Body Surfing (18 page)

"We'll talk about this when we get home?" Sydney suggested.

"Will we?" Jeff asked.

The following Wednesday, Jeff had a meeting at school that would run through the dinner hour. Sydney took a taxi to the financial district. She waited in the snow outside a building on State Street. When Ben exited, she approached him.

He stood still, as if he wasn't sure he recognized her. His mouth was rigid, his eyes unblinking.

"Sydney," he said finally.

"Hello, Ben."

"This isn't a coincidence."

"No."

"It's an ambush."

"Sort of."

Ben nodded slowly. He hiked the collar of his navy overcoat against the snow. "Come on, then," he said.

In silence, the pair tilted into the weather. They walked a block in the slush. Ben stopped and opened the door to a bar. He held it for her, allowing Sydney to step inside.

Already the room was half filled with men dressed in suits, woven scarves hanging from their necks. The men were drinking fast and hard. The snowstorm had lent a sense of abandon.

Ben and Sydney were led to a small table, wet underfoot. Ben, shedding his overcoat in the warmth of the room, ordered a complicated martini. Sydney asked for a glass of water, her sudden thirst overwhelming.

"You're not drinking. You want to keep your head. So you've come to tell me something," Ben guessed.

Despite his initial shock, Ben was looking remarkably fit. He had a tan.

"Ask you something," she amended.

Ben, loosening his tie, assessed her as if he were calculating the selling price of a new loft in the leather district. His scrutiny unnerved Sydney so much that she wished she'd ordered a drink after all. She tried to return the scrutiny but couldn't hold his gaze.

Though Ben looked fit, he seemed older about his eyes. Something hard in them that hadn't been there in the summer.

"I feel responsible," she began.

"Stop."

Sydney, daunted, paused. "Whatever happened, it can't be reason enough to break from your brother," she said.

"With all due respect," Ben said, watching as the cocktail waitress set down his martini and Sydney's glass of water, "I don't think you have the slightest idea of what goes on between brothers."

This was true. She did not.

"You're getting married," he said after a time. "Congratulations." He raised his glass in a mock toast. Sydney did not join him.

"I hear you've already moved into his apartment," Ben added.

"I want you to come to the wedding," Sydney said, taking advantage of what she saw as an opening.

"So that's why you're here."

Sydney was silent. Was that why she had come?

"And Jeff?" he asked.

"Jeff?"

"What does Jeff want?"

Sydney took a drink of water. "I can't speak for Jeff."

"No, I didn't think so," Ben said, sipping his green martini. "Then I'm afraid you'll have to get hitched without me."

"What is it?" she asked, leaning toward him and flattening her palms on the table. "I don't understand this from any point of view--not yours, not Jeff's. Don't you care about your father? How much this is hurting him?"

"I care," Ben said, looking away.

"Then why not just forget the whole thing?"

Ben was silent. "I can't," he said.

"Why?" Sydney asked.

"I don't want to."

Ben drew away, rested against the back of his chair. They sat, neither moving, in the convivial noise. It was a mistake to have come, Sydney thought. Jeff would be furious if he knew. But Sydney would not tell Jeff. This had been her mission, and she need not tell him she had failed.

"We're going to Africa," she announced.

"Really," Ben said.

"Jeff has to go for his research."

"Where in Africa?"

"Nairobi. I've never been."

"Not even with your aviator?" Ben smiled over the rim of his glass.

He made a small motion with his hand to signal to the bartender that he wanted another drink. Sydney could see how Ben might be a regular, how he might, each night after work, stop by the bar for a pair of green martinis, perhaps sharing the second one with a woman who'd caught his eye. Sydney briefly pondered Ben's sex life. She was surprised to realize how little she knew about him.

"I guess I won't mind having you for a sister-in-law," he said.

Sydney wrapped her scarf around her neck and stood to leave. Ben leaned in quickly and trapped her hand.

"He'll never love you as much as you love him," Ben pronounced.

Sydney snatched her hand away from the malediction. She remembered the night they had gone surfing, that slithering touch.

"Your mom's here," Jeff says, laying the towel on the sand in response to Sydney's request that they sit a minute before going inside. "My mother has her well in hand, writing out place cards."

"She always did have beautiful handwriting. Has my dad arrived yet?"

"I don't think so. But I've been walking."

"Thinking it all over?" she asks with a gentle elbow.

"Went with Tullus," he says, which is no answer at all. He digs at the sand with a small stick, much like a boy would do. "Ivers is never going to let me forget this," Jeff says. "He's missing two Yankees games--tonight and tomorrow."

"And you don't even have a TV."

"He'll go crazy."

"We'll get him drunk," Sydney says.

"Good idea," he says, glancing up at her. His eyes linger a moment longer than they might.

"Jeff?"

"And Sahir," he says, looking away. "Sahir hates the beach." He chuckles and shakes his head.

"What is it?" Sydney asks.

"What is what?"

"You're thinking something."

"Tomorrow I'll be a husband."

Sydney lies back on her elbows. From somewhere inside the house, she can hear light feminine laughter.

Notably, there will be no best man at the wedding, though Julie, radiant, will stand up for both of them. Even Julie wears a wet suit now, astonishing Sydney the first time she saw her in it. Sydney, who, one night over cocktails, mistook simple rapture for artistic rapture.

"After the dinner, I thought we'd come out here and make a bonfire," Jeff says. "Do some serious drinking. Well, we won't drink too much. We'll bury Sahir's shoes."

Even without the sun, there is an unpleasant glare off the water. Sydney squints. "I couldn't have imagined this a year ago," she says. "I was tutoring Julie in math and English. I hadn't even met you and Ben yet."

Sometimes the name slips out when she least intends it. She would not have mentioned Ben today.

Jeff, as always, is silent at the name. They will not say any more about Jeff's brother.

"Lousy weather," Sydney says.

"There's a chance it might clear."

"Jeff, what is it? You seem. . .I don't know. . ."

He turns and kisses her bare shoulder. He trails his fingers along her inner thigh. "I'll be happy once we're on that plane."

Jeff had suggested East Africa for the honeymoon, but Sydney pointed out that Africa would be too much like work. He'd be interviewing the whole time even if he didn't know it. No, they would go to Paris, to which she had never been, even with Andrew. Jeff could interview her to his heart's content at the small hotel in the Marais she had picked out.

"I love you," he says with some emphasis. He says the words often, sometimes for her, sometimes for himself--in astonished recognition or as a call to arms. Sydney can tell by the tone in his voice that today it is more of a call to arms.

She trails her fingers along the sandy hairs of his calf, as if in conversation with his fingers on her thigh. She has been amazed to realize, over the past year, how iconic the initial images are, talismans one returns to over and over again, even as new images are being created. For her it has always been the tanned legs, the faded bathing trunks, his eyes.

Jeff has cut his hair for the wedding. Sydney would have preferred it long. But he did not ask her.

"What time do we have to be at the airport tomorrow?"

"Eight," Sydney says. "It's a ten-o'clock flight."

In the year they have been together, a division of labor has been established. Sydney arranges the trips.

"So we'll leave here around when? Six-thirty?"

They will depart the reception in the early evening.

"A quick getaway," she says.

"Can't wait," he says.

"Sydney!" her mother cries, opening her arms to her daughter, still wet with seawater.

Sydney falters a step, not used to an exuberant welcome. Either her mother wants to annoy Sydney's father, who must have arrived early as well, or she intends to ingratiate herself with Anna Edwards, as WASP as they come. Sydney allows the embrace, folding herself into the white pantsuit and Talbots scarf, an outfit designed for the rehearsal dinner but not the three hours they all have to endure until then. Sydney notes the Coach pocketbook. The silk purses with women in purple convertibles expressing freedom have long since been abandoned. Her mother's hair is coming loose with the humidity, and the pantsuit feels damp in Sydney's embrace--sweat-damp all along its back. Her mother holds her at arm's length.

"To think. . .," her mother says.

To think what? Sydney wonders. That her daughter is marrying yet again? That she will not die a childless spinster? That she is, in her mother's eyes, marrying up? Perhaps the beach house has spoken to her mother in a way the Feldmans' house in Newton did not.

"When did you get here?" Sydney asks as she draws away.

"About half an hour ago. Anna told me to come early. I've offered to help. . .," she says, looking about helplessly.

"You look nice," Sydney says.

"Well, I thought it would be okay to wear white to the rehearsal dinner. You're not wearing white tonight, are you?"

"Nor tomorrow."

"Well, that's good, then," her mother says, smoothing the front of the jacket. "I didn't think it would be so hot, though."

"It'll cool off tonight," Sydney offers. "We'll have the dinner on the porch."

"Really?" her mother says, slightly taken aback. "I've heard the weather will be iffy."

Over her mother's shoulder, Sydney sees her father. He does not have a room in the house, but will be staying in a B&B further along the coast. He is sitting at the kitchen table (the very same kitchen table Jeff intended as a weapon against Ben; Sydney's sweater sometimes catches on the crack in the lip) with Mr. Edwards, each fingering a cup of coffee.

Her father has not had a good haircut in years. Irregular tufts of gray stick out from a bald tonsure, a contraband yarmulke after all. He is wearing an old seersucker suit, the white gone a faint yellow with the years. Any minute now, he will pull out his silver cigarette case, a gift from his wife on his wedding day, and light up an unfiltered Marlboro, bringing Mrs. Edwards screaming from the living room.

For a moment, Sydney lingers in the passageway. She will not interrupt her father's conversation, not until she is dressed. But something in the easy posture of the two men--seemingly a matter-of-fact discussion with much nodding of heads--fills Sydney with an unhoped-for sense of good fortune.

Sydney, for the wedding, has her old room, a comfort. On the second twin bed is the black suitcase she will take to Europe. She has always prided herself on traveling light. Besides, she has modest plans to shop; she and Jeff are, after all, going to Paris. From the closet door hangs her wedding dress, a slip of salmon-pink. Helene, who has demonstrated a remarkable talent for hair, has promised to arrange Sydney's in a loose bun Sydney once admired on Julie.

Across the hall, Jeff will dress in the boys' dorm, which he will share with Sahir and Ivers. (Peter and Frank will share one of the many guest rooms.) Sydney pictures the three grown men sleeping under the green plaid blankets, the childhood baseball caps slung over the bedposts. A year ago, Ben would have joined them on a cot rolled in for the occasion.

Ben, about whom no one ever speaks. His absence felt more keenly than anyone's presence.

A faint knock on the door causes Sydney to pull the sash of her terry cloth robe more tightly around herself. "Come in," she says.

Julie, with wrapped package in hand, sticks her head into the room.

"How are you?" Sydney asks.

"I'm good," Julie says.

Sydney particularly likes the way Julie's thin red scarf is knotted at the back of her neck. From her earlobes hang silver chains with large studded globes at the ends. All Helene's doing. Sydney, once admiring the way Julie had arrived at a family gathering, said, in an aside to Helene, that she'd be happy to have the woman teach her how to dress with as much panache. Helene responded by removing Sydney's silver necklace and sliding it into Sydney's pocket. She then unbuttoned the top two buttons of Sydney's jacket and rolled the sleeves. Sydney, examining the results in a hallway mirror, was pleased to discover how well the editing had worked. The silver studs in her ears and the three inches of bare skin at the neckline were immensely more elegant than the two pieces of jewelry had been.