Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701)

by McDonough, Yona Zeldis

  Once in the hallway Justine was faced with a number of doors, all of them closed. Now, this was a problem. She knew her mother was sleeping up here, along with Angelica, her grandmother, her uncles and their various partners, and Great-grandma Lenore, with her constant talk of boobs and whose bra did or did not fit correctly. But Justine didn’t know who was in which room, and it was essential that she find out; could she hang around and wait to see who emerged?

  Ohad, Aunt Angelica’s fiancé, wasn’t even staying in the house; he and his large, noisy Israeli family—the dark-skinned, black-haired mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins—were all checked in at a nearby hotel. So it wasn’t even clear to Justine what she was doing; she wanted to find Ohad, and she wanted him to be alone. It wasn’t likely that either of those aims were about to be accomplished by prowling around up here.

  Still she crept along like the inept spy that she was, staring at the doors. There were voices coming from behind one of them; she pressed her ear to the wooden panel to listen. The words were not clear, but she thought she could hear her uncle Teddy. Major douche bag. Also pompous, status obsessed, and self-important. Last night at the rehearsal dinner, he must have asked her three times where she planned to go to college.

  “I’ve just finished my sophomore year; I have a little while to decide,” she had answered.

  “Not all that much,” he shot back. “You’d be amazed at how the time flies.”

  “Would I?” she said. She raised her left eyebrow, the one with the piercing in it. She could tell that this piercing, even more than the stud in her nostril, offended him deeply, and from this she derived a rich and enveloping sense of satisfaction. “I’m not so sure.”

  “Well, you should be,” he said. “Getting into college is the whole point of high school. And not just any college—the right college.”

  “Really?” she asked with feigned innocence. “I thought the point of high school was to get an education.” In fact Justine was quietly obsessed with the topic of college in general, and the right college in particular. She was maniacal in her quest for good grades and spent most of her allowance on scoring Adderall—the cheery yellow 30-milligram capsules were the most coveted of the lot—which enabled her to study with a magnificent and single-minded ferocity. When she was deep in the A-zone, her mind became a highly powered leaf blower whose roaring blasts sent all extraneous thoughts scattering; she could hunker down and work for hours without a break. But she had no desire to share any of this with her uncle Teddy, who had clearly decided that she was not worth another nanosecond more of his precious energy and moved off in search of someone else to badger.

  Justine pressed her ear closer to the door. Yeah, that was Teddy in there, all right. Teddy had gone to Dartmouth as an undergraduate, and he managed to twist and stretch virtually every conversation to include this fact. What if she told him that these days Dartmouth was considered the bottom of the Ivy barrel, filled with dumb-ass frat boys who probably had sex with cows in their downtime? Justine had set her own sights on Yale.

  She continued along the hall. At the far end was her grandmother’s room; she knew that, but even if she hadn’t, the sound of the dog—it had started barking again—would have clued her in. So she had eliminated two of the possibilities. Then it occurred to her that she could simply knock on the doors or, if no one answered, go in. She could say that she was looking for her mother. Why had she not thought of this sooner? She rapped on the next door she came to.

  “Come in,” quavered a voice she recognized as belonging to her great-grandmother, Lenore. Justine opened the door a crack and peeked inside. “I said to come in,” Lenore said. She was standing next to a complicated-looking steaming device planted in the center of the room; she wore something flowing and gauzy that involved leopard print and lots of it. Shiny buttons winked their way down the front. With both hands, Lenore directed the nozzle at an olive-green dress. “Ow!” she added. “That’s hot.”

  “Are you okay?” Justine asked. Maybe Grandma Lenore shouldn’t be handling the steamer by herself.

  “I’m fine,” Lenore said, sucking on her finger. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  “I was looking for my mom,” Justine said, though Lenore had not asked.

  “Other direction,” Lenore said. “Down the hall.”

  “Thanks,” Justine said, feeling awkward. “Thanks a lot.”

  Lenore looked up at her as if only just realizing who she was. “What bra are you wearing?” she asked. “To the wedding?”

  “I don’t know. Just a bra.” Grandma L. truly was obsessed by the topic of other people’s underwear.

  “The dress is shantung, right? And very fitted?”

  “I guess,” said Justine. She didn’t know what shantung was, though she actually liked the dress Angelica had chosen, which was dove-gray and had a silvery sheen in the light. But she disapproved of it on principle. Meant to be worn once and then never again, it offended both Justine’s sensibilities and her morals.

  “You have to have the right bra, sweetheart. You can’t just wear any bra under a dress like that. You need something with shape but smooth too. No seams in front. No little bows.” She put down the steamer’s nozzle and used her gnarled hands to gesture across her breasts.

  “I have the right bra. You don’t have to worry.” Justine smiled. Grandma Lenore was doing fine. Just fine. She turned to leave the room.

  “Well, I hope so!” Grandma Lenore said, frowning slightly. “Your whole look can be spoiled by the wrong bra.” She appeared to be thinking and then added, “Sweetheart, there’ll be a couple of girls here later who’ll be doing hair and makeup; you’ll go see them, right?”

  “Definitely,” said Justine, though she had no intention of going anywhere near either of them: she didn’t wear makeup, period, and she would not allow her hair to be sprayed, moussed, gelled, or fluffed by a stranger with a possibly lethal pair of scissors in her hand.

  “And Portia too?” Lenore had resumed her steaming.

  “Portia too.” She glanced again in the direction of the steamer. “Nice dress, Grandma Lenore,” she added.

  “Isn’t it?” Lenore said, turning to gaze at it as well. “And it has a matching coat.” She gestured to a garment that was spread across the bed. “Do you know how long I’ve had that outfit? Thirty-five—no, forty years. I bought it at Loehmann’s, just off Flatbush Avenue. Those were the days…not like now.” The comparison made her frown, but then her expression softened. “Anyway, this dress is quality goods. And quality lasts.” Lenore nodded for emphasis; her head on her delicate neck seemed to wobble even after she had stopped.

  “Sweet,” said Justine. She was definitely good with the idea of wearing old clothes rather than depleting the poor earth’s waning resources by buying new, new, new all the time. She blew a kiss to Lenore and closed the door softly behind her.

  There was no answer at the next door, so Justine very quietly tried the knob. The room was empty. Right away she knew she had found the place she had been seeking. The closet door was flung wide-open, and the few articles of clothing it contained were shoved together on one side. There, encased in an enormous black plastic garment bag, was what could only be Angelica’s wedding dress.

  Score. Because she had found Angelica’s room, and wherever Angelica was, Ohad was sure to follow. Those two couldn’t keep their hands off each other; it was like one of those parties where the parents were out, the lights were low, and a bunch of kids coupled off, sucking face and God knew what else. Not that she, Justine, was against sex—although she hadn’t actually had it yet; this was all in theory—but she thought there ought to be some mystery to the whole business, some magic. Not this public groping for anyone and everyone to watch.

  Justine approached the closet; should she unzip the bag and peek? Angelica would be upset if she found out. No one was supposed to see the dress until the wedding. But, then again, if everything went according to plan, there wasn’t actually going
to be a wedding. Justine stood there, hand on the zipper, for several seconds. Finally she backed away. She didn’t want to violate—there, that was a good word, an SAT-worthy word—Angelica’s wishes. She just wanted to save her from making what was the worst mistake of her life. And she knew just how to do it too.

  She would find Ohad. And she would seduce him. Oh, not for real, of course. There was no way she would have sex with him. She just had to make it look like he was coming on to her and that they were about to have sex. She would have to get him to take his shirt off, to kiss her or something. Her shirt would have to be off too. She had gone back and forth about this a hundred times and decided that much as she disliked the idea, she would have to do it anyway. Both of them shirtless would make the evidence—the picture she planned to take with her cell phone—that much more incriminating. All she would need to do was to show that picture to Angelica, and then, shalom, Ohad. The wedding would be off, and he could go back to bombing Palestinian children or whatever it was that he had been doing before he came here. He would deny it, of course. But it would just be his word against hers. Hers and the picture. The picture would tell the whole story.

  Sitting down on the bed, Justine felt a flash of fear. More than two hundred people were coming here today to see Angelica get married. Then there was her family; her great-grandma, Lenore; and Betsy. Her grandfather was coming too; her mom had told her that he was flying in from LA. They would all be hugely, monumentally disappointed. And what about Angelica herself? She was going to be crushed when she found out about Ohad. Her heart would be broken, and Justine would be the cause of her misery.

  Abruptly Justine got up. She wouldn’t look at the dress, but she couldn’t resist what seemed like an innocent bit of snooping. It wasn’t snooping anyway. It was worship, pure and simple. She and Portia had always adored Angelica; yes, she was their aunt, but since she was only thirteen years their senior, she really seemed more like some exotic older cousin or even a glamorous sister than anything else.

  Pulling open a drawer, Justine saw a jumble of underwear. She dipped her hand in and pulled out a peach thong, which she looped over her thumb. Well, thongs were hot; why shouldn’t Angelica wear one? More searching revealed a matching bra as well as a ribbed silk tank top with a tiny rosette at the neckline, and a long satin nightgown in the most beautiful shade of chocolate brown. Now, who but Angelica would think to have a brown nightgown? So much more interesting and less predictable than black. Justine held it up, admiring it, before carefully folding it and placing it back inside the drawer.

  When Justine and Portia were little, Angelica would swoop down from college in Cambridge and later from medical school for the weekend, and take them to the kinds of places for which their parents never seemed to have the time or energy. They went downtown to see a collection of amazing, intricately wrought eggs made by this guy named Fabergé. Justine still remembered the gold and the pearls, the jewels and the glossy enameled surfaces. She took them to a place in Soho where they got to make their own paper from recycled rags. They had dim sum in Chinatown, frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, pizza at V&T on 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. They went to Shakespeare in the Park, and rock concerts at outdoor plazas in Midtown. She took them Rollerblading along the Hudson River, to Coney Island, and to a stable out in Queens where they got to ride their horses along the beach. She talked nonstop, asked them a million questions, and really listened to the answers, infected everyone around her with her particular energized glow.

  She and Portia had only to hear the words Angelica is coming, and they would break out into what they called their happy dance, which consisted of chasing each other around the house in a wild syncopated gait accompanied by lots of whistles and hollering. Their mother, overwhelmed, would go into her bedroom and shut the door until they had worn themselves out.

  Angelica was just beginning her career as a gynecologist and obstetrician. “Women’s health is one of the most pressing concerns of our collective medical future,” she told Justine, who had just sat there, wide-eyed. “And delivering babies—what more joyful work could there be on earth?” She went on to describe the births at which she had assisted: the baby born to a mother with a gunshot wound to her abdomen, or the one who was blue and still, the cord wrapped around the tiny neck, or another so small as to fit in the palm of your hand. And she, Angelica, was part of the miracle that extracted the baby safely from the mother who had been shot, who breathed the air back into the lungs of the baby who was still and blue, who quickly whisked the preemie to the neonatal unit where it would be fed and warmed to have a chance at life, the life that she, Angelica, had helped usher into the world. Who could not love her?

  Justine closed the drawer. She picked up a bottle of perfume—it was from Chanel and had the intriguing name of Cristalle Eau Verte—sniffed and set it back down again. There was a cosmetic bag, partially open, sitting next to the perfume, and although she knew she shouldn’t, Justine peeped inside. Mascara, a trio of eye shadows, several lipsticks, pressed powder in a midnight-blue compact. Even though she kept her own face pure of makeup, all this stuff was perfectly familiar to her: it could have been the property of anyone in her grade at school or even Portia, who had lately taken to wearing goop on her eyelids and something slick and repellent on her lips. Then Justine saw the round blister pack of pills and knew immediately what they were.

  Her heart started beating more quickly. She picked up the birth control pills and examined them closely—not that she hadn’t seen similar packages, either brought in by the school nurse and passed around during sex ed class or flashed by some precocious classmate in the girls’ bathroom. But those anonymous rectangles or rings carried no weight, no meaning, and were utterly unlike the package of pills—four were already missing—actually used by her aunt. Her heart sped up even more, and Justine felt a little queasy. Now, that was dumb. Angelica was a grown-up. Of course she was having sex with Ohad. But knowing this in the abstract and seeing the intimate, indisputable proof were light-years apart.

  Large grayish spots quivered in front of Justine’s eyes; a headache instantly bloomed, causing her left temple to throb horribly. She was having an attack of the mean greens. Right here, right now. That was the only explanation for this behavior and the grip of her compulsion. She adored Angelica; rummaging through her things was not only crazy; it was despicable. Despicable, yes. Another good SAT word. Justine let go of the package. It fell to the floor, and after she had retrieved it from under the dresser, she put it back where she had found it. She had to get out of here—immediately.

  But before she could escape, her attention was snared by a tangle of jewelry that sat in an open leather case. Here was the heart-shaped locket Angelica always wore, and her braided gold chain, and her charm bracelet. How Justine had loved that charm bracelet when she was little; Angelica told her it had been a gift from Grandma Lenore, who had worn it when she was young.

  Why was all this stuff sitting here? Then Justine remembered: last night, after the dinner, Angelica had gone to a local spa for something called a brown sugar scrub and a facial; she had invited Justine and Portia to join her. Portia had gone, but Justine said no. Not that she hadn’t wanted to spend time with Angelica. But not if it involved the idea of allowing a stranger to slather nasty brown sludge all over her body. Anyway, Angelica must have taken off all her jewelry and not put it back on yet.

  There, at the center of the case, winked a diamond ring. Not just any diamond ring either; it was Angelica’s engagement ring, which had been shown to and admired by all the women in the family. All except Justine, who thought that the mining of diamonds was a truly despicable act, even worse than snooping through someone’s stuff. As far as she was concerned, the glittering stone might as well have been dipped in blood. The mean greens were not over, no; they were just hitting their full stride. Justine’s hand, an appendage not governed by her rational mind or will, reached over to pluck the ring from its nest. She held it for a mom
ent, felt its cold, hard weight, before she tucked it into the pocket of her denim shorts.

  Pumped by the audacity of the act, she sped to the door, but before she could seize the knob, it flew open, and there stood Angelica. She was dressed in a pair of ancient, faded jeans and an oversized white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up; the latter must have belonged to Ohad. At the base of her white throat was a tantalizingly crude hunk of turquoise that hung suspended from a smooth black cord. She looked the way she always looked: perfect.

  “Justine, baby!” Angelica said. “What are you doing in here?” Mute with remorse, Justine opened her mouth and then closed it. She was horribly aware of the ring jammed into her pocket; she could almost believe it would start to beep or squawk or something. She wanted—oh, oh, how badly she wanted!—to put it back, but obviously she couldn’t do that now.

  Angelica, however, seemed oblivious to her distress. Without waiting for a reply, she breezed by her niece into the room, depositing a quick peck on Justine’s flaming cheek as she passed.

  Six

  Reaching for her reading glasses—their cherry-red frames the exact color of a Charms lollipop—Betsy consulted her master list for the tenth time that morning. Pippa Morganstern, the wedding planner, was due at the house any minute, but that didn’t lighten Betsy’s load, not one single bit. She dreaded Pippa’s arrival and could not fathom why Angelica had ever hired her. Surely there was someone else she could have chosen. But, no, it was Pippa and only Pippa who would do, and Betsy had been Angelica’s mother long enough to know that what her daughter wanted, she almost invariably found a way to get.