But as the day approached, the girls began to grow excited. This wedding—which had seemed some elaborate game of make-believe, some goofy lark—was really, actually, truly going to take place. Lil was going to walk down the aisle in a big dress, with a fluffy veil and maybe even a bouquet (her mother and Rose Peregrine were insisting, offering to pay), get married, and become Lillian Roth-Hayes.
“It sounds like a bank, doesn’t it?” Dave said the night before the wedding, after the rehearsal dinner, as they sat around Tal’s big apartment on Union drinking beer, their toes picking at the frills of mismatched linoleum that emerged from the floor. Lil and Tuck had gone home to bed. Beth was, at that moment, stranded in Pittsburgh. She’d had to stay in Milwaukee later than she’d anticipated, and Lil was pretty put out that she’d cut it so close and missed the dinner (“She couldn’t have flown in yesterday?”).
“No, a law firm,” insisted Emily, who had temped at many such firms. “I can totally see the letterhead.”
“A midlevel brand of dress shirt,” suggested Sadie.
“It sounds pretty great, actually,” said Tal. His friends looked at one another, unsure if he was kidding. “I like it. It’s kind of regal.” He wrinkled his nose with self-deprecation. “Or British.”
“Sort of,” said Sadie, prodding his corduroyed thigh with her foot.
“It’s nice,” he said. “You guys—” He shook his head. “It’s nice that they’re combining their names.” And they all grew silent, ashamed, looking down their noses into their sweating bottles of beer, for the truth was, they agreed. Some of their mothers—feminists, children of the 1960s—had kept their own names, even if just professionally, which the girls thought dry and unromantic. They had all been thinking, separately, that when they married (if they married), they would do as Lil did and hyphenate, or turn their original family names into middle names.
The next morning, at promptly nine o’clock, Emily arrived at the Peregrine house on East Ninety-second, breathless and apologetic, her dress stuffed into a crumpled grocery bag, followed a few minutes later by Beth, pale hair rising statically from her head, her plump, freckled face arranged in an expression of mild agony. Rose had insisted they meet at this early hour, at her house, to “strategize,” though they’d simply have to journey downtown on errands and then over to Brooklyn to help set up the loft for the reception, and then back uptown to dress for the wedding.
“You look exhausted,” Rose told Beth, once she’d seated the girls at her kitchen table, a massive slab of scarred oak, and placed cups of coffee in front of them. “You just got in last night?”
Beth nodded. “Midnight.” She took a tentative sip of her coffee. “I am exhausted. It took me two hours to get here this morning.”
“Two hours?” Rose cried. “You took the train in? You’re staying at your parents’?”
Beth shook her head.
“She’s in Astoria,” Emily explained. Beth was subletting an apartment from a CUNY prof, an alum of her program who was in Finland on a Fulbright. When she’d signed the sublease, she’d thought, of course, that she’d be arriving in the city at the start of September—the start of the fall semester, her favorite time of year—but there’d been that problem with her credits, which she’d worked out, sort of, by teaching the first section of a “special topics” class. Now her credits were in order, but she had—most likely, it wasn’t entirely clear—lost her New School job, at least for the fall. And paid double rent for a month, which she could ill afford. But she was in New York. That was all that mattered.
“Astoria?” repeated Rose. “Queens?”
“Ye—”
“Isn’t it all Greek there?”
“Not anymore,” Emily told her, spooning a scant bit of sugar into her coffee. “There’s a big Middle Eastern community, too. There’s this great Egyptian restaurant on—”
“You’re living in Astoria, Queens?” Rose repeated, frowning at Beth and cocking her head suspiciously, as though the girls were playing some sort of practical joke on her.
Beth nodded.
“We told her not to take it,” Emily told Rose, giving Beth a little smile. “But she didn’t listen.”
“Well,” said Rose, pulling out a chair and sitting down on Emily’s right. “It’s all the same.” She shrugged. “I don’t understand why you girls insist on living way out in Brooklyn.”
“Because it’s cheap,” Emily said, then turned to Beth. “How’s the place?”
“Fine, I guess. Pretty big.”
In fact, she’d barely examined the place. She’d gotten in so late and risen so early, nervous about finding her way to the Peregrines’, and preoccupied with the wedding—or not so much the wedding itself as the fact that she would soon find herself face-to-face with Dave Kohane, whom she’d managed to avoid for the four years since they’d departed for their respective grad programs, she to Milwaukee and he to Rochester, at which point he’d dumped her, in a strangely passive manner. Or not “dumped” her—she hated that term—but allowed their couplehood to peter out, for reasons she’d never understood.
“Okay,” said Rose, clapping her hands together, “let me get my list. We’ve got to get started.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the stove. “Beth, do you want to wake Sadie and Lil? They’ll be thrilled to see you.”
“I’m up,” came a gravelly contralto from the stairwell. Still in the old blue pajamas she’d worn in college, when they’d all shared a crumbling house behind the art museum, her curls flattened by sleep, Sadie padded into the kitchen, trailed by George, the Peregrines’ ancient orange cat, and gave Beth a silent, enervated hug. She had her own little apartment in Cobble Hill, but she’d spent the night at her parents’, as was her occasional wont. With a yawn, she glanced at the kitchen clock. She was a small girl, with a long-waisted figure that gave the illusion of height. Her dark, glossy hair and waxily opaque, vellum-hued skin came from her mother, Rose, a woman of Italianate good looks, as did her curious, formal way of speaking. But her hooded eyes and her bearing were pure Peregrine—as Rose often reminded her, in moments of anger. “Sadie,” said Rose, an edge rising in her voice, “we’ve got to get started. Did you wake up Lil?”
Sadie poured herself a cup of coffee before answering. “She’s at home,” she said finally, with another, larger yawn.
“At home?” Rose asked in alarm.
“She was supposed to stay here last night,” Sadie told Beth. “Tradition. You know. Spending the night before the wedding apart from Tuck.” Beth nodded. “But she couldn’t bear to be apart from him. Even for one night.”
“Oh,” said Rose, pursing her lips. “Well, then what’s the plan?”
Sadie took a long sip of coffee and made a face at Emily. “She has an appointment for a facial at ten—”
“At Arden’s,” said Rose.
“No,” Sadie told her. “She decided to go to some place in Soho.”
Rose emitted a sigh of deep disappointment and pressed her fingers lightly to her temples. “All right. So—”
“So, we’ll go get the flowers and meet her in Brooklyn,” said Sadie. “At the apartment. Her parents are already there.”
“All right,” Rose acquiesced. “We have to be back here by three, the latest, to get dressed.”
“It won’t take us that long to get ready,” said Sadie. “We don’t have to be at the synagogue until six, right?”
“I’m not talking about you,” snapped Rose. “I’m talking about Lil. The bride.” She shook her head at Emily and Beth. “And,” she added, “I have a manicure at three thirty. So let’s go, girls.”
And off they went: to Chelsea, with a big wad of cash, to pick up flowers—short-stemmed roses, monstrous tulips, assorted odd lacy things—then to Lil and Tuck’s new loft, on what turned out to be a grim stretch of Bushwick, where Beth and Emily found Lil’s mother, Elaine, directing a team of volunteers—various Roth cousins, some of Lil’s childhood friends—who were stringing tulle and candles
around the room, wrapping fairy lights around the loft’s fat beams, and rinsing the old milk glass vases in the kitchen’s small sink. Lil’s father stood behind a small card table, manning a platter of deli meats and chewing openmouthed on a corned beef sandwich. “Better get to work,” he said, with a wink. “Elaine’s on the rampage.” The girls trimmed the stems off hundreds of flowers, filled the vases with tepid water, and cobbled together what Rose called “French bouquets.” “You don’t think those look sloppy?” asked Elaine, squinting at a drooping tulip. “I would have been happy to pay for arrangements.” But Lil hadn’t wanted arrangements, just as she hadn’t wanted to be married in a hall on Long Island, despite her mother’s insistence that it would be “so much easier.”
At lunchtime Tal and Dave arrived to set up the sound system and help with any heavy lifting. Some friends of Tuck’s—a slender couple with a tiny baby in a sling—dropped off case after case of beer and wine and champagne. They were followed by another couple—smiling, with Southern accents—who carried in the cake, covered all over with bright buttercream flowers. The florist came by with white cardboard boxes containing wrist corsages for the mothers, rosebuds for the girls’ dresses and the mens’ jackets, and Lil’s bouquet, which was paler than the other flowers and round in shape, so beautiful and perfect that Beth, against her will, said, “Oh!” and drew in her breath. A widowed cousin of Elaine’s showed up, already dressed for the wedding in a pink silk suit, and tied floppy white bows on the vases. Then Lil called, saying she’d been delayed and would meet them at the Peregrines’, and the band swooped in, setting up yards of equipment in a corner; then suddenly the caterers were bustling about, loudly creaking open long tables for the buffet, which would be in Lil and Tuck’s bedroom, at the rear of the apartment (“It used to be a meat locker,” Elaine kept telling anyone who passed within arm’s reach of her), and it was time, Rose said. “Girls, we need to go now.”
“We do, we do,” agreed Elaine. As they gathered at the door, they stopped for a moment and surveyed the room: its pillars shrouded in tulle and twinkly lights, dozens of white-covered tables scattered over the worn oak floor, generous bouquets at their centers.
“It’s beautiful,” said Beth.
“It is,” said Emily.
“It’s fine,” sighed Elaine, smoothing her crisp blonde hair. It had once been black, like Lil’s, but over the years had grown lighter and lighter. She wore it straight, with long bangs that covered her eyebrows, a trick, Lil said, to hide the wrinkles in her forehead, wrinkles she was forever asking Lil’s father to “fix,” much as his partner had “fixed” Lil’s nose between her junior and senior years of high school. “I still don’t see what was wrong with Leonard’s of Great Neck,” she sighed, raising her thin brows. “It would have been so much easier.”
“Come on,” said Rose. “It’s after two.”
They took the train, for there were no cabs to be found in Lil’s desolate section of Brooklyn, three stops in on the L, and Elaine smiled delightedly, saying, “I haven’t been on a subway in years. It’s so clean!”
“Giuliani,” the girls said, smirking.
“Too bad he’s a fascist,” Emily told her. They emerged, once again, at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Lex, in boisterous spirits, practically running to the Peregrine house. There, spread across the Peregrines’ four bathrooms, they showered and shaved their legs, the widowed cousin making dour remarks about the time, did they know (yes, they knew) they had to be at the shul by six at the latest? Quickly, they smoothed makeup onto their faces, fingered their hair into waves and ringlets, and pulled on stockings and variations on the wispy, girlish dresses popular that year. So dressed, they turned to Lil, who had spent the day alone, receiving the ministrations of various Eastern European women, and who now emerged from the third-floor bathroom to greet them clad in Sadie’s old striped robe, a foggy look on her face, which—they all noticed—appeared a bit too pink, particularly around the edges of her nose. “She should have gone to Arden’s,” Rose whispered to Sadie, who squeezed her mother’s arm in warning. Elaine rushed over to her daughter. “You’re all red,” she said, inspecting her face. “You’re going to have to wear foundation.”
“Okay, Mom.” Lil seemed to shrink a bit in her mother’s presence, her eyes widening with what Sadie thought were tears. But then Lil caught sight of her friends and smiled, unsure of whom to greet first, and cried, “Beth! Oh my God! You look beautiful! I love your dress! Are you wearing lipstick? It looks great!” Before Beth could answer, Lil had embraced her in a warm, perfumed hug. “It’s so good to see you. We thought you’d never get here. We missed you last night.” And with that, she launched into a thousand questions: How was Beth’s apartment? Did she like Queens? Were Dave and Tal coming over, as well, or would they meet them at the synagogue? Was Sadie wearing her hair up or down? How were the flowers? Had her eyebrows turned out even? And could they please keep old cousin Paula away from her? Who had brought her back here anyway? Everyone knew she was a complete nuisance.
Somehow, they managed to coax Lil into Sadie’s room—unchanged since Sadie’s childhood, with its green and white toile coverlet and curtains—and sit her down at the dressing table. Much discussion ensued over whether Lil should dress or have her makeup applied first, until Elaine and Rose decided the matter: Lil should dress first, then a large cloth would be draped over her as Emily applied her makeup. (“Overdo it,” Elaine hissed at Emily in the hallway, laying a tan, bare arm conspiratorially on Emily’s back, the beading along the edge of her turquoise dress scraping Emily’s pale shoulder. “We don’t want her to look pasty.”) Lil pulled on scant tulle underwear—a gift from Sadie—and a long-lined bra, then attached stockings to the bra’s dangling garters, slapping away Cousin Paula’s attempts at help. “This is so porn star,” said Emily. “I know, this thing makes my boobs huge,” Lil intoned, with a wry smile, fastening around her waist a glaring white crinoline, and, finally—thus trussed and plumped—slipping the heavy dress over her head, to the oohs and aahs of the girls, and a grimace from Cousin Paula.
“You wouldn’t really call that dress white, would you, Elaine?” Paula asked. “It’s almost gold, isn’t it?” She stopped to scrutinize the heavy satin between thumb and forefinger. “Is it actually a wedding dress?”
“It’s white,” snapped Lil. “Mom, can you button me up?”
The sky clouded over, threatening rain, and Tal and Dave arrived, looking absurdly old and handsome, transformed by their black suits and glossy ties. Lil rushed up to hug them, though they seemed slightly afraid of her, in her thick lipstick and big, costumey dress, her black hair pulled back from her face in a heavy bun. “Lil, you look beautiful,” whispered Dave, as if apologizing for his stiff embrace. Tal smiled, took her hands, and pulled her an arm’s length away. “Gorgeous,” he said.
“Okay, kids,” called Rose, with a clap of her manicured hands, “I hate to break this up, but we need to get going. Start heading for the door.”
Moments later, it seemed to Lil, she arrived at the rabbi’s study, where Tuck was waiting for her by a diamond-paned window, his mother fussing with his tie. “Mom,” he said, grinning brilliantly at Lil, so brilliantly that her irritation and anxiety fell away, and she laughed with relief at the sight of him. “Oh my God,” he said when she came into full view. It was all she could do not to wrap her arms around him and press her face to his cheek, which still showed the strokes of the razor. “Shall we get started?” said the rabbi, and they signed the wedding contract—Tuck squeezing her hand—then she was walking down the aisle, bits of whispers and coughs and laughter wafting uneasily toward her, her mother on her right, smelling faintly of White Shoulders and Max Factor pressed powder, her father on her left, bald pate glowing. Both of them were, to her surprise, smiling. They were happy, she realized, or at least happier than she’d expected they’d be about this marriage to a boy they’d met but once. Not that she’d cared; she’d long ago realized that nothing she did
could truly please her parents. “But that’s how young people do it, Barry,” her mother had insisted back in May, when she’d given them the news. “Tuck’s thirty, mom,” Lil had said impatiently. “We’re not that young.” But now, as she walked down the aisle, with a hundred sets of eyes uncomfortably focused on her slow progress, she felt, really, much as she had on the first day of kindergarten, dressed in her stiff, unfamiliar uniform, unsure of what awaited her. Her mother, for once, was right.
Standing in a crowd around the chuppa—two poles held by Tal and Dave, two held by friends of Tuck’s—the girls, at first, felt faintly uncomfortable, looking out at the rows of people before them, unable to fidget or fuss with their hair. Then, slowly, they began to relax, whispering mildly to one another. They held little white cards in their hands, inscribed with the blessings each would recite at the appointed moment. None of them was familiar with this bit of ritual—even Tal, whose mother ran a kosher catering business and who’d actually gone to Hebrew school—but then, they weren’t familiar with any sort of wedding custom: this was the first wedding they’d attended as grown-ups.
One by one they stepped up and read their blessings, which were strangely simple—“Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the universe, Creator of Human Beings” and “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the universe, Who has created everything for Your glory”—and somber, and even, Dave said later, generic, just your basic prayers, praising God, nothing about marriage specifically, until Tal, handing his chuppa pole to Emily, stepped up to the bima and read, in his calm, mesmerizing way, his cheeks blaring red at the center, his dark eyes fixed on the guests in the pews below:
Gladden the beloved companions as You gladdened Your creatures in the garden of Eden. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who gladdens groom and bride.
The synagogue, which had seemed quiet before, fell into a deep, stunned silence, contemplating the groom and bride before them. She’s really doing this, thought Beth. She’s a bride. And her heart began to beat faster, so much faster that she nearly missed her cue to step up to the bima herself and read her poem, a short thing by Linda Pastan, which had seemed appropriately unsentimental when she’d chosen it, but as she read, the words—all simple, all arranged in plain, declarative sentences, rather like, she realized, the Seven Blessings—began to accrue, taking hold of her in an unexpected way. Her voice wavered, and as she reached the last line—“Because everything is ordained / I said yes”—she broke into a small sob. Mortified, she stood, frozen, swallowing back tears, staring out at the people in the pews, the rows and rows of white-haired ladies, the assorted young people, some of whom she knew and some of whom she didn’t. Some were crying a bit, as well, including her friends standing around the chuppa. Including Dave, who smiled ruefully at her. They hadn’t yet spoken, had merely nodded at each other across Sadie’s bedroom, the girls forming a shield around her.
A Fortunate Age Page 2
