PRAISE FOR
A Wedding in Great Neck
“In prose as sparkling as a champagne toast, McDonough’s delicious new novel gathers together one extraordinary wedding, two complicated families, and then shows how a single day can change everything. A funny, moving look at the bonds of love, the ties of family, and the yearning for happily ever after.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling
author of Pictures of You
“In this delightful tale, Yona Zeldis McDonough limns the ups and downs of family life with a grace that brings to mind Cathleen Schine at her best. McDonough does not shirk the dark side, but her characters, as flawed as they may be, retain their humanity in the face of life’s slings and arrows. A wise and witty novel from an author at the top of her form.”
—Megan McAndrew, author of Dreaming in French
“Spirited, entertaining, and a delight to read, A Wedding in Great Neck offers a penetrating glimpse into the lives of one particular family, with its myriad shifting alliances, disappointments, and secrets.”
—Lucy Jackson, author of Posh
“Emotional and evocative, hilarious and harrowing, A Wedding in Great Neck is a must read for every mother and daughter who’ve ever dreamed of, fought over, and loved each other through a wedding day.”
—Pamela Redmond Satran, New York Times bestselling
author of The Possibility of You
“Deftly handling a well-drawn ensemble cast of characters, A Wedding in Great Neck is a playful yet touching parsing of the tugs and tangles of familial bonds. This breezy novel offers the reader graceful writing while exploring contemporary suburban turf with an anthropologist’s sharp eye.”
—Sally Koslow, author of Slouching Toward Adulthood:
Observations from the Not-So-Empty Nest
“Yona Zeldis McDonough is a born storyteller and her powers of perception are at full tilt in A Wedding in Great Neck. Beautifully structured around the secret longings and high emotions visited upon that special day, the book explores the fraught love between siblings, the rich wisdom of their elders, and shifting class values in one family. McDonough’s Wedding is a page-turner—you’ll feel as if you were there.”
—Laura Jacobs, author of Women About Town
“With her trademark wit and keen eye, Yona Zeldis McDonough has created a confection that is not only a page-turner, but a poignant view of family life. This elegant novel is a must read for long-married wives and any woman who longs to be married. Book clubs will swoon.”
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling
author of The Shoemaker’s Wife
A
Wedding
IN
GREAT NECK
Yona Zeldis McDonough
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, October 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Yona Zeldis McDonough, 2012
Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
McDonough, Yona Zeldis.
A wedding in Great Neck/Yona Zeldis McDonough.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60770-1
1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Weddings—Fiction. 3. Dysfunctional families—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C39W43 2012
813’.6—dc23 2012002735
Set in Granjon
Designed by Beth Tondreau
Printed in the United States of America
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
For Constance Marks,
a Great Neck girl like no other
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For help, advice, support, and boundless goodwill,
I would like to thank Patricia Grossman,
Caroline Leavitt, Nechama Liss-Levinson,
Megan McAndrew, Paul McDonough,
Sally Schloss, Ken Silver, and Marian Thurm.
Special thanks to my gifted and utterly
unflappable editor, Tracy Bernstein,
and to my peerless agent, Judith Ehrlich,
who truly broke the mold.
A
Wedding
IN
GREAT NECK
Table of Contents
Morning
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Afternoon
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Evening
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
About the Author
Morning
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Grofsky
and Mr. Lincoln Silverstein
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of
Mrs. Grofsky and Mr. Silverstein’s daughter
Angelica Elise
to
Mr. Ohad Oz
on Saturday, the second of June
two thousand and twelve
at seven o’clock in the evening
35 Swan’s Cove Road
Great Neck, New York
Reception immediately following the ceremony
One
The dog. The dog was barking ag
ain, a series of clear, piercing yelps that infiltrated their way into the early-morning dreams of Gretchen McLeod (née Silverstein) and ruptured her sleep. She buried her face in the cool, polished cotton of the pillowcase in an effort to obliterate the sound. Three yips, a merciful pause in which she was lulled into thinking the dog had at last calmed down—only to be followed by three even louder and more insistent barks. The pattern cycled through three, four, five times before Gretchen yanked the blanket aside and got out of bed. She was momentarily disoriented; the house itself was still unfamiliar to her, and she had never stayed in this particular room, all English chintz and suffocating lace. But the confusion passed and she padded toward the sink; each of the six bedrooms in her mother’s grand manse had its own bathroom, and Gretchen was grateful for the amenity.
The barking continued as she splashed cold water on her face and rubbed it vigorously with a plush white towel. White towels! Only people who had live-in maids would buy white towels. Now that her mother was among their number, she bought white with reckless impunity. And these were no ordinary white towels either. These white towels had a scalloped border of Wedgwood blue and matching Wedgwood-blue monograms in their centers. White towels deluxe.
Gretchen contemplated a shower, decided to wait, and instead examined her reflection in the magnifying mirror mounted above the towel ring. Slight puffiness under the eyes—check. Dark circles—check. A gradual deepening of the nasal-labial lines; small, red bump on her right cheek; slightly loosened flesh under the jawline—check, check, check. And her brows—her brows needed a major overhaul before the wedding, which was scheduled to begin at seven o’clock this evening.
Gretchen turned from the mirror. Enough. It was being under the same roof as her siblings—Teddy and Caleb with their respective partners down at one end of the hall; Angelica, the bride-to-be, ensconced in a room at the other—that brought out this distinctly adolescent form of self-scrutiny. Except Gretchen was almost forty, a significant, milestone sort of birthday, and decades away from adolescence.
The dog was still barking as Gretchen returned to the bedroom, dug out her clothes—still sloppily crammed into her suitcase—and dressed. How did Betsy endure it? This was the very same mother who, in all the years Gretchen was growing up, would not allow so much as an orange-and-black-dappled goldfish, won at the East Meadow Jewish Center’s annual Purim fair, to cross their threshold.
So how, at the age of sixty-four, had her mother morphed into someone who did not simply tolerate this dog—a Pomeranian with a pointed, foxlike face and perpetually hysterical demeanor—but actually seemed to worship it? Betsy was like some freshly hatched religious fanatic. How did I ever live without a dog? she would say, regaling anyone in earshot about her recent conversion. To think I could have missed this! She spoke to the creature in wheedling, dulcet tones, fed it diced morsels of steak and roast beef, allowed it to sleep in her bed. What Don, Betsy’s large, backslapping husband, thought of this arrangement, Gretchen didn’t know. He seemed to tolerate it, just as he was tolerating all the hoopla—and the expense—of the wedding that was about to take place. But Don was utterly charmed by Angelica. So charmed that when Angelica wrinkled her perfect little nose at the mere idea of Leonard’s of Great Neck—Betsy’s suggestion—he immediately offered their house instead. No surprise there. Angelica was Don’s favorite, just as she had been their father’s. Betsy’s having swapped one husband for another had not changed the essential dynamic of their clan.
Angelica had it all: the looks, the brains, and the attitude. Even the name: how to compare the celestial “Angelica” with the relentlessly earthbound “Gretchen”? Her sister had lucked out in so many ways, great and small. Gretchen’s role in this wedding was, both by definition and by tradition, ancillary. It was Angelica’s day, and no one cared what Gretchen thought, felt, or wanted as long as she was willing to play her assigned part, sister of the bride, in this vast, unfolding pageant. From the way everyone was carrying on, you’d think that there was no more important event in the entire nation. Or on the planet.
There had been a series of well-choreographed events at which Gretchen was expected to appear: the over-the-top engagement party at Bouley in Tribeca, the bridal shower at the Park Avenue duplex of one of Angelica’s closest friends and matron of honor, the ocean-view prewedding brunch and the catered rehearsal dinner, all culminating in the nuptials this evening, when the 233 invited guests would descend on the lawn of her stepfather’s five-acre, baronial, but unremittingly vulgar home to hear Angelica say, “I do.”
Gretchen’s own modest wedding more than fifteen years before—justice of the peace, small family party in the backyard of the East Meadow house—had not been treated with such fanfare. Of course Betsy had not yet married up, as Gretchen’s grandmother Lenore liked to say. Had not yet become Lady Bountiful, with her manicured lawns, her magnificent circular rose garden—the only part of the vast property that Gretchen did not find in appalling taste—her charities, and her neurotic little dog. Everything was different now. But in another, more fundamental, and essential way, everything—that is, Gretchen’s place in this family—was exactly the same.
So here she was, tetchy from lack of sleep, and ill at ease in her mother’s sprawling abode, a faux Italianate palazzo-like edifice of putty-colored stucco, with a terra cotta roof and mullioned windows. Gretchen was overwhelmed by the multitude of bed- and bathrooms, the terrace and the balconies, the pretentious curved driveway as well as the various outbuildings—sheds, greenhouse, cabana—all arrayed around the main structure. Then there was the network of brick and blue stone paths linking the various parts of the property together. Coming here for a visit required a map.
As she contemplated her options—coffee, black, steaming, and strong, or a shower—her cell phone rang. She dived for it, hoping desperately it was not her boss, Ginny Valentine, calling to annoy her with a request for some trivial bit of information that she could have found for herself if she had only bothered to get up from her padded, wheeled, and insanely expensive leather chair to look. Gretchen located her phone in the morass of her handbag. But it was not Ginny. “Hello?” Gretchen said, sinking back into the enticing softness of the bed. Silence, and then the voice of her not-yet-ex-husband, Ennis, sounding so close that he could have been standing next to her. Instinctively she moved the phone away from her ear.
“Gretchen, are you there?”
“I’m here,” she said. But she wished she had not answered; she was not in the mood to talk to him today. Or any day, for that matter.
“I’m at the station.”
“Station?” She didn’t understand. “What station?”
“The train station. Here in Great Neck. I’ll be getting a taxi to the house,” he continued. “Unless you can come out and get me.” He pronounced the word “out” as if it were spelled “oot”; Ennis had grown up in Glasgow, and even though he hadn’t lived there in decades, he still had the accent.
Gretchen did not say anything. She knew he had been invited to the wedding; he and Angelica had always gotten along well, and their twin daughters, Justine and Portia, had begged that he be included. But he had declined, much to Gretchen’s relief. All of that had been months ago, and none of her elaborate preparations for this day—mental, physical, even spiritual, for God’s sake—had included Ennis.
“You still there?” Ennis was saying.
Yes, she wanted to scream. I’m still here, but I wish you weren’t!
But Gretchen was not a screamer. Never had been and never would be. She had always been the good sport, the trooper, the one who compromised, yielded, and accommodated. She watched her sister shoot through her life with the force and direction of an arrow heading straight for the bull’s-eye. Her brother Teddy had that same quality. But she, Gretchen, did not. Instead she lived her life like a handful of confetti, tossed up into the air and scattered down—gracefully, she liked to think—a little here, a little there.
“I didn’t k
now you were coming,” she said, sidestepping the question about driving to the station to get him.
“I wasn’t…” he said. “And then I was.” There was a pause. “So here I am.”
“Well, well!” she said, the brittle falseness in her tone bordering on parody. “Isn’t that just dandy?” She drew a deep breath for strength. “Does Angelica know?”
“Yes. I called her to tell her.”
Funny, she never bothered to ask how I might feel about that, Gretchen fumed.
“Gretchen? Did I lose you?”
Did you ever, she thought. But did not say. “I’m still here,” she said finally. “Though I’m really not sure why you came, Ennis. I don’t think it was a good idea.” She began pulling on the lace edge of a pillowcase; if she kept this up, she would tear it.
“The girls asked me to.” He sounded defensive. “They kept calling to see if I would change my mind, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
“But you had no trouble disappointing me,” she said, unable to hide her bitterness.
“That’s another reason I came,” he said quickly. “I wanted to see you. To talk to you.”
“About what?” The lace was sturdier than she would have expected: despite her yanking, it remained intact.
“Let’s do this in person,” he said. “Will you come out and get me?” Oot.
Gretchen did not answer right away. In the past she would have gone. She would have grumbled, she would have stewed, but she would have gone. Right now, though, she felt uncharacteristically uncooperative. Why should she have to play chauffeur for her estranged husband? Would Angelica do such a thing? Angelica, who had not even bothered to let her in on this small but significant change in the guest list? Gretchen was quite sure the answer was no.
“I really don’t want to, Ennis,” she said at last. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today, and I want to…prepare myself before I do.” She gave the lace trim a final tug and was obscurely pleased when it tore free of the pillowcase.
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