Seating Arrangements

by Maggie Shipstead

  Her eyes bulged farther from their sockets. “I knew you didn’t know what love is, but I thought you knew what attraction is. You’re an idiot.”

  “Well,” he said, “you’re the one who said you loved me.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m a bigger idiot.” She turned and vanished into the party, reemerging in a swirl of summer coat and angry eyes and slamming door. No one else seemed to notice that she had left.

  He went home with his date, who was dewy and excited from dancing and jealousy, but he was so rough that he frightened her. Fear was something he had never roused in a woman, and a part of him was pleased to be seen as threatening even though he knew he was being selfish, even wicked. When she asked him to stop, he acquiesced without argument, leaving her on her bed with her face turned toward the wall. For weeks afterward, his fingers kept straying to his chin, worrying at it, trying to sculpt it into a finer shape. Eventually, he lost track of Ophelia, who seemed to have moved away, and though he saw her father sometimes at the Vespasian or at Ophidian dinners, he avoided speaking to him. When exactly she became Fee, he didn’t know, nor did he know how she met Fenn, but he heard through the grapevine that they were dating and later that they were engaged. He was not invited to the wedding but heard it was a great party, and he heard about the birth of their children and then about Meg’s problems. The merging of two people he had rejected unnerved Winn, but whenever he bumped into them over the years, they were perfectly cordial. After she took up with Teddy, Livia said they were nothing but nice to her, and until his problems with the Pequod, Winn had begun to think the bad blood between them existed only in his imagination.

  SOMEWHERE IN THE HOUSE, a toilet flushed. Floorboards creaked. Winn sat up. He had been leaning forward at an unforgiving angle, resting his cheek on his desk, and now his neck was cricked. Already most of the fog had burned off, and his study was filled with a warm, lemony light. He returned the album to the shelf and shed his bathrobe and slippers. Barefoot, he crept to the side door and took his tennis racquet and shoes from the closet. While he was tying his laces, he heard female voices overhead. More floorboards creaked, and there was another rush of water through the pipes. Easing the screen door shut behind him, he went out, swung astride his bicycle, and peddled frantically down the driveway, slipping on the gravel and feeling that he had made a narrow escape.

  Ten · More than One Fish, More than One Sea

  Dominique sat in a beach chair reading a cookbook borrowed from Winn’s collection. A furled umbrella lay beside her in the sand; the morning was still cool, and the sun was pleasant. Livia was lying nearby on a towel. She wore a sweatshirt over her bikini and had her arms folded across her face. To dramatize her hangover, she was emitting a steady groan.

  “Go jump in the water,” Dominique told her. “Clear the fuzz.”

  Livia parted her arms and craned her neck to look at the waves. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still chilled.”

  “I can’t believe you guys slept on the beach.”

  Livia let her head drop back onto the towel. “I know. Not much sleep, though.”

  Dominique watched a gull carry a scallop up in the air and hover, flapping, before dropping it on the hard sand and swooping after it to pick out the meat. Piper was dawdling along the wrack line collecting shells while Daphne wallowed in the surf, floating on her back and admiring the diminishing island chain of her belly, knees, and toes. Greyson dipped under and resurfaced, heaving her up in his arms and roaring over her shrieks before he slipped her gently back into the water like an egg to be poached. Her belly bobbed up and disappeared and bobbed up again. Francis was lying on a towel in the sun. Charlie was playing paddleball with Dicky Jr., who wore a polo shirt and had zinc smeared on his nose. Celeste and Biddy lounged in the shade of an umbrella. Agatha, complaining of a headache, had stayed at the house.

  A breeze had kicked up and blown away the last of the fog, and fat cumulus clouds slid purposefully out to sea. The sun ducked in and out of their towers and peepholes; diagonal columns of light made jade islands in the water.

  “How did you guys leave things?” Dominique asked.

  “I don’t know,” Livia said. “Ambiguously. Once it was light enough, we walked back to the house, which took forever because I got us lost in the fog—we didn’t really talk—and then he kissed me on the cheek and got in the Jeep to wait for Greyson. And that was it. Thank God he didn’t come to the beach. I don’t think I could handle interacting with him right now in front of all these people.” She groaned again and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, but Dominique had the impression that, really, she was peacocking a little bit, proud of her boldness, her seduction of a man who was older and not Teddy. She kept touching her concave belly where her sweatshirt was riding up and crossing and uncrossing her knees like someone who had just rediscovered her own skin. Members of wedding parties, Dominique thought, were almost contractually obligated to sneak off to kiss and grope one another. The union of groomsman and bridesmaid was a symbolic consummation, a rain dance, a pagan rite fueled by proximity to love and optimism and free booze.

  A wave washed thin on the sand, catching the yellow paddleball. Charlie charged after it. He made a show of doing a shallow dive into the surf, flashing the pale bottoms of his feet. Livia added, “A party always seems like a letdown if you don’t go home with someone.”

  “Maybe,” said Dominique, “but I don’t think you should go down that road again. Not with Sterling.”

  “Well,” Livia said, rolling onto her stomach and cupping her chin in her hand, “that might be hard.”

  “I’m not trying to be a party pooper. Sex with your brother-in-law is a bad idea.”

  Livia swung her feet, pert and childish. “Isn’t there something to be said for ill-advised lust? What’s the point of being single if you don’t stockpile some good stories to live off of when you’re old and boring? Doesn’t caution pale in comparison to raw passion?”

  Dominique closed the cookbook around her index finger. “Raw passion?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, Madame Karenina, but people are assholes. They’ll cheer you on while you make all your little mistakes, and then they’ll be there to rubberneck when your adventure comes to a bad end.”

  “But he doesn’t really matter. If he hurts me, it’ll be a distraction. Like pinching yourself after you’ve stubbed a toe so you can focus on the little hurt.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I won’t.”

  Dominique settled back, resigned that she had done as much as she could. Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup. Livia would do what she would. Her sad-girl hormones would bind her to another man who didn’t want her, and when Sterling sloughed her off, Dominique would be called upon to indulge her defense mechanisms, tell her that of course there was some complicated reason he would not allow himself to open up to her, of course he knew she was too good for him (no man ever thought that—it went against natural selection), of course he was afraid of getting hurt. When Dominique had come upstairs from the party, Agatha had been tucked into her little brass bed and was sniffling and sighing to signal she needed consoling over something. Dominique ignored her, and Piper had already pitched face-first onto her own little bed and fallen asleep in her underwear and green sweater. Whatever Agatha was up to, Dominique wanted no part of it.

  A lifeguard Jeep rolled by, and the driver lifted one tan hand in lazy greeting. Two men in rubber boots rode in the back with buckets and a half-dozen tools that looked like narrow shovels on long handles. They dwindled into the distance, following the curve of the shore out of sight.

  “I wonder what’s going on,” Livia said.

  Daphne lumbered out of the water and up the beach. She wrapped a towel around her shoulders and pulled open a canvas chair, setting it in the sand.

  “Good swim?” Dominique said.

  “You
can’t appreciate weightlessness until you’re pregnant,” Daphne said, squeezing out her hair. “It’s fantastic. I understand why hippopotamuses spend so much time in the water.”

  “Hippopotami,” corrected Livia.

  “You can say hippopotamuses, can’t you?” said Daphne.

  “You’re the bride,” Livia said. “You can say whatever you want.”

  Daphne eased down into her chair. “Dominique, don’t they have hippos in the Nile?”

  “They do. I believe the plural is ‘scary fuckers.’ ”

  Livia tsked at her sister. “Are you going to ask her about the secrets of King Tut’s tomb?”

  “I don’t know why you’re getting snippy with me.”

  “I’m not snippy.”

  “You are.”

  “Isn’t there wedding stuff you should be taking care of?”

  “Like what?”

  “It just seems odd that you can sit around at the beach the day before you get married.”

  “Mom said that’s what the coordinator is for.”

  “Who’s greeting the relatives?”

  “I don’t know. They’re greeting themselves. We’ll see them tonight. What time is it, anyway?”

  Dominique consulted her phone. “Eleven.”

  “I guess the day is your oyster,” Livia said.

  Daphne ran her hands over her belly like a seer consulting a crystal ball. “You’re acting like I’m the one who embarrassed you last night.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  The two of them had always been perfectly comfortable fighting in front of Dominique. She thought they might even prefer it to fighting without an audience. Each believed she was right, and each was equally sure Dominique would take her side. They never seemed to notice whose side she really did take, and, in fact, she was usually never asked. But both Daphne and Livia would remember her as an ally, and in that way, without expending any effort, Dominique managed to come out on top of most Van Meter family disagreements.

  “Obviously, it’s my business,” Daphne said. “Greyson is exhausted. He got almost no sleep.”

  “Why didn’t you just let him sleep in your bed?”

  “We’re trying to be romantic. And, Livia, Sterling is bad news.”

  “Just because you’re getting married doesn’t mean you know everything about men.”

  “Why set yourself up?”

  “God!” said Livia, outraged. “Just let me make a bad decision, just this once. I’ve had enough endings. I’d like a beginning for a change.”

  Dominique and Daphne exchanged a skeptical glance.

  Coloring furiously, Livia said, “Agatha does whatever she wants all the time, and you guys don’t act all concerned, hovering around and telling her to be careful.”

  “What does Agatha have to do with it?” Daphne asked.

  “If Agatha had slept with Sterling, would you be giving her this speech?”

  “It’s not a speech. You slept with him? I thought you just fooled around. God.”

  Dominique said, “You don’t want to be like Agatha.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “You don’t,” Daphne said firmly, emboldened by Dominique’s endorsement.

  “Don’t tell me what I want!”

  Daphne threw up her hands. “You know what, Livia? I don’t care what you do.” She took a book about parenting from her beach bag and flipped through the pages. Livia put her cheek on the towel and closed her eyes.

  Dominique looked at the water, at the people swimming. The previous spring, she and Sebastiaan had taken a trip to the Red Sea and had gone out on a snorkeling boat. At one point, they anchored a short distance offshore, maybe a quarter mile. The captain said they could swim to the beach, and so Dominique did while Sebastiaan stayed on deck smoking black cigarettes and reading Dutch poetry. The water was warm; the swim felt good. Even though she hadn’t swum regularly since college, her shoulders were still strong, and she cut through the water with authority. Halfway to shore, she paused to go under and have a look around. The water was very clear. She saw the sloping sea floor, the pale hull of the boat, and, beyond it, huge black shadows moving through the water. They were whales: distant and indistinct and astonishingly enormous. She had never told the story to Livia because she knew Livia would ruin it by asking what kind of whales they had been and what they were doing (feeding? traveling? playing?), and Dominique did not know, nor did she want to think about them that way, as animals acting out normal behaviors. She preferred them as lurking mysteries.

  Piper approached. “Hey,” she said, holding out a small object. “What is this? They’re all over the place.” The object was a hollow pod shaped like a large scarab beetle, dry and black with the texture of papyrus and two curving prongs on each end.

  “It’s a mermaid’s purse,” Daphne said.

  Livia gave a superior sigh. “It’s a skate’s egg case.”

  Piper looked confused. “So, which is it?”

  “Both,” said Daphne, reaching up to take the pod. “Mermaid’s purse is just something people call them. I can’t remember who taught me that. Maybe Dryden.”

  “Who’s Dryden?” asked Piper.

  “Our gay cousin,” said Livia.

  Dominique imagined young Daphne had probably been disappointed by the object that went with the name. A mermaid’s purse should be green and sparkling, but this thing, with its smooth black surface and curving horns, was strange and sinister.

  Piper thought a minute. “What’s a skate?” she asked.

  “A flat, cartilaginous fish,” said Livia. “Kind of like a ray. They bury themselves in the sand.”

  Daphne tossed the pod aside. “God, I have this urge to do cartwheels. If I weren’t pregnant, I’d do some. Greyson! Do a cartwheel!”

  Down the beach, Greyson waved and turned a perfect cartwheel and then another and another. His limbs turned like spokes in the sun. “I want to do a cartwheel, too!” Piper said. She hurtled down the sand like a gymnast about to vault and turned an energetic cartwheel in front of Francis, who applauded as she stood, arms over her head, in a ta-da! stance. “Wait,” she shouted. “Watch!” She jogged some distance away and then came racing back, did one preparatory skip, and flung herself forward into a handspring. She didn’t get enough leverage on takeoff and underrotated, descending at the angle of a lawn dart and whumping forcefully onto her butt. Charlie and Dicky Jr. went running to her.

  “Are you okay?” Daphne called from her chair.

  Piper, sitting in her crater, flapped one hand in response. “Is she laughing or crying?” Livia said.

  Dominique shaded her eyes with her hand and watched the boys haul Piper to her feet, spindly as a child. “Beats me.”

  “Where are all these people going?” Daphne asked, watching another Jeep cruise by. “Hey!” she called. “Hey! Where are you going?”

  One of the men in the back of the Jeep cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled over the wind. “There’s a hail!”

  “What?”

  “There’s a wha-le! Around the point! Beached!”

  “Is it alive?” Livia shouted. He was getting farther and farther away. He pointed at his ear. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Is it alive? Is the whale alive?”

  WINN, RESPLENDENT in his tennis whites and triumphant after beating his old friend Goodman Perry in straight sets, was pedaling home with a bicycle-basket cargo of blueberry muffins when he rounded a bend and saw a golf cart parked on the side of the bike path. He was in high spirits. His hangover had lifted sometime during their warm-up rallies, and the magnificent relief of no longer feeling awful was enough to get him off to a good start, winning the first three points and then the first set. Perry was the better player, and Winn’s tidy dominance had puzzled them both at first and then, by the middle of the second set, elated Winn and lowered Perry into a sulk. Between points, Perry prowled the net, running his racquet along the tape and scuffling the red clay, keeping up a steady mumb
le to himself. “It’s this wedding,” Winn had called. “I have more pent-up aggression than usual.”

  Perry nodded and swung through a courtly backhand. “Your serve,” he replied.

  Winn won the next point with a dainty tap that brought Perry swooping up from the baseline with racquet outstretched as though trying to net a butterfly. “Good hustle,” Winn said. Perry only glowered. Pressing his hand against the strings of his racquet, Winn watched his flesh bulge through the gaps. His sudden genius for tennis suggested he might be full of physical talents not yet discovered or fully realized. As he bounced the ball and watched Perry take up a determined crouch at the opposite end, the perverse thought surfaced that his conquest of Agatha—and he considered it to be a conquest because, really, a woman’s permission was the central obstacle—was responsible for his improved game. He wondered if their tryst was acting on his masculinity like some Chinese herb or voodoo powder, making him stronger and more agile, able to—and here he reared back and sent an ace past Perry and ringing into the links of the fence—assert himself.

  He celebrated by stopping at the market and buying five of the good muffins, not enough for everyone but all the store had left. Then, on the stretch of path that skirted the twelfth hole of the Pequod, before he was even halfway home, he saw the golf cart. It had no business being where it was. There were separate paths for bikes and for carts, and this cart was most certainly on the wrong path. Winn’s habit was to ride quickly but casually, leaning back on the seat and taking occasional practice swings with his racquet. As he went zipping along, knees pumping a lively rhythm, swatting at the air to fight off the sight of the rogue cart, he saw there was a man behind the wheel and above him, at the top of a slope, two more in visors and pleated shorts, leaning on clubs. The man in the cart was bending sideways to extract a tiny white ball from a mess of grass and poison ivy. Winn steered out to the edge of the path and glared at the golfers.

  Perhaps he ought to have called out or thumbed a peal from the silver bell on his handlebars, but as it happened, just as he passed behind the cart the driver popped upright with golf ball in hand and went whizzing into reverse without a glance behind him. Escape was impossible. There was the flip of a lever, the high whine of the machine’s warning buzzer, and then the square plastic bumper flipped Winn and his bicycle sideways off the path. Later he remembered a series of crooked, trapezoidal images, like the feed from a damaged antenna: the sky, the asphalt, the back of the driver’s head, the grass where he landed. In the aerial instant of the crash, one pedal spun viciously around and sliced into the flesh of his calf, leaving a sickle-shaped wound, and, to add insult to injury, his tennis racquet flew out of his hand and up onto the road, where it was promptly run over by a passing van. Two muffins escaped from the bag, one coming to rest in the gutter and the other standing upright in the grass like a stout toadstool.