Raucous laughter in the hall jolted her from her thoughts, reminding her of her imminent obligation: a toast for the rehearsal dinner. As maid of honor, she was expected not only to propose a toast to the bride and groom but to deliver one of the most eloquent toasts of the night. Nostalgic reflection, dramatic summary, uproarious hilarity—these were merely the prerequisites of a successful wedding toast. And as though the task was not daunting enough, she was expected, while weaving a compelling narrative of the bride, to paint a secondary portrait, an equally, if not more captivating, depiction of herself.
Every time she fixed her mind on the subject, it went suddenly, totally blank. When she thought of Lila, she had nothing to say. No, not true; she had nothing nice to say. She had experimented with various openings during the drive up to Maine.
“I’ve known Lila for nearly ten years now,” she considered, “but it was only when we roomed together that I grew to detest her.”
But irony was better left to the groomsmen. People expected more of the bridesmaids, adulation, clear and bright. She went on to consider the brazen potshots of a roast:
“Lila Hayes is universally known as the most beautiful girl ever to attend Yale. Unfortunately, she’s also known as the most promiscuous …”
But she quickly dismissed this concept in favor of a more traditional narrative.
“Lila and I have shared many things over the years: rooms, clothes, study notes, colds, boyfriends.”
But nothing about their relationship sanctioned this kind of candor. As a last resort, she experimented with earnestness.
“Lila Hayes is, quite possibly, the luckiest girl in the world. Beauty, wealth, impeccable lineage, intelligence—the list goes on and on.”
This tone felt right, even if the content was nauseatingly saccharine. If nothing else, it would please the bride.
“But in addition to her extreme good fortune in said areas,” she might go on, “Lila Hayes is perhaps luckiest in love.” And this, in Laura’s opinion, was the thing that made this the best and worst option for a toast; best, because it segued naturally from a discussion of the bride to the groom; worst, because it revealed the very thing Laura strove most to deny, that she was envious of any stroke of Lila’s good luck, let alone her groom.
The thought was so literal and banal it made Laura blush. It would have been subtler to say that she was jealous of Lila’s looks. But although Laura had absentmindedly yearned for skinnier thighs or mused on the perks of life as a golden blonde, she had ultimately decided that her dark hair and thoughtful eyes were more mysterious in the final analysis, that blondes were bubbly, bodacious, and all that, but rarely did crossword puzzles with her speed and expertise. And why preclude the possibility that her own DNA hid the coveted recessive gene? For all she knew, she would one day give birth to a blond, blue-eyed child, revealing the raw potential she stored within, the untold capacity to assimilate. No, for all her self-criticism, Laura had settled on the fact that she liked her appearance, appreciating it both for aesthetic value and for its difference from her friends. She was the brooding, intelligent one, the exotic Jewess. Conceptually, boys coveted Lila, but it was Laura they wanted to possess. And she would take sultry over pretty any day.
No, if Laura was jealous of anything of Lila’s, it was not her looks. But to say she was jealous of her relationship with Tom bordered on comic understatement. Jealous was not the right word, she decided. Cynical was more accurate. Or indignant. Indignant was accurate. And why wouldn’t she be? She had dated Tom first, for the first two years of college. The only difference was that her relationship with Tom ended in the span of an afternoon. And as though that was not cruel enough, she had been robbed of the comforts of mourning. She had been forced to face Tom the very next day when he started dating Lila. The two roommates had merely switched places as though it were a beloved Ivy League tradition for roommates to trade boyfriends every fourth semester.
Laura had watched as a fling grew into a relationship of its own. Throughout, she comforted herself with two predictions: Tom and Lila would go their separate ways after graduation, and she and Tom would eventually reunite, wiser and more in love. But the years after college confirmed only half of this hypothesis: Tom and Laura did reunite with renewed passion, but they did so even while Tom and Lila’s relationship thrived. At the tender age of twenty-two, Laura found herself entwined in an affair.
In the beginning, it felt like most transgressions—like an experiment, a day in someone else’s life. But gradually, it became commonplace, banal even. That she still spoke to Tom on the phone every day even while he went home to Lila seemed perfectly normal—unfortunate to be sure, but manageable nonetheless. They were still too young to concern themselves with the notion of permanence, and there was a certain freedom in having her nights to herself. That she pictured Tom when she was with other boys was peculiar but convenient. It softened the blow of wasting time with hopelessly incomparable replacements. Like any other habit—vice or virtue—it eventually became routine. It was simply a function of their unusual bond that they remained in love—fell deeper in love really—after their time as a couple ended, in much the same way you yearn for a family member after he dies.
Physical attraction did its part to glue them together, but something stronger than sexual attraction sealed the bond. When men and women grow apart, Laura had found, it is for the same reason they are drawn together; because they are finally, inherently too different. Friendships among women, on the other hand, were burdened by similarity. But Tom and Laura were somehow immune to the pitfalls of both relationships. They enjoyed the intrigue of opposites and the comfort of twins.
In Tom’s presence, Laura felt incomparably calm, the way you feel on a rainy day when your only reasonable option is to consign yourself to sitting still, the way she had felt the moment time was called on the last exam of senior year, that a vast amount of work had been completed and the future held only excitement. In Tom’s presence, time passed at an accelerated pace. They could be sitting in traffic or talking on the phone or waiting in line for a movie, and their time felt precious, important, worthwhile. Memories of Tom looked different. Their colors were sharper and richer, like grass after it rains. And she had been in love enough times to rule out the possibility that this was merely some feat of nostalgia.
With everyone else, Laura felt rushed, convinced that her companion was on the verge of being bored. She spent her life cursed by this awareness, rushing to make a point, pretending to understand someone else’s. But with Tom, she felt the same pressure to finish a thought that she would if she were talking to herself. It was understood that they shared the same thresholds—the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect.
Laura knew perfectly well that her friends disapproved of her friendship with Tom. But their disapproval was based on an incomplete set of facts. Unfortunately, she could never share the extent of their relationship. So she stomached the disgrace and let them think what they pleased. They were, at least, correct in thinking that she was brokenhearted. Only, she was not brokenhearted because the relationship had ended suddenly; she was brokenhearted because it had never truly ended. Finally, new inspiration for her toast:
“Tom and Lila are two incredible people,” she could begin, “who are going to have incredible lives. Unfortunately, they are not meant to spend their lives together.”
Loud laughter from the hall interrupted the pleasure of this notion. Suddenly conscious of the time, she collected her things and hurried to join her friends in their customary pre-party bathroom caucus. As for the
toast, she would simply have to hope for the best.
“What was that about anyway?” Tripler was saying when Laura arrived.
The bathroom had been transformed into a steamy war room. Each girl stood at the mirror in uniform, one towel wrapped around her showered body, another twisted into a turban on her head. As they dried their hair and applied makeup, they plotted the evening’s strategy like top military aides.
“That was a little weird,” Annie agreed. “It kind of felt like the beginning of a horror movie.”
“Gussie’s gotten a little cuckoo,” Tripler said, “in her old age.”
“It’s not her fault,” Weesie said. “You drink enough champagne, it’s bound to waterlog the brain.”
“That whole thing about the porch,” Annie said. She extended her arm and craned her neck to inspect the state of her underarm.
“That’s her way of saying they’ve let the house go,” said Weesie. Lips pursed, she leaned into the mirror and applied a coat of sugary lip gloss.
“It’s her way of saying they’re not as rich as the Hayeses,” Tripler corrected. Without warning, she sprayed perfume inches from Weesie’s ear and stepped toward her, into the mist.
“What is that?” Weesie yelped.
“It’s just perfume,” Tripler sniffed.
Weesie glared her reproach at the mirror.
“She sounded awfully proud about that ghost on the roof,” said Annie.
“Maybe she had a soft spot for her great-great-great-grandmother,” said Tripler.
Laughter erupted, amplified by the tight quarters.
Weesie looked up from her lips to meet Laura’s gaze in the mirror. “Oh,” she chirped. “There you are.”
“I’m screwed for my toast,” Laura declared.
“Shut up,” said Weesie. “You always say that, and then you give the best toast of the night.”
“I wrote mine out,” Tripler bragged, pointing to a stack of index cards on the sink counter. Wielding an eyeliner pencil, she pried one eye open to reveal the pink interior of an eyelid.
Weesie held Laura’s gaze then shot Tripler a murderous look.
“Your signature rhyming ode?” asked Laura.
Tripler nodded, one eye still pried open. “Guaranteed to bring down the house.”
Laura and Weesie opted for silence. It was the fastest way to shut Tripler up or, at the very least, to change the subject.
“Did Lila put you in that dead girl’s room?” Tripler demanded.
“That’s nice,” said Laura.
“Lila would only pull that shit with you,” Tripler quipped. She had a knack for weaving character assassination into the most offhand comment.
“I love old houses,” Laura insisted.
“Why?” Tripler asked. Satisfied with her eyes, she unraveled her towel to release a mass of stringy wet hair.
Annie shed both towels and strutted proudly across the room as though to assert the intimacy they all shared.
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “It’s kind of fun to picture the girls who grew up here …”
“But who would want to?” Tripler asked.
“It makes me want to write a novel,” said Laura.
“Better not write about me,” said Tripler.
Laura stared at Tripler, checking the urge to say something snide.
“Well, the fascination is mutual,” said Weesie, reviving the previous conversation. “Remember sophomore year when you got that tattoo, and Lila went out and got the same one …”
Laura offered Weesie a grateful smile. “It was only henna,” she said.
Annie paused to interject, one foot out the door. “Not to get too technical, but didn’t Lila steal Tom from you, too?”
Running water punctuated her question. The girls remained silent, plucking hairs, puckering lips.
Finally, Weesie spoke up, sparing everyone the discomfort. “Shit,” she said. “It’s ten to four. Who has the hair dryer?”
Tripler pressed the power button in response, assaulting the room with its deafening noise and precluding conversation entirely.
Laura was ready before the others and walked down to the porch to wait. The air was fresh, and the light was remarkably different from the light in New York. Calming slightly, she took the opportunity to survey the house. What was it about this house that Augusta wanted to destroy? Had she once yearned to tear down the porch at Northern Gardens too? Was that how Augusta felt when she looked at her? Now, looking across the field, she studied the profile of the elegant white house. A truckload of white chairs had been stacked by a vine-covered trellis, ready to be arranged for tomorrow’s fete. The enormous white tent rustled in the breeze, as though taking a deep breath.
Suddenly, Laura was struck by the immediacy—the reality of Tom and Lila’s wedding. In twenty-four hours, Tom and Lila would stand underneath that trellis. Chairs would line the lawn in neat rows. Guests would fill the chairs. Laura would stand in her horrible tin dress, beaming at Lila’s side. Picturing this, Laura felt and fought the impulse to run screaming onto the lawn, to find Tom, shake him, beg him not to go through with it. Strangely, this operatic act seemed entirely sensible at the moment. It would be worth any mortification to prevent him from making this mistake. But just as quickly, she kicked herself for humoring an absurd notion. How many movies had she seen that exploited this very setup? How many soap operas had culminated in just this story arc? And more important, what made her think she wanted him for herself? She did not admire the man Tom had become. He had traded integrity for status. What was desirable about a man like that?
As she stood on the porch, a beautiful day grew even more picturesque. The full, buoyant clouds of the afternoon stretched into gauzy ribbons and hovered above the house like contrails left by a plane. A school of pristine sailboats cut across the shimmering cove. Grass turned from green to gold as the sun sifted through the clouds, lengthening the shadows of trees and the house. Across the lawn, people were starting to gather. A small contingent formed on the Hayeses’ porch and filtered onto the lawn for the rehearsal. One person broke from the group and took an exuberant lead. It was Lila, swinging her arms up and down like a child on Christmas day.
The girls walked over to Northern Gardens together, arms linked, four abreast, like soldiers marching to battle. The boys followed close behind, jostling each other and occasionally bursting into a chorus of shouted insults. For everyone, distance from home and routine and the smell of fresh-cut grass played a trick on their moods, convincing them that they had retreated to a different time. Gradually, the girls loosened their grasp on one another and fell into a new formation. Tripler enlisted Weesie to listen to a practice run of her toast. Annie and Oscar walked in silence, appreciating the ocean breeze. Pete and Jake broke into an impromptu race, as though to remind the group of their athletic prowess at Yale. Laura lagged behind, forcing a merry smile that only an idiot could mistake for real cheer.
The Hayes and McDevon families were fully assembled when the group arrived. They had formed a semicircle with Augusta at its center like members of an ancient religious cult worshipping a deity. On one side of the circle, members of the Hayes contingent stood in official cocktail stance. They chatted amiably, arms propped on hips, heads tilted inquisitively. On the other side, the McDevons reunited, greeted new arrivals to the clan, but they looked slightly confused, like school children awaiting instructions. Their side of the circle had bottlenecked into an inelegant clump, causing the semicircle to resemble a snake with a curling tail. The pileup looked strangely inappropriate on the otherwise immaculate lawn. Annoyed, Augusta dispatched her younger daughter to impose order.
Lila stood apart from the circle, watching her guests arrive. She greeted the group with a high-pitched shriek that was answered with an echo. She was quickly surrounded by the wedding party and congratulated on her current ensemble. Somehow, they managed to double the excitement they had expressed only an hour earlier before subsiding into a more appropriate volu
me to coo about their rooms and the fit of Lila’s dress. She looked perfectly radiant in a fitted navy blue silk frock. The dark blue silk offset her eyes even while allowing them to upstage it. Her golden hair provided the perfect contrast to the rich color. The dress seemed to have been designed to showcase her enviable figure, announcing her virtues in rapid succession: long legs, ample bust, beautiful face.
Laura surveyed the lawn for a moment before she spotted Tom. He was obscured by Lila’s maternal grandparents, who had effectively barricaded him as though to prevent a sudden escape. When she finally caught a glimpse of his face, he looked strange, unlike himself. He stood unnaturally erect and smiled in a forced, plastic way, like a kidnapped child feigning normalcy on a ransom tape. He wore a cream-colored linen suit of a cut and color designed expressly for garden parties, the kind of suit Tom would surely have called “poncy” had he seen it on another man. He nodded and blinked more than usual, as you do when you’re faking an emotion. It was immediately clear to Laura that he was miserable and scared, and the realization made her feel equal amounts of delight and despair. The paradox of emotion caused a combustive reaction in her heart that resulted in nausea.
Tom noticed Laura just as this sensation threatened to bring her to the grass. Laura stared back without smiling, forgetting propriety. Mercifully, Tripler grabbed her elbow just then, demanding that she vet the closing joke for her toast, allowing Laura enough time to slow her pulse before Augusta corralled the crowd.
The Romantics Page 5