The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

  The wedding party stood in rapt silence, muted by the reprimand.

  Finally, Pete broke the silence with a signature quip. “Honey,” he said, turning to Tripler, “you sure you don’t want to stay in that lovely bed-and-breakfast in town?”

  “Can I come?” Laura chimed in.

  Mrs. Hayes’s playful smile froze as she turned to Laura. She paused, staring unabashedly. It was one thing for her to tease the family but another thing for an outsider. “You will all be fine,” she said conclusively. “Because you’re all family.”

  “Phew,” said Pete.

  “No kidding,” said Tripler. “Last thing I need is an angry ghost mussing up my bridesmaid dress.”

  Laura mustered a polite smile as laughter swelled and abated.

  Finally, Lila tired of negotiating with her mother. She asserted the power conferred by this weekend alone and shooed Augusta back into the house with a ferocious look. Assuaged somewhat, Lila refocused her energy on supervising the group. They had better hurry to the Gettys’ right away and get settled. Tom would be returning momentarily from his tennis game. And the wedding party would need to be dressed for the evening in an hour so that they could leave for the yacht club immediately after the rehearsal.

  A cheerful calm returned as the group followed Lila across the field. But even after the affable resolution of the ghost conversation—it had been hostility, had it not—Laura still felt the chill of Mrs. Hayes’s gaze. Yes, in fact, she was completely certain it was hostility. And she was sure that when Augusta referred to family, she meant everyone except her.

  Tom had never felt completely at home with the Hayes family. He had felt welcomed by them, included by them, but never accepted. In their presence, he felt much as he had as a freshman at Yale, as though he was discovering a new side of his personality. His college friends, he later realized, got to know Tom McDevon precisely when Tom did. He had found and formed his adult personality with them—because of them, he sometimes felt. Like most writers, he had borrowed and invented in equal part.

  But what did it really mean “to feel at home” with someone? It was an overrated sentiment and a hackneyed cliché, Tom thought, a feeling that he was not even sure he wanted. He had never harbored particularly positive feelings about home, nor had he felt particularly “at home” in his own childhood. On the contrary, from a very early age, he was plagued by the feeling that he did not belong in the family in which he grew up. It was not that he didn’t love his parents. They were adequate, to be sure. But there was no escaping the fact that they had produced a child with superior intelligence, and this fact engendered unavoidable tension in the house.

  Tom’s mother, Kathy McDevon, was the fifth of seven children, the only one in her generation to achieve a version of the American dream. She had emerged from a rough upbringing in Dorchester, Massachusetts, due to her plucky nature and exceptional looks, to marry a man with both intelligence and aspirations. Teddy McDevon received his business training in the neighboring town of Roxbury, apprenticing in the gleaming classroom of the Irish-Italian garbage business. By the age of sixteen, he was running the trucks for all of Roxbury and Dorchester. By thirty, he had tired of city grit and moved, with his wife and his own cadre of trucks, to suburban New Hampshire.

  The McDevon family enjoyed the spoils of the garbage business for many years, profiting from the tree-lined towns’ inexhaustible supply of trash. The business consumed Ted’s every moment. Kathy busied herself with the children, returning to work in a salon—just for fun—when the children were well into school. Tom’s sister was spared Tom’s aching intelligence and embraced the pleasures of suburban life. But Tom was restless from an early age. How could anyone find contentment hanging out in a Dairy Queen, fulfillment on the four-mile drive to and from the video store? Parochial school provided a glimpse, however obstructed, of more enriching pursuits while the obstructions fostered a healthy desire to rebel.

  It was not until college that Tom first understood the impact of his upbringing. Catholicism, he realized, explained all of his pathologies. Ten years of parochial school had taught him nothing if not self-flagellation, while daily catechism left him with a healthy fear of girls. His first encounter did little to dissuade him of this fear: an accidental glimpse of Sister Margaret’s brassiere during a volleyball game in gym class. The second—an intentional glimpse of a classmate’s underwear—was just as filthy and far more disturbing. By the age of twelve, the damage was done. Catholic doctrine had taken hold. In Tom’s mind, suffering was synonymous with sainthood; sex with depravity.

  College offered ample opportunities to reassess his past and, better yet, to reassign blame from his nuns to his parents. It was there that Tom realized that his parents’ relationship mirrored an archetypal Catholic union, the one between the Virgin Mary and Joseph—one was a perennial martyr and the other, a bit of a fool. That Tom had not developed a full-blown phobia of women was nothing short of miraculous.

  And yet, despite the blessed confusion of growing up Catholic, Tom suddenly felt a devastating yearning for Manchester, New Hampshire. This feeling was, of course, aggravated by a growing suspicion. But as he stood on the grass courts of the Dark Harbor Bath and Tennis Club, knees bent, racquet poised to strike, he knew he was fooling himself. His craving was not for a particular time and place. It was for a particular person. He had known what it was to feel truly at home—he had felt it in the company of one woman in his life—and unfortunately, she was not the woman he was marrying tomorrow.

  But to think of her now was not only self-destructive but stupid. It was stupid enough to be funny. No, not even—it was tragic, maudlin and trite. Unfortunately, the physical exertion of tennis was failing in its promise to clear his head. A friendly game with Lila’s father, William, had turned into a free-for-all when Lila’s younger brother, Chip, and younger sister, Minnow, stormed the court and insisted that singles be rescheduled to make room for a long-awaited doubles grudge match. Tom had agreed willingly. The alternative was to sit with his own family in the clubhouse and smile while they complimented the grounds.

  Perhaps this was what Lila had alluded to when she joked about “island fever.” The cleverness and offensiveness of the joke rested in the double entendre, the notion that the Hayes family could legitimately be called “island people.” Island people, Lila snobbishly meant to imply, were the colorful populace of Gauguin’s paintings, natives who wore magenta-and-orange prints and frolicked with tigers and gazelles. Lila’s islanders were lily-white. They eschewed orange-and-magenta sarongs for pink-and-green prints or bleached tennis attire. They grazed on golf courses, not fertile plains, hydrated with champagne instead of water, found nourishment in watercress sandwiches and lobster salad instead of coconuts and plantains.

  The closest Lila’s people had ever come to frolicking with a gazelle was walking with Lila herself. Her long, seemingly jointless legs had glided over every inch of Dark Harbor, moving from lesson to lesson, porch party to porch party in search of her next prey. Now, as Tom pictured Lila as a teen, he was suddenly enraged. He would happily wager that she had slept with at least ten of her tennis and sailing instructors. The total number could not be less than ten.

  Surely, geography had a hand in Tom’s anxious state. How could you not feel disoriented when stranded on the peak of a mountain jutting out of the ocean, a remnant of volcanic rock dressed to look like civilized society? The mainland, he reminded himself, was only seventeen miles away, technically only five if you counted the land bridge that connected Dark Harbor to Northern Isle. But channels between the many islands off the coast of Maine were traversed by all manners of dinghies and whalers. Ferries carrying cars and people were dispatched between the bigger islands every several hours. Still, even despite this constant commotion—a ferry was likely docking in the harbor this very minute—Tom felt completely adrift, as though Dark Harbor were isolated and remote. Seventeen miles of water felt intrinsically different from seventeen miles of dirt. I
t changed one’s perception of a place to know that escape was possible, if necessary, simply by placing foot in front of foot.

  Water would forever be an alien entity. The ocean, even for an adept swimmer, was intrinsically treacherous, largely unknown, and constantly subject to change. That the ocean presented the only means of egress from Dark Harbor was suddenly overwhelming. It was, in itself, more unsettling than any possible cause for escape he could conjure up. Therefore, he decided, the escape from Dark Harbor would be worse than anything he might need to escape. And somehow this deduction left Tom feeling both panic-stricken and euphoric. In all his years studying literature, he had only conceptually grasped the meaning of “existential dread.” But now he felt he understood. When the act of escaping from a place is worse than the thing one might need to escape. This was “existential dread.” He was in such a place right now.

  He quickly checked himself for his melodramatic conclusion. Surely it was natural to be somewhat stressed right now. The phrase “wedding-day jitters” had been coined to explain this very state of mind. Grooms throughout history had felt this sensation thousands of times before. Furthermore, he was faced with another equally unnerving concern: bridging the communication gap between his parents and the Hayeses.

  He rose to the task the moment his family stepped off Wednesday’s ferry. He had served as translator for the two families, conveying the hidden meanings of one, shielding the improprieties of the other. To a casual witness, the packed schedule of activities—morning golf, afternoon tennis—might have seemed fun. But it was anything but recreation for Tom. Within hours of his family’s arrival, he felt drained of energy.

  At first sight, the Hayeses and McDevons appeared to be members of the same species. But closer examination revealed they had diverged sharply, much like Darwin’s finches. Tom’s mother, for example, had greeted Lila with a compliment about her engagement ring. It was an heirloom she’d given Tom for the proposal, an impressive rectangular emerald in a pleasing Art Deco setting. Kathy had inherited it when her own mother passed away. Mrs. Hayes secretly scorned the ring. She felt it looked far too much like a cocktail gem to be used as an engagement ring. Its inappropriate use bothered her as misplaced commas do a good editor. Frequent mention of Lila’s ring had required that Augusta bite her tongue and Tom tether his mother’s. Would that the communication gap lessened with silence.

  Cultural discrepancies came to a head on the subject of the rehearsal dinner. As tradition dictated, the McDevons would foot the bill for the Friday night meal while the Hayeses shouldered the greater financial burden of the wedding festivities. It was tradition for the groom’s parents to host this event, a conciliatory gesture to compensate the father of the bride for his bum deal. Nevertheless Augusta had offered to help with the rehearsal dinner. It would be easier for her to organize due to her familiarity with local caterers and her connections with local venues.

  But soon enough, Augusta’s “help” turned into supervision, her supervision into command. She insisted on the yacht club as a venue. She hired the staff, tweaked the design for the invitations, even secretly asked her florist to supplement the McDevons’ order. Mrs. McDevon was enraged by Augusta’s interference while Augusta was quietly horrified by Mrs. McDevon’s stingy budget. These feelings only added to tensions between the two families. Tom, as always, served as the biased ambassador, empathizing with his mother, siding with Augusta, and hating himself for his duplicity.

  He was comforted by the comparison to a translator. As the only “bilingual” party, he was uniquely positioned to comprehend the misunderstandings and missteps that inevitably arose between two cultures. His purpose was to predict and prevent as many as possible. He was comfortable enough in the post, having historically served this role within his group of friends, acting as liaison between those who otherwise could not communicate. He prided himself on this knack—it was a talent, really. He was like a crab, capable of living in any environment, skilled at presiding over the most makeshift camps. But for the first time in his life, he felt ill equipped for the task. Now, he felt like the foreign party, confused, put off, and consistently surprised.

  The realization was marked by a sudden tightening in his chest, and he wondered, for a split second, if he was suffering a cardiac arrest. But panic attacks, he had learned over the years, aped the hallmarks of most fatal diseases; the key to snuffing them out was to focus on one’s breath. With this in mind, he inhaled, exhaled, then inhaled again. But finding that the extra oxygen only increased his pulse, he made a brusque excuse to his doubles partner, Minnow, then called to his cousin, who was watching the game courtside, and asked him to take his place.

  He excused himself with a half-truth—the rehearsal dinner was hours away, and he needed to work on his toast. Liberated, he walked briskly across the court, then waved to his relatives in the clubhouse before cutting across the golf course, the shortest distance to the nearby road. He was nearly foiled by an unforeseen obstruction on the seventh tee: a mortifyingly large constituent of McDevons had congregated on the fairway and transformed the trimmed grass into their own private picnic grounds. Tom smiled politely and did his best to convey a look of urgent tardiness, then cut across the green and turned up Harbor Road as though he were heading toward Northern Gardens. Once he was out of sight, he slowed his pace slightly. All roads in Dark Harbor eventually led to water; it was simply a matter of time.

  Mercifully, the road made good on this promise before long. Pavement gave way to moist brown dirt and dirt to gravelly sand. Whiter, silvery light betrayed the nearness of the water. Finally, Tom faced two familiar landmarks: on his right, the elm-flanked drive to Northern Gardens; on his left, an ancient graveyard. Its headstones were not the typical gray but a chalky, iridescent white. Calming slightly, he checked in both directions to make sure he was alone, then ducked into the graveyard, picking up speed as he passed through the open gate. As he ran, the headstones formed a clean white ribbon in his periphery. The ocean announced itself with the rush of wind through trees.

  Sprinting now, his vision was blurred by so many familiar names: Hayes, Getty, Westfield, Adams. Would he and Lila be buried here, too? What would Lila’s headstone say? Lila Hayes McDevon or Lila McDevon Hayes? And as though these morbid thoughts possessed a force of their own, Tom found himself running at a desperate pace as though he was being pursued. He ran faster and faster through the sloping cemetery, past the modest graves that rose out of the earth like an endless row of perfect teeth, past the formidable mausoleums with their intricate vines. Soon enough, gravity and velocity combined to pull him toward the ground. Grabbing hold of a branch, he averted a fall and glimpsed the water beyond the trees. He remained like this for several moments, panting and wheezing, watching the afternoon ferry as it lessened into the fog.

  THREE

  The Gettys’ house was a smaller version of Northern Gardens, but it lacked the vibrance of the Hayeses’, and, of course, it lacked a name. It was built with similar materials and with only slightly smaller proportions, but it looked, particularly when seen from the water, like Northern Gardens’ younger, less attractive sister. It was painfully clear the house had been shortchanged the attention and refinements Northern Gardens had enjoyed. Its defects were visible even as the group approached from across the field. Its white paint peeled noticeably near the gutters; all but one of the decorative black shutters was missing a crucial panel; the wraparound porch had been so severely damaged by termites that whole sections had been roped off. Like so many homes that have remained in one family over several generations, it had become a museum of sorts. Everything about the house bore the faint musk of 1963.

  Lila had given the room assignments great consideration. She had factored in the respective needs of each guest (and her affection for that guest) before settling on the right room. Tripler and Pete, she had decided, would stay in the master bedroom, a sizable, if slightly dated suite whose red toile upholstered furniture had faded to a consistent p
ink. Weesie and Jake would stay in the bedroom that belonged to the Gettys’ older son, a small damp room that made up for its size with a stunning view of the ocean. Annie and Oscar would stay in the younger son’s bedroom, a room that made up for its inconsequential views with a charming built-in window seat. Laura would stay in the room that belonged to the Gettys’ youngest daughter, a room that had remained monastically untouched since the child’s tragic death from leukemia.

  At Lila’s insistence, the group disbanded to settle into their rooms, promising to reconvene in an hour on the porch of the Hayeses’ house. The girls dispersed to compare their rooms—why did Tripler get the best one—and to assess available bathrooms, negotiating their order of entry through a series of announcements shouted across the hall. The boys dropped their bags in the appointed rooms and reassembled on the porch, arranging themselves on the wicker furniture, oblivious to its state of disrepair. Laura took advantage of the commotion to retreat to her room, hopeful that silence would work its magic on her frayed nerves.

  She stood at the door before entering, unnerved by the stillness. Every attempt had been made to barricade the room from the summer sun, as though to shield the delicate soul who lived there from the outside world. The bed was sheathed in crisp white linen with a delicate pink monogram, its fraying eyelet ruffles brittle enough to break at the touch. Tulle curtains on the windows dusted the room with a confectionary shadow, and the windows themselves seemed to have been intentionally painted shut. A white wrought-iron headboard had jaundiced significantly, and red rosebuds on the wallpaper had bleached to a fleshy pink. One leg of the bed seemed to have suffered an emergency amputation, but a stack of books tucked underneath served as a prosthetic limb. Even though it was long before dusk, inside this room it looked like evening.

  Scanning the room, Laura reconsidered Augusta’s claims about ghosts. The room was unsettling—chilling, really—in that specific indescribable way of a haunted house. It was classic Lila to condemn her to this room. Annoyed, Laura walked toward the window and pushed her face to the glass. A thick forest of spruce ended a few feet from her window as though it had grown, untamed, past a designated perimeter. Still, Laura found it pleasant enough to stare silently into trees. It was an interesting change, if not exactly a relief, to leave the noise of the city, to forget, as she did, even with brief separation, the rhythm of her daily routine. Ben, though technically a boyfriend, suddenly seemed like a figment of her imagination, as permanent and corporeal as the girl whose bedroom she borrowed right now.