Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (27 page)

Brock wasn’t listening.

What he was doing was producing a box—a small blue box—and getting down on one knee in the gravel, surprisingly graceful for
such a big man, like a circus elephant she’d once seen as a child balancing delicately on one massive, columnar foot.

As if in a dream, she took the box and, with fingers suddenly twice their normal thickness, tugged at the ribbon—back on Fifth
Avenue, she imagined, a mischievous salesgirl was laughing at how tightly she’d tied this bow—and removed a smaller inner
box just like the one that had held her promise ring. “He couldn’t give you the real deal?” Bex had asked when Peggy had come
into the shop wearing it.

This wasn’t a pre-engagement ring. This wasn’t a fake wedding ring. This was, in fact, the real deal.

Brock struggled to his feet, less nimble than he’d been while sinking to his knees, to help Peggy shove the ring over her
unaccountably swollen knuckle. He took her hand in his and held it out as if displaying it to her.

“What do you think, Pegs?”

Luke didn’t hang up when Peggy did. He held the dead receiver in his hand absently, mulling over their brief exchange, attempting
in vain to decipher why Peggy had brought up the Colonial Inn, until the phone made its insistent, earsplitting off-the-hook
signal. He replaced the receiver and went out to Charity’s Porch. Through the screen, he watched Abigail walking in the back
garden and tried to picture what Peggy was doing in New York this weekend and whether she was doing it with her prefiancé,
and the solution to his problems materialized with such immediacy, Luke couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Peggy
wasn’t taken, not really. She wasn’t engaged. She was merely engaged to be engaged.
Which means she’s fair game,
he thought.
There’s no reason I can’t pursue her myself.

And there wasn’t. There was no reason at all. He resolved to put some effort into making Peggy Sedgwick his own. She was his
wife, after all.

The roses lay abandoned in the gravel. Peggy was sure they had no fragrance but pitied them all the same. She steered her
mind back to the matter at hand. She again had the sensation of watching herself: Peggy Adams mulling over a marriage proposal.
Only—
was
this a proposal? Had Brock asked her to marry him?

Footsteps crunched from a few feet away, and Jeremy appeared through the hedges—half man, half cyborg. “Peggy, are you in
here—” He stopped short.

Brock was still holding her hand. She pried his fingers off hers.

“Who the hell is this?” Jeremy put his hand on his waist-tethered gadget. He looked for all the world about to unsheathe it
for a digital duel.

“This is, uh, my ex-boyfriend, Brock. Brock, this is…” Peggy didn’t know how to introduce Jeremy. Or why she felt compelled
to introduce these two at all.

Brock nodded wordlessly at Jeremy and said to Peggy, “So how about we go for it? Let’s get married, Pegs.”

“But I just made dinner reservations,” Jeremy said.

Brock looked apologetic. “Oh, man. Sorry.”

Here was Peggy’s choice made flesh: dating men like Jeremy, telling her life story over and over, breaking up or being broken
up with, or marriage. An eternal, fruitless quest for an as-yet-unmet Mr. Perfect…or the opportunity to stop searching. At
no moment had her life been as black and white. Brock or nobody? Quit looking or keep trying?

But what about Luke?

She was an idiot for thinking it. Hadn’t she just realized Luke wasn’t a choice? And what did he have to do with anything?
Whatever she felt for him wasn’t real. People didn’t form relationships with men they met during drunken blackouts. Here was
Brock, whom she’d loved for seven years, who had clearly changed, whom she would surely grow to love again, who was asking
her to be his forever.

Forever.

She was ready for forever.

“What do you say, Pegs?” Brock’s question floated through the air.

She’d imagined this moment differently. She would be wearing a dress, not a down parka. She wouldn’t have brought a date along.
She wouldn’t be petrified of being caught by Ernestine Riga. She wondered, amazed, why she wasn’t crying. She’d always assumed
she would cry.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go for it.”

After reimbursing Jeremy for his expenses, Brock wanted to stay at the inn, but Peggy was intent upon getting home. She barely
remembered the drive back, what she and Brock had talked about, whether they’d talked much at all. Her dazed mind raced through
a long list of quandaries: How profusely apologetic she should be with Jeremy. Whether he’d prefer the apology to be in person,
over the phone, by e-mail, or via text message. How to break the news to Bex. How to tell Luke about Brock;
whether
to tell Luke about Brock. How to tell Brock about Luke. And the wedding date, which Brock was already pressing her to set.

“End of January.” He maneuvered the car in front of her building, munching on the remains of an extra-large order of fries
from a drive-through just across the New York State line. “After playoffs, before the Super Bowl.”

Already, the logistical problems were piling up. “As in eight weeks from now?”

“Yeah, why not? If we wait past that, we’re getting into February and I’ll be leaving to do the surf documentary, and then
by the time I’m back it’s summer and baseball season, and then it’s August and football, and by the time that’s over we’re
talking January a year from now. Who needs an engagement that long?” He offered her some fry crumbs.

Peggy shook her head. Who needed a long engagement? She did, to be sure her other marriage was annulled first. This was the
ideal time to tell Brock about Luke. But that would spoil the moment, wouldn’t it? “Let’s not set a date just yet—mmmmf,”
she answered as he kissed her, familiar and salty, until a taxi behind them honked its horn and Peggy moved away.

He reeled her back. “Go pack a suitcase and come stay at our place.”

“I’d better take a rain check.” She gave him a quick hug. “I should tell Bex the news first.”

But not tonight. In the stairwell, she slipped Brock’s diamond ring into her handbag. In the span of a couple of months, she’d
gone from a woman without a ring to a woman with one ring too many.

The Holidays

P
eggy had changed. She wasn’t being sullen or hostile, just distant. Luke found it maddening. How could he win her over when
she wouldn’t speak two sentences to him? He tried inquiring about her health, her work. “Fine, thank you,” she’d answer, no
matter the question. He’d been able to pull out of her that Bex was indeed going to have a baby. He’d asked Peggy to pass
along his congratulations. “Okay, yes, sure,” she’d replied distractedly.

He began to test her, asking her opinion just to take the opposing view. When Abigail inquired which vegetable they would
prefer with dinner, Luke would wait until Peggy said peas, and then he would say carrots, but she wouldn’t argue. One Saturday
afternoon, passing the picketers on the way back from a trip to Seymour’s, he asked which side she was on.

“Theirs. I think development is ruining the character of the town.”

“If you lived here and had to drive forty-five minutes to the beauty parlor, you might think differently.” It was juvenile,
he knew.

She only laughed. “
Salon,
Luke.”

He suggested every long, involved chore he could think of. They recaulked the bathtubs, spread a blue tarp over the leaky
roof and around the northwest chimney; there was no money to have the roof properly repaired. They spent hours shuffling across
the floor of each of the house’s twenty-one rooms, listening for squeaks, hunching over to nail down the loose boards. The
work was repetitious and dull; talking would have passed the time. Still, Peggy barely spoke. Her mind, he could see, was
elsewhere.

Nicki called every so often, a cell phone siren trying to lure him back onto the rocks. If he answered his phone at all, he
kept the talk light. More often, he ignored it. Late one week-night, lonely, he drove halfway to Nicki’s place in South Norwalk,
turned around, and came home. She wasn’t the one he wanted.

New Nineveh prepared for Christmas. Colored lights appeared on the pine tree on the green, the volunteer fire department trimmed
its station with a wreath, and the brokers at the real estate offices set dishes of red and green Hershey’s kisses on their
desks. But this year, most of the local shoppers had flocked to Pilgrim Plaza, and the town center was sad and deserted. The
only steady sign of life came from the small huddle of Saturday picketers who marched across the still snowless green.

But when Peggy returned on the weekends, which were filled with more social invitations than he’d ever received without her—and
left him little time alone with her—Luke’s dolor deepened. Whether they were drinking hot chocolate at Liddy Hubbard’s Christmas
cookie party or passing under the mistletoe—mistletoe! there to torment him!—on the way into the Rigas’ holiday open house,
Luke scowled at Peggy’s ring. His plan to court her was getting nowhere.

On the morning before Christmas Eve, Luke was untangling the cords of Miss Abigail’s decorative electric candles, setting
one onto the sill of each window as he had every December 23 as far back as he could remember, when an oversize pickup truck
towing an outsize trailer pulled up in front of the house as if sidling up to a dock. A man and woman climbed out and walked
toward the front gate. From his window in the gentlemen’s parlor, Luke could make out their astonishment as they gazed at
the house’s facade. He continued working—it was not unusual to have tourists stop to ogle the house—but in another few moments
the door knocker sounded, and he reluctantly went to answer it.

“Is this the Silas Sedgwick House?” The woman had faded blond hair pulled back from a worry-lined forehead.

Luke said it was, patiently pointing out the plaque.

“Wow.” The woman’s eyes were wide. “Really, wow.”

Luke waited for more questions and hoped the two wouldn’t ask to come inside for a tour. It was remarkable how many did.

The husband was balding and bearded, with a souvenir New Mexico sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. It was a mystery to Luke
why tourists wore shorts in the winter. Perhaps handling that big pickup was more strenuous than it appeared. “If this is
the Sedgwick House, then you must be Luke,” the man said, and before Luke could answer, he was caught in a bear hug; and the
wife, too, was exclaiming how thrilled they were to meet him, and it dawned on him who these people were.

“We know we’re a day early.” The man answered Luke’s next question before he could think it. “We made great time through Maryland
and Delaware, and we were going to stop there awhile, but then we decided, why wait? Why not drive straight through to Connecticut?”

“Absolutely.” Luke took the first opportunity he could to retreat to a safer distance. Yankees did not hug and kiss total
strangers, even their new in-laws.
Holy hell,
he thought,
I have in-laws.

“Who’s at the door?” Abigail called.

“If you’re not ready for us, we can camp out in the rig.” The woman took her eyes off the house for a moment to flutter a
nervous hand toward the trailer.

“We wouldn’t think of it. I’ll get a room ready for you on the second floor. Come in, Mrs. Adams, Mr. Adams.”

“Please.” Peggy’s father rested his hands comfortably on his round, solid belly. “Call us Mom and Dad.”

“But that can’t be,” Peggy said into the phone. She was at the shop and made an effort not to shout. “They’re not supposed
to get there until tomorrow!”

“Then right now, two strangers who arrived towing something called a Kustom Koach are drinking eggnog with my great-aunt in
the library.”

“What do I do?” Peggy pressed her back against the storage closet door. On the other side, the store buzzed with activity
and Bing Crosby carols; there was a line at the register, and Padma was frantically wrapping gifts. “I can’t leave the store.
It’s crunch time and Bex is at the doctor.”

“Don’t worry. I can handle your parents. You come up tomorrow night, as planned.”

“That’s very sweet, Luke. You can’t handle them. My mom will worry about everything, and my dad will wander around the house
in cutoffs.”

“He already is. Cutoffs and bedroom slippers. And he gave Abby a big kiss on the lips.” Luke had to admire Peggy’s father.
Unlike his daughter, he didn’t seem the slightest bit self-conscious.

Peggy groaned. “They won’t be able to get over the house, and how big it is. Then Miss Abigail will start asking about their
connection to the New Nineveh Adamses, and they won’t have the faintest idea what she’s talking about, and our story will
be blown to bits.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Peggy opened the supply closet and peeked out. She had little choice but to trust Luke to take care of things. “Okay, honey.
Thanks.”

“Honey?”

“I meant okay, thanks.” She hung up and emerged red-faced from the closet.
Honey.
She’d gotten mixed up and thought she was talking to Brock. Juggling two relationships was not proving easy. Once she’d nearly
called Brock “Luke,” and last Friday night she’d walked halfway to the car rental place before realizing she had slipped on
not her phony wedding ring from Luke, but the real engagement ring from Brock, which she kept stashed in her jewelry box alongside
the Connecticut decoy. She’d had to go back and switch them. Making matters much worse, she hadn’t found a way to tell Bex
and Josh about her betrothal. She wore Brock’s ring only on their dates one or two nights a week—evenings Peggy let Bex assume
she was having dinner with Jeremy.

Peggy would have insisted, had anyone asked, that she was keeping her engagement secret for her friend’s sake, that Bex was
in no state to handle the shock. Bex was constantly nauseated—a good sign, Bex said; it meant her hormone levels were good
and strong. “I might be carrying more than one,” Bex had confided the night before. “You should come with us to the six-week
ultrasound and see…oops…wait…hold on…” She clapped her hand over her mouth and rushed from the room.