Beautiful Day (5 page)

“I’m sure she looks lovely in Beth’s dress,” Doug said.

“You know,” Pauline said, “I thought it was a good thing that you were widowed instead
of divorced. I was
glad
there wasn’t an ex-wife I had to see at family functions or that you were paying
alimony to. But guess what? Beth is more intrusive than any ex-wife could have been.”

“Intrusive?” Doug said. “Define intrusive.”

“She’s everywhere. Especially with this wedding. She is a palpable presence in the
room. She is an untouchable standard by which the rest of us have to be judged. She
has taken on sainthood. Saint Beth, the dead mother, whose memory grows more burnished
every day.”

“Enough,” Doug said.

“I just can’t compete,” Pauline said. “I’ll never come first, not with the kids, not
with you. You are, all of you Carmichaels, obsessed with her.”

Doug thought that hearing such words might anger him, but he merely found them validating.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t think you should come to Nantucket this weekend.”

“What?”
Pauline said.

“I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I don’t
want
you to come to Nantucket this weekend. It’s my daughter’s wedding, and I think it
would be best if I went alone.” Doug heard Pauline inhale, but he didn’t wait around
for what she was going to say. He left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Down the stairs, through the kitchen. His cell phone was on the counter. He snatched
it up and saw the two meager lamb chops sitting in a pool of bloody juices.

He wasn’t going to eat them. He was going out for pizza.

I
t felt so good to be back in the house of her childhood summers that Margot forgot
about everything else for a minute.

The house was two and a half blocks off Main Street, on the side of Orange Street
that overlooked the harbor. It had been bought by Margot’s great-great-great-grandfather
in 1873, only
twenty-seven years after the Great Fire destroyed most of downtown. The house had
five bedrooms, plus an attic that Margot’s grandparents had filled with four sets
of bunk beds and one lazy ceiling fan. It was shambling now, although in its heyday
it had been quite grand. There were still certain antiques around—an apothecary chest
with thirty-six tiny drawers, grandfather and grandmother clocks that announced the
hour in unison, gilded mirrors, Eastlake twin beds and a matching dresser in the boys’
bedroom upstairs—and there were fine rugs, all of them now faded by the sun and each
permanently embedded with twenty pounds of sand. There was a formal dining room with
a table seating sixteen where no one ever ate, although Margot remembered doing decoupage
projects with her grandmother at that table on rainy days. One year, Nick and Kevin
found turtles at Miacomet Pond and decided the turtles should race the length of the
table. Margot remembered one of the turtles veering off the side of the table and
crashing to the ground, where it lay upside down, its feet pedaling desperately through
the air.

In the kitchen hung a set of four original Roy Bailey paintings that might have been
valuable, but they were coated in bacon grease and splattered oil from their father’s
famous cornmeal onion rings. At one point, Margot’s mother had said, “Yes, this was
a lovely house until we got a hold of it. Now it is merely a useful house, and a well-loved
house.”

Margot was shocked at how well loved. She felt euphoric at the sight of the dusty
brick of the kitchen floor, the old wooden countertops scarred by 140 years of knives
coarsely chopping garden tomatoes, the sound of the screen door slamming as her children
ran out back to the green lawn, the seventy-foot oak tree named Alfie—after Alfred
Coates Hamilton, the original owner of the house—and the wooden swing that hung from
Alfie’s lowest branch.

Margot had lived in the city all her adult life. She loved Manhattan—but not like
this. Her adoration of Nantucket was matched only by her adoration of her children.
She wanted to be buried here, in the shade of Alfie’s leaves, if possible. She would
have to write that down somewhere.

No sooner had Margot entered the house and allowed herself those sixty seconds of
appreciation than crisis struck. Jenna stood in front of Margot, holding open her
Mielie bag, handmade by a woman in Cape Town, South Africa. Jenna was sobbing.

“What?” Margot said. She had certainly expected tears from Jenna this weekend. Jenna
was an idealist, and the world was constantly falling short. But so soon? Ten minutes
after their arrival? “What is it?”

“The Notebook!” Jenna said. “It’s
gone!
”

Margot peered into the depths of Jenna’s bag—there was her wallet made from hemp,
the handkerchief Jenna used like a character from a Merchant Ivory film because, unlike
Kleenex, handkerchiefs could be washed and reused, her Aveeno lip balm, the package
of Dramamine, and her cell phone. There was no Notebook.

“Maybe you put it somewhere else,” Margot said.

“I keep it here,” Jenna said. “Right here in my bag. You know I keep it right here.”

Yes, Margot did know that; she had seen Jenna remove and return the Notebook from
that bag a hundred times. Jenna was the kind of person who had a place for everything,
and her place for the Notebook was in that bag.

Margot laid her hands on Jenna’s shoulders. “Calm down,” she said. “Let’s think. When
was the last time you remember having it?”

Instead of this question focusing Jenna, it caused her to
become more scattered. She cast around the kitchen, her eyes frantic. Jenna was the
kindest, most nurturing soul Margot knew; the students and parents at the Little Minds
school adored her. As the youngest by such a large span of years—there were eight
plus years between Jenna and Nick—Jenna had been raised in the warm bath of their
parents’ love. Her childhood and adolescence had involved little conflict. The downside
to this was that Jenna wasn’t great with crises.

“Think,” Margot said. “Stop and think. Did you have it on the boat?”

“No,” Jenna said. “I haven’t seen it at all today. I had it last night at… Locanda
Verde.” Her face dissolved.

“Whoa, whoa,” Margot said. “No big deal. We can
call
Locanda Verde.”

“Then Stuart and I got into a cab!” Jenna said. “What if I left it in a cab?”

Margot’s heart sank. What if Jenna had left it in a cab? Margot would go through the
motions of calling the dispatcher’s office, but they wouldn’t have it. Once you left
something in a New York City cab, it was gone forever. How many pairs of sunglasses
lost each day? Margot wondered. How many cell phones? How many copies of
Fifty Shades of Grey
? A massive redistribution of personal belongings took place every day across the
five boroughs because of what people left behind in cabs. The Notebook! Like Jenna,
Margot had read the Notebook front to back and back to front, focusing most intently
on the passages that mentioned her; she felt a piercing loss at the thought of never
seeing it again.

Jenna was on her phone.

Margot said, “Who are you calling?”

“Stuart!” Jenna said.

Stuart, of course. Margot thought, with a glimmer of hope,
that maybe Stuart had the Notebook. If he didn’t, he would fly out the door of his
office and drive to godforsaken who-knows-where-Brooklyn-or-Queens to personally dig
through the lost and found at the dispatcher’s office. Stuart would be able to offer
Jenna comfort; he was the only one who mattered.

Margot didn’t have anyone like that. She could never call Edge about something like
the Notebook. Instead she called her father. No answer. She called again and left
a voice mail.

“Hey, Dad, it’s Margot. Jenna has misplaced the Notebook. She had it last night at
dinner, she said? She thinks maybe she left it in the cab? Any thoughts? Call me back.”

Margot then sent her father a text:
Jenna lost Notebook.

And another:
Please call me.

Jenna, meanwhile, was still on the phone with Stuart. In the Notebook, their mother
had referred to Jenna’s future husband, whoever he may be, as her Intelligent, Sensitive
Groom-to-Be—and Stuart fit the bill. Jenna had already calmed down; she had stopped
crying.

Margot marched upstairs. Jenna’s luggage was in the hallway, and Margot started to
look through it, thinking,
Please appear, please appear.

What appeared were a pair of shapely, tanned legs. Finn’s legs. Margot used to have
legs like that, back in her surfing days, before she worked sixty-five hours a week
trying to support three kids and an ex-husband.

Finn said, “Why are you going through Jenna’s things?”

Her voice was accusatory, but Margot didn’t even both looking up.

Finn said, “Oh, shit.”

“Exactly,” Margot said. A second later, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Involuntarily,
she thought:
Edge.

But it was her father.

“I have it,” he said.

Margot filled with giddy relief, and Jenna sobbed with tears of joy. One of the best
feelings in the world was finding something you were sure you’d lost forever.

A little while later, a white van pulled into the driveway behind Margot’s LR3. She
poked her head out the side door. The Sperry Tent Company. She hoped she didn’t have
to sign anything or decide anything. She hoped the four guys who hopped out of the
truck knew exactly what they were doing. She hoped that Roger, the wedding planner,
had reminded the tent guys about her mother’s perennial bed.

Beth had been a fanatical gardener, and some of those perennials were over forty years
old, which made them heirloom. Or maybe not. Margot knew nothing about gardening;
every year, she killed one store-bought herb garden by placing it on her fire escape
and forgetting to water it.

Out the back screen door, which faced the yard, Margot called to her children, “The
gentlemen are here to set up the tent! Either make yourself useful or get out of the
way!” Ellie was lying on her stomach on the swing, spinning in circles until the ropes
were twisted to the top.

“Eleanor, come in, please!” Margot called.

“No!” Ellie said.

Margot sighed. Was it too early for wine?

Upstairs, Margot heard Jenna and her maidens milling around; she caught the occasional
burst of laughter. The hysteria over the missing Notebook had subsided—THANK GOD—and
shortly thereafter, Autumn Donahue had arrived in a cab
from the airport. Autumn had been Jenna’s roommate at the College of William and Mary.
She had beautiful copper-colored hair and freckles and brown eyes and was the visual
antidote to Jenna’s and Finn’s uncompromising blondness. Autumn swore like a sailor,
and she could turn any situation pornographic in seconds. At the bridal shower, which
had been attended by Pauline, as well as Jenna’s future mother-in-law, Ann Graham,
Autumn had seen fit to give Jenna a two-headed vibrator and a tube of lubricant.

“Just turn that thing on for Stuart,” Autumn had said. “He’ll love it.”

Autumn always dated three men at the same time; she called these men her “lov-ahs,”
and she sometimes threw a random one-night stand into the mix. She had never been
in love; she had no intention of ever falling in love.

Quite frankly, Margot admired this about Autumn.

Margot was waiting for a text from Edge. She had texted him the night before to tell
him that Drum Sr. was getting married. What she’d written was:
Drum Sr. is getting married to someone named Lily the Pilates instructor.

When, after thirty minutes, she hadn’t received a response, she had written:
No, seriously, Drum Sr. is getting married.

Margot had fallen asleep with the phone in her hand, waiting for a response. But in
the morning there was still nothing from Edge. Margot found this silence perplexing.
He often let one or more of her texts go without a response, but a text about her
ex-spouse remarrying? That was real
news.
It deserved
something.
Then Margot began to worry that Edge wasn’t responding because he thought Margot
was fishing for a proposal herself. Ha! The mere idea of a proposal from Edge was
ludicrous. He had allowed her to spend the night at his apartment only once—and then
only because he’d had a favor to ask of her.