Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (35 page)

Finally, Peggy nodded. “Maybe we should move to the den. It’s more comfortable there.”

Luke couldn’t believe his luck. “Great idea, Peggy. How about it, Abby?”

His great-aunt peered into him. Not
at
him; it was as if she could see through his skin into his muscles, bones, bloodstream, into the DNA at the center of each
cell.

“On second thought,” she said, “I don’t need to know right this minute.”

“It would be best if you did,” Luke pressed.

“He’s right.” Peggy put her hand on Abby’s arm. “It’s time.”

“Nonsense,” Abby declared. “It’s time for dinner.”

The meal was festive. Peggy made eggs, and Luke fixed Abigail her sherry, and Abby set out the family china, and the three
ate as darkness descended on the garden outside, and the wind moaned, and snow collected in U-shaped drifts against the steamy
windowpanes.

Peggy’s skin gleamed golden in the overhead light. “Isn’t it late in the season for a freak snowstorm?”

“It’s not unheard of, dear. One year it snowed on Memorial Day weekend. Nineteen seventy-seven. Remember, Luke?” Abigail chuckled.
“You and the Hubbard boy went sledding on your mother’s silver tea tray.”

Luke laughed aloud at the forgotten memory. The confession he’d so urgently wanted to make to his great-aunt half an hour
earlier no longer seemed necessary. Why spoil the moment? He and Peggy still had time until the annulment was final. They
had two more weeks.…

Only two more weeks.

He pushed away his plate. Peggy was laughing, too, as Abby embellished the sledding story. This time next year, Peggy would
be married to someone else, with an entirely new life, while he, Luke, remained in the life he had, except without Peggy.

Without the woman he loved.

Because, heaven help him, he loved her.

I love her,
he repeated to himself with wonderment as the kitchen light blinked off and then on again like a heart fluttering to life,
so quickly that he was sure he was the only one who’d noticed it had blinked at all.
I love her long underwear. I love that she found the only damn apple left in that orchard. I love that she’s afraid of the
basement but pretends not to be. I love that she has the guts to picket against me and that all the people in town like her
better than they like me—

The house went dark.

“Oh!” Peggy exclaimed.

“It’ll come back on in a minute.” Abby sounded unconcerned, but she and Luke both knew if the storm had already knocked out
the power lines, there was little that could be done about it until at least tomorrow morning. “Meantime, Luke will light
us a fire,” she said.

Luke goggled at his great-aunt in the dark. “Abby, the flues have been shut for years.”

“Then open one. Peggy is cold. She’s been cold since the first day she came here. How about the library? I’ve always been
partial to a fire in the library.”

Luke got up and groped along the drainboard until his hand connected with the flashlight he’d left there. He flicked it on
and set it in the center of the table, where it threw off an embracing circle of yellow light.

“It’s all right, Miss Abigail,” Peggy said. “I’m not cold anymore. I think my blood has gotten thicker.”

“Nonsense. Luke, fetch the firewood. While you’re at it, bring up that port you’ve been hiding. I don’t know what you’ve been
saving it for.”

“You weren’t the one who hid the port?” Luke was surprised. “Then how do you know about it?”

Abby tilted her head to scrutinize him. It must have been an optical illusion, a trick of the flashlight, that made her appear
no older than she did in her portrait in the den. “I know everything that goes on in this house,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, a fire was crackling in the library. Luke heated the family port tongs and used them to cleanly break
off the neck of the bottle underneath the cork. He decanted the port into a crystal vessel, the dusky scent of vanished time
coiling up from the amber liquid. “We should drink it right away,” he announced to no one in particular; Abby and Peggy seemed
lost in their separate thoughts.

From her chair, his great-aunt gazed through the flickering shadows at the mantel portrait of Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick. “I
believe I’ll go upstairs,” she said dreamily. “It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”

Peggy stood with her back to the fire. “But what about the port?”

“I’ve never cared for port, dear.”

Luke moved forward, but Abigail held out a hand to keep him at his distance and stood on her own. She nodded at him, and he
gave her the flashlight, knowing better than to try to escort her to her room. Luke’s heart swelled with admiration for his
great-aunt—her resilience, her strength.
She’s the last of her kind,
he thought.

Peggy, too, looked as if she would like to reach out to Abby, to touch her arm or pat her hunched shoulder, but she held back,
Luke suspected, out of respect for Abby’s reserve and simply said, “See you in the morning, Miss Abigail.”

Abigail paused, as if to speak. Then she turned and made her way down the corridor, her fading footsteps punctuated by a faint
protest from the squeaky step as she climbed the front staircase to her bedroom, before the darkness swallowed up the sound.

“Did something seem not right to you?” Peggy asked once she was sure Miss Abigail was far enough away.

Luke blinked as if waking from a dream—as if, Peggy thought, he’d been mesmerized by the flames. “What do you mean, not right?”

“I mean…It’s not important.” She’d been about to say everything about this day had been surreal, as if she, too, had seen
the day’s events from inside a dream instead of experiencing them as they’d unfolded, were unfolding, right now. In a giddy,
irrational flash, it occurred to her that all of this might be a dream; and if she concentrated hard enough, she would wake
up with Bex in their Las Vegas hotel room and return to New York City to apologize to Brock for giving him that stupid marriage
ultimatum, and life would be just as it was before she’d gotten herself into this mess…and yet, she was aware it wasn’t a
dream, and furthermore, she didn’t want it to have been.

Luke poured port into two cut-crystal glasses and reached one out to her. When she took it, their fingers brushed, and she
drew back in surprise. Had he meant to touch her? She stole a peek at him, but his face was inscrutable in the half-light
of the fire. Outside were darkness and the unseen storm.

“We should toast.” Luke’s voice was quietly gruff. “It doesn’t seem right to drink this without ceremony.”

She held the gleaming glass, hesitating. “I feel bad that you opened it. This is hardly the perfect time.”

“Maybe Abby’s right, and it’s as good a time as any.” Luke brought his glass to his nose and inhaled.

Peggy did the same, but the port’s caramel aroma gave up no secrets. She said, “We really should prepare ourselves. It’s been
waiting so long. It could be terrible.”

“It could.” Luke raised his glass and tipped it toward her, as in a toast. “Or it could be every bit as good as we’ve imagined.”

He touched his glass to hers, and she let herself fall into the complex depths of his eyes and understood he was no longer
talking about the port.

She looked away, her heart racing, her airways narrowing with a feeling that wasn’t anxiety, and sipped. And swallowed. And,
when she was sure her face wouldn’t betray her emotions, looked up. “Mmm.”

Luke was taking his second sip of port. He held it in his mouth, then swallowed. “Hmm.”

She drank again, the thick, flat liquid coating her throat. “Mmm-hmm.”

“What do you think?” He was surveying her intently, as if all things hinged on her opinion of the Sedgwick port.

She smiled at him in a way that hopefully gave the impression of sincerity, took another sip, and swallowed it. “It’s…” She
was at a loss for words. “I—” She coughed. “I like it.”

“Really?” He smiled back at her, a dazzling, lopsided, endearing smile that rendered her barely able to remember her own name.
“Because I say it’s swill.”

She burst out laughing. She set the Sedgwick crystal onto a side table and draped herself against a bookshelf, giggling helplessly.
Luke, too, began to laugh, with a depth and commitment she’d not heard in all their months together, and the more he laughed,
the harder she laughed, until the two of them were clutching their sides and gulping for air as the fire popped and crackled
and cast shadows across the portrait of Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick so that the great patriarch himself seemed to muster a smile
at the scene below; to observe with lenient eyes as the family’s last hope pulled his wife of convenience into a kiss from
which Silas, had he been able, would have averted his eyes. But Peggy wasn’t thinking about Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick. She wasn’t
thinking of picketers, or soulless superstores, or disapproving preppy wives; of ACME Cleaning Supply and its precarious grip
on profitability; of lease negotiations or wedding dresses—or, least of all, of her fiancé. She surrendered to Luke’s embrace,
to his soft (so impossibly soft) lips, to the sweet roughness of his hands unbuttoning first his own Toggery corduroys and
then hers and pulling her down with him onto the shopworn rug in front of the fireplace, as she tried with trembling hands
to take off his sweater, and the frayed oxford shirt underneath, and the faded polo underneath that, until she looked up in
frustration.

“How many layers do you have
on
?”

“It’s a Yankee thing,” he whispered, and kissed her again, hugging her to him and wrapping his long legs around her as they
proved to each other, at long last, that something longed for and anticipated could indeed be better than either could have
expected.

O
f all the beds in the world, none could be as sublime as this. The sheets were silky, the pillows soft, the covers cozy and
protective. Peggy stretched luxuriously, turned from her left side to her right, and, when she felt ready, opened her eyes.

Watery gray light trickled in through the snow-plastered windowpanes as snow continued to fall, tranquilly now. The world
was otherwise still. Peggy recalled the line from Robert Frost: “The sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.”

Asleep next to her, Luke looked as he had the first morning she’d seen him: His chest—bare this time—rose and fell with his
breathing, his lips were parted slightly, his reddish lashes fluttered as his eyes moved beneath his closed lids. It was all
so familiar, she thought, curling her body into Luke’s. This scene, and the fit of this man’s body against hers, both now
and last night. She shivered involuntarily, remembering their lovemaking, and then the full impact of what she had done hit
her.

She’d slept with Luke.

She’d betrayed Brock and hadn’t thought of him once as she’d done so.

And—her fingertips went cold, her lungs threatened to collapse—she had officially put her annulment in jeopardy. She and Luke
had consummated their marriage, and there was nothing to keep Luke from telling that to the judge, if he wanted to cause trouble
for her. She imagined having to call off her wedding to Brock, cancel her wedding dress order, unbook the church. If she was
lucky, Brock might agree to reschedule the wedding for next year or the year after, once Peggy had gotten a full divorce—she
could still file for divorce, couldn’t she, even if the annulment could no longer be granted? But she couldn’t imagine Brock
forgiving her once he learned what a conniving liar she was, not just a woman who’d had an affair, but one who’d had an affair
with a man to whom she’d secretly been married for months.

Peggy slipped out of Luke’s bed, dressed quickly in last night’s clothes, and tiptoed to her own room, hoping Luke wouldn’t
wake before she was able to get to her car and drive away. Safely in her own room, she called Bex.

“You did?” Bex started to laugh. “Really? Padma,” she called, “you owe me twenty bucks!”

“Peggy slept with Luke?” Peggy heard Padma shout. “Woo-hoo!”

Peggy was horrified. “Bex, are you at the store?”

“Where else would I be at noon on a Sunday?” Bex answered. “Not that it matters. Thanks to the snow there’s no one on the
street. I was just about to send Padma home.”

It was noon? Good grief, Peggy thought, she and Luke had made Miss Abigail miss church. Mortified at the thought of Miss Abigail
sitting alone in the kitchen, no doubt aware of exactly what had happened last night, Peggy told Bex she’d see her at the
apartment later.

“You’d better look outside.”

Peggy drew aside one of her room’s lace curtains.

The world had turned black and white overnight. Snow lay in thick white stripes on the bare black branches of the Sedgwick
maple, which stood out, eerily beautiful, against the white gray sky. Main Street was entombed in snow; the black-shuttered
white houses along it were heaped with snow; the Sedgwick front yard had disappeared. Peggy couldn’t see the garage on Luke’s
side of the house, but she knew that the driveway leading to it would be buried as well.

“Looks like I have some shoveling to do,” she told Bex, and hung up. There would be no way to get her car otherwise; no way
to get home. She tiptoed down the front staircase, carefully avoiding the squeaky step, thinking she and Luke really ought
to fix it, wondering why they hadn’t thought to do so on any of the weekends they’d spent nailing down every other loose board
in the house.

Well, the stair would have to be Luke’s to fix now. She would not be coming back to New Nineveh until the court hearing in
April. She couldn’t face him any more than she could face the thought of what she’d done. She would tell Miss Abigail about
the annulment today, whether Luke wished her to or not.

Miss Abigail wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the ladies’ parlor, still waiting, two hours past meeting time, in her Sunday
clothing with her hands folded. She wasn’t in the den or the library—Peggy could barely look into that room, at the decanter
and glasses that still held the undrinkable port, without going weak at the memory of last night. She carried the glasses
and decanter into the kitchen and set them on the drainboard. It was odd—there was no used teabag, no cup in its usual spot.
The kitchen was undisturbed, as if Miss Abigail hadn’t eaten at all today. Where could she have gone without breakfast or
lunch?