Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (6 page)

To his credit, Luke remained in control. “You
told
her, Geri?”

“Gosh, I figured she knew! I called to say congratulations.” Geri’s round face drooped. “Did I spoil a surprise?”

“Welcome to the family, dear,” the old lady told Peggy. “I’m sorry Luke seems to have forgotten his manners. I am Abigail
Agatha Sarah Sedgwick, and I understand you are of the New Nineveh Adamses? You do plan to have children, I presume?”

Peggy tried to dislodge her chin from the old woman’s iron grip. “Um, I—”

Luke was still speaking to Geri. “Why do you think Peggy and I are here today?”

“Naturally, to update your paperwork. We always advise newlyweds to come in and—”

Peggy pried Miss Abigail’s hand away. “That’s not it.” She looked from Miss Abigail to Geri and back again. “We’re getting
an annulment.”

Miss Abigail stepped back as if she’d been slapped.

Luke glared at Peggy. He tried to take his great-aunt’s arm. “Abby, have a seat.”

Miss Abigail yanked her arm away and remained standing. “We’re New Nineveh’s oldest family, Luke, and our survival is at stake.
You’re the only hope. It’s your responsibility as the last surviving Sedgwick to provide an heir.”

“Lowell, please put the paperwork through as we’ve agreed,” Luke said quietly.

“Lowie, kindly explain to my great-nephew. We do not get divorced. When a Sedgwick marries, a Sedgwick stays married. We must
set a good, moral example. And this young lady is of the New Nineveh Adamses! I didn’t know there were any left.”

Luke’s hands were in fists. He stuck them in his pockets. “Abby, our family has no power anymore. We don’t need to set examples.
It’s a brave new world out there. And technically this isn’t a divorce, it’s an annulment.”

Miss Abigail gasped and fanned herself with her rain hat.

“Forgive me,” Luke said evenly, “but when will it occur to you that the only person left who cares about the Sedgwick legacy
is you?”

His words were eclipsed by Geri’s shriek.

Abigail Agatha Sarah Sedgwick was collapsing. In slow motion her knees buckled, her eyes fluttered shut, and she pitched forward
onto the well-worn carpet of the Law Offices of Lowell C. Mayhew.

Peggy had read every page of a three-year-old copy of
AARP
magazine and was considering moving on to
Field & Stream
when a man in scrubs strode into the emergency room waiting area. Luke, who had been absorbed in the sea-foam green walls
for the past ninety minutes, stood up. Peggy did the same.

Luke looked at her. “You don’t need to be here.” He sounded about as pleased at her company as she was at his.

“I don’t have a choice.” Somehow she had ended up in the ambulance with Luke and Miss Abigail, and now she was stranded fifteen
miles from New Nineveh in this hospital in Torrington, Connecticut, a place she’d never heard of. What if Brock were calling
the store, looking for her? It was two o’clock; she’d been out of communication half the day. She’d forgotten her phone on
the front seat of the Chevy on Church Street. If she ever got back to the car, she’d no doubt find the window smashed and
the phone gone.

The doctor motioned Luke down a long corridor. Peggy followed; Luke was her only link to the outside world. After a few steps,
the doctor said, “Luke Sedgwick, right? Tim Stancil. Your parents were on my paper route. How are they?”

“Dead. How’s my great-aunt?”

“Sorry, man.”

“Thanks. How’s my great-aunt?”

Dr. Stancil didn’t appear affected by Luke’s unfriendliness. “We’ll need to do a few follow-ups to be sure, but the neurologist
will fill you in.” They had arrived at the room. Luke’s great-aunt lay asleep in bed, her legs two sticks under the thin blanket.
An IV protruded from a knotty blue vein in one crooked hand.

A doctor with ballpoint-pen marks on the pocket of his white coat stepped forward. “Your grandmother has had a transient ischemic
attack, a brief cessation in blood flow to a region of the brain.”

Peggy had half a mind to explain that Miss Abigail wasn’t Luke’s grandmother and to ask the neurologist to please speak in
English.

“A stroke?” Luke asked.

“A sort of practice stroke, if you’ll pardon the expression. TIA presents with strokelike symptoms—vertigo, partial numbness,
weakness, and so on—but the symptoms resolve within minutes. In a real stroke, the effects can be permanent.”

Abigail’s eyes snapped open, alert in her thin, wizened face. “I’m fine. It was the shock. Nothing more.”

Luke knelt beside her. “How are you?” He spoke softly, holding his palm against her forehead as if she were an ill child.
“Are you dizzy, or numb?”

“I’m ready to go home.” Miss Abigail’s voice was reedy but firm. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me so I may get dressed…”

The neurologist said to Luke, “We’ll need to keep her for a day or two. We consider TIA a warning signal. About a third of
patients who’ve had one will eventually have a larger stroke.”

“How eventually?”

“It might be days or months, but likely within a year. She’ll need to curtail any strenuous activities that might put stress
on her heart—stair climbing, lifting heavy objects, and so forth.”

Miss Abigail was annoyed, Peggy could tell, that the doctor was talking not to her, but to Luke. The old woman addressed the
neurologist: “I’d like to speak with my nephew in private.”

When the doctors moved on, Miss Abigail pressed a button to raise herself to a sitting position. “Pull the curtain.”

“I’ll wait in the hall.” Peggy started to leave.

Miss Abigail rattled her IV. “Nonsense. Luke, pull the curtain, please”

Luke drew the privacy curtain, enclosing the three of them in a bubble of turquoise vinyl.

“When did you two get married?” Miss Abigail said.

“Last week,” Luke mumbled.

Peggy waited for him to add an explanation. “It was kind of a whirlwind courtship,” she said, when it became clear he didn’t
plan on volunteering anything else. “You know how that is. You get caught up in the moment and all of a sudden you’re married.”
She tittered agitatedly.

Miss Abigail looked Peggy up and down.

Peggy’s mind raced, anticipating the barrage of questions to which, she knew, her own parents would subject her. No one said
a word. Rattled, she blurted, “It was love at first sight. Like in the movies? We saw each other across a crowded room, our
eyes locked, and we
knew.
” Blushing at the lie, she looked over at Luke, signaling that it was now time for him to flesh out the story, but he appeared
absorbed by an invisible spot on the hospital floor.

Miss Abigail cleared her throat. “I see.”

Peggy waited; now the questions would begin. When they didn’t, she continued, desperate to fill the silence, “So I guess,
then, you might be wondering why we’re getting an annulment. I mean,
I’d
wonder, if I were you.” She glanced again at Luke, but his impassive expression made it clear she was on her own. “All right,”
she stammered. “I think the easiest way to explain it is to say that sometimes, what seems right in a romantic moment doesn’t
pan out in the cold light of day.” She was blathering, mixing metaphors. “I mean, as one example, there’s the simple matter
of where we would live. I have a small business in New York I can’t possibly leave behind. And Luke, well, he simply adores
Connecticut—” She stopped, distracted by a barely detectable flash of alarm on Luke’s face. “S-so, you see,” she concluded,
“for this and many other reasons we think it best to go our separate ways.”

Miss Abigail stayed silent for a moment, and then said, “You heard the doctor. I don’t have a lot of time left.”

“You don’t know that,” Luke interjected. “It’s only a third of patients—”

“Don’t give me that claptrap, young man. I’m ninety-one years old. I’ve lived a long life with no regrets. Until this morning.
Now I must go to my grave knowing I let the last living Sedgwick get divorced.”

“It’s an annulment.” There was nothing in Luke’s voice to indicate he was upset, but his hands were in fists again.

Peggy squirmed. “I’m happy to wait in the hall now, really.”

The elderly woman fixed her with the most piercing look Peggy had ever witnessed; the fact that Miss Abigail had started to
cough violently only made its immobilizing power more impressive. Luke offered his great-aunt a cup of water from the bedside
carafe, but she snubbed him. “This concerns you, too, young lady,” she said when the coughing had subsided. “Luke, you’ve
been after me for years to sell my home. I’ve been after you for years to find a suitable wife. Now you’ve got one, a descendant
of a fine old family.”

“Actually, I’m not related to—”

The rest of Peggy’s response was lost in a fresh round of coughing from Miss Abigail. The poor woman didn’t sound good. Did
these doctors know what they were doing? The caliber of medical talent here couldn’t be what it was in Manhattan. On the monitors
behind the bed, lines of light traveled steadily up and down, up and down.

“You have a wife. I’d like you to keep her.” Miss Abigail had again recovered. “I’m offering you two the house. Stay married,
and I’ll sign it over to you both. You’ll of course move in right away, Peggy, and then the two of you may take control of
the house after a year, assuming I don’t die first.”

“Abby, you’re not going to die. And I have no interest in that house. I’ve said so a hundred times.”

“Yes, but this time I’ve made a decision. When I deed it to you, you may sell it, if you must, and move me into one of those
infernal rest homes. The balance of the money would go to the two of you, naturally.” She eyed Peggy. “May I presume you’ve
seen my charming home?”

Peggy said nothing.

Miss Abigail clucked her tongue. “What has happened to your manners, Luke?”

“Sell the house? What happened to ‘Only Sedgwicks shall live under the Sedwick roof’?”

“I’ve changed my mind. As I’m certain you and Peggy will once she’s moved in.”

“Abby, this is absurd. Neither of us wants to stay married. I’m sure Peggy will back me up.”

Lowell Mayhew’s pink face appeared around the curtain. “Miss Abigail? Pardon the intrusion. I came to check on you. You gave
us quite a scare.”

“It’s no intrusion, Lowie, I’m fine. Come in.” Miss Abigail pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I’d like to change my will.”

Mayhew raised a bushy eyebrow at Luke and asked in a low voice, “Did you talk to her?” Luke shook his head.

If Miss Abigail had overheard, she didn’t let on. “Luke? Peggy? Do we have an understanding?”

“I’m afraid not,” Luke declared. “Peggy?”

The monitor light made its endless hills and valleys. Hills and valleys. Hills and valleys. Peggy felt hypnotized.
Bex will be in the hospital eventually,
she thought, out of nowhere.
If the fertility treatments work, I’ll be visiting her in the maternity ward.
She wouldn’t acknowledge her next thought:
Unless something goes wrong.

“Peggy?”

“Right, yes,” Peggy said. “I’m sorry, Miss Abigail. I agree with Luke.”

Peggy was so glad Mayhew had offered to drive her back to New Nineveh, she barely worried whether he might be a serial killer
disguised as a kindly country lawyer. She was so happy to be in her rented Chevy—which hadn’t been broken into after all—she
forgot to fret about skidding in a residual puddle and flying off the interstate into a ditch. The rain had ended, and as
she drove out of town, she sang aloud to the radio.

But by the time she’d gone thirty miles, she was again apprehensive over whether Luke’s batty great-aunt would really be okay.
That fall onto Mayhew’s floor had looked serious, and she had to have been delirious in the hospital, making that offer. Did
the old lady really think she could keep two people together by dangling some quaint country cottage in front of them like
a carrot on a stick?

“I’m Crazy Carl Kirkendall, Connecticut’s Carpet King. And if you need floor covering, we’ll treat you like royalty!” a man
shouted out of the radio. Peggy shut it off so she could think.

Maybe it’s not a cottage.
The Sedgwicks were the oldest family in New Nineveh, Miss Abigail had said. Families like that had money. And cottages didn’t
have names like the Silas Sedgwick House.

New Nineveh certainly had its share of mammoth old homes—the kind New Yorkers called “antiques,” spent a fortune on, and used
as weekend places. If Miss Abigail’s house was one of the fancy ones, it might fetch two, or three, or four million dollars—half
of which, after she’d split the proceeds with Luke, would handily cover the increased rent on the shop. What if the house
was worth five, eight, ten million? She and Bex could hire more sales help, redecorate, open a second store on the East Side
or downtown. They could get better medical insurance that would cover Bex’s fertility treatments and some sorely needed therapy
for Peggy.

It was outrageous. Why was she thinking this way? She turned the radio back on and forced herself to sing along until she
crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge into Manhattan and the thoughts of easy money crept back in.
Stop it, Peggy.
She couldn’t imagine what, even drunk, she had seen in Luke Sedgwick. He wasn’t her type. Brock was a confident man’s man,
not some sullen or unkempt preppy. She shelved her twisted fantasy, thankful she’d have to see Luke only once more—in court
in about three months for a final hearing on the annulment. The idea of this whole mess being over by December or January
pleased her to the point that, she thought, pulling into the car rental place, settling the bill, and walking down Broadway
toward home, she might just confess her mistake to Brock tonight and get it over with. It was six-thirty; Brock would be back
from the gym. She could cook him dinner and break it to him gently.

Brock was in their bedroom, packing. “Last-minute gig,” he greeted her, putting a rolled-up T-shirt into his travel duffel.
“A guy in L.A. needs some fast B-roll for a surf documentary. Going to JFK ASAP.”

The barrage of abbreviations hurt Peggy’s brain. “But you don’t shoot surfing footage.”