Beautiful Day (15 page)

Roger came over to Margot with an actual smile on his face, and Margot shivered, despite
the warm sun. She had never seen Roger smile before.

“Your brother has an idea,” Roger said.

Margot nodded, pressing her lips together.
Of course he does,
she thought.

“He thinks we can lift the branch with a series of ropes that we would tie to the
upper branches,” Roger said. “He thinks we can lift it enough to clear the height
of the tent.”

“How is he planning on reaching the upper branches?” Margot asked. The upper branches
were high, a lot higher than Kevin standing on top of the ladder.

“I have a friend with a cherry picker,” Roger said.

Of course you do,
Margot thought.

“I’m going to call him right now,” Roger said. “See if he can come over.”

“Will a cherry picker
fit
through here?” Margot asked. Alfie dominated the eastern half of the backyard. Beyond
Alfie was Beth Carmichael’s perennial bed and the white fence that separated them
from the Finleys’ next door. Any kind of big truck would mow right over the flower
bed. “My mother was very clear that no one was to trample her blue hardy geraniums.”

But Roger was no longer listening. He was on his phone.

“Isn’t it
great?
” Jenna said. “Kevin found a way to fix it! We don’t have to cut Alfie’s branch.”

“Maybe,” Margot said. She wondered why she didn’t feel happier about this breakthrough
news. Probably because it had been Kevin who came up with the answer. Probably because
she now looked like a knee-jerk tree-limb amputator who would have lopped off a piece
of Carmichael family history if Kevin hadn’t arrived in time to save the day.

Margot smiled. “Thank God for Kevin,” she said.

She knew she sounded like sour grapes, and Jenna kindly ignored her.

Margot heard the back screen door slam, and she turned, expecting to see Finn or Autumn
emerging—but the person who came through the door was her father. And behind her father,
Pauline.

“Daddy!” Margot said.

Doug Carmichael was dressed in green golf pants and a pale pink polo shirt and the
belt that Beth had needlepointed for him over the course of an entire summer at Cisco
Beach. The outfit said “professional man ready for a day of good lies and fast greens,”
but his face said something else.

For the first time in her life, Margot thought, her father looked old. He was a tall,
lean man, bald except for a tonsure of silver hair, but today his shoulders were sloping
forward, and his hair looked nearly white. His face held the same hangdog expression
that he’d worn for the two years after Beth died, and it broke Margot’s heart to see
it now.

As he approached, Margot held her arms out for a hug, and they embraced, and Margot
squeezed extra hard. He still felt solid and strong, thank God.

“Hi, sweetie,” he said.

“You made it,” Margot said. “Is everything okay?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t, he had to move on to Beanie and Nick—and Jenna, whom
he picked clear off the ground. Margot felt a crotchety old jealousy. How many times
had she wished that she was the little sister instead of the big sister, the youngest
instead of the oldest? She never got coddled; she never got
picked up.
Jenna was the Carmichaels’ answer to Franny Glass, Amy March, Tracy Partridge. She
was the doll and the princess. Margot used to comfort herself with the knowledge that
she had been their mother’s confidante, her right hand. In the weeks before Beth died,
before things got really bad and hospice and morphine were involved, she had said
to Margot, “You’ll have to take care of things, honey. This family will need to lean
on you.”

Margot had promised she would take care of things. And she had, hadn’t she?

“Hello, Margot.”

Margot snapped out of her self-indulgent bubble to see Pauline standing before her.
Usually, Pauline was breezy and officious, as though Margot were a woman at a cocktail
party whom Pauline knew she had to greet and give five minutes of small talk before
moving on to mingle. And Margot liked things that way.
She had never discussed anything personal with Pauline. On the occasion of Doug and
Pauline’s wedding at City Hall in Manhattan, Margot had kissed Pauline on the cheek
and said congratulations. She had meant to say, “Welcome to the family,” but she couldn’t
form the sentence. She always referred to Pauline as “my father’s wife,” never “my
stepmother.”

Something about Pauline’s demeanor and her tone of voice was different now. It was
apologetic, nearly obsequious.

Pauline isn’t coming to the wedding.

Margot realized that Doug and Pauline must have had a fight, a fight big enough to
warrant the sending of that text. She had never once considered that her father and
Pauline were a
couple,
who might have
problems.
At their age, Margot assumed, the drama would be all dried up. She didn’t like thinking
about their intimate life—sexual or emotional.

“Hi, Pauline,” Margot said. She gave Pauline a hug, smelled her familiar perfume,
wondered if Doug had wanted Pauline to stay home, or if Pauline had been the one who
hadn’t wanted to come. She wondered what the issue had been.

“What’s going on here?” Doug asked.

At that second, Margot felt the weight of the late night and the drinks. The weekend
had only just begun, and she was already exhausted. She didn’t want to explain about
the tree to anyone else, she would let Kevin explain it; she needed to go upstairs
and lie down, just fifteen minutes and she would be fine.

But once she headed upstairs to the relative peace of her bedroom, she felt ill at
ease. It was a well-known fact that once you left the room—or in this case the yard—the
rest of the family would start talking about you. Margot lay across her bed, feeling
as though her head was filled with pea gravel. She could hear the voices and laughter
coming from the yard, and she thought, really, this was the best part of any wedding,
not the ceremony or
the cake or the dancing but the downtime when they were all together without the lights
shining on them. Her mother, if she had been alive, would be snapping pictures, asking
the kids to pose, deadheading flowers, pulling weeds. Her mother would have had a
platter of bacon and eggs ready, a pitcher of juice, and boxes of doughnuts from the
Nantucket Bake Shop.

The problem, Margot realized, with having had a wonderful mother was that it was impossible
to live up to the standards she had set.

Margot couldn’t sleep. She knew they were all down in the yard, calling her a tree
killer.

She stood up, and seeing that the door to Jenna’s bedroom was open and the room was
empty, she walked through and stepped out onto the deck. From this vantage point,
she could see everything. Nick had his arms wrapped around both Finn and Autumn. Okay,
that was dangerous: Autumn and Nick had had a not-so-secret fling during the weekend
of Jenna’s college graduation eight years earlier. (They had nearly broken the bed
at the Williamsburg Inn; everyone had heard them, including Margot and Drum Sr., and
in the morning over the breakfast buffet, Drum Sr. had given Nick a high five.)

Next Margot’s attention was drawn to Pauline and Jenna, who were standing apart from
everyone, alone. They seemed to be engaged in the kind of deep conversation that Margot
studiously avoided having with Pauline. Pauline was doing most of the talking, and
Margot wondered what she was saying. Then Pauline pulled the Notebook out of her enormous
handbag and handed it to Jenna, and Jenna and Pauline hugged, and Margot thought,
Ohhhhhhh. Pauline had the Notebook.
And Margot thought,
Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Oh, boy.
Had Pauline taken the Notebook from the dinner on Wednesday night? Had she
absconded
with it? Maybe that was what the fight with Doug was about. He had
banned her from the wedding. Or she had said she didn’t want to come.

Margot was flushed with high emotion. She wondered if Pauline had read the Notebook.
She bristled at the thought. Pauline had only met their mother once or twice, a thousand
years earlier. The Notebook was none of Pauline’s business.

Jenna accepted the Notebook graciously, then hugged it to her chest. She didn’t seem
the least bit ruffled by the exchange. She was their mother reincarnated. She had
probably thanked Pauline for returning it, instead of asking why she had taken it
in the first place, which was what Margot would have done.

At that moment, heads swiveled, and Margot knew someone had just entered the yard,
but she couldn’t tell who. It was Rhonda, back from her half marathon. Pauline ran
toward her daughter, and in the middle of the Carmichael chaos, the two Tonellis embraced,
and Pauline’s shoulders heaved. She was sobbing. Doug took no notice of this, nor
did Nick or Kevin or Beanie or any of the kids—they were either oblivious, or too
consumed with Alfie’s branch, or willfully ignoring the teary scene. Rhonda wisely
shepherded Pauline inside. A moment later, Margot could hear them in the kitchen.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, only the sounds of their voices. If Margot
had moved to the staircase, she would have been able to hear every word of their conversation,
and while it was tempting to eavesdrop, Margot refrained. When it came to weddings,
all people were not created equally. There were insiders, and there were outsiders.
There were people like Finn, who had been Jenna’s friend since diapers, and then there
was a couple attending whom Stuart and Jenna had just met in their premarital counseling.
Jenna admitted they barely knew the couple, but she felt like they would be friends
going forward, and she wanted to include them. Edge was coming to the wedding, but
there were law
school friends of Doug’s coming who had never even met Jenna. Pauline and Rhonda must
have felt like outsiders, too, although Pauline was Doug’s wife and Rhonda was a bridesmaid.
Or maybe they didn’t feel like outsiders, but neither did they feel like insiders.
They were family… but not family. It was no secret that Pauline didn’t like the Nantucket
house; she only let Doug visit the island once or twice a summer. Pauline found the
house dusty and moldy and decrepit; she didn’t appreciate its charm, she hadn’t bothered
to learn its nooks and crannies, she hadn’t experienced it as a summer haven for decades
the way the rest of the Carmichaels had. Maybe she sensed that although the house
was the ancestral abode of Doug’s family, it had really been Beth’s home. Beth had
planted the perennial bed and cultivated the climbing roses; Beth had chosen the artwork
and sewn the slipcovers. Pauline wouldn’t give two hoots about Alfie’s branch or the
swing, but at the same time, she yearned for a connection. She wanted to
be
a Carmichael. She must have thought the Notebook would provide a secret clue, the
elusive key to understanding.
How do I fit in here? How do I become one of them?
What Margot knew and Pauline must have figured out was that the membership was closed;
Pauline had arrived too late in the game. The Carmichaels were incapable of forming
any meaningful new memories because the old memories—the ones with Beth in them—were
too precious to replace.

This weekend would be difficult for Pauline. Really difficult. Margot decided to forgive
her for taking the Notebook.

Margot, Jenna, Finn, Autumn, and Rhonda were due at the RJ Miller Salon at ten o’clock
for manicures, pedicures, and facials—but it was such a splendid day that Margot decided
to cancel her appointment. She was going to hang out at the house for a while and
then take her children to Fat Ladies Beach. Margot thought
Jenna might be bummed about this—really, Margot was proving to be the lamest maid
of honor in the history of weddings—but Jenna just grinned wickedly and said, “Great
idea. I’m canceling, too. I’m going to go kayaking with Stuart in Monomoy Creeks.”

“Wait,” Margot said. “
You
can’t cancel. You’re the bride.”

“So?” Jenna said.

“Don’t you want your nails done?” Margot said. “Don’t you want your skin to glow?
Tomorrow, all eyes are on you, angel bear.”

“I couldn’t care less,” Jenna said. “Do you mind calling the salon?”

Margot didn’t mind calling the salon at all. First she checked with the other bridesmaids
to see if there would be any other truants.

Autumn wanted to keep her appointment.

Rhonda wanted to keep her appointment, and she asked if there was a tanning bed.

“Tanning bed?” Margot said. She studied Rhonda, whose skin was evenly bronzed—possibly,
if Margot was being super critical, even a little orange. Rhonda must have used a
tanning bed in New York; the thought struck Margot as amusing. She had thought that
tanning beds went out in the 1980s with perms and Loverboy. “If you want to get some
sun, come to the beach with me and the kids,” Margot said.

“No, that’s okay,” Rhonda said quickly. “I was just wondering.”

Finn opted to cancel her appointment—not because she planned on wallowing in misery
in her room, and not because she was tagging along with Jenna and Stuart’s kayaking
expedition. She canceled because she was going to the beach with Nick. He was going
to teach her to paddleboard.

Oh, boy,
Margot thought.

“Nick is coming to Fat Ladies with us,” Margot said. “So we’ll all go together.”

Beanie and Kevin and the kids were also coming to the beach, so there would be eleven
people headed to Fat Ladies.

“I’ll make sandwiches,” Margot said.

“Since when do
you
make sandwiches?” Kevin said. “Call Henry Jr.’s and order sandwiches. Nick and I
will go to Hatch’s and get chips and soda and beer.”

“I am capable of making sandwiches, Kevin,” Margot said. “It’s not always takeout
at my house, you know.”

Beanie patted Margot’s arm. “You have a job,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“
What’s
okay?” Margot said. “I can make sandwiches! I bought deli stuff yesterday and Portuguese
bread at Something Natural. I can do peanut butter and fluff. I bought fluff! I can
cut the crusts off.”