Seating Arrangements

by Maggie Shipstead

  “No need to get huffy with me, 007,” she said. He would never dare pick on her drinking with Biddy around, but as they faced each other out in the trees, his dignity ruptured and his adrenaline still running high, they were caught up in a primal energy. She thought he was equally likely to strike her or kiss her. He had kissed her once before, supposedly by accident, and he was attractive in his way, in good shape for his age and with a symmetrical, serious, news anchor sort of face and nice gray temples. But then again she had a thing for repressed men (hello, husbands one, two, and four), and she had a thing for men just starting to go gray (three and four), and she had a thing for forbidden men (three, oh lord, three), and, truth be told, she flirted with Winn sometimes for no more substantial reason than that she liked to keep things lively. She had stolen husband number three in the first place—he had been a charismatic trial lawyer, married, and the authoritarian, despised, partnership-withholding boss of husband number two—and then that little tramp, that child with the long, long legs and the horse face, her best friend’s daughter, had gone and stolen him, and off they’d flown to Bolivia.

  But Winn was such a square. That was why he and Biddy worked. Ogling through the pine trees was probably the great sin of his life. “I wasn’t sneaking,” she said. “I was walking, just like you.” She attempted a saucy smirk, feeling a curious deadness in the parts of her face that had been injected into submission. “So, which is it?” she asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Is it Agatha or Piper? Oh, don’t tell me. I’ve already guessed.” As she spoke, she realized that she had, in fact, guessed, and scorn rose up in her.

  “You are being disgusting,” Winn said with exaggerated deliberateness. “I hope you get all this out of your system before our guests arrive.”

  She poked him in the belly, just above the brass buckle of his needlepoint belt, finding more softness there than she expected. “Dirty old man.”

  “Screw off,” he growled and stomped away into the trees.

  Celeste watched him go and then pushed through the branches and sauntered out onto the lawn. “Hello, ladies!” she called. Piper waved; Agatha propped herself up on her elbows; Daphne lolled on her side like a walrus, her chin lost in the soft folds of her neck. Poor dear. Fortunately, she would be the type to shed the baby weight right away.

  “What’s up, Celeste?” Agatha said.

  Piper sat up straight as a yogi and lifted her arms over her head. Her swimsuit stretched over the hollow between her ribs and hips. “Isn’t it so beautiful out?” she chirped.

  Celeste flopped onto the grass. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

  “Make sure you check yourself for ticks later, Celeste,” Daphne said. “Lyme is a problem here.”

  “Why would limes be a problem?” Piper asked.

  “Not limes,” Agatha said. “Lyme disease. With a y.”

  Celeste crossed her arms over her face and wished that a hand would descend from heaven and offer her a cocktail. She was wearing shorts and a striped sailor’s shirt, and the grass pricked her calves. She kicked off her sandals and rolled onto her belly, looking uphill at the girls. “So who’s next, ladies? Who’s after Daphne?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Agatha. “Piper’s the one with a boyfriend.”

  “Oh my God,” Piper said. “Don’t jinx it.” She ran a hand through the huge mane of hair that, in Celeste’s opinion, made her look like a member of Whitesnake.

  “So marriage is still cool?” Celeste asked. “It’s still something girls your age want? I would have thought you all would be going over to some groovy, Swedish hipster model of commitment.”

  “Obviously, marriage is cool,” Agatha drawled. “Otherwise Daphne wouldn’t be doing it.”

  Daphne snorted. “If I had a baby out of wedlock, Daddy would die. Literally die.”

  “You mean,” Celeste said, “you wouldn’t be getting married if it weren’t for your father?”

  “Well, Mom, too. And the Duffs. But, no, if I really had my way, we’d wait a while so I wouldn’t have to be pregnant in the pictures.”

  “I really want to get married,” Piper volunteered. “It’s so romantic.”

  “Yes, it is,” Celeste agreed. She plucked a blade of grass from the soil and tickled her lips with its waxy edge. “But romantic and prudent are not the same thing.”

  “That’s good, though,” Agatha said. “Imagine if there was only prudence.”

  “Hmm,” said Celeste. “Then I never would have married, and the world would be a very different place.”

  “My parents would have, though,” Daphne said. She had settled on her back again, and her voice drifted over her belly.

  “That’s true,” Celeste said.

  Agatha crossed one golden leg over the other and bounced her slender, dirty foot. “What was Winn like when he was young?” she asked. “It’s just that I can’t imagine it. Biddy I can picture, but not Winn.”

  Celeste felt a prickle. The nymphet was interested. Never one to torture herself, she preferred not to dwell on the charms of young women and had only allowed her eyes to skim the girl before, assessing her as pretty (really, more than pretty but with the kind of looks that would turn vulgar before too long). But now she gave her full attention to the remarkable body on display in that ratty old bikini, worn to near transparency. Agatha was thin but not hard. Long limbed but still small. Totally devoid of pores or cellulite or stretch marks or stray hairs. Even something as mundane as her kneecap was finely wrought, worthy of study, top of the line.

  But this girl must have her choice of men. Why would she want old Winnifred? What about him could possibly light her fire except his forbiddenness, his unlikeliness, the very triteness of his middle-aged crush? Not that any of those should be underestimated. Husband number three, Wyeth, had been the least handsome but most loved of her husbands, and now he lived off his fortune in St. Barts, the novelty of Bolivia having long ago worn off, though not, apparently, the allure of long-legged, horse-faced youth. But Wyeth had been stolen property to begin with, an unlucky penny, and Celeste, in the end, had come to accept the bulk of the blame for the sorrows caused by their marriage. Nothing like that should happen to Biddy. Biddy had always been such a docile creature, highly competent but docile, happy to be a kind of ladies’ maid to her sisters through her childhood and then an earnest bluestocking and then a selfless wife. To betray her would be the height of cruelty. But this was crazy. Agatha couldn’t possibly want Winn.

  “Oh,” Celeste said, drawing an expansive sigh of phony reminiscence, “let me cast my mind back. I think—I think—yes. I remember now. Winn was exactly the same.”

  Piper made a high squawk that Celeste supposed was laughter. “There has to be more. Tell! What was he like?”

  “Really. I couldn’t possibly come up with one thing that’s changed.”

  Daphne stirred. “Mom once said he had a bad reputation before they met. Apparently he liked the ladies.”

  Agatha’s bouncing foot stilled.

  “I think he started those rumors himself,” Celeste said. “Your father is a born monogamist. Boring as hell.”

  “Mom seemed kind of proud of it,” Daphne said. “She’s funny.”

  Agatha uncrossed her legs and sat up. The shade had fully caught her, and she rubbed her arms as though to brush it off. She said, “Some people like a little competition. You want to feel like you have someone desirable.”

  “You would say that,” Daphne said. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  But Piper was nodding. “No,” she said, “I think that’s true sometimes. You want to feel like the guy had lots of options but chose you. Like you tamed him a little bit.”

  “That is so retro,” said Daphne.

  “Don’t you feel that way?” Agatha asked. “It’s not like Greyson was a virgin when you met. It’s not like Greyson was ever a virgin.”

  “Well,” Daphne said. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
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br />   Sadly, but with a certain pleasure of anticipation, Celeste accepted that she needed a drink. “All right,” she said, hoisting herself to her feet and sliding back into her sandals. “I’ll leave you girls to it. Someone has to tell Daphne what’s going to happen on her wedding night, and I don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “We’ll be in soon,” Daphne said. “We’ve lost our sun. Check for ticks.”

  Celeste walked around the house and greeted Livia and Dominique, who were deep in conversation on the deck beside two bags of shucked corn. Inside, place cards and seating charts were spread over the table, but Biddy was nowhere to be seen. The bottle of gin was out on the counter, and after she poured a little into a tumbler and added ice and a dollop of tonic, she put it away in a cupboard, where people were less likely to monitor its level. The first sip, bitter and fizzy, was unspeakably delicious, and she felt her nerves begin to settle at once. The bottom line was that she was being paranoid about Winn. And even if she wasn’t, what could she do?

  After retrieving the bottle and splashing out a tiny bit more gin, she climbed up through the house to the widow’s walk, where she could have some privacy and fresh air and take in the view. Reclining in a chair, she closed her eyes and pressed the sweating glass against her forehead. She wanted to tell herself she had once been as sexy as Agatha, but her delusions were not so strong as that. Still, she had been seductive. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to poach Wyeth from his mousy wife and three children. The best she could say for herself now was that she was the kind of woman people called well preserved. But despite all her restorative efforts, she looked tired. Which she was, in the existential sense. There would be no more seductions for her, no more ecstasy, no more destruction. She and Cooper had a pleasant life together, a sanctuary built by two reformed sinners around a policy of maximal calm and minimal communication. Quiet dinners out, long weeks apart when he was off sailing, compatible taste in TV and movies, mutual tolerance of each other’s friends, agreement that they would never marry. Maybe she had stumbled on the ideal relationship for a woman her age. Maybe, after all these years, she had solved the riddle. Even if things fell apart, she would draft another companion from the bush leagues of washed-up lovers, and they would wait out the violet hour together.

  Four · Twenty Lobsters

  I’ve spent the past six months wishing he were dead,” Livia said to Dominique. Immediately, she regretted the melodrama of the statement. Melodrama did not fly with Dominique.

  The last of the corn had been shucked, and Dominique was leaning back in her chair and looking out over the lawn. Celeste had walked up the grass a minute before, and they could hear the murmur of bride and bridesmaids from around the corner of the house. “I doubt that’s what you were really wishing for,” she said tolerantly.

  Livia considered. “Everyone thinks I should just get over it,” she said. “But I don’t know what’s on the other side of ‘it.’ I’m not even exactly sure what ‘it’ is.”

  “No need to be all metaphysical about it. You know what you’re supposed to do. You just don’t want to do it.”

  “I don’t want to give up prematurely.”

  “No one could accuse you of that. I could read you back the fifty e-mails you sent me this winter detailing the ten million arguments you’d pitched to Teddy for why you should be together. But look, you’ve given it the old college try, he hasn’t come around, so cross your fingers and let go.”

  A cry came from above and a crow swooped from the roof, trying to gobble something down as it flew, pursued by an enraged seagull. The birds disappeared over the trees. Livia said nothing.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve talked to him, right?” Dominique pressed. “Just keep going with that. Invest some time. I mean, think of it this way. How do you think it looks if you go around mooning over him for months after he dumped you?”

  “Why does it matter how it looks?” Livia said hotly, surprised at Dominique. “Why does everyone care so much about how everything looks?”

  Dominique held up her hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not a member of this Great Gatsby reenactment society you all have going on. I just think it’s possible to trick yourself into feeling better by pretending you feel better.”

  “Yeah,” Livia said. “Yeah, I know, but I keep thinking about how far along I’d be. I’d be just as preggers as Daphne.” Two weeks after her abortion, she had been summoned home for a weekend. Daphne and Greyson were coming up from the city for dinner. They had news. Winn roasted a duck. They were still on the salad course when Daphne bubbled over and announced she was pregnant and she and Greyson were getting married. Livia, to her enduring shame, had burst into tears and run from the table.

  “Women,” Dominique said knowingly. “We measure our lives in months.”

  “People kept telling me that at least now I know I can get pregnant. Like, phew, what a relief. I’d really be spending a lot of time worrying about infertility otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but what do you say to someone about their abortion? The impulse is to grasp for silver linings.”

  “I’m not beating myself up over it. I just want to meet someone else. Barring that, I just want to sleep with someone else. To at least create the sensation of moving on.”

  “Fine,” said Dominique, “but beware the rebound guy.”

  “I just want a distraction.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  BIDDY WAS COLLECTING the last of Winn’s groceries from the Land Rover when he came walking up out of the trees, frowning and moving his hands to emphasize some speech he was giving in his head.

  “Where did you go?” she asked.

  “To check on the garden,” he said. “Depressing.”

  “You saw Jack?”

  “Livia told you about Teddy?”

  “I’m shocked.”

  “I’m not. Chip off the old block. At least he’ll be far away. Livia won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  “She thinks he’s leaving because of her. I’m afraid she’ll romanticize this.”

  “Tell her she’s overestimating her own importance. He’s a Fenn. He’s joining up because he thinks it makes him look good. I tried to get a word in about the Pequod with Jack but didn’t get too far. If he’s blackballing me because of this whole business with the kids, I think that’s poor form.”

  “Mmmm.” Biddy was unwilling to enter into another round of the Great Pequod Debate. Was Jack shutting Winn out because Winn had excluded Jack from the Ophidian? Was Fee carrying a grudge over their breakup all those years ago? Were the Fenns so collectively shamed by Livia’s ordeal that they simply had no wish to see the Van Meters around the clubhouse? This last hypothesis, she had pointed out to Winn over and over again, was especially silly since he had been on the waiting list well before Teddy’s hapless sperm found its way to Livia’s egg. To Biddy’s thinking, Winn had done everything he could to make his case with the Pequod, and the rest was up to fate. So there was no cause for angst, no need to spin conspiracy theories. In all likelihood, the holdup had nothing to do with the Fenns and everything to do with the club’s internal workings and quotas. And even if the Fenns were the problem, most likely Winn, not Livia, was to blame, as Biddy was fairly certain the Fenns had been genuinely fond of her daughter and would not be so unjust as to think she had tried to entrap their son. At the end of the day, why would you want to join a club where you are not welcome? But Winn saw the consequences of Livia’s mistake everywhere, as though her womb were the source of all disorder in the universe.

  “I’ll tell you,” Winn said, “I have an itch to call up Jack and have it out, get the straight story once and for all.”

  “No,” Biddy said, “not this weekend, Winn, please.”

  Celeste’s voice clarioned down from the roof. “Winnifred!” Winn grimaced. “Oh, Winnifred! The lobsters are here!”

  A red-faced man in white shirt and pants appeared around the corner of the house, strug
gling to push a dolly loaded with two cardboard boxes through the gravel. Each box had a large red lobster stamped on it.

  “Van Meter?” he said, consulting something scrawled in black marker on the top box. “Twenty lobsters?”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” said Winn. He stepped forward and lifted the first box off the dolly, setting it on the ground and pulling off the lid.

  The deliveryman watched dubiously. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Winn said. “That’s why I’m checking them.” He pulled lobster after lobster out of his box, holding each in the air to make sure it was moving its antennae and rubber-banded claws before adding it to a pile on the gravel.

  “I’m sure they’re all alive, Winn,” Biddy said, blocking one lobster’s escape with her Top-Sider. People said lobsters were just giant bugs, and they looked it, creeping along, probing with their long feelers.

  “Better safe than sorry, dear,” Winn said. To the deliveryman, who had begun to remove lobsters uncertainly from the second box, he said, “Here, I’ll get those if you’ll do me a favor and put these ones back.”

  “No,” Biddy said. She bent and grabbed a lobster by its midsection and dropped it back in the box. There was a bed of seaweed at the bottom. “I’ll do it.”

  “He doesn’t mind.” Winn turned to the deliveryman. “Do you?”

  “No?” the man said, confused.

  Biddy set two more lobsters on top of the first, and Winn scooped two out of the second box. “Slow down,” she said, “they’re getting mixed up.”

  “It doesn’t matter which box they go in, dear, as long as they’re alive.”

  “You can go,” Biddy told the deliveryman. “We’re all paid up, aren’t we?”

  “Just hang on one minute,” Winn said. “Let me finish here.” Biddy gave up replacing lobsters, and she and the deliveryman watched in silence until Winn pulled out the last one and waved it at them. “Now,” he said, “aren’t we glad I checked? This one’s dead.” The lobster’s claws drooped limply, swinging from side to side like a pair of oversized boxing gloves. Setting it on the ground among its living brethren, Winn straightened up and put his hands on his hips, victorious. They all looked down at the lobster.