Beautiful Day (40 page)

His presence shocked her. Before she could dream up a single appropriate word to say,
Edge grabbed her arm.

“Margot,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Um…” she said. “I went to the bathroom?”

He stared at her.

“I was headed there, I mean. But I wanted to get back to hear the toasts.”

“You followed Rosalie out,” he said. “What are you
doing?
”

“Nothing,” Margot said. As much as she craved his touch, she didn’t like the way he
was holding her arm, and she didn’t like the way he had used his lawyering skills
to make it seem like
she
was the one who had done something wrong. And as badly as she had wanted to talk
to him, she wasn’t sure how to start.

She said, as casually as possible, “So what’s up with Rosalie, anyway?”

Edge lightened his grip on Margot’s arm, and his face changed. It became… well, the
word that popped into Margot’s mind was
kind.
In all the months of their dating, Margot had never known Edge to look kind or nice
or tender or gentle. He was an attorney who specialized in land mines, trapdoors,
and setting his opponents up to fail. That was why his nickname was “Edge,” or so
he claimed. He always conveyed mental toughness; he prized courage over compassion.

This unfamiliar facial expression, she knew, was bad news.

“I texted you on Thursday,” Edge said. “I asked you to call me so I could explain.”

“Explain what?” Margot said, hoping what he needed to explain was that he was bringing
Rosalie as his “date,” to mask his passionate and burgeoning love for Margot.

“This isn’t something I want to talk about here and now,” he said. “Why didn’t you
call me?”

“I sank my phone,” Margot said. “I killed it.”

Edge’s hand instinctively flew to the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which was
where he kept his BlackBerry. The mere idea of sinking his phone would be worse to
him than losing his heart.

“Listen, Margot…”

“So you’re an actual couple, then?” Margot said. “You and Rosalie?”

Edge peered over Margot’s shoulder, presumably watching for Rosalie.

Margot said, “She’s having a cigarette. By my estimation, we have three minutes left.
Tell me the truth, Edge. Are you and Rosalie together?”

“I told you you wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he said.

“How can I handle or not handle something when I don’t even know about it!” Margot
said. “When you refuse to tell me the truth! Are you and Rosalie a couple?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

He sighed. “Since January.”

“Since
January?
” Margot said. Her mind flipped back through imaginary calendar pages. It was March
when Edge took her to Picholine and then home to his apartment. And even then he had
been screwing Rosalie? It was too hideous to contemplate.

“It started at the firm’s New Year’s Eve party,” he said.

Oh, God. Famously, the firm of Garrett, Parker, and Spence eschewed Christmas for
New Year’s at the holidays. Margot had desperately wanted to attend the party. Every
year it was held at Cipriani. There were oysters and caviar and good champagne.

“The New Year’s Eve party!” Margot said.

“And then it’s gained momentum since we started working on the Cranbrook case,” Edge
said.

“I don’t understand,” Margot said.

“I don’t expect you to,” Edge said.

“Why didn’t you tell me in January?” Margot said. If Edge had told her in January,
she would be six months past the news by now. But he had continued to see Margot,
and to sleep with her. He had continued to torture her by texting her and not texting
her.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Margot,” Edge said.

That’s a beautiful girl you’ve got there, partner.
Edge had been thirty-two years old when he’d made that comment, far younger than
Margot was now. He claimed not to recall saying it, and yet here he was pulling out
nearly the same phrase to placate her.

“Don’t patronize me,” Margot said.

“It was never going anywhere,” Edge said. “You knew it and I knew it.”

“You may have known it,” Margot said. “But I thought maybe…”

“Maybe what?” Edge said. “That you’d become the fourth Mrs. John Edgar Desvesnes?
You’re too good for that, Margot.”

“What about Rosalie?” Margot asked. “Is
she
too good for it?”

“Rosalie is a better match for me,” Edge said.

“She’s half your age,” Margot said. “Maybe not even.” Rosalie would want children,
and maybe Edge would oblige her, maybe he would be a new father at sixty or sixty-two—then
eighty years old by the time that child graduated from high school. Rosalie would
have left him for the town’s fire chief or the children’s orthodontist by then.

“She’s mature for her age,” Edge said. “And very bright.”

Margot breathed out her nose like a charging bull. She wasn’t going to stand here
while Edge enumerated Rosalie’s attributes.

“You asked me for that favor in March,” Margot said. “I colored outside the lines
for you, Edge.”

“And I appreciated it,” Edge said. “Even though it didn’t end up working out.”

It didn’t end up working out because it had been ill conceived from the get-go. “You
never would have done the same for me,” Margot said. She had compromised her standards
for Edge because she had so desperately craved his approval, his good graces, his
love. Margot had given these things to Edge too readily, she saw now. She’d left him
nothing to work for, nothing to figure out. There was no mystery with Margot. From
the start, she had felt like the same awkward adolescent yearning to be thought beautiful.

“You’re a jerk,” she said.

“That I am,” Edge said.

She couldn’t stand the way he was agreeing with her. It was a courtroom trick.

“Well, thank you for ruining my sister’s wedding for me,” she said. “I hope you’re
happy.”

Edge said, “It was never going to work, Margot. The fact is that you’re Doug Carmichael’s
daughter, and you know how I love and respect your father.”

“Yeah,” Margot said. “Just think how disappointed he’s going to be when he finds out.”

“He’s not going to find out,” Edge said. “We agreed.”

“Ha!” Margot said. “What did we agree?”

“We agreed not to tell him we were together.”

“So now we’re no longer together,” Margot said. “So now I can tell him whatever I
damn well please.”

Another unfamiliar expression crossed Edge’s face: fear. His eyes flickered beyond
Margot at the same moment that the smoky, sexy voice floated over her shoulder.

“Edge?”

And then the tent burst out in thunderous applause.

Jethro (boyfriend of the best man):
There are two other black men in the tent. One is a server, Jamaican, I think. He
is very black and very, very big—I heard one of the female servers call him “Jungle
Gym,” which sounded like a sexual nickname rather than a racist one.

The other black man is the bandleader. He has light skin and Adam Duritz dreadlocks,
and he wears funky glasses with black rectangular frames. When I saw him at the outside
bar I asked his name and he said, Ernie Sands. Then he said he was from Brooklyn and
I said I was from Chicago, and he asked what part of Chicago and I said that now I
live in Lincoln Park but that I grew up in Red Houses of Cabrini-Green. He squinted
at me and said, “What you doing at this party, man?” And I said, “My boyfriend is
the best man, the groom’s brother.” And he held his hands up like I’d pulled a gun
on him and said, “Cool, man, that’s cool.” Then there was an awkward moment of silence.

I said, “Did you know Frederick Douglass came here in 1841 and spoke out against slavery
on the front steps of the public library?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, and the bonding ended there.

Ann (mother of the groom):
I ordered the rib eye, as did the Lewises and the Cohens, but the Shelbys got the
swordfish and they say they wished they’d ordered the fried chicken, even though fried
chicken wasn’t a choice. I said, “Wait until tomorrow, you will taste the best fried
chicken ever, served with honey pecan butter.” Devon Shelby said, “Amen to that,”
and went to get himself another bourbon.

Out of a sense of duty, I spent a few minutes talking to Maisy, Jim’s sister, who
insisted on wearing one of her prairie dresses,
which turned her into someone whom everyone else at the wedding wanted to avoid at
all costs. I could practically hear the Carmichael side wondering,
Who invited Laura Ingalls Wilder? Did she arrive in her Conestoga wagon?
Maisy had approached me, something she doesn’t like to do, and said, “Where’s Helen?”
And I said, “Helen had a dinner date.” And Maisy said, “Who with?” And I said, “With
one of her old flings from Roanoke.” Maisy made a sour-pickle pucker face of disapproval—whether
at me for using the term
fling
or at the thought of Helen having such relationships with men (there were many, we
all knew it), I wasn’t sure. Maisy said, “Well, why didn’t she tell
me?
” And I said, not unkindly, “Oh, Maisy, who knows, it’s Helen.” And Maisy nodded along,
as if she understood perfectly.

Ryan (best man):
Perhaps you missed my toast. Your loss! I was funny and charming and appropriate
and hugely complimentary of Stuart and Jenna’s union, and I took out my veiled joke
about She Who Shall Not Be Named because that boat had been rocked—and righted—already.
I could have posed thorny questions about why Stuart and Jenna, but not me and Jethro?
Really: why a man and a woman, but not a man and a man, or a woman and a woman? I
could have referenced Chick-fil-A, a place I will never eat again, despite the fact
that I love their coleslaw. The main reason I kept myself in check is because I didn’t
want to embarrass or upset my mother. That woman has been through enough this weekend,
thanks to the horrible drama queen Helen Oppenheimer. The last thing my mother needed
was for me to make GAY a political issue. All weekend, she has been introducing Jethro
as my “boyfriend,” and she makes it sound wholesome and normal, like Jethro is the
person I take to the drive-in and then later out for milk shakes. So the GAY issue
has been sensitively treated. I had wanted the punch line of the
toast to be me saying how happy I was that Stuart was marrying Jenna because I had
waited a long time for there to be another girl in the family.

But Jethro vetoed it. He can be prudish that way.

T
he band played “The First Man You Remember,” from
Aspects of Love,
and Doug took Jenna into his arms and danced with her alone in the spotlight while
everyone else looked on.
I want to be the first man you remember, I want to be the last one you forget, I want
to be the one you always turn to, I want to be the one you won’t regret.
Doug recalled sitting in the third row orchestra of the darkened Broadhurst Theatre
on Broadway watching
Aspects
with Beth and Jenna. Doug had held Jenna’s ten-year-old hand during the song, and
Beth had whispered over the top of Jenna’s blond head, “You’ll have to dance with
her to this song at her wedding.”

Now here they were. Jenna’s blond head rested against the front of Doug’s tuxedo shirt,
and she said, “Oh, Daddy, thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Doug felt himself choking up once again. He was unable to speak, but if he had been
able to speak, he would have said,
I wish I could give you even more. I wish I could wave a magic wand that would ensure
that you and Stuart are as happy as…

Instead he squeezed her tighter. Stuart and his mother had joined them on the dance
floor and were spinning in circles. Those two could really dance; it was lovely to
watch.

Then, all too soon, the song changed to “One,” by U2, which was a song Stuart and
Jenna had picked, and Doug realized it was time to hand Jenna over. Jenna and Stuart
danced alone while Doug stood at the edge of the dance floor feeling bereft. Then
Ann Graham led Jim Graham to the dance floor, and Doug knew he should dance with Pauline,
but when he turned, the person his eyes settled on was Margot. Margot was sitting
at the head table with tears streaming down her face. Tears? Doug had to check to
make sure. Yes, Margot was crying. Doug walked over and offered his hand.

“Dance with me?” he said.

She followed him to the dance floor, and a murmur went through the tent.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Doug asked.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said into his ear. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

It took her two and a half songs to tell the whole story. She was weeping and trembling,
and Doug held on to her, rigid with anger.
Edge and Margot.
Doug heard about the chance meeting outside Ellie’s dance class and the “dates” that
followed. They were sleeping together. Doug knew there had been someone in Edge’s
life, and he knew that Edge hadn’t wanted to tell him who it was. Because it was Doug’s
daughter. Doug wasn’t going to lie—the thought of the two of them together made him
physically ill. The cherrystone clams and the phyllo triangles filled with Brie and
pear and the three vodka tonics churned in his stomach and threatened to come back
up. Doug had always thought of Edge as a sort of uncle to his kids. He and Beth had
toyed with asking Edge to be Jenna’s
godfather;
they had only decided against it because Edge had no religion to speak of.

He was godless. Lawless. He had no morals, no scruples, no guiding principles. He
was a shark in the courtroom and a great guy to golf with, and Doug had loved him
like a brother—but this. This!

Margot described what Edge had asked her to do at work. Doug couldn’t believe it—he
couldn’t believe Edge had asked, and he couldn’t believe Margot had agreed. It was
an egregious lapse in judgment.

What had Margot been
thinking?

Well, she said tearily, she had been thinking that she loved him.