“Coffee would be great,” Ennis said, putting his battered olive drab knapsack on the floor.
“You can leave that there,” Betsy said. “Someone will bring it downstairs.”
“Where’s Portia?” asked Ennis.
“Sleeping,” Justine snorted. “But I’m going to wake her up.”
“It’s okay, baby,” Ennis said. “Let her sleep. I’ll see her later.” He walked into the dining room with Justine, who was still clutching his hand.
Betsy, left alone with Gretchen, watched them go. “I know this is hard for you,” she began.
“It’s all right,” Gretchen said. “He’s their father. And it would be worse if he’d deserted them.”
“That’s true,” Betsy said. She had an urge to smooth the tangle of Gretchen’s curls, but she refrained. Her daughter was a grown woman with daughters of her own. Too old to have her hair smoothed by her mother.
“They still blame me,” Gretchen said in a low voice. “They don’t know everything. I haven’t told them yet.”
By everything Gretchen meant this: Ennis, who taught poetry at Brooklyn College, had slept—only once, he swore—with one of his students in the MFA program. But the single indiscretion had had major consequences. The girl—she was in her twenties but still, truly, a girl—had gotten pregnant. And she had refused to have an abortion. When Ennis had told her—kindly, gently, he swore—that he would not marry her, she had become so hysterical that she had shown up at their house after downing a bottle of Ambien, and because Ennis had not been home, Gretchen was the one who had called 911 and accompanied her to the emergency room.
“You were protecting them,” Betsy said. “That’s what mothers do. Good mothers, anyway.”
“I tried,” Gretchen said. She ran a hand through the tangle; it didn’t seem to help. “Not that they’re grateful at all.”
“No, of course not,” Betsy said. “What makes you think children are ever grateful?”
“What about us, Mom?” Gretchen said. “Were we grateful? Did you have to protect us from Dad?”
“Whatever your father did, you all knew about it. There was no hiding anything.” This was true: how many times had Teddy or Caleb or one of the girls come upon Lincoln, dead drunk on the bathroom floor or passed out by the front door, after he’d stumbled in at four in the morning? How many times had they heard the excuses, the promises, the pleading?
“What did Dad do that we all knew about?” Teddy asked; he must have come through the kitchen, where either Esperanza or Carmelita would have let him in. Teddy, Betsy observed, seemed to be in the pink: sleek and well attended to. It must be that girl he had brought with him.
“There’s no time to go into all that now,” Betsy said, consulting Mickey Mouse again. Good God, it was already after eleven. Just then Betsy looked up and saw Angelica and Pippa descending the stairs. They had linked arms, and though it hardly seemed possible, they were still giggling. And as absurd, childish, and embarrassing as it was, the sight of them together caused a scrim of tears to cloud Betsy’s eyes. She would not let them fall; she rarely did. But she knew that they were there, and she turned her head so no one else would see.
Seven
Gretchen jackknifed off the side of the swimming pool and straight into the blue. She was a good diver and a good swimmer too, swimming being one of the few—okay, only—sports she could not just tolerate but actively enjoy. Down, down she went, slick as a seal, until she had traversed the length of the pool—interior walls painted a haunting shade of indigo—and burst up to the surface at the other end. God, that felt good. She needed to do this more, she decided. There was a free public pool out in Red Hook and another in Sunset Park. Or she could join a health club with a pool. That was another thing she planned to look into next week; her list was growing. She gathered her hair—now flattened against her skull and pasted to her neck and shoulders—into the elastic she had around her wrist and began to swim: long, even strokes, back and forth, back and forth. Work off some of those breakfast calories, she thought as she swam. It couldn’t hurt.
After Ennis and Justine had disappeared together downstairs, where presumably they would take on the chore of waking Portia (the girl would sleep all day if allowed), Gretchen faced the inevitable now what? The rest of the household would be consumed by wedding preparations; the women who were doing hair and makeup had arrived, along with the florist, and Betsy had disappeared in a flurry of instructions, directives, and imperatives.
Gretchen decided against having her brows done after all; she’d seen the alarming mask—a gleam of purple shadow, false lashes as thick as fur—on the young woman assigned to the job and decided she did not want this person anywhere near her face. She planned to steer clear of the hairstylist too. Her long, wild curls may have been a mess, but they were her mess, and she liked them just the way they were.
Outside, the gorgeous June day had beckoned. Even though the weather report, which had been a constant, feverish topic of conversation since her arrival, was predicting a thunderstorm in the late afternoon, there was no evidence of it yet: the sky was a limpid cerulean blue, and only the gentlest of breezes wafted over the fat pink roses that bloomed along the stone wall outside the kitchen door.
And so here she was, clad in the sensible black maillot, a trusty, tried-and-true staple of the Lands’ End catalog that did not let her down, even with the extra poundage she was carrying. Spread out across a chaise longue was one of her mother’s heavenly white towels, ready to receive her when she finished her swim. Swimming was good: it cleared her mind of Ennis, of Justine, of Angelica, and of just about everything else. She focused instead on the movement of her body as it sped through the water, arm over arm, legs kicking vigorously behind her.
She had swum the pool’s length about six times when her solitude was broken by a buff, tanned guy with a smoothly shaved head who was walking purposefully across the lawn, past the pool. He gave her a friendly wave, and she waved back, though she didn’t know who he was. He looked good though. He wore cutoffs, and he was shirtless; an amazing pair of tattoos—huge blue-black wings whose rippling feathers were filled with slashes of purple, scarlet, blue, and green—covered his shoulders and draped down his back.
Gretchen, who was a secret admirer of such bodily markings and, though she would never have told her daughters, was contemplating having a small tattoo—A flower? No, that was such a cliché; perhaps a bee or a mushroom would be better, more original—inked on her ankle or her hip, was mightily impressed by the whole package. She remained at the deep end, treading water as she watched him disappear into a shed and then emerge again with a red wheelbarrow. Mystery solved. He was clearly someone her mother had hired, part of the grounds crew, no doubt. Not that such a thing would bother her. Not a bit. Hadn’t she just been fantasizing she might meet someone at this wedding? Well, she hadn’t imagined anyone this hot. Gretchen continued treading water and hoping that her sodden ponytail did not make her look too foolish.
“How’s the water?” he called out.
“Fabulous,” she replied.
He nodded as if this were important information worth weighing and considering.
“I’m Gretchen,” she added.
“Jon,” he said. He adjusted the wheelbarrow. “You’re here for the wedding, right?”
“Sister of the bride,” she said. The treading was tiring, but she didn’t want to move down to the shallow end, where the water would no longer cover her. She wasn’t ready for him to see her in her bathing suit. Not yet, anyway.
He nodded again. “Big day for your family.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said. She was aware that she sounded too effusive somehow, as if she were drunk. But she hadn’t met anyone who had appealed to her in the longest time, and she was seriously out of practice.
“Well, have fun,” he said, resuming his walk with the wheelbarrow. The sun gleamed on his head; maybe he oiled it.
“See you,” she called back lamely. But would she?
She certainly hoped so.
She tried to resume her swimming, but her concentration—and with it her sense of pleasure—was broken, so she climbed out of the pool, unbound her hair, and settled with the towel on the chaise longue. She wouldn’t stay out here, of course; she was always mindful of her pale skin, which burned easily. But, oh, the sun felt so good. She closed her eyes and drank in the warmth.
“That’s an upstairs towel.”
Gretchen squinted up at Caleb, who was leaning over her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your towel. It’s from the bathroom upstairs.”
“So what?” The point of this exchange eluded her.
“Mom said the upstairs towels should stay upstairs. Towels for the pool”—he shook a turquoise-and-yellow-striped towel in her face, as if he were the matador and she the bull—“are in the cabana. Over there.” He let the towel go limp and pointed.
“Big deal,” she said, rolling over and away from him. “Who even cares?”
“Mom. She made a point of telling me.”
“So what is she going to do about it? Dock my allowance? Ground me?” She was annoyed; ordinarily she got on well with Caleb, but right now he was deliberately baiting her. Regression, she thought again. That was what happened when all four adult siblings were under a single roof.
“No need to get all huffy,” he said. “I was just stating the rules of the manor. Milady’s pleasure, if you know what I mean.”
“Grow up,” she muttered. Fuck you, was what she really wanted to say, but why go there? She closed her eyes and, because she’d left her sunglasses upstairs in her room, pressed her forearm over them. Maybe if she pretended to be trying to nap, Caleb would go away. No such luck.
“You remember Bobby? From last night?”
She opened her eyes to see her brother’s new boyfriend standing at his side. Naturally she remembered Bobby; did her brother think she was senile? But she just propped herself up on her elbows and said, “Sure.”
“I told Caleb that you were the smart one,” he said in a low, confiding voice. Despite her annoyance with Caleb, Gretchen smiled. Bobby was charming; she would grant him that. Charming and good-looking too, with a thick sheaf of blond hair that fell across his intriguing, amber-colored eyes.
“Going in for a swim?” she asked.
He nodded. “Looks like you’ve been in already.”
“I was. And the water’s just fine.” She settled back down.
Caleb and Bobby laid their striped towels—their cabana towels—on the pair of chairs flanking the chaise longue and jumped into the water. They didn’t so much swim as frisked, splashed, dunked, and cannonballed; they made quite a racket. Gretchen could have easily left. She’d had her swim, and she’d had her flirtation. But she found herself wanting to stay, so she got up and dragged the chaise longue into the shade, where she would not have to worry about sunburn. Caleb and Bobby were swimming now, gracefully in tandem across the glittering blue surface of the water.
Her brother looked so—well, so happy that Gretchen’s earlier irritation evaporated, leaving a tender and protective glow in its place. Caleb had been a sensitive, nervous kid. He cried easily and took even the smallest things very hard. So it was nice to see him enjoying the giddy little intoxication of this nascent romance. Caleb was a honey. Oh, he could be prickly, but that was only in self-defense; he was so easily hurt and needed some sort of armor. She hoped Bobby would understand this.
Finally the two men climbed out of the pool and lay panting side by side in the sun. Gretchen saw Caleb reach for Bobby’s hand and give it a squeeze; Bobby leaned over to whisper something in Caleb’s ear that made him burst out laughing. He was still laughing when Bobby got up, crossed the lawn, and headed back toward the house.
After a minute Caleb opened his eyes and waved at Gretchen.
“Come sit with me,” she called. “I’m in the shade ’cause I don’t want to get burned.”
“You and Angelica, always shunning the sun,” he said, but he got up and ambled over, striped towel trailing along behind him, to where she sat.
“When we’re old ladies, our skin will still be radiant and dewy, while yours will be all wrinkled, like a raisin.”
“No, it won’t,” he said, nudging her leg with his.
“Why not, smarty-pants?” she retorted. “Do you have an antiaging secret you’re not telling me about? No fair.”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m not going to get old.”
“And how are you planning to avoid that?” Gretchen scanned the sky overhead; it must have been noon or just about. She was getting hungry, damn it. The downside of physical exertion.
“I’m planning to die young.”
He looked so serious that Gretchen wanted to hug him and say, Shut up, in that way she heard her daughters say it, the emphasis on the second word. Instead she said, “You’re really crazy about this guy, huh?”
He nodded, and the smile widened until it consumed his face.
“That’s wonderful, Caleb. Really wonderful.”
“We’re moving in together.” He leaned forward as he spoke.
“Really? I didn’t know.” Gretchen considered this for a moment. Was it too sudden, or was Caleb really ready to commit?
“We just decided.”
“Any thoughts about where?”
“It’s complicated.” Gretchen said nothing, waiting for him to go on. “I haven’t told this to anyone but Mom yet,” he continued, voice growing more animated. “I haven’t been happy at work for a long time now, and I’m ready for a change. So I’m going back to school. To become a pastry chef.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not.”
“Well,” Gretchen said. “Well.”
“So everything’s a little unsettled now. I’ll be starting school in September, and I want Bobby to go with me.”
“Go with you where?”
“This is the best part: the cooking school is in the south of France. A town called St. Jean Cap Ferrat; it’s on the Riviera.”
Gretchen was silent.
“What? You mean you don’t think that’s a little slice of heaven?”
“Mom’s paying for this, isn’t she?”
“What difference does that make?” He looked hurt.
“None, I guess.” Why had she even said that? She let her mother pay her daughters’ tuition, didn’t she? Who was she to throw stones?
“It’s not like she can’t spare it,” he said, gesturing to the pool and all that went with it.
“You’re right,” she said, shamed now by her ungenerous response. “You’re absolutely right. She has the money, and she wants to give it to you. Why shouldn’t you take it?”
“Exactly,” Caleb said. “And if I become really successful as a chef, I can pay her back, right?”
“Right,” she said, and in that moment he was her little brother again, dripping chocolate batter onto the pages of the Joy of Cooking as he pored intently over its stained pages. “Anyway, all this talk about pastry is making me hungry,” she added, swinging her legs up from the chaise and reaching for her towel. “Why don’t we go inside and see if we can find some lunch?”
Caleb got up, and together they walked back along one of the paths that led to the house. Along the way they passed a quaintly decaying stone well—nonfunctional—and a bronze fountain of a dolphin spewing water from its bronze mouth. Her mother did love her garden ornaments. They also passed the little shed; Gretchen noticed that the red wheelbarrow was standing by its door, which was partially ajar. That meant Jon, the sexy grounds crew guy, was somewhere nearby. She sucked her stomach in as she ever so casually glanced around in the hope that she might see him. And in the next instant she did, but then just as quickly wished she didn’t: still shirtless, he stood just inside the shed, his wonderfully tanned and muscled arms locked tightly around Bobby as the two of them kissed as if they would never stop.
The sensation she felt, that slow dr
op of her heart from its perch of high, eager anticipation was nothing—and this she knew from cruel experience—but nothing compared to what her brother must be feeling. She put her hand on his arm, trying desperately to think of something, anything that would be of comfort to him now. But he recoiled from her touch as if he’d been singed, and ran without looking back or stopping toward the shelter of their mother’s house.
Gretchen was still standing there wondering what to do—follow Caleb or give him some privacy—when Teddy came out, wearing a garish pair of baggy flowered swim trunks that extended to his knees. Once a frat boy, always a frat boy, she thought. Walking alongside him was the elegant and self-contained Marti, her smooth brown hair in a twist, her well-cut black bikini—she had the body for it, that was for sure—at once sexy and sophisticated.
“What was that all about?” Teddy asked. He removed his dark wraparound sunglasses. “Caleb just went streaking by; boy, were his knickers in a twist.”
“He was upset,” Gretchen said. How much to tell Teddy? He and Caleb were not especially close, and she did not want to expose her youngest brother, especially in front of Marti, whom none of them knew well.
“I could see that,” Teddy said witheringly. “I was wondering why.”
“Maybe Gretchen does not wish to say,” Marti said, putting a hand on Teddy’s arm. She had a slight French accent and a low, pleasant voice.
“It’s true, I don’t,” Gretchen said gratefully. Teddy’s main squeeze was both attractive and sensitive, a winning combo in Gretchen’s view.
“Hey, I’m his big brother. He has no secrets from me,” Teddy said, looking back and forth from Gretchen to Marti.
“We all have secrets,” Marti said airily. “Don’t we?”
“Whatever,” Teddy said, taking Marti’s hand. “He always was a drama queen.”
“That isn’t nice, Teddy,” said Gretchen.
“Nice? Who wants to be nice? Nice is for losers.”
Gretchen stared at him. Had Teddy always been such a jerk?
“No, that’s not true, Teddy.” Marti smiled, but there was something firm, even directive in her tone. “The losers are the bitter ones. It’s the winners who can afford to be gracious and kind, no?” She cocked her head in Gretchen’s direction, a small Gallic gesture that completely won Gretchen over; if she’d been inclined to like her before, she was inclined to love her now. Her brother should not let this one get away.
Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) Page 8