Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  Peggy groaned. “They won’t be able to get over the house, and how big it is. Then Miss Abigail will start asking about their connection to the New Nineveh Adamses, and they won’t have the faintest idea what she’s talking about, and our story will be blown to bits.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Peggy opened the supply closet and peeked out. She had little choice but to trust Luke to take care of things. “Okay, honey. Thanks.”

  “Honey?”

  “I meant okay, thanks.” She hung up and emerged red-faced from the closet. Honey. She’d gotten mixed up and thought she was talking to Brock. Juggling two relationships was not proving easy. Once she’d nearly called Brock “Luke,” and last Friday night she’d walked halfway to the car rental place before realizing she had slipped on not her phony wedding ring from Luke, but the real engagement ring from Brock, which she kept stashed in her jewelry box alongside the Connecticut decoy. She’d had to go back and switch them. Making matters much worse, she hadn’t found a way to tell Bex and Josh about her betrothal. She wore Brock’s ring only on their dates one or two nights a week—evenings Peggy let Bex assume she was having dinner with Jeremy.

  Peggy would have insisted, had anyone asked, that she was keeping her engagement secret for her friend’s sake, that Bex was in no state to handle the shock. Bex was constantly nauseated—a good sign, Bex said; it meant her hormone levels were good and strong. “I might be carrying more than one,” Bex had confided the night before. “You should come with us to the six-week ultrasound and see…oops…wait…hold on…” She clapped her hand over her mouth and rushed from the room.

  But it wasn’t Bex’s delicate condition that was keeping Peggy from sharing her own good news. She just wasn’t ready to hear her friend’s well-argued reasons why Peggy was making the biggest mistake of her life. Which I’m not, Peggy told herself, taking Padma’s place at the register. Brock had been nothing but accommodating. Over sushi the night after the proposal, he’d suggested she move back into their apartment, and Peggy had put him off.

  “I’ve been thinking we shouldn’t sleep together until we’re married,” she had interrupted before he could finish. She had already decided not to tell Brock about Luke. What was the point? Brock would be hurt and wouldn’t—couldn’t—understand, and since he was gone weekends anyway, and working as usual over Christmas, he didn’t need to know. But Peggy couldn’t be sleeping with one man while she was married to another. She had to have some integrity.

  Brock had been speechless through a mouthful of hamachimaki.

  “It will seem more special that way,” she’d continued.

  “Then can we at least get married in January? You never did give me an answer.”

  Anxiety squeezed her temples. “I promise, we’ll set a date soon.”

  But “soon” still hadn’t arrived, and Peggy’s troubles weighed on her as Christmas grew closer. In just twenty-four hours, she and Luke would have to act out their charade at Christmas Eve dinner. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep it up before it all folded under her like a Sedgwick House of cards.

  Again, Luke was struck by how exponentially big his life had become in such a small amount of time.

  Last year, still living in his apartment in Hartford, he’d barely noticed the holidays. He’d spent Christmas Eve with Nicki at her place and driven to New Nineveh Christmas Day for a quiet dinner with Abby. Now here he was in the Sedgwick dining room with a tableful of people he’d only just met. To his right, Madeleine—he couldn’t bring himself to call her “Mom”—was describing life on the road to Peggy’s friend Josh, while Bex poked cheerfully at the takeout Indian dinner Peggy had brought from the city and chatted with Peggy’s dad. The only two who didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves were Abigail, who was fanning herself and taking liberal gulps of water between polite tastes of lamb curry, and Peggy, seated across from him with a pained expression as her father rose from the table, his dinner napkin slipping to the floor from the lap of his denim shorts.

  Max tapped his lowball with his butter knife. Luke noted with amusement that Peggy’s father, who’d arrived asking for a wine spritzer, had adapted quickly to Abigail’s limited choice of Yankee beverages: tonic water, Harvey’s Bristol Cream, gin, and Scotch. He’d stopped seeming cowed by the house. It was as if he’d been in this world all his life. Next thing you know, Luke thought, he’ll be collecting duck decoys and playing bridge.

  “A toast to Peggy and Luke,” Max announced, “and the merging of the great Sedgwick and Adams names.…”

  Peggy glanced at Luke. He shook his head as imperceptibly as he could and still get the visual message across: Don’t worry. Peggy’s concerns that her parents would ruin their story had, so far, been unfounded. Since the Adamses’ arrival, Luke had managed to steer the discourse elsewhere whenever it began to turn—usually through Abby’s prompting—to matters of heritage. Just this afternoon, when Abby had suggested driving past the former Adams mansion on Church Street and then visiting the Adams family plot at New Nineveh Cemetery, Luke had jumped in asking for a tour of the Fifth Wheel—RV slang, he’d learned, for a towed trailer—and Max had proudly obliged, showing off its compact kitchen, living area, and full-size bed. Luke had been intrigued. Maybe this was what he would do when he was rid of the Sedgwick House—take to the open road.

  When they’d emerged, Ernestine Riga had been passing on the sidewalk. “How was your lunch?” she’d asked Luke.

  “Lunch?” he’d repeated.

  “At the Colonial Inn. Peggy didn’t tell you I saw her there?”

  He’d kept his cool. “Lunch was great, thanks.” He’d introduced Ernestine to Max and Madeleine, and Ernestine had eyed them with inordinate interest until he was able to herd them safely back into the house, swallowing his jealousy and shock. So Peggy had wanted a weekend off to spend it with another man at their theoretical honeymoon spot. It had taken every shred of his self-control to push the thought from his mind. He did so again now.

  Max had finished with his toast. “Mazel tov!” He polished off his Scotch.

  Abby craned her neck toward Luke. “What did he say?”

  Peggy coughed forcefully. Her mother jumped up from her chair and ran around to thump on her shoulder blades. “Are you choking? Are you all right?”

  “Fine!” Peggy gasped, and Luke could tell she hadn’t been choking at all—just trying to distract all assembled from the fact that her father had said “mazel tov.”

  Max raised his glass again. “Whoops, I forgot. May they be fruitful and multiply!”

  “Hear, hear!” Madeleine sat back down at her place.

  “And soon!” Abby added. Everyone looked at Bex and Josh as if waiting for them to agree.

  “Oh!” Bex said hurriedly. “Hear, hear.”

  “And what about you two? You’ve been married how many years?” Max asked Josh.

  “Please pass the naan,” Peggy said.

  Madeleine passed her the dish. “Really, Peggy, you’re not getting any younger. If you two start trying now, it could be a year or more before anything happens. Before getting pregnant with you, I had a terrible miscarriage—”

  “Mom, I know!” Peggy barked, and glanced quickly at Bex, who seemed to be keeping her condition secret.

  “Want some curry, honey?” Max offered a forkful off his plate to Bex, who turned green and ran out of the room.

  Everyone stared at her empty chair.

  “She’s fine,” Josh assured them. “It’s nothing.”

  Max put the forkful of curry into his mouth. “You’ll have to move to New Nineveh full-time first, Peggy,” he continued. “It’s hard to make babies when you’re a hundred miles apart!”

  “Please pass the samosas,” Peggy said loudly.

  “When are you moving up here, dear?” Miss Abigail was more energized than Luke had seen her all day. And no wonder: The Adamses were posing the tough questions Abby couldn’t ask on her own. “The town is starting to talk. T
he Reverend Matthews asked for you at church on Sunday.”

  “Church?” Max Adams repeated.

  “And in the Grocery,” Abigail went on, “Emily Hinkley wanted to know why she doesn’t see you around town more often.”

  “Peggy, Luke, listen to Abigail.” Madeleine Adams contributed her two cents as Bex came back in and took her seat. “It’s not healthy for a couple to live apart. Is it, Bex?”

  Peggy put her head in her hands. Luke, remembering that Josh and Bex maintained separate apartments, longed to laugh but refrained.

  Madeleine didn’t wait for Bex’s response. “The closer together you live, the better. Look at your father and me. We’re practically living on top of each other and our love life has never been more satisfying!”

  Don’t think about it.

  Peggy was having an impossible time following her own advice. No matter how hard she tried, she lay in bed, unable to erase the evening from her mind. Could it have gone any worse? Okay, it could have gone worse. Her father could have worn white shorts, for example, a no-no after Labor Day. Her mother could have insisted on recounting each harrowing detail of the miscarriage story, reducing Bex to tears. Miss Abigail could have choked on her aloo gobi. Everyone at the table could have uncovered her and Luke’s lie—

  There was the ghost again. The Thing. She could hear it rustling.

  Don’t think about it.

  It could be worse. She could have twenty more months of this to endure, instead of just nine. Yet how much lower could she sink than she had tonight, lying so outrageously to her parents? When Bex and Josh had left for the city, whispering to Peggy how amazing the house was, and Peggy had announced she was going to bed, Luke had said, “Think I’ll turn in, too,” and they’d made a big show of going upstairs together just like a real married couple, only to separate on the third-floor landing. Peggy had opened her bedroom door to discover that all her belongings had vanished. She’d padded indignantly to Luke’s study, where he’d explained that he had hidden her things so it wouldn’t appear as if they were sleeping in separate bedrooms. “In case your parents decide to go exploring on our floor,” he’d said. And Peggy had thought, This is what it’s come to. The Christmas she’d never had but had always dreamed of, a holiday with family and friends all gathered around a table, and it was nothing but an illusion.

  Rustle, rustle, whisper. The ghost noises erupted full force.

  Peggy tried to calm herself. It could be worse. So the Thing was more active than usual. If it had wanted to make contact with her, wouldn’t it have done so by now?

  An unearthly yowl erupted from the blackness. And then—thud! The Thing landed on her feet.

  Peggy screamed. She leaped off her bed and flung herself in the direction of the door. When she made contact with the doorknob, she threw open the door and shrieked again. It filled the house, rolled down the dark, empty third-floor hallway, frightening her more, until suddenly she was almost at Luke’s door and lights were blazing and Luke was running toward her.

  “Ghost!” She could barely get the word out. “Ghost!”

  Peggy’s mother appeared at the top of the shuddering back stairs. “What is it? Peggy, are you all right? Did you say ghost?”

  Through her panic, Peggy realized with dismay that her own hysteria-tinged voice sounded nearly identical to her mother’s. And that her father, right behind her mother, was wearing an undershirt and boxer shorts. What was wrong with her parents? Why couldn’t they be dignified?

  The staircase rattled again, and Miss Abigail came into view. “What on earth is going on?”

  “You aren’t supposed to be climbing stairs!” Luke scolded.

  Peggy told her, “There’s a Thing in my room!”

  “Our room,” Luke said warningly.

  Peggy held her breath. Had anyone noticed?

  It appeared they hadn’t. “Is this house haunted?” Madeleine was demanding.

  Miss Abigail blinked. “Of course it’s haunted.”

  “Everyone calm down,” said Luke, who, like his great-aunt, Peggy noted, was appropriately attired in a robe. “Peggy, what thing?” But as Luke was asking, the Thing itself streaked past them and down the stairs into the chasm of the house below. A cat. A cat with a small, furry object in its mouth.

  Peggy screamed again.

  “Get hold of yourself, dear,” Abby said. “It’s only Quibble, with a mouse.”

  Peggy shuddered at the thought of the limp, gray thing in Quibble’s mouth. There were mice in her room? Mice—their revolting pink feet scrabbling across her pillow, their disgusting tails…

  Two patches of black appeared before Peggy’s eyes. They doubled, then redoubled, until her field of vision was riddled with blackness. She rubbed her eyes, swayed a little on her feet…heard her mother, from far away, suck in her breath…

  Luke grabbed her shoulders. She rested her head against his chest. Nice. She closed her eyes. Strong. Safe.

  “What’s the matter, Peggy? Talk to me!” Her mother rushed over, but Luke held on to her.

  “She needs to lie down.”

  Luke was right. She needed to lie down. She forced her eyelids apart, stood up straight, and shuffled back in the direction she’d come, toward her room.

  “This way.” Luke put his hands on her waist and turned her to face his room.

  “Yes. Right.” She wasn’t as faint, but she was all too aware of Luke’s touch.

  “Why don’t you go back to bed,” Luke told her parents and his great-aunt: a command, not a request. “I’ll take care of her from here.”

  And with her parents and Miss Abigail watching, Peggy allowed Luke to steer her into his bedroom. He closed the door behind them and patted the foot of his rumpled bed. “Rest here a bit. Get your bearings back. You’ll be all right.”

  She did, jarred by the sight of her belongings, the candle she’d brought from the shop, her snapshots of Bex and Josh, in Luke’s otherwise unadorned chamber. He must have caught her looking, because he shrugged. “I know. It’s like a hotel in here.”

  “Why don’t you have any mementos or photos?” Like that one I saw of your girlfriend in your study.

  “I don’t plan to stay here long.” He touched her forehead. “You looked about to pass out back there.”

  She moved away from his touch. She was a taken woman. “I’m fine.”

  “Spoken like a Sedgwick.” He opened the door an inch and peeked out. “Coast is clear if you want to go back to your room now. Don’t worry. You scared a couple of lives out of the cat. I doubt he’ll be back in there for a while.”

  Peggy stood up slowly and left, closing Luke’s door behind her. She was halfway down the hall when she hesitated, turned back toward Luke’s room, turned back again toward her room, and then made a decision and knocked softly on Luke’s door.

  It opened instantaneously, as if he’d been waiting for her.

  “I can’t sleep in my room.”

  “Why not?”

  “I, uh…” He was gorgeous. Really. Tall and lean and gorgeous. How had she been able to resist him all this time? “Uh…”

  He had his glasses in one hand and was polishing them idly on his pajama top. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Mice in there,” she finished inarticulately.

  “I’d say it’s safe to assume, at least for tonight, that your room is mouse-free.”

  Few men could pull off plaid flannel pajamas. Luke Sedgwick not only could, he was positively sexy in them, with his sleep-tossed hair, squinting at her knowingly without the glasses, as if he could see straight into her soul…and it hit her.

  She was wearing thermal underwear.

  And nothing but. Long johns and a matching top printed with a ditsy floral pattern and cut close to the body—for warmth without bulk, according to the aged Toggery sales-woman. They clung to every curve, bump, and bulge, leaving nothing to the imagination.

  Luke slipped his glasses back on.

  Peggy dove into his bed, yanking the cov
ers up to her neck.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like I just jumped into your bed. Which is not what I did. Well, it’s what I did, but not for the reasons you might think.” Peggy, please, shut up. She began again. “I’m not properly dressed. If you wouldn’t mind loaning me your robe, I’ll be on my way. Just don’t look.”

  “I pretty much saw. In the hall. My eyes aren’t that bad.”

  Don’t think about it. “A robe, please.”

  His robe was camel colored, like the coats in the window of the Toggery. He held it out to her and averted his eyes, and she slithered out of his bed and into the garment, which enveloped her in Luke’s clean, manly smell.

  She was as light-headed as she had been in the hallway, only this time it had nothing to do with panic or anxiety and everything to do with this feeling of being in Luke’s bedroom, in his bathrobe. She cinched the belt tightly around her waist. “I’ll return it tomorrow morning.” She started again for the door.

  “Wait.” He removed a wrapped present from the closet. “It’s past midnight. Christmas Day. You can open it.”

  Peggy was touched and ashamed. She’d blown most of her holiday budget on an overpriced rolling suitcase for Brock, leaving little left over. She’d found items from the shop for her parents and the Ver Plancks. But she’d hesitated over Luke—what did one give a husband of convenience? In the end, she’d bought a joint gift for him and Miss Abigail. Now she wished she’d tried harder.

  “All I got you was a cookie basket,” she admitted.

  “That’s fine.” Luke sat on the bed. “Go ahead, open it. It won’t bite you.”

  She sat, too, and tore away the wrapping paper to reveal a book: William Butler Yeats: Early Poems, its cover faded, its pages yellowed, a leather bookmark marking the poem “When You Are Old.”

  “It’s the book I read from at the party,” Luke said. “I thought you should have it. To make up for my behavior the rest of that evening. It belonged to my aunt Beatrice. We called her Beebee.”