The Romantics (4 page)

She looked terrifyingly tall to the guests standing below on the lawn.

“My goodness,” Augusta went on. She projected the same volume and intensity as a street performer. “You have all grown impossibly old. Either that, or I’m getting younger.”

Laura often wondered if Augusta understood her own performance. How could she not be aware of her method and effect? She used this saccharine anachronistic tone as a means of disconcerting her guests so that when she barked, and she inevitably did, they were wholly unprepared. But perhaps it was unfair, Laura considered, to
make this critique. Mrs. Hayes was of a different generation, one that learned to speak from Mia Farrow, learned to dress from Doris Day. Checking herself, Laura mustered a cheerful smile. A failure to feign the expected thrill would only cost her more effort later on.

“Mrs. Hayes!” the girls exclaimed, their voices rising an octave.

“Please, girls. We’re beyond surnames.”

“Mummy,” barked Lila. “No one wants to call you by your Bryn Mawr name. Gussie went out of fashion fifty years ago.”

“Now Lila,” said Pete, “don’t be rude.” He smiled flirtatiously at Augusta. “We have to call you Mrs. Hayes. Otherwise, we’re liable to mistake you for a bridesmaid.”

Augusta blushed and replied with a grateful smile.

Tripler eyed her husband with annoyance. His obsequiousness was more troubling than his flirtation.

“Tripler,” said Augusta, “I saw your mother last week at the Colony Club. She seemed positively giddy.”

“She gets that way,” Tripler said, “whenever she redecorates. She asked me to send her love.”

“And Weesie, I understand Kate has added another cherub to that gorgeous brood.”

“Yes, she gave birth last Tuesday,” Weesie said. “That was so very thoughtful of you to send a gift.”

“Oh, it was my joy,” said Augusta. Her golly-gosh demeanor gave way to the breathy largesse of royalty.

The exchange of greetings was, for Laura, the first in a series of painful moments. The ritual was ostensibly designed to be an update on vital life changes but, in truth, it was yet another opportunity to assert one’s status, to mark territory with the same grace and compulsion as a urinating dog. The demarcation of shared memories, the plans for future ones—it all made Laura yearn to be back in her
apartment, shades drawn, covers yanked above her head. What she would do to be deaf to all this nonsense.

“Laura, don’t you look wonderful,” said Augusta. She indulged in a shameless head-to-toe scan.

The subtlety of her grammar was not lost on Laura. The compliment was, of course, posed as a question.

But worse yet, the question was, in fact, code for something else. “Don’t you look wonderful?” actually meant “Have you lost a little weight?” Hip to the lingo, Laura smiled back, an appropriate signal for thanks. She had always found Mrs. Hayes’s awareness of her weight a bit disconcerting. And worse, the compliment begged a response about Mrs. Hayes’s appearance, a comment whose intimacy made Laura cringe.

Then, the inevitable question. “Now how is your mother?”

It was expertly phrased to mimic the tone of her queries to the other girls, designed to simulate the affection of truly close friends. In fact, Mrs. Hayes barely knew Laura’s mother, nor had she made any effort to get to know her during the years since Lila and Laura had met. While the other parents of the group had attended numerous dinners and parties at the Hayeses’, Mrs. Rosen had never been invited to a single event.

“She’s very well. Thank you for asking,” Laura said. “Asked me to send her best.” Somehow, this felt like a triumph. Saying “best” versus “love.”

For a moment, Laura wondered if Mrs. Hayes had noticed the distinction. But she turned away, mercifully distracted by Annie and Oscar’s late arrival. They hurried toward the group, hair mussed by the journey, eager to join the revelry. With the whole group finally together, everyone’s spirits lifted. They breathed more slowly, as though impersonating the breeze as it skipped across the water.

Laura took the opportunity to disengage from conversation. She surveyed the group, studying her friends with the detachment of an anthropologist. Most of them had come at their Yale acceptance honestly—with impressive high-school transcripts, exceptional test scores, and a dizzying list of extracurricular accomplishments. But they were cursed by their good fortune, stunted by their abundant gifts. Beauty, Laura decided, was their greatest burden in life.

Early and consistent attention on Lila’s looks had fostered an unhealthy preoccupation, causing her personality to form around the facets of her beauty like a setting around a diamond. It was almost a fluke that intelligence had flourished alongside such perfection. Sometimes, it seemed she had cultivated it—or at least, the appearance of it—as an added bonus for her admirers. Her decision to pursue a law degree had always seemed incidental, as though she had flipped through a leaflet on impressive careers, closed her eyes, and pointed to a random page. At best, it was a token nod to the nascent activism of her college years. At worst, it was a merciless bid to entrap a worthy husband.

But criticisms of Lila were always foiled by undeniable compliments. As Lila chatted and smiled, Laura couldn’t help but note the quality of her teeth. They were as straight, shiny, and white as keys on a typewriter, as perfect at the age of twenty-eight as they had been when she was three. Annoyed, Laura scanned the group for someone with more flaws.

Tripler had come close enough to beauty to merit an obsession. Her desire to be an actress was, to Laura, a function of this shortcoming. Auditions occasionally offered a reprieve, but mostly they validated her fears. With reddish hair and a pointy nose, her looks were too odd and her body type too average to make her eligible for leads. Most often, she was cast as the quirky best friend or the
unhinged jilted lover. But the insult of both was heightened by the infrequency with which she landed either role.

Before trying acting, Tripler had tried her hand at designing clothes. The business was entirely funded by her father, a fact that enabled her to avoid competing with market trends. Even her friends struggled to wear her clothes out of the house. Ample pocket money wrought its own havoc on Tripler’s ambition, facilitating, depending on the time of year, a bad shopping or cocaine habit.

Weesie’s plainer features left less up for debate. Light brown hair and murky blue eyes gave her a pleasant, if unmemorable look. Her family was of the same ilk as the others but hers had landed on the wrong side of Plymouth Rock. Her great-great-great-grandparents had made money; her great-great-grandparents had saved money; her grandparents had hoarded money; and her parents had squandered it. In its absence, she was taught to act as though she had money.

She had concentrated in art history in school basically by default—how anyone could declare a major by sophomore spring was truly beyond her. But the classes were easy to sleep through, and there was something relaxing about being in a dark room, watching colorful slides flutter by. The choice turned out to be wise, positioning her perfectly for her job at Gagosian’s gallery. She knew just enough to impress the clients, and too little to aspire to a museum job.

Annie was the least beautiful girl in the group and, as a result, had developed the most interesting personality. She was what admissions officers at Yale called a well-rounded applicant. As editor in chief of her high-school newspaper, valedictorian of her graduating class, captain of the squash team, and president of the French Club, she had been bound either for Yale admission or a nervous breakdown.

Her robust physique and her sense of humor gave her an endearing heartiness, making her somehow more equipped than the others to withstand the New Haven winters. A history major in college, she had become the de facto archivist of the group, memorializing their news and secrets with reportorial detail. She was perfectly suited for the job she’d secured at the
Boston Globe
, but her journalistic skills were sharpest when she was gossiping about her friends.

Pete was, almost as much as Lila, defined by his good looks. His popularity among freshman girls at Yale was legendary. Luckily, neither his looks nor his awareness of them curbed his sense of humor. In the years since college, he had accepted and quit three different jobs, and enrolled in two graduate programs—first law, then business. Of course, family money made Pete’s choice of vocation less pressing than for most. But he still resented the compulsion to make a choice.

Jake, like Pete, had fashioned his identity in relation to his looks, but he had worked harder for the attention. His deep-set eyes and long eyelashes made him look brooding and sensitive, and he cultivated the look by growing out his hair to an unkempt shag. These attributes—and his knack for writing—earned him a loyal female fan base at the
Yale Literary Magazine.
But after spending college in a uniform of tweed and corduroy, he quickly traded in his wardrobe—and his literary aspirations—for the blue gabardine suits of a banker.

Throughout college, Jake indulged a writer’s appetite. He developed a rare form of alcoholism whereby he drank himself into a comfortable stupor while simultaneously plying his date with a dizzying amount of liquor. Fortunately, none of these women held the “disease” against him. Or perhaps, like Jake, they simply forgot the experience by the next day.

Oscar, much like his bride-to-be, was unfettered by extreme beauty. He had gained acceptance to Yale the old-fashioned way, scoring a perfect 1600 on his SATs. Unlike most members of the group, he had actually pursued an education in college. It was only after graduating that he realized the benefit of being a geek. With a simple purchase—a pair of square-rimmed glasses—he earned a spot at a start-up dot-com, and, three years later, a share of its millions.

Now, as she appraised her friends, Laura indulged a guilty thought. They were painfully transparent, easier to crack than a combination lock. In school, they had seemed impenetrable. They had glowed with confidence, talent, promise. But what had they done since graduation? It was as though they had stopped trying as soon as they received their degrees—not even: as soon as they got to college. Their looks and personalities were still intact, but something had atrophied ever so slightly. Their faces bore the distinct wear of goals gone too long unfulfilled.

A clap of hands jarred Laura from her critical musings. She looked up to find Augusta focused on her and shuddered at the notion that she had somehow intuited her thoughts.

“I’m putting you all at the Gettys’,” Augusta announced. “Right across this field. It’s a sweet old house, a strange house, but a sweet house nonetheless.” She waved majestically at a large expanse of lawn that extended several acres from the Hayeses’ to the neighboring house. The Gettys’ was a smaller, less formal version of Northern Gardens, likely built as a home for the daughter of the Hayes who built the house.

Mrs. Hayes spoke about houses and people in the exact same way, with a cryptic mixture of professed adoration and obvious condescension. When she described the house, she could just as easily have been talking about a dear friend’s overweight child.

“I should warn you the house is a little rough around the edges.” This was her way of saying the house was not as well kept as her own. “The Gettys keep threatening to do something about it, but they haven’t been up since June. What I would do to tear down that porch.” She stared wistfully at the house as though watching a loved one recede across the field. Then, in a final aside—as though to share the location of the linen closet—she covered her mouth, and whispered, “Like Northern Gardens, the house is haunted.” She paused. “But the Gettys’ ghosts aren’t as friendly.”

“A haunted house and a wedding,” said Pete. “Sounds like the makings of an interesting night.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Lila barked. “Or Gussie will make you come round the campfire and listen to her ghost stories.”

“Oh boy. Do you have marshmallows?” Pete cried. His excitement was quickly deflated by another glare from his wife.

“Yes, do tell, Mrs. Hayes,” said Weesie. “I love scary stories.”

Currying favor with Augusta was perhaps the only goal for which a member of this group would knowingly defy Lila.

Lila closed her eyes and sighed theatrically.

Only Laura knew Lila well enough to know this was not a performance of irritation.

“Her proof,” said Lila, “is a couple of slamming doors and a few mysterious footsteps.”

“That is false,” said Augusta. She addressed Lila directly. “How about the time Joe was run out of the Gettys’ when he was working on the attic.” She paused for a moment, satisfied with this irrefutable proof. Then she offered the group an apologetic shrug as though it was selfish to deprive the others of such scintillating lore. “Joe was the contractor,” she explained. “He was working on the house one cold December night when all of a sudden—”

“Mother, I think you’ve made your point—”

“When all of a sudden,” Augusta continued, “he heard loud and furious footsteps. He took this as his cue that he had overstayed his welcome.”

“Speaking of which …” Lila interrupted.

“Slamming doors, mysterious footsteps, overheard voices,” Augusta continued. “The occasional apparition. And, of course there was the time your father saw your great-great-grandmother sitting on the roof.”

“Mother,” said Lila, “you have just single-handedly made a case for interracial marriage. This is what happens”—she turned to the group—“after generations of inbreeding.”

“On the contrary,” snapped Augusta. “You are evidence of the gene pool’s formidable state.”

Lila glared and dismissed her mother, asserting her dominance. “This is why my mother thinks she’s psychic, and the rest of us think she’s insane.” She eyed Augusta with a maternal scold and nodded toward the Gettys’ house.

“I don’t think she’s insane,” Pete said. He winked mischievously at Mrs. Hayes.

“Me neither,” Tripler agreed. “I think you’re brave. I would have been on the first ferry back to Rockland.”

“Oh, they don’t bother family members,” Mrs. Hayes clucked. “On the contrary, they protect us.” She nodded instructively, as though addressing an errant toddler.