Obediently, holding a tumbler brimming with amber liquid, Sterling walked up the grass. “Have you met Livia?” Dicky asked, opening his arms around them like they had just signed a peace accord.
“Hello,” Sterling said, shifting the glass to shake her hand.
Livia was taken aback by the blatancy with which he looked her up and down. Dicky didn’t bat an eye. “Livia is considering law school,” he said. “I thought you might have some advice for her.”
“Where did you go?” Livia asked.
“UCLA.”
“Really?”
“Not Ivy enough for you?”
“I was just expecting somewhere in the East.”
“Francis,” Oatsie called, “don’t leave that glass there. Someone will break it.” She marched off, and Dicky Sr. drifted away, drawn inexorably toward the lawn, where Greyson and Charlie and Dicky Jr. and Dominique had begun a game of badminton. Livia and Sterling were left alone. In Duff family lore, of which Daphne had become an evangelist, Sterling was always portrayed as a lady killer, and Livia had not expected someone so terse and dissipated looking.
“I needed a break from the village,” he said.
Livia was confused. “Greenwich Village?”
“No, this village. All these people who know my parents. This little world where everyone reports on everyone. Not that Hong Kong is much better. The expats are all tied up together.”
“Kinky.”
He stared at her, then half smiled.
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. “Do you like it?” she prodded.
“Being tied up with expats?”
“Hong Kong.”
“I like how the Chinese do business.”
“How is that?”
“Drunk.”
She laughed. Again, she waited for him to say something; again he only stared at her in silence. His blankness made her feel itchy, jumpy. “Where did you go for undergrad?” she asked.
He took the nearly empty Bloody Mary pitcher from a low table and poured the thick dregs into her glass. “Bowdoin. I’m the lone holdout from Princeton, although I don’t think Francis counts because we had to buy his way in.”
She couldn’t resist the bait. “What do you mean?”
“Little Franny couldn’t keep his eyes on his own paper. The teachers looked the other way. The kids noticed. Eventually, someone got tired of it and busted him. Rather than let him swing, Mom and Dad made the whole thing go away. He got caught again at Princeton. He almost got kicked out. Princeton got a remodeled library of dramatic arts.”
“I didn’t know any of that.” Livia studied Francis, who was out on the lawn with the others. He swiped lazily at the birdie and missed.
“It wasn’t in the Christmas letter.”
Livia had always liked the Duffs. They were painless companions. Dicky and Maude lived within familiar confines: the Ivy League, the Junior League, The Social Register, Emily Post, Lilly Pulitzer, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Windsor knots, cummerbunds, needlepointed tissue box covers, L.L. Bean, Memorial Day, Labor Day, waterfowl-based décor. They were old-fashioned, myopic, beyond reproach. Greyson was a modernized version of his parents, still an upright citizen but loosened up, enlightened, gone wireless. Dicky Jr., though only thirty, seemed to belong to an earlier generation. He had the joylessness of someone who had seen too many cycles of war, social upheaval, and financial ruin to bother with the caprices of modern youth. According to Greyson, Dicky Jr. had been a dour Young Republican in his teens and in his twenties applied himself to his finance job and to a methodical investigation of eligible women that ultimately yielded a female mirror image who fused with him in a marriage as cold and perfect as the bond between two adjacent blocks in an igloo. She was known as Mrs. Dicky and would not be arriving until just before the rehearsal dinner—work, Dicky Jr. explained. Since entering his thirties, he seemed to be settling in beside an eternal fireplace for a lifetime of newspaper rattling and irritable rumination. Francis was the classic baby of the family, indulged and flattered, but Livia had always assumed that Sterling, not Francis, was the black sheep.
She had been interested to meet the protagonist of the lurid stories Daphne told with mock horror, and now a whiff of Sterling’s allure came spiraling down as though on a breeze. His willingness to abandon the family press release was titillating, and he had a lazy, reptilian confidence that appealed to her. Recognition dawned on her—here he was, the rebound guy, gift wrapped and delivered to her door. If she and Teddy got back together, she wouldn’t be so angry at him for having strayed once or twice if she’d had a fling of her own.
“But you decided not to finish,” Livia said to him. “Law school.”
“I needed to get farther away.”
“You’re wearing seersucker pants. How far can you have gone?”
For the first time, he smiled fully, showing teeth that were unexpectedly white and even, a movie star smile. He looked down at his lower half. “Don’t tell anyone, but this seersucker is ironic.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Don’t go to law school.” He was serious again.
She rolled her eyes. “I never said I was. I never even said I was thinking about it. I’m studying marine biology.”
“Like Jacques Cousteau?”
She smirked. “That’s exactly what your father said.”
He shrugged. “It’s the obvious thing to say. I’ve never met anyone over the age of six who wanted to be a marine biologist.”
“I’m going to get a Ph.D.”
“That’s what you want?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Well, as long as you’re so definite.” He sipped his drink. “Sounds great. Chasing grant money, chasing fish, chasing tenure. Sounds fun.”
Livia said, “You told me not to go to law school, and now you’re making fun of me for having something else I want to do?”
He stepped closer and clasped her forearm. His gaze was unwavering, not intrusive but strangely inactive, like his eyes had landed on her and he could not be bothered to move them. “I’m only teasing. I’m not used to talking to people who know what they want.”
He released her. She couldn’t tell if anyone had noticed the touch; no one seemed to be looking. “What makes you so immune to it all?” she asked.
“To what?”
“The village.”
“Nothing. I’m not. I’m undone by the evils of my upbringing and the turpitude of my kind.” He smiled.
“Sterling,” Oatsie called from across the deck, “what are you saying over there?”
“Just talking, Grammer,” Sterling said. He drank his whiskey, his eyes suddenly dark, like Oatsie had kicked his plug out of the wall.
Lightly, Livia said, “Your grandmother told me I have beautiful hair and would make a wonderful lawyer.”
He snorted. “I’d rather see you on the prow of a boat, looking for dolphins.”
“And you’ll be somewhere in Asia, wearing ironic pants.”
“In Asia my pants are very, very sincere.”
She stepped closer to him. “You said you don’t talk to many people who know what they want. Do you know what you want?”
He did not blink. “Always.”
In the air around them, the evening tuned its orchestra. “What?” she asked, feeling bold and fearful at the same time.
“Right now,” he said, “I want to sit down.” He pivoted around, turning her with him, and sat in an Adirondack chair, pulling her onto its arm. The two of them surveyed the lawn: the bright, running figures and the white flash of the birdie.
• • •
THE LOBSTERS NEEDED COOKING. Winn whisked the first unlucky six two at a time from their box on the kitchen floor and dropped them on their backs in the pot of boiling water. The remaining lobsters crawled slowly over one another, purplish, alien, their bound claws sad and impotent. They had been packed with layers of green and brown seaweed, and some of t
hem wore glossy wigs where it had caught on their plates. Winn did not know why the seaweed was included—when Livia was a child, he had, out of laziness, told her the lobsters ate it, but she’d consulted a book and corrected him. Most likely the box was supposed to seem homey for the lobsters, not for their benefit but so people could feel better about the way their dinner spent its final hours. He had already covered the kitchen table with a red and white checked tablecloth and put out green salad, the corn and tomato salad, sliced French bread, and plastic plates and utensils. They would eat on the deck or the lawn, not ideal for a strenuous, two-hand food like lobster but better than having all the mess inside. Biddy came in with an empty wine bottle and looked in the pot. “They’re flipping their tails,” she said. “I hate how they flip their tails.”
“They’re none too pleased about things,” Winn said. “Leave the lid on and it’ll be over faster.”
“I feel sorry for them.”
“They’re overgrown insects.”
“I feel sorry for them anyway.”
“They have very basic nervous systems, Biddy. They don’t feel things the way we do. They’re just reacting. They’re not emotional.”
Biddy stood for a moment, looking down into the pot, billows of steam rising around her. Carefully, she replaced the lid. She turned around and smiled brightly. She held out the wine bottle. “Do we have any more of this? Our nearly in-laws say it’s exceptional.”
He pulled another bottle from the refrigerator and opened it for her. Watching her go, stiff shouldered, back outside, he noticed Agatha and Piper jumping around, cheerleading the men and Dominique as they ran complicated patterns across the grass, a shuttlecock bouncing above them, the net disregarded in favor of a kind of free-roaming scrimmage. Agatha leapt in the air with her knees bent so her white dress floated up and the dirty bottoms of her bare feet flashed him, and for a single filthy second he fell through a trapdoor and into a delirium of Agatha on her hands and knees in the grass, his fingers gripping a golden handful of her hair. The vision lasted no time at all, striking him like the blast of air from a speeding train. Then he saw the deck, his guests, his wife, the lawn, and the braided paths of the badminton players. He willed the thought away, and it went.
He loved Biddy—indeed she was deeply lovable, and loving one’s wife was a requirement of marriage. She was so entirely the kind of person he should be married to that he loved her, in part, out of gratitude for her very appropriateness. There had been times, only a few times, when her prim, calm, polite, essential Biddyness had seemed to waver (for instance, when he had seen her straining in that tub of French water, calving Livia into a cloud of blood), and so, too, had his love tipped and teetered. But even he, with his accountant’s view of emotion, grimly consigning its bits and pieces to the correct columns in a secret ledger, recognized there was more to his feeling for Biddy than simple appreciation. He could not be sure he had ever been in love with Biddy, or with anyone for that matter, but Biddy was the woman he had felt the most for, which was enough for him to consider himself fortunate in matrimony. He would not give himself over to fantasy, especially not when he had lobsters on the stove. If he let his thoughts run wild, then thirty years of marital fidelity, professional integrity, and social rectitude might be trampled into the same muck that stained the bottoms of Agatha’s feet.
Livia was sitting on the arm of Sterling’s chair, talking, her face tilted down to him while he gazed at her crossed knees. Beyond, Agatha and Piper had stopped jumping and were talking with their heads close together in the intent way women had, pawing each other’s hands and arms with little darting touches to mark salient points. Once, when she and Daphne were seventeen, Agatha’s parents had gone to Mauritius for the month of December and declined to invite their daughter along, arguing that her short, two-week break would disrupt their stay, and Agatha had spent the holidays with the Van Meters, giving Winn two weeks of nervous stomach. At his own Christmas party, he had watched Agatha perch on the arm of a chair occupied by their next-door neighbor, Mr. Buckley, a man so ancient he resembled a reanimated mummy and who had once reported Biddy to the police for driving with one headlight out. Agatha laughed at whatever drivel was wheezing from his desiccated lips, and eventually the geezer grew bright eyed and bold and rested one Methuselan hand on Agatha’s bare knee, which she rewarded by tapping that claw with her fingertips as she spoke, causing Winn to turn away in disgust and spill eggnog down his pant leg.
Sterling was the only young man not engaged in sport, though he looked like he could use the exercise. Around him, women lounged like seals on a rock. Dominique made a spectacular save, smacking the birdie at Greyson from just inches above the grass. She, too, had been at the Christmas party when Agatha captured Mr. Buckley’s aged heart, but she had been in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on Winn’s signature Black Forest Yule log. Daphne shouted encouragement through cupped hands. Biddy pulled up a chair beside Maude and the grandmothers. Sterling, imperial, enthroned, looked up at Livia and spoke. He touched her knee with one finger. In three strides Winn was at the door. “Livia,” he called. “Would you come in here?”
THE SOUND OF her name barked as though through a bullhorn made Livia jump. “What?” she said. Her father stood in the doorway, beckoning her with an eggbeater motion of one hand. She crossed the deck, chin high, ignoring Oatsie’s raised eyebrows and Celeste’s wink. “What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t be difficult, Livia. I want you to set out that bluefish pâté with some crackers,” Winn said.
She wondered if she had done something wrong by sitting on the arm of Sterling’s chair. If her father had decided to run such obvious interference, then maybe she had wandered beyond flirtation into the red lace slums of apparent desperation. But no, she thought. Sterling had been the one to draw her down beside him.
“That’s what you shouted at me for?”
“I did not shout.”
“You did, too. You completely interrupted my conversation.” She glanced back at where Sterling was sitting motionless, lizardlike, one hand wrapped around his glass. “Haven’t you done enough today?”
“What are you talking about?”
“ ‘How is Teddy?’ ” she said, mimicking her father’s chummy tone to Jack Fenn.
He gave her a long, steady look over his glasses. “I’ve known the Fenns for a long time,” he said. “I was only being polite.”
“I’ve had enough politeness,” Livia said. “Why can’t you be loyal to me and just the tiniest bit impolite?”
“There’s no reason to be impolite,” said her father.
She began Dr. Z’s trick, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth and counting to five.
“Stop it,” he said, pointing at her. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You know what. That breathing thing. That shrink thing.”
She pushed his finger away. “If it’s so important to you that I forget about Teddy, you should leave me alone out there.”
“What does one thing have to do with the other?”
From the stove came the hissing and clicking sounds of the lobster pot boiling over. “You should check on that,” she said. She did not know if he watched her go, but she strode across the deck as though it were a stage and settled, preening, back on the arm of Sterling’s chair.
OATSIE WAS DRINKING her vodka neat because she did not care for the way Maude made Bloody Marys, and the Van Meters did not have any clam juice with which she might have been able to doctor one to her satisfaction. Lately her drink of choice was a bullshot. Her friend Doris had put her on to the concoction—vodka mixed with cold beef bouillon—and she took it as a sort of curative tonic, even though her grandsons laughed. Cold beef vodka soup, they called it. She watched Sterling sitting with that Van Meter girl on the arm of his chair. He looked like he could use some nutrition mixed with his booze. He had gotten fat but also sallow. The girl didn’t appear to mind. A wedding wa
s always an aphrodisiac, full of temporary pairings driven by vicarious hope. Love was in the air, weak and snappy as static electricity. Let them do as they liked. She had met Harold at a wedding, and their marriage had been tolerable enough. She sipped and watched the boys and the Egyptian girl running on the grass. Francis swatted listlessly at the birdie, missing it.
Waskeke made Oatsie uncomfortable. She disliked the expectation that she should always be looking at the water, the sky, and so on. The sun had fallen into the trees, leaving behind air that was sweet and full of entomological strummings, but Oatsie could find no delight in a sunset. Beauty strained her nerves. The loveliness of the evening twisted itself into the sensation of longing—but for what? For more. For more, or for some end to it, some climax, but the sweetness only stretched on, like a violin string that is tuned to unendurable tautness but will not snap. No release, only fading, light leeching away.
Out on the grass, Francis shouted something rude at Greyson, and Oatsie thought of scolding him but could not be bothered. The Van Meter girl looked pleased with herself, there beside Sterling, even though he seemed to have gone off into one of his silences. Propellers droned overhead. One of those buzzy little twin-engine planes. Beyond, the almost-full moon was ascending in time with the purpling of the sky. A string of birds sped by. Oatsie could feel the world pivoting away from her, the unstoppable entropy. Was longing a pleasure in itself? She had been at a party once, not unlike this one, back when she was married and newly pregnant with her first child, and Freddy Maughn, whom she had known since childhood, had grabbed her hand and kissed its palm as she passed him in the hall on her way to the bathroom. She remembered Freddy’s dry lips and the tip of his tongue on her hand. He was three sheets to the wind and probably only meant to be playful, but for months afterward, until her pregnancy became too much of a distraction for Harold, she had pressed her hand to his mouth while they made love and told him to kiss it. His lips never produced the same effect as Freddy’s, but she had persisted, irritably casting around for satisfaction. Her disappointment made her wish so fervently to be kissed again by Freddy Maughn that her desire spilled over and made her cling tightly to Harold, who strutted around afterward like a rooster.
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