The Perfect Couple

by Elin Hilderbrand

  She struggles to catch her breath. She was having a dream, a nightmare, about Celeste. Celeste was… somewhere unfamiliar… a hotel with unnumbered floors, different levels, some of which led to dead ends; it was a confusing maze of a place. Celeste kept calling out but Karen couldn’t get to her. Celeste had something to tell her, something she needed Karen to know.

  Celeste doesn’t want to marry Benji, Karen thinks. That is the stark truth.

  Involuntarily, the psychic’s word comes to her: Chaos.

  Part of Karen believes Celeste should go through with the wedding anyway. So she isn’t madly in love with Benji. Possibly she feels only a fraction of what Karen feels for Bruce, or possibly it’s a different emotion altogether. Karen wants to tell Celeste to make the best of her situation, a situation any other young woman would kill to find herself in. Celeste and Benji don’t have to be a perfect couple. Really, there is no such thing.

  But then Karen stops herself. It is only the most selfish of women who would encourage their daughters to marry people they don’t love. What Karen must do—now, she realizes, now—is give Celeste permission to back out. There are 170 people descending on Summerland tomorrow for a wedding unlike any other; over a hundred thousand dollars has been spent on these nuptials, perhaps even twice that. But no amount of money or logistics is worth a lifetime of settling. Karen must find Celeste now.

  Finding Celeste, however, suddenly seems arduous. Will a phone call suffice? Karen picks up her cell phone and dials Celeste’s number. The call goes to voice mail.

  This is the universe telling Karen that a phone call will not suffice. Celeste turns her phone off when she goes to bed; she must be asleep.

  Gingerly, Karen lowers her feet to the floor and stands. She finds her cane and hoists herself up. The oxy is still working; she feels strong and steady with purpose. She wraps herself in the robe and ventures out into the hallway.

  If Karen’s memory serves, Benji’s room, where Celeste is staying alone tonight, is the second door on the left. The hallway has subtle lighting along the baseboard so Karen can see where to plant her cane as she pads down the hall. When she reaches the door, she taps lightly. She doesn’t want to wake the whole house up but neither does she want to interrupt anything.

  There is no answer. Karen presses her ear to the door. In their house on Derhammer Street, the doors are hollow-core. Here they are true, solid wood, impossible to hear through. Karen eases the door open.

  “Celeste?” she says. “Honey?”

  The room is silent. Karen gropes for the switch and turns on the light. The bed is made up just as Karen’s is—comforter, cashmere blanket, a host of pillows. Celeste hasn’t gotten home yet, then. Or maybe she decided to join Merritt in the cottage so they can stay up gossiping and giggling on Celeste’s last night as a single woman. But somehow Karen doubts that. Celeste has never been a gossiper or a giggler. She never had close girlfriends growing up, which used to worry Karen, even as she loved being Celeste’s closest confidante.

  Karen gazes upon the white silk column wedding dress hanging on the back of the closet door. It’s a dress from a dream, ideally suited to Celeste’s simple tastes and her classic beauty.

  But… she won’t be wearing it tomorrow. Karen sighs, turns off the light, and closes the door.

  As Karen heads back down the dark hallway, she feels a growing irritation. Where is everyone? Karen has been left all alone in this house. She wonders if this is what it feels like to be dead.

  Stairs are tricky with a cane. Karen decides she feels strong enough to leave her cane behind. She takes the stairs slowly, gripping the rail, and thinks about the leftover lobster tails stashed in the fridge. The idea of them is enticing but she can’t make herself feel hungry. The only thing she craves right now is a meaningful conversation with her daughter, and her husband’s body next to her in their bed.

  Karen hears distant voices and she smells smoke. She tiptoes along, reaching out for the wall when she needs to steady herself. She hears Bruce’s voice. When she turns the corner, she can see two figures out on a deck—not the main deck but a horseshoe-shaped deck off to the right, one Karen hasn’t noticed before. She wedges herself behind a sofa and peers behind the drapes. Bruce and Tag are sitting on the edge of this deck, smoking cigars and drinking what she thinks must be scotch. She can hear their voices but not what they’re saying.

  She should either go back to bed or find her daughter. But instead, Karen quietly cranks open the window. In a fine house like this one, the crank is smooth. The window opens silently.

  Tag says, “There hasn’t been anyone serious before this. Just casual stuff, when I was traveling. A woman in Stockholm, one in Dublin. But this girl was different. And now I’m trapped. She’s pregnant and she’s keeping the baby. She says.”

  Bruce shakes his head, throws back a swallow of scotch. He must be very, very drunk after an evening of mojitos, champagne, and now scotch. At home, all Bruce ever drinks is beer—Bud Light or Yuengling. When Bruce speaks, his words are slurred. “So whaddaya go’ do, then, my friend?”

  “I’m not sure. I need her to listen to reason. But she’s stubborn.” Tag studies the lit end of his cigar, then looks at Bruce. “So, anyway, now I’ve told you my war story. How about you? Have you ever stepped out on Mrs. Otis?”

  “Naw, man,” Bruce says. “Not like that.”

  Karen takes a deep breath. She should not be eavesdropping; this is a conversation between men, and now she has heard Tag confess he has gotten someone pregnant—probably that Featherleigh woman!—and what a mess that will turn out to be! Karen feels a little better about the last-minute canceling of the wedding. The Winbury family isn’t at all what she thought.

  “But I did have a crush on this chick once,” Bruce says. “A real intense crush.”

  Karen is so shocked she nearly cries out. The pain is instant and rude. A crush? A real intense crush?

  “Oh yeah?” Tag says.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bruce says. He’s drunk, Karen reminds herself. He hasn’t had this much to drink maybe ever. He is probably making up a story to impress Tag Winbury.

  “She worked with me at Neiman Marcus,” Bruce says. “At first we were all business. In fact, I didn’t even like her that much. She was uppity. She came to my store from New York City, from Bergdorf Goodman, where she worked in shoes.”

  Bergdorf’s. Shoes. Yes, Karen vaguely recalls someone… but who was it?

  “Oh yeah?” Tag says again.

  “Then we became friends. We’d take our dinner break together. She had a different perspective on the world and it was… I don’t know… refreshing, I guess, to talk to someone who had been places and done things. This was right after Celeste left for college, and I’m not going to lie, it was like a midlife crisis for both me and Karen. Karen hates to shop, hates to spend money on frivolous things, but she started going to all these trunk shows, Tupperware parties, something called the Pampered Chef. And I took on more night shifts so that I could be with this other woman.”

  Karen feels her heart pop, like a tire sliced by a granite curb, like a balloon drifting into a thorny rosebush. There’s a concussion in her chest. She can’t believe she’s hearing this. Now, in her final days, she is learning that the man she has spent her whole life loving once harbored feelings for another woman.

  Karen tries to calm herself. A crush is nothing. A crush is harmless. Hasn’t Karen herself had crushes on people—the young man who worked in the produce section of Wegman’s, for example? She used to give him a little wave and if he waved or smiled back she would float through the store, sometimes so giddy that she would buy treats she shouldn’t have—white chocolate Magnum bars, for example.

  “Did you two ever…” Tag asks.

  “No,” Bruce says. “I thought about it, though. It was a confusing time in my life. I can’t tell you how much it turned my whole world upside down. I had spent my entire life feeling like one person and then suddenly I felt like so
meone else.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tag says. “What was her name?”

  “Robin,” Tag says. “Robin Swain.”

  Karen does gasp—loudly—but neither Tag nor Bruce hears her. They just puff away on their cigars. Karen feels her insides turn to liquid. She has to sit down. She frantically tries to arrange the drapes back as she found them and she clambers out from behind the sofa. She should go back to her room. She can’t have Bruce finding her here. If he knew she had been eavesdropping he would… vaporize.

  Robin Swain. No. Please, God, no.

  She can’t make it back up the stairs. She sits on the sofa but feels too exposed. She would slide down to the floor but she’ll never be able to get back up. She looks around the room in a wild panic. Suddenly, she hates the house, its luxurious furnishings, the ostensible kindness of the Winburys, which now seems like a masked cruelty. Why on earth would Tag ask Bruce such a heinous question?

  Why would Bruce give such an answer?

  Robin Swain.

  What did Bruce mean by that?

  But Karen knows what he meant. And that’s why she’s reacting this way. She knew there was something unusual about Bruce’s friendship with Robin. But of course it was inconceivable, unthinkable. It made no sense.

  Karen steadies herself. Bruce is drunk, she thinks. He made up a story for Tag, out of machismo. He used Robin Swain’s name because it was the first that came to mind. Karen shouldn’t put any stock in what she just heard. She should go to bed. She manages to make her way back to the entry hall and climbs the stairs.

  Once in her room, she takes an oxy. She takes two. Then she climbs into bed, still in her robe. She’s shivering.

  An intense crush on Robin Swain. They shared dinners; Bruce worked nights so they could be together. A confusing time in his life. A midlife crisis.

  Well, yes, Karen thinks. This is confusing.

  Robin Swain is a man.

  It was September, right after Celeste left for college. Karen and Bruce had rented a U-Haul and driven her all the way across Pennsylvania and nearly all the way across Ohio to Oxford, which was only five miles from the Indiana border. They had helped her move into her dorm room in Hahne Hall, they had met her roommate, Julia, and Julia’s parents. Karen and Bruce had attended the opening address by the college president and then they returned with Celeste to her room, both Bruce and Karen at loose ends, unsure of how to say good-bye. Eventually, Celeste decided to go to dinner at the Kona Bistro with Julia and her parents; she had left Karen and Bruce alone in her room. Karen had thought about simply moving in or renting an apartment down the street, and she’s sure Bruce did too.

  Neither of them had said much on the drive home.

  A week or two later, Bruce had come home talking about a new colleague, Robin Swain. He was a man about Bruce’s age who had transferred in from the shoe department of Bergdorf’s. Robin had grown up in Opelika, Alabama, and had started college at Auburn but hadn’t finished. He’d always wanted to go to New York City so he saved his money and bought a bus ticket. He was first hired at Bergdorf’s to work in the stockroom.

  Initially, Bruce complained about Robin. He might have come from a small town, but working in Manhattan had given him an attitude. He disparaged the King of Prussia store, the mall, the entire Delaware Valley. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as New York City, he said. The area was permanently stuck in 1984, back when the Philadelphia sports teams were good and perms were in fashion and everyone listened to Springsteen. Robin himself listened to country music.

  But over the course of a few weeks, Karen noted a shift. Bruce started to talk more favorably about Robin. One of the shirts that Bruce came home to model for Karen was something that Robin had picked out for him. Now that Karen thinks back, that was when Bruce’s sock fetish started. Robin loved flashy socks, and soon after, Bruce adopted the affectation; he wore rainbow socks, zebra socks, socks printed with the likeness of Elvis. He bought a CD called When the Sun Goes Down by Kenny Chesney and started singing the song all the damn time. Everything gets hotter when the sun goes down.

  One night, Bruce invited Robin home for dinner. This had struck Karen as a bit strange. She and Bruce rarely had guests for dinner, and the town of Collegeville, where Robin was renting an apartment, was over an hour away. It was impractical. If Bruce wanted to have dinner with Robin, he should do so at the mall.

  But Bruce had insisted. He had instructed Karen what to cook—her Betty Crocker pot roast with potatoes and carrots, a green salad (not iceberg lettuce, he said), and snowflake rolls. He would pick up wine on the way home, he said.

  Wine? Karen had thought. They never, ever drank wine with dinner. They drank ice water, and Bruce, occasionally, a beer.

  When Bruce and Robin walked in, they had been laughing at something, but they sobered up when they saw Karen. Robin was tall, wearing an expensive-looking blue blazer, a white shirt, navy pants, a brown leather belt with a silver H buckle. He wore light blue socks patterned with white clouds, which Bruce proudly showed off to Karen by lifting Robin’s pants at the knee. Robin had a receding hairline, brown eyes, a slight Southern drawl. Had Karen thought gay when she saw him? She can’t remember. Her overarching emotion at dinner was jealousy. Bruce and Robin talked between themselves—about the merchandise, about the clientele, about their co-workers. With each change of topic, Robin tried to include Karen, but maybe Karen’s responses were so frosty that he stopped trying. She hadn’t meant to be unkind to Robin but she had felt blindsided by his presence. Her mind kept returning to the sight of Bruce lifting Robin’s pant leg at the knee. The gesture had seemed so familiar, nearly intimate.

  She had chalked up her conflicting emotions to the fact that Celeste had left and now it was just Karen and Bruce, and Bruce had gone out and found a friend at work. Which was fine. After all, Karen had friends at the Crayola factory gift shop. She was friends with nearly everyone! But there was no one special, no one she would invite home to dinner, no one she would talk to and laugh with and in so doing make Bruce feel irrelevant.

  After dinner, Bruce had suggested Robin help him with the dishes so that Karen could put her feet up. When had Karen ever put her feet up? Never, that’s when. But she knew how to take a hint. She bade Robin good-bye and Bruce a good night and she had stormed upstairs to lie angrily on the bed and listen to the two men washing and drying the dishes and finishing the wine and then stepping out onto the back porch to talk about heaven knows what.

  Karen feels the oxy gripping her by the shoulders, then there is a great release as the pain falls away.

  Bruce had an intense crush on Robin. A man. It was a confusing time, he said. Suddenly I felt like someone else, he said.

  To Karen, it’s a nuclear confession. Her husband, her state champion wrestler, her hungry wolf in bed had had feelings for another man, feelings he obviously isn’t comfortable acknowledging because to Tag, he changed Robin’s gender to female.

  Robin worked at Neiman Marcus only through the holidays that year. By the time Celeste returned to Oxford after Christmas break, Robin had been transferred to the Neiman Marcus flagship store in Dallas. Had Bruce been upset? Heartbroken, even? If so, he’d hid it well.

  Bruce had a secret, an intense crush. He never acted on it; this, Karen believes.

  And Karen has a secret of her own: the three pills in the bottle, among the oxy.

  Karen issues Bruce a silent pardon—it had been a confusing time. And, as Karen had wanted to tell Celeste, there is no such thing as a perfect couple.

  Karen will tell Celeste this in the morning. She closes her eyes.

  Saturday, July 7, 2018, 12:45 p.m.

  NANTUCKET

  Nick “the Greek” Diamantopoulos is driving from 333 Monomoy Road to the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where he is finally going to talk to the bride. She wants to be interviewed at the hospital, and Nick hopes this means she has real information. He’s eager to find out, but when he rolls around the rotary, he catches the
scent of Lola Burger through his open window and the smell is too much to resist. One thing about Nantucket, Nick thinks, the food is top-notch. Even the burger joints. Nick pulls into takeout parking and races inside to charm Marva, the hostess, who scores him a medium-rare Lolaburger (aged cheddar, onion compote, foie gras dipping sauce) with a side of fries. Nick leaves Marva a nice big tip and she says, “Don’t be a stranger, Greek man. Come back and see me!”

  Nick hops back in his car, stuffing fries in his mouth.

  At the hospital, the Greek is greeted by a trio of nurses—Margaret, Suzanne, and Patty. Nick has been on dates with both Suzanne and Patty—nothing serious, just fun. He smiles at all three and says, “Where am I going and what do I need to know?”

  Patty links her arm through his and leads him down the hall to an exam room. “She came in early this morning and we treated her for hysteria slash panic attack, meaning we took her vitals and gave her some Valium to calm her down. She slept for a little while. I wish there were something more we could do. Her best friend drowned out in front of the house? And Celeste found her? On her wedding day?”

  “Wedding was canceled,” Nick says. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “The deceased was the maid of honor,” Nick says.

  “That’s what Celeste told me,” Patty says. She gives a dry laugh. “Maybe she didn’t like the dress.”

  Nick shakes his head. He can’t make a joke at Merritt’s expense. He just can’t.

  “What happened when the groom showed up here?” he asks.

  “That was about an hour ago. Seemed like a nice guy. He was worried about Celeste and he expected to take her home. He was in her room for about ten minutes, then he left. And she asked to speak to you.”

  “Okay, Patty. Thank you. It’s okay if I question her in here?”