Seating Arrangements (35 page)

A ripple of apprehension crossed Winn’s face, but he lowered his chin and glared over his glasses. He pointed at Sterling. “We are standing outside the restaurant where you are supposed to go in and make a toast to your brother, who is marrying my daughter. You’re a grown man. You should take some responsibility. I think in time you’ll learn the value of being a gentleman—it puts you above reproach.”

Firmly but not roughly, Sterling pushed Winn’s accusing finger away with the side of one hand. “I’d rather get laid,” he said.
“The way you’ve got it all worked out, the burden is all on the men to regulate the morality and happiness of the sexual world. But I think there’s something condescending about that. Should women’s impulses be overridden by my patriarchal duty to keep order among them? Shouldn’t women be allowed to choose who they sleep with and when, regardless of the consequences? Do you really think men should police them? Or do you just want special rules for your daughter?”

“I don’t want to debate philosophy with you.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to apologize to my daughter.”

“I did apologize. I already told you that.”

“One day you’ll be married, maybe with daughters of your own, and you’ll learn the value of respecting women. You’ll also see that what you’re doing now, what you did yesterday is … it’s tacky.”

“Tacky?” Sterling had not planned to play his next card, but he had also not planned to be scolded like a schoolboy by Greyson’s new father-in-law. “How was your night last night?” he said. “Did you get caught up on your laundry?”

Winn tipped back like a buoy on a wave, eyes wide with shock. Just as quickly, he recovered his expression of flinty resolve. Whatever the cost, he would not be deterred from his original plan for this conversation, and Sterling was almost impressed.

“You’re not fit to shine Livia’s shoes,” Winn said.

“You’re probably right,” Sterling replied, “but she was a willing participant.”

“You don’t know how to be a man or a gentleman.” Winn was beginning to slur his words ever so slightly, and his pupils were large and dark. Sterling wondered if he could possibly be on drugs—wouldn’t that be something? Taking careful aim, Winn poked him in the chest.

Sterling knocked the finger away. He had been in enough bar fights to know when words were about to come to blows. They weren’t quite there yet. So far, they had kept their voices down, and the party continued around them, though Livia was still staring at them, transfixed.
“I’m sorry—given what I saw through the window last night, I’m not sure I’ll be signing up for your correspondence course on being a man and a gentleman.”

Winn frowned, put his hands in the pockets of his green pants, and tried for a kind of cowboy bluster. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sterling, entertained, spoke mildly. “You think I’m bluffing? I just reached into the ether and plucked, at random, the idea that you were up to no good in the laundry room last night?”

“So you’re a Peeping Tom now, too.”

“I was taking a walk to try and sober up. Don’t worry—I won’t tell on you. Agatha’s weird, isn’t she? She’s so aggressive, but then once things get going, there’s not much there. You know what I mean? She’s wild and frigid at the same time.”

Recognition was all over Winn’s face, but he said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally. A lot of these kinds of slutty girls are like that. In my experience, anyway.”

“You sleaze,” Winn barked, his index finger jabbing painfully into Sterling’s sternum again. “You think you can just oil your way through your life, but you can’t. You have to take some responsibility. Youth is the best excuse you’ll ever have, but you aren’t a kid anymore. You’ve got to take some responsibility for yourself.”

Sterling thought it over. He swallowed the last of his drink. “To each his own,” he said.

“No,” said Winn. “Everyone has to grow up. You don’t get to be an exception. If everyone just did whatever they wanted, where would the world be?”

“Friend,” said Sterling, “I don’t have the answers.”

“Dinner!” cried Sam Snead. “Dinner is served!”

Fifteen · Raise Your Glass

E
veryone was funneling into the restaurant, but Biddy was moving in the opposite direction, toward the railing and the water. Dominique paused at the doors and then followed, lightly touching her back as she drew up beside her. “Can I do anything to be helpful?”

“Oh, no,” Biddy said. “I just need a second.” She rested her hands on her hips and leaned forward with her elbows out like a sprinter recovering from a race. Besides her wedding band and a wristwatch with a leather strap, she wore no jewelry, and her dress was a simple sheath in cream linen that left her thin, brown arms bare.

“Everything okay?”

“Of course.”

Sam Snead stood beckoning at them from inside. Dominique shook her head and held up an index finger. Looking at Biddy’s unfussy person and unfathomable profile, she felt a deep puzzlement about how to proceed. She wanted to repay some portion of the comfort this woman had given her when she was a lost, foreign teenager, but if she ventured to say she was sure Livia hadn’t
meant
to break Agatha’s finger or that Winn hadn’t
meant
to get in a fight with Greyson’s brother, she would certainly be blundering across Biddy’s invisible boundaries of privacy and propriety. This was truly advanced WASP: how to comfort a wronged wife and mother without acknowledging any misdeeds done or embarrassment caused by loved ones. Too advanced for her. Dominique was ready to leave Waskeke. Spending
so much time with the Van Meters was like returning to a cherished childhood home and discovering that either her memory had been wrong or time had taken its toll, and the place was not magical or special at all but ordinary, flawed—a revelation doubly offensive because it made a certain swath of past happiness seem cheap, the product of ignorance.

“I checked the weather,” Dominique said, “and this is all supposed to have passed by the morning.”

Biddy gave a wan smile. “Good. Thank you for checking.”

“Yoo-hoo!” called Sam Snead. “Mother-of-the-Bride!”

Dominique said, “Should we go in and see how our seating chart is working out?”

“I just need one more minute.”

Dominique waved at Sam. “Go ahead,” she called. “We’ll be right in.”

“We didn’t put Sterling near Winn, did we? Do you remember?” Biddy asked. “I’ve gotten all mixed up.”

“I don’t think so. Do you want me to go look?”

“Who’s next to Winn?”

“You are, I think. And maybe Maude? Do you want to sit somewhere else?”

“Why would I want that?” She seemed taken aback by her own sharpness and touched her fingers to her temples. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Dom. I didn’t mean to snap. Do you think everyone’s having a good time?”

“Hmmm,” Dominique said, pretending to mull over the question. “No.”

Biddy gulped a laugh that swerved quickly toward tears. But all she had to do was take a breath, and the usual friendly composure returned to her face. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice to have someone around who’s so honest.”

“I’m definitely from the village of truth tellers. Not everyone loves it.”

“What do you mean, the village of truth tellers?”

“You don’t know that old riddle? There’s a jungle with a village of
truth tellers and a village of liars, and an anthropologist is looking for the truth-telling village. He comes to a fork in the jungle path, and there’s a native standing there. What question does he ask?”

Biddy bowed her head for a moment and then looked up, pleased. “Which way to your village?”

“Exactly. The magic question.”

“Is there a village for people who stick to pleasantries?”

“Maybe. What question would you ask to get there?”

“Where does Biddy Van Meter live?”

They stood for a moment in silence. A waiter moved around the deck collecting left-behind glasses and chasing after stray napkins.

“I’m joking,” Biddy said.

“I know.”

Intertwining her slender fingers, Biddy brought her hands up under her chin and blinked over them at Dominique. She looked earnest, even prayerful. “You seem so strong. I wish Livia were more like you.”

Dominique didn’t know if she was strong or not. All she knew was that her best decisions had been the ones that brought her freedom, but talking about freedom with Biddy would be like explaining Africa to a giraffe that had been born in the Bronx Zoo. She felt like a fraud, a sham healer whose only hope was to keep spinning bullshit and hope no one caught on before she could make her escape. “I think Livia is strong,” she said. “She’s just going about things the wrong way right now. She’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine. We should go inside.”

“You’re right.” But still Biddy did not move.

“Mother-of-the-Bride?” Dominique said. “O, Mother-of-the-Bride? We can’t have a rehearsal dinner without the mother-of-the-bride.” She offered her arm to Biddy, who took it and allowed herself to be led back to the party.

LIVIA WAS SEATED
with Dicky Jr. on one side, Dicky Sr. on the other, and Mopsy across from her. Dinner was in a private room with two long, white-draped tables topped with vases of irises. Three of the
walls were taken up by ranks of twelve-paned windows, shut against the wind and full of the boat-crowded harbor, now dark and ruched with whitecaps. A waitress in a blue necktie and white apron moved along the tables, lighting tall white tapers in silver candelabras.

Livia’s position as the filling of a Dicky sandwich was fine with her. If she had been stuck between Francis and Sterling or her father and Sterling or anyone and Sterling, she would have cried into her field greens. But the Dickys were a sturdy, lockjawed bulwark against whatever had transpired between her father and Sterling out on the deck. She hadn’t been able to hear them, but her father had kept poking Sterling in the chest, never a good sign. On the way to dinner, she had lingered in the doorway and caught his arm, whispering, “What was that? What did you say?” But he had only hustled her through the dining room, hissing at her that he wasn’t the one who had broken somebody’s finger that day, and now he seemed to have already buried the incident somewhere in his vaults. He took his seat and shook out his white napkin. Glasses pushed to the end of his nose, he raised his wineglass and swirled it, inspecting the burgundy liquid in the candlelight.

“Dicky,” said Mopsy, “I’m under a vent.” She rubbed her arms and stared accusingly at the ceiling, which was made of white planks and dark beams and had no vents. “Could you ask them to turn down the air-conditioning?”

“Certainly,” said Dicky Jr., getting up.

“I don’t think the air-conditioning is on,” Livia said. A waitress folded Dicky Jr.’s dropped napkin and set it back on the table.

Dicky Sr. eyed the ceiling as though he had been asked to speculate on the weather. “Mopsy,” he said loudly, leaning across the table, “are you cold?”

“A little.”

Dicky Sr. nodded and forked up a bird’s nest of frisée, satisfied that, having been cold for the forty or so years of their acquaintance, his mother-in-law was still cold.

Livia leaned forward. “Do you ever think about moving somewhere warm?”

The old woman cupped a hand behind her ear. “You’ll have to speak up. I’m hard of hearing.”

“She asked,” Dicky Sr. bawled, “whether you ever think about moving someplace warm.”

Mopsy looked over at the table where the lesser relatives were sitting. “Do you think it’s warmer at that table?”

“I meant,” Livia shouted, “do you ever think about moving to Florida or someplace like that! A warm place!”

“Oh,” Mopsy said, shaking her head. “No. What would I do in Florida?”

Dicky Jr. returned and sat back down. “All taken care of,” he said, shaking out his napkin.

Mopsy beamed and stopped rubbing her arms. “Thank you, dear. It’s much better already.”

The meal progressed. Daphne and Greyson smiled at each other as they sipped ice water, as they passed the bread basket, as they chose between sea bass and lamb. Livia ate sea bass and listened to Dicky Jr. and Dicky Sr. discuss the traffic situation in New York City, their cutlery flashing in tandem, the pair of them rolling along like two wheels hitched by her axle. Mopsy picked at her food and passed the time between bites by staring at Livia with distaste. When Livia offered pleasantries and questions, Mopsy only said, “I’m afraid I can’t hear you.” Neither of the Dickys made a move to serve as a bullhorn, probably because they knew Mopsy could hear her perfectly well. But still Livia was grateful not to be next to Sterling, who sat between Piper and Dominique and stared petulantly into space like someone enduring a ride in a crowded subway car.

Livia wondered what would happen to them, Daphne and Greyson. When they were children, Daphne’s favorite game had been to dress Livia up in a pillowcase veil and give her a bunch of flowers picked from the yard and marry her off to some inanimate object dressed in one of their father’s bow ties: a stuffed elephant, a tree, a leaky inflatable shark dug out from a heap of disused pool toys. “You must take this very seriously,” Daphne would tell her. “You are a princess now. And a wife. You must care for him”—she gestured at the
slowly crumpling shark—“and for your kingdom. It won’t always be easy. Do you accept this as your duty?”

“I do,” Livia would say solemnly, worrying about the pilfered bow tie and if her father would find out they had broken the rule against playing with his things.

Where Daphne had picked that stuff up at such a young age and how she had managed to combine sparkling pink fancy with a stoic sense of marital endurance, Livia could not guess. The general consensus was that, as a couple, Daphne and Greyson were perfectly suited, both for each other and for the institution of marriage. It was a match both appropriate and timely; they were two people joined by their desire to join. They were pleasant, predictable, responsible, intelligent, and practical, not full of fiery, insupportable passion or ticking time bombs of impossible expectations. What they had was a comfortable covalence, stable and durable, their differences understood, cataloged, and compensated for. They were perpetuating their species. Livia saw her own parents as having a marriage of habit and mutual tolerance; the Duffs went together like two shades of beige, bound by a common essence of optimism, narrow-mindedness, and self-satisfaction. Daphne and Greyson were the perfect next generation.