The Romantics (2 page)

Tom’s critics argued that he downplayed his intelligence. Like a politician, he spoke more simply than he thought, so much so that even very close friends often failed to grasp the depth of his ideas. It was hard to say whether his bride-to-be knew the contents and capacity of his mind, not to mention what fraction of it was at work when they were together. But to Laura, Tom’s mind was the most beguiling thing about him, and the most unusual. It was almost female in its propensity to obsess.

Of course, it might be considered odd for a woman other than the bride to be thinking so clinically and constantly about a man scheduled to wed in twenty-four hours. But Laura’s interest in Tom was beyond her control. They had dated for two years in college before Lila deemed Tom fair game. But even after Tom and Laura broke up, they had remained close friends, the kind that speak, e-mail, or exchange telepathic messages several times a day. They had maintained this correspondence throughout Tom and Lila’s relationship in college and during the six years since, until Tom fell out of touch suddenly and without explanation. One month later he proposed to Lila.

A chorus of honks interrupted Laura’s meditation. Startled, she raised her head from the dashboard to recognize a carful of friends.

Tripler, Pete, Weesie, and Jake had caravanned to the wedding together, a concise and painful reminder that Laura was attending alone.

“You lost,” yelled Pete. For a moment, Laura struggled to discern whether this had been a statement or a question. A rugged twenty-eight-year-old with overgrown bangs, Pete brought his car to an abrupt stop. A mere inch separated the two cars.

“Completely,” Laura admitted. “How do I get to New York?”

“Pete, don’t move. I’m getting in,” Tripler said.

“What,” he said. “Where?”

Before she could respond, a long golden leg extended from the passenger window. A second one followed, and, several thrusts later, Tripler wriggled through Laura’s window, over her lap, and into the passenger seat.

“Desperate situation,” she announced. “I had to get out of there.”

“Tripler.” Laura smiled. The weekend would be saved by her friends.

Most of Laura’s friends had held on to their college nicknames long into adulthood even though the names now seemed annoyingly precious. They were names that grew out of circumstance, because they carried easily across soccer fields, or referred to some hallowed drunken night, or, in the case of Tripler, was her family’s alternative to Katherine III. Each name had unceremoniously graduated to permanent status, creating an individual and collective group identity. The names all rang with the same cheerful clang of a dinner bell summoning a family to a meal, signifying not only the gated intimacy of the group but the crest of its members.

Tripler grabbed Laura’s bag from the floor of the car and rifled through it as though it were her own. “Pete is such a fascist,” she
said. “He won’t let me smoke on the off chance that we conceived last week.”

“You guys are trying?” Laura asked.

“He
was trying,” Tripler corrected. “I was trying to sleep.”

“That’s so exciting,” Laura said.

“Oh, spare me,” said Tripler. She found a cigarette, lit it, and propelled the smoke out the window. “You got anything else in here?” she asked, still rifling through Laura’s bag. “I need something to get me through the rehearsal dinner. There’s only so many times I can hear people toast that bitch.”

Laura laughed and shook her head at her friend. She indulged in a jab even though she had vowed to abstain for the weekend. “I would like to congratulate the McDevons,” she said, assuming the bloated tone of a wedding toast, “on getting one to the other side. I would like to offer the Hayeses my sympathy. There goes the bloodline.”

With that, the two girls threw back their heads with the combined force of hilarity and hatred and, goaded by a honk, followed the other car up the driveway.

The drive was underscored by the whirl of wheels on dirt and the bumpy condition of the unpaved road. Cathedral elms formed a canopy overhead. A warm breeze carried the scent and the silvery light of the sea.

Tripler leaned back in her seat, making the most of the bouncy ride. “Where’s Ben,” she said.

“Wasn’t invited.” Laura swerved to avoid a pothole.

“That little bitch.” Tripler exhaled at a passing tree.

“Oh yeah,” said Laura. “Gussie’s policy.” She still could not believe she had been subjected to this affront. Members of the wedding
party had been asked not to bring a date unless they were married or engaged, a gracious rule of etiquette designed to shame the lonely on a night that celebrated the loved.

“Oh, honey. I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“That’s nothing,” Laura quipped. She directed her friend’s gaze toward the dress that hung in the backseat, encased in plastic. “She wants us to look bad. Didn’t even try to hide it.”

“Is it gray?” Tripler asked, wincing. “Or pewter?”

“Tin,” said Laura.

“Tin to match her ring?” Tripler quipped. “Tin to match her heart.”

Finally, the bouncing stopped as the car rolled onto smoother ground. The transition was marked by a change of tune. The raucous hum of wheels on dirt switched to the whirl of tires on gravel, a quiet rush that was not unlike the sound of the nearby surf.

T
he arrival of the two cars at once was a feat of geography and timing. It marked the simultaneous arrival of almost half the wedding party—the maid of honor, two bridesmaids, and two groomsmen—and the reunion of seven-ninths of a group that had not been together for over a year. Like all college cliques, these friends made frequent and zealous attempts to reunite. But their attempts were often thwarted by delayed flights, pressing deadlines, or last-minute catastrophes at work. Still, the effort was earnest and unanimous. They were as tight as friends can be ten years, two marriages, and several moves later. Of course, changes of job and heart had caused some wear and tear on the relationships. But with every inch they grew apart, they held more tightly to each other, as
though maintaining the friendships might enable them to keep their grasp on youth itself.

Throughout college, they identified themselves as a pack in all the usual ways. By graduation, all but a few had slept with one another. Tom dated Laura before dating Lila; Oscar dated Weesie before dating Annie. Pete and Lila had shared more than one drunken night. And all the girls had kissed Jake. This amorous behavior earned the clique a nickname from their fellow students. They were dubbed “the Romantics” as a nod to their incessant intra-dating and their byzantine incestuous history. But gradually, eight of the nine lovebirds paired off into the inevitable groupings, drifting toward monogamy under the looming threat of their thirtieth birthdays.

The wedding party included every member of these original nine college friends, most of whom could be conveniently broken down into couples. The totem pole descended like this: Lila and Tom were the reigning Homecoming King and Queen; Lila’s rank was built on beauty and class, Tom’s built on charisma and talent. Tripler and Pete were Second-in-Command. They had fallen in love junior year at St. Paul’s and enrolled together at Yale, keeping their relationship intact for all but a hairy period during freshman year. Confidence and athleticism honed on prep school fields made these two a formidable pair.

Weesie and Jake occupied the next rung on the ladder. They could go head-to-head with the others on the vital statistics—summer communities, yacht club memberships, and boarding schools. But Weesie’s shyness and Jake’s lack of direction kept them out of a more prestigious spot. Annie and Oscar often seemed like something of an afterthought. Their recent engagement was viewed by some as a response to peer pressure. And
geography put them at a disadvantage; they lived in Boston while the others lived in New York, and so were often left out of spontaneous local plans.

Laura was the only Jew in the group. Once in a while, she shuddered at this fact. Did it make her a self-hating Jew? But rather than think of herself as an infiltrator or worse, a traitor, she preferred to think of herself as a chameleon. It was simply a function of circumstance, she told herself, that these people had ended up her best friends. They had chosen each other out of a crowd (at the Freshman Ice Cream Social, to be exact) in that mysterious way that friends choose one another, identifying attitudes, comportment, clothing—the indefinable flags of personality—as though shopping for groceries. They chose each other instinctively, ignorant of their own criteria, gleaning all they needed to know from the first meeting, starting with a sighting across the quad. Just like this, Laura had chosen her family, and it had chosen her, ensuring that she would always feel like its misshapen black sheep.

N
orthern Gardens was even more beautiful than Laura remembered. The house itself was the ultimate hostess, recently groomed and fussed over, manicured and perfumed. Traditional Victorian architecture furthered its feminine effect. Intricate dormer windows extended over the third and fourth floors. Elegant brackets courted the eye from the roof and gutters. The wraparound porch circled the house like a grand dancing skirt, its floor painted a warm chocolate brown and its roof painted the traditional robin’s egg blue. The house rested on a newly mowed lawn
whose perimeter was lined with red and orange zinnias and perfectly haphazard clumps of marsh grass. These vibrant bursts of color accented the lawn with the pleasing flourish of an impressionist painting.

When one gazed out at the water, the tableau was complete. The sand at Northern Gardens was grayish blue, a hue that seemed to have been chosen expressly to complement the sky at dusk. But in fact, this color was chosen during the continent’s last ice age, when an ocean of ice extended over what would become the coast of Maine.

Laura pulled the car to a full stop in the gravel driveway. She and Tripler sat motionless for a moment as though they expected the house to issue its own greeting. Finally, a car door opened and noise exploded from the other car. Jolted, Laura opened her door. The festivities began with a bloodcurdling scream.

“Finally!” Lila yelled. “What time did you leave? You nearly missed the rehearsal. For the last two hours, I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out who was going to replace you.”

Laura turned her head and scanned the driveway to locate the object of Lila’s rage. It was a cursory gesture. She knew perfectly well: She was the only person in the world Lila would speak to that way.

Bags were dropped and hugs were exchanged as the group assembled in the driveway. The girls greeted each other in the customary way, assessing each other’s clothes, accoutrements, and weight fluctuation with rapid and indiscernible scans. The boys exchanged halting hugs and busied themselves with the girls’ gear. Squeals of joy resumed after these formalities.

But before the group could begin their long-awaited reacquaintance,
they heeded tradition and commenced the token but true assessment of the bride’s beauty. The typical bride is bent on entertaining the falsehood that she is the most beautiful bride in the history of the world. Lila’s effortless radiance suddenly made it clear that every other bride before her had been horribly misled.

“Positively disgusting,” Tripler exclaimed, shaking her head in a caricature of disbelief. It was customary, among this group, to turn the corner from superlative to pejorative in the service of extreme praise.

“Completely vile,” Weesie agreed. “You’ve never looked worse in your life.”

A moment passed while Lila waited for Laura’s consensus. “Wholly repugnant,” Laura confirmed. “Every wretched inch.” Lila smiled with satisfaction while the girls surrounded her. Laura stifled a secret thought. It felt way too good to insult Lila to her face.

Then, after the pleasantries, the mandatory questions, a decoy while the girls perused one another in greater detail. “Was the traffic bad?”

“Terrible,” said Tripler. “Pete had to stop at the office, so we got stranded in the middle of rush hour.”

“It’s true,” said Pete. “I have this irksome little commitment Tripler finds terribly frivolous. It’s called work.”

“Oh Pete. Shut up,” said Tripler.

“I torture my poor wife,” he confessed, mock contrite. “I’m so sorry I have to work, darling.” He laced his arms around her neck. “I only do it to put a wrench in your travel plans.” He twisted her neck to face him and deposited a kiss on her lips.

“This is his new thing,” Tripler said, turning to the group. “Apparently, what I do no longer qualifies as work. It’s only called work when you go to an office every morning at eight, dressed like a shithead.”

“No, no,” said Pete. “It’s work so long as you get there before noon.”

“All right, you guys. Let’s save this for couple’s counseling,” said Jake.

“Very funny,” said Pete.

“Jake’s right,” Tripler said. “We’re here to celebrate a happy couple. Let’s keep the sorry states of our own marriages to ourselves.”

Laughter swelled and subsided. But swipes like this were far from fatal. On the contrary, the disappointments of the group were a comfort to all.

A moment of silence passed as the friends settled into their new surroundings. Lila regained command quickly. She glanced at her watch, gasped, and beckoned to the group. Jake took this as his cue to hoist several monogrammed leather bags onto his shoulder. Pete followed Jake’s example, shouldering several more overstuffed bags. The girls looked on, smirking slightly at this rare show of chivalry, then they wove their arms around shoulders and waists and dragged each other onto the sunny lawn.

“Let’s hope this weather holds up,” said Tripler.

“God, Trip,” said Weesie. “Don’t taunt her.”

Lila tugged subtly on Laura’s arm as Weesie and Tripler broke into their usual barbed banter. They, too, had roomed together in college and so toed the line, in all conversation, between jovial and strained. Laura took the cue and released her grasp, allowing
Tripler and Weesie to take the lead while she and Lila fell behind.

“So …” said Laura. She attempted, with the one-word question, to convey delicious excitement.