Mayhew emerged from the courthouse as Luke lost sight of Peggy’s car. “You ready?” Luke asked, eager to stop dwelling and put his mind to something practical.
“If you’re up to it.”
Luke nodded his assent, and the two sloshed across the green to Mayhew’s office, where Geri greeted Luke and asked for Peggy. “Where has she been? I haven’t seen her since the funeral, poor dear.”
Luke walked around behind the desk and took both of Geri’s freckled hands in his. He had to start somewhere, he supposed. “Peggy and I have split up. She’s gone for good. I wish it weren’t the case, but it is.”
He watched Geri’s eyes well up.
Stay strong. You’re a Sedgwick, Luke instructed himself. He had let down not just himself, but the entire community. The news about Peggy and him would be around town by the end of the day.
Mayhew cleared his throat and patted his secretary on the shoulder. “Luke, let’s go into my office. I presume you brought it?” He waited, as if expecting Luke to produce something from inside his slicker.
“Brought what?” All Luke had was Elizabeth’s brooch.
“The will,” Mayhew clarified.
“But you have one on file. Don’t you?”
Luke sat at the kitchen table, his head throbbing, his stomach growling. It was three o’clock in the morning and there was nowhere else to look. After five sixteen-hour days of turning over every last metaphoric stone in this house, pulling out every drawer, turning back every rug, peering under every cushion and between every mattress, there was nothing left to do but concede defeat. The only copy of Abby’s new will, which his great-aunt had apparently insisted on taking home with her for safekeeping against Mayhew’s counsel, had vanished into thin air. And without it, without this updated version that gave Luke and Peggy co-ownership of the Sedgwick House, Luke knew, the previous version would prevail. The version Mayhew had tried to warn him about months ago at Seymour’s. The version leaving the house and everything in it, all of Abigail Agatha Sarah Sedgwick’s earthly possessions, to a single beneficiary who, at the moment, was padding silently across the drainboard.
“I salute you, friend,” Luke said to Quibble. “It’s all yours.”
Quibble’s yellow eyes glowed in the reflected light. He leapt to the floor and darted from the room.
It was all unfolding as it should. Luke didn’t want to live in this house, had never wanted to, and now wouldn’t be able to. Abby’s will had seen to that: It called for Mayhew to hire a caretaker, using funds from the Sedgwick Family Trust—someone to come in every day, feed Quibble, and see to it the house wasn’t overtaken with cobwebs and dust. Abby hadn’t forgotten Luke, though. “To my devoted nephew, Luke Silas Sedgwick IV, I bequeath my box with the star, so he may be free to pursue his poetry and live where he wishes,” she had written in the will. Luke had been moved by the gesture. The box didn’t exist, but she had recognized his desires and had done her best to grant them.
His stomach growled again. When was the last time he’d eaten? Luke opened the refrigerator, but he had long since gone through the casseroles, and the shelves were bare: a bachelor’s fridge. He remembered having seen celery in the vegetable crisper; it might still be good.
The drawer was stuck, as if somebody had tried to cram it with too much food. Luke tugged and tugged at the bag of celery. It took some doing, but he managed to get the bag out—if only because the celery had rotted. So much for that. He threw the celery in the garbage and went back to close the drawer, but there was something else inside, a brown paper bag.
Luke opened the bag and took out a small jewelry box.
It was old, made of black leather dry and cracked with age.
“Star Jewelers” was stamped on the lid in gold letters.
Luke wouldn’t allow himself to hope. He spoke aloud into the kitchen. “The box.” It had to be. A small box with “star” on top. Almost exactly as Abby had described.
He opened the lid a crack, and something gleamed. He lifted it all the way and beheld what was inside.
It was a platinum engagement ring with a tiny, delicate sapphire set off by two diamond chips. Charles’s gift, Luke knew, to Abby. Elegant and simple, just as she would have wanted. Charles would have had to save for it for years.
And, though Luke was hardly a jewelry expert, worth two or three thousand dollars at most.
The inheritance.
His inheritance.
“On the bright side, you said you were sick of soap.” Bex placed a “50% Off” placard next to their soap pyramid and returned to the chair in which she now spent most of her workday, resting her hands on her belly. At twenty-one weeks, the twins were kicking constantly. Bex said it was like hosting soccer practice in her uterus.
Now she held a bar of wasabi-ginger soap and waved it at Peggy. “You’ll never have to smell me again,” she made it say in a squeaky voice.
Peggy didn’t laugh, but she knew they were making the correct choice—the only choice—by closing the store. There was no money left, no way to save it, no new location they could afford. And they’d had a good run. So many small shops didn’t last more than a few months, let alone a decade.
She hadn’t believed Luke at first when he’d called with the news about Miss Abigail’s lost will. She’d thought it was a ghoulish Yankee practical joke. When she finally understood he was being serious, she’d had to repeat the information over and over. “You’re saying Lowell didn’t have a copy? Don’t all lawyers keep copies of important papers?”
“Not if their clients tell them not to. She always insisted on keeping her own records, Mayhew said. There’s not a shred of Sedgwick paperwork anywhere, he told me. I suppose she was worried about the family’s privacy,” Luke had explained tonelessly.
“And she left everything to Quibble? Can’t you contest it?”
“I could. And I’d probably win. But I don’t want to. If you do, I can’t stop you.”
She had declined without a second thought. She might not get her million dollars, but she’d be able to sleep at night.
“How are things?” Luke had asked.
She wanted to tell him it felt strange to spend weekends in the city. She wanted to ask whether the redhead was happy to have him all to herself again. She wanted to confess that she missed his companionship, she missed him. “Things are great. Busy, with the wedding planning and all. How are you? Are you holding up all right? Are you eating?”
“Why wouldn’t I eat?”
Now Peggy unfurled the “Going Out of Business” banner she’d ordered for the front window and searched for tape in the drawer under the register. “I should never have done something so insane, staying married to a stranger for money.” She could barely look Bex in the eye. “I should have known it wouldn’t work.”
“Cut it out. You took a chance and it didn’t pay off. So we’ll all do something different. I’ll stay at home with the babies awhile, until we figure out what to do next. And you can enjoy just being Mrs. Clovis.”
“True,” Peggy said as the doorbells jingled. She didn’t bother to look up; what was the point of being friendly to customers when the store would be gone in a matter of weeks? Besides, the clerks at Bath were downright cold, and their business was thriving.
With a little moan, Bex lifted one swollen foot and tried to prop it on the opposite knee but got stuck halfway to her goal and gave up. “Unless,” she went on, “you’re having second thoughts.”
About Brock, Bex meant. It was the only time since the engagement Bex had said anything negative. Peggy had known her friend would, sooner or later. “I’m not having second thoughts,” she declared. She wasn’t, after all. Hadn’t she just booked the honeymoon? She and Brock would be spending a week in Mexico. A whole week together, before he had to go back on the road for baseball season.
“Second thoughts about what?” a voice asked.
Bex and Peggy both looked up for the first time at their customer.
“
Please tell me you’re getting back together with Luke,” said Tiffany Ver Planck.
The day after the rain ended, Luke put on his Wellingtons and squelched downtown to go to the library. The picketing had started up again and grown in numbers. Where there had once been a handful of protesters, now there were dozens, treading a muddy circle in the still dormant grass. Luke noted they’d replaced the “STOP the Sedgwicks” signs with “STOP the Budget Club”—Angelo and Annette’s doing, he assumed, and certainly a step up from having his own name plastered all over the town green. He nodded at Annette, who smiled, but a number of people refused to acknowledge him. On the spot, Luke gave himself until the end of June to leave New Nineveh.
“Save our town! Save our town!” the marchers chanted.
Seeing Luke, Angelo lowered his sign and the two moved away from the demonstration. “Real sorry about Peggy. I heard it from the guys down at Seymour’s, and Annette heard from Debby.” He gestured toward the owner of the Cheese Shoppe. “We’re all real sad for you. First your great-aunt and now this.”
“I’m all right.” Luke shrugged and continued before Angelo could be any more supportive, “I need help patching up the place, though, before I move out in two months. I’d pay whatever you’d like. Interested?”
“Move out?” From under the brim of his Red Sox cap, Angelo appeared confused. “Where are you going?”
“Back to Hartford. Just until I decide what to do with myself.”
“You mean you’re not going to live in the house?”
Luke answered lightly, “It seems Abby had other plans. But I would like to leave it in decent shape. Will you help?”
“Absolutely. We’ll figure out the details later.” Angelo nodded back toward the group. “You sure you won’t rethink your decision, Luke? Stop the Budget Club? It would mean a lot to a lot of people.”
Luke scanned the green—the boarded-up shop windows he’d pelted with eggs as a teenager, the abandoned Nutmeg Coffee Shop, the antiques dealers and Realtors who trafficked in the remains of the dead: centuries-old farmhouses built by doughty settlers, firearms used to win the country’s freedom, fine furniture imported from England—possibly by Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick himself—on which generations had worked and dined and slept. It was as if the entire state were being sold off, piece by piece.
“I wish I could stop it,” Luke told Angelo, “but it’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.” Curvy, bouncy, glossy, sparkly, Tiffany was a vision in monogrammed sandals, a divine being who had arrived in Peggy and Bex’s shop by way of Palm Beach. “You love Luke, he loves you, I could drive you up to New Nineveh right now and you could be Mrs. Sedgwick again in no time. So what if you got married the first time under odd circumstances? Plenty of couples get together for far weirder reasons. In a way, every marriage is a financial transaction. Don’t you think, Bex?”
Bex’s face was incredulous. “You love Luke?”
“No.” Peggy slapped her hand down on the counter. “Let’s talk about something else. Tiffany, how’s Tom?”
Tiffany examined her shoes. “We’re fighting.”
Of all the responses Peggy had been expecting, this had not crossed her mind.
“It’s this Budget Club deal he got Luke involved in—the one you were protesting on the New Nineveh green. Oh, I’m on your side,” Tiffany interjected as Peggy started to invoke her “I have a right to free speech” speech. “While we were in Palm Beach I happened to call that nice, crunchy-granola couple from your reception. I wanted to ask them to help me put in an organic garden at the Greenwich house, and Annette filled me in on the protest. I had no idea people were so upset! Why does New Nineveh need a superstore, Peggy? Don’t they know it only encourages mass consumption of the cheap, petroleum-based plastic products that are destroying our planet?”
“But you drive an Escalade.” Peggy pointed out the window. The giant black SUV was parked at the curb—with a driver today, she noted.
“And you own how many homes, all using up energy when you’re not there?” Bex chimed in.
“Just three.” Tiffany looked almost hurt. “But this isn’t about me. It’s about you, Peggy. You do too love Luke.” She turned to Bex. “She does. And vice versa.”
“She’s marrying another guy,” Bex said.
“Are you crazy?” Tiffany yelled.
“A sports cameraman. He travels all the time. He cheats on her.”
“Once, Bex! It was a onetime mistake!” Peggy yelled in return.
Tiffany took Peggy’s hand. “What are you doing?” Her voice was a cashmere twinset, her words a string of perfect, gleaming pearls. “Please don’t throw your life away on the wrong man when the right one is yours for the taking.”
Peggy could feel the anxiety twisting up around her throat. Damn you, she told it silently. Why can’t you leave me alone?
She swallowed it down. “I’m marrying Brock the first Saturday in June. There’s no more discussion. My decision is made, and it’s final.”
Topher Eaton, who lived in Katonah, across the New York State line, hosted poker that evening. Luke was surprised the wives were there as well.
“Carrie and Liddy are having a committee meeting for one of their charities. The Daughters of New England Night of Something or Other.” Hubbard, bored as always, stood near the doorway with a drink. He’s been putting on the same act since he was thirteen, Luke thought. Doesn’t he get tired of it?
“Night of Hope.” Carrie came over to take Luke’s coat, a hungry gleam in her pterodactylian eyes, Liddy at her elbow, giving Hubbard the opportunity to head to the bar. “It’s in the fall. You’ll come, won’t you, Luke? Even without…” Carrie let the absent name speak for itself.
“Peggy,” Luke said. “You mean ‘without Peggy.’ ”
Liddy took his arm. “There will be other single girls there. I personally know three who would die to meet you. Have you met Kiki Spencer? You’d like her, Luke. She’s one of us, you know?”
Something hot and dangerous ignited inside Luke’s chest. “No. I don’t know. I’ve never understood ‘us.’ You’d do me a great service to explain it.”
Liddy and Carrie exchanged glances. Liddy picked at a hangnail.
“Us,” Carrie took over. “One of us. People like us.”
The hot, dangerous thing burned hotter, an enraged insect buzzing inside him. A hornet—no, a wasp. I’m one mean, angry WASP, Luke thought giddily. He said, “As opposed to somebody not like ‘us.’ Tiffany Ver Planck, for example.”
“Exactly!” Liddy looked shocked to hear the consensus coming out of her own mouth, as if she’d not ever verbalized this observation—that Tiffany Ver Planck was decidedly Not Our Kind, Dear—to anyone.
“Who isn’t here tonight, I notice.”
“Well, naturally!” Carrie flashed a malignant smile. “She’s not in Daughters of New England. And Tom isn’t in town tonight anyway, so we thought, why not take advantage of the opportunity and have the committee meeting?”
“That way nobody feels left out.” Liddy was clearly satisfied with her own explanation and looked as if, having made herself clear, she would like to escape to the safety of the Eatons’ kitchen. The time-honored rules of etiquette dictated that Luke should now allow her to do just that, but Luke had played by the rules his entire life. He was tired of the rules.
“Tell me, Liddy. Was Peggy like us?”
The two women glanced at each other again.
“Truth?” Liddy wavered.
“Absolutely,” Luke assured her.
“She marched against you on the town green. She showed too much leg at your great-aunt’s reception. She was a spoil-sport at the tailgate—”
“She was cold,” Luke tried to cut in.
“—and she was entirely too chummy with Tiffany.” There was no stopping Liddy. “We even tried to invite her into Daughters of New England, and she didn’t seem the least bit interested. As if she didn’t have the slightest idea what an honor
it is. Not just anyone can be a Daughter of New England.”
“No,” Luke mused. “I don’t suppose just anyone can.”
Carrie slipped her arm through his. “Really, Luke. You’re better off without her.”
“Committee time!” Creighton Simmons called from the kitchen.
“Poker time!” Hubbard mimicked in a falsetto from his place at the Eatons’ dining room table. Simmons and Eaton, too, were seated. There was one empty chair, Luke’s.
Luke hesitated.
Eaton began to deal. “You in or out, Sedgwick?”
The eyes of the room—the friends he’d known his entire life; their wives, whom he’d known half his life—were on him.
“Out,” Luke declared.
He was unclear exactly why he had chosen to leave, but he drove back to New Nineveh with a heady sense of freedom he hadn’t experienced since the first time he’d driven this car alone as a newly licensed teenager and realized he could have taken it anywhere, gone anywhere, without anyone having a say in it. Now he had the audacious notion of having outgrown his friends. He could, if he chose to, simply not see them again. He wouldn’t miss them. He’d remain friends with Ver Planck—the only one he genuinely liked. The rest, well, perhaps he’d gotten from them what he’d needed to.
Mating Rituals of the North American WASP Page 29
