The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

  One thing succeeded in soothing her where everything else failed. A feeling of calm returned as she pictured herself in her dress. Perhaps it was vain to imagine herself in the eyes of her guests, but she forgave herself the indulgence. A modern wedding would always lack a certain sexual charge. In the absence of virginity, the wedding dress offered a vestigial mystique, presenting the ultimate challenge to the bride: to look at once as pure as a girl and as sensual as a woman. The paradox was itself the source of the dress’s power. Renewed, Lila lifted herself from her bed and headed for the attic.

  The house was blessedly quiet when she emerged from her room. Padding up the stairs, she entertained another guilty thought: She was more excited for Tom to see her in her dress than she was to see Tom. Few people were honest with themselves, she decided, about the difference between these two things, willfully confusing the glee of reunion with the vanity of exhibition. Of course, she yearned to see Tom. Spending the night apart had only strengthened the urge. But when she pictured the day ahead, she imagined it from someone else’s perspective. She saw herself in the eyes of Tom and her guests, her body displayed at its best, every feature on her face reflecting the warmth of her audience.

  Her first glimpse of the dress did not fail her memory. It hung neatly where she had left it in the cedar closet. Starched and stuffed for its shipment to Maine, the dress looked strangely alive. The bodice, stuffed with a mass of tissue paper, looked as though it had just taken a hearty deep breath. Each of the buttons remained tightly secured. The skirt flowed effortlessly from the bodice, skimming the floor like a dollop of cream. The train fell to the hemline before swooping up to the hanger. The veil hung on a separate hanger, a shadow in white tulle.

  Even as she caressed the dress, Lila failed to notice the damage. Minnow had gone a ways toward replicating its pre-torn state. Lila stood, running her hands over the bodice for several moments before she noticed. Just like this, she was able to picture Tom or, rather, to picture herself with Tom: They would look so beautiful today; they would have such a beautiful life. This realization was so comforting it nearly obscured the horror of her next one: The dress was ripped at the seam between the bodice and the skirt, so that half of the skirt billowed out from the corset, forming a gaping hole. In an instant, Lila’s peaceful musings were replaced by homicidal thoughts. She immediately deduced the perpetrator and started down the stairs at a run.

  “Margaret!” she shrieked.

  Augusta was the first to react. She lunged from her bed as though braced for a clock’s alarm.

  Minnow, too, responded quickly. She had slept very little throughout the night. At the sound of Lila’s voice, she darted out of bed and sprinted up the stairs, propelled by remorse and curiosity.

  Luckily, Augusta arrived first, sparing Minnow the vicious attack she would have suffered had she found Lila alone.

  “I hate her,” Lila was screaming, as Minnow rushed up the stairs.

  Overhearing, Minnow froze in her place. Lila heard the footsteps and turned toward the noise, then charged the door, screaming threats, arms flailing.

  Augusta reacted, restraining Lila before she reached the door. She managed to detain her just long enough to give Minnow a healthy lead.

  “I hate you, too,” Minnow cried as she sprinted down the stairs. “I’m glad it’s ruined.”

  The new provocation renewed Lila’s wrath and, in turn, her ferocity. With a frantic grunt, she got free of her mother’s grasp and bolted down the stairs, catching the tail of her sister’s nightgown as she rounded the third-floor landing. But gravity conspired with Minnow’s cause, propelling her down the next two flights with a small advantage. After a clumsy tour of the kitchen and living room, the chase culminated on the porch, with Minnow disappearing into the protective throng of the wedding party.

  Lila collapsed operatically onto an empty chaise. She threw herself facedown on the chair and wept like a lovesick teenager. Her friends stood on the porch, assembled awkwardly, watching her cry, saying nothing. Fearing the worst, they checked each other’s eyes. Had she already learned of Tom’s disappearance? But the patter of bare feet on wood soon relieved them of this concern. Minnow sped across the grass, hooting and gloating. It seemed the cause of tears had been a family dispute.

  Instinctively, Tripler stepped toward her friend. Lila’s hysteria was, in some way, serendipitous, an opportune moment to share more bad news. “Li,” she said. “There’s something we have to tell you.”

  The others exchanged a series of glances, a critique of Tripler’s timing.

  “What,” Lila sniffled. “What else can go wrong? Don’t tell me it’s going to rain.”

  “No,” Tripler said. She nodded cheerfully at the sky, as if to imply that she alone had arranged for the weather.

  “What is it?” asked Lila.

  Tripler looked to Weesie helplessly as it dawned on her that she had appointed herself the messenger.

  Lila scanned her friends with new concern. Why did they look so guilty? Perhaps they had broken some valuable heirloom at the Gettys’ or harbored the knowledge that a certain guest had cancelled at the last minute.

  As they stood in silence, each member of the group considered his guilt in Tom’s disappearance. Whatever his crimes—negligence, disloyalty, betrayal—each one fought the urge to confess the sins he’d committed over the last twelve hours.

  Laura surveyed the group and waited for anxiety to seize her. She had expected to feel something—self-loathing or something darker, satisfaction even. But instead, she felt an utter absence of emotion toward Lila. And when she thought of Tom, she felt a heady thrill. He had not run from her arms straight into Lila’s. Apparently, he had not yet resolved to attend his own wedding.

  “Tom’s missing,” Pete said finally. He blurted it out like a confession, and Lila heard the guilt in his voice.

  “No, he’s not,” Lila snapped. “Chip saw him last night.”

  Laura froze. What had Chip seen last night and what had he told his sister?

  “Chip was trashed,” Jake said. “You saw him at the dinner.”

  “No,” said Lila. “He’s not missing. We planned to spend the night apart.” Her tone was irritable, as though she had been asked to explain a menial task to a servant.

  “We were with him last night,” Tripler explained. “And then.” She paused. “We lost him.” It was a rare occurrence for Tripler to make a correction in which she took no pleasure.

  “What?” snapped Lila.

  Tripler lowered her head.

  The others nodded in confirmation.

  “He probably just went on a walk,” said Lila. “He does that. When he’s nervous.”

  Annie turned to the others hopefully, as though Lila had arrived at a superior theory none of them had considered.

  The others shifted, looked away. Somehow, it felt unethical to allow Lila to be too optimistic. But no one among them had the nerve to explain, so they tacitly agreed to collaborate on the confession.

  “We all went swimming,” Weesie began. “After dinner. Down by the dock. We got onto that raft. We were pretty messed up. It was stupid.”

  Lila glared at Weesie with profound loathing as she rambled. It was one thing to stammer inarticulately about politics, but another for her to bumble on like this about her future husband.

  Sensing Lila’s anger, Tripler interrupted with an excess of factual information. “After the rehearsal dinner,” she explained, “we all went down to the water.”

  “Pete smuggled booze,” Jake volunteered.

  “Asshole,” snapped Pete. “We did it together.”

  “Guys,” said Tripler.

  Lila looked from one to the other and sighed in a silent appeal for clarity.

  “Someone got the idea about the raft,” Tripler went on.

  “That would be you,” said Annie.

  Tripler turned to Annie, shocked by her disloyalty.

  “It started with Weesie,” said Jake. “She wanted to go
skinny-dipping.”

  “Hey!” said Weesie.

  “Guys,” yelled Tripler. “She doesn’t need to hear this.” She silenced the group with an instructive sneer, then turned back to face Lila, comfortable once again in the role of fearless leader. “We sat there for a while on the raft, drinking, singing, being silly. Then, all the sudden, we looked up at the house and realized the raft had come unmoored. The tide was carrying us out.”

  “How far?” asked Lila.

  “Hard to tell,” said Jake.

  “A couple hundred feet,” said Pete.

  “So we broke into pairs and started back,” said Tripler.

  “The water was pretty rough by then,” Annie interrupted.

  “And when we got to the shore.” Tripler paused. “Tom was missing.”

  Lila stared at the ground while she digested the new information. When she finally spoke, her voice was thick, her eyes, narrow with hatred. “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

  Tripler turned to Weesie, then Annie, desperate for corroboration. “We’re so sorry,” she said.

  “You’re sorry?” said Lila. “You knew he was trashed, and you let him swim anyway?”

  “Lila, he’s a championship swimmer,” said Weesie.

  “Don’t tell me what he is,” said Lila. But her tone was strangely businesslike, as though she was annoyed with her friends, not for endangering Tom’s safety but for spoiling her party.

  “Besides, we were all shit-faced,” Pete said. “None of us should have been in the water.”

  But Lila was only more incensed by Pete’s flimsy excuse. “So where do you think he is?” she hissed.

  “We have no idea,” Weesie admitted.

  “But we don’t think he drowned,” Annie volunteered.

  “Wow, that’s comforting, Annie,” said Tripler.

  “What do you think?” Lila demanded.

  “We just think …” Weesie turned to Tripler for support.

  “We just think he’s missing,” said Tripler.

  Lila flinched, as though she’d swallowed pure lemon juice. “You people disgust me.”

  Oscar jumped in, anxious to rein in the conversation. “We need to call the police,” he said. “Before it gets any later.”

  “No,” Lila said. Her eyes were wild, her mouth feral and parted. “If this is some kind of joke,” she said, “I swear to God. I’ll never forgive you.”

  The group stood in awkward silence as a ray of sunlight inched up the porch step.

  “Oscar’s right,” Pete said. He took a step toward the door. On reflex, Weesie grabbed his elbow.

  Tripler bristled at the familiarity of the gesture, digesting her suspicion. But suspicion turned quickly to certainty. When she looked at Weesie, her face was flushed, her eyes fluttering and guilty.

  “Where are you going?” Lila demanded. “What are you doing?” she repeated. Once again, she collapsed into tears as her friends looked on, guilty and helpless.

  The sound of Lila’s weeping served as an alarm of sorts for Laura, but not because it triggered compassion or pity. Instead, it served to reinforce the two sides of her dilemma: To stand by and allow Lila to grieve was undeniably callous; but to comfort her, while hiding her own betrayal, was equally duplicitous. Oddly, Laura felt the most pressing obligation to her other friends. Regardless of their shortcomings, their collective corruption, it seemed horribly unscrupulous to remain silent in the face of their discomfort.

  Bracing herself, she stepped toward Lila and took a seat at the end of her chaise. She placed her hand on Lila’s back. “It’s going to be fine,” she whispered.

  Without warning, Lila whipped around and swatted her hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  Laura looked down, ashamed. Lila’s response was, after all, prescient.

  “Why would he do this?” Lila sniffled.

  “It’s going to be fine,”

  Laura repeated. “What if it’s not,” Lila said.

  “It will be,” Laura said. She replaced her hand on Lila’s back. “How do you know?” Lila snapped.

  Laura considered for a moment. She could easily go on just like this, deflecting, generalizing, omitting. But if Tom had decided to skip his own wedding, then why prolong the confession? She took a deep breath and gathered her strength. “Because I saw him,” she said.

  “When,” Lila demanded.

  “After,” said Laura. She fidgeted with a loose piece of wicker on the chair.

  “After what?”

  “After we got back to shore,” said Laura.

  “But where?” Lila whimpered, equal parts pathetic and forceful. “Where was he headed?”

  Laura paused as she realized Lila’s misunderstanding. There was still time to retread, to say nothing. But some part of her, some horribly human part relished the triumph. “He wasn’t headed anywhere,” she said.

  Lila stared, eyes narrowed in confusion.

  “He was standing still,” Laura went on. Then, she clarified. “I was with him.”

  Lila continued to stare in silence as she gained comprehension. Her features contorted from uncertainty to disgust, as though she’d ingested poison.

  But the two friends were spared an exhaustive discussion of the betrayal.

  “Holy shit,” Jake was saying.

  “I told you,” said Pete. He shook his head and blinked as though he were trying to verify a mirage.

  Laura and Lila followed their gaze out toward the water to find Tom walking up the lawn, his hair backlit like a matinee idol. The sun was such that everyone in the group had to squint to behold his arrival.

  He greeted the crowd with a dapper wave like a magician emerging from a box.

  “I hate you,” Lila whispered, though it was hard to tell whether she had addressed Laura or Tom. Then she wiped her tears, assumed a gracious smile, and sprinted across the grass to meet him.

  Laura watched the next several moments play out in slow motion.

  Lila ran until she reached Tom, throwing herself into his arms.

  Tom received her enthusiastically, like a quarterback catching a football.

  They pulled away to stare at each other and stood like this, completely enthralled, as though they were reuniting after several years apart as opposed to several hours. They remained oblivious to their audience for a full minute, then they pulled apart and headed back to the porch, arms woven around each other.

  “I told you he went for a walk,” Lila announced.

  The group responded with a hearty laugh, an expression of their overwhelming guilt and the relief of blame absolved.

  “Oh no,” said Weesie. “It’s bad luck for you guys to see each other before the wedding.”

  “Shut up, Weez,” said Tripler.

  “Yeah, shut up,” Annie agreed.

  And with that, the subject of Tom’s disappearance was permanently dropped.

  EIGHTEEN

  Northern Gardens was invaded an hour later without warning or fanfare. An army of caterers, florists, and servers descended on the estate, assuming their respective posts like dancers in a ballet. Their arrival was a merciful relief for the wedding party. Upon Tom’s return, they had unanimously heeded Lila’s tacit command to deny the incident. In the hour since, even the best conversationalists had been challenged to make small talk, socializing on the porch despite fatigue and emotional upheaval. Luckily, the arrival of the wedding staff provided a natural intermission, allowing the group to excuse themselves to refresh before the festivities. Lila and Tom retired to their rooms, content to disregard the bad luck of their pre-wedding kiss.

  Laura spent the better part of the hour recovering from shock—or rather, several. First, the shock of seeing Tom, finding him alone by the tree; then, the shock of holding Tom, living out something that had been so long forbidden; then the shock of seeing Tom embrace Lila, still sticky from her own kisses. As far as Laura could tell, Tom intended to careen back into a life he had only hours ago professed to hate. But by t
he time she had managed to close her mouth, to peel her eyes off the grotesque spectacle, the sun was high and the strange enchantments of the night seemed like a hallucination.

  Augusta’s arrival on the porch cemented the fact of the wedding day. Lila’s wedding dress would prove no match, she declared, to her sewing basket. With typical determination, she stationed herself on the chair traditionally reserved for morning coffee and remained there for half an hour, dress strewn across her lap like a wounded soldier. She completed the repair of the dress just like this, pins and needles tucked between her teeth, intermittently issuing commands to workers on the lawn, gesturing floral arrangements toward their rightful places, tent poles to firmer ground.

  The wedding party returned to the Gettys’ in a fraught and concerted silence. Despite the gift of their hangovers—dimmed recollection and slightly blurred vision—they walked across the lawn, not as friends or couples, but as individuals, content that the consequences they had imagined had become as irrelevant as yesterday’s weather. Fatigue and relief conspired to blur their gripes and suspicions for the moment. Unfortunately, relief—and the humility it reaps—tends to fade quickly.

  As they neared the front door, Weesie caught up with Jake and gave his arm a proprietary tug.

  Jake shrugged her off. The crash from the drug had made his skin so sensitive that the gentlest nudge felt like a brutal assault.

  Walking behind, Tripler watched the exchange and detected the guilty sentiment. But her anger was diverted by her husband. Pete sprinted up from behind and surprised her, wrapping his arms around her neck and smothering it with kisses.

  “I missed you,” he whispered.

  Tripler pushed him off, conscious of the manipulation. He had done something wrong—this much was obvious—but she couldn’t tell what and how much.