Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  “How many layers do you have on?”

  “It’s a Yankee thing,” he whispered, and kissed her again, hugging her to him and wrapping his long legs around her as they proved to each other, at long last, that something longed for and anticipated could indeed be better than either could have expected.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Of all the beds in the world, none could be as sublime as this. The sheets were silky, the pillows soft, the covers cozy and protective. Peggy stretched luxuriously, turned from her left side to her right, and, when she felt ready, opened her eyes.

  Watery gray light trickled in through the snow-plastered windowpanes as snow continued to fall, tranquilly now. The world was otherwise still. Peggy recalled the line from Robert Frost: “The sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.”

  Asleep next to her, Luke looked as he had the first morning she’d seen him: His chest—bare this time—rose and fell with his breathing, his lips were parted slightly, his reddish lashes fluttered as his eyes moved beneath his closed lids. It was all so familiar, she thought, curling her body into Luke’s. This scene, and the fit of this man’s body against hers, both now and last night. She shivered involuntarily, remembering their lovemaking, and then the full impact of what she had done hit her.

  She’d slept with Luke.

  She’d betrayed Brock and hadn’t thought of him once as she’d done so.

  And—her fingertips went cold, her lungs threatened to collapse—she had officially put her annulment in jeopardy. She and Luke had consummated their marriage, and there was nothing to keep Luke from telling that to the judge, if he wanted to cause trouble for her. She imagined having to call off her wedding to Brock, cancel her wedding dress order, unbook the church. If she was lucky, Brock might agree to reschedule the wedding for next year or the year after, once Peggy had gotten a full divorce—she could still file for divorce, couldn’t she, even if the annulment could no longer be granted? But she couldn’t imagine Brock forgiving her once he learned what a conniving liar she was, not just a woman who’d had an affair, but one who’d had an affair with a man to whom she’d secretly been married for months.

  Peggy slipped out of Luke’s bed, dressed quickly in last night’s clothes, and tiptoed to her own room, hoping Luke wouldn’t wake before she was able to get to her car and drive away. Safely in her own room, she called Bex.

  “You did?” Bex started to laugh. “Really? Padma,” she called, “you owe me twenty bucks!”

  “Peggy slept with Luke?” Peggy heard Padma shout. “Woo-hoo!”

  Peggy was horrified. “Bex, are you at the store?”

  “Where else would I be at noon on a Sunday?” Bex answered. “Not that it matters. Thanks to the snow there’s no one on the street. I was just about to send Padma home.”

  It was noon? Good grief, Peggy thought, she and Luke had made Miss Abigail miss church. Mortified at the thought of Miss Abigail sitting alone in the kitchen, no doubt aware of exactly what had happened last night, Peggy told Bex she’d see her at the apartment later.

  “You’d better look outside.”

  Peggy drew aside one of her room’s lace curtains.

  The world had turned black and white overnight. Snow lay in thick white stripes on the bare black branches of the Sedgwick maple, which stood out, eerily beautiful, against the white gray sky. Main Street was entombed in snow; the black-shuttered white houses along it were heaped with snow; the Sedgwick front yard had disappeared. Peggy couldn’t see the garage on Luke’s side of the house, but she knew that the driveway leading to it would be buried as well.

  “Looks like I have some shoveling to do,” she told Bex, and hung up. There would be no way to get her car otherwise; no way to get home. She tiptoed down the front staircase, carefully avoiding the squeaky step, thinking she and Luke really ought to fix it, wondering why they hadn’t thought to do so on any of the weekends they’d spent nailing down every other loose board in the house.

  Well, the stair would have to be Luke’s to fix now. She would not be coming back to New Nineveh until the court hearing in April. She couldn’t face him any more than she could face the thought of what she’d done. She would tell Miss Abigail about the annulment today, whether Luke wished her to or not.

  Miss Abigail wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the ladies’ parlor, still waiting, two hours past meeting time, in her Sunday clothing with her hands folded. She wasn’t in the den or the library—Peggy could barely look into that room, at the decanter and glasses that still held the undrinkable port, without going weak at the memory of last night. She carried the glasses and decanter into the kitchen and set them on the drainboard. It was odd—there was no used teabag, no cup in its usual spot. The kitchen was undisturbed, as if Miss Abigail hadn’t eaten at all today. Where could she have gone without breakfast or lunch?

  What if she’d gotten it into her head to shovel the driveway?

  “Miss Abigail!” Peggy dashed back down the stairs and into the mudroom, where shovels stood at the ready. Had the old woman taken one and gone out into the cold? Peggy yanked at the mudroom door, which opened toward her with a slide of snow onto the slate floor. “Miss Abigail?” she yelled into the monochrome garden, but nobody had come this way; the snow was untainted by footprints. Peggy ran to the front of the house and opened the main door. There were no footprints here, either. Calmer, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. Miss Abigail would be in her bedroom. Why hadn’t she thought of that in the first place?

  She knocked on Miss Abigail’s door. “It’s me. Are you in there?”

  No one answered. She knocked and called again and then opened the door a crack. And there was Miss Abigail lying in bed, facing her, an amused smile on her lips as if she were about to share her deepest secret.

  “There you are!” Peggy smiled back at her, still breathing heavily from running through the house, still too glad to have found Miss Abigail to think it strange that she was in bed this late. Peggy flipped the switch near the door—the room was dark—but the ceiling light didn’t come on. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it to church. But I’m not sure there’s a meeting today, anyway. The power is still out, and have you looked outside? We’re completely snowed in! Is that why you decided to stay in bed? I bet this is the first time in your life you’ve slept past noon.”

  Miss Abigail continued to smile.

  “By the way, the port? You didn’t miss anything. I’m sorry to say, not everything improves with age. It’s a shame, but it was fun trying it.” Was that why Miss Abigail was smiling? Had she suspected as much all along?

  There was no answer. It was as if the old woman were in a trance.

  “Are you all right?” Apprehensive, Peggy tiptoed up to the bed. “Can I get you anything? Are you not well today?”

  He should have known. Luke sighed and rolled over. It was the second time in his life he had awoken full of peace and anticipation, thinking Peggy was next to him, only to discover she had gone. He had hoped to put his arms around her, to make love to her again. He wanted to tell her they belonged together. He wanted, using any and all measures necessary, including pleading or asserting his husbandly prerogative, to persuade her to call off the annulment. We haven’t been married very long, he would tell her, an appeal to her common sense. Let’s give it more time. He’d wanted to do and say all of these things before the day and its responsibilities intruded, before the magic of their night together had faded away. But, he reassured himself, dressing quickly in last night’s wood-smoky clothing, it wasn’t too late. Surely he could still take Peggy aside this morning and say his piece.

  “Luke!”

  His name rocketed toward him.

  “Luke!”

  His hopes soared again. Peggy was calling for him. It wasn’t too late.

  And then he realized she wasn’t calling, she was shrieking.

  He knew his great-aunt was gone before he touched her still, bloodless cheek. He didn’t know what to do next. Dully, he dialed the Fi
orentinos, and within minutes, Annette and Angelo had waded through what had to be waist-deep drifts in their front yard and were in Abby’s bedroom, snow still caked on their jeans. Angelo helped Luke cover Abby with a clean white sheet, and then went out to shovel the Sedgwick House front path, while Annette spoke in low tones on Luke’s cell and Peggy wept quietly in the corner. Luke was desperate to catch her eye, to calm her with strength he knew it was his duty to show, but she wouldn’t look at him. Luke knew she was avoiding him on purpose.

  And he was ashamed for thinking about last night while Abigail Agatha Sarah Sedgwick lay dead.

  For Peggy, the afternoon passed slowly, excruciatingly, in hushed words and cups of undrunk stovetop coffee and untouched sandwiches from Annette, who’d traversed the snowy garden, back and forth, bringing provisions and supplies. As dusk fell, Peggy was sitting alone in the ladies’ parlor, crying over the tea rose bath products she’d brought Miss Abigail, which she’d found unopened in Miss Abigail’s bathroom, when Annette came and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Listen,” she said, and Peggy tuned in to the thunderous scraping she’d barely registered coming from a distance outside. “The snowplows are nearing Main Street. It should be clear within the hour.”

  Soon, Peggy knew, people would come and take Miss Abigail away.

  She called Brock. She longed for the familiar sound of his voice. She caught up with him in a hotel in Victoria, Australia. Peggy wondered momentarily if he was surrounded by blondes in bikinis, then concluded she had too much else to contend with to worry about it. “I miss you,” she said. “I really wish you were here right now.”

  “Me too, Pegs.” Brock said his good-byes; he was due downstairs for breakfast. Peggy next dialed Bex, who offered sympathy and counseled Peggy to stay and comfort Luke as long as he needed her to.

  “Trust me. He doesn’t need comforting. The man is made of stone.”

  “Stay anyway. You don’t want to come back here and face the reality of our failing business.”

  Peggy hadn’t thought she could feel worse. “It’s that bad?”

  “I finished the bookkeeping, which was easy because we had no customers today. We’ve officially had the most dismal first quarter ever.”

  Peggy returned downstairs. Ernestine and Stuart Riga, the Fiorentinos, and Lowell Mayhew were all in the grand parlor in their snow boots, speaking to Luke in hushed tones. In typical New Nineveh fashion, the news had traveled quickly. The visitors would have had to hike through the snow to get here.

  A solemn Mayhew took her aside. “I’m sorry for your loss. She was a remarkable lady, and I know you made her happy.”

  Peggy started to cry again.

  Mayhew fumbled in his pocket. “You just take your time, and when you’re ready, you and Luke should bring in the will, and we’ll all go over it together. There’s no rush.” He produced a handkerchief and held it out to Peggy.

  She twisted it in her hands, wanting to wipe her face but not knowing what she would do with the hanky once she had. “I have no right to this house. We never even told her about the annulment. If we had, she would have gone back to her old will. I was going to break the news to her this morning, but—” She cut herself off with a sob.

  “The agreement was you were to remain married for a year or until Miss Abigail’s demise. Legally you’ve met those conditions. You may inherit her estate as outlined in the will.” Mayhew chuckled sadly. “Provided you can find it.”

  Had Peggy been coherent, had she cared about anything beyond wanting Miss Abigail back, she might have asked the lawyer what he meant. As it was, two uniformed men had just arrived with a gurney, and she followed Luke to the foyer to escort them to Miss Abigail’s room. But the men said it was fine; there was no need to go upstairs again, they would find their own way.

  Peggy couldn’t help judging Luke’s demeanor. He was relaxed, serene, impassive—just as he’d been that first day in Lowell Mayhew’s office. Just as he’d sounded over the phone New Year’s Eve, when he’d effortlessly agreed to separate, as if their marriage, friendship—however one might describe it—had been meaningless. And now Miss Abigail was gone, and even that didn’t seem to matter.

  “Don’t you care?” Peggy hissed to Luke as the men navigated the gurney around the bend in the staircase. “Don’t you see what we’ve done? In one night, we ruined everything.”

  “She didn’t die because we slept together, Peggy,” Luke said with uncharacteristic directness. He didn’t make his hands into fists and put them in his pockets. He didn’t slide his glasses onto his forehead and rub his eyes, didn’t exhibit any of the telltale behaviors Peggy now understood signaled his discomfort. As far as she could tell, he felt nothing about anything. Bex was right. Repressed, withholding, unemotional—emotionless—the stereotype fit Luke.

  “You are the coldest human being I’ve ever met in my life.” She stalked back to the grand parlor with Luke behind her, grief rolling over her in terrible, relentless waves, along with the knowledge that her life in New Nineveh had at last come to an end. She would likely never see these people again. Cowardly as she knew it was, she couldn’t face saying goodbye to them. Explaining what had become of her would have to be Luke’s problem, too.

  After a time, the two men in uniform came down the new staircase. Miss Sedgwick had died peacefully of natural causes in her sleep, they assured Luke. They walked the gurney toward the front foyer and had nearly lifted it across the threshold when Peggy remembered something.

  “Stop,” she said. “This isn’t right.”

  She led the men back to the door in the grand parlor, the coffin door. She opened it. More snow tumbled in; the drift was chest-deep. “We’ll have to shovel it out,” she told them.

  “No, Peggy,” Luke said. “That will take too long.”

  “So be it.” Peggy was determined. “Miss Abigail was a Sedgwick. And this is the only way a Sedgwick leaves this house.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mud Season

  Late March snow, no matter how ferocious its arrival, tended to depart quickly, and the vast drifts that had paralyzed the town dwindled rapidly into dense, icy islands on lawns and roadsides. Even before the roads and sidewalks were clear, the condolence calls began, and Luke went through the motions as every person he had ever met came through the house with casseroles and sympathy until he had lost his appetite for both. He waited for an uninterrupted moment with Peggy, a chance to tell her all the things he’d wanted to for so long, but the morning after the funeral, he awoke to discover she had left for good, her room bare except for Elizabeth Coe Sedgwick’s brooch and a brief note on the dresser: “I’ll see you at the hearing.” He left messages on her cell phone, asking her to please call him, but she didn’t.

  They met at the courthouse two weeks later, on what turned out to be the first day of a week of torrential April rain that would hammer away the last of the ice heaps and leave all of New England knee-deep in mud. It was in this downpour that Luke said good-bye to Peggy for what he knew would be the last time, after they had both perjured themselves and testified that they had not consummated the marriage, and the judge pronounced the annulment final: The marriage no longer existed, had never existed, at least in the eyes of the state.

  Afterward, Luke walked Peggy to her car, rain dripping from his hair, his fingers wrapped around Elizabeth’s brooch, which he had put in his pocket. “Mayhew and I are going to his office to discuss the will. You should come.”

  Peggy looked across the green to Mayhew’s office and, as he’d expected, shook her head.

  “We need to get a plan together, too, to sell the house,” he persisted. “It would be good to get it on the market soon, so the summer people can see it.”

  “Whatever you think is best,” Peggy said, her voice flat.

  Luke was glad he’d brought the brooch. He took it from his pocket and held it out to Peggy, hoping she would take it and that when she did, she would let her hand linger in his.
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br />   She didn’t move.

  “Abby would want you to keep it.”

  “It belongs to the family. I’m not family anymore.” Black rivulets of eye makeup flowed down Peggy’s cheeks—rain, Luke knew, not tears. Peggy had not cried since the day they’d discovered Abby—not at the funeral; not afterward, when Abby’s casket was lowered into the Sedgwick plot at New Nineveh Cemetery; not during the condolence calls, where she never let on she was anything but Luke Sedgwick’s steadfast, capable wife. After nearly seven months as a Sedgwick, Peggy Adams, overemotional New Yorker, had turned into the consummate WASP.

  It was a shame.

  The rain fell. Peggy gave Luke a long look, and he knew the time to tell her all he’d left unspoken had passed. “At least take the brooch.”

  “I can’t.”

  She got into the car. Luke remained on the sidewalk in the rain, watching her go, hoping she might look back, knowing she wouldn’t.

  It was fitting that her last visit to New Nineveh would be on a day as dreary and stormy as the day of her first visit. Peggy turned the windshield wipers to top speed and tried to brush away the rainwater that had collected in the driver’s seat as she’d gotten inside her final rented-car-of-the-week. At the stoplight, she looked up Main Street one last time. Soon some new family, no doubt wealthy New Yorkers longing to play country-house on the weekend, would buy the Sedgwick House and fill it with televisions and blaring music. They would outfit the kitchen with status appliances and granite countertops, and install showers in the bathrooms and hire an exterminator to kill the mice, and stop off at Budget Club on the way back to the city Sunday evenings to buy bulk laundry detergent and flats of diet soda. Luke would move who knew where, free of the Sedgwick burdens. Would he someday regret giving up the house? Peggy peeked into the rearview mirror. He was still in front of the courthouse, a lone figure in the rain, newly unburdened, soon to be independently wealthy again. Peggy guessed there was no regret. She only hoped he’d find a good home for Miss Abigail’s cat.