Lady in Waiting
This time seemed as though it would be much worse than the Fourth of July. It had to be. She was the only one who wasn’t family—aside from Seeley, who couldn’t, in this context, count—staying in the house. The spinster room, of course, as ever. But that wasn’t the challenge. The challenge was the thickness of the air. She, who had felt she saw so clearly that it hurt, had felt that the truth, crystalline, was, with Murray, granted her (though not through his help, or anything he did: but just by his presence; as though, indeed, he were but a part of her that had been lost, a magnificent Platonic epiphany repeated, and daily repeated: this, surely, was love!), felt, now, that the weight of emotion lay like a veil, a fine mist. No exchange, however simple, was untainted. Paradoxically, only Ludovic seemed the same, his lightly mutable self in the face of all crises, flitting into and out of conversations with a sardonic flick of the tongue. Marina was a mess. Her mother, the indomitable Annabel, had fallen into frantic distraction: so busy doing (where were the boutonnières? Now please, now—and the disposition of the chairs, in their slightly arced rows, before the pergola; and the tying up of the marquee’s sides, on account of the clement weather; and the scudding cumulus clouds in the sky, were they, too, something to be done?) that she couldn’t listen. She and her daughter repeatedly presented to Danielle the tableau of supplicant child, trailing, anguished, in her mother’s wake. This vision—repeated on the lawn, in the kitchen, the bathroom—forced Danielle to reconsider the Thwaite family dynamic, or rather, like the trick of an Escher drawing, to see the same thing in reverse. Always, Danielle had seen Annabel as the odd one out, taking forlorn care of a husband and daughter whose passionate bond had no place for her. But on this day she felt enlightened: maybe, in fact, Marina and Murray so greatly needed Annabel, desired her attentions more than anything, that, unrequited, they turned to each other for consolation because the great, nurturing force of her was so widely dispersed—upon the running of their worlds, the making of weddings, the salvation of DeVaughn and others like DeVaughn, always the kind word, the palm upon the shoulder, the extra, and meaningful effort—that they were left ravenous for more, clinging satellites to her sun. Danielle had seen Annabel as dispensable where in fact she was—Marina tripped up the stairs behind her mother, all but reaching for her hem—The Family incarnate.
Which made Danielle smart. Because by this logic, she too was consolation, not the respite and final fulfillment she had all this time imagined. Murray turned to her not heliotropically, but in the small and sorry spirit of diversion. This didn’t seem possible—given what they shared, their private realm of truth among the Rothkos—but once imagined, it didn’t any longer seem impossible, either, and gnawed at her, on the wedding day, till—even in the midst of makeup, the hairdresser, fetching sparkling water for Marina, laughing, the two of them in their underwear after they’d both run their stockings and decided to do without them—she could think of nothing else.
Murray kept well out of things. His study was off their bedroom, and even on the morning of Marina’s wedding he sequestered himself there, supposedly finishing a newspaper column, or was it a magazine essay, Marina wasn’t quite sure, but told Danielle they weren’t to bother him—not even about the champagne or the ice, which were his jobs—until after noon.
At lunchtime, the caterer set out sandwiches, chips, watermelon, and lemonade on the kitchen island, and everyone foraged, each taking his portion on a paper plate to a remote corner. Marina, suddenly overcome with superstition, retreated to her bedroom so as not to see Ludovic (who, in a parody of propriety which Marina herself had requested, had been moved, for two nights, to solitary confinement in the other, double, guestroom) and told Danielle she needed some time by herself to think. Which is how Danielle came to be in the pergola, with her mozzarella, basil, and tomato on focaccia, her back to the house, aware of the late bees against the screen and only at the last, and suddenly, of Murray joining her.
“May I?”
“Perhaps not a good idea.”
“My family would think it odd if I didn’t flirt with you just a little. I have a reputation to live up to.”
“I’m finding it pretty weird, all this.”
“I’m staying out of it.” He sat, on the bench opposite her, as far away as he could be. It felt as if her skin were attempting to move her body, to close the gap: yearning.
“Hard to do when you’re Best Woman. It’s my job to be involved.”
“Quite.”
“I haven’t asked a lot, have I?”
“What on earth do you mean? You can ask whatever you want.”
“I want the night. A night, any one. Just all of it.”
“Yes. That would be … yes.”
“You’d have to lie. You won’t want to.”
He looked up at her, through his hair, like a boy.
“You could say you were traveling. A talk. You forgot, someone reminded you, you have to go.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Why now?”
“Because.” She sighed. She couldn’t say that it was because she had been struck with the fear that he loved his wife. In their discourse, so mature, it was a laudable trait, to love your wife. He spoke of it often, and she played along, taking it for the necessary rhetoric of a man over thirty years married. But he was, in his way, a truth-teller—that, above all, was what she had idealized, had wanted—and in this newly imagined light, he meant each word as it was said. Only her skills as a reader were at fault. “Because I want you to; and I’ve never asked you anything like it. Nor will I, ever again.”
“Don’t promise too much.” He, too, sighed. She wished she knew the meaning of the sigh, which seemed, suddenly, open to many interpretations, few of them favorable to her. Then he said, very quietly, “Don’t you know yet that the more we have, the more we’ll want?”
And she felt a flush of delight.
He stood, holding his untouched plate in front of him like an offering. He ran his hand through his hair, in his boyish way. She wanted to kiss him, looked down at her watermelon instead.
“I have a lecture in Chicago next Monday that’s been postponed,” he said. “I found out yesterday. It’s on the calendar. I’m officially out of town.”
“Would you do that?”
“I’m officially out of town,” he said. And as he was leaving, “Do you want some vodka in your lemonade to get you through? Easily done, no one would know.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, swallowing the “now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“Vows by Lisa Solomon” Special to the New York Times
When the bride strolled down the aisle on her father’s arm, gasps were audible among the assembly. Swathed in a close-fitting seafoam chiffon, she carried a profusion of calla lilies, and wore two more entwined in her raven hair. Her smile, one guest observed, was like a second sun in the glorious late summer afternoon: “She’s always been that way. A ray of sunshine.” The vows, written by the couple themselves, were exchanged on the steps of a romantic summer house at the bottom of the garden at the bride’s family’s country home in western Massachusetts, under the authority of Judith Rohmer, a local justice of the peace and longtime family friend. The bride teared visibly, and the couple held hands throughout.
“The whole wedding was so Marina,” according to her friend the critic Julius Clarke, who has known her since their college days at Brown. “We all knew that when she got married, she’d do it more beautifully than anyone. She’s always been an ‘it’ girl, her whole life.” A journalist and author of the forthcoming book The Emperor’s Children Have No Clothes, Marina Thwaite, 30, is the daughter of the celebrated journalist Murray Thwaite, and has attracted attention as an intellectual and socialite since her high school days, when she was both an organizer of the national movement for high school students against apartheid and a sometime model for Elle and Seventeen.
Her husband, Ludovic Seeley, 36—himself an “it”
man, featured last month in New York magazine’s article on eligible bachelors—agrees: “It was love at first sight, for me,” he maintains. “We met through a friend of hers [Danielle Minkoff, a producer for public television, who was also “best woman”], and the moment we were introduced I knew she was the one.” This was an introduction in passing at the Metropolitan Museum, “tellingly, over food, not art,” Marina laughs. It took them some weeks to meet again—at a gala honoring Marina’s father—but once they did, in May of this year, things moved very quickly.
“We knew we were destined to be together,” Marina explains. “So what was the point of waiting?”
The irony, for this young couple, is that they have to bring their first “baby” into the world in just two weeks: Mr. Seeley, originally from Sydney, Australia, moved to New York city earlier this year to take the helm of the new Merton Publications weekly, The Monitor, which launches on September thirteenth. Marina Thwaite is cultural editor for the magazine. “It’s very exciting to be working together on this amazing new publication,” Marina says. “It’s really going to wow people. Ludo is an amazing editor.”
Her husband returns the compliment. “Marina just came on board over the summer, and she’s done a phenomenal job. It’s a superlative team, and I think readers are going to be surprised by the magazine—it’s something completely new.”
The launch party, rather like this wedding and only fractionally less exclusive, is slated to be one of the fall calendar’s major social bashes. “It’ll be a little flashier,” Ludo confesses. “We wanted our wedding to be low-key and intimate.”
The bride’s father, Murray Thwaite (author, most recently of When the Fat Lady Sings), hasn’t yet seen any of The Monitor’s articles. “I’ve been hearing about it, though. It’s going to be unlike anything else. It’s going to be great.”
If the wedding is anything to judge by, that’s certainly true. The familiar faces of New York and Washington intelligentsia sipped champagne and nibbled at caviar blinis on the rolling lawn while a chamber ensemble played Mozart in the twilight. The tree frogs serenaded the party, too; and as night fell, the guests were ushered to splendidly decorated tables under a grand marquee. When the time came to cut the cake, Ms. Thwaite and Mr. Seeley returned to the folly where they had made their vows, and embraced in front of a cheering crowd.
It wasn’t staid elegance, however: once the dancing got underway, Ms. Thwaite kicked off her heels and spun out onto the grass, her dapper husband, his bow-tie loosened, right behind her. “It just feels incredible,” she said. “Whoever knew that getting married could feel so liberating?”
“It’s all a matter of finding the right editor,” Mr. Seeley quipped, as he twirled his bride to the samba beat.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Bedtime
We got through it.” Murray lay on the bed with his eyes closed, hands clasped behind his head. “We did it. Let me say, you did it. You did it all. Brava.”
“Not really. I’m glad it went off well.”
“They’re still cleaning up. Four-thirty.”
“That’s a good wedding.”
“Is anyone else still here? I mean, have we got any guests around?”
“I think Danielle left with Julius and his boyfriend. I told her to stay, but I guess she thought it would be weird, to have breakfast with just you and me. Too much parents.”
Murray didn’t open his eyes. He pictured her in her apartment, the light across her cheek. He sighed. “She’s a good kid. She loves Marina.”
“She didn’t want her to marry Ludovic, though.”
“Who did?”
“Come off it, you. Nobody could have passed your tests. He adores her.”
“Does he? He’s a slippery fish.”
“That’s what Danielle thinks.”
“It’s a package, isn’t it, what he’s bought.”
“Bought?”
“Won. However you want to put it. He’s hooked our Marina, and ended up related to me at the same time.”
“That’s a little self-absorbed even for you, my darling.”
Murray straightened, opened his eyes, and began to unbutton his shirt. “I wish I thought so. He’s pure ambition, that slinky snaky so-and-so, with his too-tight shirts. He wants to do something spectacular, and believe me, doing away with me would be good enough. The closer he gets, the more mortal the blow.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The article. The boy’s article.”
“What about it?”
“He told me himself, the kid, he told me that Seeley wanted to publish it. Probably still does. I’m not demented, you know.”
“I’m sure he was just making it up to get back at you. Bootie. Frederick. That poor kid. He worshiped you.”
“And had a bloody peculiar way of showing it.”
Annabel stepped out of her dress and stood in her slip, in a pool of silk. “They love each other. It’s their time now.”
“My time ain’t over yet, baby.” Murray wrapped his arms around his wife, lifted her off the ground, out of her dress, and dropped her, with a bounce, onto the bed.
“No, I don’t imagine it is,” she said, and laughed. “But it’s four-thirty in the morning.”
“We have eternity for sleeping. There’s no rush.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Tiger Woods
Danielle woke up on the floor of Julius and David’s hotel room, at the end of their bed, wrapped in their bedspread, slightly clammy, and in her underwear. They were still sleeping, one of them snoring softly, and Julius’s foot dangled in the air perilously near her head. Something—either the bedspread or the carpet, of a fading crimson, patterned with large escutcheons, and very close to her cheek—smelled musty. She contemplated leaving, slipping out discreetly before they stirred; only to remember that she was trapped in Stockbridge and reliant on their help. Everyone—Marina and Annabel, that is—had expected her to stay on at the Thwaites’ after the newlyweds had departed, in their festooned, chauffeur-driven car, for a fancy hotel in Lenox. Perhaps they’d imagined, too, that she’d ride back to the city with Murray and Annabel, making cheerful conversation from the backseat. She couldn’t have done it. In the shower, she remembered the night before in snatches: the ceremony, the speeches, the spat between bride and groom in the stairwell when they thought no one was there. Marina had been tense, almost angry, at the beginning of the party—Danielle figured it had to do with Murray, with her ambivalence about her father—but had put on her best social face, and Danielle had watched as she’d slowly melted into her role, until she was the exuberant carefree beauty she appeared to be. The spat on the stairs seemed to be about the woman from the Times Style section. Seeley was telling Marina not to blow her off. “It’s good for The Monitor,” he was saying. “Keep it in mind.”
“It’s our fucking wedding, Ludo. I don’t want to keep talking to that crazy bat with her notebook.”
“It’s the New York Times.”
“I don’t give a fuck. It’s bad enough that she’s here at all. Let her watch us all she wants. I don’t want to talk to her.”
Whereupon Danielle had revealed herself, made a joke, and offered to mop up the journalist if they wanted her to.
“She just asked for five minutes to speak to Marina,” Seeley said, tight-lipped. The rose in his lapel seemed to quiver with exasperation. “It isn’t much.”
“Hey, M”—Danielle, against her better instincts, opted to palliate—“five minutes? For the smooth unfolding of your wedding night? Go on, you can do it. For Ludo, here. For love?”
The look Marina gave her was peculiar, as though she thought Danielle was making fun, or judging. As though, Danielle thought in the shower, Marina thought that Danielle thought that Seeley was revealing his true cynic’s colors. For him, even the wedding was about advancing his career. She hadn’t considered it at the time; and maybe she was projecting. In any event, Marina had recomposed her features, sallied f
orth, smiling, and fulfilled her duties to love and to The Monitor.
And of the evening, above all she remembered, inevitably, Murray. After their lunchtime conversation, they had barely exchanged a word, but she’d been always aware of him, as if he were electronically tagged, aware from afar of the terrifying expertise of his apparent indifference, of his impeccable ability to play the necessary role. He and Marina, two of a kind.
And, too, there’d been Julius, the long-lost, only mildly sheepish on the arm of his beau. David seemed fine. In fact, David seemed, to Danielle, a matter of no possible significance, a young—definitely younger—perfectly polite, handsome-enough, sort of boring-seeming guy from Westchester, a businessy type, the kind of guy, back in college, to whom you cheerfully said hello at the salad bar, with a genuine smile, even, but with whom you never bothered further, because you sensed—from the clothes, the friends, the haircut, the major (probably Political Science, or Economics), even from the tenor of his voice—that he didn’t have anything interesting to say. His most intriguing feature, to Danielle’s mind, was the degree to which he seemed ordinary, ur-normal, even heterosexual: the chino’ed center of the privileged nation. Which might explain at least part of Julius’s attraction, of course; but as for its intensity, its prolonged secrecy—Danielle was mystified. David didn’t seem hostile, after all—“I’ve heard a lot about you, yeah, great,” he offered, along with his rather feeble hand, upon their introduction—merely irrelevant. More generously put, he remained amiably reserved. She noticed that he didn’t dance, a certain type, and instead sat on the sidelines with a bourbon on the rocks and a tolerant but weary expression while Danielle and Julius spun and dipped in front of him. She’d expected, given the history, that Julius would kowtow to his lover, focus, above all, on David in this gathering of old friends that didn’t include him, but Julius proved refreshingly, Julius-ly, callous on that score, and abandoned David for long stretches to gossip with people he hadn’t seen for years.
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