’t voice any concerns to me on my wedding day.

  * * *

  “You okay, Rennie?” Kyra asked, reentering the room with a glass of orange juice.

  “Yes,” I said. The ghosts were gone. I took a sip.

  “Ready?” She held out my wedding dress.

  I nodded and stepped into it, a hollowed-out meringue waiting to be filled. I inhaled and was zipped up, the gown’s boning compressing my waist and holding me erect. I stood tall before the mirror, and Kyra clasped a single strand of freshwater pearls around my neck.

  “Perfect” came Malabar’s voice from behind us. She was standing in the doorway. “Darling, you look beautiful.”

  I looked in the mirror and saw what she saw.

  Kyra went down to assemble with the rest of the wedding party, leaving my mother and me alone. We sat on my bed and she took my hand. I have a photo of this moment, so someone must have been in the room, although I don’t remember anyone else’s presence. My mother looked glamorous in her shimmering blue-green dress, but it was not indomitable Malabar who was before me. It was my childhood mother, the woman who used to comfort me and tuck me in at night. I had almost forgotten about her existence. I’d been the grownup in our relationship for so long—the one who advised and consoled and did the holding—that I didn’t remember what it was like to be held by her. But here was my mom, hugging me, the woman whose soft neck I used to burrow into as a toddler, hiding behind the curtain of her auburn hair. For one brief moment, I was the daughter again.

  I’m so scared, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. Instead, I breathed her in and let myself feel safe. Behind the perfume she’d dotted on her neck to beguile Ben, I smelled vanilla beans and tapioca pudding, childhood scents that lit up a synaptic path to my brain and told me everything would be okay.

  * * *

  Downstairs, I took my father’s arm. He wore gray slacks and a light jacket with a pale pink rose pinned to the lapel.

  It was time.

  He squeezed my hand between his arm and warm body, and together, we stepped off the porch and onto the lawn. My gown met the grass with a swish, and one satin heel sank slightly. We faced the driveway, on the opposite side of the house from the ocean. As we’d practiced the day before, we stopped and waited for our cue: the sound of the string quartet. To our right, around the corner and beyond our view, were the backs of our guests. Those who were not craning their necks to watch our entrance were likely staring out at the harbor, which was at its most beautiful this time of day, winking in the afternoon sun. This was the golden hour when the lobster boats chugged back toward Snow Point with flocks of seagulls wheeling behind them, waiting for chum to be chucked overboard. What the gulls didn’t catch would descend to the inlet’s sandy floor and become dinner for the scavengers below—so much vibrant life invisible.

  The Wedding March began.

  We had taken only a couple of steps forward when my father stopped me and leaned in close. This was the inevitable moment when a father walks a daughter down the aisle—a moment I’d never thought about because my father was unconventional; he wasn’t that kind of dad. When I was a teenager, his biggest concern about my dating was not what might be happening in the back seat but whether I wore a seat belt. “Seventeen-year-old boys are knuckleheads behind the wheel,” he’d told me on countless occasions. “Complete fucking idiots.” Exactly what bit of paternal wisdom Paul Brodeur would offer at this moment, I couldn’t imagine. It wouldn’t be a platitude, because my father didn’t have a Hallmark bone in his body. It wouldn’t be a blessing, because he didn’t believe in God. But I was his only daughter, about to get married, and he’d brought us to a halt for a reason. The stringed instruments continued to play, beckoning us around the corner and past the point of no return, and my father’s handsome face broke into a smile. He motioned toward his car, parked on the public landing just beyond my mother’s property, a red Toyota Camry station wagon with north of two hundred and fifty thousand miles on the odometer, a point of pride.

  “Give me the word, darling girl,” he said, “and we can just hop in my old heap and go fishing instead.”

  I laughed—it was a joke, right?—and suddenly we were both laughing, which had been my dad’s intention, no doubt. And we were still laughing a few steps later as we rounded the bend to where two hundred heads turned to greet us. Every face was lit up by the afternoon sun. Every face beamed happiness at us—even Lily’s. Margot smiled confidence my way and I held tightly her lace handkerchief, my something borrowed. What reason could there be to feel anything but joy? A laughing bride, young and beautiful, her arm linked with her dashing father’s, a handsome bridegroom waiting in the distance. Buoyed by all this love, I felt relief wash over me. The ghosts were nowhere in sight. Everything was going to be okay.

  * * *

  After the ceremony, we all meandered across the lawn to the guesthouse, where champagne, a raw bar, and other delicacies awaited. The bridal party posed for some formal, portrait-style pictures and then lined up at the edge of the property under the shade of the lollipop tree where I’d spent so many evenings waiting for Malabar and Ben. Our backs were to the ocean, granting our guests that view as they dutifully filed past, my father the unwitting buffer between my mother and the Southers. I swallowed my first glass of champagne in two large gulps and savored the feel of it washing down into my legs.

  * * *

  In the photographs, we were all smiles and champagne flutes. There was not a single candid shot that revealed the mother of the groom staring daggers at the mother of the bride or the mother of the bride looking longingly at the father of the groom. Everyone behaved well, and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. The reception was an extravaganza of ice-cold cherrystone clams, plump briny oysters, curled pink shrimp the size of thumbs.

  The wedding album does reveal a metamorphosis, however. At some point between the ceremony and the reception that followed, my mother must have sneaked off to retrieve the necklace. In photographs taken of Malabar during the ceremony, she looked unequivocally proper, as poised as her idol Jackie O., demure in white gloves and a jacket that matched her dress. In photos from the party that fo
llowed, Malabar had shape-shifted into an exotic creature empowered by her talisman. Gone were the gloves and modest jacket that had concealed her figure. In these pictures, Malabar was bare-shouldered and graced by all those brilliant rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. Caterpillar to butterfly. She was the most dazzling woman in sight.

  * * *

  As the evening wore on and the sky turned a deep purple, the wedding party and guests wended their way from the front lawn to the pristine white tent that had been erected behind the guesthouse, and there dinner was served and toasts were given. The music started, and naturally, Jack and I were the first to take to the floor, dancing to our song, “I Only Have Eyes for You.” On the most important day of our lives as a couple, we’d spent virtually no time together. Our wedding was a grand party, but I was—as always—hungry for a moment of connection with him, not easily had on this day.

  My father cut in and twirled me away from Jack, who went on to dance with Lily. She was fetching in a primrose-colored dress and matching shoes, and her hair had been set for the occasion. With each song, more guests joined us on the dance floor. At some point, I decided to take a breather and observe the action from the sidelines. From my seat at the wedding table, I watched my father take my mother in his arms and marveled at how the sight of them together still filled me with longing, twenty years after their divorce.

  Nearby, Ben bobbed alongside his wife.

  And that’s when it happened.

  My parents met Ben and Lily in the middle of the dance floor and—blink!—Ben and my father swapped partners. Ben took my mother’s arm. My father took Lily’s.

  Some part of me had been holding my breath; I’d known that this moment would happen ever since Lily forbade it during our lobster dinner all those months ago.