Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

by Lauren Lipton

  When his cell phone rang, he picked it up absently. It would be Hubbard, scolding him for leaving the game before it had started.

  “It’s Bex,” the caller said. “You need to do something about Peggy.”

  His foolish heart beat harder at the sound of Peggy’s name. He was quiet, forgetting for an instant Bex was on the line.

  “Is it true you love her?”

  The question shook him. He concentrated on the road, the way it rushed up to meet his headlights, only to be swallowed instantly underneath his wheels. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From that friend of hers, Tiffany. Is it true?”

  When had Bex spoken to Tiffany? Luke was perplexed at all of it, most especially that Bex would think it appropriate to ask him such a personal question. Did all other people in the world speak this freely about their private thoughts and emotions?

  “Because if you love her, you need to tell her right away.”

  A deer was grazing alongside the road. Don’t jump, Luke willed it until he was past. “But she’s getting married.”

  “You can stop her. You show up at the store, get down on one knee, plead your undying love, and I swear she’ll call it off.”

  “She’s not going to call it off. She wants to marry this guy—Brock.”

  “Wrong. She only thinks she wants to marry him. I’ve been telling myself, ‘Keep your mouth shut, Bex; she’ll come to her senses on her own.’ But she’s so damn dense, she needs a shove, a big, dramatic gesture, or she won’t see the light until it’s too late.”

  Luke laughed at the absurdity of expecting him to stage a scene. “If you want drama, you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t like drama, not in private and definitely not in public. Peggy knows that.”

  “What do you call those preppy pants, the kind where the right front leg is, like, yellow, and the left front leg is pink, and the right back leg is, I don’t know, green, and the left back leg—”

  “Go-to-hell pants,” Luke interrupted. “What’s your point?”

  “You people are lunatics,” Bex scoffed. “You can wear pants like that, but you won’t say one little ‘I love you’? Don’t be such a WASP, Luke. You’ve got five weeks before you lose Peggy forever. If that doesn’t call for drama, nothing does.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Late Spring, May

  Peggy was at the point in her wedding planning where she was no longer the slightest bit interested in the wedding.

  She was only looking forward to not having to do any more planning.

  The chores were infinite. There were registries to be decided upon and fittings to be booked and missing RSVPs to be tracked down (why couldn’t people just commit to a yes or a no?) and seating arrangements to be reshuffled. She’d spent hours on the phone as Sharon Clovis questioned her reception decor choices. She’d fielded call after call from her parents, questioning her entire life.

  “But you and Luke loved each other,” her mother argued one night two weeks before the ceremony, as Peggy sat at Bex’s coffee table cataloging wedding presents in a special binder she’d bought to keep track of everything, just as she did at the store. Just as she had done, she corrected herself: The store would close for good that Friday. Peggy had barely been able to keep up with the bargain hunters who came to the going-out-of-business sale to buy not just products, but the display shelves and light fixtures—expensively dressed buzzards picking gleefully at a carcass.

  She wondered if Luke had returned all of their wedding presents or if they were still up in the vacant room on the third floor. She should call him, she thought, to make sure he had. No, she shouldn’t. He had manners. He’d do it on his own.

  “See you at the wedding, Mom. Drive carefully.” Peggy was tired of other people telling her whom she loved. She was heartbroken over closing the shop, exhausted from working sixteen hours at a stretch. She envied Brock. His documentary wouldn’t wrap up for another week, and by the time he returned to New York, the wedding would be a few days away. His only responsibility would be to show up and say He Did.

  He would show up, wouldn’t he?

  Peggy opened the apartment door, peeked into the hall to make sure the coast was clear of neighbors who might catch her in her bathrobe, and knocked on Josh’s apartment door. It was nine o’clock, Bex’s bedtime, but when Josh let her in, Peggy could see her friend on Josh’s new sofa with her feet propped on a pillow.

  “I’m trying to muster the energy to get up and go to sleep,” Bex said. “Is everything all right?”

  What if Brock changes his mind? Peggy was about to ask, when the notion came to her: Bex’s answer would be of no comfort. If Peggy kept her worries to herself, she wouldn’t have to get upset when Bex inevitably wisecracked, We can only hope.

  Bex struggled to get her feet from the couch onto the floor. “Sweetie, I have news, and you’re not going to like it. I have to go on bed rest, starting tomorrow, doctor’s orders. I’ve got the okay to be in your wedding, but I’ll have to sit the entire time. I can’t so much as walk down the aisle. I’ll have to lie down for the reception. I hope that’s okay.”

  Peggy had thought Bex was about to say she didn’t want to be in the wedding. This seemed like nothing in comparison.

  “But wait, there’s more,” Josh added in a television announcer’s voice.

  “I’m no longer allowed to climb any stairs, so I’ll be staying with my parents in their elevator building until the babies are born. And I’m not allowed to come down to the store. You’ll have to close it on your own.”

  Josh squeezed Peggy’s shoulders sympathetically. “Those Cohen twins. Not even born yet and already causing all kinds of trouble.”

  Peggy waited for Bex to correct him with “Sabes-Cohen twins.” But Bex’s lips were trembling. “Please don’t fall apart, Peggy. I feel so bad about this. You shouldn’t have to close up our business by yourself.” A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another.

  It took Peggy aback. She had no intention of falling apart. She could handle a seated bridesmaid. She and Padma could close up the shop. “You don’t need to cry. I’m fine, truly. You just focus on having healthy babies. Nothing else matters, Bex.”

  Bex’s tears were gone nearly as quickly as they’d begun. “You aren’t anxious?”

  “What’s the point? Worrying won’t solve anything.”

  Josh and Bex looked at her as if she were a stranger.

  The last day at ACME Cleaning Supply passed in a haze. Peggy and Padma boxed up the remains of the unsold merchandise and swept out the dust from the corners, stopping only when Bex’s mother made a surprise appearance with takeout Chinese food, saying, “I thought you could use lunch.” Sue Sabes spread out the white cartons and paper napkins on the front display counter and fixed Peggy a heaping plate. “Bex is at home, beside herself, the poor thing. I guess you’re taking this just as badly?”

  “It feels like someone died,” Peggy admitted. So much loss, she thought. First Miss Abigail gone, and now the store.

  “You two will be just fine. Bex’s dad and I lost our first store. Disco Duds, it was called. Turned out it was a just plain dud. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but we learned from it, and Sabes Shoes came out of it, and we all survived.”

  Peggy picked at her beef with broccoli and waved forlornly at Jorge, the UPS man, who was passing by the propped-open door in the sunshine with a hand truck laden with boxes. He made a sad face and waved back.

  “Eat, sweetie.” Sue waved her hands over the food. “Problems are worse on an empty stomach.”

  Perhaps Sue was right. “You sound just like Bex.”

  “Where do you think she got it from?” Sue replied. “Will you be okay, Padma?”

  “Oh, it’s all good.” Padma grinned at Peggy through a mouthful of fried rice. “I forgot to tell you, Peggy. I got accepted into pre-med.”

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice.

  Padma and Sue looked idly toward the doorway.

&
nbsp; Peggy nearly choked on her lunch.

  Luke was here in her shop. Luke Sedgwick.

  “I need to talk to you.” He picked his way between the stacked boxes. “May we speak privately?”

  Something went wrong with the annulment. It was Peggy’s first coherent thought. She surveyed the wreck of her business in desperation and pointed toward the sidewalk, but Luke asked, “Do you have a back room?”

  Padma and Sue, who Peggy realized hadn’t the faintest notion who this person was, were observing with growing curiosity. Sue set down her chopsticks. “Should we leave?”

  “Not at all. Finish your lunch.” Peggy grabbed Luke by the arm, marched him into the now empty supply closet, flicked on the light, and shut the door. “Make it quick.”

  Luke inhaled deeply.

  Peggy waited. There was barely enough room inside for the two of them. She pressed herself against the bare shelves on the back wall. Was it warm in here, or was it that Luke was so near to her, as close as he’d been the night they’d made love? Don’t think about it. “What do you want?” Her brusque question filled the close space. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve gone out of business. I’m pretty busy out there.”

  “I’m so sorry, Peggy.” Luke’s eyes were grave behind his glasses. “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.”

  She wouldn’t cry. If she cried, he might try to comfort her, and once he did, her tears might never stop.

  He breathed in again. It was as if he were drinking his fill of the closet air, as if there hadn’t been enough air to breathe in Connecticut. She felt a sneeze coming on and rubbed her nose furiously. There wasn’t a thing left in this closet, yet it still reeked. She wouldn’t miss all the smells, that was for sure. “Please,” she said, “just tell me why you’re here.”

  At length, he breathed out. “You can’t get married.”

  It was the same phrase he’d used when he’d called her at the store back in September. Panic squeezed her so tightly, she thought she’d burst. She refused to give in. There was no way she was going to swoon in this closet in front of Luke Sedgwick. “Don’t tell me you and I are still married.”

  He laughed—nervously, Peggy thought. “That’s not it. Don’t worry.”

  His hand was inches from her hip. She thought of the way he’d undressed her in front of the fire, his warm fingers sliding off her Fair Isle sweater, his warm mouth on her bare skin.

  She had to get out of this closet.

  “You can’t marry him because…” He hesitated.

  A balloon of anticipation began to expand inside her.

  “Because…” He couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  She understood. He was about to tell her he loved her, just as she loved him, just as she’d loved him for months, maybe since the night she’d met him. She felt ready to lift her feet from the closet floor and float gently up to meet the tin ceiling.

  “Because why?” she urged. Tell me. She had to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.

  “Because you don’t love him.”

  The balloon began to deflate. “I don’t understand.” She was trying to give him a chance to redeem himself. There was still the possibility he might redeem himself. Because I love you, Peggy. Say it.

  “You don’t love him. Bex told me.”

  The balloon deflated, and she fell back to earth. “Did Bex put you up to this?” Peggy jerked open the closet door. Padma appeared busy taping up a packing box, and Sue had started peeling the “Lost Our Lease” banner from the window, but neither, Peggy was sure, had missed the last line.

  Sue waited for as long as it took to crumple up the banner and toss it in the garbage. “What has my daughter done now?”

  “You’re Bex’s mother?” Luke stumbled a little over his own deck shoes as he exited the closet and stood silhouetted ethereally against the cloud mural on the back wall: an otherworldly visitor with a popped collar. “I’m Luke Sedgwick, a friend. How is she?”

  “Driving me nuts,” Sue said, “but fine.”

  “You’re Luke Sedgwick?” Padma’s jaw dropped.

  Just what Peggy needed—for Padma to tell Sue who Luke was. She threw the salesgirl a glare as intense, she hoped, as one of Miss Abigail’s. It must have been a decent facsimile; Padma stopped talking, though she did wink and give Peggy a thumbs-up sign.

  Peggy dragged Luke out onto the sidewalk and down half a block until there was no chance Padma and Sue could overhear. “Let me set the record straight. Bex is my best friend, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” She moved to the side as a taxi stopped at the curb directly in front of her and a couple climbed out. “I love Brock, and he loves me, and we’re getting married the way we were always supposed to, and that’s the end of it.” She moved to the other side as a father with a baby on his shoulders passed between them. “So you tell Bex she’d better get used to it. And as for you…What’s this?”

  Luke had taken a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his shirt—the pink button-down again, the one he’d worn under his sweater the day they’d met in Lowell Mayhew’s office. He offered the paper to her.

  She didn’t take it. “What is it?”

  “Read it.”

  “What is it?” She refused to give him the satisfaction of following his orders.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He unfolded the paper and glanced around, as if to make sure no one was observing them. “An aphrodisiac will disappear—” His voice cracked, and he started again:

  “An aphrodisiac will disappear,

  delusional, like permanence or wealth—

  a shimmering, as if love were a ghost—

  and yet my passion for you seethes and sears

  without an end. Late April leaves can’t crave

  caress of dew, sunlight’s sweet splash, more than

  I pine for your embrace, us turned to one;

  when harsh reversals scar, the thought of you will salve

  like summer wind in autumn; deep red blood

  surging along with mine, staid genes worked hot

  from your electric charms, as all my moods

  succumb to your sweet fire, and perfect wit.

  Now you are all I live for—loving you—

  in fleeting world of lies, you are the truth.

  People were listening. Here were a restaurant deliveryman chaining his bicycle to a parking meter, a kid carrying a violin case, a woman sliding a letter into a mailbox—poised, attentive. Luke raised his eyes from the paper, and Peggy stared at him, stupefied, not knowing what to say, so that the first thing out of her mouth was the first thought to surface: “But this is for Nicki.”

  “Nicki? I broke it off with her in November.”

  “But I saw this poem before that, when I…” She was so embarrassed, she thought she might melt. “Snooped.”

  Luke stepped back into the unmarked doorway of Rubicon, a women’s clothing store. The face of the boutique’s security guard appeared behind a small porthole. Luke jumped. He really is nervous, Peggy marveled.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t snoop.” Luke refolded the paper and again held it out to her. “It was never for anyone but you.”

  All over again, Peggy and Luke were the only two people on earth. Peggy heard, from another universe, the faraway sound of her name; she heard a siren, an idling truck, passing conversations; she ignored it all. Luke loved her. His feelings, which his upbringing wouldn’t allow him to express directly, were in this poem, clear as day.

  “Peggeee!” There it was again, a voice calling her, a high, faraway cry as if from deep inside Peggy’s brain. A call to action. What’s it going to be, Peggy? We’re all waiting, Peggy. Make your choice.

  But there was no choice.

  She had made it in December, in the garden of the Colonial Inn. She had chosen Brock. The guests were on their way, the dress was waiting in her closet, she was getting married in a matter of days, and the time for choices was over.

  How c
ould Luke show up now?

  She crossed her arms over her chest and blinked back the tears in her eyes. She would not cry. She would stay strong, the way Miss Abigail would.

  “Peggy Adams!” The shout came again, and it was Padma who’d been calling her—calling to get Peggy’s attention, because Brock was striding toward her up the sidewalk, a beaming grin on his dimpled, chiseled face.

  “You’re too late,” she told Luke, and turned hurriedly toward her fiancé, who was half a block away, utterly oblivious to what was happening, to the fact that the tears flowing down Peggy’s cheeks were for anyone but him.

  “This is it,” Peggy heard Luke say from behind her. “If you walk away, I won’t go after you. I won’t burst into the church yelling, ‘Stop the wedding!’ ”

  She turned back around. “I know,” she said. “You don’t like scenes.”

  And then she hurried to meet Brock, leaving Luke alone with his poem, her heart aching as it never had, wondering if, were she to look back, she would see Luke suffering in the same way she was. Pain builds character. It was one of the Sedgwick family slogans, and Peggy understood that if she was somehow able to live through this, she would be stronger. She’d have to be.

  “Hey, Pegs!” Brock tackled her and engulfed her in a hug. When he let go, Peggy glanced over her shoulder one last time.

  Luke was gone. In the space of a few seconds, it was as if he hadn’t been there at all.

  So that was that.

  Luke had had a moment on the way into the city, navigating the Volvo through the thick of Manhattan, in which he’d thought, We’ll live here, and the image had popped full-blown into his head: he and Peggy, happy ever after in a cramped but charming apartment filled with books and sunlight; a baby’s crib; trips to the park and the museums; the city noise a lullaby to rock them all to sleep at night. He’d been struck with the sure knowledge that this was how things were meant to turn out, and his only job had been to convince Peggy of the same. Hadn’t he planned his appeal to Peggy, thought of nothing else for days? Hadn’t he neglected his investment portfolio, ignored repeated phone messages from Ver Planck, daydreamed through the repairs he’d embarked on with Angelo, to write and rewrite and edit and re-edit the grand gesture, the poem that would make Peggy his and bring with her a life he’d only recently come to understand was the life he’d always wanted? He’d not considered this a gamble he could lose.