The Scenic Route (27 page)

“That's not what I meant.”

“Then you're saying a lot of things you don't mean.” They were both saying a lot of things they might not mean.

“I'm just saying that other people wouldn't be so damn ungracious about me proposing marriage.”

“Then maybe you should ask one of those people to marry you.” She didn't mean that. Maybe she did.

“Maybe I will,” he said.

Naomi scanned the room, both hoping and fearing she'd spot Austin. Her attention was pulled back to Dov when he banged his glass down on the bar.

“Are you going to marry me or not?”

“Oh, that's romantic.”

“It's a straightforward question. Are we in business or aren't we?”

And there it was. The reason he had continued to pursue her. The reason he had ignored all those other potential mates, who would always be there waiting for the right moment to pounce. She was something he wanted. And Dov always got what he wanted. Or at least tried. He wouldn't have been so successful if he wasn't so tunnel-visioned. But Naomi saw so clearly what would happen once she said yes. The thrill of the chase would be over. And she'd be moping around a seventy-five-hundred-square-foot home wondering what surgically enhanced blonde was making the moves on her husband.

“I'm selling my shares of Splurge,” Naomi said, finally sure of her decision.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don't think we should be in business anymore.”

She ran out of the room. She ran into the dining room, where guests were feasting on coriander-crusted tuna and grass-fed hanger steak. She twisted and turned, not seeing Austin, not seeing which way she should go. She ran up and down the stairs, in and out of crowded vestibules. The rain was crashing against the windows in waves of agitation.

Naomi found Noah on the second-floor landing, speaking to a male couple in snug-fitting Thom Browne suits. She stood waiting for a break in the conversation, looking left and right, feeling the heat from the bourbon in her chest.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked her.

“No,” she said. “I'm sorry. I need to make an early exit.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Noah, please don't make me explain.”

“You look like you've just seen a ghost.”

“The problem is I haven't seen a ghost.”

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I can't. I mean I can't stay. I'm so happy for you and Godwin. I'm so sorry.”

She ran down the stairs like Cinderella leaving the ball, leaving her prince, leaving her sanity. She just knew she needed to run. She got down to the front hall before remembering she didn't have her purse. She had left it in the bridal room when she changed into her dress. She ran back up the stairs, nearly crashing into her parents. Talking. To each other. Like civilized people.

“Naomi.” Her mother grabbed hold of her arm. “You look a wreck.” She always knew what to say.

“I know,” Naomi said, trying to reclaim her appendage.

“Have you been outside? Your makeup is running. You look like a raccoon. Doesn't she look like a raccoon, Ben?”

“A very lovely raccoon,” he said with an attempt at fatherly sensitivity that sounded a whole lot more like tipsiness.

She didn't know which one of them was more annoying. How had they managed to spawn her? But at least they were agreeing on something.

“I need to go.”

“Go?” her mother said. “What do you mean go? It's the middle of a wedding.” As if that fact had somehow escaped Naomi's notice.

“Mother, please—”

“Please what? I'm worried about you. Now, I try not to say that. But this seems a good time to tell you that I'm—”

Naomi fled. She raced up the remaining steps to the room where the bridal party had put their belongings. Found her purse under the settee, where she had stuffed it. Did an about-face and froze in her tracks.

There, staring at her with a transfixed look on his face, was Austin. A very wet Austin. Dripping from head to toe. They both stood there looking at each other. For eons.

“I was looking for someone,” Austin finally said, a small pool forming beneath him.

“Did you find them?” Naomi said.

Austin stared at her again. “I think so.”

He came toward her so suddenly and with such intense force, she thought he was angry with her. But instead of yelling something at her, he took her in his arms and kissed her, the way he did on a train platform many lifetimes ago.

Seconds later they were on the settee, pushing shoe boxes and garment bags aside as they lunged at each other. Who knows how far they would have gone if Noah hadn't appeared in the doorway.

“I'm sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I just needed to get a mint out of my bag. Can you believe I forgot to have mints? How do you have a wedding without mints?”

Austin and Naomi stood up and straightened out their clothing. There was a large wet spot across her periwinkle blue dress.

“Congratulations,” Austin said, extending his hand. “I'm Austin Gittleman.”

“Oh,” Noah said. “Hope's date,” he added meaningfully.

“I've been looking for her,” Austin said.

“Under the settee?” Noah asked. Austin looked abashed. Noah stood there, taking them both in and seeming to deliberate how he wanted to respond.

“Well,” he said. “I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but Hope seems to be thoroughly enjoying the company of a young Israeli venture capitalist.” Naomi felt a twinge of anger mixed with relief and gratitude.

Noah picked up a knapsack from the floor and started rummaging through it. “Now, this is just me conjecturing here. But I'm thinking that Hope might enjoy her conversation all the more if she got a text saying her date was . . . rain delayed. But that's just a guess on my part.”

“Sounds like a good guess,” Austin said quietly. “Thank you.”

“Oh, just call me a fairy god-brother,” Noah said. “And if I'm ever asked, this conversation never happened.” Then he closed the door behind him.

“We should talk,” Austin said. Naomi nodded. “Maybe somewhere else?” Naomi nodded again. “Is there a back exit?”

“I don't think so.”

They stood like that for several moments, pondering their options.

“Shall we do a walk of shame?” Austin asked.

“You first.”

Austin headed out of the room and down the stairs, keeping his head down and avoiding eye contact. Naomi followed a few feet behind, doing the same. She couldn't imagine what she looked like in her wet dress.
Please let me not pass by my mother,
she prayed.
Or Dov,
she added. When they reached the front hall, they ran for the entrance like two children being let out of school early.

They were laughing and panting when they got outside, even as the wind and rain whipped around them. They dashed across the street, her clingy, long silk dress and strappy shoes terribly suited for the inclement weather.

“Do you know where you're going?” she asked.

“No idea,” he responded. They laughed as they tried to catch their breath. And then they were all over each other again.

“We should stop,” he said.

“You're right,” she agreed.

“We should talk. We should date.”

“Absolutely.”

“We should get out of the rain.”

“Kiss me!” she told him. And he did. On her mouth. On her neck. As the rain came down from the heavens.

N
aomi was a beautiful bride. Lila told her so over and over all morning. She wanted to make sure Naomi heard her say it. And didn't try to claim later that she hadn't.

The wedding was going to be everything that Lila wanted it to be, because it was pretty much
precisely
what Lila wanted it to be. While it had been fun for her to help plan Noah and Godwin's wedding, Noah had very strong opinions about what he wanted and how many orchids should be in each centerpiece. Lila loved her son, but there was such a thing as too many orchids. If there was an argument to be made against gay marriage, it was that men made terrible brides. Noah knew how to throw a wonderful, or how they say, fabulous party. But there was something about a wedding that required a more delicate and—politically correct or not—a more feminine hand. Fortunately, Naomi had been willing, or, more likely, resigned, to letting Lila have her way. There were times Lila almost believed Naomi didn't care about the details of the wedding. Partly because she kept saying “I don't care about the details.”

The only concessions were place and time. Naomi and Austin wanted to get married at the Crystal Cove. And as far as Lila was
concerned, they couldn't have made a better choice. The timing was another story. Not only did they want to get married on New Year's, a social faux pas, but they wanted to get married on New Year's Day. Lila had pointed out that an evening wedding was more elegant and sophisticated. She also pointed out that guests tended to give better gifts. But Naomi was insistent. “This isn't the end of something,” she said. “It's the beginning.”

It was hardly the beginning, since they had known each other for almost thirty years. However, Naomi was intransigent, and since she didn't object or even question any of Lila's other suggestions (and since Lila herself had to admit that a daytime wedding outdoors at the Crystal Cove would look spectacular), Lila had dropped the topic with unusual alacrity.

Her initial plan was for the ceremony to be on the beach, but she had trouble figuring out how to transport the guests up and down the bluff. There was a gently sloping path that snaked its way down the mountainside, making for a lovely but circuitous route and turning the one-hundred-foot distance into a mile-and-a-half trek. It would take an eternity to get the guests up and down. There was also a stairway, which was less attractive but more efficient. However, Lila couldn't see the groom's mother making it up the 140 stairs. Lila considered looking into an airlift but then thought better of it.

So the beach was out, and the ceremony instead took place under a Venetian-domed gazebo on an expansive grassy bluff. The wedding party walked down an aisle lined with treelike arrangements of white roses and pink peonies with the Pacific beckoning on the horizon. As Austin and Naomi exchanged their vows, Lila noticed the breeze blowing through the chiffon panels hanging from the side of the gazebo, and it made her heart race a bit.

“I fell in love with you the day I first saw you,” Naomi said, holding both of Austin's hands in hers. “I don't believe in destiny. But I
believe in you. And I believe in the path that brought us together, no matter how much it twisted and turned.”

“Naomi,” Austin said, “I try to imagine my life without you, and it's impossible, because when I found you I found myself. My sister once told me that ‘love takes practice.' I want to practice with you for the rest of my life.”

Lila teared up. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry. Her makeup wasn't waterproof. She hoped Austin and Naomi would be happy together. Happy like her and Ben. She took her husband's hand, and he smiled at her. The same goofy smile he'd had at their own wedding. In the cramped social hall of her parents' Los Angeles synagogue. It seemed impossible that Lila had once been a young bride with so many plans for the future. Plans to live in New York and be a clothing designer. She had been applying for a job as an assistant buyer at Macy's when she found out she was pregnant. She remembered how much she'd resented Ben at the time. She had felt it was his fault, and technically it was, though that didn't stop his mother from accusing her of trying to entrap him. Lila could have chosen to have an abortion, but it would have destroyed her mother. “They kill enough Jews,” she had spat at her; “you don't have to help them.”

She had blamed Ben for having to give up the Macy's job. But the truth was the thought of moving to New York by herself had terrified her. She lacked Naomi's confidence and had feared failing in the cutthroat fashion industry and humiliating herself in the process. For all the women's lib rhetoric she spouted to Ben at the time, she'd been relieved when he proposed.

It was easy for her to forget that. So easy to forget how happy she had been to marry the man she loved. She wanted Naomi and Austin to be even happier than she and Ben. She supposed that's what every parent wanted for her children. To be happier. To be richer. To be wiser. Though if it truly worked that way, the world would be an
increasingly bountiful place. And Lila didn't see that as a realistic possibility.

But maybe Naomi did. She had never been a very realistic person. Something she seemed to go out of her way to prove. A year ago she was in the
New York Times
business section, and now she was baking cookies again, in a “shop” that made an ATM lobby seem spacious. Lila couldn't even pretend to understand her daughter's choices. But Naomi was indeed a beautiful bride. And she would have been even more beautiful if she would just stand a little straighter.

Austin and Naomi were saying good-bye already. How was that possible? There was a too-hurried kiss. And a heartfelt hug. Lila was crying again. The day had gone by so quickly. Too quickly. Stu and Steffi were taking pictures. And so was Penelope. Was it Lila's imagination or did Naomi's hug of Penelope last longer than their own? Noah and Godwin helped the newlyweds get into a convertible red Miata, festooned with those silly ribbons and soda cans. They were going on an African safari for their honeymoon. Lila didn't see anything romantic about sleeping under mosquito netting, but far be it from her to criticize.

They inched the car forward with the family trailing alongside them, cheering and throwing rice. Lila had never thrown rice before. Or thrown anything else for that matter. She would never be accused of being a tomboy, but throwing rice at weddings had always seemed a particularly strange custom to her. She didn't understand the reason for it and didn't see the benefit of rice raining on a bride's hairdo and down her décolletage. But as she reached over and over into the box of Uncle Ben's Noah had handed her, she discovered there was something surprisingly liberating about flinging handfuls of grain into the air. Tossing them with abandon and watching them scatter in every direction.

As Austin and Naomi reached the end of the Crystal Cove
driveway, they veered to the right at the exit. But the highway was to the left. “They're going the wrong way,” she said to Ben. He nodded.

“You're going the wrong way!” she shouted, but they didn't seem to hear her.

Then Lila did something she hadn't done in years. Not since school days. She ran. In three-inch heels. On a dirt road. She ran. She sprinted the few yards to the Miata, then was running alongside them. Her heart was pounding in a way she didn't remember it doing since possibly her wedding night. No, since the night she gave birth for the first time.

“You're going the wrong direction!” she called out. “You're taking the long way around.”

Naomi turned to her with an amused expression on her face. Then she looked at her husband and smiled. “We
know.”