Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  She flinched as Miss Abigail’s fork fell to the table with a nerve-shattering clatter.

  “He’s dead!” Half howl and half shout, the cry filled the kitchen. Miss Abigail tried to lift herself out of her chair. Peggy wasn’t sure whether to restrain her or help her up. She felt sure asking whom Miss Abigail was referring to—Silas Sedgwick? Luke’s father?—was the wrong thing to do.

  “Charles is dead!” Miss Abigail shrieked. “Gone!”

  What had Peggy said? The anxiety dug its bony fingers into Peggy’s lungs, wringing them, twisting them, making each gulp of air an exercise in mind over matter. Breathe, Peggy. Breathe. “I’m going to get Luke. Please, just stay in your chair. Okay?”

  Miss Abigail gazed ahead vacantly, but at least she didn’t move.

  “Don’t leave. I promise to be right back.” Peggy walked calmly from the kitchen, breaking into a run the second she was out of Miss Abigail’s view. She tore down the hall toward the front staircase and had just about made it into the front entryway when she slipped on a bare spot of wood, lost her footing, and fell with a crash. Pain shot through her right leg, but she ignored it, picked herself up, and sprinted up the stairs.

  The tea had served its intended purpose. After finishing it, Abby had agreed to change into her nightclothes, ordering Luke out of her room. He took the cup and saucer downstairs to the kitchen, which was otherwise spotless; Peggy must have done the dishes and cleaned up Abby’s mess. By the time he’d gotten to his great-aunt’s side, Abigail had managed to spill most of her food and knock over her drinking glass, and water had been cascading off the edge of the table onto the floor below.

  When he returned to Abby’s room, she was in bed, snoring gently under a blue-striped Hudson’s Bay blanket Luke remembered from his childhood as the roof to many a rainy summer Saturday fort. He tucked the blanket around Abby’s shoulders as Quibble jumped onto the bed and prowled it silently, a black shadow with a tail arched into a question mark.

  Luke lined up Abby’s slippers at the end of her bed, where she would find them in the morning, and crept out of the room, leaving the door open a crack and turning on the hall light. He climbed the back stairs to the third floor, hoping to catch Peggy in her room, but the door was closed. After he knocked and she didn’t answer, he opened the door cautiously. All he found inside was the barest whisper of her flower-and-fruit fragrance. He stood still, trying to capture the scent in his nostrils, to take apart its components and decipher its mysteries, then shut the door with a soft click and went downstairs.

  Peggy was in the den, her back toward the door, her face inches from the portrait of Elizabeth Coe Sedgwick as if she were memorizing every paint crackle. Luke coughed, and she spun around, her left hand flying to the brooch on her sweater as if to check that it was still there. The diamond sparkled on her fourth finger. It was almost too much to bear, the sight of another man’s engaged-to-be-engaged ring covering the wedding present Abigail had given Peggy in good faith. “You’re a Sedgwick,” his great-aunt had declared, and he’d had to turn away; Peggy might not be a real Sedgwick, but just then, wearing that brooch, she’d looked like a Sedgwick, and the image had been a shock. It made no sense to him that he could simultaneously rail against his heritage and be so taken by the way this woman seemed, through no conscious effort of her own, to embody it.

  Peggy moved back from the portrait. “Is Miss Abigail all right?”

  “She’s fine. I made her chamomile tea.” He didn’t add that he had fortified it with a healthy shot of sherry. “She can get like that when she’s overtired or overexcited. It upsets her when it happens. She thinks it’s undignified.”

  “But she can’t help it,” Peggy said. “She’s ninety-one. No one expects her to keep up appearances every minute of the day.”

  She expects it of herself,” Luke told her. “Keeping up appearances is what Sedgwicks do.”

  Peggy dropped into a chair now free of the items Abby had spread throughout the room. Luke realized Peggy must have cleared those, too, and put back the remaining books and trinkets. For the first time, he was thankful to have someone else helping him look after his great-aunt, even if Peggy was here only because she knew eventually she’d be compensated for it. She must be as desperate for money as he was.

  Who was she? Luke wondered. He imagined Peggy had enjoyed a childhood full of ordinary pleasures, of brothers and sisters and neighborhood friends riding their bicycles on an unremarkable suburban cul-de-sac, their futures wide open, their choice of college and job and mate entirely within their own control.

  She got up again to straighten a portrait of a young girl in a party dress.

  “That’s Abigail,” Luke said, and Peggy smiled. The child version of his great-aunt had short, dark hair and a playful look in her brown eyes that suddenly reminded him of somebody; he couldn’t remember who. “I suppose you would like to know who Charles is,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Charles Finnegan lived two houses north of here. He was the son of the housekeeper at Number Five Main Street. When Abigail was a schoolgirl, she and Charles were the closest of friends. My great-grandparents didn’t like their only daughter fraternizing with a servant’s boy, but the friendship only strengthened, and when she turned sixteen and he was eighteen, they secretly got engaged.”

  Luke hadn’t planned to air his family’s laundry, but if Peggy was to be witness to Abby’s outbursts, it was best she understood them. He continued, “Soon afterward, her brother, my grandfather Luke the Second, discovered their plan to elope and ratted out Abigail to my great-grandfather, who secretly arranged a job for Charles. He used his connections to get Charles work building the Bourne Bridge in Massachusetts. This was during the Great Depression, and good jobs were hard to come by. Charles would have needed to save money for his marriage—a marriage that wouldn’t include a dowry—and my family knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t say no. Charles promised Abigail he’d return to her once the project was completed, but the family was counting on Abby coming to her senses before he got back.

  “But things turned out better than my great-grandfather had hoped. Charles had been working only a few months when he fell off the bridge into the Cape Cod Canal.”

  Peggy gasped.

  “Abigail wasn’t the same. No matter how many suitors her parents brought home, she swore she wouldn’t marry, and she didn’t.”

  “That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”

  “I don’t know. To me, it’s all very Miss Havisham.”

  “How remarkably unsympathetic,” Peggy said.

  Luke straightened in his chair. “I guess I don’t understand how one could be so dependent on another person that to lose him or her could ruin one’s life.”

  “You’ve never…?” Peggy looked into the empty fireplace. “You’ve never been…?”

  “Consumed? Obsessed? No.” He found he was again eyeing her ring. He supposed she was consumed with love, or whatever she thought passed for love, for the cretin who’d given it to her.

  “You wanted to talk about the house. What is it you want to know?” He took off his sweater and tied it around his shoulders. “I suppose you’d like a sense of how much it’s worth—”

  “Three million, according to the tax assessment.”

  So she’d done her research. He had a brief flash of admiration for her business instinct that was quickly eclipsed by a fierce Yankee disapproval of which he hadn’t known he was capable: This outsider was digging into his family’s private affairs, placing a dollar value on something to which she had no true right. He reminded himself that he didn’t want the Sedgwick House and sat back down. “If we could sell it for that much, it wouldn’t be without a lot of work, which we need to start doing. We can’t afford a new roof and a paint job, but I thought I’d draw up a list of chores we can tackle. It’ll take months to get this place into selling shape, and it won’t be any fun. No offense meant, but you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who…”<
br />
  “Who what? Who enjoys being insulted in bad rhymed verse at her own wedding reception?”

  Where the hell had that come from? Despite his reluctance to bring it up, Luke had expected to have this discussion sooner or later, given the way Peggy had avoided him and acted sulky the two weekends before this. But not out of nowhere, during a discussion about unrelated matters, when just this afternoon she’d given the impression that she wasn’t mad at him anymore. He considered his response, not knowing what she expected him to say, not wanting to get it wrong and start a whole lot of unnecessary unpleasantness.

  But Peggy was already bombarding him with a barrage of, “Don’t you have any feelings?” and, “Where were your manners?” and, “You had no right.”

  “I apologize. It won’t happen again.” It was a frank sentiment. She didn’t seem appeased, so he groped reluctantly. “As you already know, I guess, I write a little poetry now and then. But it’s nothing like…what you heard. That was a spur-of-the-moment poem. It was…I don’t know…” For chrissakes, Luke, find an adjective.

  She got up. “It was bad. ‘Say, pay, day.’ You could at least have used ‘dismay’ or ‘betray’ or ‘radioactive decay.’ ”

  “Thank you for your valuable poetic suggestions. It was a limerick. I’d had a few drinks. Ever done anything you regretted when you were drunk? Say, married someone wholly inappropriate?” He was annoyed at himself for letting his annoyance show.

  She got up, as if to go upstairs, walked to the doorway, and turned back around. “You know,” she said, “my relatives came here the same way yours did—on a ship. Just because it wasn’t the Mayflower doesn’t make you better than me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs to plot more ways to wreck your life.”

  Before he knew he’d made the choice to go after her, he was on his feet, following her to the front staircase, knowing she was aware of him a few feet behind—as usual, the house kept no secrets; his footsteps were thunderous—and was refusing to acknowledge him. Just as she started up the staircase, he stepped onto the landing and reached out to grasp the hem of her sweater.

  “It was the second Mayflower,” he said.

  She stood, balanced on the very edge of the squeaky third step, the extra inches putting her face above his eye level.

  “The original Mayflower landed in 1621. Another ship, also called the Mayflower, arrived here eight years later. My relatives were on that ship.”

  He’d always thought of her as delicate, in need of protection—yet at this height, she seemed neither.

  “So you see, as far as the original Pilgrims are concerned, the Sedgwick family is sloppy seconds. And, so you’re clear on this, I don’t think I’m better than anybody.” He waited for her to storm up the stairs.

  Instead, she offered him the smallest smile. “You must need this money pretty badly,” she said.

  “I do,” he admitted. “My great-aunt needs to go into a nursing home. You saw her tonight. She’s only going to get worse. Unless we sell the house, there’s no way I can afford it.”

  “Then it would be nice,” she said, “if until this is over, we could try and get along. We don’t have to be best buddies, but it would be good, at least, to have a united front.”

  “By which you mean…?”

  “That you don’t embarrass me in front of your friends. And you stop making me feel unwelcome. And talk to me once in a while. I’m sorry I snooped in your office. But I only did it because I don’t know a thing about you.”

  “I talk to you.”

  “You do not.”

  “I’m talking to you now.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “Luke, I’m not stupid. It’s clear you don’t want me here. I don’t blame you. But you agreed to this marriage, and you’re going to get what you want in the end, and it would be nice if you could try to tolerate me for the next year.”

  “Eleven months. We’ve done a month already. I only have to tolerate you for eleven more.”

  “Actually, it’s ten months. And nineteen days.”

  “But who’s counting?”

  She looked different when she laughed. The shadows, the scrunched-up forehead, vanished, leaving a lively, intelligent face with a big smile and those warm gray eyes—eyes, he realized with a shock, that held the same playful expression as the little-girl Abby’s. Here was the woman Luke had met in Las Vegas. That he liked seeing her again was more than he cared to admit to himself.

  TEN

  Peggy felt as if she’d made a diplomatic breakthrough. Something had changed today. Between Luke’s unexpected friendliness in the car, their cooperative effort to help Miss Abigail, and their exchange just now on the staircase, she thought she could look forward to a little less chilliness from her temporary husband. Tomorrow, if her courage held, she might see if he had any memory of their walk across the bridge.

  She shivered. Speaking of chilly, her room seemed much cooler than the rest of the drafty house. Didn’t an unexplained pocket of cold mean a ghost was present? Peggy could practically hear Elizabeth Coe Sedgwick moaning, “Give me back my brooch…I want my broooooooch.…”

  “You don’t scare me.” Peggy unpinned the brooch and put it safely in her nightstand drawer. She resolved to order long underwear and was getting into her pajamas when it occurred to her a ghost might be watching her undress.

  She buttoned her top hurriedly and distracted herself with a chorus of “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” on her way to the bathroom. “Take one down, pass it around…,” she sang, lining up her cleansers and moisturizers—this for her cheeks, that for under her eyes—on the edge of the rust-stained sink and then clipping her hair off her face. “Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.” The water was freezing, but by now she knew to brush her teeth in the time it took to warm up. She squeezed organic toothpaste onto her imported Italian toothbrush with the ergonomic handle and brushed, humming through the foam, and then sang between splashes of water as she washed her face, and sang some more while she moisturized, and sang as she raced down the hall to the relatively ghost-free shelter of her ugly plaid comforter.

  In the morning, Luke was at the kitchen table, as always, buried in his newspaper, as always.

  “Good morning!” It was a lot of cheer to muster before ten a.m., but she was determined to start off her new phase with Luke on the right foot.

  “Mmm.” Luke didn’t stop reading.

  “Have you seen Miss Abigail? Is she better?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Thank goodness.” The news made Peggy enormously happy. She guessed she’d grown fonder than expected of Luke’s great-aunt. She poured herself a cup of bad coffee, threw away Miss Abigail’s used teabag from last night, and sat at the table across from Luke. She had prepared herself. It was time to bring up the marriage proposal. “I’m glad we cleared the air last night. Aren’t you?”

  Luke continued reading.

  Peggy toyed with the salt and pepper shakers. Mr. Pepper and Mrs. Salt, her mother called them. They were married, and when you passed one, you were supposed to pass the other as well, so the two wouldn’t be separated. “Building bridges. That’s what some people call it.” She emphasized “bridges.”

  Luke’s newspaper rattled as he turned a page.

  “You know what Tiffany said yesterday? She said Tom dreamed he bought the Brooklyn Bridge. Isn’t that funny?

  The Brooklyn Bridge, like, ‘And if you believe that, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.’ ”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Peggy’s enthusiasm ebbed. There wasn’t a trace of recognition in Luke’s response. There wasn’t a trace of yesterday’s openness. As if their breakthrough hadn’t happened. She asked, “Is anything wrong?”

  “No,” Luke said from behind the newspaper.

  “You’re acting quiet.”

  “I am quiet.” A pause. “And I’m not a morning person.”

  “Me neither. I guess you’ve figured that out.” A squeaky, sk
ittish giggle escaped before Peggy could stop it. It was awkward, this one-sided dialogue. Help me out, Luke, she thought. Give me something to work with.

  Miss Abigail bustled in, wearing her going-out clothes and her coat.

  “Good morning!” Peggy sang out for the second time in three minutes. “Are you feeling all right?”

  The old woman stared at the counter. “Young man, where did you put my teabag?”

  “That was me,” Peggy said. “I threw it out.”

  “But it was still good for two or three more cups.” Miss Abigail looked certifiably puzzled, then brightened up. “It’s nearly time for meeting, dear; you’d best be getting your coat.”

  During church, Peggy sat quietly next to Miss Abigail and tried to pay attention to the service, but her mind wandered to Tiffany enumerating the ways Peggy stood out from the Connecticut crowd. In their pearls and low-heeled pumps, the women in these pews, no matter their age, seemed to have stepped out of another time. The fashionable crowd in New York would consider them laughably conservative—dowdy, even—but Peggy thought they looked exactly right in the clean, plain meeting house. And Tiffany had been correct about this, too: No one else here was in black. Peggy might as well have been out all night clubbing and worn the same outfit to church.

  The Yankees, their heads bowed in unison, began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. What would these people think if they knew Peggy was just going through the motions? She said her own silent prayer instead. Please put an end to war. Please make all the sick people better. Please stop global warming. Please give Bex a baby. It seemed too much to ask for, even from God.

  Luke was waiting at the curb to drive them home when Peggy and Miss Abigail emerged into the sunshine, but Peggy told him she’d walk. She’d finally explore downtown New Nineveh, eat lunch with Miss Abigail at the house, and go back to New York early to see Bex. She’d had good luck with the Sedgwicks this weekend and didn’t want to push it.