“I feel so underdressed,” I say, handing Margot a bottle of wine that I grabbed from our wine cellar on our way out the door. I run my hands over my denim-clad hips and add, “I thought you said casual?”
Ginny looks somewhat jubilant, oblivious to the fact that I secretly feel appropriate, even smug, in my jeans and T-shirt—and that I think she’s the one who is overdressed. As she leans in to give me a demure collar bone-to-collar bone hug, Margot thanks me for the wine and says, “I did. You look great.” Then, as she pours margaritas into oversized hand-blown glasses, she adds, “God, I wish I had your height…Especially these days. Ginny, wouldn’t you just kill for those legs?”
Ginny, who never made a postpartum comeback despite a personal trainer and a tummy tuck she doesn’t know that I know she had, glances wistfully at my legs before murmuring noncommittally. Clearly, she prefers that her compliments to me be of the backhanded variety—such as the recent gem she doled out while we were selecting invitations for Margot’s baby shower (an event I’m shamefully dreading) at Paces Papers. After laboring over our wording and the selection of pale pink, deckle-edged paper, charcoal ink, and an old-fashioned pram motif, I thought our task was finished. I picked up my purse, relieved to go, when Ginny touched my wrist, smiled condescendingly, and said, “Font, hon. We have to choose a font.”
“Oh, right,” I said, thinking of my old workroom in New York and how much I learned about typefaces from Oscar. Way more than Ginny could have picked up from planning her wedding and a few showers and charity balls. But I still amused myself by throwing out, “So I guess Times New Roman won’t do this time?”
At which point Ginny did her best to convey horror to the cute redheaded girl helping us and then declared, “Oh, Ellen. I so admire how laidback you are about these details…I try to be more that way, but just can’t.”
Bless my heart.
So anyway, here I sit in Margot’s family room in my Orange Crush T-shirt, the only bright color in a sea of preppy chic, summery pastels. And the only one who hasn’t heard the summer’s breaking news—that Cass Phillips discovered her husband, Morley, had purchased a three-thousand-dollar harp for his twenty-one-year-old lover who happens to be her best friend’s goddaughter. Which, as you can imagine, has caused quite the stir at Cherokee, the country club to which all pertinent parties belong.
“A harp?” I say. “Whatever happened to your standard negligee?”
Ginny shoots me a look as if I’ve totally missed the point of the story, and says, “Oh, Ellen. She’s a harpist.”
“Right,” I say, mumbling that I figured as much, but who the heck decides to pick up the harp, anyway?
Andy winks at me and says, “Elizabeth Smart.”
As I recall the “missing” posters of Elizabeth playing the harp, I smile at my husband’s ability to conjure examples for just about anything, while Ginny ignores our exchange and informs me that she and Craig had a harpist at their rehearsal dinner, along with a string quartet.
“Elizabeth who?” Craig says, turning to Andy, as if trying to place the name in his tight little Buckhead context.
“You know,” I say. “The Mormon girl who was kidnapped and then found a year later walking around Salt Lake City in a robe with her bearded captor.”
“Oh yeah. Her,” Craig says dismissively. As I watch him slice a big wedge of Brie and sandwich it between two crackers, it occurs to me that while he is like Webb in some ways—they are both ruddy, joke-telling, sports guys—he has none of Webb’s affability or ability to put others at ease. Come to think of it, he never really acknowledges me much at all or even looks my way. He brushes a few crumbs from his seersucker shorts and says, “I did hear the harpist was smokin’ hot…”
“Craig!” Ginny whines her husband’s name and looks aghast, as if she just caught him jerking off to a Penthouse magazine.
“Sorry, babe,” Craig says, kissing her in such a way that would suggest they’ve only just begun to date, when in fact, they’ve been together since virtually the first day of college.
Webb looks amused as he asks how Morley was busted.
Ginny explains that Cass found the charge on Morley’s corporate Amex. “She thought it looked suspicious and called the store…Then she put it together with his sudden interest in the symphony,” she says, her eyes bright with the scandalous details.
“Did he not think that, given his womanizing reputation, she was going to check his corporate Amex, too?” Margot says.
Craig winks and says, “It’s usually a safe harbor.”
Ginny whines her husband’s name again, then gives him a playful shove. “I’d leave you so fast,” she says.
Right, I think. She is exactly the sort of kept woman who’d put up with serial shenanigans. Anything to keep up their perfect appearances.
As the group continues to untangle the sordid harp saga, my mind drifts to Leo, and I consider for at least the hundredth time whether, in a technical, poll-one-hundred-people-in-Times-Square sort of way, I cheated on Andy that night on the plane. Always before, I wanted the answer to be no—both for Andy’s sake and for mine. But on this night, I realize that a small part of me almost wants to fall in that dark category. Wants to have a secret that distances me from Ginny and this whole desperate-housewife world I have found myself in. I can just hear her gossiping with her Buckhead-Betty friends—“I don’t know what Margot sees in that tacky-font-selecting, T-shirt-wearing, unhighlighted Yankee.”
The rest of the night is uneventful—just lots of golf and business talk among the men and baby talk among the girls—until about halfway through dinner when Ginny sips from her wineglass, winces, and says, “Margot, darling. What is this that we’re drinking?”
“It’s a merlot,” Margot says quickly, something in her voice tipping me off to trouble. I glance at the bottle and realize that it’s the one I brought tonight—and upon further inspection, the very same one that my father and Sharon gave Andy and me after we moved into our New York apartment.
“Well, it tastes like arse,” Ginny says, as if she’s British, a pet peeve of mine. (Just earlier tonight, she mentioned that she and Craig were planning a trip to Meh-hee-co.)
Margot flashes Ginny an insider’s look of warning—a look that you’d think they would have perfected in high school—but Ginny either misses it or intentionally ignores it, continuing her banter. “Where did you find it? Wal-Mart?”
Before Margot can offer a preemptive strike, Craig grabs the bottle from the table, scans the label, and scoffs, “Pennsylvania. It’s from Pennsylvania. Right. Everyone knows how world-renowned the vineyards are in Philadelphia.” He laughs, proud of his joke, proud to be showcasing his sophistication, his appreciation of all the finer things in life. “You shouldn’t have, really,” he adds, anticipating all of us to burst into fits of laughter.
Andy gives me a look that says, Let it ride. Like his sister and mother, he is one to avoid conflict of any kind, and deep down, I know that is exactly what I should do now. I am also fairly certain that no one meant to offend me—that Craig and Ginny likely didn’t piece together that I brought the wine—and that it was only a good-natured ribbing between close friends. The sort of foot-in-the-mouth remarks that anyone can make.
But because they come from Ginny and Craig, and because I do not like Ginny and Craig and they do not like me, and because at this moment I want to be anywhere in the world but sitting at a table in my new town of Atlanta having dinner with Ginny and Craig, I pipe up with, “Pittsburgh, actually.”
Craig looks at me, confused. “Pittsburgh?” he says.
“Right. Pittsburgh…not Philadelphia,” I say, my face burning with indignation. “It’s Pittsburgh’s finest merlot.”
Craig, who clearly has no clue where I’m from, and certainly has never bothered to ask, continues to look puzzled while I catch Webb and Margot exchange an uncomfortable glance.
“I’m from Pittsburgh,” I say, drolly, apologetically. “I brought the bottle t
onight.” I shift my gaze to Ginny and swirl my wine. “Sorry that it’s not up to snuff.”
Then, as Craig looks sheepish and Ginny stammers an awkward retraction and Margot laughs nervously and Webb changes the subject and Andy does absolutely nothing, I silently raise my glass and take a big gulp of cheap red wine.
Twenty-Four
On the short, muggy walk home that night, I wait for Andy to rush to my defense—or at least make cursory mention of the merlot episode. At which point, I plan to laugh it off, or perhaps chime in with a few choice comments about Ginny and Craig—her insipid chatter, his misplaced superiority, their relentless, almost comical, snobbishness.
But surprisingly and even more disappointingly, Andy doesn’t say a word about them. In fact, he has so little to say that he comes across as uncharacteristically remote, almost aloof, and I start to feel he actually might be mad at me for causing a ruckus at Margot’s so-called barbecue. As we near our driveway, I am tempted to come right out and ask the question, but refrain for fear that doing so would suggest guilt. And I don’t feel that I’ve done anything wrong.
So instead I stubbornly avoid the subject altogether and keep things neutral, breezy. “Those were some great filets, weren’t they?” I say.
“Yeah. They were pretty tasty,” Andy says as he nods to a night jogger passing us in crazy, head-to-toe reflective clothing.
“No chance that guy’s getting hit by anything,” I say, chuckling.
Andy ignores my half-hearted joke and continues in a serious voice. “Margot’s corn salad was really good, too.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. I’ll be sure to get her recipe,” I mumble, my tone coming off slightly more acerbic than I intended.
Andy shoots me a look that I can’t read—some combination of doleful and defensive—before dropping my hand and reaching in his pocket for his keys. He fishes them out, then strides more quickly up the driveway to the front porch, where he unlocks the door and pauses to let me enter first. It is something he always does, but tonight the gesture registers as formal, almost tense.
“Why, thank you,” I say, feeling stranded in that frustrating no man’s land of both wanting to fight and wanting to be close.
Andy won’t give me either. Instead, he steps around me as if I were a pair of tennis shoes left on the stairs and heads straight up to our room.
I reluctantly follow him and watch him start to undress, desperately wanting to define what’s in the air between us but unwilling to make the first move.
“You going to bed?” I say, glancing at the clock on our bedroom mantel.
“Yeah. I’m beat,” Andy says.
“It’s only ten,” I say, feeling both angry and sad. “Don’t you want to watch TV?”
He shakes his head and says, “It’s been a long week.” Then he hesitates, as if he forgot what he was about to do, before reaching into his top dresser drawer to retrieve his best pair of fine, Egyptian-cotton pajamas. He pulls them out, and, looking surprised, says, “Did you iron these?”
I nod, as if it were nothing, when in fact I felt like a martyr as I pressed them yesterday morning, with starch and all. Spray, sigh, iron. Spray, sigh, iron.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, buttoning his shirt slowly, deliberately, while avoiding eye contact with me.
“I wanted to,” I lie, focusing on the curve of his slender neck as he looks down at the top button, thinking that I have nothing better to do in Atlanta.
“It wasn’t necessary…I don’t mind wrinkles.”
“In clothes or on my face?” I say wryly, hoping to break the ice—and then fight.
“Either,” Andy says, still stone-faced.
“Good,” I say flippantly. “Because, you know, I’m not really the BOTOX type.”
Andy nods. “Yeah. I know.”
“Ginny gets BOTOX,” I say, feeling slightly foolish by my overt, clumsy attempt to divert the conversation to what’s really on my mind, and even more so when Andy refuses my bait.
“Really?” he says disinterestedly.
“Yeah. Every couple months,” I say, grasping at straws. As if the frequency of her cosmetic-surgery office visits will finally push him across some imaginary line and rally him to my cause.
“Well,” he says, shrugging. “To each his own, I guess.”
I inhale, now ready to goad him into a proper argument. But before I can say anything, he turns and disappears into the bathroom, leaving me sitting on the foot of our bed as if I’m the bad guy.
To add insult to injury, Andy falls right to sleep that night—which is about the most galling thing you can do after a fight, or in our case, a standoff. No tossing or turning or stewing beside me in the dark. Just cold indifference as he kissed me goodnight, followed by an easy, deep slumber. Of course this has the infuriating effect of keeping me wide awake, replaying the evening, then the past few weeks, and the few months before that. After all, there is nothing like a little argument-induced insomnia to shift you into a state of frenzied hyper-analysis and fury.
So when the grandfather clock in our foyer (incidentally a housewarming gift from Stella which I’m none too fond of, for both its foreboding appearance and sound) strikes three, I am in such a bad mental place that I transfer to the couch downstairs where I begin to think of our engagement—the last time I can recall feeling defensive about my background.
To be fair (which I’m not in the mood to be), our wedding planning was mostly smooth sailing. In part, I credit myself for being a relatively laidback bride, as I really only cared about the photography, our vows, and for some odd reason, the cake (Suzanne believes this was simply my excuse to sample lots of baked goods). In part, I think things went well because Margot had just gone through it all, and Andy and I weren’t afraid to shamelessly copy her, using the same church, country club, florist, and band. Largely, though, I think it went well because we only had one mother in the picture, and I was perfectly happy to let her run the show.
Suzanne didn’t get it—didn’t understand how I could so easily surrender to Stella’s strong opinions and traditional taste.
“Pink roses aren’t you,” she said, starting in on the Grahams one afternoon as we flipped through my CDs, looking for good first-dance song choices.
“I like pink roses just fine,” I said, shrugging.
“Please. Even so…what about everything else?” Suzanne said, looking agitated.
“Like what?” I said.
“Like everything…it’s as if they expect you to become one of them,” she said, her voice rising.
“That’s what a wedding is all about,” I said calmly. “I’m becoming a Graham, so to speak.”
“But it’s supposed to be two families coming together…and this wedding feels like it’s more theirs than yours. It’s almost as if they’re…trying to take you over…phase out your family.”
“How do you figure?” I said.
“Let’s see…You’re on their turf, for one. Why the hell are you getting married in Atlanta anyway? Isn’t the wedding supposed to be in the bride’s hometown?”
“I guess so. Typically,” I said. “But it just makes sense to have it in Atlanta since Stella’s doing most of the work.”
“And writing all the checks,” Suzanne said, at which point I finally got defensive and said that she wasn’t being fair.
Yet now, I wonder if finances weren’t a factor, after all. I can say with unwavering certainty that I didn’t marry Andy for his money, and that I wasn’t, as Suzanne seemed to be implying, bought. But on some level I guess I did feel indebted to the Grahams and therefore complicit when it came to the details.
Beyond the money, there was something else at play, too—some dark thing I never wanted to look at too closely, until now, in the middle of the night, on the couch. It was a feeling of inadequacy—a worry that, on some level, maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I didn’t quite measure up to Andy and his family. I was never ashamed of my hometown, my roots, or my family, but the mo
re I became entrenched in the Graham family, the way they lived, and their traditions and customs, I couldn’t help but start to see my own background in a new light. And it was this concern—perhaps only subconscious at the time—that gave me a tremendous sense of relief when Stella suggested that she plan our wedding in Atlanta.
At the time, I justified my feelings. I told myself that I had left Pittsburgh for a reason. I wanted a different kind of life for myself—not a better life—just a different one. And included in that was a different sort of wedding. I didn’t want to get married at my drafty Catholic church, eat stuffed cabbage from tinfoil chafing dishes, and boogie down to the Chicken Dance at the VFW Hall. I didn’t want to have wedding cake smashed in my face, a blue-lace garter removed by my groom’s teeth, and my bouquet caught by a nine-year-old because virtually every other female guest is already married with kids. And I didn’t want to get pelted with rice by my husband’s friends—the few who had yet to pass out—then cruise off in a black stretch limo with empty Iron City cans tied to the back bumper all the way to the Days Inn where we’d spend the night before flying to Cancun for our package honeymoon. It’s not that I turned up my nose to any of that—I just had a different concept of the “dream wedding.”
Now I see that it wasn’t only a question of what I wanted for myself—it was also what I feared the Grahams and their friends would think of me. I never tried to hide how I grew up, but I didn’t want them observing too closely for fear that someone might come to that horrifying conclusion that I wasn’t good enough for Andy. And it was this emotion, this fear, that crystallized and manifested itself in the purchase of my wedding gown.
It all started when Andy asked my father for my hand in marriage, actually flying to Pittsburgh so that he could take my dad to Bravo Franco, his favorite downtown restaurant, and ask for permission, face to face. The gesture won big points with my dad, who sounded so happy and proud when he told the story that for a long time I joked he was worried he could never marry me off (a joke I stopped telling once it became apparent that this might be Suzanne’s fate). In any event, during the course of their lunch, after my dad gave his jubilant blessing, he became earnest as he told Andy about the wedding fund he and my mother had long ago set up for their girls—a savings of seven thousand dollars to be used any way we wished. In addition, he told Andy that he wanted to buy my gown, as it was something my mother had always talked of doing with her daughters, one of her symbolic big regrets during her final days.