Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (38 page)

“Who isn’t here tonight, I notice.”

“Well, naturally!” Carrie flashed a malignant smile. “She’s not in Daughters of New England. And Tom isn’t in town tonight
anyway, so we thought, why not take advantage of the opportunity and have the committee meeting?”

“That way nobody feels left out.” Liddy was clearly satisfied with her own explanation and looked as if, having made herself
clear, she would like to escape to the safety of the Eatons’ kitchen. The time-honored rules of etiquette dictated that Luke
should now allow her to do just that, but Luke had played by the rules his entire life. He was tired of the rules.

“Tell me, Liddy. Was Peggy like us?”

The two women glanced at each other again.

“Truth?” Liddy wavered.

“Absolutely,” Luke assured her.

“She marched against you on the town green. She showed too much leg at your great-aunt’s reception. She was a spoil-sport
at the tailgate—”

“She was cold,” Luke tried to cut in.

“—and she was entirely too chummy with Tiffany.” There was no stopping Liddy. “We even tried to invite her into Daughters
of New England, and she didn’t seem the least bit interested. As if she didn’t have the slightest idea what an honor it is.
Not just anyone can be a Daughter of New England.”

“No,” Luke mused. “I don’t suppose just anyone can.”

Carrie slipped her arm through his. “Really, Luke. You’re better off without her.”

“Committee time!” Creighton Simmons called from the kitchen.

“Poker time!” Hubbard mimicked in a falsetto from his place at the Eatons’ dining room table. Simmons and Eaton, too, were
seated. There was one empty chair, Luke’s.

Luke hesitated.

Eaton began to deal. “You in or out, Sedgwick?”

The eyes of the room—the friends he’d known his entire life; their wives, whom he’d known half his life—were on him.

“Out,” Luke declared.

He was unclear exactly why he had chosen to leave, but he drove back to New Nineveh with a heady sense of freedom he hadn’t
experienced since the first time he’d driven this car alone as a newly licensed teenager and realized he could have taken
it anywhere, gone anywhere, without anyone having a say in it. Now he had the audacious notion of having outgrown his friends.
He could, if he chose to, simply not see them again. He wouldn’t miss them. He’d remain friends with Ver Planck—the only one
he genuinely liked. The rest, well, perhaps he’d gotten from them what he’d needed to.

When his cell phone rang, he picked it up absently. It would be Hubbard, scolding him for leaving the game before it had started.

“It’s Bex,” the caller said. “You need to do something about Peggy.”

His foolish heart beat harder at the sound of Peggy’s name. He was quiet, forgetting for an instant Bex was on the line.

“Is it true you love her?”

The question shook him. He concentrated on the road, the way it rushed up to meet his headlights, only to be swallowed instantly
underneath his wheels. “Where did you hear that?”

“From that friend of hers, Tiffany. Is it true?”

When had Bex spoken to Tiffany? Luke was perplexed at all of it, most especially that Bex would think it appropriate to ask
him such a personal question. Did all other people in the world speak this freely about their private thoughts and emotions?

“Because if you love her, you need to tell her right away.”

A deer was grazing alongside the road.
Don’t jump,
Luke willed it until he was past. “But she’s getting married.”

“You can stop her. You show up at the store, get down on one knee, plead your undying love, and I swear she’ll call it off.”

“She’s not going to call it off. She wants to marry this guy—Brock.”

“Wrong. She only thinks she wants to marry him. I’ve been telling myself, ‘Keep your mouth shut, Bex; she’ll come to her senses
on her own.’ But she’s so damn dense, she needs a shove, a big, dramatic gesture, or she won’t see the light until it’s too
late.”

Luke laughed at the absurdity of expecting him to stage a scene. “If you want drama, you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t
like drama, not in private and definitely not in public. Peggy knows that.”

“What do you call those preppy pants, the kind where the right front leg is, like, yellow, and the left front leg is pink,
and the right back leg is, I don’t know, green, and the left back leg—”

“Go-to-hell pants,” Luke interrupted. “What’s your point?”

“You people are lunatics,” Bex scoffed. “You can wear pants like that, but you won’t say one little ‘I love you’? Don’t be
such a WASP, Luke. You’ve got five weeks before you lose Peggy forever. If that doesn’t call for drama, nothing does.”

Late Spring, May

P
eggy was at the point in her wedding planning where she was no longer the slightest bit interested in the wedding.

She was only looking forward to not having to do any more planning.

The chores were infinite. There were registries to be decided upon and fittings to be booked and missing RSVPs to be tracked
down (why couldn’t people just commit to a yes or a no?) and seating arrangements to be reshuffled. She’d spent hours on the
phone as Sharon Clovis questioned her reception decor choices. She’d fielded call after call from her parents, questioning
her entire life.

“But you and Luke loved each other,” her mother argued one night two weeks before the ceremony, as Peggy sat at Bex’s coffee
table cataloging wedding presents in a special binder she’d bought to keep track of everything, just as she did at the store.
Just as she had done, she corrected herself: The store would close for good that Friday. Peggy had barely been able to keep
up with the bargain hunters who came to the going-out-of-business sale to buy not just products, but the display shelves and
light fixtures—expensively dressed buzzards picking gleefully at a carcass.

She wondered if Luke had returned all of their wedding presents or if they were still up in the vacant room on the third floor.
She should call him, she thought, to make sure he had. No, she shouldn’t. He had manners. He’d do it on his own.

“See you at the wedding, Mom. Drive carefully.” Peggy was tired of other people telling her whom she loved. She was heartbroken
over closing the shop, exhausted from working sixteen hours at a stretch. She envied Brock. His documentary wouldn’t wrap
up for another week, and by the time he returned to New York, the wedding would be a few days away. His only responsibility
would be to show up and say He Did.

He would show up, wouldn’t he?

Peggy opened the apartment door, peeked into the hall to make sure the coast was clear of neighbors who might catch her in
her bathrobe, and knocked on Josh’s apartment door. It was nine o’clock, Bex’s bedtime, but when Josh let her in, Peggy could
see her friend on Josh’s new sofa with her feet propped on a pillow.

“I’m trying to muster the energy to get up and go to sleep,” Bex said. “Is everything all right?”

What if Brock changes his mind?
Peggy was about to ask, when the notion came to her: Bex’s answer would be of no comfort. If Peggy kept her worries to herself,
she wouldn’t have to get upset when Bex inevitably wisecracked,
We can only hope
.

Bex struggled to get her feet from the couch onto the floor. “Sweetie, I have news, and you’re not going to like it. I have
to go on bed rest, starting tomorrow, doctor’s orders. I’ve got the okay to be in your wedding, but I’ll have to sit the entire
time. I can’t so much as walk down the aisle. I’ll have to lie down for the reception. I hope that’s okay.”

Peggy had thought Bex was about to say she didn’t want to be in the wedding. This seemed like nothing in comparison.

“But wait, there’s more,” Josh added in a television announcer’s voice.

“I’m no longer allowed to climb any stairs, so I’ll be staying with my parents in their elevator building until the babies
are born. And I’m not allowed to come down to the store. You’ll have to close it on your own.”

Josh squeezed Peggy’s shoulders sympathetically. “Those Cohen twins. Not even born yet and already causing all kinds of trouble.”

Peggy waited for Bex to correct him with
“Sabes-
Cohen twins.” But Bex’s lips were trembling. “Please don’t fall apart, Peggy. I feel so bad about this. You shouldn’t have
to close up our business by yourself.” A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another.

It took Peggy aback. She had no intention of falling apart. She could handle a seated bridesmaid. She and Padma could close
up the shop. “You don’t need to cry. I’m fine, truly. You just focus on having healthy babies. Nothing else matters, Bex.”

Bex’s tears were gone nearly as quickly as they’d begun. “You aren’t anxious?”

“What’s the point? Worrying won’t solve anything.”

Josh and Bex looked at her as if she were a stranger.

The last day at ACME Cleaning Supply passed in a haze. Peggy and Padma boxed up the remains of the unsold merchandise and
swept out the dust from the corners, stopping only when Bex’s mother made a surprise appearance with takeout Chinese food,
saying, “I thought you could use lunch.” Sue Sabes spread out the white cartons and paper napkins on the front display counter
and fixed Peggy a heaping plate. “Bex is at home, beside herself, the poor thing. I guess you’re taking this just as badly?”

“It feels like someone died,” Peggy admitted.
So much loss,
she thought. First Miss Abigail gone, and now the store.

“You two will be just fine. Bex’s dad and I lost our first store. Disco Duds, it was called. Turned out it was a just plain
dud. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but we learned from it, and Sabes Shoes came out of it, and we all survived.”

Peggy picked at her beef with broccoli and waved forlornly at Jorge, the UPS man, who was passing by the propped-open door
in the sunshine with a hand truck laden with boxes. He made a sad face and waved back.

“Eat, sweetie.” Sue waved her hands over the food. “Problems are worse on an empty stomach.”

Perhaps Sue was right. “You sound just like Bex.”

“Where do you think she got it from?” Sue replied. “Will you be okay, Padma?”

“Oh, it’s all good.” Padma grinned at Peggy through a mouthful of fried rice. “I forgot to tell you, Peggy. I got accepted
into pre-med.”

“Excuse me,” said a male voice.

Padma and Sue looked idly toward the doorway.

Peggy nearly choked on her lunch.

Luke was here in her shop. Luke Sedgwick.

“I need to talk to you.” He picked his way between the stacked boxes. “May we speak privately?”

Something went wrong with the annulment.
It was Peggy’s first coherent thought. She surveyed the wreck of her business in desperation and pointed toward the sidewalk,
but Luke asked, “Do you have a back room?”

Padma and Sue, who Peggy realized hadn’t the faintest notion who this person was, were observing with growing curiosity. Sue
set down her chopsticks. “Should we leave?”

“Not at all. Finish your lunch.” Peggy grabbed Luke by the arm, marched him into the now empty supply closet, flicked on the
light, and shut the door. “Make it quick.”

Luke inhaled deeply.

Peggy waited. There was barely enough room inside for the two of them. She pressed herself against the bare shelves on the
back wall. Was it warm in here, or was it that Luke was so near to her, as close as he’d been the night they’d made love?
Don’t think about it.
“What do you want?” Her brusque question filled the close space. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve gone out of business.
I’m pretty busy out there.”

“I’m so sorry, Peggy.” Luke’s eyes were grave behind his glasses. “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.”

She wouldn’t cry. If she cried, he might try to comfort her, and once he did, her tears might never stop.

He breathed in again. It was as if he were drinking his fill of the closet air, as if there hadn’t been enough air to breathe
in Connecticut. She felt a sneeze coming on and rubbed her nose furiously. There wasn’t a thing left in this closet, yet it
still reeked. She wouldn’t miss all the smells, that was for sure. “Please,” she said, “just tell me why you’re here.”

At length, he breathed out. “You can’t get married.”

It was the same phrase he’d used when he’d called her at the store back in September. Panic squeezed her so tightly, she thought
she’d burst. She refused to give in. There was no way she was going to swoon in this closet in front of Luke Sedgwick. “Don’t
tell me you and I are still married.”

He laughed—nervously, Peggy thought. “That’s not it. Don’t worry.”

His hand was inches from her hip. She thought of the way he’d undressed her in front of the fire, his warm fingers sliding
off her Fair Isle sweater, his warm mouth on her bare skin.

She had to get out of this closet.

“You can’t marry him because…” He hesitated.

A balloon of anticipation began to expand inside her.

“Because…” He couldn’t seem to get the words out.

She understood. He was about to tell her he loved her, just as she loved him, just as she’d loved him for months, maybe since
the night she’d met him. She felt ready to lift her feet from the closet floor and float gently up to meet the tin ceiling.

“Because why?” she urged.
Tell me.
She had to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.

“Because you don’t love him.”

The balloon began to deflate. “I don’t understand.” She was trying to give him a chance to redeem himself. There was still
the possibility he might redeem himself.
Because I love you, Peggy. Say it.

“You don’t love him. Bex told me.”

The balloon deflated, and she fell back to earth. “Did Bex put you up to this?” Peggy jerked open the closet door. Padma appeared
busy taping up a packing box, and Sue had started peeling the “Lost Our Lease” banner from the window, but neither, Peggy
was sure, had missed the last line.