“I love Stacey,” I said, answering what I understood to be the question—was it a reproach?—embedded in his speech. And I almost believed it. I had convinced myself that the tender regard I had for Stacey was far more enduring than the usual hormonal fever, and indeed my affection for her has acquired depth and patina over the years. I was about to say she’s my best friend—at any rate she’s my second-best friend. That she is not the object of my desire incarnate does not invalidate our partnership. Most of the parents we see at our daughters’ school are divorced. Sometimes I think the Japanese have it right, arranging their marriages like corporate mergers, without reference to the poets or the moon.
Looking at my father that night in the smoky den, I realized with a shock that after my long flight and all my fantasies of nobler parentage I still wanted him to be proud of me. Some part of me felt fraudulent, and yet for the first time in many years I felt almost comfortable in my parents’ home.
I wondered if anyone was ever at ease with Stacey’s father. After dinner one evening, on a long weekend at the family home on Nantucket, he invited me out to the porch for a brandy. The dreaded moment of inquisition was suddenly upon me. We sat down in rocking chairs on the big porch, the brightly lit windows of the gray shingled house glowing behind us, the ocean audible but invisible out beyond the white beach.
When he finally spoke he said, “This has been Stacey’s summer home since she was born.”
“It’s a beautiful place, sir,” I said.
“Stacey tells me you’re planning to ask your friend William Savage to be best man.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“I know his father. Very shrewd businessman, and I gather young William has done well in his way.”
I nodded.
“Quite the unconventional character, I’m told.” He took a long sip of brandy. “That in itself doesn’t concern me. However, I’ve learned that he has a drug conviction in California.”
His intelligence was correct. Two years after his arrest in New York Will was stopped and searched by the state police in Sausalito. “It was a misdemeanor,” I noted.
“Be that as it may, I sit on the bench of the second-highest court in the land. How do you think it would look if my son-in-law’s best man had been convicted on narcotics charges?”
“He’s my best friend,” I said firmly.
“I’m not asking you to bar him from the wedding. But I don’t think it would be appropriate for him to assume an official role. I know Stacey’s brother Charlie would be happy to do the honors. In that way you might avoid offending your friend. If you wish you can always lay it at my doorstep. I’d like you to think hard about this, Patrick.”
If there was another option, I didn’t hear it in his tone. But I could hardly sleep that night or the next, wondering how to accommodate my divergent loyalties. Though the idea of defying the judge was daunting, Will was my best friend. And I had just resolved to tell Carson Colchester, respectfully, to fuck himself when a letter arrived from Will—a rare, almost unheard-of event—rendered in a nearly indecipherable scrawl:
Patrick:
You know how I hate committing thoughts to paper—from sheer laziness plus I find the written word slow and crusty. But it’s not every day you tell me you’re getting hitched. I spose congratulations are in order. No one will be happier than me yada yada yada if you’re happy. But are you sure you’re doing this for the right reasons? I mean, not to sound too boring, are you in love? You know, like in the songs? Ain’t no mountain high enough … Layla, you got me on my knees, etc. Do you love Stacey or what she represents? Don’t mean to rain on your parade but neither do I want to piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining. This all may be heroic and stoic and very Dink Stover, but is it you, Patrick, my man? And what about Stacey? Forgive me if I’m full of shit on this, but just think about it, will you?
However much it angered me, the letter provided the solution to my dilemma. Feeling as he did, Will could hardly expect to be my best man. As for his concerns and reservations, I knew perfectly well what I wanted, thank you very much.
But I had already caught a glimpse of the demands that would be placed on me as a son-in-law. And in a rebellious frame of mind that Will might have approved I impulsively asked Aaron to serve as my best man. I was so pleased with this gambit that I forgot, until after I had asked him, that my best man was dating Will’s wife.
In an unofficial capacity, Will did attend my wedding and even came to the rehearsal dinner at the Colchester house in Marblehead. Standing on the front steps with Stacey’s father, I watched Will roll up the gravel driveway in a vintage maroon-and-cream Rolls. Having fortified the judge with tales of Will’s business prowess and wealth in hopes of ameliorating his actual presence, I still hoped Will would seduce the company, charm them all into dancing to his own beat.
My father-in-law, however, was amused by neither the music that blared from Will’s chauffeured car nor the purple smoking jacket and jeans he’d selected for the occasion.
“I know your father,” the judge said, after I had performed the introduction.
Will shook his hand. “I won’t hold it against you.”
“That’s quite an outfit you’ve got on.”
“Tell me, Judge,” Will countered. “What constituency do you dress for?”
“I beg your pardon?” A dark cloud passed over Judge Colchester’s craggy features.
“You probably dress for your peers,” Will explained. “I don’t imagine you’re wearing that penguin suit sheerly out of considerations of comfort. It’s kind of a father-of-the-bride uniform in your circles. And I expect you wear black robes in court. Very appropriate for your role—dignity of the bench and so forth. We all have our roles, don’t we?”
“And how exactly would you define yours?”
“I have many roles,” Will said, but the arrival of several Colchester cousins thankfully abbreviated this discussion.
When I caught up with him a few minutes later he was in the library pretending to examine the books. I wanted to warn him that Taleesha was here with Aaron, but I was distracted by the sight of the white powder in his black mustache.
“Jesus, Will. Are you trying to ruin my wedding?” After our long, dark night in Memphis, I had found buyers for several pieces of Will’s empire, and now I suspected that he was going to make me pay for helping him out when he was down.
“I’m here to celebrate your nuptials,” he said, hoisting his glass.
“For God’s sake,” I said, reaching up to brush away the coke, or whatever. “The governor’s here, and the attorney general.”
“You must be very proud, Dink.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “The state police come with them, goddamnit. I told you on the phone—no drugs. Stacey’s dad’s a judge—”
“You still hear from that old bastard over in London,” he asked abruptly. “That lecherous piece of right-wing shit? You tell him his happy days are numbered ’cause I’m coming to get him. I got a plan’s gonna put him flat out of bidness.”
Beyond the door I saw my own parents hovering, clutching their drinks with the fervor of those who wouldn’t otherwise know what to do with their hands. I waved for them to join us, then turned back to Will. “Try to do a little better with my parents than you did with the judge.”
Suddenly it seemed amazing to me that they’d never met. At some other point in the history of our friendship, I might have been more nervous about Will’s impression of my parents; now I could only wonder what they would make of him—a wild-eyed, badly dressed hippie. But Will was on his best behavior, immediately shedding his anger and arrogance.
My father clapped both hands over Will’s, one successful businessman to another. “Will, a real pleasure,” he said.
“Likewise, Mr. Keane.” Will bowed deeply. “And Mrs. Keane—an honor and a pleasure. Patrick’s told me so much about you.” He kissed her hand, then hugged her. In his bearish embrace, my mother giggl
ed with delight.
“I see you both have a cocktail,” he said after releasing her. “And I can’t help noticing that I’ve finished mine. Perhaps you’d be so good as to accompany me while I freshen it.” When I left them at the bar, Will and my father were discussing Caribbean real estate.
I tended to the new arrivals, most notably Lollie Baker, now a celebrated playwright. I was touched that she’d come. I hadn’t seen her in more than a year, and I was afraid that her new celebrity would keep her away.
“I take it as a flagrant insult, Patrick, that you’d think for a minute I might miss this. Do they by any chance have a bar around here? No, wait.” She slapped a hand on my arm. “Can we take a little walk or something?”
We slipped around the back of the house and walked down the lawn to the seawall. The water was a steely gray, and Lollie held her hand over her short coif to keep it from rising in the salty wind. She put her other arm around me and we both looked out over the waves, hypnotized by the vanishing point of the horizon.
“I was so goddamn happy to get your invitation. I was afraid you hadn’t forgiven me for the play.”
“Is that your idea of an apology?”
I had my season of disapproval after seeing Lollie’s second play, which involves a love triangle: a salty actress from New Orleans, a brilliant Jim Morrison-like rock star and a repressed Irish-Catholic banker. Lollie had managed to absent herself from the matinee performance I attended; and on a hunch, I hadn’t asked Stacey along. When the lights came up I cowered in my seat, certain that I would be pointed out and jeered. But in the end it seemed there were only three people in the world who recognized me as the model for Ian Rourke, the sexually confused banker who hangs himself at the end of the play.
“Just say you forgive me.”
“No one would have ever guessed you were a fan of Tennessee Williams,” I said, looking out over the water.
Lollie leaned into me, thrusting her breasts authoritatively into my ribs. “I just want you to know,” she said, “my offer still stands. No, wait, hear me out. If you’re ever going to have second thoughts they’ll come in the next twenty hours or so. And I’m ready to stand in.” From her capacious and cluttered purse she removed two airline tickets. “Round-trip to Paris, first-class, in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Keane. Say the word and we’re out of here.”
“It’s tempting,” I said. “A lifetime of watching my weaknesses revealed onstage.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Patrick. Marriages don’t last a lifetime anymore.”
“Mine will.”
“You don’t have to tell me now. Offer good right up to the altar. My friend Sissie told me that’s when you know, when you’re walking down the aisle. That’s when you suddenly realize you’re making a hideous mistake. She should know, she’s on her fourth husband.”
I hugged her. Amazed at her offer, I could think of no way to adequately express my gratitude. “Am I doing a terrible thing,” I asked, whispering into her hair.
She shrugged. “That’s what I’m asking you to consider. Try to be honest with yourself, even if you can’t be a hundred percent honest with her.” Freeing herself, she handed me the tickets. “Your wedding present, if you go through with it. And don’t forget, I was almost your first. Now, where can I get a damn drink?”
After showing Lollie to the bar, I saw Will through the bay window. Out on the lawn, Taleesha was restraining him as he lunged toward Aaron, who was holding a hand to his cheek. Having brooded about this possibility for weeks, I started toward the door, but I was intercepted by Stacey, whose obvious distress turned out to be related to a last-minute seating crisis.
“Don’t worry,” I said, steering her away from the larger disaster outside. “We’ll figure it out.”
Will’s obstreperous behavior carried over into the rehearsal dinner. If the Colchesters had been as stuffy as I sometimes suspected, they would have called off the wedding that night. I’d seated Will at the second table facing away from Aaron and Taleesha, but this precaution proved inadequate. Halfway through the roast beef Aaron tapped his glass and made an amusing speech about what a geek I was at Yale. Then Charlie Colchester, the failed candidate for best man, described in clever detail the weaknesses of my tennis game. As the dinner plates were being cleared—just when it seemed I might be spared the ordeal—Will rose up like Banquo’s ghost. I’d wanted to slide gracefully into my new life, and I was still secretly afraid that my qualifications for marrying Stacey Colchester would be called into question at the last minute. Standing up uncertainly, Will banged with a spoon on the bottle of Russian vodka which he was holding by the neck. “My name is Will Savage,” he began, “of Memphis, Tennessee, and it is my distinct honor to be present at these … nuptials.” He paused, looking puzzled, as if he’d forgotten the rest. “And I would just like to say …” Again he paused, his features blurry, though he now seemed to be gathering his wits. And I was alarmed by the expression that settled on him then. I had seen it before, that look of diabolical resolution. “I’d just like to say that Patrick is a good man, damn good man. Lucky to get him, even if he doesn’t know it.”
For a blessed moment I thought this might be the end of his speech; he bent from the waist toward his seat—but only to put down his bottle. Righting himself, he scanned the dozen or so tables, and resumed. “Patrick is of Irish descent, as you may know. Not so very long ago, his people were spat on when they arrived in this city. Spat on, I might add, by the very kind of Anglo-Saxon bastards that drove them out of Ireland in the goddamn first place.”
He retrieved his vodka and took a long swallow, then examined his audience. “Greeted by signs that said NO IRISH NEED APPLY and such. Treated much the same as the supposedly free slaves in the land of my own birth after the War between the, uh, States. We said they were too passionate, and unruly, too childlike in their emotions, too fond of music and drink and revelry. Ah, yes, sounds familiar. And yet, here we are today. Here you are.”
Paralyzed by his performance, I sat there dying a slow death like the ice sculpture at the buffet table.
“Patrick Keane marrying Stacey Colchester with the blessing of the … plutocracy.” He winked, as if to congratulate himself on his vocabulary. “Almost makes you proud to be an American,” he said, sounding anything but proud. “It makes me proud of Patrick. Smart as hell, old Pat. Worked hard. Studied hard. Doesn’t smoke or drink or dance the hoochie-coo. Well, not hardly. Not for an Irishman. Brushed his teeth after meals, between meals. Whatever. And he stands here on the threshold of his own American dream. I wouldn’t touch it with a fucking barge pole my own self. But Patrick, he’s my man …”
Again he seemed lost, staring out into the crowd. Then he turned to me and smiled. “And I want him to be happy. Clutch him to your stony bosoms. Like I said, you’re lucky to have him. Stacey, be good to him. He has a sweet disposition and a heart that’s large and stretchy. Big enough for all of y’all … and even, I hope—for me.”
Will sat down with the slow ceremony of the corpulent drunk, beaming at me as if the stunned silence were a tribute to his oratory. Stacey kicked me under the table, and when I finally dared to look at her I saw in her face the steely determination of her father. In this, our first crisis, I realized she was not quite the pliable helpmeet I had imagined her to be.
If Will was right that my affections were plastic enough to accommodate widely divergent objects, they had seldom felt so thinly stretched as at that moment when I was furious both with Will and with these unimaginative citizens who would judge him, who’d never seen him at his mesmerizing best. In fact I wondered if I had not reached a point in my life when I would have to choose between the twain. After my wedding it was a long time before I cared to see Will again.
Following Will’s performance, Lollie Baker cantered to the rescue with a speech casting herself as the groom’s first flame and ardent pursuer, the groom as a paragon of virtue. “We southern women,” she concluded, after entertaining the co
mpany with bowdlerized versions of our adventures, “pride ourselves on our wiles and our charms and even our guerrilla tactics. But like Robert E. Lee before me, I have to admit defeat. Congratulations, Stacey. Now that you’ve retired from the field, I hope you’ll give me a few tips on strategy.” It seemed to me that Lollie was salvaging not only my honor but that of her homeland; her little speech nearly cleared the air of the lingering stench of Will’s. And given her recent success, the very fact that I knew Lollie was seen as a credit to me.
After we rose from the table, Taleesha immediately pulled me aside. I was more than happy to avoid, if only for a few minutes, the impending private conference with my betrothed. In fact I gladly would have postponed speaking to anyone on the bride’s side for several years.
Taleesha looked as distraught as I felt. “I’m sorry, Patrick.”
I assured her it was not her fault. Will had been my friend before he was her husband. I asked about the fight on the lawn.
“Will took a swing at Aaron, luckily he didn’t really connect.”
“He was just saving his big punch for me.”
“Patrick, I don’t know what to do,” she confided.
“What are your choices,” I asked, avoiding Stacey’s impatient wave.
“He needs me,” she said.
Aaron joined us then, and our private parley ended. I was left to face my fiancée and her family.
Brides and grooms imagine that the dull ceremony which codifies their cooling romance is the main event, when, in fact, off in the coat closets and the bathrooms and out behind the elm trees the real drama takes place. My aunt Colleen, who had recently lost her own son, sobbed so loudly during the wedding ceremony that my father had to escort her outside. Stacey’s thirteen-year-old nephew Brent was discovered in the boat house engaged in an imminent act of incest with his cousin Leanne. Returning from Bermuda, I learned that Will and Taleesha had slipped away from the wedding together and flown off to Mustique.
The Last of the Savages Page 26
