“Listen.” Liddy put her leash-free arm around Peggy’s shoulders. “This isn’t the sort of thing we would normally discuss, but, well, if you and Luke are having problems…”
Peggy was paralyzed with anger.
Liddy continued, “You know, Peggy, no marriage is perfect. I’ll admit, Kyle and I have our differences now and then. But we don’t parade those differences all over town.”
Of course you don’t, Peggy thought. Not when you could have a couple of drinks and ignore it. She wanted to defend herself, but what could she say, really? Besides, there seemed to be agitation among the demonstrators, who’d all set aside their signs and were huddled in a discussion. Peggy stopped listening to the preppy trio and tuned back in to her own group in time to hear Annette say, “That’s it for today, folks. See you all tomorrow, weather permitting,” and to discover that, at long last, snowflakes were falling.
“Luke!” Abigail shouted from downstairs. “Luke!”
Luke looked up from the poem in front of him. There was an almost agreeable sameness to Abby calling for him this way. He put down his pencil. A new piece of plaster dangled from the ceiling. For once, the house’s decrepitude didn’t bother him. It was almost endearing the way that piece of ceiling clung there tenaciously, defying gravity and time.
“Luke!” Abigail shouted as the staircase rattled.
Luke ran to the landing in time to see his great-aunt appear.
“What are you doing? You shouldn’t be climbing—” He stopped himself.
Abigail’s wrinkled cheeks were flushed with excitement. A mischievous sparkle lit her faded eyes.
“Winter is back,” she said.
Peggy saw the two of them in Luke’s study before they saw her. She started to ask how Miss Abigail had gotten up the stairs but forgot the question as she watched them confer together at the computer.
“You see, that’s the storm coming in.” Luke, in the straight-backed chair Peggy remembered from his bedroom, pointed to the display.
“What’s this?” Miss Abigail was in Luke’s desk chair, her tiny body craned toward the screen.
“If I click on it, it shows the snowfall over the next few hours. See? By three it will be steady, and by five it will be heavy. You can get all that on the Internet.”
Miss Abigail snorted. “Or you could just look out the fool window.”
Peggy laughed, and the two raised their heads, noticing her. “That was funny,” she said, giggling. “Good one, Miss Abigail.”
“Humor was not my intention, young lady.” But instead of the glared rebuke Peggy had expected, a smile spread across Miss Abigail’s face. “It’s wonderful to be in the ballroom again. Mother and Daddy had such parties here. The chandeliers sparkled, and the musicians would play, and it was a fairyland.” Miss Abigail hummed a tuneless melody.
“It’s nice to see you in such a good mood.” Peggy, too, could feel happiness stealing over her. As long as she was in this house, she was safe—from the prying comments of Liddy, Carrie, and Creighton; from the controversy over Luke’s land; from the fact that the business she’d poured her life into was withering away. No wonder Miss Abigail loved the house so much. And, Peggy supposed, she could understand, too, why Luke might yearn to leave behind this cocoon of comfort to stretch his wings. Didn’t everyone struggle between the desire for the familiar and the equal desire to break free? Try to think what it is you’re really anxious about, Birch had said in that long-ago meditation class. Was it just that Peggy still hadn’t found the right balance? Was this why she’d always been so eager to get married, as if marriage were the sole promise of safety in a cold, stormy world?
Miss Abigail was struggling to get out of her chair. Luke, still demonstrating the Internet’s many weather-measuring capabilities, wasn’t paying attention. “May I help?” Peggy asked, knowing what the answer would be: Nonsense.
“Yes, thank you.” Miss Abigail fluttered her tiny hand onto Peggy’s arm, and Peggy supported her as she rose slowly from Luke’s desk chair. It was the first time the Yankee woman had ever needed her, and Peggy was glad to be able to help at long last. “It’s time to start dinner,” Miss Abigail continued. “Peggy, would you take me down the stairs?”
Their voices and footsteps faded, and then all was quiet. Quieter than quiet, hushed by the snow now falling in goose-feather flakes. His great-aunt was right, of course. Who needed a computer when one could simply look outside? Luke stood near the half-moon window, winter cold stealing in through the panes despite his best efforts to seal it out. The false spring was over. One needed to look no further than the New England sky, pregnant with snow.
It was time to get ready.
“What’s Luke doing?” Peggy asked. For the past fifteen minutes he’d been passing by the kitchen, descending into the basement and emerging again with tarnished brass lanterns, plastic jugs of kerosene, and old shoeboxes with the stubs of candles. “He’s acting like the world is about to end.”
“There’s a nor’easter blowing in.” Miss Abigail surveyed the back garden out the kitchen window. Nearby, Quibble wove his black body around and between the table legs.
Something wasn’t right. Nothing about this day felt normal, not the unexpected change of weather, not Luke’s manic energy, not Miss Abigail’s unusually good mood, not Quibble rubbing against Peggy’s calves agitatedly, as if there were nothing the least bit odd about his being out and about at this time of day. Peggy opened the fridge. It was virtually empty. In all her focus on the demonstrations, she’d forgotten about her weekly trip to the market with Miss Abigail. There was a carton of eggs and, in the crisper, what looked like a bag of celery.
A clatter sounded in the basement, as if Luke had dropped something. The cat jumped two vertical feet in the air and streaked out of the room.
“Damn!” Luke cursed from down the stairs.
“Do you suppose he’s all right?” Peggy started to get up, thinking she should offer him some assistance, but Miss Abigail touched her elbow.
“Let him be. He needs the distraction.”
Distraction from what? Peggy didn’t ask. She knew what Miss Abigail meant.
“This hullabaloo on the green is bothering him, dear. The Sedgwicks don’t enjoy attention. It isn’t in our nature.”
“I have a right to free speech,” Peggy responded, for the second time that day. “Forgive me, Miss Abigail, but this is what your own ancestors died for in the Revolutionary War—so future generations could speak their minds freely, even when it was difficult and painful. This is no easier for me than it is for you, or Luke. But I can’t sit by while Luke ruins New Nineveh in the name of progress. This place is too special for me not to at least try and—”
Luke was passing through the hallway again.
“—change Luke’s mind,” Peggy finished when his footsteps were far enough down the hall. Self-conscious, she opened the refrigerator again. “How about scrambled eggs?”
Miss Abigail turned from the window. “You’re a real Sedgwick, Peggy.”
Peggy set the eggs on the counter.
“Our family’s women have a long history of speaking their minds and standing up for what they believed in. Had Charles not passed away, I would have married him even if it meant losing my inheritance. Sedgwick women aided slaves on the Underground Railroad and marched at Seneca for the right to vote. Elizabeth Coe Sedgwick, whose brooch I gave you, was a vocal abolitionist. It nearly killed Josiah at first, but he came around.” Miss Abigail grinned. “If you ask me, Sedgwick men have always been attracted to uppity women. Clearly my nephew is no exception.”
Was Miss Abigail having one of her episodes? Peggy wasn’t sure—and was blushing so badly, she wanted to hide in the refrigerator. She tugged at the celery in the vegetable drawer, but it was wedged in tightly, and she gave up. Even Miss Abigail couldn’t want celery in her scrambled eggs.
Luke clomped into the kitchen, a dusting of snow in his hair. “The lamps are filled, the flashlights have
fresh batteries, the shovels are in the mudroom, and the cars are in the garage. Anything I’ve forgotten, Abby?”
“Well,” Miss Abigail said, “you never told me Peggy wasn’t a Yankee.”
Luke and Peggy stared at each other. It was the first time he could remember meeting her gaze in weeks. She was so pretty, he thought, before a less affectionate conclusion intruded. You told her? he mouthed. Peggy widened her eyes and mouthed back, No.
Luke couldn’t imagine what to do. All he knew was Abby was wearing her “don’t take me for a delusional old lady” look.
“Aren’t you two going to explain what’s going on?” Despite her stern words, Abby’s tone was mild, almost amused.
This was the perfect time to tell her. Not just that Peggy wasn’t a New Nineveh Adams, but about the annulment. About all of it—their accidental marriage in Las Vegas, their ridiculous plan to finance her long-term care by selling the house.
“Abby…” Luke looked at Peggy long and hard, willing her to understand. “Peggy and I have a number of things to discuss with you. Things about our marriage—the circumstances behind it, and decisions we’ve made about it.” He glanced at Peggy for confirmation.
In the window behind her, snow pelted the ground. Peggy would be lucky to get home tomorrow, Luke thought; if the nor’easter kept up at this pace—the news was predicting a blizzard—it could take the snowplow crews all day to clear the roads.
Finally, Peggy nodded. “Maybe we should move to the den. It’s more comfortable there.”
Luke couldn’t believe his luck. “Great idea, Peggy. How about it, Abby?”
His great-aunt peered into him. Not at him; it was as if she could see through his skin into his muscles, bones, bloodstream, into the DNA at the center of each cell.
“On second thought,” she said, “I don’t need to know right this minute.”
“It would be best if you did,” Luke pressed.
“He’s right.” Peggy put her hand on Abby’s arm. “It’s time.”
“Nonsense,” Abby declared. “It’s time for dinner.”
The meal was festive. Peggy made eggs, and Luke fixed Abigail her sherry, and Abby set out the family china, and the three ate as darkness descended on the garden outside, and the wind moaned, and snow collected in U-shaped drifts against the steamy windowpanes.
Peggy’s skin gleamed golden in the overhead light. “Isn’t it late in the season for a freak snowstorm?”
“It’s not unheard of, dear. One year it snowed on Memorial Day weekend. Nineteen seventy-seven. Remember, Luke?” Abigail chuckled. “You and the Hubbard boy went sledding on your mother’s silver tea tray.”
Luke laughed aloud at the forgotten memory. The confession he’d so urgently wanted to make to his great-aunt half an hour earlier no longer seemed necessary. Why spoil the moment? He and Peggy still had time until the annulment was final. They had two more weeks.…
Only two more weeks.
He pushed away his plate. Peggy was laughing, too, as Abby embellished the sledding story. This time next year, Peggy would be married to someone else, with an entirely new life, while he, Luke, remained in the life he had, except without Peggy.
Without the woman he loved.
Because, heaven help him, he loved her.
I love her, he repeated to himself with wonderment as the kitchen light blinked off and then on again like a heart fluttering to life, so quickly that he was sure he was the only one who’d noticed it had blinked at all. I love her long underwear. I love that she found the only damn apple left in that orchard. I love that she’s afraid of the basement but pretends not to be. I love that she has the guts to picket against me and that all the people in town like her better than they like me—
The house went dark.
“Oh!” Peggy exclaimed.
“It’ll come back on in a minute.” Abby sounded unconcerned, but she and Luke both knew if the storm had already knocked out the power lines, there was little that could be done about it until at least tomorrow morning. “Meantime, Luke will light us a fire,” she said.
Luke goggled at his great-aunt in the dark. “Abby, the flues have been shut for years.”
“Then open one. Peggy is cold. She’s been cold since the first day she came here. How about the library? I’ve always been partial to a fire in the library.”
Luke got up and groped along the drainboard until his hand connected with the flashlight he’d left there. He flicked it on and set it in the center of the table, where it threw off an embracing circle of yellow light.
“It’s all right, Miss Abigail,” Peggy said. “I’m not cold anymore. I think my blood has gotten thicker.”
“Nonsense. Luke, fetch the firewood. While you’re at it, bring up that port you’ve been hiding. I don’t know what you’ve been saving it for.”
“You weren’t the one who hid the port?” Luke was surprised. “Then how do you know about it?”
Abby tilted her head to scrutinize him. It must have been an optical illusion, a trick of the flashlight, that made her appear no older than she did in her portrait in the den. “I know everything that goes on in this house,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, a fire was crackling in the library. Luke heated the family port tongs and used them to cleanly break off the neck of the bottle underneath the cork. He decanted the port into a crystal vessel, the dusky scent of vanished time coiling up from the amber liquid. “We should drink it right away,” he announced to no one in particular; Abby and Peggy seemed lost in their separate thoughts.
From her chair, his great-aunt gazed through the flickering shadows at the mantel portrait of Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick. “I believe I’ll go upstairs,” she said dreamily. “It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”
Peggy stood with her back to the fire. “But what about the port?”
“I’ve never cared for port, dear.”
Luke moved forward, but Abigail held out a hand to keep him at his distance and stood on her own. She nodded at him, and he gave her the flashlight, knowing better than to try to escort her to her room. Luke’s heart swelled with admiration for his great-aunt—her resilience, her strength. She’s the last of her kind, he thought.
Peggy, too, looked as if she would like to reach out to Abby, to touch her arm or pat her hunched shoulder, but she held back, Luke suspected, out of respect for Abby’s reserve and simply said, “See you in the morning, Miss Abigail.”
Abigail paused, as if to speak. Then she turned and made her way down the corridor, her fading footsteps punctuated by a faint protest from the squeaky step as she climbed the front staircase to her bedroom, before the darkness swallowed up the sound.
“Did something seem not right to you?” Peggy asked once she was sure Miss Abigail was far enough away.
Luke blinked as if waking from a dream—as if, Peggy thought, he’d been mesmerized by the flames. “What do you mean, not right?”
“I mean…It’s not important.” She’d been about to say everything about this day had been surreal, as if she, too, had seen the day’s events from inside a dream instead of experiencing them as they’d unfolded, were unfolding, right now. In a giddy, irrational flash, it occurred to her that all of this might be a dream; and if she concentrated hard enough, she would wake up with Bex in their Las Vegas hotel room and return to New York City to apologize to Brock for giving him that stupid marriage ultimatum, and life would be just as it was before she’d gotten herself into this mess…and yet, she was aware it wasn’t a dream, and furthermore, she didn’t want it to have been.
Luke poured port into two cut-crystal glasses and reached one out to her. When she took it, their fingers brushed, and she drew back in surprise. Had he meant to touch her? She stole a peek at him, but his face was inscrutable in the half-light of the fire. Outside were darkness and the unseen storm.
“We should toast.” Luke’s voice was quietly gruff. “It doesn’t seem right to drink this without ceremony.”
She h
eld the gleaming glass, hesitating. “I feel bad that you opened it. This is hardly the perfect time.”
“Maybe Abby’s right, and it’s as good a time as any.” Luke brought his glass to his nose and inhaled.
Peggy did the same, but the port’s caramel aroma gave up no secrets. She said, “We really should prepare ourselves. It’s been waiting so long. It could be terrible.”
“It could.” Luke raised his glass and tipped it toward her, as in a toast. “Or it could be every bit as good as we’ve imagined.”
He touched his glass to hers, and she let herself fall into the complex depths of his eyes and understood he was no longer talking about the port.
She looked away, her heart racing, her airways narrowing with a feeling that wasn’t anxiety, and sipped. And swallowed. And, when she was sure her face wouldn’t betray her emotions, looked up. “Mmm.”
Luke was taking his second sip of port. He held it in his mouth, then swallowed. “Hmm.”
She drank again, the thick, flat liquid coating her throat. “Mmm-hmm.”
“What do you think?” He was surveying her intently, as if all things hinged on her opinion of the Sedgwick port.
She smiled at him in a way that hopefully gave the impression of sincerity, took another sip, and swallowed it. “It’s…” She was at a loss for words. “I—” She coughed. “I like it.”
“Really?” He smiled back at her, a dazzling, lopsided, endearing smile that rendered her barely able to remember her own name. “Because I say it’s swill.”
She burst out laughing. She set the Sedgwick crystal onto a side table and draped herself against a bookshelf, giggling helplessly. Luke, too, began to laugh, with a depth and commitment she’d not heard in all their months together, and the more he laughed, the harder she laughed, until the two of them were clutching their sides and gulping for air as the fire popped and crackled and cast shadows across the portrait of Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick so that the great patriarch himself seemed to muster a smile at the scene below; to observe with lenient eyes as the family’s last hope pulled his wife of convenience into a kiss from which Silas, had he been able, would have averted his eyes. But Peggy wasn’t thinking about Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick. She wasn’t thinking of picketers, or soulless superstores, or disapproving preppy wives; of ACME Cleaning Supply and its precarious grip on profitability; of lease negotiations or wedding dresses—or, least of all, of her fiancé. She surrendered to Luke’s embrace, to his soft (so impossibly soft) lips, to the sweet roughness of his hands unbuttoning first his own Toggery corduroys and then hers and pulling her down with him onto the shopworn rug in front of the fireplace, as she tried with trembling hands to take off his sweater, and the frayed oxford shirt underneath, and the faded polo underneath that, until she looked up in frustration.
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP Page 27