Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (10 page)

Okay, so I could be a snob about that, but this woman had built a business that had bought this house and paid for those window treatments. Could I have done that on my nurse’s salary? Not hardly.

Mike admired people who started their own businesses, who had what he called an entrepreneurial spirit. I didn’t have such a spirit; Claudia apparently did.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Claudia was keeping Guy
and Rose close to her. Mike was making awkward conversation with my father. More and more people were arriving now, bringing gifts, apologizing for being late. They hadn’t realized how long the drive would be.

I recognized almost everyone, which meant that few people were here because of their association with Claudia. I was startled at how many people from Mike’s professional world had been invited. He and two other economists had a consulting firm in which they provided damage-assessment estimates, especially in environmental cases. His partners and the various lawyers who hired them were amicable enough, but when Mike and I’d been married, we hadn’t socialized with them much. I wondered if they had been surprised to be invited to this affair.

It was good to see Jeremy’s high-school friends, especially the guys on the crew team. They were clearly happy to see me; they hugged me, called me “Mrs. Van” as they had in high school. Their mothers also came and talked to me, touching my arm, asking me how I was. “We never hear from you,” one after another said.

That was true. Mike had left me three months after these boys had graduated. I was embarrassed; I had felt like a failure. I wasn’t about to call the crew-team moms and stage a pity party for myself.

I also didn’t know these women as well as they knew one another. Crew-team parents get to know one another while standing around the banks of the river during the day-long regattas. But I spent the regattas on the water, driving one of the motorized boats that the judges and safety officials rode in. I was one of the few parents who had enough experience and the necessary certification to drive a launch, so everyone was always grateful to me. But I hadn’t gotten chummy with the other moms.

It had been the same when the boys were in Scouts. I had
been the one willing, even eager to dig out my hiking boots and get the lifeguard training. So I went with the boys on their outings instead of going grocery shopping ahead of time with another mom.

Promising the women that I would call, that we would get together, I excused myself, saying that I hadn’t picked up my table assignment yet. As I went back toward the front hall, I saw another crew-team mom, Beth Vindern. Her son Josh had been the coxswain of Jeremy’s boat.

I greeted her, asking about Josh.

She ignored my question. “You did know that David and I separated, didn’t you? The invitation came to both of us.”

“I did know,” I said, suddenly remembering that I had heard that somewhere, “and I was sorry to hear about it, but this isn’t my party. I didn’t see the guest list.”

“Oh,” she said. “I suppose that that will happen to me too.
She
will be inviting my friends to parties.”

I didn’t know the details of the Vinderns’ split. Clearly there was another woman involved. I wondered how I would feel if Mike had left me for someone else. Probably a whole lot worse.

I looked across the room. Claudia was escorting Rose and Guy to the tables. Seeing her at a distance, I noticed what a long torso she had; there was length between her clavicle—her collarbone—and her pelvis. It made her walk seem both graceful and authoritative. She also had great posture, which must have been a challenge considering how much time she spent at the sewing machine and the computer.

I knew, from her Web site, that her dress was “seafoam”— “light green” in my lingo—satin. I don’t know if it was deliberate, but whenever you looked at her seafoam satin, your eye then went to Cami’s rose satin, and vice versa. That they were in these pale, gleaming colors made it clear that the two of them were the stars of the show.

It was deliberate. It had to be.

Beth followed me to the table where the seating-assignment cards were. They were in alphabetical order. I picked up my envelope and, since it was close to mine, handed Beth hers.

“Did you know that these are technically called ‘escort cards’? Like anyone is going to assign us escorts,” she said bitterly. “What do you want to bet we’re at the losers’ table?”

I certainly hoped I wasn’t at the same table as Beth. I didn’t want to spend the evening with someone so bitter. “I imagine I’m with my father.” I pulled my card out of its envelope. I had been assigned to table 9.

Beth was at table 9 as well. Dad hadn’t picked up his card yet so I reached across the table and opened his. He was at table 2.

Within a few moments it was clear that Beth was right. If there was such a thing, table 9 was definitely the losers’ table. There were two couples who knew no one—one pair was Claudia’s neighbors, and I never figured out how the other couple was connected to anyone, but obviously the husband did not want to be there. The other four of us at the table were divorced women.

As soon as everyone was seated, Mike and Guy made toasts. Mike praised Cami, Guy praised Jeremy, and both of them thanked Claudia for hosting the party. I might as well have not existed.

I thought I didn’t care about crap like this. Apparently I did.

Hospitals are hierarchical places. The attending physicians are over the residents, who are over the interns. As an advanced-practice nurse, I can legally do more than an RN, a registered nurse. The RNs, in turn, have more authority and status than the LPNs, the licensed practical nurses, etc. etc.

Short of getting a PhD in nursing and a faculty appointment to teach other nurses, I am at the top of the nursing ladder. And my status at the hospital doesn’t come just from my credentials. I’m really good. I know what I’m doing. Even the doctors know
it. All I have to do is say “Doctor?” in a cautionary voice, and everyone in the room stops.

Once Mike started making good money, he’d asked me if I wanted to quit work. I hadn’t considered it for a minute. Work was the one place where I felt completely confident, where I felt respected and valued.

But tonight was as if I had shown up at the hospital having lost my nursing license. No one would know what to say to me, what to do with me. I wouldn’t fit in; I wouldn’t belong. Someone else had been hired to do my job, someone with a willowy torso, a risky haircut, and a seafoam-green dress.

This party was celebrating my son’s engagement. This was my family. If I didn’t belong here, where did I belong?

The waiter was refilling the wineglasses. Since I wasn’t driving, I let him top off my glass again and again. I did wonder how the other single women at the table were getting home. They weren’t stopping the waiter either, and the conversation at the table was growing sharp.

In response to a question from the neighbor, I pointed out Cami’s family. Rose was sitting with Mike at one table, and Guy with Claudia at another.

Across the table, Kate Sheehan, one of the crew-team moms, spoke, directing her comment to me. “So I suppose you’ve heard the advice given to mothers of the groom?”

“No.” I looked up interestedly. I probably needed all the advice I could get.

“Keep your mouth shut and wear beige.”

“Beige?” I had never worn beige in my life. “Wouldn’t I look like an unbaked oatmeal cookie?”

“Better that than ruin everything for everyone else.” The woman whom I hadn’t been able to place leaned forward, eager to speak. “The day after Dave and I were engaged, his mom called
and said that she had bought her dress and it was royal purple. Just twenty-four hours after our engagement, she had her dress. We needed to plan everything around her wearing royal purple.”

“Why did it matter what she was wearing? What difference did it make?”

“We wouldn’t have wanted everything to clash with her dress. The pictures would have been awful.”

“When my Liz got married,” another Selwyn mom spoke with an “I can top that” air, “her mother-in-law said that she was going to wear black. She said that’s what she wore, that’s what she always wore, and she absolutely wouldn’t budge. And that would have really ruined the pictures. She would have just stood out, like this big dark blob.”

“Wouldn’t a few blobby pictures be worth making her comfortable?” I asked.

“These were the
pictures.
”

I hate this worship of photographs. It sometimes seems that people care less about what happens at an event than what the pictures look like. Guests can be drop-dead miserable, they can be ready to smash a wineglass so that they have something to slash their wrists with, but if the pictures are great, who cares? “What did you do?”

“I wore a tobacco brown, my mom wore navy, my sister wore raisin, and so Marian didn’t stick out as much. But it was a summer-afternoon wedding. The bridesmaids were in primrose. I had been going to wear aqua and my mom and sister were going to be in lavender and periwinkle. It would have been so pretty if Marian had been willing to wear a midtone green, a celadon or a jadeite. To this day, I can’t look at some of the pictures and not get angry.”

I leaned to the side as the waiter set down my dessert. It was a showy-looking thing with flying buttresses of spun sugar. To my
mind, everyone in the story was wrong—the mother of the groom for insisting on wearing black, everyone else for caring so much. “Then I’ll wear beige. I can do that. But I’m going to have trouble if they tell me to wear celadon. I have no idea what that is.”

“And the other thing,” said yet another woman. “When the babies come, you have to let her mother go first. My mother-in-law was furious because I wanted my mother as soon as I got home. She spent the first two years of Graham’s life complaining because she thought that my mother got to see him more than she did.”

I had to admit that when I brought Jeremy home, I was much more interested in having my mother come help than Marge. But she was not only my mother; she was also a pediatric nurse.

Dresses and photographs didn’t matter to me, but babies did. I wondered if I would play the nurse card in order to get my hands on a grandbaby as soon as possible. “Cami and Jeremy are about to start medical school,” I said. “Then they have their internships and residencies. We have time to figure out the postpartum schedule.”

“No, no,” the neighbor lady said, now joining the conversation. “You can tell yourself that you’re being cooperative, but watch out. If you set a pattern, if you let her family think you’re a pushover, that’s going to last. I have boys, and their mothers-in-law decide everything—which holidays my sons will be
allowed
to come to my house. Then it never lines up, so I never have everyone together. You know the saying, ‘a son’s a son until he takes a wife.’ You have to be realistic. You’re in competition with her parents. That’s just the way it is. You both want the same thing, the kids to visit you, not the other family.”

I winced. I suppose I did want to be a “fun” grandma. I couldn’t bear it if the boys had to drag their families to visit me with the same dread and reluctance we had felt about visiting Marge. That would be awful.

“Don’t the Zander-Browns have a big house in the Hamptons?” Beth Vindern asked. “How are you going to compete with that?”

“Darcy has a very big house herself,” one of the Selwyn moms put in loyally.

“Actually, I don’t anymore.” I felt as if someone were sticking pins in me. And of course I was competing not only with the big house in the Hamptons; I was also competing with the premium cable-TV package of the house we were in.

How bitter, how hostile these women were. How could I keep that from happening to me? “Let’s go back to talking about me wearing beige,” I said brightly. “I’m going to be facing that long before the babies come.”

“What about keeping your mouth shut?” Beth Vindern said. “Won’t that be even a bigger problem for you?”

She had spoken with the mock-teasing air that Mike’s mom specialized in. I hated that. If you tried to defend yourself, the other person would just accuse you of not being able to take a joke.

But what Beth had said wasn’t fair. I’m not one of those people who insist on talking all the time, telling long, pointless stories about themselves. Furthermore, I’m a health-care professional; I am scrupulous about patient confidentiality.

Of course, when someone is being a jackass and keeping everyone else from doing anything, I do try to get the traffic moving. Beth probably hadn’t forgiven me for the regatta at which I had told her that her son was absolutely not suffering from hypothermia and she needed to get out of the way of the EMTs who were trying to examine the kids who might be.

I suppose I could have gently explained to her that as a coxswain, racing in a hooded waterproof jacket and long pants, her son was less vulnerable than the rowers in their thin Lycra unitards.
I could have drawn her attention to the fact that Josh, although shivering, was coherent and his color was good while two of the rowers, their faces waxy, were growing disoriented.

But I hadn’t. I had been quick and blunt. So now, years later, she was retaliating.

Why do people think it is okay to tease me? I hate it as much as the next person. My nice mom-type therapist said that people were trying to get a reaction and that I should call them on it, that I should hold them accountable.
I’m sure that if you knew how critical that sounded, you would not have said it.