Beautiful Day (39 page)

T
o talk to Edge alone, Margot had to wait for Rosalie to excuse herself for the ladies’
room. This turned out to be a test of endurance. Rosalie was downing glass after glass
of champagne, but she hung stalwartly at Edge’s side. Her bladder must have been the
size of a volleyball, but as Margot watched her, she seemed untroubled. She was more
attractive than she had seemed in the church, which irked Margot.

Rosalie was quick and lively; she was a woman who oozed confidence and was comfortable
in her own body. Her face was freckled, but her breasts, which were pushed up and
out to lovely advantage by the bodice of her dress, were all roses and cream. Margot
could barely keep her eyes off Rosalie’s sweet and luscious bosom, so Edge must have
been mesmerized. Of course, Rosalie hadn’t breast-fed three children. Rosalie had
one of those sexy-gravelly voices, which was perhaps the thing Margot envied the most.
She had always yearned for a sexy-gravelly voice but instead had been given a voice
that sounded camp-counselor chipper on a good day, and shrill and strident on a bad
day. Margot couldn’t stand to hear herself recorded; she only liked her voice when
she had a scratchy sore throat or had spent all night screaming at a rock concert,
and her rock concert days now were few and far between. As a placement person, Margot
knew how important voice was. After all, you not only had to look at someone eight
to ten hours a day in the office but also had to listen to them. Rosalie had been
blessed with a voice that was a cross between Anne Bancroft and Demi Moore.

Advantage Rosalie. Margot couldn’t deny it.

As the maid of honor, Margot was meant to chat and socialize; she was meant to make
sure that Jenna had a full glass of
champagne at all times and that Jenna ate a canapé from one out of every three trays
presented to her. But Margot’s constant surveillance of Edge and Rosalie distracted
her from these duties. He did
see
her, right? He knew she was here, he realized he couldn’t spend the whole night ignoring
her, he would have to explain himself.

Margot stood in line at the bar with Ryan’s boyfriend, Jethro, who looked marginally
less uncomfortable and out of place than he had the night before. Margot wondered
if it was difficult to be openly gay, citified, and black at a WASP wedding on an
island thirty miles out to sea.

She said, “What did you think of the ceremony?”

He said, “Well, it wasn’t without intrigue.”

Margot wondered for a second if he was talking about Edge and Rosalie—but how would
Ryan’s boyfriend from Chicago know about
that?
Then Margot realized Jethro was referring to Pauline’s wild exodus from the church.
She chastised herself for being so self-absorbed.

Margot said, “The Carmichaels are always good for some drama.” She hadn’t asked her
father why Pauline left the church—partly because she felt she knew too much already,
but mostly because she had been focused on only one thing, and that was Edge and Rosalie.

“It just as easily could have been the Graham family,” Jethro said. “Trust.”

Their turn at the bar came. Margot ordered three glasses of Sancerre—one for Jenna,
two for herself—and then she was faced with the question of how to carry three glasses
without spilling one down the front of her grasshopper green dress. Jethro offered
to help, but he had three drinks himself—Ketel One and tonics for himself and Ryan,
and a Heineken for Stuart.

Margot said, “Oh, I’ll manage,” and she held the three glasses in a balanced triangle
with both hands and tottered through the grass in her dyed-to-match pumps toward Jenna,
who was talking to her gaggle of young teacher friends. Margot handed off the wine
and said, “You eating?”

One of the young teachers—Francie or Hilly—said, “I just made sure she had a chicken
skewer.”

Jenna beamed at Margot. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “Isn’t it perfect?”

Margot took a breath and willed herself not to glance over at the proposal bench,
where Edge and Rosalie were standing, talking to Kevin. Was it beautiful? Yes. The
sky was brilliant blue, the sun had achieved a mellow slant, the tent was a masterpiece
of natural elegance. There was a jazz combo playing now—four members of the sixteen-piece
band that would start up after dinner—and the music floated on the air along with
chatter and perfume. Waiters passed trays of champagne, along with chicken satay and
lobster fritters and blue-cheese-stuffed figs wrapped in bacon and mini–beef Wellingtons.
The local Nantucket legend, Spanky, had set up his raw bar in an old wooden dory.
This was where Margot parked herself to spy on Edge. She would double-fist her wine
and suck down oysters and flirt with Spanky—all the while, her surveillance camera
would be trained on Edge and Rosalie. They were still talking to Kevin and might remain
there all evening. Kevin never shut up.

Margot ate three oysters. She was joined, temporarily, by Stuart’s father, Jim, who
attacked the pile of jumbo shrimp rather indecorously.

Jim said, “Hell of a party.”

Margot faked a smile and slurped another oyster. “Mmmhmmm.” No other response seemed
to be required of her, thank God. She
needed Jim Graham to stay right where he was, shielding Margot and keeping her safe
from any conversation that might cause her to miss her chance with Edge.

Rosalie’s glass was empty, Margot could see, as was Edge’s. But then the girl with
the champagne came by, and Rosalie accepted a glass with a smile, and Margot read
Edge’s lips as he ordered a Scotch.

Margot’s heart cracked open a little bit more. Margot kept a bottle of Glenmorangie
in her liquor cabinet at home for the evenings when Edge stopped by.

Rosalie had a steel-reinforced bladder. She outlasted Margot; Margot had to go. She
bypassed the elegant portable bathrooms set up in a discreet corner of the yard beyond
Alfie, and instead went into the house and headed up the stairs to her own bathroom.

On the second floor, Margot heard voices, then a rhythmic banging. Margot stopped.
The noise was coming from Jenna’s room. Finn and Nick. Margot nearly shouted at the
top of her lungs. GROSS! But she refrained, slamming the door to the bathroom to make
her point instead.

She hiked up the skirt of her grasshopper green dress and peed, holding her forehead
in her hands. The banging continued against the wall behind her, and she heard Finn
cry out in ecstasy, and Margot thought,
All right, I’ve had enough.
She washed her hands and stared at her reflection in the dingy medicine cabinet mirror.

I’ve had enough!

But she wasn’t sure what that meant, and she didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly she heard her mother’s voice. She knew it was her mother’s voice and not
her mimicking her mother’s voice because Margot did not like what the voice said.

It said,
Get back out there, honey. Pronto.

A glass bell sounded: dinner was served. Everyone sat except for the wedding party;
they lined up so that they could be introduced by the bandleader and then take their
places at the head table. Everyone in the wedding party had been asked to divulge
one “interesting thing” about themselves to be read aloud by the bandleader. Margot
was introduced as follows:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for our maid of honor, who
has taken surfing vacations on four continents—Margot… Carmichael!

Polite applause. Margot wasn’t crazy about the surfing vacation answer because all
those vacations had been taken with Drum Sr., and at least half the people in this
tent knew it. But the word
interesting
had presented a challenge because the things that filled Margot’s days—work placing
executives in major corporations, raising three kids as a single parent, conducting
a clandestine relationship with her father’s law partner—weren’t interesting. Margot
would have liked to have said that she played classical guitar or spoke five languages,
but neither was true. The fact was, she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, she
didn’t have any skills—except for surfing. And although her surfing had always been
eclipsed by Drum Sr.’s surfing, she had ridden waves in Bali and Uruguay and La Jolla
and the north shore of Oahu and the frigid waters of South Africa. There was a picture
hanging in her father’s office of Margot in her wet suit with her dark hair slicked
back and her face tanned—somehow the Asian sun had not brought out her freckles—crouched
on her board in the tube of a left-hand break off the tiny Balinese island of Nusa
Lembongan. Edge had once admitted to being captivated by that picture of Margot, even
before the two of them started seeing each other.

You look powerful, dangerous almost, like a jaguar ready to pounce,
Edge had said.
It’s incredibly sexy.

That had been one reason why Margot chose to mention the surfing. She had wanted Edge
to recall that picture of her.

Margot sauntered across the dance floor like a game show contestant toward her seat,
thinking,
Smile brightly! Don’t trip! Shoulders back, head high!

She couldn’t help herself. She sneaked a look at Edge, who was sitting next to Rosalie
at her father’s table.

He winked.

Margot made it to the life preserver of her seat as the bandleader introduced “Our
best man—who scored a perfect sixteen hundred on his SATs and still didn’t get into
Princeton—Ryan Connelly Graham!”

Margot thought,
He winked!
She didn’t know whether to be thrilled or indignant. Indignant, she thought. How
dare he wink! But thrilled won out. He had noticed her!

Then a thought broke through Margot’s despair. Maybe Edge had brought Rosalie to this
wedding as a front to throw Doug off their trail. Margot felt sweet relief, followed
by a glimmer of actual happiness. Of course that was why Edge had winked at her like
a conspirator. He must have assumed she knew that was why he’d brought Rosalie. Rosalie
was a straw candidate. Margot wondered where they were staying. Had they gotten two
rooms? Oh, please, Margot thought. Please let that be the case. Please let this be
a huge misunderstanding on her part.

She drank red wine with dinner. Did she eat? She and Jenna had set up no fewer than
six tastings to come up with the menu of field greens with dried cherries, goat cheese,
and candied pecans, the choice of seared rib eye or grilled swordfish, the baked potato
with choice of decadent toppings, the pan-roasted asparagus with lemon and mint—and
yet Margot could only recall eating a
single perfectly toasted salty-sweet pecan and one bite of rosy, juicy meat dragged
through béarnaise sauce. Ryan was seated next to her on one side, and Jethro on the
other. Ryan was a conversational dynamo, he could uphold his own side and Margot’s
side with minimum output from Margot, and whereas Margot flogged herself for not doing
a better job—Ryan had once confided that he thought Margot had ten times the personality
of Jenna—she was determined to constantly monitor the situation between Edge and Rosalie.

They seemed so happy, Margot thought, that they had to be acting. Definitely acting.
This was all a game.

And then, just as the dinner plates were cleared and Ryan pulled a sheet of paper
from his breast pocket on which he had written his best man’s toast, Rosalie pushed
back from the table and stood. Edge stood also, and for a second Margot feared they
were leaving. But Edge was only standing to be polite, and the crack in Margot’s heart
widened. When Edge had taken Margot to dinner at Picholine, which had been the most
sublime and grown-up dinner date of her life, he had stood when Margot excused herself
for the ladies’ room, and then stood again upon her return. It was one of the fine,
old-fashioned, charming things about him—elegant manners, respect for the gender.

Of course, now Margot realized that the dinner at Picholine and the subsequent night
at Edge’s apartment had all been a lubricant to ease the way for him to ask Margot
to betray her professional principles.

Rosalie left the tent. Edge sat back down and said something to Doug that made him
laugh.

Rosalie going to the bathroom wasn’t the answer, because Edge was still trapped at
the table with Doug. Margot couldn’t very well plop down and engage Edge in the conversation
she needed to have with him with her father present.

Still, Margot rose and, at what she thought was a discreet distance, followed Rosalie
out of the tent.

“Wait, Margot!” Ryan called after her.

Margot whipped around, feeling caught. “What?”

“You’re going to miss my speech!” he said.

“I’ll be
right back,
” she promised.

She saw Rosalie leaning against Alfie’s tree trunk, smoking a cigarette.

Rosalie smoked. That explained her voice. Edge had once told Margot that everyone
smoked in law school as a way of handling the pressure. Edge himself had smoked in
law school and had continued until his second wife, Nathalie, demanded that he quit.

Rosalie didn’t yet see Margot, and this bought Margot some time to think. What should
she do? She wanted to introduce herself and see if Rosalie had any reaction. Would
Rosalie know that Edge and Margot were lovers? Would he have told her? Certainly not—that
might cause a security breach with Doug. But maybe Edge had felt the same pressure
Margot had felt earlier this weekend to just tell
someone,
and during one of their late-night prep sessions for court, he had told Rosalie.

If Rosalie
didn’t
know, should Margot tell her? Or should Margot just engage Rosalie in casual conversation
that would allow her to figure out if Edge and Rosalie were really dating or if they
were only coworkers?

At that moment, Margot heard the distinct chime of spoon on glass, and the tent grew
quiet. Ryan’s speech. Margot didn’t want to miss it. Any conversation with Rosalie
was bound to leave her livid or in tears. Margot spun on her dyed-to-match heels and
headed back toward the tent. She nearly smacked right into Edge, who was hurrying
from the tent himself.