There was a brief, wounded silence before he spoke again. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll call a taxi. See you later.” He clicked off.
Gretchen was left staring at her phone. Whatever burst of spirit that had enabled her to say no evaporated as soon as the connection was severed. She felt depleted and sad. Dreamy, sensitive Ennis, with his fine, wispy hair and his adorable accent. He was the love of her youth, the love of her life. Or so she had thought. They met, they courted—he’d been so ardent back then, calling late at night “just to hear her breathe,” penning verse that he slid under the door of her dorm room at school or slipped into the poetry books he was always buying for her—and they wed in great haste. Her parents had worried that they were too young, but Gretchen waved away all their concerns. He was the one, she told them. The One. Hah.
Gretchen surveyed the room to which she had been assigned. It had a cloying, virginal feel. A lace-infested bower of tiny floral prints, suffocating swags, and fancy flounces, it effectively catapulted her back to middle school, one of the more dismal periods in her life. Angelica had been given much more soignée lodgings, with a raw silk duvet the color of champagne, and a very fine, at least to Gretchen’s admittedly imperfect eye, Persian rug. She had not seen the other rooms occupied by her brothers or her grandmother Lenore, though she had been downstairs to the media room with its sixty-inch flat-screen TV, piped-in sound, Wii, and latest-model PlayStation. Justine and Portia were camped out there because Betsy thought it would be “more fun” than one of the upstairs bedrooms. Portia had been delighted by all the flashy, high-tech toys, but Justine scowled ferociously.
“What’s wrong?” Gretchen had asked. “Don’t you like it?”
“What’s to like?” Justine had said. “It’s decadent beyond belief.”
Gretchen had not known how to reply. Her immediate thought was that she wanted to box Justine’s ears for her rudeness—box her ears, what an archaic term. Gretchen was not even sure she knew what it meant; besides, she had never hit her children and was not about to start now.
But on a deeper level Gretchen was worried. Justine’s displeasure—with the room, with her life at school and at home in Brooklyn—had become a kind of emotional kudzu, propagating madly and strangling everything in its path. Justine was not happy with anything, and Gretchen’s maternal barometer told her this was not just a typical adolescent need to push her mother away and in the process carve out her own identity. No, it was something more. Something, if Gretchen was willing to be stingingly honest with herself, darker and more troubling. Justine was hurting; Gretchen could feel it, smell it, practically taste it, but the barrier her daughter had erected made it impossible for Gretchen to either locate the source of the pain or do anything to help.
Looking around herself now, Gretchen felt sickened by the terminal sweetness. The urge to escape propelled her downstairs, where the kitchen was a hub of activity. Of course the crew from Elite Catering had its own state-of-the-art station set up outside, near the main tent, but Betsy’s maids were preparing food to set out in the breakfast room to feed the family and, apparently, anyone else who happened to wander in.
Water ran, pots clanged, and the phone trilled. One of the maids was at the sink rinsing berries in a colander; another was pouring various juices—apple, orange, grapefruit—into colorful glazed pitchers brought back from Betsy’s recent trip to Tuscany.
Gretchen heard her mother’s voice: “Carmelita, could you please—” although the rest of what she said was drowned out by the noise of the food processor, which in full throttle sounded like a small jet taking off.
Gretchen paused. No one had seen her yet, and, apart from her desire for a cup of strong black coffee, there was no reason to go in. She would just be in the way. Breakfast was supposed to be laid out in the appropriately named breakfast room, but she saw no signs of it yet. Besides, Ennis would be here soon, and she still wasn’t ready to deal with him.
She hurried back up the stairs and poked her toothbrush around in her mouth. Having her own immaculate bathroom for the duration of the visit was almost compensation for being here; back in Brooklyn, without Ennis’s calm, orderly presence, the house had become a perpetual mess. Without any discussion or prompting on her part, he had loaded and emptied the dishwasher, dusted furniture, vacuumed with a vengeance. Now that he was gone, it seemed like there were always towels on the floor, hairs in the sink, and wads of dirty tissues and cotton puffs overflowing from the bathroom trash pail. Portia, when reminded, would make an attempt at corralling the chaos; Justine would use Gretchen’s perfectly reasonable request as another black mark against her.
But it was time to stop wallowing. There was nothing she could do this weekend to address or alter whatever was going on with Justine. It would be challenge enough to get through the wedding relatively intact. She would deal with Justine when the nuptial circus had concluded and she was back home with her girls again.
Looking out the small, lace-bedecked window, Gretchen saw the four-car garage, which suddenly presented her with an escape route. Her mother had given her a set of keys to one of the cars that was housed there—not the Mercedes convertible, the Lexus or the Jaguar, but the older, admirably maintained Volvo that the maids used for running errands. She’d go find a diner where she could order coffee, a couple of fried eggs, and a side of hash browns without having to listen to anyone discuss calories, saturated fats, or the wedding of the century. If she hurried, she could be out of the house well before Ennis and his Scottishly inflected but nonetheless perfidious heart arrived, before she heard one more word about what Angelica wanted or Justine did not. Gretchen grabbed the keys. In her mind she was already gone.
Two
Dozing lightly in a room at her daughter Betsy’s Great Neck house, Lenore dreamed of breasts: big breasts and small breasts, breasts as high and firm as hills, breasts that drooped and sagged like a couple of old change purses. Breasts as pale as milk, dark as cocoa beans, and every shade in between. There was nothing erotic in her reverie; her interest was purely professional. But breasts were more than a profession for Lenore. Breasts were a calling.
Years ago, before Betsy was even born, Lenore and a friend had made the trek down to Essex Street to a lingerie shop owned by her husband’s best friend’s father, Sy Rosenzweig. Sy could take one look at a customer and say, “Maidenform, thirty-two-C,” in a tone that brooked no discussion. If the customer attempted to argue, he would simply turn to the wall of cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling, yank out the size and brand he deemed appropriate, and thrust it toward her. “You can put it on over there,” he would grunt, indicating a curtain—so faded a blue as to appear gray—that cordoned off the single dressing room. The woman would slip behind the curtain, try on the bra, and—lo and behold!—Sy would have been right.
Lenore had grudgingly admired his expertise, but disdained his manner. Why make a woman feel that buying a bra was somehow a shameful and dirty business, like a backroom abortion? Why couldn’t the search for the right bra be a joyful, self-affirming experience? That’s where Lenore had seen her opening, and she’d stepped into it with all the tremulous excitement of an aspiring actress taking to the floorboards for the first time. It hadn’t happened right away; no, Lenore had had to plan and wait. But when her own sainted grandmother had died and left her a little nest egg, Lenore knew just how to hatch it: she rented a small storefront on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, and opened Lenore’s Lingerie.
Remembering everything that had offended her about Sy’s shop, Lenore set out to do things differently. The shop was painted a delicate, wistful shade of pink, like the inside of a seashell. There were pictures of lingerie ads, clipped from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and framed in the gold-tone frames that Lenore bought on sale at Woolworth’s. She had carpeting installed, and the curtains to the two small fitting rooms were made from a pink-and-green flowered fabric that she had cut and sewn at her kitchen table.
As she stitched the hems
on her compact little Singer, a girlhood gift from her parents that she had brought with her into her marriage, she thought of what would take place inside these dressing rooms. She, Lenore, would do all the fittings herself. Straps. Hooks. Padding. Push-ups. All the small yet essential details that would coalesce into the perfect fit, the perfect experience. The women who came to see her would be made to feel beautiful, special, cherished. They would leave feeling confident in a way they had never felt before. And then they would return, bringing their mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, friends, and bridge club members. Her thoughts hummed merrily in concert with the buzzing machine. There. She’d finished both panels. Now all they needed was a quick pressing with a schpritz of starch.
That had all been more than fifty years ago. Lenore had opened her shop, and then another in Midwood and a third in Bay Ridge. They’d been successful, every single one of them, and she’d reluctantly had to accept that she could not do every single fitting herself. But she trained her fitters personally and would perform surprise spot checks, sweeping in unannounced to see how Myra, Susie, Ruby, and Precious were getting on. Even now, she still made her weekly rounds to the different shops, though Betsy had been hinting that she ought to give up driving. Give up driving! Lenore seethed just thinking about it. She loved to drive almost as much as she loved to breathe, and she still kept a drawer filled with silk scarves—only silk, never cotton or, God forbid, polyester—that she tied over her head when she was behind the wheel. Not only did she like to drive, but she liked to drive fast, and the scarves provided the necessary protection for her carefully wrought coif.
The sun was brightening behind the shades, and Lenore woke herself with a little snore. How rude! She was glad that no one, not even Monty, had had to hear that. One more indignity of aging, these crude, piglike snores; she had never snored when she was young. Or if she had, she had slept so soundly that she had never heard herself.
Mildly disgusted, she got out of bed and went to the window. A light tug caused the shade to snap up with a satisfying ping and allowed her to survey the scene below. Two gardeners were working around the edges of the lawn; another trimmed the hedges across from the kitchen door. Someone she didn’t recognize—maybe from the catering crew?—hurried across the lawn, avoiding the path. Lenore hoped Betsy did not see him; she was very particular about people using the paths, not the lawn.
Several large potted hydrangeas—all of them creamy white and at the peak of their form—sat in terra cotta urns on the terrace, awaiting their ultimate deployment. Angelica, God bless her, had superb taste; Lenore had to concede that, even though she was still slightly rankled by her granddaughter’s refusal to invite Lenore’s old friends Bunny and Tess to the wedding.
“Grandma, we’ve been through all of this before,” Angelica had said last night when Lenore brought it up again. “The guest list was getting too big. We had to rein it in.”
“But to leave out Bunny! And Tess!”
“Didn’t I invite Arlene and her new husband? And what about Celia, Claire and Doris? All with escorts?”
“Well, yes, but…” said Lenore, beginning to be mollified but not wanting to let go of her grievance just yet.
“Also the Blooms, the Kremers, and the Steins. Your guests, all of them, Grandma.”
“That’s true,” Lenore admitted.
“So Bunny and Tess were really at the bottom of the list anyway. Besides, Bunny’s not even here. You said she was on that cruise.”
“She would have canceled it for this,” said Lenore, eager to start fanning the flames of her resentment again. “I know she would have.”
“It’s too late, Grandma,” said Angelica gently. “Sometimes you just have to admit defeat gracefully.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?” Angelica had said. Her dark eyes looked genuinely curious.
“Admit defeat gracefully?”
But Angelica had elected not to answer that; instead she leaned in and deposited a light kiss on her grandmother’s cheek—what delightful perfume she wore; Lenore would have to get the name of it—and was gone.
The kitchen door opened, and Betsy’s furry little dog ran out, squatted, and ran back in again. At least it hadn’t relieved itself in the house. Like it had at least twice before. Lenore loved dogs, but this one tried even her patience. It yapped; it quivered; it puddled. She had seen it bare its sharp little teeth more than once (the last time she was here, the dog had snapped at one of the maids), though fortunately not on this visit. Yet Betsy was enamored of the creature and simply ignored any and all complaints lodged by her family against it.
Turning from the window, Lenore looked at the room and its adjoining bathroom; she approved of her lodgings. Betsy had finally done well, though Lenore had wondered occasionally about the mental acuity of her new son-in-law. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer was what her beloved Monty, may he rest in peace, would have said. Though Don certainly was what would have been called, in Lenore’s day, a good provider. Where had all his money come from? Lenore had asked Betsy this very question. When Betsy told her that Don had made his fortune with a patent for a particular kind of cabinet hinge, Lenore had felt a flash of kinship. She understood how some seemingly ordinary, even inconsequential item—a hinge, a bra—could spawn an empire. Granted, Lenore’s Lingerie was not exactly an empire. But three successful stores, a new car every couple of years, a brownstone on Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights where she still lived, a summer place on the Island, which she had sold when Monty died—those things were not exactly chopped liver. Lenore, a Brooklyn girl raised in a modest Flatbush apartment—her parents had slept on a fold-out sofa and allowed Lenore and her sister, Dottie, to have the single bedroom—and educated at Erasmus Hall High School, had done pretty well for herself. But Betsy, God bless her, had done even better: Hunter College, and then Columbia, no less, for a MSW. Well, that was the plan, wasn’t it? That the children should do better than the parents, and the grandchildren better yet?
Lenore thought about her own grandchildren as she made the bed, with its ivory sheets and gaggle of small fringed pillows. Betsy would have chided her for this—That’s why I hired the maid, Ma!—but Lenore, who liked comfort as well as the next person, had her standards. Certain things should be done for yourself and by yourself. Making a bed you had slept in was one of them.
Judging from this wedding, Angelica certainly was doing well. Yes, Betsy and Don were contributing a sizable amount, but Angelica and her fiancé, Ohad, had also pitched in. Such a handsome young man, that one. Like a movie star, with those teeth, that hair. A good match for Angelica—their babies would be drop-dead gorgeous. Ohad had been born and raised in Israel. Jerusalem, no less. He’d been in the army. Of course they all were: the young men and the women too. But Ohad had been both a pilot and a commanding officer. Angelica had revealed this with something akin to embarrassment, but to Lenore, a staunch supporter of Israel since the nation’s earliest days, it was heroic. Yes, Angelica had made the right choice. This lavish wedding was the sort of solid proof Lenore sought: big, showy, and public, it confirmed, in her eyes, that Angelica was proud of her decision and wanted everyone to know it. Lenore was not worried about Angelica.
Then there was Teddy, head of his own company and seeing a very nice girl who was a lawyer. Of course she did go by a boy’s name, which Lenore had trouble remembering. She stopped what she was doing to think. Marti, that was it. Now why would such a smart and pretty girl let herself be called Marti, especially when her given name was Martine? Lenore was stumped; she could not fathom the ways of the young. But, still, Teddy had found himself a prize. Teddy too was on his way.
But it was different with Caleb and Gretchen. Caleb was the sweetest boy on God’s earth. Tender, considerate, always thinking of someone else. Yet he was, it had to be said, a faygele. Not that there was anything wrong with that; Lenore knew you loved who you loved. End of story. But other people were less understanding, and she worried about hi
m, her boychick. When he was a child, she had wanted to protect him—from the world and from the obstinate vulnerability of his own gentle soul—and though he had not been a child for years, the impulse was still there, strong as ever.
So Lenore had been instantly on guard when he introduced her to Bobby, the glib young man whom he had invited as his escort to the wedding. She didn’t trust him, not for a second, and while the rest of the family fairly swooned for his muscled, blond good looks, overplayed Southern accent, and slightly risqué jokes, Lenore was not charmed. Can’t you see that he’ll take Caleb’s heart and break it in two? she had wanted to yell. Break it and stomp on the pieces?
Lenore gave the pillows a final smack. It was still early, though there would be plenty to do today. She wanted a long, soul-restoring soak in the tub before the wedding. And she planned to steam her dress, since the steaming of special garments was another task that Lenore felt a person should not entrust to anyone else. Angelica had offered the services of the visiting hairdresser, manicurist, and makeup artist to anyone who wanted them. Betsy and Marti had signed on, of course, as had Lenore. So had two of the bridesmaids, friends of Angelica’s, who were due here soon. But Lenore was not sure that Gretchen would take advantage of this generous offer, and the girl’s refusal vexed her.
Gretchen was the other worrisome grandchild, the one who could or would not take her place in the world. Oh, she had gone to college, where she had done quite well, though Lord only knew what it was she had studied; it seemed to change every other month. And after she graduated, she continued to bounce around from this job to that, never settling on any one thing in particular. Lenore could smell the indecision on her, ripe as the scent that emanated from a bunch of soft, spotted bananas.
One thing Lenore had approved of was that her granddaughter had married young and given birth to twin girls shortly thereafter. Lenore remembered feeling relieved that Gretchen seemed to be acquiring some heft, some substance, even if the husband—a poet, of all impractical things—was never going to be a good provider. Still, he’d had a job teaching poetry (imagine paying for your children to potchke with such a thing!) at Brooklyn College, which was where Monty had gone; he and Gretchen owned a pretty brick house not far from Lenore’s Midwood store. The house had a backyard, a deck, and a wood-burning fireplace.
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