by Amanda Brown
Edward had announced his destination to Becca and his straight face earnestly told her he was serious. Her eyes danced as she congratulated Edward for going out at least one night this week in something other than his tux.
Edward met his car downstairs, as arranged. Though he would ordinarily walk to the Carlyle from the Racquet Club, he needed a few minutes to review the briefing papers that Alice had prepared for him. He was surprised to see James pull up in the old black Bentley, one of Kirkland Enterprises’ company cars.
Edward experienced a paralyzing moment of dread when he suspected his father would be waiting for him in the car, probably to attend the Knot Tying Dinner or some blustery event at the Union Club, but was relieved to find the car empty of all but a heavy jasmine-scented perfume. Edward could imagine the scenario. His father’s driver, Robert, had taken Horace Kirkland home in Edward’s green Jaguar, Horace had dispatched his son’s driver James to drop his mistress off at La Guardia in the company car, sending James on to his appointment with Edward in the Bentley.
“Who was it this time, James?” Edward asked with a laugh. “Miss Whitshire or Miss Abshire?” Horace insisted on calling his mistresses by their proper names, to rest his laurels with propriety.
“Strike two,” smiled the driver, who knew Edward kept his confidence. “Miss Shropshire.”
“I don’t believe I’ve met her,” Edward admitted. “My junior or my senior?”
“She’s a good bit older than you, son,” James advised him, and said no more.
Edward opened the window a crack to relieve them both of this sickly floral reminder of his father. He turned to his briefing papers to assess his prospects for tonight. Cricket St. James, he read, unfolding the paper. He thought he could picture her. Blonde, he remembered. Or was that Cricket St. Clair?
He grinned with the sudden memory of the black and green crickets that Becca and Emily had made from pipe cleaners. They had hidden them in his bathtub, trying to scare him. He laughed to himself, recalling that he had rehidden the same creatures in Becca’s bedroom. He wondered if she would retaliate.
Unable to sort out his Crickets, he consulted the briefing paper. Cricket St. James, a curator at New York City’s Museum of Television and Radio, was a part-time sculptor. He studied the pictures Alice had provided from a press piece describing Cricket’s sculpture exhibition at Max Fish last spring. He couldn’t get past the exhibition’s name: Haiku in Plaster.
Cricket herself looked like twenty other people he knew: he was glad to have arranged to meet her at the Carlyle, as she would be harder to recognize. The event was at the St. Regis, as usual. Proceeds would be donated to fund an airlift of dental supplies to the Balkans.
The air hung, thick and misty under the heavy sun. It had rained last night; or so he was told—Edward was not woken by the thunderstorm that sent Emily sprinting into Becca’s room for cover. The day had warmed again, but without brightening: Rain seemed again to be imminent, and the air was dense. Edward leaned toward the window of the car, relieved to see the familiar view of the Carlyle. Graceful black and gold canopies shielded the hotel’s entrance: It appeared to Edward as welcome as a port.
It was still too early to expect much of a crowd. He had arranged to meet Cricket for a drink at five-thirty, according to Alice. He had just enough time to change.
Edward paused, asking the driver to wait, noticing something strange. His eyes moved past the lush white jardinieres, imported from Versailles, that guarded the entrance, to the crowd that buzzed around them. Who had imported the Junior League, he wondered, puzzling over the glut of heel-clicking bon vivants? The crowd was chaotic, scurrying about, unconnected: a swarm without a hive. He saw some perky pincurled blondes, some sleek brunettes dressed for art openings; a few women in workout clothes, a few in clothes suitable for the office. He could see only women, and many of them were toting things: heavy bags, pictures in frames, folded sweaters.
Where were their dates? Why were they carrying all those things by themselves? Were they shooting an Upper East Side episode of the Antiques Roadshow?
Edward leaned closer and recognized Cricket St. James on her way into the lobby. He had just been thinking of her. She seemed upset. What was she holding?
He drew in his breath when he saw the photo collage Alice had prepared for Cricket after their yacht trip. She had set down another crate of things to offer a condescending, drop-fingered hand to an acquaintance. Edward peered from behind the shield of his one-way window into Cricket’s crate. He thought he saw the royal blue sailing jacket she had worn in Mykonos, which he remembered letting her keep.
In the crowd he saw little Bitsy French. She was consoling someone. Minnie Forehand? Edward felt a sense of foreboding. He was grateful for the cover that the unknown car provided in this strange circumstance. James called for the concierge, and in minutes, the frantic figure of Dwight Owsley raced to the side of the Bentley.
He poked his head into the back window while it was still opening.
“Quick! Let me in!” He jumped inside and dropped his head to his ankles to hide.
“Pull around to the back entrance!” he ordered the driver.
When they were out of sight, he sat up and flung a pained glare at Edward.
“Mr. Kirkland,” he addressed him. “What have you done?”
Edward stared speechlessly.
“The operators are going mad! We haven’t taken a reservation all morning. Your voice mailbox is full, the hotel’s mailbox is full. Everyone is frantic! I have been slapped, I have been tackled, I have been cursed in Swabian! Everyone is looking for you! What have you done?”
Edward, stunned, shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, Dwight.”
“Our storage facilities are overflowing. Women have been throwing boxes of things at me all day. Lingerie! Perfume! Bracelets! Men’s fishing sweaters, Burberry scarves, umbrellas. And about ten thousand pictures of you smiling on a yacht deck with every girl in Manhattan!”
Edward sunk his head into his hands. His gifts. People were hurling them back at him. When did he get the plague? “What happened?”
“I expected you would tell me that,” the concierge snipped, squinting at Edward long enough to determine that the source of this fracas was as baffled as he. Spying his general manager carrying a box from a dark-tinted Mercedes sedan into the hotel, Dwight ducked his head again.
James, circling the hotel, stopped at the back entrance. Edward prepared himself to be swarmed—which might be all right. At least he’d find out what the commotion was about—the women were beginning to look for sticks and newspapers and that looked like they were going to create his effigy.
“Good luck.” When James opened his door, Edward noticed he was smiling. He was beginning to feel like the butt of a joke. He hurried through the kitchen to the service elevator with growing curiosity.
When he got to his tower apartment, Cricket St. Clair was waiting for him. She was slumped against his door: She had been crying. He reached out to her with concern, and was shocked by the sharp, stinging slap that was her answer to his help.
With a sullen look back at her, he unlocked his apartment, leaving her in the hall. He left the door open. She had better explain herself.
By the time he had poured himself a glass of water, she had poured herself onto his carpet, pounding her fists on the Persian rug and shouting in a mixture of apology, anger, and accusation that left him utterly confused.
“Cricket,” he said, leaning against the wall to regard her from a distance of several paces. “What the hell is going on?”
The only thing he understood from her torrent of screams, threats, and accusations was that the Sunday Times had something to do with it. With a wary eye on Cricket, whom he wanted under no circumstances at his back, he walked to the hall and gathered his unopened edition of the newspaper.
“Enlighten me,” he asked her. Petulantly she snatched the Sunday “Vows” section, unfolded it in a huff, and shoved it under h
is nose.
“Does this help you understand why I feel like such an asshole? Just last week I confirmed our date with your secretary. I talked to Alice yesterday. You might have told her to give me a heads-up!”
Edward listened without interrupting, staring at her evenly, trying to understand what had happened. Cricket, finally exhausted, looked back at Edward in a daze. She was furious to find him neither regretful nor angry. He was waiting—inscrutably—regarding her with his quiet composure, with self-control.
“How could you keep this from me?” she shrieked at him.
He looked curiously at the newspaper, surprised she had handed him the “Vows” section. If his father’s company was at fault, it was covered in “Business.”
She recited from agonized memory what he read from the paper:
Heir to Chemical and Diamond Fortune to Wed Notable Equestrienne in Private Ceremony
“Well?” She studied his face as he read further: read his own wedding announcement. The strange scene in the lobby became clear to him. In the minds of an angry torrent of women he had behaved badly, last week, last month, last night. He was getting married. Married!
“Cricket.” He looked straight into her eyes. “This is a total surprise to me.”
Her jaw dropped and for a moment she was too angry to speak. She clenched her fists and trembled. “Don’t take me for an idiot!” she hissed at him.
He set his jaw. He had been thinking the same thing.
“Get out,” he said, throwing the paper down with frustration.
She shivered, stepping backward toward the wall. She had never seen him angry.
His eyes burned, staring past her, and without another word to Cricket he reached for his tweed jacket. He bent to the floor to retrieve the newspaper, and placed it under his arm. His face was aflame as he stared through her, his eyes fixed, lit with an unutterable intensity. She drew in her breath when he spoke.
“I’ll call you a cab,” he said, and his voice was like stone. She shook her head, uncertain, hiding her face behind her hands. He pulled a phone from his breast pocket to call for his car.
“Our date is cancelled,” he said, holding his arm on the door. “I apologize for the inconvenience to you.” Cricket hurried out, as eager to leave as he was to dispense with her.
She sunk against the wall, crying into her hands, unable to grasp the emotions that swung and whistled around her. She was breathless, ashamed, and angry—but she believed him now. The change she had just seen in his blazing eyes! It must be true. She had seen his sudden severity and terrible resolve, his face flushed in streaks. She had seen him become someone else.
She knew Edward was telling the truth. He had been engaged by ambush. And his reaction, she thought, her heart overflowing with pity, was the opposite of joy.
His mother was behind this, Edward thought, dropping his eyes at the thought of her silent force: her presupposition that he would oblige her, the compulsory undertone of her delicate suggestions. His mother.
And Bunny! How devious she was. How could he marry a woman who was taking him hostage?
Edward stood alone in the elevator. He stared fiercely ahead, his eyes burning, the pressure pushing into his brain, the unyielding, uncompromising future he had tried to ignore. So now a wedding was set for him like a tea table.
He read the impeccable prose of his wedding announcement, read and re-read it, the words swimming past his eyes as he lurched through the service kitchen and hurried out to the street. He wondered if he could really say that this engagement took him by surprise. Hadn’t he seen it coming? His thoughts kept returning to the Hamptons.
Bunny had visited his mother alone too often this summer. He should have known something was brewing when she actually took up bridge and began to play with Catherine Kirkland and her cousins once a week. His mother had dropped hints for years that it was time for him to get serious with Bunny, but he had never expected her to do more than talk. It was his life.
Wasn’t it?
He directed the car to his parents’ house in Sutton Place.
CHAPTER 20
Mother Knows Best
Edward paused in the small half-circle of a Japanese garden that graced the north face of the house. He had lingered outside when he saw Bunny’s car in the driveway, and he remained in the shade of a stately old elm tree as he watched her depart.
It was the first time Edward had felt strange in his parents’ home. The doorman greeted him with a customary half-bow as he entered from the garden, and Edward returned his stiff politeness with a kind smile, but the cheerful temper that was his natural solace had withered inside him. As he waited, listening to his mother’s proper English as she spoke unguardedly into the phone, he regarded the gilded portraits which lined the north hallway.
Edward cast an eye over his great uncle Henry Castor, pictured with a full proud chest as he stood holding the bridle of his Tennessee walking horse; his cousin Margaret Springer Whitney, seated on a red velvet ottoman, was trailing a double-length strand of pearls lazily from her jeweled right hand. He gazed indolently over the faces of a half-dozen more aunts and uncles, feeling no more warmth towards their disdainfully dropped glances than he felt for the woven Turkish carpets painted under their feet or the fur stoles thrown imperiously over their icy shoulders. His own shoulders sank and he kicked the fringe of the Kazaki carpet with the toe of his cordovan loafer. All the people in his life struck him suddenly as absurd decorations, assembled like jewels in a case to dazzle the visitor with the glamour and glory of the House of Kirkland.
He was agreeable with his mother, of course, when she moved upstairs to receive him in the suite overlooking the garden, adjacent to her master bedroom. She had fresh tea and scones brought up from the kitchen for him. Edward stood to hold the door for the maid when she arrived with the tea; he paused to regard the gentle evening that was taking form outside in the dusky garden. He turned to find his mother smiling contentedly at him from where she sat in a tapestry-covered armchair. She tapped her silk slippers on the red and gold Persian rug, squeezing a lemon with the tip of her silver teaspoon over the steam that rose from her porcelain teacup. She nodded to indicate that she was preparing the tea for him.
Edward returned her smile, noticing with shame that he turned his eyes to avoid her blank, contented gaze. He was unable to look at her directly when he could not share her carefully constructed joy. Edward sat beside his mother in a matching chair. He rocked back and forth restlessly, finding himself unable to rest his feet on the finely patterned ottoman for fear of kicking it over. He found that he drew no pleasure from his mother’s finery, her gold-rimmed, lemon-scented tea service, her silk curtains, soft bedroom slippers, and the gleaming white façade of her French marble fireplace. His restless spirit felt estranged in the familiar elegance of this room he had visited a thousand times. He felt like a stranger here, and perhaps always had been.
His mother’s admission regarding the wedding announcement was immediate and remorseless. So simply did she state her reasons for publishing the announcement without informing him that Edward began to glimpse the totality and depth of her self-deception. She acted as if it all was perfectly normal. She seemed to regard the typical Manhattan society family as a feudal entity whose alliances were forged by parental negotiation and announced to the public at appropriate intervals. Incredibly, he felt sorry for her.
Watching her speak, so simply and ridiculously, he knew his mother had been used. Beautiful illusions had always sparkled before her lovely eyes like frost on a window glass. Edward saw how this innocent frost had somehow preserved his mother, insulated her vulnerability, protecting her like a doll in a case. She had been cheated, he thought, of some necessary interaction with reality. Had he?
It was all a matter of scheduling, according to his mother. His father, who had given up on the pipeline through Turkey and was now negotiating a path through Kazakhstan, had quite a bit of travel coming up that winter. She had to get the d
ate on his calendar before he was committed through next spring. It would be soon, she said, looking at him from beneath a raised eyebrow.
“You won’t make any travel plans for the next few weeks, will you darling? We’re rushing a bit, chop-chop, right up to the gate, but Bunny and I have decided there’s something fresh and romantic in that, don’t you think?”
Edward sat back to catch his breath. A few weeks? She couldn’t be serious.
He had no chance to confirm the date, however, before his mother had moved on to the details. The Oxford Boys Choir, as Edward knew, had sung at every Kirkland wedding ceremony for 250 years, and they had to be zipped over on a chartered plane right-o, so they could get back in time for midterm exams. The Esquida trio, a chamber music ensemble that played on original Stradivarius violins, would be perfect for the first day of receptions, if they could squeeze it in before the October festival they played in Salzburg. She was certain that the trio would oblige, since the acoustics in the shell-roofed music room with its original horsehair plaster would ideally suit their original instruments.
She had to think of the minister, and a soloist for the arias…Catherine recalled Bunny’s mention of having engaged a flower arranger, and gave a little sigh of pleasure.
“That Bunny is simply the most considerate young lady,” Catherine exclaimed, smiling proudly. “So attentive.”
Edward almost spit out his tea with surprise.
“Bunny?” He covered a smile with his hand. She had a great seat, a commanding riding style, nice posture, and an attractive bust, but Bunny was no Florence Nightingale.
“Bunny has chosen a delightful flower arranger who will help us with some of these dreadful little details. Isn’t that dear of her? She’ll be a lovely wife.”
Edward listened patiently, with sympathy, unable to speak. What could he say? His mother lived in a snow globe. A word of opposition now would shatter her.
