Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701)

by McDonough, Yona Zeldis

  “Well, I would have been ready if I hadn’t had to handle every single thing by myself for the last two hours!” Betsy said, boiling over. “Where have you been? What have we been paying you for, anyway?”

  “I really don’t appreciate being spoken to in that tone of voice,” Pippa said, her nostrils quivering rabbitlike with indignation.

  “What tone of voice?” said Don, who was wearing a tuxedo and gleaming white shirt anchored by a black satin bow tie and a pair of heavy gold cuff links. He looked at Pippa. “Why are you still here? I thought Betsy had given you your marching order hours ago.”

  “I have never been spoken to this way before. Never,” said Pippa. “I would leave right now except that would be a totally unprofessional thing to do. And I am a professional,” she added, her chin trembling slightly.

  Betsy felt no sympathy at all; now that she had started, she didn’t want to stop. “Well, if you’re such a professional, please get into the car, drive into town, and get Lenore her panty hose. Immediately.” Gretchen, who had the keys in her pocket, held them out to Pippa.

  As Pippa took the keys, her phone started buzzing; she whipped it out and stepped closer to the door to conduct her conversation. Betsy couldn’t believe she wasn’t moving in the direction of the garage now, but before she could interrupt, she was literally faced with Lincoln, who had just come in and was now standing inches away from her. “Do you know what’s going on between Justine and your future son-in-law?” He spoke quietly, but there was an intensity to his words that put Betsy instantly on the alert.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. Had he been drinking? She scanned his face for the signs but did not see any. In fact he was looking very pulled together and spiffy; that was definitely not a rental tux.

  “Ohad told me something happened between them. But he wouldn’t say what. Do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Betsy said, immediately imagining several possible scenarios; she didn’t like any of them. She turned to look at Justine, whose arm was being held—rather tightly in Betsy’s view—by Ennis.

  Gretchen must have thought so too. “You’re going to hurt her,” she said to Ennis.

  “No, she’s fine—” Ennis began. He let her go, but the rest of his sentence remained unspoken because he, like everyone else, was suddenly distracted by a voice that emanated from the top of the stairs.

  “What is wrong with everyone?”

  They looked up. There was Angelica, resplendently garbed in her wedding gown, reproaching them all with her beautiful, furious gaze.

  Twenty

  Gretchen heard her father’s small intake of breath at the sight of her sister, and she could understand why. Angelica was less adorned—but even more exquisite—than Gretchen would have expected: the dress, a gleaming yet simple undulation of heavy white satin, the glossy black hair pulled up and back revealing the crisply articulated point of her widow’s peak, the ebullient froth of the net veil spilling over her shoulders. She was, as Lenore would have put it, a vision.

  “Mom, you’re not even dressed yet!” Angelica cried.

  “I’m about to go up right now,” Betsy said. “I was just asking Pippa to please drive into town to buy your grandmother a pair of panty hose.”

  Angelica looked at Pippa, who was finally off the phone. “Could you?” she said. “For me?” Pippa nodded, mouth tight, and, clutching the keys, she walked out without another word.

  As soon as Pippa left, Esperanza, the maid, walked in, carrying Betsy’s wretched little dog in her arms. It was wheezing pathetically, and even Gretchen, no friend to high-strung, sleep-decimating creatures, could see that something was terribly wrong.

  “Excuse me, señora,” said Esperanza. “The dog. She no good. Look.”

  “Oh my God,” Betsy said. “Her tongue is blue!” She grabbed the gasping dog and ran off to the kitchen with Esperanza hurrying behind her. Seconds later they heard the rush of water and Betsy’s voice loud and clear above it. “Ice, please, someone get me some ice!”

  “What’s going on?” Gretchen asked.

  “I have no idea!” Angelica snapped. “All I know is that my wedding is about to start, and Mom is in the kitchen with her dog! I cannot believe it.” She moved along the marble floor. The long dress swirled around her ankles and made sibilant whispers as she passed. “At least you’re dressed, Daddy!” she said to Lincoln. “But what about the rest of you?”

  “I’m not getting dressed, because I’m not going to be there,” Justine announced. She clenched her fists slightly as if for resolve. Gretchen stared at her. Was nothing about this day going to go smoothly? Was it going to be a battle every damned step of the way? That phone call from the police, the ride with Ennis, sloshing through the rising water, the humiliation of reclaiming her child from the station—and now this out-and-out refusal to attend the wedding.

  “What are you talking about?” Angelica stopped in front of her niece. “How could I even think of getting married without you there?”

  “I’m sorry,” Justine said. “But I’m not going. Don’t you see? I can’t go.”

  “Why not, sweetheart?” Angelica’s tone had softened, and she placed her hands on Justine’s shoulders. Galvanized by Angelica’s touch, Justine reared back and attempted to bolt. Ennis caught her first and this time took both of her arms in his hands.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Not again.”

  “Let me go!” Justine wriggled in her father’s grasp.

  “Ennis!” Gretchen cried. “Stop being so rough!”

  “I’m not hurting her,” Ennis said. “I’m just setting some limits. She can’t go running off again. This has got to stop, and it’s stopping right now, hey.”

  “Why do you want to run away, sweetie?” Angelica said. She made no other move to touch Justine but stood very close to her with their faces mere inches apart.

  “Ask Ohad! Ask that murderer you want to marry!” Justine wrenched her face away and pressed it to her father’s chest. Then she began to cry. Gretchen was too stunned to approach her and stood there staring.

  “What is going on here?” Betsy said. She and Esperanza had walked back into the room, still holding the dog, which was now soaked and trembling violently. The animal’s abundant fur was tamped down, and she seemed diminished, small as a rodent.

  “That’s what I’d like to know!” Angelica whirled around to face her mother. “Justine is calling Ohad terrible names and says she’s not going to be at the wedding, and you run off into the kitchen with your damned dog—”

  “My damned dog was minutes away from death,” Betsy said. “This has happened before; she gets herself overwrought and goes into some kind of shock. I had to get her under cold water immediately to bring her body temperature down.” She gave Esperanza a quick hug. “Thank you for letting me know so quickly,” she said. “You saved her life.”

  “Mom, this is surreal,” said Angelica. “All those years of not allowing so much as a canary to cross our threshold, and now you’re catering and kowtowing to the most neurotic animal on the planet. And on my wedding day no less!”

  “The goldfish…” Gretchen said. “She wouldn’t even let me have a goldfish…” She was transported back to that rueful day when she’d had to surrender her shimmering orange prize.

  “And you!” Angelica said, turning her wrath on her sister. “Why aren’t you dressed? And why can’t you control your own daughter?”

  “This is not a matter of control, Angelica,” flared Gretchen. That was so like Angelica, blaming everyone for everything. How was it that Angelica, so much younger, nevertheless had always managed to wield such power in the family? Gretchen had never been able to figure that out, and now, even on the cusp of forty, she was no closer to knowing her sister’s secret. “Justine is suffering. Can’t you see that? Is everything always about you?”

  “Mom, stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Justine said, lifting her face from Ennis’s chest. “You’re always doing that, and I
hate it!” Gretchen felt something inside crumble; how wounding were your child’s offhand and so casually hurled recriminations.

  “You’re jealous,” Angelica said, ignoring Justine. “You’ve always been jealous of me. You want to ruin my wedding, don’t you?”

  “I was jealous of you in the past,” Gretchen said. “And maybe I’m still jealous of you now. But accusing me of wanting to ruin your wedding? That’s a total distortion. Because I wouldn’t do that—not to you, not to anyone. I wouldn’t rob you of something so precious and important. But you can’t say the same thing, can you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Angelica said. It was clear, though, that Gretchen’s comment had in some way registered; her enviably white skin had turned ever so slightly pink, and she gripped the folds of her dress more tightly than necessary.

  “Oh yes, you do,” Gretchen said. She hadn’t thought about the incident in years, though she remembered how dismayed she’d been at the time. Yet she’d said nothing to Angelica; even then her sister’s armor had been proof against any question.

  “It was that spring you graduated from college. After you’d walked off with about every honor there was—departmental, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. But there was one thing you didn’t get. It was that fellowship to go off to…Sweden?”

  “It was Copenhagen!” Angelica said, flustered. “It was Copenhagen, and I was the one who should have been chosen; everyone thought so!”

  “Not the committee who made the decision,” Gretchen said. “They didn’t think so. They picked someone else.” She felt the air in the room subtly changing as this conversation was taking place and sensed how everyone—her parents, her daughter—was regarding Angelica as if they had not seen her, or at least not all of her, before now. “But you didn’t like that, did you? More than not like it—you wouldn’t stand for it. So you tipped off someone on the committee about the graduation party she was hosting, didn’t you?”

  “She invited all her druggie buddies to that party! The committee had a right to know. And I had an obligation to tell them.” Angelica was so self-righteous, so odiously sure of herself.

  “Wasn’t your first obligation to her? She was your friend. Your best friend,” said Gretchen quietly. “And, anyway, you’re making it sound way more serious than it was. We’re talking about pot, Angelica. Those kids were passing around a few joints, not mainlining heroin.”

  “Pot is illegal! It was then, and it is now! She was a lawbreaker. A lawbreaker engaged in a criminal activity.” Angelica’s voice had scaled up. “And she was a fool to have jeopardized that fellowship just to get high. She didn’t deserve it.”

  “You had so much already,” Gretchen said, ignoring her sister’s last remark. “But you couldn’t let her have that. You wanted it, so you took it from her. The way you take just about everything.”

  “How do you know all this?” Angelica burst out. “Who even told you?” Her voice had a desperate edge.

  “She did,” said Gretchen. “After it was all over, and you had flown off, she called me. She was miserable, disgraced within the department, afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to graduate. She wanted to talk to someone who knew you as well as she did. Someone who could explain what it was that you had done. I guess she thought that would be me.”

  There was a deep and powerful silence that lasted several seconds. Gretchen was the one who broke it. “I spent years envying you,” she said to her sister as if they were the only ones in the room. “At first it was because everyone doted on you, and later because you were so good at everything. But I’m not envious of you anymore.” Was this even true? She didn’t know, but she felt good saying it, felt good acting as if, so she continued. “I don’t want your life, Angelica. Not the big splashy wedding, not the high-powered career—none of it. I’m different from you—and from Teddy and Caleb too. I don’t want what the rest of you want, and that’s always made me feel insufficient. Lacking. I spent so much time feeling that way that I couldn’t figure out what it was I did want. That’s going to change, though. In fact, I think it already has.” Gretchen stopped talking. She felt everyone looking at her now, as if she was the one they had failed to see clearly.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not envious,” Angelica said frostily. She had regained command of herself again; the momentary crack in her composure was sealed over by the carapace of her personality. “Because I never intended to make you feel that way. And if you did, it wasn’t my fault. But none of you are being particularly supportive,” she said, looking around the foyer at the assembled group. “Caleb having histrionics over his boyfriend, Grandma disappearing, Justine taking the car. And someone”—her voice rose, the angry queen once more—“has gone and stolen my diamond ring! I just can’t believe it. You all want to sabotage this day. It’s clear to me now. Even you, Mom. You’re trying to turn this into your day, your event. That’s why I hired Pippa: I needed an ally in this family—even if I had to pay to get her.”

  “You think I was trying to sabotage you?” Betsy said; the shock made her voice sound, at least to Gretchen, unfamiliar. “And that Pippa—Pippa!—was your ally? Angelica, that is the worst thing you have ever said to me in your entire life.” And, still clutching the dog, she began to cry. Betsy, Gretchen knew, never cried, and the effect on everyone was immediate.

  A weird hush settled on the room; even Justine stopped her own crying to witness the spectacle of Betsy breaking down—the loud, wrenching sobs that contorted her mouth and caused red blotches to appear on her cheeks and neck. Swiftly Gretchen walked over to her mother and took both her and her wretched dog in her arms. Betsy let herself be enfolded by the embrace; her small shoulders trembled as she wept. The dog trembled in sympathy. Awkwardly Gretchen patted her mother’s back. Her father looked stricken and useless; even Mr. Know-It-All Don was without a solution.

  And then Teddy and Marti came into the foyer; he wore his tuxedo, and she was in a crisp linen dress the color of toast, with several strands of ivory beads at her throat. Caleb, also tuxedo clad, walked in just behind them. “What’s going on?” Teddy asked. “The photographer is all set up, and she wants all you guys over there.”

  “He’s right,” Don said, finally jolted into action. “Betsy, honey, please stop crying. You need to get a grip.” But Betsy kept crying and didn’t answer, and everyone else started talking at once.

  “Everyone’s trying to ruin my day! Ruin!”

  “It’s always about her; no one else even exists!”

  “That was such an uncalled-for comment! So cruel!”

  “He’s a murderer!”

  “She’s so self-centered! Selfish!”

  “Have you all gone crazy?”

  “Someone has to take this child in hand!”

  “I don’t want Marti to have to see any of this!”

  “I should have left with Bobby!”

  “There’s a thief in this house. A thief!”

  Gretchen didn’t know which voice to listen to, what to do next. What had she set in motion here? Was Angelica right in her accusations—that Gretchen was jealous and wanted to spoil things for her? But no. She realized as she listened to all the strident, angry voices around her that was not what she wanted—not at all. They had gathered here to see Angelica get married. And that’s what they were going to do. Everything else could wait.

  Putting two fingers up to her mouth, she let out a piercing whistle, something she had not done since she was a kid. Amazingly she still knew how, because they all stopped; every single one of them shut up and stared. Even Betsy’s sobs ceased, and the little dog’s ears pricked, two perfect triangles on its small, wet head.

  “Enough!” Gretchen cried, a stern schoolmarm addressing her unruly charges. “There’s no time for this now. Yes, everyone’s angry. Everyone has an agenda. But for the next few hours, we have to rein it in. For Angelica and for ourselves too. Because otherwise all those people who are about to arrive will think we’re totally out of
control and coming apart at the seams. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t believe that about us, and I don’t want anyone else to believe it either.” Gretchen could not remember when she’d had the attention of her entire family all at the same time. “So are you with me? Mom? Caleb? Please?”

  Angelica stood with her open hands at her sides; the dress had indentations, subtle but still visible, where she had clutched it. “Thank you, Gretchen,” she said. Her voice broke the spell that Gretchen’s whistle had cast, and again everyone was speaking at once, thanking her and agreeing that, yes, they would all pull it together for the wedding. “I told you I won’t go—” These words, uttered by Justine, were lost in the general buzz as the door opened, and there stood Ohad, surrounded by the dark, noisy members of his family, all chattering in Hebrew. When Justine saw him, she burrowed under Ennis’s arm as if trying to hide.

  “I’m going to get dressed now,” Gretchen said. She looked at Justine, who did not return the look.

  “So am I,” added Betsy. “Lincoln, would you tell Amber that we won’t be doing the family photographs before the wedding, but that if she could get some pictures of the two bands setting up, that would be wonderful.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” a quavery voice called from above. There at the top of the staircase was Lenore. She wore the shimmering green brocade dress, and her hair had been restored to its bouffant fullness, the dips and waves crowning her head like meringue. Adhesive gauze pads neatly covered both knees, and her ankle was tightly bound in an Ace bandage. Her small feet were bare. “Where are my panty hose?”

  “Your panty hose!” cried Betsy, mounting the stairs quickly. “I forgot! Ma, just use a pair of mine—”

  “No, I can’t!” Lenore said. “They’ll be too big, and the ankles will sag! And I cannot attend this wedding with saggy ankles.”

  “I have your panty hose!” Pippa, who had just come in, was elbowing her way through the throng of Israelis; she held the package up in the air like a banner. “I have them right here!”