The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

  “Ladies, gentlemen. I hate to interrupt, but cocktails beckon us tonight. Lila, Tom.” She gestured to both and waited for them to grasp her outstretched arms.

  Her muscular smile, Laura noted, was actually quite impressive. It was, in fact, a feat of stage acting. She had gauged the size and distance of her audience and made the necessary adjustments. Up close, the clenched veins in her neck betrayed anxiety. From twenty feet away, her whole effect was quite subdued.

  “Now, let’s get this over with, shall we?” she said. “So we can toast this fabulous pair.”

  A hearty cheer erupted from the lawn. Augusta encouraged it with polite applause, then silenced it with a definitive clap.

  Lila, who was herself a veteran performer, smiled demurely at the crowd. This was her cue to play up the romance.

  Tom performed his scheduled kiss, but a moment too late, with obvious haste, like an actor who has forgotten a line.

  “If you’ll forgive me,” Augusta went on, “we’re going to begin. If you listen.” She gazed pointedly at the younger members of the crowd. “This won’t take long at all.” She dispensed a merciless scolding look, then, just as quickly, transformed her face into an expression of rapturous delight. “Let me introduce the Reverend Hipp. He is our dear family friend and the beloved pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on Garden Street in Cambridge. He will be performing the ceremony tomorrow.”

  “And drinking heavily tonight!”

  Augusta turned sharply on the group. Who would say something so crass and inappropriate?

  The delighted grin on the face of one of Tom’s many younger cousins gave away the culprit. Augusta glared at the offender and his mother, conveying her disapproval.

  “So!” she said, startling the crowd with a staccato high pitch. A natural public speaker, she understood the power of explosive utterances. “This handsome, youthful group over here. They are the wedding party.” She scanned the group, offering each a cursory nod. “Tripler, Louisa, Anne. Oscar, Peter, Jake. These are the dear friends who will participate in the wedding. They are honored guests.” She paused and smiled coyly. “But not until Lila says ‘I do.’ Until then, this wedding is work.”

  The wedding party assented with a good-natured round of hoots and whistles. Augusta silenced them with a sharp look. She had not meant this in jest.

  “Minnow, my youngest, is also a bridesmaid,” she went on.

  Minnow smiled and curtsied for the crowd. Even at fourteen, she was already more of a ham than her older sister.

  “And Laura and Chip,” Augusta said conclusively. “Laura is Lila’s maid of honor and Chip is Tom’s best man. They will be the last to walk down the aisle before the bride and groom.”

  Laura bristled instinctively at Augusta’s description. She was not Lila’s anything, except perhaps her greatest critic. Still, she mustered the expected smile for the waiting eyes, trying to find the most livable balance between submission and self-respect.

  Without warning, Chip snuck up from behind and grabbed her by the waist. The surprise and bad taste of the gesture nearly caused her to lose her balance.

  “I knew it,” he roared. “Laura Rosen. I still make you weak in the knees.”

  “Chip, get off me,” Laura snapped, then embarrassed by her harsh tone, she quickly added. “You nearly took me down.”

  Chip Hayes was a strange boy that Laura loathed as much as she loved. Over the years, she had spent more time with him than she would have liked, sharing with Lila the responsibility of older, wiser sister. Like Lila’s, Chip’s looks, demeanor, and credentials were irreproachable. But he lacked his sister’s lightness and magnetism. He had inherited, Laura could only guess, more of his father’s than his mother’s traits. Even more than most boys, he was plagued with an off-putting strain of restlessness. His checkered history in school and love attested to this fact.

  From the age of thirteen to eighteen, he had attended no less than five prep schools, relocating whenever a new learning disability was diagnosed or new transgression discovered. Each school had been more specialized than the one before and, in turn, more ill suited; first, a traditional coed day school in Cambridge; second, after a series of suspensions, an ascetic boarding school in Connecticut; third, after the expulsion, three months at home at a smaller, alternative day school; fourth, after the second expulsion, an all-boys institution that bordered on military school, with a heralded department for challenged learners; and fifth, after he escaped from this school on the Vespa of a very attractive drama teacher (with that drama teacher), Chip completed his high-school degree at a ski school in Vermont, the only licensed institution that would accept his dossier of transcripts.

  Incredibly, Chip had turned around this ten-year fiasco when he began to channel his restlessness into artistic pursuits. A compelling portfolio of mixed media collages, stellar performance on the ski team, and a small donation from his father earned the attention of the admissions director of Trinity College, landing Chip, for the first two years of college, only forty miles away from his sister. The short commute from Hartford to New Haven allowed Lila to keep the promise that she made to her parents, that she would keep an eye on her younger brother, and permitted Chip to benefit from the dating options of the Ivy League. Throughout, Laura tolerated Chip’s frequent stays on their common room futon. He was always game to procrastinate, and his constant professions of lust and adoration were amusing, if not flattering.

  “All right,” said Augusta. “I’d like us to do one walk-through of tomorrow’s procession. Members of the wedding party, I need you to break into your assigned pairs.” She waved her arms with the wide, ambiguous movements of an airport traffic controller. “Everyone, line up behind Uncle Jack’s tree. That’s where you’ll begin.”

  The group dutifully broke into pairs, husbands clutching wives, fiancé grasping fiancée with the relief and sweetness of wallflowers finding partners at a dance.

  Laura stalled for a moment, embarrassed by the indignity of the situation. It was somehow degrading to march at Augusta’s command. It hearkened back to an insult borne by her ancestors. Still, she followed the crowd toward the trunk of the majestic tree. Chip followed close behind, poking her waist like a twelve-year-old child.

  “Oh boy,” he said. “Tonight’s the night.”

  “The night you finally drink yourself into oblivion?”

  “The night you finally realize you’re in love with me.”

  “But, Chip, I realized that years ago,” Laura said. She had found that playing along with him was the best course of action. Defying him just provoked him to try harder, at a higher volume. “It’s sad, though, about the age difference. People would talk. You don’t want a bride who has to hobble down the aisle with a cane.”

  “Oh but I do,” Chip replied. “It’ll make it easier to have my way with you.”

  Augusta interrupted, sparing Laura the burden of another scold. “Family members last,” she said. She gestured at the McDevons with a patronizing flourish. “Flower girls will walk first. Your mothers have hung or steamed those dressed already. That silk wrinkles so easily.” She turned to Lila’s older cousin. “Kate, I suggest you use my time-tested trick. Don’t feed your girls after eleven. Then stand at the end of the aisle with a piece of candy.” She indulged in a mischievous smile, then returned to business. “Kathy and Ted, you’ll walk together. Minnow, you’ll walk with the bridesmaids, after Tripler but before Laura. I’ll walk with Chip. Lila will walk with her father. And Tom, of course, will wait with Reverend Hipp.”

  For a moment, everyone remained still, too intimidated to move. But soon the group began to shuffle in the prescribed order, processing from under the gnarled, stately tree with halting, self-conscious steps.

  “You would think it was our first time walking,” said Jake. “Hey, Frankenstein,” he called to Pete. “You all right over there?”

  “I wouldn’t talk,” Pete quipped. “You’re about as graceful as this tree.”

 
; “I hope my dress fits,” Annie said, teasing too loudly.

  Lila turned sharply to look at her friend, opened her mouth to reprimand her, then, realizing Annie’s joke, closed her eyes and smiled.

  One by one, each pair completed the journey from the tree, meeting Augusta and smiling as she nudged them into the correct positions.

  Throughout, Lila remained uncharacteristically quiet, as though she had been hypnotized. Finally, a more familiar Lila seemed to wake from trance. “All right, Mother. This is a wedding. Not a marching exercise. I think we’ve asked enough of our guests.” She shook her head with disdain and let out a peal of gay laughter, playing to the crowd as only she could, distancing herself from her mother even while channeling her.

  “We’ll exact our punishment tonight,” Oscar teased. “At the rehearsal dinner.”

  Another chorus of laughter erupted, followed by louder hoots and whistles.

  “If we drink enough,” Jake said.

  “If you drink your usual amount,” Pete said, “you won’t be standing when it’s your turn to toast.”

  Finally, Tom descended upon the debate to deliver his verdict. He was the de facto judge of the group, their moral arbiter, if not their conscience.

  “If I drink enough,” he said, “you may both live to see me get married tomorrow.”

  At this, the assembled group devolved into raucous applause, their volume escalating suddenly like schoolkids’ after a period bell.

  Tom and Lila grasped hands in a show of unity, and Augusta surrendered, acknowledging that she had lost the group’s attention.

  Lila was rewarded for her gracious act with a kiss from her groom. Tom turned her toward him as though she were a large marionette, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and deposited a polite kiss on her lips. Laura watched the elaborate performance of romance from her assigned position. She was relieved to find she was wholly unmoved. In fact, it was a great comfort to see Tom and Lila finally interact, perhaps because this kiss revealed something far worse than anything she could imagine. It was immediately apparent, not just from the kiss but from his halting step, the choreographed placement of his arm—the whole charade she had just witnessed—that Tom was not in love with Lila—in fact, he seemed mildly repulsed. Realizing this, Laura felt her lungs saturate for the first time since arriving at Northern Gardens. Odds were even that Tom would marry Lila tomorrow.

  FOUR

  By five o’clock, the weather seemed to have lost conviction. A beautiful day had dissolved into a foreboding evening. The wind had picked up, and the clouds had darkened to the color of a bruise. Laura could not help but smile as she pictured the consequences of an approaching storm. She imagined snapshots of the event: an immaculate satin shoe splattered with rainwater, a puddle collecting in the center of the dance floor, rows of shoulders huddled under cocktail shawls. Improbably, she thought of something her father had told her as a child: “What’s good for your friends is good for you.” But she dismissed it as a trite notion just as quickly as it entered her head.

  When she entered the yacht club, she was greeted by a disturbing smell. It was pungent, nutty, and faintly obscene, hardly appropriate for the refined event under way. She knew, from visiting Lila over the years, that it was the stench of sulfur, rising from the marshes at low tide just in time for cocktail hour. But even after deciding on the cause, it was funny to think about other possible sources of the pungent scent. She couldn’t help smiling at the thought that the guests emitted their own noxious gas. Amused, she veered away from the group and wandered toward an empty patch of grass. The detour left her dangerously far from the other bridesmaids and directly in Augusta’s path.

  “My Heavens,” said Augusta. “Everyone’s in black.” She simultaneously looked past and at Laura, rapidly scanning the grounds.

  Laura followed Augusta’s gaze into the assembled crowd, but found only a bright bouquet of primary colors. She regarded her own dress with shame. She was better dressed for a funeral than a wedding party.

  “Well, you certainly are a city girl,” Augusta chirped.

  Laura replied with a smile meant to convey two things: gratitude for the feigned compliment and apology for the insult of her attire.

  “Now, what is that perfume?” Augusta said. “Isn’t it the marsh?” Laura asked.

  “No, no,” said Augusta. “Yours.” She struck a contemplative pose and furrowed her brow, making it perfectly clear that she hated the fragrance before moving on to greet another guest.

  It had taken Laura several years to learn the language of Lila’s culture. Rooming with Lila had, of course, been a crash course in the dialect. But the language was as nuanced and subtle as the most complex Eastern tongue, cursed with its own multifaceted characters and an unpublished set of rules.

  In conversation, for example, one must maintain a constant stream of chatter while avoiding emotional content at all costs. These two requirements were, of course, in direct conflict. The exclusion of emotional content necessarily shortened response time and rendered continuous banter all the more difficult. Still, a skilled conversationalist overcame this obstacle by stockpiling pithy, interested questions and keeping them poised at the ready. All the while, the speaker maintained an air of wondrous intrigue, answering with thoughtful precision and asking with breathless curiosity.

  A truly advanced speaker was capable of even greater feats. He could draw on information gathered in previous conversations, thereby displaying his impressive recall, and yet still maintain a dry and emotionally guarded mystique. Such a pro could weave a seamless ribbon of pleasantries into a factual conversation. He could summarize profound life-changing events such as deaths, births, and marriages with short superlative statements. A conversationalist of the highest level could use one phrase for two wholly disparate scenarios. For example, “How is that guy anyway?” could be used for both of the following queries: “How is your one-month-old?” and “How is your dying father?” Both were asked with the same furrowed concern and chipper aplomb.

  God forbid one answer a question with too much gravity. Earnest expressions of sorrow or distress were best left for one’s diary. Of course, the uninitiated might hear the question, “How is your dying father” and mistake it for a sincere query. But the distinction between the words and the questioner’s intent, though subtle, was all-important, for it spared the cocktail realm incongruous heaviness—subjects better saved for private talks on the porch—and it enabled good manners to be mistaken for sincere compassion. This, of course, was a dangerous mistake should you ever find yourself in need of a confidante.

  Laura had first encountered the language freshman year in college when she and Lila together took on Yale’s secret society punch. Never mind that they were conversing with a population that was almost exclusively drunk, these people were incomprehensible to Laura. For months, she struggled to understand; Lila was fluent from the start.

  Nearly ten years later, Laura was finally conversant. She had, of course, been subject to an immersion course while living with Lila, and she had honed the ear of a foreigner from the day she was born. Her own parents were members of the caste known most affectionately as reformed Jews, in other words, Jews who had all but converted to another religion. They were people who summered in the Hamptons and lived on the Upper East Side, or resided in Brookline and summered on the Vineyard. They were people who sought membership at Bath and Tennis Clubs all over the New England seaboard in spite of their well-known membership policies. They were the people who supported a multibillion-dollar industry of retail modeled on yachting attire. They were people Laura had come to think of in the most simplistic way: Jews were black and Wasps were white, and she was some shade of gray in between.

  Boarding school was the defining turn in her religious education. As one of four Jews in her grade-school class, she had always been outnumbered. But at boarding school, she was marooned, finally far enough from her city roots to forget her urban identity. Quickly and quietly, th
irteen-year-old Laura had completed a total makeover, trading in the Doc Martens in which she arrived for tasseled moccasins. The pictures she tacked on her wall still revealed the stylish iconoclast of her younger years; the foray into rubber bracelets, a short affair with side ponytails. But, without this evidence, her classmates would never have known her secret history. By the time she returned from Thanksgiving break, the transformation was complete; her room was stocked with J. Crew catalogs, her drawers filled with plaid flannel shirts. Only a genealogical expert would have guessed her ethnicity.

  She sometimes blamed her parents for this disgrace. It was their job to instill pride in her heritage. Instead, they had confused her with a surplus of cultural identities, as though religion were something you could change at will to match a new pair of pants. Her family’s Chanukah tradition typified the problem. On the first night, her mother unveiled a dusty menorah, assembled the family in the kitchen, lit a candle from the burner in the stove, and sang a dirge-like Hebrew prayer. The custom was entirely devoid of joy and magic. It felt both cursory and compulsory, like the stats class required of all freshman at Yale, which no one really studied for, but everyone eventually passed. On the five remaining nights, the menorah was lit, but the somber songs were dropped. Hastily wrapped presents were exchanged over a takeout meal.

  Her mother’s approach to Christmas was ebullient, by contrast. Mrs. Rosen, a Jew on both sides, decked her halls with holly and filled the house with an abundance of presents as though striving to destroy her credit in a single month. Her one nod to Judaism was the color of the lights on her Christmas tree. The tree was festooned, not with tasteful white bulbs, but tacky colored ones, a sign to God or Moses or Abraham, much like lamb’s blood smeared on the doorway Passover night, that hers was a family of believers.