Bride & Groom (24 page)

Birds. We did sound like them. Our striking plumage was, however, more characteristic of avian males than of females. Steve’s vet techs and assistants weren’t wearing scrubs, and my friends from dog training weren’t in kennel clothes. Still, I’d have bet that almost every outfit had pockets and that a lot of those pockets contained dog treats. Faith Barlow, Rowdy’s handler, wore a dress I’d seen in the showring. Its color was a pale rose, chosen, no doubt, to hide dog hair, as Faith’s dress almost did. Rowdy’s breeder, Janet, wore a rather severe gray suit, but large sterling silver malamutes dangled from her ears, and her hair bore a startling resemblance to the stand-off coat so desirable in our breed.

Birds. I wouldn’t mention them to Rita, who had, of course, met Artie when she’d taken up birding. Didn’t some feathered species mate for life? Not Artie. As I chatted with friends, I kept darting glances at Rita. She’d discovered Artie with the gushy, perfidious Francie in this same neighborhood only the night before. To preserve our friendship with Rita, Steve and I would have to tell her about the scene I’d witnessed at the Wayside Wildlife Refuge. But not yet, not until she regained some strength. At the moment, she was in animated conversation with Gabrielle, who was due to spend the night in Rita’s guest room. Rita held a cup and saucer in her left hand, but she wasn’t drinking anything, and she wasn’t eating, either. She’d told me that she’d been unable to swallow more than a bite of the scrambled eggs she’d fixed herself for breakfast. My concern for Rita made me realize that many of my best friends were absent. One of the few disadvantages of forming friendships through dogs is that you end up with close friends who live thousands of miles away. Some of mine would be there for the wedding, but they couldn’t make separate, expensive trips just for a shower.

The one guest who wasn’t exactly a friend of mine was Carla Guarini, who was doing the flowers for our wedding. Carla also had the distinction of being the only guest invited because her husband was a Mob boss and I’d consequently been scared to exclude her. For once, Carla’s dog wasn’t with her, and for once, I was glad that someone had left a dog at home. Under my tutelage, her tiny dog, Anthony, had progressed beyond disobedient insufferability, but I hadn’t cured Carla of tucking him into her bosom, as if he were a silk scarf that prevented her from showing a lot of cleavage, a function that Anthony did not, in any case, serve. As usual, Carla’s dress plunged. A turquoise satin cocktail dress with dyed-to-match pumps, it looked like an especially hideous bridesmaid’s gown. Soon after Judith Esterhazy arrived, I was surprised to find that Carla, having learned that Judith was a famous novelist, had engaged her in what Carla clearly intended as literary conversation.

“You write books!” Carla exclaimed. “I just love to read! I’ve always got my nose stuck in a book. My favorite is Cecilia Ann Vesper. Don’t you just adore her?”

Slim and refined, Judith Esterhazy was possibly the last woman on earth who’d accessorize by sticking a dog between her breasts. “Vesper?” she inquired.

“Well, some people think she’s old-fashioned. She doesn’t go in for these modern settings and career women and all that, but, hey, I live modern, and I’m a career woman myself, and when I settle down with a book, I want barons and baronesses and castles and ruins, because
that’s
romance, and if romance is what you pay for, romance is what you should get, right?”

Judith’s sangfroid remained intact. “Cecilia Ann Vesper. I don’t think I’ve read her.”

“Well, my favorite was
Moated Passion,
but
Towering Love
was pretty good, too. The new one is
Highborn Rapture.
I just got it, but I haven’t started it yet. So what do you write?”

I abandoned eavesdropping. “Judith’s new book is about a woman warrior,” I told Carla. “A queen. It’s set in England during the Roman occupation.”

“I love queens! And we’re Italian ourselves, my husband and me. What’s it called?”

“Boudicca.”
I didn’t offer to lend Carla my copy. She could afford to buy the book, and Judith needed every hardcover sale she could get.

“Presents!” Ceci announced. “Let’s all get together by the fireplace!”

As we gathered for the ritual, I spotted Rita at the periphery of the group. She was no longer talking with anyone, but lurking silently and looking as if she wanted to disappear altogether. When Leah joined me and nearly shoved me to a seat in the middle of the couch, I murmured, “Let’s get Rita to sit with us.”

For once, instead of speaking so that everyone could hear every word she enunciated, Leah whispered. “One of her patients is here. She wants to keep a low profile.”

Rita ran into her patients all the time at restaurants, at movies, in shops, and at parties. She saw them in the pool at her health club and, worse, in the sauna, where, of course, they saw her, too. When I was with Rita during these encounters, I could always identify her psychotherapy patients as such because Rita would suddenly make what I recognized as an effort to behave as if she weren’t privy to all sorts of secrets that these people hid from everyone but her. I was always itching to know the details of the hidden lives of these apparently ordinary people, but Rita never violated her patients’ privacy. On the contrary, unless she was desperate, she wouldn’t even admit that a particular person whose appearance had suddenly caused her to assume an expression of ultranormality was, in fact, one of her patients.

The first present I opened was from Carla Guarini: a black lace teddy and a matching thong. The gift drew laughs and exclamations that delighted Carla, who, I felt sure, was not Rita’s patient. As I unwrapped the next package, it occurred to me that Rita had been outgoing and talkative, albeit in a rather brittle fashion, until the arrival of the last guest.

Who had been the last to arrive? Judith Esterhazy.

CHAPTER 31

More than any other human being I’d ever known, my stepmother, Gabrielle, established a special connection with everyone she met. When people described her as charming, they really meant that she made them feel uniquely understood and appreciated. They didn’t just feel that way, either; Gabrielle was genuinely fascinated by everyone. Consequently, the world worked better for Gabrielle than it does for the rest of us. Repair persons returned her calls and efficiently fixed her appliances. Auto mechanics took pains to make sure that her car was safe. Doctors and dentists squeezed her in ahead of other patients. Even my impossible father was in her thrall. For example, had it not been for Gabrielle, Buck would not only have managed to attend my bridal shower, but would have done so dressed for a hunting expedition and accompanied by a large pack of dogs. As it was, she’d contrived to leave him in Maine, the state slogan of which is, of course, “Maine: The Way Life Should Be.” When it comes to my father, that’s my slogan, too, more or less: “Buck Far Away: The Way Life Should Be.”

All this is to say that one reason I adored Gabrielle was that she possessed what I’d previously believed to be the exclusive power of Alaskan malamutes: the enchanting ability to make everyone feel special. Like Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy the pup, she was observant, intelligent, and responsive. Her energy was theirs. At eleven o’clock on Sunday night, for instance, Gabrielle was still talking away, examining every wedding present Steve and I had received, asking about Paris, and deepening her relationship with Sammy the puppy, who was no more eager to let me go to sleep than she was. We were in my guest room, which served as Wedding Central. My gown hung in the closet, and presents were everywhere.

“Now, I know that you need to get to bed,” said Gabrielle, sipping from a glass of wine I’d just refilled for her. “This is going to be the busiest week of your life. But I want to reassure you that even though your father and I will get here on Friday, we aren’t going to be underfoot. Are you sure you want Buck and me to stay here? We could easily find a hotel. Or maybe Rita would put us up. She seems happy to have me use her guest room tonight, although there does seem to be something a little off with her. She seems fragile. Trouble with a man?”

“Of course you’re not going to a hotel! The beds on the third floor aren’t too bad. Steve had them in storage, but they’re all set up. You and Buck are going to be in one room, and Twila Baker is going to have the other. Buck is going to be so crazy about one of her dogs, North, that we’ll be lucky if he remembers the wedding. Steve’s dogs will be in that apartment, too, at least some of the time, but Buck obviously won’t mind, and Twila won’t, either. She’s used to teams of malamutes. She’ll have her whole team with her, but except for North, they’ll be outside in her dog trailer. Steve’s three dogs and the two you’re bringing won’t bother her at all. She’ll probably harness them up and put them to work. Actually, she’ll be staying here all week, until she goes to mushing boot camp. Are you and Buck still...?”

“Your father promises me that the accommodations are nothing short of luxurious,” Gabrielle said. “He may be exaggerating a tiny bit. He and I do, after all, have rather divergent opinions of what constitutes luxury. But I simply didn’t have the heart to crush his enthusiasm, especially after he’d reconciled himself to having you and Steve go to Paris instead, not to mention the matter of Althea’s performing the service.”

If I’d tried to enlighten Gabrielle about the true nature of mushing boot camps, we’d have been up for another few hours. By the time I crawled into bed, it was midnight. Steve was asleep, and eager though I was to talk to him about Judith Esterhazy, I couldn’t bear to awaken him. We had no chance to talk in the morning, either. Gabrielle ate breakfast with us, and then Steve left for work. For the rest of the day, I was frantically busy. Gabrielle left for Maine at nine. After that, I stowed all five dogs in crates and supplied them with giant black rubber Kong toys that I’d stuffed with goodies and placed in the freezer. Having bought silence, I did two radio interviews that Mac had set up for me, one with a local station, the other with a station in California. Both so-called interviews consisted mainly of my listening to weather reports, station identification information, and news updates. The local station’s news made no mention of the serial killings. The California weather sounded enviable. Our Cambridge weather was sunny and warm, too, so I was able to wash and groom Rowdy and Kimi outdoors. Mac had arranged to have a reporter from a small local paper do an article about my book. The reporter was going to get here at three, and I wanted the dogs looking their best because she was going to be accompanied by a photographer. The newspaper wasn’t the
Globe
or the
Herald,
but promotion was promotion, and I wanted the dogs to create a good impression. Once they looked terrific, I cleaned the house, took a shower, and fixed myself up. The reporter arrived late and stayed for two hours. We talked mainly about the problems she was having with her Gordon setter, problems attributable to her failure to give the dog any exercise, as I tried to tell her in a tactful manner. After she left, I worried that her article would portray me as a nasty, critical person whose book no one should buy.

After I’d fed all the dogs and given them time outdoors, I tried to ease my worries about the interview by checking the web sites of the big online booksellers. Browsing by category, I got to Home and Garden, then to Pets, then to Dogs, and finally to Care and Feeding. Ridiculous! If I did the categorization, Dogs would a subcategory of Religion. Anyway, having slightly narrowed the field of comparison, I found that
101 Ways to Cook Liver
was doing just great; in fact, if there’d only been a subcategory of liver cookbooks for dogs, I’d have had a bestseller. I also checked on
Ask Dr. Mac,
which was selling even better than
101 Ways to Cook Liver,
and, alas for literature, about 1001 times better than Judith Esterhazys
Boudicca.

At about the time I finished “ego surfing,” as it’s called, searching the web for oneself, Steve arrived home with the takeout food he’d promised to pick up because he’d known how busy I was going to be. Sammy, who was loose in the kitchen, sniffed the bag.

“I feel guilty,” I said. “You’d rather have real food than sushi.”

“Your greatest fear about getting married isn’t that we’ll end up miserable or that I’ll cheat on you. It’s that you’ll get stuck cooking every night. And I don’t mind sushi. I like horseradish and ginger. And this isn’t just sushi. I got shrimp.”

“My greatest fear is economic dependence,” I said. “But speaking of cheating, I have been dying to talk to you since yesterday afternoon. I love Gabrielle, but we haven’t had a second together when we’ve both been awake, and this is about one of Rita’s patients. It’s confidential.”

“Stop worrying about money. We’re in this together.”

“In a million years, I’m never going to earn half what you do.”

“So what? It doesn’t bother me. We do different things. We do things we love. We love each other. We share. Let it go, Holly.”

“It’s not that I want the kind of marriage where each of us pays exactly half of the electric bill and the gas bill and so on, and where we have to figure out who made which phone calls, and how much of the dog food got eaten by whose dogs.”

“Yours steal more food than mine. We’d have to factor that in.”

“Sammy does his share. Don’t you, Sammy? And he’s the only one who chews books.”