Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  The doctor motioned Luke down a long corridor. Peggy followed; Luke was her only link to the outside world. After a few steps, the doctor said, “Luke Sedgwick, right? Tim Stancil. Your parents were on my paper route. How are they?”

  “Dead. How’s my great-aunt?”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “Thanks. How’s my great-aunt?”

  Dr. Stancil didn’t appear affected by Luke’s unfriendliness. “We’ll need to do a few follow-ups to be sure, but the neurologist will fill you in.” They had arrived at the room. Luke’s great-aunt lay asleep in bed, her legs two sticks under the thin blanket. An IV protruded from a knotty blue vein in one crooked hand.

  A doctor with ballpoint-pen marks on the pocket of his white coat stepped forward. “Your grandmother has had a transient ischemic attack, a brief cessation in blood flow to a region of the brain.”

  Peggy had half a mind to explain that Miss Abigail wasn’t Luke’s grandmother and to ask the neurologist to please speak in English.

  “A stroke?” Luke asked.

  “A sort of practice stroke, if you’ll pardon the expression. TIA presents with strokelike symptoms—vertigo, partial numbness, weakness, and so on—but the symptoms resolve within minutes. In a real stroke, the effects can be permanent.”

  Abigail’s eyes snapped open, alert in her thin, wizened face. “I’m fine. It was the shock. Nothing more.”

  Luke knelt beside her. “How are you?” He spoke softly, holding his palm against her forehead as if she were an ill child. “Are you dizzy, or numb?”

  “I’m ready to go home.” Miss Abigail’s voice was reedy but firm. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me so I may get dressed…”

  The neurologist said to Luke, “We’ll need to keep her for a day or two. We consider TIA a warning signal. About a third of patients who’ve had one will eventually have a larger stroke.”

  “How eventually?”

  “It might be days or months, but likely within a year. She’ll need to curtail any strenuous activities that might put stress on her heart—stair climbing, lifting heavy objects, and so forth.”

  Miss Abigail was annoyed, Peggy could tell, that the doctor was talking not to her, but to Luke. The old woman addressed the neurologist: “I’d like to speak with my nephew in private.”

  When the doctors moved on, Miss Abigail pressed a button to raise herself to a sitting position. “Pull the curtain.”

  “I’ll wait in the hall.” Peggy started to leave.

  Miss Abigail rattled her IV. “Nonsense. Luke, pull the curtain, please”

  Luke drew the privacy curtain, enclosing the three of them in a bubble of turquoise vinyl.

  “When did you two get married?” Miss Abigail said.

  “Last week,” Luke mumbled.

  Peggy waited for him to add an explanation. “It was kind of a whirlwind courtship,” she said, when it became clear he didn’t plan on volunteering anything else. “You know how that is. You get caught up in the moment and all of a sudden you’re married.” She tittered agitatedly.

  Miss Abigail looked Peggy up and down.

  Peggy’s mind raced, anticipating the barrage of questions to which, she knew, her own parents would subject her. No one said a word. Rattled, she blurted, “It was love at first sight. Like in the movies? We saw each other across a crowded room, our eyes locked, and we knew.” Blushing at the lie, she looked over at Luke, signaling that it was now time for him to flesh out the story, but he appeared absorbed by an invisible spot on the hospital floor.

  Miss Abigail cleared her throat. “I see.”

  Peggy waited; now the questions would begin. When they didn’t, she continued, desperate to fill the silence, “So I guess, then, you might be wondering why we’re getting an annulment. I mean, I’d wonder, if I were you.” She glanced again at Luke, but his impassive expression made it clear she was on her own. “All right,” she stammered. “I think the easiest way to explain it is to say that sometimes, what seems right in a romantic moment doesn’t pan out in the cold light of day.” She was blathering, mixing metaphors. “I mean, as one example, there’s the simple matter of where we would live. I have a small business in New York I can’t possibly leave behind. And Luke, well, he simply adores Connecticut—” She stopped, distracted by a barely detectable flash of alarm on Luke’s face. “S-so, you see,” she concluded, “for this and many other reasons we think it best to go our separate ways.”

  Miss Abigail stayed silent for a moment, and then said, “You heard the doctor. I don’t have a lot of time left.”

  “You don’t know that,” Luke interjected. “It’s only a third of patients—”

  “Don’t give me that claptrap, young man. I’m ninety-one years old. I’ve lived a long life with no regrets. Until this morning. Now I must go to my grave knowing I let the last living Sedgwick get divorced.”

  “It’s an annulment.” There was nothing in Luke’s voice to indicate he was upset, but his hands were in fists again.

  Peggy squirmed. “I’m happy to wait in the hall now, really.”

  The elderly woman fixed her with the most piercing look Peggy had ever witnessed; the fact that Miss Abigail had started to cough violently only made its immobilizing power more impressive. Luke offered his great-aunt a cup of water from the bedside carafe, but she snubbed him. “This concerns you, too, young lady,” she said when the coughing had subsided. “Luke, you’ve been after me for years to sell my home. I’ve been after you for years to find a suitable wife. Now you’ve got one, a descendant of a fine old family.”

  “Actually, I’m not related to—”

  The rest of Peggy’s response was lost in a fresh round of coughing from Miss Abigail. The poor woman didn’t sound good. Did these doctors know what they were doing? The caliber of medical talent here couldn’t be what it was in Manhattan. On the monitors behind the bed, lines of light traveled steadily up and down, up and down.

  “You have a wife. I’d like you to keep her.” Miss Abigail had again recovered. “I’m offering you two the house. Stay married, and I’ll sign it over to you both. You’ll of course move in right away, Peggy, and then the two of you may take control of the house after a year, assuming I don’t die first.”

  “Abby, you’re not going to die. And I have no interest in that house. I’ve said so a hundred times.”

  “Yes, but this time I’ve made a decision. When I deed it to you, you may sell it, if you must, and move me into one of those infernal rest homes. The balance of the money would go to the two of you, naturally.” She eyed Peggy. “May I presume you’ve seen my charming home?”

  Peggy said nothing.

  Miss Abigail clucked her tongue. “What has happened to your manners, Luke?”

  “Sell the house? What happened to ‘Only Sedgwicks shall live under the Sedwick roof’?”

  “I’ve changed my mind. As I’m certain you and Peggy will once she’s moved in.”

  “Abby, this is absurd. Neither of us wants to stay married. I’m sure Peggy will back me up.”

  Lowell Mayhew’s pink face appeared around the curtain. “Miss Abigail? Pardon the intrusion. I came to check on you. You gave us quite a scare.”

  “It’s no intrusion, Lowie, I’m fine. Come in.” Miss Abigail pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I’d like to change my will.”

  Mayhew raised a bushy eyebrow at Luke and asked in a low voice, “Did you talk to her?” Luke shook his head.

  If Miss Abigail had overheard, she didn’t let on. “Luke? Peggy? Do we have an understanding?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Luke declared. “Peggy?”

  The monitor light made its endless hills and valleys. Hills and valleys. Hills and valleys. Peggy felt hypnotized. Bex will be in the hospital eventually, she thought, out of nowhere. If the fertility treatments work, I’ll be visiting her in the maternity ward. She wouldn’t acknowledge her next thought: Unless something goes wrong.

  “Peggy?”

  “Right, yes,” Pe
ggy said. “I’m sorry, Miss Abigail. I agree with Luke.”

  Peggy was so glad Mayhew had offered to drive her back to New Nineveh, she barely worried whether he might be a serial killer disguised as a kindly country lawyer. She was so happy to be in her rented Chevy—which hadn’t been broken into after all—she forgot to fret about skidding in a residual puddle and flying off the interstate into a ditch. The rain had ended, and as she drove out of town, she sang aloud to the radio.

  But by the time she’d gone thirty miles, she was again apprehensive over whether Luke’s batty great-aunt would really be okay. That fall onto Mayhew’s floor had looked serious, and she had to have been delirious in the hospital, making that offer. Did the old lady really think she could keep two people together by dangling some quaint country cottage in front of them like a carrot on a stick?

  “I’m Crazy Carl Kirkendall, Connecticut’s Carpet King. And if you need floor covering, we’ll treat you like royalty!” a man shouted out of the radio. Peggy shut it off so she could think.

  Maybe it’s not a cottage. The Sedgwicks were the oldest family in New Nineveh, Miss Abigail had said. Families like that had money. And cottages didn’t have names like the Silas Sedgwick House.

  New Nineveh certainly had its share of mammoth old homes—the kind New Yorkers called “antiques,” spent a fortune on, and used as weekend places. If Miss Abigail’s house was one of the fancy ones, it might fetch two, or three, or four million dollars—half of which, after she’d split the proceeds with Luke, would handily cover the increased rent on the shop. What if the house was worth five, eight, ten million? She and Bex could hire more sales help, redecorate, open a second store on the East Side or downtown. They could get better medical insurance that would cover Bex’s fertility treatments and some sorely needed therapy for Peggy.

  It was outrageous. Why was she thinking this way? She turned the radio back on and forced herself to sing along until she crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge into Manhattan and the thoughts of easy money crept back in. Stop it, Peggy. She couldn’t imagine what, even drunk, she had seen in Luke Sedgwick. He wasn’t her type. Brock was a confident man’s man, not some sullen or unkempt preppy. She shelved her twisted fantasy, thankful she’d have to see Luke only once more—in court in about three months for a final hearing on the annulment. The idea of this whole mess being over by December or January pleased her to the point that, she thought, pulling into the car rental place, settling the bill, and walking down Broadway toward home, she might just confess her mistake to Brock tonight and get it over with. It was six-thirty; Brock would be back from the gym. She could cook him dinner and break it to him gently.

  Brock was in their bedroom, packing. “Last-minute gig,” he greeted her, putting a rolled-up T-shirt into his travel duffel. “A guy in L.A. needs some fast B-roll for a surf documentary. Going to JFK ASAP.”

  The barrage of abbreviations hurt Peggy’s brain. “But you don’t shoot surfing footage.”

  “Ha! I do now.” Brock pumped his fist in the air victoriously.

  Peggy crossed her arms over her chest. “But I was going to make chicken piccata.” Beautiful. Now you’re a whiny housewife. In every way but the “wife” part. How was it a stranger could marry her after a few hours when her own boyfriend couldn’t make up his mind after nearly a decade? Against her better judgment, she muttered, “I don’t understand why we can’t just get engaged.”

  “Hey.” Brock play-punched her on the shoulder. “Hang in there.” He added a pair of swim trunks to his duffel. “You know I don’t want to end up having a midlife crisis and trading you in for a newer model.”

  “Then don’t. You’re not your father.” How many times had she heard this excuse?

  “Plus,” Brock said, “there’s the money thing.”

  This was new. Brock wasn’t one to lie awake at night mentally counting pennies. “Money thing?”

  “Weddings are expensive, Pegs. And you know I want the best for us. Why do you think I’m working like a dog?”

  It was the first time Brock had mentioned an actual, concrete wedding.

  She wanted to be sure she’d heard him correctly. “You’re working this hard to pay for our wedding?” she repeated, trying to contain her hope and excitement.

  “Sure.” Brock hoisted the duffel onto his shoulder and started toward the apartment door. “I’ll be in California till Thursday, and then to Denver for the Broncs game. See you in a week.”

  And that’s when she knew what she was going to do.

  Peggy threw her arms around Brock’s neck and kissed him.

  “What was that for?” Brock staggered backward, clearly as surprised as she was at her enthusiastic good-bye.

  She hugged him as hard as she could. “You don’t have to worry. Go on your trip. I’ll take care of everything. And wear sunscreen!” she added, unable to resist, as he disappeared into the elevator.

  “I still don’t get why you couldn’t come to SoNo tonight. I hate this house. Your great-aunt looks at me like I’m some dead thing the cat brought in.”

  “Abby’s in the hospital.” Luke preferred the privacy of Nicole’s place in South Norwalk as well. On the rare occasions she did visit the Sedgwick House, he tended, ungentlemanly as it was, to usher her quickly up to his bedroom. Tonight’s conversation would take place in a more decorous location. Luke could have done without the painted Sedgwick ancestors judging him from the den walls, but the den still beat the library, which was presided over by a life-size portrait of Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick that never failed to look disapproving. “Nicki, I need to talk to you.”

  That got Nicole’s attention. There was very little serious discussion in their relationship, exactly how they both liked it.

  “If you truly want to get back together, there’s something you should know.”

  Luke chose his words carefully as he told Nicki of his mistake in Las Vegas. He didn’t have the energy for an argument, and Nicole was mythic when she was angry. Years ago, early in their relationship, Luke would get distracted by the way her green eyes seemed to darken into black and her fiery hair flashed around her face like a modern-day Medusa. He’d quickly learned to keep her away from any object she might hurl at his head.

  Instead of raging at him, she stood, stretched, jutting her hipbones forward, and rearranged herself on her chair: legs extended, back slightly arched. “So you’re getting it annulled for sure?”

  That Nicki’s pose was utterly calculated made it no less mesmerizing. A rush of heat came into Luke’s groin. “It’s as good as over already.”

  The phone—fifty years old if it was a day—rang. “The hospital,” Luke said apologetically, and reached over to answer it.

  “It’s Peggy,” said the voice on the end of the line. “Peggy Adams. I called information for your number.”

  Nicki yawned and got back up. “What’s there to eat?” She headed out, Luke assumed, to the kitchen.

  “This isn’t a good time,” he told Peggy. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Actually,” she said, “I have a way you and I can help each other.”

  FOUR

  Fall Color, October

  Peggy’s acupuncturist, Jonah, thought she was in denial. Peggy knew because he had asked, in a studiously detached way, “Is it possible you might be in denial?”

  “If anything, I’m taking charge of my own destiny.” Peggy grimaced as Jonah slid a needle into her wrist. The needles were the width of hairs; she could hardly feel them, but the idea of them bothered her. Nor was she sure how much the acupuncture was helping. She felt calmer and more grounded this week, having made her deal with Luke, than she had after three months of Jonah’s needles and herbs.

  Jon-Keith, Peggy’s colorist, went bug-eyed when she told him. “You’re doing this behind Brock’s back?” He had a bandanna tied around his head, and diamond earrings, and he resembled a pirate who’d wandered into midtown. “Won’t he notice you’ve moved to Connecticut? And while you
’re gone, who’ll mind the store?”

  Peggy spoke to his reflection in the salon mirror. “Here’s what’s so brilliant. I won’t be moving to Connecticut. Luke’s great-aunt wanted me to, but I told her I couldn’t give up the shop completely, at least not right way. So we compromised. I’ll live in the city during the week as usual. Then on weekends, when Brock is working anyway, I’ll go to New Nineveh and pretend to be happily married to Luke. Brock won’t have any idea. In one year I’ll be able to shore up my business, with plenty of money left over for a big wedding. Then Bex won’t have to worry about money, and Brock won’t have to worry about proposing.” She’d say the money was an inheritance from a long-lost relative. It was the only shaky part of the plan. Given her family’s utter lack of wealth, she couldn’t imagine anybody believing that some fourth cousin twice removed had left her a truckload of cash. But Brock wasn’t one to get bogged down in details. With luck, he’d be too thrilled to ask questions.

  “Oh, okay.” Jon-Keith began to section off Peggy’s hair with plastic clips. “So you’ll spend a year screwing this Luke What-You-Said-His-Name-Is, and then marry Brock. Dare you wear white?”

  “It isn’t like that.” The arrangement she’d worked out with Luke was all business. With Luke’s great-aunt restricted from stair climbing except to get to her own second-floor bedchamber, Peggy would have a private room on the third floor, entirely separate from Luke’s, and Miss Abigail would be none the wiser. There would be no sleeping together. That was a given. Peggy knew Luke Sedgwick had no more interest in her than she had in him. Once he’d finally agreed to her terms, he’d done so emotionlessly.

  “Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t,” Peggy explained to Jon-Keith. “Otherwise we can’t get an annulment when it’s all over.”

  Nor was Bex as enthusiastic over Peggy’s save-the-store scheme as Peggy would have liked.