On a Friday in mid-February, he stepped out for a rare excursion to the post office. To his astonishment, the cold had disappeared. It was unseasonably, unreasonably warm. On the town green, the picketers were back, protesting in shirt-sleeves. A few birds chirped, as if it were spring. When Luke stepped up to the post office counter—refusing to capitulate to the dishonest weather, steadfastly wrapped in hat, gloves, and scarf—Jeff, the postmaster, crowed, “Nice day, huh?”
Sure—for May, Luke wanted to say.
“And I’m sure that’ll all blow over soon.” Jeff pointed in the direction of the green.
Luke nodded, not knowing what the postmaster was referring to.
“How’s Peggy?” Jeff set Luke’s roll of stamps on the counter. “I see her in church but not during the week. You keep her locked up in the house?” He chuckled, a big, hearty rumble that shook his burly chest. “Great girl, Peggy. But you knew that.”
“I did. Do,” Luke corrected himself.
Back on the green, he stood in the sun, sweating in his February clothing, idly watching the demonstrators. Norma Garrison and her husband, Mike, had moved to New Nineveh from New York after the terrorist attacks, seeking a safer life. They held “Protect Our Town” signs. The woman in the black cowboy boots was a writer, originally from Los Angeles, Luke thought. She held up a copy of the Litchfield County Times. And the owner of the Cheese Shoppe had an octagonal-shaped sign. When she marched back around so that the sign faced Luke, he almost exclaimed out loud. There, in five-inch-high white letters on a red background, was “STOP the Sedgwicks.”
At home, Abigail was having tea with Annette Fiorentino. “… hasn’t snowed all winter, and now this, and I don’t like it one bit,” his great-aunt was saying. “It’s unnatural.”
“I agree. How some people still doubt global warming is beyond me.” Annette looked up. “Luke, what’s the matter?”
Moments later, Luke and Annette were on Charity’s Porch.
“I had no idea they were out there.” Annette put her hands in the pockets of her faded jeans. “I guess they got excited, what with the warm day today and the article in the paper.”
A spider was spinning its web in the corner of the screened-in porch. It was a futile exercise; the spider would die out here when the cold returned. “What article?”
“You didn’t see the County Times?”
Luke hadn’t. He rushed into the kitchen. The local weekly, which always arrived on Friday, lay unopened on the drain-board, with his own name looking up at him: Sedgwick Leases Land to Budget Club.
Luke had spent his whole life listening to his family tell him the only three times it was accceptable to have one’s name in print were at birth, at marriage, and at death. He picked up the paper and read standing up:
NEW NINEVEH—Four decades ago, plagued with financial woes and facing bankruptcy, William Elias “Bink” Sedgwick sold off all but 20 acres of his venerable family’s real estate holdings, a stretch of farmland a mile west of the town green. Now, pending almost certain approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission, the remaining Sedgwick acreage will become home to a new superstore. Luke Silas Sedgwick IV has agreed to lease the land for 99 years to Budget Club, International…
If all the flues hadn’t been sealed, Luke would have started a fire with this article, to ensure neither Peggy nor, worse, Abigail happened upon it. He made do with tearing the entire front page into confetti-size bits. He asked Annette, “Has Abby seen this? Does she know I’ve made this deal?”
“You haven’t told her?”
“Did you say anything?” Luke persisted, and when it became clear Annette hadn’t, he let himself relax slightly. “You have to stop the picketers,” he told her.
“I’ll go down there right away. How long do you need to break the news to your great-aunt? I’m sure they’ll stop for a week or two.”
“A week or two? I need you not to picket at all! You know me, Annette. Those people know me. I’m not some evil force out to destroy New Nineveh.”
Annette touched his shoulder. “But that’s what most of us think will happen if you put a Budget Club on your land.”
“Luke? Annette?” It was Abby, wondering where they were. Luke threw the torn newspaper into the garbage. “So you’re going to keep picketing?”
“I’m sorry, Luke. I can’t censor them. Please understand it’s nothing personal. I hope we can still be good neighbors.”
Luke nodded. In a small town like this, there was no sense in starting a feud.
“Oh, it’s just…” Sharon Clovis leaned against a column for support and groped for the word.
“Spectacular.” The saleswoman patted Sharon on the arm. “Now, don’t cry. Watch the mascara.”
Sharon blinked and smoothed her gold-buttoned knit jacket. Peggy was fascinated. She’d not realized how skinny Brock’s stepmother’s neck was. Sharon had the skinniest neck she had ever seen.
Peggy stood at the three-way mirror, unsure of what to do with her hands. Clasping them together, prayerlike, seemed wrong, as did crossing them over her chest. They dangled at her sides as if unconnected to the rest of her. Outside the reflected floor-to-ceiling windows, multitudes of New Yorkers shoved past one another in their rush to enjoy the nineteen-degrees-warmer-than-average Friday afternoon. Peggy seemed to be the only person in the world unsettled by the temperature.
The saleswoman joined Peggy on her gray-carpeted pedestal. “The fabric is exquisite. Eighteen yards of silk peau de soie, imported from France, not China, and light as a feather.” She lifted Peggy’s train and gave it an expert snap. It billowed up and settled back to earth. “And it’s versatile. You could do cathedral wedding, garden wedding, downtown wedding, princess wedding.”
In the mirror, Peggy watched the saleswoman and Sharon share a proprietary smile in triplicate and tried not to think about how hungry she was. Across the hushed room, another, younger bride preened in a beaded gown with a plunging neckline that ruled out any option besides strip club wedding. Peggy’s dress was nice enough, she supposed, not too ornate, and she was weary of bridal boutiques. And time was ticking. As it was, she’d have to pay a rush fee to have the dress ready for June. She tugged the bodice farther up onto her chest and pressed her arms against her sides to keep it from slipping.
The saleswoman produced a silver clamp and used it to section off a few inches of fabric at the middle of Peggy’s back. The bodice stretched taut across Peggy’s chest. “There,” she said. “How does that feel?”
Peggy wanted to ask if it was normal to feel nothing.
On the telephone a few hours after his talk with Annette Fiorentino, Luke received assurance from Wesley Buckle, the town’s zoning commissioner, that ground breaking for the new store could begin after mud season, which was usually around April or May but this year seemed likely to happen early, Luke thought. He’d noticed that a number of trees had started to bud, and crocuses had pushed up through the soil. It was as if nature was fast-forwarding through winter.
Luke deposited his first check from Budget Club. The fact that the deal would go a long way toward shoring up the Sedgwick coffers failed to cheer him. He was only grateful the picketers had gone home. He could only hope that Angelo and Annette would talk sense into the demonstrators. With luck, Abby wouldn’t find out there had been a group of people on the town green with “STOP the Sedgwicks” placards and he could break the news to her when the time was right.
His hope was short-lived. When he returned home from the bank, Ernestine Riga was speaking gravely to Abigail in the ladies’ parlor. When he stopped in to greet the neighbor, he saw Abigail held a copy of the County Times with the article he’d destroyed; Ernestine must have brought it over. Abby was smiling, but her eyes were terrible. They said, We’ll discuss this in private, young man.
Luke should have known better than to think Abby wouldn’t find out on her own. The only surprise was that it had taken a few hours, not a few minutes.
On Saturday i
n New Nineveh, Peggy took Miss Abigail on their weekly grocery outing. Cal Seymour Jr., the third-generation owner of Seymour’s, was leaving the Stop & Shop as the two came in. He looked right past Peggy as they passed. In the soup aisle, Peggy greeted a woman she recognized from church, who uttered a brief hello and excused herself. But at checkout, the cashier seemed thrilled to see her. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Sedgwick. Lots of us who grew up here think it’s time this town finally moved into the twenty-first century.”
“What’s going on?” Peggy asked Miss Abigail in the parking lot.
“You mean Luke didn’t tell you, dear?”
When she got home, Peggy took the stairs two at a time, burst into the ballroom, and yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Luke looked nothing short of cornered.
“The green is already a ghost town, thanks to Pilgrim Plaza. And if that Budget Club goes in, it’ll be the end of everything. Why shop at the Toggery when you can get cheap polo shirts at Budget Club? Why go to Luigi’s when you can bring home frozen Budget Club pizza? Can’t you understand? It’s going on all across America, Luke—these big retailers marching into towns and cities and destroying them.”
Luke had on a yellow oxford shirt. It was the first time in months she’d seen him without a sweater. With the freakish temperature, there was no need. “There’s such a thing as progress,” he said. He pushed up his sleeves as if he were too hot.
“It’s not progress, it’s greed. It’s you trying to make a buck at the expense of an entire town. And it’s exactly what’s happening to my shop!” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror against the wall, surprised at how furious she looked. “Don’t you care at all who you are and where you come from? Don’t you realize there are almost no places like this left in America—places not overrun with chain stores? Don’t you realize how lucky you are to live here?”
He looked unwell. His skin was dry, and there were hollows under his eyes, as if he’d been staying up all hours in front of his computer, not getting enough to eat, losing contact with the outside world. She was furious at herself for caring.
“The deal is done,” he said. “Ground breaking begins in late spring. Or sooner.”
“Do Annette and Angelo know this?”
“People were picketing yesterday afternoon. Annette got them to stop, but soon they’ll be back out in full force. You should be prepared. They carry ‘STOP the Sedgwicks’ signs.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to react, but she had nothing left to offer.
“I’m doing what’s best for my family,” he said eventually.
“Then I’m glad I won’t be part of your family much longer.”
She ran back down the stairs, the creaky third step screeching as she landed in the foyer. She left through the front door, running through the front gate and down the granite sidewalk to the Fiorentinos’ black-shuttered white house next door, hammering their door with both fists until it swung open with Annette Fiorentino on the other side, her braid askew, her compassionate blue eyes scrunched with worry.
“I’m ready to join you,” Peggy said, panting. “I’m ready to join the demonstration. Just tell me when you need me and I’ll be there.”
TWENTY-ONE
False Spring
Winter never returned. After a while, even those who’d been fretting about it soon gave in to unabashed pleasure at having dodged two more months of cold weather. In New York City, the daffodils bloomed in February instead of March, the tulips bloomed in March instead of April, and the city dwellers cheerfully put their snow boots and parkas in storage and brought out the spring coats and shoes that didn’t usually emerge until after Easter. Peggy felt like the morose guest at a party.
“I feel like a traitor for saying this, but right now I don’t mind.” Bex stuffed her down coat into a bag for the dry cleaners. “I can’t button this around me anymore, and I didn’t want to have to buy a whole new one. Not that I need a coat anyway. Your father has the right idea, Peggy. I’m so hot I’d wear shorts if I didn’t think people would faint from horror at my elephant ankles.”
Bex had passed the first trimester, and the twins by all benchmarks were developing normally. At fourteen weeks, brimming with joy, Bex was announcing her pregnancy to customers, to the UPS guy, to anyone who would listen. She was already in maternity clothes, two or three sizes bigger than other women at her stage of pregnancy—publicly, definitively, proudly fertile. But she tired easily, and as she and Peggy traipsed from empty retail space to empty retail space, trying to find a new home for their shop before the lease ran out, she had to rest every few minutes.
“I don’t know why I’m dragging you all around,” Peggy said, sighing, as they rejected yet another hole-in-the-wall with outrageous rent. “There isn’t a single place on the Upper West Side we can afford, and it’s all my fault.” She couldn’t help feeling she had killed their business by backing out of her deal with Luke. The ACME Cleaning Supply lease was set to expire the last day of May, and Peggy and Bex had yet to renew it. Without that Sedgwick House money, and with the competition from Bath, it was impossible to justify staying where they were, paying twice as much for the same space.
“It’s not your fault. This city is too expensive. We working people can’t afford it.” Bex reached both hands behind her lower back to give herself a massage. “It’s too bad you’re not around weekends to go apartment shopping with Josh and me. Talk about depressing.”
Bex was mistaken. Depressing was trying to explain to a ninety-one-year-old Yankee why you’d decided to demonstrate against her family on the town green. Peggy tried again and again to plead her position to Miss Abigail: “I mean no disrespect to you or Luke. But I know you can’t approve of what Luke is doing with that land.”
“I’d like my sherry now,” was all the old woman would say.
Peggy spent four Saturdays marching, shouting slogans, and chanting until her voice gave out. She got stares—and a scowl or two—from plenty of passersby; the Realtors, especially, seemed to shoot daggers at the picketers marching past their offices. But just as many other people waved or nodded their approval. Debby Doff, owner of the Cheese Shoppe, brought the group samples—dabs of Brie on French bread or local cheddar with sliced apples—and Luigi, from Luigi’s, gave out cans of soda. The shop owners understood, Peggy knew, that their livelihoods depended on keeping downtown vibrant.
But it wasn’t easy for Peggy. In church, she could feel rows of eyes on her as she took her seat. She could imagine what people were thinking—that Peggy and Luke Sedgwick had turned against each other. Miss Abigail didn’t seem aware of the whispers. Peggy began to think there might be a small silver lining in this apparently worsening dementia—if it prevented the old woman from being hurt. But then, Miss Abigail could be just being her usual, stiff-upper-lipped self.
“You have to tell her about the annulment,” Peggy told Luke during one of their rare exchanges; she’d nearly bumped into him on the way back from brushing her teeth before bedtime. She was fully clothed, thank goodness. She’d learned her lesson after getting caught in her long johns.
Luke promised he would say something soon, but Peggy knew he was as reluctant to upset his great-aunt as she was. She let it go, hoping an opportune moment for the conversation would materialize. They had barely a month left until their annulment hearing, until this entire foolish endeavor would be behind her. She tried not to think of Miss Abigail, growing older, her health eventually fading, with only Luke to look after her; of what would become of the Sedgwick House; of Luke, free to be with whatever woman he chose.
On the last Saturday in March, Peggy was out picketing in the still too warm weather when a female voice spoke her name. She turned to see Liddy Hubbard, holding a leash to which was attached a graying golden retriever.
“Well, hi!” Peggy exclaimed, confused over why Liddy would drive an hour from Westport to New Nineveh to walk her dog. Just then, Peggy spotted Carrie and Creighton behind Liddy�
��nor did either one of them live anywhere near New Nineveh. For a moment she thought, They’ve come to demonstrate.
“Peggy, what are you doing?” There wasn’t a trace of compassion in Liddy’s thin, humorless mouth.
“Picketing, I guess,” Peggy said stupidly. She waggled her “Save Our Town” sign. “See, we’re protesting against the commercial interests who want to destroy New Nineveh’s character to further their financial—”
Liddy narrowed her eyes. “We know what you’re doing. What we don’t understand is why.”
“People are talking.” Carrie grimaced as a sudden cold gust ruffled her hair. “You’re calling too much attention to yourself. Connecticut isn’t a big state. Word gets around.”
“Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places,” Liddy interjected. “As my grandmother used to say.”
“Exactly.” Creighton, who had been patting the dog, stood back up and readjusted her headband—kelly green today, to match her grosgrain belt. “You’re embarrassing your husband.”
The snake of anxiety that had been slithering into Peggy’s windpipe vanished—replaced by indignation. She set down her sign and led the trio away from the knot of demonstrators, toward the marble obelisk commemorating the New Nineveh soldiers lost in the Civil War. Peggy knew from Miss Abigail that the memorial included the names of three Sedgwicks.
She wished she had a coat. The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees in as many minutes.
“This isn’t the sixties.” Liddy buttoned up her jacket. “The hippie era ended for a reason, you know.”
“It was tacky,” Carrie said. “The polyester and the facial hair.”
That was the problem with people who had everything, Peggy thought. They’d never had to fight for anything.
“I have a right to free speech,” she insisted. “It’s what this country was founded on. I’m not embarrassing Luke—not trying to, anyway. I just disagree with what he’s doing.”
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP Page 26