The Romantics Read online

  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.

  Northern 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.

  “So …” said Lila, matching Laura’s tone but infu
sing it with a more personal demand.

  Laura paused, suddenly aware she had absolutely nothing to say. She made a sweeping gesture at the activity on the lawn. “So how’s it all going up here?”

  “What? The wedding?” Her tone was defiant, her volume loud enough to seem angry. “I really don’t get why people make such a big deal. I mean, it’s just one day of your life.” She shrugged as though baffled by a complex scientific fact, at once asserting her wonder and disdain.

  It was this type of comment that made Laura seethe. Did Lila actually think she was comforted by her trivial generalizations, her denouncement of the wedding institution? On the contrary, it made Laura feel terrible that Lila thought she needed to be comforted. And it irritated her that Lila considered such a condescending statement comforting. It would have been less patronizing for Lila to pat her on the head and commend her for coming to the wedding on her own.

  “Did you pick up your dress?” Lila demanded. “The store called me Tuesday and said it was still there.”

  “Yes, I got it,” Laura said.

  “Thank God.” Lila sighed. “I’ve been totally panicked that the bridesmaids are going to look bad.”

  “How could we look bad,” said Laura, “in such a flattering color?”

  Lila paused, mistrusting Laura’s tone. But thankfully, when it came to detecting sarcasm, Lila’s “hearing” was slightly impaired. “Thank God Weesie’s lost the weight,” she whispered. “You were worried?” Laura asked.

  “Well, yeah. She insisted on ordering her dress a size too small to motivate herself. I’m just glad she came through. It’s not her problem if she looks bad in my wedding pictures.”

  Laura sighed, conveying sympathy where, in fact, she felt disgust.

  “But Annie, I’m a little worried about. Have you heard anything,” Lila hissed.

  “About what?”

  “Oh forget it,” said Lila. “Just last time I saw her she looked a little pudgy.”

  Laura nodded, conveying understanding when, in fact, she felt rage.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Lila whispered. “It didn’t feel real without you.”

  Laura paused for a moment, touched by the childlike sweetness of the sentiment. She tightened her grasp around Lila’s shoulders. “I’m glad I’m here, too.”

  There was always this moment between the two friends when they reunited, this process of resistance and submission. First, Laura acknowledged the bile and bitterness she had harbored toward Lila since she’d seen her last. Then, Lila welcomed Laura back into her thrall with seeming obliviousness to Laura’s treachery. Finally, Laura cursed herself for harboring such hateful feelings and, embarrassed by her quickness to yield, converted hatred into resentment.

  It was not Lila’s fault, Laura always decided, that she was so lucky. Her greatest crime was entitlement, her greatest curse, good luck. How was she to know the wisdom earned by yearning? And why should she be faulted for the circumstances that had precluded her having to yearn?

  “I’m so sorry Ben couldn’t be here,” Lila whispered.

  Comments like this threatened Laura’s precarious composure. For every ten blundering, callous things Lila said, she said something eerily telepathic.

  “I’m completely enraged with Gussie for holding me to it. I should have told her to fuck off at the time, but it was just easier to appease her. And now, you’re stranded up here all alone with all your friends and their husbands. I would understand if you never spoke to me again.” She gripped Laura’s forearm.

  Laura flinched on reflex.

  “But I’ve done my best to make it up to you with the seating arrangement.” She smiled devilishly.

  “Oh God.” Laura sighed. “I thought I would be at the wedding party table with you.”

  “You are,” Lila said, batting her eyes.

  “Next to who?” Laura asked.

  “You’ll see,” Lila cooed.

  “Who?” Laura demanded.

  “Someone smart, gorgeous, and brilliant.”

  Laura stopped walking, forfeiting her only remaining leverage. “Tell me right now,” she tried.

  Lila kept walking but turned her head while she kept her pace. “Someone you haven’t seen in a very long time,” she said. “Someone you absolutely adore.”

  “Please tell me who it is,” Laura begged. As she stood, hands on hips, in the middle of the lawn, she felt completely degraded, not unlike a defiant pet, refusing to enter the house.

  Finally, Lila stopped and turned to face Laura. The setting sun struck her eyes and doubled their intensity. “Why, the groom. Who else?”

  Just like that, Laura kicked herself for her self-recrimination. Lila deserved every bit of ill will she bore her. Breathing deeply, Laura picked up her pace and hurried to catch up with her friends, praying Lila’s lucky streak would end with a rainy wedding day.

  TWO

  Augusta Hayes had spared nothing in her efforts to ensure beautiful weather on her daughter’s wedding day. She had spent the last two weeks paying homage to that most pagan of Protestant deities: superstition. A bottle of Chivas Regal, her own drink of choice, rested in the crook of a majestic beech tree at the end of the property, hovering, like Augusta, in that delicate space between paganism and propriety.

  Her expertise with the venue afforded her a certain amount of confidence. She had hosted innumerable picnics and parties at Northern Gardens over the years and had herself been married on the lawn far too many years ago. Seniority seemed as likely to help the cause as prayer. She hoped her efforts would not be looked upon as hubristic, but rather as a logical extension of her faith. Whether that faith was in God or the house was hard to know.

  Historically, the strict observation of etiquette had served her well. Writing thank-you letters within three days of receiving a gift, thanking the hostess before leaving a party, stripping the bed after an overnight stay—all of these rules, when observed to the letter, had wrought not only order but loveliness. It seemed wholly plausible that for one day, one as important as her eldest child’s wedding, strict observation of etiquette might suffice to impose order on the gods themselves.

  Like many women of her generation, Augusta viewed matrimony as an achievement. The simple veil that Lila would wear might as well have been a crown of laurel leaves. For Augusta, the day was both a celebration and display of social triumph. The extent of that triumph was measured according to the same stringent criteria that applied to an engagement ring. Size, lineage, sheen, and pedigree were intrinsic to the assessment; extra marks could be earned for the relative quotient between price and pocket depth. Tom, in turn, was not unlike the emerald he placed on Lila’s finger: impressive, but not flawless; robust, if unrefined. Augusta often wondered if something had been lost in the trade between size and quality. But his higher marks compensated for his lower ones, giving him an impressive dazzle despite his lackluster facets.

  The wedding required that Augusta pull off a jeweler’s greatest challenge: downplaying the defects of a jewel while flaunting its beauty. Luckily, she had spent a lifetime honing this skill. The fine art of bragging while trivializing was as natural to her as drinking iced tea on the porch, as automatic as playing doubles tennis on Sundays at the club. It was, in short, the modus operandi of her culture. Furthermore, Tom himself did much to help the cause, aspiring to membership in her club with the same intensity with which Augusta wished for his eligibility. Tom’s critics would argue that he compromised himself in this effort. His enemies would argue that Lila herself was the compromise.

  Even Tom’s best friends would point out the ways he changed when he was around Mrs. Hayes. When he introduced himself, he lowered his voice and all but dropped the first two letters of his last name. His a’s lengthened in the Anglican way and his mouth tightened into an affected smile. The whole thing seemed like a bad impression of affability.

  Regardless, Augusta would prevail over all such imperfections. She had orchestrated a wedding more lavish and
lovely than any she had attended to date, and she relished the chance to watch her plans unfold. In the weeks leading up to the day, she had felt disproportionately anxious, like a sergeant planning for battle. She had quickly and quietly co-opted the occasion, imposing her taste, her guest list, and her rules, an imposition Lila allowed because of her aversion to details; she was far more interested in the fact of her wedding than the minutiae of the party itself.

  Gleefully, Augusta took the reins, consulting Lila on aesthetic decisions as a mere formality. She selected the menu, lifting many of the dishes from her most successful dinner parties. She involved a caterer not as a chef, but in the capacity of a cook. She supervised the guest list, culling the one hundred fifty most deserving friends and family members from her network. One hundred additional spots were filled by the enormous McDevon family and the fifty-odd peers Tom and Lila insisted upon.

  Augusta auditioned and hired the band—they had been a big hit at an engagement party she threw for her niece in the spring. She commissioned the flowers, integrating local blooms with the ubiquitous Maine spruce. She designed the palette, drawing on the dominant colors of Northern Gardens: the shimmering blue of the ocean, the welcoming white of the house and, as an accent, the lush green of the grass that separated the two.

  It was divine inspiration, she felt, to weave these colors into the wedding tableau—grass green for the tablecloths and napkins, Maine coast blue for the ribbons and bunting, and the two colors joined together for the table centerpieces. Each centerpiece would be fashioned from a branch harvested on the property and adorned with sea glass collected from their beach. The large floral arrangements would draw upon the same color scheme while the wedding party’s bouquets would consist exclusively of white: peonies and lilies of the valley. The menu was classic coastal with touches of urban sophistication. A raw bar would feed the guests during cocktails. Hors d’oeuvres would include a cornucopia of cheeses and savories. Dinner itself would be served in time with the setting sun. Guests would choose between broiled lobster and carved lamb, enjoying a decadent truffled pasta and cascades of colorful grilled vegetables. Drinks would flow throughout.