Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  She floated through the rest of the day, fortified at lunch time by Liddy’s chili (spicy hot, no; temperature hot, yes) and a few more swigs from Luke’s flask. At game time, she sat in the wooden bleachers of the Yale Bowl, a blanket across her knees, with Luke on her right, hoping he’d take her hand, although he didn’t.

  In the fourth quarter, with Yale ahead by fifteen points, Kyle leaned forward drunkenly and called down the row to Topher, who was sitting on Peggy’s left, “Somebody’ssss buying me a Porterhouse!” He added to no one in particular, “When we win, Crimson over there is taking ussss to dinner.”

  Carrie was sitting on her husband’s other side, with Paige. “You didn’t make another bet, did you, Toph?”

  Topher hiccuped. “There’s still time.”

  From his side of their row, Kyle drank from his smuggled-in flask and guffawed.

  Peggy leaned forward and called to Kyle, “Topher’s right. In ’68, Harvard got two touchdowns and a two-point conversion in the last forty seconds. Anything can happen.” She reached out to return Topher’s high five.

  Luke looked astonished.

  “I’d worry if I were you, SSSedgwick.” It was remarkable Kyle hadn’t passed out. His face was florid, his words slurred. “Seemss your wife is consorting with the enemy.”

  Peggy drew the blanket tighter around her knees. “My point was, it ain’t over till it’s over.” A Harvard player fumbled, then recovered, the ball. The Harvard side of the bowl roared. Barclay and Bradley, too, squealed with excitement until Liddy shushed them, saying, “Wrong team, boys.”

  Kyle raised his flask. “A toast. To life.”

  “You’re the only one with a drink, Hubbard,” Topher said.

  Kyle ignored him. “To life. Y’never know where iss gonna take you.”

  “That’s bull.” Luke spoke up. “There are no surprises.”

  “Notsso,” Kyle slurred. “Didjou know lassyear you’d be married?”

  “He’s got a point.” Topher raised an imaginary glass. “Anything can happen.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Kyle took a swig.

  “You’ll drink to anything,” Luke retorted, but Peggy saw he was smiling.

  She couldn’t get to sleep.

  It might have been the alcohol. Peggy hadn’t felt drunk, but she’d lost count of how much brandy she’d had over the course of the day, and she supposed it could be affecting her sleep. Or the cold could be the problem; it had settled back into her bones as soon as she and Luke had returned to the Sedgwick House. It might be that her room felt haunted again, full of the whispery noises that quieted if she consciously listened for them. Or was it she who was haunted? She couldn’t get Luke out of her mind—the embrace of his coat around her shoulders, the way he’d looked almost proud when he’d asked her, on the way out of the Yale Bowl, how she knew so much about football.

  “I dated a sports fanatic—a long time ago.” She still couldn’t decide why she’d added the qualifier, except she’d thought she’d seen Luke frown. It was that disapproval that had her tossing and turning. Was it possible Tiffany had been right after all? Luke couldn’t really have feelings for her, could he?

  A noise, a soft cheep, came out of the darkness. Peggy stopped breathing and listened. The room was silent once again.

  He couldn’t. It wouldn’t make any sense if he did. He’d not ever showed a shred of romantic interest in her. He could have held her hand today during the football game if he’d wanted to. None of the others would have thought anything of it.

  Cheep, came the sound again, and Peggy realized what it was: her cell phone, telling her she had unopened voice mail. For once glad for, rather than annoyed by, a communiqué from the outside world, she reached out for the nightstand. Soon a dispassionate electronic voice was informing her she had four new messages.

  The first was from her mother, more tense than usual. “Peggy, call us.” The second was from her mother. “Peggy, call your dad and me.” The third was from her mother. “Patricia Ann Adams, why in the world don’t you answer your phone? Call us right now.” The final one was from Bex. “Peggy, will you please call your mother? She’s been leaving messages at the store all day.”

  Airless lungs contracting, a litany of potential Adams family disasters whirling across her imagination, Peggy punched in her parents’ number.

  Her mother didn’t bother with hello.

  “When were you planning to tell us?” The yell was earsplitting. Peggy suspected Miss Abigail could hear it on the second floor. She dove underneath the ugly plaid comforter. The phone’s illuminated screen flickered like a fire in a primitive cave.

  “Tell you what? Mom, what’s the matter?”

  “What’s the matter? It seems you’ve gotten married. At least, so says a person named Abigail Sedgwick in a letter inviting your father and me to Christmas in Connecticut. My only child gets married and doesn’t invite us to the wedding? What about Brock? Who is this Sedgwick woman? Are you in trouble, Peggy? Have you joined a cult? Do you need us to deprogram you?”

  “You got the letter?” It was as if Peggy’s brain were on a ten-second delay.

  “The post office forwards our mail. We’re in an RV park, Peggy, not on Mars.”

  It took Peggy nearly an hour to recount to her mother, and then her father, the now familiar, fictional tale of her and Luke’s whirlwind courtship and marriage; to explain that she and Brock had broken up.

  “We can’t understand why you didn’t tell us about this.” It was her father’s turn on the line. “Unless you’re ashamed of us.”

  Peggy could hear her mother in the background: “It’s typical Peggy, Max—not thinking of anyone but herself.”

  “She was always ashamed of us,” her father said. Peggy could tell he had his hand over the phone mouthpiece, but she could hear every word. “That’s why she hasn’t let us meet her husband.”

  I’ll be getting a massage this week, Peggy thought. Her neck ached from hunching over in the blanket cave. She stuck her head out for air and lay on her back, eyes wide in the darkness. She repeated, “I’m sorry,” and, “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” and, “Of course I love you,” until they were meaningless lines. “You’ll meet him sometime.” It was a last-ditch effort to appease them. “I promise.”

  “Oh, we’ll meet him.” Her mother had retaken control of the phone. “Over Christmas, when we come to Connecticut.”

  Luke turned onto his side in his bed, uncomfortable, and folded one leg up and out from underneath the covers. The room, though cold, was stuffy, as if the air had been sucked out of it. The bright light of a half-moon shone through his window. He was restless. He couldn’t remember the last time in his adult life he’d been without a woman this long. This, he knew, was why he’d not been able before to break away from Nicki. It had been easier to put up with her moods, her shallowness, her cigarettes, than to do without the pleasures of silky skin and pillowy lips and soft hair. For the first time since their breakup, he wondered what Nicki was doing. Was she, too, lying awake? He could call her. It was after one in the morning, but she was a night owl.

  His phone was in the pocket of his pants, which were draped across the chair next to his bed. He dialed and listened, his breath quickening. Nicki’s line rang once, then twice, then three times with no answer. He hung up and slipped out of bed. Nicki wasn’t the one he wanted to speak with anyway.

  That he’d known the door would be shut didn’t quell his disappointment when he found it so. He couldn’t imagine what he’d expected on this, his second middle-of-the-night foray to Peggy’s bedroom. Did he think the door would be ajar? That Peggy would be beckoning in a diaphanous nightgown? Still, he lingered in the hallway, not ready to admit defeat, telling himself if he stood here long enough, she might sense that he was missing her after their day together, hoping to talk to her, and come out. Quibble, on his way down the hall from somewhere, mewed softly and brushed up against Luke’s leg in the dark, but by the time Luke reached dow
n to pet him, the cat was gone. Luke was just about to return to bed when he detected Peggy’s muffled voice from behind her closed door.

  She was awake! He leaned closer, as he had during his last late-night wandering. This time there was no muffling rain, and he could distinctly make out a one-sided conversation. Most of the words were unintelligible, but he heard her say, “… love you…”

  She had to be talking to him.

  Discouragement pressed upon Luke’s shoulders. He didn’t like the idea of Peggy with another man and a life outside of New Nineveh. Strangely, he had started to think of her as belonging to him—his to share the burden of caring for Abby, to work with in easy silence. He’d been flattered the previous weekend in the basement, when Peggy had confided in him about her friend Bex’s possible pregnancy. As they continued their chore, Peggy had added that Bex was her business partner and that her husband lived down the hall.

  “Sounds like the perfect marriage,” he’d said. “All that time alone.”

  She’d knocked off a particularly stubborn piece of fungus with her broom. “What’s so great about being alone all the time?”

  He hadn’t known the answer. He was thinking were he ever to settle down for real, after his and Peggy’s annulment, he’d like it to be with someone like Peggy. Someone who was a friend first.

  From down the hall, his phone rang. Nicki. She must have seen his missed call and was returning it. He stood, torn, straining to catch more of what Peggy was saying. His phone rang again. Perhaps all of this was a sign that he was, as Nicki had said, taking his marriage more seriously than he needed to. Peggy wasn’t his. She was someone else’s. Why should Luke have to forsake all others? Why should he cut Nicki out of his life altogether because of some misplaced sense of husbandly loyalty?

  By the time he’d made it back to his room, the ringing had stopped. He debated with himself, climbed back into bed, and dialed.

  “Where are you?” Nicki was using the husky, come-hither voice that always made him want to come hither.

  “In bed.” He ignored the “this is wrong” ache in the pit of his stomach. “Where are you?”

  “In bed.”

  The sex had been matchless with Nicki. There was no doubt about it. His ex had eroticism to spare, and she was fearless.

  “In bed, naked,” she continued.

  He could practically feel her breath, close in his ear. It would be so easy to ask her to go on.

  “Should I go on?” she asked.

  Yes, he thought. No.

  He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want her to. He wanted to hang up and pretend the phone call had never happened. What a pussy.

  “I knew you’d call, Luke.” The barely discernible flick of a cigarette lighter igniting. A pause; an inhale. “It’s almost three weeks on the dot.” An exhale. “Told you so.”

  “Nicki, when I called a minute ago—it was a mistake. I hit the wrong button. I apologize for disturbing you.” He prepared himself for a barrage, but Nicki, displaying a degree of self-discipline she’d never managed while they were together, hung up without a word.

  FOURTEEN

  Peggy no longer minded Luke’s silence at the breakfast table—she’d grown almost comfortable with it—so when he spoke to her Sunday, it caught her unawares. She stuttered a greeting and reached up to comb her bangs with her fingers.

  “I trust you slept well.” He let his newspaper flutter to the table, stifling a yawn as he did so.

  “I did, thank you.” She hadn’t, but this time instead of listening for ominous noises, she’d agonized over the prospect of her parents’ visit. It wasn’t only that she couldn’t imagine the Adamses mixing with the Sedgwicks. It was that this was all turning out to be infinitely complicated. When it came time for Peggy and Luke to go their separate ways, it would be difficult enough telling Miss Abigail. Now she’d also have to break the news to her own family. It seemed marriage, even a marriage of convenience, was not to be entered into lightly.

  “Well, I didn’t.” Luke picked up his cup and stared into it, as if hoping more coffee would appear. “It wasn’t very restful around here last night. There was a lot of talking, coming from your side of the house.”

  Peggy felt her face redden. She hadn’t known Luke could pick up on a phone conversation all the way in his room. Worse, if he’d overheard hers, he must know her parents had found out about him—that now there were two more people she and Luke would have to lie to.

  “I feel terrible, really. I’ve tried to keep this relationship a secret—” She broke off, self-conscious at using “relationship” to describe their arrangement. Luke would think she liked him. She glanced toward the doorway, hoping for the fortuitous appearance of Miss Abigail, telling her it was time to leave for church. “I mean, I’ve tried to keep this life in New Nineveh separate from my, well, real life. I was hoping the two worlds wouldn’t collide.” She sighed. “So what should we do with my parents at Christmas?”

  “Your parents?” Luke’s face changed from tired and grumpy to bewildered.

  “Right,” she said. “When they come to visit.”

  Luke stared at her. “Your parents are visiting? Here?”

  “Yes, Luke. Here.” She couldn’t understand his confusion. Hadn’t he just said he’d overheard her on the phone? “Your great-aunt told my parents we got married. Naturally, they want to meet you. So how do you want to handle their visit?”

  Luke’s face was white. “I shouldn’t have agreed to this. It’s beyond dishonest. It’s morally wrong.” He stood up and started out of the room, but Peggy caught him by the sleeve, hurt at the way he unfailingly made her feel like the corrupt one, like the interloper. Here she’d thought they were getting to be friends, and he still assumed the worst of her.

  From afar, she could hear measured footsteps: Miss Abigail was approaching at last.

  “Do you think”—Peggy kept her voice low—“that I like this loving couple act any more than you do? Do you think I enjoy duping your great-aunt, and your friends, and my parents? Do you think I don’t wish every day this were over?”

  “Good morning, Abby,” Luke said.

  Peggy let go of his sleeve. Miss Abigail stood in her shabby cloth coat that couldn’t possibly keep her warm enough, if it was as cold today as it had been yesterday. The old woman glanced from Peggy to Luke and back again. “Good morning,” Peggy said, frozen in Miss Abigail’s searching eyes.

  “It’s time for church, Peggy,” Miss Abigail said at last. “I trust you both slept well?”

  Later that afternoon, Peggy bundled up against the weather as well as her wardrobe would allow and was outside loading her bags into the car, shivering, when Luke came around from the back garden. He carried a cache of reflective stakes over his shoulder, like arrows; Peggy knew the stakes were to mark off the edges of the driveway to help guide the snowplow once winter finally arrived. He handed her half of the bundle, saying, “We should have done this weeks ago when the ground was still soft—it’s probably near frozen already, after yesterday.”

  Peggy sighed to herself and spent the next half hour helping Luke plant the stakes. When they were through, instead of thanking her, he said, “Let’s go to the roof. There’s a leak I’ve been meaning to investigate.”

  “I can’t. I have to get back to the city.”

  “I see.” He was not happy. She could tell. He put his hands in his pockets. Across Main Street, a green Volkswagen Beetle slowed as it passed by, as if it could sense an interesting skirmish developing on the Sedgwick House lawn.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Peggy couldn’t understand it. They’d gotten along so beautifully yesterday. What had changed? He’d seemed so annoyed that she’d been on the phone last night. So she’d ruined his beauty sleep. Why couldn’t he let it go?

  “Nothing’s the matter,” Luke said.

  The green car made a U-turn at the traffic light and started slowly up their side of Main Street. “Good, then.” Peggy walked toward her o
wn car. “I’ll see you late Wednesday night. I’ll come up for Thanksgiving, but I have to go back to the city right after dinner.” She was about to explain that she couldn’t abandon Bex at the shop on the day after Thanksgiving—“Black Friday” in the retail world, the busiest shopping day of the year—when she saw Luke was no longer listening. The Volkswagen had turned into the Sedgwick House driveway.

  Peggy watched it, too. Were Luke and Miss Abigail expecting a visitor?

  But the driver didn’t get out of the car. She leaned out her window, a woman with long red hair and a smoking cigarette. Peggy knew in a flash who this was.

  “Hello there.” The redhead disregarded Peggy entirely, turning her face to Luke. “I hope you got to sleep last night.” She flashed Luke a seductive smile, pulled her head back into the car, and drove away.

  Heading back to the city, Peggy clutched the steering wheel and punched the accelerator aggressively, but nothing could get the sight of that woman out of her mind. It was one thing for Luke to have a girlfriend, another thing entirely to rub said girlfriend in Peggy’s face. It was humiliating. It didn’t matter that the marriage wasn’t real; she’d still ended up with a husband who was cheating on her. Welcome to WASPville.

  “Thoroughly uncalled for,” Bex agreed when Peggy got home. “At least you keep your extracurricular affairs to yourself.”

  Peggy was not consoled. How liberating it would be to call off this deal with Luke, to tell her parents the invitation to Christmas had been a big mistake, to no longer have to care whether Luke was seeing that floozy or not.

  “How were things at the store?” Peggy asked, perusing her closet. She was due to meet Jeremy in an hour.

  “Not good. We had maybe three people all afternoon. I sent Padma home early.”

  So much for calling off her fake marriage. “People are probably just staying home because it’s cold,” Peggy said, heavy-hearted.

  “I have two other pieces of news. Ready? Guess what competing chain store is moving in across the street? Bath.”