Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (39 page)

Sue waited for as long as it took to crumple up the banner and toss it in the garbage. “What has my daughter done now?”

“You’re Bex’s mother?” Luke stumbled a little over his own deck shoes as he exited the closet and stood silhouetted ethereally
against the cloud mural on the back wall: an otherworldly visitor with a popped collar. “I’m Luke Sedgwick, a friend. How
is she?”

“Driving me nuts,” Sue said, “but fine.”

“
You’re
Luke Sedgwick?” Padma’s jaw dropped.

Just what Peggy needed—for Padma to tell Sue who Luke was. She threw the salesgirl a glare as intense, she hoped, as one of
Miss Abigail’s. It must have been a decent facsimile; Padma stopped talking, though she did wink and give Peggy a thumbs-up
sign.

Peggy dragged Luke out onto the sidewalk and down half a block until there was no chance Padma and Sue could overhear. “Let
me set the record straight. Bex is my best friend, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” She moved to the side as
a taxi stopped at the curb directly in front of her and a couple climbed out. “I love Brock, and he loves me, and we’re getting
married the way we were always supposed to, and that’s the end of it.” She moved to the other side as a father with a baby
on his shoulders passed between them. “So you tell Bex she’d better get used to it. And as for you…What’s this?”

Luke had taken a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his shirt—the pink button-down again, the one he’d worn under his
sweater the day they’d met in Lowell Mayhew’s office. He offered the paper to her.

She didn’t take it. “What is it?”

“Read it.”

“What is it?” She refused to give him the satisfaction of following his orders.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He unfolded the paper and glanced around, as if to make sure no one was observing them. “An aphrodisiac
will disappear—” His voice cracked, and he started again:

“An aphrodisiac will disappear,

delusional, like permanence or wealth—

a shimmering, as if love were a ghost—

and yet my passion for you seethes and sears

without an end. Late April leaves can’t crave

caress of dew, sunlight’s sweet splash, more than

I pine for your embrace, us turned to one;

when harsh reversals scar, the thought of you will salve

like summer wind in autumn; deep red blood

surging along with mine, staid genes worked hot

from your electric charms, as all my moods

succumb to your sweet fire, and perfect wit.

Now you are all I live for—loving you—

in fleeting world of lies, you are the truth.

People were listening. Here were a restaurant deliveryman chaining his bicycle to a parking meter, a kid carrying a violin
case, a woman sliding a letter into a mailbox—poised, attentive. Luke raised his eyes from the paper, and Peggy stared at
him, stupefied, not knowing what to say, so that the first thing out of her mouth was the first thought to surface: “But this
is for Nicki.”

“Nicki? I broke it off with her in November.”

“But I saw this poem before that, when I…” She was so embarrassed, she thought she might melt. “Snooped.”

Luke stepped back into the unmarked doorway of Rubicon, a women’s clothing store. The face of the boutique’s security guard
appeared behind a small porthole. Luke jumped.
He really is nervous,
Peggy marveled.

“That’s why you shouldn’t snoop.” Luke refolded the paper and again held it out to her. “It was never for anyone but you.”

All over again, Peggy and Luke were the only two people on earth. Peggy heard, from another universe, the faraway sound of
her name; she heard a siren, an idling truck, passing conversations; she ignored it all. Luke loved her. His feelings, which
his upbringing wouldn’t allow him to express directly, were in this poem, clear as day.

“Peggeee!” There it was again, a voice calling her, a high, faraway cry as if from deep inside Peggy’s brain. A call to action.
What’s it going to be, Peggy? We’re all waiting, Peggy. Make your choice.

But there was no choice.

She had made it in December, in the garden of the Colonial Inn. She had chosen Brock. The guests were on their way, the dress
was waiting in her closet, she was getting married in a matter of days, and the time for choices was over.

How could Luke show up now?

She crossed her arms over her chest and blinked back the tears in her eyes. She would not cry. She would stay strong, the
way Miss Abigail would.

“Peggy Adams!” The shout came again, and it was Padma who’d been calling her—calling to get Peggy’s attention, because Brock
was striding toward her up the sidewalk, a beaming grin on his dimpled, chiseled face.

“You’re too late,” she told Luke, and turned hurriedly toward her fiancé, who was half a block away, utterly oblivious to
what was happening, to the fact that the tears flowing down Peggy’s cheeks were for anyone but him.

“This is it,” Peggy heard Luke say from behind her. “If you walk away, I won’t go after you. I won’t burst into the church
yelling, ‘Stop the wedding!’ ”

She turned back around. “I know,” she said. “You don’t like scenes.”

And then she hurried to meet Brock, leaving Luke alone with his poem, her heart aching as it never had, wondering if, were
she to look back, she would see Luke suffering in the same way she was.
Pain builds character
. It was one of the Sedgwick family slogans, and Peggy understood that if she was somehow able to live through this, she would
be stronger. She’d have to be.

“Hey, Pegs!” Brock tackled her and engulfed her in a hug. When he let go, Peggy glanced over her shoulder one last time.

Luke was gone. In the space of a few seconds, it was as if he hadn’t been there at all.

So that was that.

Luke had had a moment on the way into the city, navigating the Volvo through the thick of Manhattan, in which he’d thought,
We’ll live here,
and the image had popped full-blown into his head: he and Peggy, happy ever after in a cramped but charming apartment filled
with books and sunlight; a baby’s crib; trips to the park and the museums; the city noise a lullaby to rock them all to sleep
at night. He’d been struck with the sure knowledge that this was how things were meant to turn out, and his only job had been
to convince Peggy of the same. Hadn’t he planned his appeal to Peggy, thought of nothing else for days? Hadn’t he neglected
his investment portfolio, ignored repeated phone messages from Ver Planck, daydreamed through the repairs he’d embarked on
with Angelo, to write and rewrite and edit and re-edit the grand gesture, the poem that would make Peggy his and bring with
her a life he’d only recently come to understand was the life he’d always wanted? He’d not considered this a gamble he could
lose.

Peggy had chosen her future, and it didn’t include him. Hidden in a shop doorway, he’d watched her after she’d turned her
back, watched her run into the arms of that muscled lug on the sidewalk, considered running after her and…and what could he
have done? Challenged the guy to a duel? Stung him with his wit, WASP versus Goliath? The contest was over, the match lost.
Maybe Peggy had never felt anything more for him than friendship. And now that was gone as well.

Luke dropped his worthless sonnet into the nearest trash basket. He wished only for one thing: that in that closet, he’d inhaled
more deeply the lingering fragrance he’d come to associate with Peggy and held it in his lungs as long as he could.

He drove home as if anesthetized. The Hudson River was alive with sailboats, the trees lining the parkways lush with leaves,
the farms of Litchfield County overrun with spring calves and foals on spindly legs. Luke saw all of it and absorbed none
of it. He thought of his ancestral home, soon to be barred to him. He passed Pilgrim Plaza, its parking lot a lustrous slab
of asphalt, and thought about the Widow in the Woods. He came to the Sedgwick land, the last bit of his heritage. The ground
breaking had begun the previous week. Luke had watched in silence as an excavator had taken the first grab of land with its
greedy steel arm. In just a few days, this single machine had reduced the grassy meadow to dirt. Now Luke parked on the shoulder
and watched it work, and something inside him, something he hadn’t known was there, ripped open—a gaping wound out of which
poured sorrow and anguish and self-reproach. He was a Sedgwick, like it or not. Maybe it was impossible to truly break away
from one’s heritage. He saw Abigail Agatha Sarah Sedgwick saying,
Nobody but Sedgwicks shall ever live under the Sedgwick roof.
He wasn’t angry with her for leaving the house to the cat. In her own off-kilter way, she’d been trying to save what was
theirs when her last living relative was hell-bent on destroying it.

It had been months since Peggy had been to Brattie’s Sports Pub, but nothing had changed. The TV screens were still broadcasting
a hodgepodge of events, from track and field to golf—the U.S. Open; a pantheon of New York sports saints including Patrick
Ewing, Joe Namath, and Babe Ruth watched over the proceedings from their photos on the walls. The sameness was comforting
after a day of changes and endings. “In fleeting world of lies, you are the truth,” Peggy whispered to her grubby reflection
in the ladies’ room mirror. Now that a few hours had passed since her scene with Luke, she was sorry for her ungracious exit.
She might have said a proper good-bye, told Luke how much she’d liked his poem.

Enough. She made a face at herself and rubbed dirt from her cheek. She was a mess. How about regretting not having gone home
to shower and change before agreeing to come here with Brock?

Her fiancé was entertaining the crowd at the bar with stories of his work on the documentary. Somebody started an off-key
chorus of “Here Comes the Bride” as Peggy reappeared, and hands reached out to pat her on the back.

“Come over here, Pegs.” Brock slid his arm around her and tugged her to his side.

The Commissioner poured Brock a beer. “Why the hell’d you wait so long to pop the question, Clovis?”

Everyone looked at Brock—including Peggy. It was the question she’d wanted answered for months. Had he proposed because she’d
followed through on her ultimatum? Because he’d been jealous she’d started dating? Because he’d realized there wasn’t anything
better out there? Now she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the reason. She held her breath.

“Commish, gentlemen, I’ve thought a lot on this very subject.” Brock was enjoying himself. “And you know what I say?”

“Tell us what you say, brother!” the Commissioner shouted, and the crowd laughed.

“There comes a time in life when you need to take a good, long look at things and ask, ‘What do I have, and what do I want?’
That’s what happened to me last fall. I said to myself, ‘Clovis, you jackass, here you had this great thing, and you went
and lost it. If you want it back, better do something about it.’ So I did something about it.” Brock clutched Peggy more tightly
around the waist. “Vince Lombardi said it best: ‘The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.’ ”

“Lombardi,” said a guy to Brock’s left. “The man was a poet.”

“Good for you, Clovis,” the bartender said. “Way to go, Peggy.”

Peggy couldn’t believe it. The Commissioner was looking her in the eye. “I’ll be back,” she said, and slipped out of Brock’s
grasp and onto the sidewalk, taking her phone from her purse.

If Bex’s mother was worn out from spending all afternoon shutting down the store, she didn’t sound it when she answered the
phone. Bex was asleep, Sue reported apologetically. Did Peggy have a message to relay?

It was better this way. Peggy was sad and emotional and tired. It would be too easy, were Bex to get on the phone, to pick
a fight with her about Luke. Peggy didn’t want to fight. Bex had many faults. She was a know-it-all and a busybody, but she
was Peggy’s best friend, and Peggy loved her. Bex would never come to terms with Brock. But it was all right. The friendship
had survived this long, despite Bex and Peggy’s differences. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“Just please tell her I’ll come by tomorrow,” Peggy told Sue.

“See you then,” Sue said. “And I can’t wait for the wedding.”

“I can’t either.” Peggy meant it. It would be liberating to put the past behind her and step into the future.

She went back inside Brattie’s. “It’s midnight—our wedding is exactly a week away,” Brock said. He planted a definitive kiss
on her lips and ground himself against her pelvis. “Come home with me. I can’t take it anymore.”

She couldn’t sleep with him—not yet. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t until after they were married. Feeling like a prude,
she separated herself from him, her hands against his chest. “It’s just one more week.”

On Saturday morning, Luke was up at dawn in spite of (or perhaps because of) having played umpteen games of mental tennis
most of the night. As he came through the grand parlor, he spotted Quibble, who, exactly as in Luke’s collapsing-house daydream,
was perched on the mantel. The house remained standing. “Look at you, acting like you own the place.” Luke scratched the cat
fondly under the chin. “Too bad you’re legally obligated to live here, or I’d take you with me.” To where, beyond Hartford,
Luke still didn’t know, but Quibble didn’t press him for an answer.

By nine, Luke and Angelo were up on the roof with a bucket of roofing tar, enveloped in the heavy odor of hot asphalt. It
was the next step after the blue tarp to stave off leaks and a temporary fix at best; in six months or a year, the leaks would
be back. As he had many times since reading Abby’s will, Luke wondered how the meager Sedgwick Family Trust could possibly
cover the cost of maintaining the Silas Sedgwick House in perpetuity. Mayhew was right: Luke should contest the will. He mulled
over the idea briefly and rejected it. Taking on this house would be a terrible decision made in an irrational moment. Even
with his Budget Club windfall, he couldn’t afford the place.