The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

  With new resolve, she uttered a hasty thanks to Tom’s parents for the party. She made a public show of kissing Tom good night and reluctantly tearing herself away. Then, she hurried away from the yacht club, gaining speed as she cut across the seventh tee. As she walked, she hopped to remove her shoes. She dangled them between two fingers in one hand in a manner that conveyed lightheartedness—the opposite of what she was actually feeling. Thankfully, distance from the tent restored her spirit slightly. The cool, wet grass was comforting, as was the fading sound of laughter.

  Weeks ago, Lila had decided to heed the old-fashioned superstition that required a bride and groom to spend the night before their wedding in different beds. It just seemed wise to honor those customs designed to instill good luck, particularly in light of her abundance. Oddly, she was not entirely daunted by the prospect of a night away from Tom. After the emotional drain of the rehearsal dinner, she was all too happy to be alone. She needed to process the experience by spending at least an hour in complete silence.

  How could she have known how tiring it would be to be the object of so much attention? She had spent every day since the age of two owning the spotlight of every room she occupied, so the idea of consolidating the focus of so many people simply seemed efficient. To her surprise, it had been tiresome, uncomfortable even, to be stared at and talked to by so many people. She finally understood why celebrities complained about being recognized and signing autographs. It was exhausting to sustain a smile for that long; it was difficult to assume a look of curious intrigue during dull conversations. It took a certain talent to appear interested in a fool.

  In fact, by the end of the night, she had begun to feel strangely toward her guests. And she could imagine that celebrities felt the same way about regular people. There was something tragic about her guests’ ignorance of their redundancy. Wouldn’t they cringe, Lila wondered, if they knew how many before them had complimented the fit of her dress? Wouldn’t they bristle to learn how many people had gushed about the color of her eyes? Wouldn’t they die to find out that they all conveyed the same desperate anxiety, that their nervous obsequiousness was as distinct and repellent as the spray of a skunk?

  Their repetition couldn’t help but ignite a measure of her disdain. And disdain, on a night designed for delight, was a tremendous burden. The eve of her wedding should not be cluttered with an emotion as ugly as pity. It should be spared from all pettiness, secured exclusively for lovely sentiments. To this end, Lila decided on a strict schedule for the rest of the night. Upon her return to Northern Gardens, she would do the following: edit the choice of clothes she had packed for her honeymoon, decide on the departure dress between the two she was debating—an audacious red shift and a classic honeymoon suit in a demure shade of blue. She would take a hot bath, soak until she was fully renewed, and, afterward, apply every potion in her cabinet to faded and future blemishes. This would leave just enough time to receive her friends at midnight. If all else failed, they would succeed in restoring her good mood.

  Lila’s room provided a measure of soothing, if superficial, relief. Despite her gripes with her mother, there was no denying the house had benefited from Augusta’s impeccable taste. Lila’s room had been redone during the most recent redecoration, a triennial occurrence as reliable as the return of gypsy moths. The makeover was characterized by Augusta’s usual staples: Clarence House chintz, Rosecore carpets, Brunschwig and Fils wallpaper. But it diverged delightfully from earlier interpretations of the perfect seaside mansion, incorporating a color palette that could only be described as Archipelago Chic.

  The combination of the two styles—Classic Wasp and Indonesian—was surprisingly agreeable, reinvigorating the ancient summerhouse aesthetic with the feel of a thatched-roof hut. A citrus yellow pillow infused a white linen eyelet duvet with a welcome shot of color; a brown throw made an otherwise dainty pink floral chintz sofa seem suddenly sumptuous; a woven straw wallpaper provided a seamless segue from an indoor dressing room to an outdoor terrace; a sisal rug provided a welcome antidote to the formal carpeting downstairs, while batik pillows dotting the bed and settee gave the room an inviting whimsy. Every corner of the room offered a new and more pleasing vignette. It was no surprise that the house had been photographed by House and Garden three times.

  But even this pastoral refuge failed to revive Lila’s mood. She was plagued with a vague inexplicable feeling as she settled into the room. It was the same feeling that she had when she left the house at the end of August every summer, that nine months of dreariness stood before her next breath of bright sunny air. Discouraged, she took a seat at her vanity and hastily unzipped her dress. She eyed herself in the mirror as though challenging her mind to reveal the source of her discontentment. It was always this way, she decided, with something you’ve awaited too eagerly. It was simply impossible for the world to live up to one’s expectations. She had spent her life trying to challenge this notion—to match expectation and experience—but this was no small feat given the standards set by such a lovely childhood.

  She had intended, for example, to look a certain way on her wedding day. Her dress fit her best when she was 120 pounds. It clung to her hips just enough, her collarbones protruded the ideal amount, and best of all, her bust at that weight was a perfect 32-C. Here, she had pulled off a clear victory. When she weighed herself earlier this morning, she was 117 pounds, three pounds less than she had weighed the summer after senior year. But herein lay the problem: Unfortunately, she could not control the rest of the world as precisely as she could her weight. Tonight was proof, if anything was, that the world will always—it can only—disappoint.

  Lila’s mood improved slightly as she studied her reflection in the mirror. There was no denying this was the right weight for her. Her collarbone formed a dramatic line just underneath her neck, as though to underline the incredible beauty of her face. Her waist had never been smaller; her stomach had never been more taut. But she had not gone too far and become annoyingly skinny. Her legs, as always, descended from her hips like pulled taffy, decreasing their circumference at a constant gradation down to her ankles. Her hair was the same honeyed blond it had been when she was two years old. But she had recently made the jump from elegant to sexy with a cut inspired by Brigitte Bardot. It almost made her wish she’d experimented with bangs sooner. All in all, Lila had never looked better. So why did she feel so gloomy?

  When she got engaged, she had made a vow never to become one of those brides. And she was proud to say she had kept her promise. She had not bored her friends with endless discussion of her dress. On the contrary, she had been astonishingly blasé about the whole endeavor, selecting her dress from the very first batch she tried on. She had not asked her bridesmaids to suffer through an inordinate number of parties. There had only been two bridal showers, one of which Letty Bayer had insisted on throwing for Augusta’s friends and the older relatives, and one bachelorette party which, in all candor, was not terribly well planned. Furthermore, Lila had been very understanding about the slipshod party—the lack of reservations, the nonexistent schedule, the misguided episode with the stripper—never once scolding the maid of honor, whose duty it was to plan these things.

  She had not asked her bridesmaids to wear something that compromised their dignity. Rather, she had gone out of her way to choose something that satisfied everyone in the group. She had been admirably tolerant when Tripler demanded that they switch from a strapless to an off-the-shoulder style, and very sympathetic to Annie’s request to change to a color that was more flattering to her skin tone. She had decided on “sterling silver” only after everyone had weighed in with her personal preference, an exercise that had every single bridesmaid demanding a different color of the rainbow. Even silver had been a selfless choice; it promised to accentuate the many blue eyes in the group, pick up the metallic glint of the ocean, and was the most forgiving, second to black, to the girls’ varying physiques.

  Lila held her tongue when Weesi
e insisted on ordering her dress a size too small, a strategy that she claimed would motivate her to lose weight in time for the wedding. Though Lila had bristled at the notion, she did not oppose her at the atelier nor call and arrange for the larger size to be ordered behind her back. As a result, she had suffered terrifying nightmares until this past Thursday night, envisioning a hideous bridal procession in which bridesmaids waddled down the aisle like overstuffed sausages.

  But of all her generous acts as a bride, Lila felt her greatest was her treatment of Laura. From the moment she got engaged, she had been highly sensitive to Laura’s prickly spots. She had delayed telling Laura about the engagement as long as humanly possible and, when she did, downplayed her excitement an enormous amount. She might as well have been saying she had finally found the perfect winter scarf—she was that nonchalant. She had made a special effort not to bother her with any of the frivolous girly stuff. She was unbelievably forgiving when Laura flubbed the bachelorette party. And even after Lila found out how little Laura contributed to the planning of the bridal shower—Weesie and Tripler did the invitations, for God’s sake, and they were just regular bridesmaids—still, she said nothing. In her humble estimation, she had been more selfless than a saint.

  Incredibly, Laura’s behavior had worsened in the last twelve hours. She had arrived a day late, making absolutely no apology for her tardiness. The comment about the bridesmaids’ dress was passive-aggressive to say the least. Was it Lila’s job to attend to the needs of her bridesmaids? No, it was their job to attend to hers. And her toast, though sweet, had been unmistakably downhearted. She had seemed downright unhinged by the end. It was not like Laura, valedictorian of her high-school class, to fold in front of a crowd. No, Lila decided, she had spent too long denying the truth about her friend, shielding herself from the thing that had roiled their ten-year relationship. Even when she told Laura the news of her engagement, it was obvious she was perplexed. The tone of her voice was forced—congratulatory, but not truly happy. Her jealousy, though hardly a new thing, had finally gotten out of hand.

  It would be one thing if Laura were just a measly bridesmaid, the title Lila forked out to everyone in the rooming group. But the “maid of honor” title was the venerable post given to one’s best friend, and it was given not only to acknowledge the friendship but to ensure a certain amount of work. It was one thing for her to fall short during the preliminary phase, but to be so distracted the day before her wedding was horribly insulting. For a maid of honor to be so remiss was truly unacceptable.

  Now that she focused on the subject, Lila wondered if she had appointed Laura her maid of honor expressly for this reason, to provide Laura with a means of participating in Lila’s happiness, to draw Laura’s attention away from her own bad luck. Certainly, she could sympathize with the fact that Laura was put off by weddings. Her lack of marital prospects and her own parents’ troubled marriage justified an aversion to the institution. But still, she felt, had the roles been reversed, she would have put on a good face. She would have set aside her needs for the sake of the bride. It was just good manners.

  And so it was this, Lila realized, that was riling her tonight. She took some comfort in this realization—at least the bad mood did not reflect some horrible defect in her. But there was another yet more insidious component to Laura’s jealousy. Any friendship between two women might suffer when one of the two graduated to a new phase, especially if the other trailed so far behind. This specific situation somehow exceeded the limits of healthy rivalry. It was not simply that Laura resented Lila for getting married first, but rather—why not be completely honest—that she resented her for marrying Tom.

  That Laura still harbored feelings for Tom was not a revelation. To be fair, she had dated him long enough to justify a proprietary attitude, at least in the beginning. Laura and Tom shared a portion of their youth and a bank of memories, and they referred to them with the same easy familiarity with which you might quote a movie you’ve seen too many times. Lila had never been threatened by this—not when she first started dating Tom, nor as their romance progressed. In some strange way, it was comforting to know that Laura seconded her opinion. Subconsciously, competition made him more precious.

  Not that her love for Tom needed any augmenting. Tom was, of course, unanimously considered to be a superlative catch. But truth be told, their rapport was not the most effortless she had ever enjoyed with a man. Occasionally, she wondered if all couples struggled so much to understand one another, spoke so little at dinner together, spent so much time camped out in front of the TV. Did all women sometimes feel distanced from their man while they were making love? Just last week, she had looked up at Tom while they were having sex and forgotten, for a split second—it was the strangest thing—who in God’s name he was.

  But this was surely a common symptom of wedding preparation, a casualty of the heightened stakes built up around one single day. What relationship wouldn’t buckle slightly under the pressure? What couple would not be strained by so many inconsequential disputes? Over the past several months, she herself had reached her breaking point at least seventeen times. It seemed fair to multiply that number by ten to approximate Tom’s annoyance.

  For the most part, he had been a very good sport. He had indulged her “suggestions” about the engagement ring, procuring a substantial stone, if not the one she had in mind. He had pacified Augusta at her planning sessions, supplying the right mixture of submission and scorn. He had behaved affably at the parties, attended his fittings without too much grumbling—had helped just enough to seem interested but not so much as to seem effete. In short, he had showered her with all the love and attention befitting a princess, displaying a tasteful amount of affection when they were in public and ravishing her when they were alone. Yes, if there was one thing in which to take solace, it was that Tom had been a good boy.

  Then why was she suddenly gripped with doubt about the merits of their union? She cursed her moronic brother for putting these thoughts in her head. Still, as she sat, staring at herself in her grandmother’s white lacquer vanity, she couldn’t help but obsess over the very themes Chip had touched upon. Was it possible there was some fatal flaw in their matching, that they were ultimately, impossibly different—dissimilar enough to fall in love, but too fundamentally distinct to stay together?

  She had heard it said once by an aging aunt at a Christmas party when she was a child that marriages cannot work unless both members are from the same class. Instinctively, she had bristled at this notion. Even by the age of five, she understood the small-mindedness of certain relatives. Still, Aunt Caroline’s comment took root in her mind. She remembered her parents’ conversation in the car on the way home from the party. Aunt Caroline was rude and provincial, they had hissed, an embarrassment to the family. But they never said Aunt Caroline was wrong.

  Now Lila dared to consider the validity of Aunt Caroline’s thesis. Certainly, things had changed since Grandmother Westfield’s time. Even Gussie described a time when Hayeses, Bayers, McCarthys, and Kennedys played doubles together at the club. No Rosensweigs or Rosenfelds were present. But perhaps one day, even they might be inducted, or at the very least, invited as guests. Whether Gussie realized that the road to that club was paved for the McCarthys and Kennedys by a president by the same name was of little consequence anymore. Just as Bouviers had married Kennedys, Hayeses would marry McDevons. Much to Aunt Caroline’s confusion, all these families were indistinguishable now. They had blended and mixed as compatibly as horses and donkeys. Only people like Gussie and Lila could tell which ones were mules.

  In some way, Lila relished the opportunity to botch the bloodline, to exercise the power bequeathed to her by Darwin. It would be unfair to call her a snob. She was not a reactionary either. She was simply happy to view the world from the enviable position of membership. She welcomed her friends as guests to her club, so long as they remembered who was the member.

  The subtleties of her choice of hus
band were not lost on her. Marrying Tom was a safe rebellion, much like smoking from the window of her childhood bedroom or sneaking out of that same window to meet Charlie Bayer at the dock. She could not count the times she had sat on that ledge, her feet dangling dangerously as though she might propel herself onto the lawn at any moment. Reforming from within was Lila’s preferred mode, a strategy that allowed her to change the rules of the club while retaining membership. Even she could not deny the intricacy of her maneuver: She was marrying a McDevon who passed for a Hayes, a trick of camouflage that allowed her simultaneously to fulfill and flout everything she held dear.

  Inspired, she moved from her seat at the mirror and crossed the room with purpose, determined to indulge in this favorite childhood pastime. She walked to the window at the side of her room closest to the ocean, parted the rosebud curtains, and pushed it open as far as it would go—not quite to the top—fighting the rigidity of fresh paint and infrequent use. Refreshed by the air, she removed the screen and placed it on the floor. Then she lifted one leg to the sash, drew the other through the open window, and shimmied head and torso under so that all but 5 percent of her body was in open air. In the ten years since her last perch, her body had not changed, but her stomach had, making the distance to the ground seem suddenly like a much greater drop. Still, she felt slightly calmer, even without the aid of cigarettes. She stared out at the black bay and focused on the sound of waves. Their arrival was louder and more frequent than usual, clear evidence of an approaching storm.

  As she sat, she continued an honest assessment of her relationship with Tom. The crux of the problem was this: He was at once everything and nothing she needed. Seen from afar, they were picturesque, a symphony of superior genes, a study in storybook promise. But when they were alone together, they were curiously ill suited, sometimes mortifyingly lacking in secrets to share and things to talk about. But common wisdom condoned this, did it not? Was this not the basis of a great partnership: opposition, difference of opinion. Pairing up with someone as practical as she would be terribly boring, just as coupling Tom with another dreamer would result in incompetence; that pair would never make it out of the house. Both combinations would amount to deadening and impractical redundancy. But what if it was equally dangerous to pair up two people who were so different? Were they not signing up for a lifetime of silent dinners or, worse, after-dinner spats?