by Nancy Geary
The normally immaculate bedroom was in disarray, with clothes piled on the canopy bed, shoes strewn across the floor, and pillows from the love seat pushed aside. The floral area rug was askew on its pad. Makeup and powder covered the skirted dressing table. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what to do,” Hope said, her voice trembling.
“Everybody gets nervous,” Penelope replied, realizing how dismissive she sounded.
“It’s not about the wedding. I don’t even care about that anymore.”
Penelope was silent. How was she supposed to be empathetic when she’d trade places in a minute? All her life she’d dreamed of a big, dramatic wedding with large bouquets of roses, a fabric-lined tent with white lights and decorated poles, a crowd in black tie, everything Hope was now getting. She had no father to walk her down the aisle and knew that if ever the day came, Bill wouldn’t go to this expense, this effort, for his stepdaughter. Hope was spoiled and selfish. Try being thirty and single before you complain, she wanted to say. “You’re being irrational.”
“You don’t understand. My heart’s racing. I keep changing because I can’t stop sweating.” Hope walked over to her bed and flopped down on the pile of clothes. “I should have said something before now. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Have you ever thought you knew someone, really knew them, but then realized you’d been deceived? It’s as if the world’s been split down the middle and your legs are spread straddling some abyss. I can’t manage.” She put her head in her pillow and Penelope could hear the muffled sobs.
“Maybe you should talk to Mom. Or Bill.” Your parents, Penelope thought. They’re the ones who are supposed to know and understand you. But she knew Hope’s prewedding jitters wouldn’t be well received. After a ten-month engagement consumed by planning and preparation, their mother wouldn’t hear of a cancellation, and Bill would tolerate Hope’s anxiety and intense emotional state for all of a half second. Make a decision and don’t second-guess it. If you can’t trust yourself, your own judgment, you can’t trust anybody else. That was his advice in just about any situation.
“I can’t. They’re liars. They’ve lied to me for years. Everyone has. I want this to end. You’ve got to help me.”
Penelope glanced out the window at the dogwood below. Its branches seemed to reach up, covering a portion of the glass. It had always been her favorite tree on the expansive property, an ironic selection given that it grew just outside Hope’s bedroom. As a child, she’d climbed it and spent afternoons nestled in its boughs, enveloped by its pungent flowers.
Her ranting made no sense. Penelope would have thought she’d thrive on all the attention. She usually did. Instead she was having yet another fit, another one of the emotional tirades that the entire family had dismissed over the years as simply Hope being Hope. Why didn’t Jack give up on her? Why was he willing to tolerate the hysteria? It wasn’t fair. “What do you want?” she said with a sigh.
Hope sat up on the edge of the bed. When she spoke, her voice was so low that Penelope could barely hear. “Mum has some Equanil in her medicine cabinet. I need it. Please get it for me.”
“Equanil?”
“It’s antianxiety medication. Like a tranquilizer.”
Penelope was surprised that their mother, the personification of social grace and composure, needed a sedative. And how come she hadn’t known? “I can’t go snooping in her bathroom.” She walked over to Hope and took her arm, which felt tiny in her grip. “Let’s get you dressed. You can go have a glass of wine. That’ll calm you down.”
“Please.”
“Why don’t you get it yourself?”
“I can’t. I can’t run into anyone like this.”
“If I could get away with it, why couldn’t you?” She realized she was using logic on someone whose distress made her irrational. It was a pointless conversation.
“Please!” Hope nearly shrieked. Her body shook and she hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms with her hands as if she were freezing. “It’s all I ask.”
Although Penelope felt sorry for Hope, her sister’s weakness and fragility empowered her. While recognizing how tragic she appeared, that the Lawrence princess was begging to be anesthetized at the precise moment when everyone was watching, gave Penelope a thought. Maybe this time Hope could be a disappointment. She’d cause some scene no one could ignore. Maybe then their mother would be forced to acknowledge how irresponsible and unstable she really was. Maybe Jack would realize the true extent of her pathology. Maybe Penelope’s opportunity wasn’t gone. Maybe, finally, she would be the winner by comparison.
“Have you taken it before?”
Hope shook her head. Then she started to cry. Her lips quivered and tears ran down both cheeks. “I need your help,” she blubbered.
She forced a reassuring smile. Just when she least expected it, her time had come.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she heard Hope say as she headed down the hall toward the master bathroom.
Frances scanned the round tables sprinkling the lawn at the Singing Beach Club, but between the plaid umbrellas and the myriad straw hats it was difficult to discern the faces underneath. She debated checking the dining room adjacent to the buffet but remembered her grandmother’s words: “If it’s nice, we’ll be outside. Inside gets claustrophobic. Plus everyone else can hear your conversation, but you can’t The acoustics are terrible.” Given the cloudless sky, they had to be here somewhere.
Finally she spotted Teddy and Hope seated on aluminum chairs. Teddy wore a frayed straw hat, a pink-and-yellow long-sleeved dress belted oddly just under her large bosom, and a pair of flesh-toned orthopedic shoes. Her cane rested against the back of her chair. Frances glanced at her watch. Lunch was scheduled for noon and it was just now ten past, but they’d obviously already gone through the buffet line. Teddy’s plate was piled with cucumber sandwiches, deviled eggs, and tomato aspic.
“You’re late,” Teddy admonished as Frances approached. “We couldn’t wait, but get yourself some lunch and join us. Penny canceled at the last minute, Adelaide’s apparently running even later than you, and the bride-to-be here has said nothing since she sat down, so I could use an addition to the conversation. I’m hoping you’ll have something of interest to tell us.”
Frances laughed to herself. Old people seemed to get away with comments and criticisms that no one else would dream of uttering aloud. She went inside, lifted a warmed, slightly damp plate from the pile at the left end of a long table, and proceeded through the buffet. The menu hadn’t changed since Frances had come to the club as a child, and she could almost close her eyes and remember the sequence: hot and cold soup, carrots, celery sticks, and canned olives on a clear plastic tray, deviled eggs that looked as if they’d been set out an hour too soon, chicken salad, sweaty cold cuts, aspic, and Jell-O. Nouvelle cuisine hadn’t made an appearance. Although well situated on a bluff overlooking Singing Beach, the clubhouse was equally outdated. The white-painted walls had yellowed, and the furniture in the main sitting room had faded. There was mildew in the changing rooms, and a constant smell of stale cigarettes permeated the air. Why anyone wanted to belong, or would remain on a more than five-year wait list, baffled Frances. She helped herself to a cup of vichyssoise.
“You see, I got known as a pearl wearer,” Teddy was saying. “My mother said it was the oil in my skin. I never knew if she was right or whether it was all hogwash. But everyone admired the pinkish color of my pearls. Acquaintances began to ask me to wear their pearls for them, hoping the color would turn, too. So I did. And before long, wouldn’t you know, I was walking around with seven or eight strands at any time.”
“Are you ready?” Frances said to Hope, settling herself in one of the vacant seats.
“As I said, Hope’s not talking. I’ve tried,” Teddy replied. “She wouldn’t let me give a proper bridal lunch, so here it is, just the three of us. S
he’s not eating anyway.”
“I’d be nervous, too.” Frances tried to sound reassuring. She looked at Hope, who stared down at her plate. “Is there anything I can do this afternoon?” She took a sip of her soup. It was overly lumpy and tasted like flour.
“Adelaide’s got everything in order. The house is like a military base,” Teddy replied. “You should’ve eloped. It’s not as though Father Whitney’s blessing would help a marriage anyway.”
Hope looked up at the mention of the reverend’s name.
“Aren’t we a little cynical?” Frances asked. Her cousin looked so pale and forlorn that her natural instinct was to defend her. As much as she adored her grandmother, Teddy could be harsh.
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me the religious bug has bitten you, too. One fanatic in the family is enough.”
“Teddy doesn’t like that I volunteer at the church. But I guess you could figure that out,” Hope said.
“When I was bedridden with my broken leg last summer, I didn’t get a single call from that man. What kind of minister is that?”
Frances remembered hearing of her grandmother’s accident. The terrier had tripped her on a walk. She’d fallen on the path and lain there for hours before being discovered by the neighbor’s gardener. When she finally got to the hospital, X-rays confirmed multiple fractures and she’d had a cast for nearly eight weeks.
“I had a terrible time. Even missed Clio’s funeral, although I can’t say I was heartbroken. I never understood what your father saw in that woman.” Frances contained a smile at Teddy’s bluntness about her stepmother. Her candor seemed to increase with age. “They never did figure out what happened, did they?”
“It’s a closed case. The lead investigator determined it was a suicide.”
Her grandmother snorted in disgust.
“Father Whitney probably didn’t come to visit because he knew what kind of a reception he’d get from you. Why go where you’re not welcome?” Hope said quietly.
“You’re entitled to your view.” Teddy lifted a bite of aspic to her lips, but it jiggled and rolled off the spoon. She didn’t seem to notice and inserted the empty flatware into her mouth. Frances could hear her dentures hitting the stainless steel. “Why, speak of the devil.”
Frances turned to see Father Whitney standing at an adjacent table. Despite the heat, he wore his black cassock. He excused himself from his conversation and approached the table. Resting a hand on Hope’s shoulder, he asked, “How are you holding up?”
She said nothing.
He introduced himself to Frances. “I’m sorry to break up your lunch, but I do need a moment of Hope’s time and her mother said I’d find her here.”
“I’ve got a lot to do,” Hope said. “I can’t now.” Her voice was soft, and Frances noticed a slight slur to her words. Had she been drinking? Her glass seemed to hold iced tea.
“I only need a minute. There’s a part of the service we need to discuss. Jack has asked that we delete that portion of the service that allows a member of the congregation to object to the marriage. It’s rather last minute, I’d say, but I think we three should discuss it. I told Jack I’d come find you.”
Hope kept her face down as she stood and pushed her chair back from the table. Frances reached for her wrist. Her skin was cold and clammy despite the warm day. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Hope’s eyes met hers but revealed nothing. Father Whitney nodded, then turned to escort her out.
“What’s that all about?”
“I’m not the least bit surprised. I know several people who might cause a stink if given a chance. And I’m probably unaware of others, knowing how this family keeps secrets.” Teddy reached for a deviled egg. “Jack’s not as dumb as he looks.”
I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord. If we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord. Hope straightened her back and realized what pain she was in. She’d been crouched over her vanity using the mirrored top as a desk for the last hour, and her muscles were sore. Adjusting her position on the stool, she heard the sound of a tear as the hand-sewn folds of her silk shantung train snagged. Look what you’ve done, she thought.
Why had she bothered to dress so early? She was Miss Havisham, perpetually waiting for a wedding. Although unlike Dickens’s heroine, she wanted it never to transpire.
She put down her pen and gently rubbed the cover of her diary, a well-worn red leather book with lined pages. Flipping back through the last fifteen, she saw that she’d scribbled the same sentences over and over. She’d been unable to stop. The forced repetition seemed the only way to block out the voices that screamed in her head. How could she not have seen, have known, that she could trust no one? Why did she find it so difficult to accept further deceit? More to the point, why did the people in her life continue to betray her?
She’d sought answers in the Episcopal Church. Even though the church had always been a part of her upbringing, it had only been in the last several years that she’d truly immersed herself in its teachings. She’d studied the Book of Common Prayer. She’d read John Booty and other theologians. She’d felt as if she’d absorbed their words and adhered to their instructions. But it hadn’t worked. No matter how much she prayed, no matter how she tried to be pious, she’d failed in her quest for redemption. The betrayals she’d discovered were her fault. She’d obviously gotten what she deserved. She was bad, evil, and would be forever damned, condemned to hell, to a place for sinners and infidels. She shut her eyes and imagined her body burning, her skin peeling from her skeleton as she writhed in pain, acid destroying her sight.
She stared at the pen in her hand, the fragmented letters it created. She’d started keeping a diary years earlier and wrote every day, often more than once. She’d hoped it would help her to purge her fears, that the process of reducing her emotions to writing would clarify her feelings, but she’d found just the opposite resulted. Now the pages were filled with the thoughts that tormented her, evidence of the world’s wickedness and her weaknesses. The past volumes were safe, protected from discovery, but this current one remained. Now it was too late to stash it away.
If she was honest with herself, she knew that part of her wanted her secrets to be discovered. She wanted her mother to find the book and to read of her agony. Maybe then she’d understand the full consequences of her years of silent tolerance. She wanted her father to know the pain she’d endured.
She reread the last complete entry and then reached for the medicine bottle, her mother’s Equanil. Shaking it slightly, she listened to the pills rattling inside. She’d taken two earlier to calm her nerves, but the dosage hadn’t been enough. She’d felt nothing. Now she poured the remaining contents into the palm of her left hand, leaned toward the mirror, and opened her mouth. One at a time, she began placing pills on her tongue, making an arrangement in the shape of a heart. Go on, Hope, do it. Don’t be weak about this, too, the voices screamed. A sip of Pellegrino and they can all disappear. You can, too.
She closed her eyes and felt momentarily calm, the first peace she had experienced in days. She tried to remember the sensation of overwhelming excitement she’d had when Jack had invited her on their first official date. Dinner at 7 Central. In the smoky, informal pub filled with underage drinkers—girls in flower-print summer dresses and Jack Rogers woven sandals, boys in black T-shirts with pictures of the Grateful Dead and Aerosmith on them—they’d talked until closing time, drunk Sam Adams straight from the bottle, and shared their visions of a future, Jack’s dream of an Olympic polo team. There had been an ease born of years of friendship, a safety in their intimacy. That had been the best summer. Walks along Singing Beach hand in hand, rainy days in Rockport exploring the twists and turns of little shops along the waterfront, the blistering hot afternoons spent in Jack’s air-conditioned library drinking vanilla frappés and watching Family Feud.
She felt a tear roll down her cheek and realized she simply couldn’t muster the vi
sion or energy to imagine such pleasure now. Her future promised no such delights. She’d tried as hard as she could. It felt as if she’d been trying to claw and scrape her way out of an abyss of anger and distrust, and then, just as the edge seemed within reach, she’d slipped and fallen back. She knew she would never get as close again.
She shut her diary and hugged it close to her chest. She felt the pills on her tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth. Just then, the doorknob turned. The noise startled her. “Hope,” a familiar voice called. “Hope, open the door. It’s me.”
Wait, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t speak. She spat the pills into the palm of her hand and then transferred them to a tissue, which she tucked into a corner of the dresser. Saved for later. There was still time.
Although she knew she shouldn’t, she found herself unlocking the latch.
11
Organ music filled the Church of the Holy Spirit, a celebratory prelude before the “Wedding March” began. The late afternoon sun lit the stained-glass windows, sending an array of reflected color onto the white walls. Bouquets of pink roses and clusters of blue hydrangea tied with oversize tulle bows decorated each pew. On either end of the altar, white candles burned next to floral arrangements that exploded from silver urns.
Frances sat in the third row next to Sam. An usher in a morning suit with gray satin lapels had escorted her to their place on the bride’s side of the aisle. Although Frances was surprised to be seated so close to the front, she realized that the Lawrence-Pratt family was small, and its present contingent was even smaller. Teddy sat in the front row, wearing a bowl-shaped pale blue hat and matching knit suit with four separate strands of pink-hued pearls dangling around her neck. Aside from her, Adelaide’s only other relative was Frances. Bill Lawrence had two siblings, but his sister had died several years earlier of lung cancer. The remaining brother, Stephen, and his wife, Maggie, occupied the second row. At the Cabots’ party the night before, they’d boasted in hyperbolic prose to whoever would listen about how their sons’ accomplishments kept them from the wedding. One was a decorated pilot in the navy and couldn’t obtain leave because his reconnaissance missions were crucial to United States security; the other, a graduate of Columbia Business School, worked for an investment bank in Hong Kong. Pressing financial decisions with tremendous impact on world currency markets kept him away. “Hope and Jack surely must understand that,” Maggie had said without a hint of apology. The small contingent of relatives didn’t translate into an intimate gathering, however. Several hundred friends, out-of-town guests, and business colleagues filled the pews to witness the celebration.