Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (23 page)

“It isn’t.” From the facing wall, the painted eyes of Elizabeth Coe Sedgwick bored into him.

Peggy said, “You and I should get out more.”

“Why?” He pictured her saying the same thing during the week to her boyfriend.

“Also, I’d like to invite a few people over for Thanksgiving. Maybe the Fiorentinos. They seem nice.”

He stared right back at the portrait, defiant. “I’d rather keep it the three of us.”

“Why? So we can sit shivering in the dark, eating that chicken-and-potato-chip stuff?”

“We have turkey. But what’s wrong with Chik-N-Chip Casserole?”

Peggy made an odd noise, a sort of laugh crossed with a sneeze.

“I just don’t want a big fuss,” Luke said. “The more we socialize with people, the more chance we’ll make a mistake and be
found out.”

“Fine.” Peggy sneezed—a definite sneeze this time. “No guests for Thanksgiving. But we’re going to that tailgate party.”

Shaking her head and sneezing for at least the twentieth time, Peggy stepped back out into the store, glad to escape the cloying
algebra of fragrances in the supply closet: lemon plus patchouli to the power of bergamot times beach grass plus vanilla plus
tangerine plus green tea divided by gardenia squared. She replaced the phone in its cradle by the register.

“Where’d you get the flowers?” Bex, who’d come in just before Peggy had taken the phone into the closet, was standing near
the front window, pretending to be a customer, picking up items and examining them. Her theory was that shoppers were lemmings;
they were more likely to come in when other shoppers were already inside.

“Some sales rep.” Peggy wanted to tell Bex about her recent contact with Brock, her sense that he might be trying to win her
back. She wasn’t sure how to start. Bex was so pleased about their breakup.

“Lucky us,” Bex said. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Luke. Mister Uncongeniality. Thank heaven we aren’t a genuine couple. If it weren’t for me making him go out, I don’t think
he’d leave his study.”

“Men.” Bex sighed. “It’s like, as soon as a man meets a woman, she becomes his only friend. We’re all that’s saving them from
being lone wolves.”

“Brock wasn’t a lone wolf.” Maybe now was the time to broach the topic. “He always had lots of friends.”

Bex didn’t take the bait. “By the way…” She gestured at the now empty store across the street where Black and White Books
had once been. A for lease sign had been posted on the window. “I called about the rent on that place.”

“How much?” Peggy allowed herself to hope.

“Let’s just say we don’t have a prayer in the world of affording it. Our rent increase is a bargain by comparison. You don’t
plan to back out of this deal with Luke, do you?”

“Not a chance.” Luke might be a lone wolf with a thing for red foxes, but Peggy could put up with him for half of three million
dollars.

“You’re a lifesaver.” Bex stood contemplating the inside of their own window. “So what should we do for the holiday decorations
this year?”

“Holiday” reminded Peggy that she still owed her great-aunt-in-law a forged note from her mother, declining the invitation
to the Sedgwick House for Christmas. It was amazing how much paperwork was involved in being married.

Then she had another idea. “What are you and Josh doing on Christmas Eve?”

“You mean after we close up shop? Ordering Chinese and going to a movie. Just like we always do. Why?”

“How would you like to spend it with the WASPs?”

S
he would never get this right. Peggy sank down, turtlelike, into her scarf and tried to hold her coffee cup steady with wind-chapped
hands retracted into the sleeves of her coat. She was shivering uncontrollably in a grassy parking lot outside the Yale Bowl,
with two hours to go before game time, surrounded by Ivy Leaguers who didn’t seem to notice it was thirty-three degrees out
here—one of New Haven’s coldest game days on record, according to the radio on the way up. Luke, Topher, and Kyle stood in
a loose circle, Topher and Kyle swapping jokes. Luke wordlessly observed them.

“How many Elis does it take to change a lightbulb?” Topher, in a dark red Harvard baseball cap, was asking. “The entire student
body. One to change the lightbulb and everyone else to tell him he did it just as well as a Harvard student.”

A few feet down, next to a car to which had been affixed a sun-faded Yale 1962 flag, a fur-coated crowd Peggy’s parents’ age
was gathered around a table with a silver candelabra and steaming silver chafing dishes, singing what sounded like “Boola!
Boola!” over and over again. There were so many of them, they effectively drowned out the din from the student-tailgate field
across the street, where a visiting New Haven radio station was blasting hip-hop and intoxicated students danced in Yale sweatshirts
and down vests, oblivious to the cold.

“How many Cantabs does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one—to hold the bulb while the rest of the world revolves around
him.” Kyle wore yellow corduroy pants and a black bowler hat to which he’d affixed one of the “Proud Yalie” stickers passed
out by the alumni association. He sauntered over to Peggy, sucked on his cigarette, and exhaled smoke in the direction of
her coffee cup. “Let’s put a little brandy in that.”

Peggy sniffled. The weather was making her nose run. “It’s ten in the morning.”

“Exactly. You’re hours behind.”

At the Hubbards’ Land Rover, Liddy was setting up a folding table she’d taken from the trunk. At a second folding table, Carrie
Eaton and her second grader, Paige, arranged stalks of celery in a cup next to a spare jug of Bloody Mary mix. Peggy asked,
as she had three times already, whether she could do anything to help, but Liddy waved her off. Peggy was heartened slightly
to see that the tin of shortbread she’d brought was open and sitting nearby. So she’d gotten that right.

The group of older alumni sang, “They will holler boola boo!”

“Did you two go to Yale—and Harvard?” Peggy added quickly, in Carrie’s direction.

“Babson for me.” Liddy extracted from the car a stack of blue plastic Solo cups nearly as tall as she was and set it on the
table. “Carrie went to Lake Forest.”

“Oh!” Peggy said brightly. She hadn’t heard of either school.

“I have a way you can help, Peggy.” Carrie gave a piece of celery to Paige, who stuck it into the hole left by her missing
front tooth and ran off between the parked cars to terrorize the Hubbards’ four-and six-year-old boys. Barclay and Bradley,
Peggy remembered: blond and blonder. “Liddy and I are co-chairing next year’s Daughters of New England Night of Hope,” Carrie
said.

“It benefits the Families Can Foundation.” Liddy brought a pan of seven-layer dip to the table.

“We thought you might enjoy chairing the goody bag committee,” Carrie continued. “It’s a wonderful way to meet people.”

“And a chance to help those less fortunate.” Liddy sank a chip into the dip and nibbled it daintily. “You could really shine
with the goody bags.”

“Last year, the goodies were chintzy,” Carrie said. “Should we put out the chili, Liddy?”

Peggy gazed with longing toward the covered barbecue grill a family was lighting three cars away. She wanted to crawl inside.
She wanted Liddy and Carrie to turn their backs so she could steal a napkin to wipe her nose. She hoped she was conveying
neither of these desires. The last corner of her brain not yet frostbitten was already assembling goody bags filled with products
from the shop. “I’m f-f-flattered,” she eked out through chattering teeth.

“We’ll sponsor you for Daughters. We know you’ll fit right in.” It was Carrie’s turn to pick up the conversational relay.
“All of our friends participate on one committee or another. Creighton Simmons is always in charge of the table centerpieces.
They were gorgeous last year, weren’t they, Liddy?”

“Creighton does have a flair for choosing flowers,” Liddy concurred. Peggy wondered if the two women secretly felt superior
whenever they heard a Crazy Carl Kirkendall commercial.

Lemon would be a nice, crowd-pleasing fragrance for the goody bags. Everyone loved lemon. Peggy could almost hear the oohing
and aahing. “What d-does T-Tiffany d-do?”

Liddy pried the lid off a container of baby carrots. “Tiffany isn’t in Daughters of New England.”

Peggy’s stomach sank.

“She and Tom come to Night of Hope, though,” Carrie said. “They buy a table every year. It’s next October, by the way. May
we count you in?”

“I’m sorry.” Peggy was. Sorry and glad at the same time. “I’ll be gone by then.”

Paige and the boys ran past, shrieking.

“Where will you be?” Liddy asked.

The football sliced across the sky, soared over the tidy rows of SUVs and station wagons, an off-course pigskin missile bound
for the head of some unsuspecting reveler—in this case, Hubbard. Luke reached up to pluck the football out of the air and
looked around for its owner, who turned out to be a kid in his mid-twenties, obviously a recent graduate.

“Sorry, man.” The kid stood poised, impatient, wanting the ball back.

Luke threw it and sought out Peggy, who was hunkered inside her coat, her cheeks and nose pink from the cold, and had missed
the scene entirely.

Her entire appearance had changed. He’d hardly noticed over the past several weeks that the heels and tight jeans had gradually
fallen by the wayside until she’d come down this morning in chinos, driving moccasins, and a barn coat, outpreppying his preppiest
friends.

“Where’d you get the clothes?” he’d asked. She’d even gotten the broken-in part right; though he assumed everything she wore
was new, it looked as if she’d owned it all for years. He’d been stunned at the transformation, impressed at her chameleonic
powers.

She’d widened her eyes at his question. “Is something wrong?”

He’d considered telling her he liked the way she’d always stood out from the crowd, that the conservative outfit didn’t suit
her because now, except for the flashy diamond ring he wished she would leave back in New York, she looked exactly like everybody
else.

“Not at all,” he’d said at last.

Luke left Hubbard and Eaton and walked over to Peggy. As he got closer, he could see her agitation. She looked cornered, shriveling
under the scrutiny of the other wives. He didn’t care for Liddy and Carrie. They brought to mind pterodactyls, with their
predatory eyes and sailing-and-skiing-weathered skin.

“Where will you be?” Liddy was cross-examining Peggy. “Luke, where will your wife be that she can’t help the Daughters of
New England at our Night of Hope?”

“It’s n-next October.” Peggy’s words came out in white clouds.

Luke understood at once.

He laughed and put his arm around Peggy’s shoulders. “You two wouldn’t rob us of our honeymoon, would you?” He clutched Peggy
tighter. She was shivering. “We were married so quickly, we didn’t go on a romantic getaway, so we’re taking it for our anniversary
instead. Aren’t we, Peggy?”

Peggy looked up at him. She sniffled.

Liddy and Carrie were exclaiming, “How sweet!” and, “Where are you going?”

“Hawaii,” Peggy chattered.

“Bermuda,” Luke corrected. Peggy might look like a WASP, but Hawaii was no WASP vacation spot. For good measure—and to shock
Carrie and Liddy with a public display of affection—Luke brushed his lips against Peggy’s cold, fragrant hair. He pocketed
a leather-covered flask somebody had set out on the tailgate. “Come, darling. Let’s go for a walk.” His arm still around Peggy’s
shoulders, he seized her back from the jaws of the pterodactyls.

The top of her head was burning. The spot where Luke had touched her—had it been a kiss? did that count as a kiss?—still radiated
a small, insistent pulse that warmed her nearly as much as his arm around her shoulders and the gulp of brandy he’d insisted
she swallow. It took resolve not to succumb to the sheltering curve of his arm, not to lean her body into his. If she did,
she suspected he would move away, and she didn’t want him to. It wasn’t just because she was feeling warmer than she had since
climbing from the Hubbards’ car into the frigid New Haven morning.

They slipped out through a space in the chain-link fence separating the alumni tailgate area from the road and walked on the
shoulder for a few yards, scuffing through heaps of yellow and orange leaves.

“Want to see the real Yale?” Luke shouted as they crossed the road to the student area. The noise was deafening. The students
were glassy-eyed, flushed, staggering across acres of trampled grass littered with squashed cups and foam plates and lined
with U-Haul vans Peggy guessed they’d rented just for tailgating. The girls had painted blue Y’s on their cheeks, and the
boys wore “Fuck Harvard” baseball hats. An ambulance, lights flashing, whooped behind Peggy and Luke as it entered the student
lot. The reek of stale beer rose from the ground.

“Did you do this sort of thing when you were here?” Peggy asked.

“Never.”

“Were you in one of those secret Yale societies, like Skull and Bones? I’ve always wondered what the members do.”

“They get together on Thursday and Sunday nights and tell their life stories.”

“That’s it?”

“More or less.”

“So you were in one?”

“No. I lack the preppy social gene.” He took his arm from around her shoulders.

She almost grabbed it and put it back, but instead she accepted another belt of brandy from the flask; the weather was starting
to overtake the warm spot on her head.

He took off his coat. “Put this on.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she tried to protest, but he settled the coat around her.

It was a barn coat like the one she’d had sent over from the Toggery, but his was flannel lined and heavy and already held
his heat. He uncoiled her scarf and rewound it so it covered her ears, and he crossed the ends in front of her throat and
buttoned up the coat. “Hardly fashionable, but it’ll help.”

“But what about you?” It was the first chatter-free sentence she’d uttered for forty-five minutes, and she was torn between
gratitude and concern. Surely Luke wouldn’t be able to walk around out here without his coat.