Angels All Over Town

by Luanne Rice

  Chapter 19

  Delilah married Beck the week before Christmas. Billy, making a cameo appearance as Judge Deborah Buell, officiated. Although the happy couple had planned to elope to a ski lodge in Utah, Paul Grant had gotten wind of their plans and made some plans of his own. No way was Delilah, his favorite daughter, going to get married without him giving her away! So, the night before Beck and Delilah were scheduled to leave for their “vacation,” Paul and his wife (Selena, who was beginning to poison Paul by adding smidgens of arsenic to his nightly Scotch) threw a dinner party—with all the Grants, a few Mooreland regulars, and Judge Buell as guests. He asked Delilah, as a special favor to him, to wear her pretty white sundress.

  “My sundress?” Delilah exclaimed. “Daddy, it’s Christmastime.”

  “Indulge me, darling,” Paul said, a twinkle in his eye.

  When Delilah showed up at the Grant mansion, twenty minutes late, she was amazed to find Beck and her father in tuxedos.

  “What is this, a black-tie affair?” she asked.

  Paul kissed her cheek. Then he offered her his arm. “Shall we?” he asked. He tilted his head toward the living room, where all the party guests were seated, looking expectantly over their shoulders toward the foyer where Delilah, Beck, and Paul stood. Beck kissed Delilah’s other cheek and went into the living room to stand before Judge Buell at the Christmas tree. An organ began to play “O Holy Night.” Delilah’s eyes filled with generous tears as her father handed her the bouquet of holly and white roses.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she whispered. Jennifer, her little illegitimate daughter, dressed in red velvet, tugged on the lacy white hem of her dress. “Mommy, are we getting married?” she asked.

  Delilah laughed through her tears. “Yes, sweetheart, we are.” And then the music swelled, she squeezed her father’s arm, and the three generations of Grants walked down the aisle.

  My tears were real. I cried all through the ceremony. I truly felt as though Stuart MacDuff, as Paul Grant, were giving me away to Jason Mordant, as Beck Vandeweghe. They got mixed up in my mind with James Cavan and Samuel Chamberlain. I do, I do, I said. No wonder a girl loves her wedding day: she is given the ultimate illusion of protection. She gets to walk down the aisle once with her father and then with her husband. Her father passes her, like valuable chattel, into the hands of another man. He actually hands her off: here, take her, but take good care of her. Or else. Standing at my own TV wedding, I felt as though I were the center figure in some primitive ritual. A virgin bride, all in white, the love object of father and husband. My head spun with Freudian implications.

  Billy, dressed in a black robe, looked solemn and urgent. She held a black Bible open in her hands, but she spoke the words of a civil ceremony. Some of her pots had been placed around the room to hold holly, fir boughs, and poinsettias. In the list of credits at the show’s end, it would say, “Pottery by Willimore Schutz.” She looked into my eyes as I gasped my vows. Then she looked into Jason’s. She had appeared on the show before, once as an undercover agent, another time as a madam. She nodded and told us we could kiss. Jason took my face in his hands. He looked at me for several seconds, and then he kissed me with more passion than he ever had before. His mouth was hot; his tongue touched my lips. When I pulled away, I tried not to let the camera catch my surprise. Jason was crying.

  After we wrapped up the episode, Chance led us into an unused part of the studio, where long tables holding food and liquor had been set up. Our voices and Christmas music echoed through the cavernous space. Billy, still wearing her black robe, rushed over to me. I was unused to seeing her with any makeup, never mind stage makeup.

  “You make a beautiful bride,” she said. “When do we see it for real?”

  “One wedding at a time—Margo gets married next week.”

  “Yes, but what about you and Sam? I like him.”

  “So do I. But there are no plans—”

  Billy touched my cheek. “There will be,” she said.

  I found Jason drinking bourbon at the bar. “What happened?” I asked.

  “You mean the kiss?”

  “That and you crying. What’s going on?”

  “Oh, the usual holiday blues, I guess. Plus, I got turned on by your white dress.”

  I tried to see whether he was kidding, and he rolled his eyes. “It’s no big deal—I’ve kissed women before.”

  “Well, you’ve never kissed me like that before,” I said, embarrassed, wishing I hadn’t called attention to it. He was looking into his bourbon with severe intensity, as if he had just seen a gnat land in it.

  “When do you leave for Aruba?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s off. Our charter got canceled, and Terry’s going to San Francisco instead. He’s considering going from there to Okinawa, to visit his grandmother who’s dying.”

  “But he’s coming back?” I asked, wondering why Jason was sounding so desolate.

  He nodded. “He promises to be back for New Year’s Eve. We’re throwing a party—want to come?”

  “Oh, thanks. But I’m not sure what our plans are.”

  “You’re still tight with Sam?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing it was true. And getting tighter all the time. “But he’s away for five days. At Yale.”

  Jason pretended to cringe. “Don’t say that four-letter word.” Jason had gone to Harvard. I smiled, happy to hear him joking. In Europe he had shown me how jokes could pull him up.

  “Hello, my children,” Stuart MacDuff said, putting his arms around our shoulders. His steely hair, purple as gunmetal, glinted in the bright stage light. He always used a blue rinse, to keep it from getting yellow. “Now listen, Beck. You going to take care of my girl here?”

  “I promise to love and cherish.” Jason signaled the bartender for another hit of bourbon. The bartender tried to catch Jason’s eye, but Jason looked away.

  “Tell me all your Christmas plans, both of you,” Stuart said, watching the door. I supposed that he had told Margie about the party and was waiting for her to arrive.

  “My sister’s getting married in Watch Hill.”

  “And I’m not going to Aruba.”

  “Would you like to have Christmas with the MacDuffs, Jason? The whole brood should be there. You like ham?”

  “I adore ham, but I wouldn’t want to intrude on your holiday. I wouldn’t want to expose myself to the stable family influence.”

  “Nonsense. You like fig pudding, boy?”

  “Love it.”

  “Well, needless to say, Margie MacDuff makes a superlative figgy pudding. And you know how much she would love to have you at our table.”

  “Thanks, Stuart,” Jason said, placing his hand on Stuart’s shoulder. Both men looked handsome and archaic in their trim black tuxedos. “I promise to think about it.”

  “Good boy. You have a happy wedding, Una.” He looked puzzled. “Didn’t your sister just get married, though?”

  “That’s my other sister.”

  “Ah. You girls travel in a pack, I guess. You’ll be next. Well, have a merry time.” He kissed my cheek and went to greet Margie, who had just joined Billy.

  “What a father figure,” Jason said, smiling as he shook his head. I noticed that his brown hair was showing gray strands along the part.

  “You should go there for Christmas. He really meant it.”

  “They live in Westchester,” Jason said dismally, as though that fact alone would prevent him from going.

  “That’s okay. Westchester will be like the country. You can pack a little overnight bag, pretend you’re snowed in.”

  “In Westchester I probably will be snowed in. Snowed in with Margie MacDuff—help me.”

  We laughed, and Jason got me a glass of spiked eggnog.

  “Are you and Sam truly in love?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay together?”

  “I don’t know, Jason. I hope so—but who can know?” I spoke cautiously. For a second I had
a fantasy of Jason going straight, provided he had a chance with me. All I had to do was tread lightly.

  “I’m always looking for love,” he said. “Something long-term.”

  “But you’ve been with Terry a long time. Longer than I’ve been with Sam.”

  He stared at me a few seconds, trying to gauge how much truth there was to what I had said. Then he shook his head. “No, it’s different. I can tell by the way you talk about him. You expect it to last. Even when you were suffering, right after Thanksgiving, I could tell you knew it was just a matter of time before you worked things out. I was so jealous of you, even though things were good with Terry then. Our charter didn’t get canceled, you know. Terry backed out.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He does this all the time. He leaves me, and then he comes back. And I always take him back. Always.”

  “But you don’t have to. If he treats you this way, maybe you should break up with him.”

  “The problem is, I love him. Even though he treats me like shit.” Jason made a clown face. “So, what do you think of that?”

  I kissed his lips. “I think you deserve better,” I said. And then Jason walked away.

  Chapter 20

  The morning we were to leave for Watch Hill, it was snowing, and Sam surprised me with a rental car. He said he was going out to buy bagels for breakfast, and he came back with a subcompact. We ate breakfast while driving north on the New York Thruway. Our trunk and back seat were full of suitcases, wedding and Christmas presents, bird books, binoculars, and snow boots. Dry flakes hit the windshield and the wipers whisked them away. Six inches had already accumulated on the shoulder. Traffic crept along; Sam drove, hunched forward, both hands on the wheel. The defroster did not work well, and I kept wiping the inside of the windshield with a paper napkin.

  “Now I wish I’d surprised you with train tickets,” he said.

  “Want me to drive for a while?”

  “Not yet. Tell me a story or something. Or turn on the radio.”

  I told him the story of Vigil and Ante, of how Lily and Margo had been my emotional bodyguards.

  “I can’t imagine Lily slitting someone’s tires,” he said, laughing and fondling my knee.

  “But she did. She acts so genteel now, but that’s just a cover.”

  “You girls must have been something.”

  “We still are. I can’t believe Margo’s getting married. I can’t believe it.”

  “Your youngest sister, getting married before you.” He slid a smiling glance at me.

  “Who cares? I’m glad she’s marrying Matt.” Something in his glance made me shiver, as though he were thinking about our wedding instead of Margo’s. I was thinking of it too.

  “Well, I’m married on the show.”

  “Mrs. Delilah Vandeweghe.”

  “No, I’m keeping Grant. Now that I’m a successful psychotherapist. I’m pretty worried about Jason.” I told Sam about our conversation. “They say Christmas is the biggest time for suicide. People remember how happy they were when they were children, and they expect the same things.”

  “Maybe you should call him from Watch Hill. Stay in touch until you get back to New York.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I said, and then Sam told me about some article he had read in the Times that morning. I swiped the windshield with my napkin. I wanted to slide closer to Sam, but in such a snowstorm it could be dangerous. He took his right hand off the wheel and held mine for a few seconds. I started singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” and Sam joined in. Then he placed his hand back on the wheel. Safety first.

  Snow covered the roof, porches, and lawn of the Ninigrit Inn. It covered the rocks out to the lighthouse and the beach down to the water’s edge; it was high tide. Waves pounded the shore. White snow fell on the sea’s gray-green surface. I felt a thrill and wanted to run down to the beach with Sam, but our arms were full of packages.

  “Welcome, you two,” Matt said, coming past a huge undecorated Christmas tree in the foyer. I thought he looked different, and when he kissed me I realized his friendly gold beard was gone. “Everyone else is already here. Your mother stayed last night, and Lily and Henk came in this morning.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Everyone is in the living room. My family’s not coming till tomorrow, so you Cavans have the run of the place.”

  “The family reunion Margo planned for last September—” I said.

  “Better late than never,” Matt and Sam said at once.

  We walked into the living room where Margo, my mother, and Henk were standing before a roaring fire. Laurel roping tied with red ribbons decked the mantel, banisters, and window frames. Lily was stretched out on a wicker chaise. Margo came to kiss me; everyone else looked vaguely disturbed, as if they were trying to remember my name.

  “Mother, this is Sam Chamberlain,” I said, standing between them with my arms outstretched, like a windmill.

  “Hello, Mrs. Cavan,” Sam said, shaking her hand.

  “Please call me Grace,” she said, then, “Hello, dear,” kissing me, keeping her pelvis well away from mine.

  “Isn’t this a perfect place for a wedding?” I looked all around the room.

  “Pardon me, don’t I know you from somewhere?” Lily asked.

  I leaned down to kiss her. She looked the same size she had a month earlier. “How are you? Still due next month?”

  “Still takes nine months, no matter how hard you try.”

  I smiled at Lily, then stood and nodded at Henk. We did not speak to each other. He looked annoyed, and I tried to imagine why. Then, as soon as the greetings had died down, he resumed his discussion with my mother. She gazed at him, entranced.

  “So, as I was saying, I have quite a famous collection of French watercolors—mainly Degas and Renoir.”

  “Oh, Renoir,” Lily said. “I love his women. They are so maternal.”

  Margo gave me a loaded eyebrow. Sam squeezed my hand.

  “Yes, you don’t think of Renoir as a watercolorist, do you?” my mother asked mistily.

  “I assure you, these are superior watercolors,” Henk said, laughing.

  “Oh, I’m sure they are. I didn’t mean—” my mother said, flustered, smoothing over any feelings she might inadvertently have ruffled.

  “You two want to freshen up after your drive?” Matt asked. “Or whatever?”

  “Where is our room?” I asked.

  “Oh, the regular,” Margo said. “In the turret, of course. It doesn’t have any heat, but we’re supplying extra down quilts. Sam has to supply the body heat.”

  “With pleasure,” Sam said into my ear.

  Everyone, including my mother, laughed. In two days, Sam and I would be the only unmarried couple in the family. If Margo was the type to throw a bouquet, she would whip it in my direction.

  “Let’s take our things upstairs. We can come right back down,” I said.

  “Fine,” Sam said, following me.

  We climbed the narrow, steep stairs, feeling colder with every flight. I could see our breaths. Sam paused, smiling at me, when he reached the door to the turret room. Then he flung it open. First I saw the view, the icy green sea spreading to the white horizon. Then I noticed the bed, covered with a mound of puffy white comforters. The room had a familiar, musty smell. It smelled like old wood, salt air, and summer. Then I saw the ice bucket that held a bottle of champagne, its neck tied with a red ribbon.

  “It must be frozen!” I said. My own fingers were icicles.

  “I think it’s a fairly recent gift,” Sam said. He lifted the bottle out of the slushy ice and pulled a small white card from the ribbon. It said “Una.” He handed it to me. I turned it over and read, “This is in place of the bouquet I won’t throw. I love you. Margo.”

  “I don’t think we need the ice bucket, do you?” Sam asked, placing the bottle on the bureau. He hugged me close to him, my head turned so that I could see the water. Snow was still falling on its s
urface; I thought of the shooting stars last summer, of how Margo had said they fizzled the instant they hit the surface.

  “Do I sense a little tension downstairs?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Then let me tell you what to do. As soon as I can, I’ll get Henk busy in a conversation. Then you, Margo, and Lily go off together.”

  “Go off where?”

  “Anywhere. Just be together.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “But first…” Sam said, fixing me with his greenish eyes, pulling me down onto the bed’s chilly white hills.

  The sun was starting to go down. The inn’s living room, on the northeast side, was cold in spite of the red fire. The embers were dark as garnets. My mother sat erect in a wicker rocker, staring at the fire. Lily had her head in Henk’s lap, and Henk was stroking her yellow hair. Margo sat across a big armchair, her back against one arm, her legs over the other. She was reading a murder mystery with a splashy cover.

  “Maybe I ought to crank up the boiler,” Matt said. “Warm this burgh up.”

  “Where’s the boiler?” Sam asked.

  “In the basement. Who wants a tour of the boiler room?” Matt asked, and instantly I knew Sam had enlisted him in our mission.

  “Oh, I’ll go,” my mother said. She understood that whenever someone offered a tour of the house, the polite guest accepted. Everyone loved showing off property.

  “Count me out,” Margo said. “I spend too many of my waking hours in that basement, doing hotel laundry.”

  “Why not?” Henk said, easing out from under Lily’s head.

  He, Sam, and my mother trooped after Matt. We could hear their footsteps on the wooden stairs.

  “The tour has begun,” Margo said, climbing out of the chair. “Let’s take a sea cruise.”