Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) (2 page)

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Constance Marks,
a Great Neck girl like no other

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For help, advice, support, and boundless goodwill,
I would like to thank Patricia Grossman,
Caroline Leavitt, Nechama Liss-Levinson,
Megan McAndrew, Paul McDonough,
Sally Schloss, Ken Silver, and Marian Thurm.

Special thanks to my gifted and utterly
unflappable editor, Tracy Bernstein,
and to my peerless agent, Judith Ehrlich,
who truly broke the mold.

A
Wedding
IN
G
REAT
N
ECK

Morning

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Afternoon

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Evening

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

About the Author

T
he dog. The dog was barking again, a series of clear, piercing yelps that infiltrated their way into the early-morning dreams of Gretchen McLeod (née Silverstein) and ruptured her sleep. She buried her face in the cool, polished cotton of the pillowcase in an effort to obliterate the sound. Three yips, a merciful pause in which she was lulled into thinking the dog had at last calmed down—only to be followed by three even louder and more insistent barks. The pattern cycled through three, four, five times before Gretchen yanked the blanket aside and got out of bed. She was momentarily disoriented; the house itself was still unfamiliar to her, and she had never stayed in this particular room, all English chintz and suffocating lace. But the confusion passed and she padded toward the sink; each of the six bedrooms in her mother’s grand manse had its own bathroom, and Gretchen was grateful for the amenity.

The barking continued as she splashed cold water on her face and rubbed it vigorously with a plush white towel. White towels! Only people who had live-in maids would
buy white towels. Now that her mother was among their number, she bought white with reckless impunity. And these were no ordinary white towels either. These white towels had a scalloped border of Wedgwood blue and matching Wedgwood-blue monograms in their centers. White towels deluxe.

Gretchen contemplated a shower, decided to wait, and instead examined her reflection in the magnifying mirror mounted above the towel ring. Slight puffiness under the eyes—check. Dark circles—check. A gradual deepening of the nasal-labial lines; small, red bump on her right cheek; slightly loosened flesh under the jawline—check, check, check. And her brows—her brows needed a major overhaul before the wedding, which was scheduled to begin at seven o’clock this evening.

Gretchen turned from the mirror. Enough. It was being under the same roof as her siblings—Teddy and Caleb with their respective partners down at one end of the hall; Angelica, the bride-to-be, ensconced in a room at the other—that brought out this distinctly adolescent form of self-scrutiny. Except Gretchen was almost forty, a significant, milestone sort of birthday, and decades away from adolescence.

The dog was still barking as Gretchen returned to the bedroom, dug out her clothes—still sloppily crammed into her suitcase—and dressed. How did Betsy endure it? This was the very same mother who, in all the years Gretchen was growing up, would not allow so much as an orange-and-black-dappled
goldfish, won at the East Meadow Jewish Center’s annual Purim fair, to cross their threshold.

So how, at the age of sixty-four, had her mother morphed into someone who did not simply tolerate this dog—a Pomeranian with a pointed, foxlike face and perpetually hysterical demeanor—but actually seemed to worship it? Betsy was like some freshly hatched religious fanatic.
How did I ever live without a dog?
she would say, regaling anyone in earshot about her recent conversion.
To think I could have missed this!
She spoke to the creature in wheedling, dulcet tones, fed it diced morsels of steak and roast beef, allowed it to sleep in her bed. What Don, Betsy’s large, backslapping husband, thought of this arrangement, Gretchen didn’t know. He seemed to tolerate it, just as he was tolerating all the hoopla—and the expense—of the wedding that was about to take place. But Don was utterly charmed by Angelica. So charmed that when Angelica wrinkled her perfect little nose at the mere
idea
of Leonard’s of Great Neck—Betsy’s suggestion—he immediately offered their house instead. No surprise there. Angelica was Don’s favorite, just as she had been their father’s. Betsy’s having swapped one husband for another had not changed the essential dynamic of their clan.

Angelica had it all: the looks, the brains, and the attitude. Even the name: how to compare the celestial “Angelica” with the relentlessly earthbound “Gretchen”? Her sister had lucked out in so many ways, great and small. Gretchen’s role in this wedding was, both by definition and by tradition,
ancillary. It was Angelica’s day, and no one cared what Gretchen thought, felt, or wanted as long as she was willing to play her assigned part, sister of the bride, in this vast, unfolding pageant. From the way everyone was carrying on, you’d think that there was no more important event in the entire nation. Or on the planet.

There had been a series of well-choreographed events at which Gretchen was expected to appear: the over-the-top engagement party at Bouley in Tribeca, the bridal shower at the Park Avenue duplex of one of Angelica’s closest friends and matron of honor, the ocean-view prewedding brunch and the catered rehearsal dinner, all culminating in the nuptials this evening, when the 233 invited guests would descend on the lawn of her stepfather’s five-acre, baronial, but unremittingly vulgar home to hear Angelica say, “I do.”

Gretchen’s own modest wedding more than fifteen years before—justice of the peace, small family party in the backyard of the East Meadow house—had not been treated with such fanfare. Of course Betsy had not yet married up, as Gretchen’s grandmother Lenore liked to say. Had not yet become Lady Bountiful, with her manicured lawns, her magnificent circular rose garden—the only part of the vast property that Gretchen did not find in appalling taste—her charities, and her neurotic little dog. Everything was different now. But in another, more fundamental, and essential way, everything—that is, Gretchen’s place in this family—was exactly the same.

So here she was, tetchy from lack of sleep, and ill at ease
in her mother’s sprawling abode, a faux Italianate palazzo-like edifice of putty-colored stucco, with a terra cotta roof and mullioned windows. Gretchen was overwhelmed by the multitude of bed- and bathrooms, the terrace and the balconies, the pretentious curved driveway as well as the various outbuildings—sheds, greenhouse, cabana—all arrayed around the main structure. Then there was the network of brick and blue stone paths linking the various parts of the property together. Coming here for a visit required a map.

As she contemplated her options—coffee, black, steaming, and strong, or a shower—her cell phone rang. She dived for it, hoping desperately it was not her boss, Ginny Valentine, calling to annoy her with a request for some trivial bit of information that she could have found for herself if she had only bothered to get up from her padded, wheeled, and insanely expensive leather chair to look. Gretchen located her phone in the morass of her handbag. But it was not Ginny. “Hello?” Gretchen said, sinking back into the enticing softness of the bed. Silence, and then the voice of her not-yet-ex-husband, Ennis, sounding so close that he could have been standing next to her. Instinctively she moved the phone away from her ear.

“Gretchen, are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said. But she wished she had not answered; she was not in the mood to talk to him today. Or any day, for that matter.

“I’m at the station.”

“Station?” She didn’t understand. “What station?”

“The train station. Here in Great Neck. I’ll be getting a taxi to the house,” he continued. “Unless you can come out and get me.” He pronounced the word “out” as if it were spelled “oot”; Ennis had grown up in Glasgow, and even though he hadn’t lived there in decades, he still had the accent.

Gretchen did not say anything. She knew he had been invited to the wedding; he and Angelica had always gotten along well, and their twin daughters, Justine and Portia, had begged that he be included. But he had declined, much to Gretchen’s relief. All of that had been months ago, and none of her elaborate preparations for this day—mental, physical, even spiritual, for God’s sake—had included Ennis.

“You still there?” Ennis was saying.