The Engagements (3 page)

Frances quickly ate her breakfast and showered. She put on a long-sleeved brown dress, not bothering to check her reflection in the mirror. It was usually something of a disappointment to her anyway: her flat, wide cheeks, her goofy grin. She had been out on dates with men who called her pretty, but she knew the facts. She towered over half the boys at the office. She was all wrong for a woman in this day and age, when the gentler sex was supposed to be demure, quiet, and pocket-sized.

She rode the train downtown, clutching the slip of paper from the previous night. When she reached Washington Square, she hurried toward the Ayer building. She was dangerously close to being late.

In 1934, when the rest of the world was flat broke, N. W. Ayer and Son had enough cash to build their thirteen-story headquarters, directly across from the old statehouse. It was a magnificent structure, made of Indiana limestone, in the Art Moderne style.

She had been so proud the first time her father visited for lunch and whistled under his breath, “Wow, Mary Frances. That’s really something.” He only used her first name when he wanted to emphasize his point.

Now she opened the building’s big brass door, so heavy that in the slightest breeze you could barely get it to budge an inch. The lobby walls
were lined with marble. Classic, yet not at all fussy or ostentatious. Much like Ayer itself.

The middle-aged greeter sat behind an oak desk just inside the doors.

“Good morning, ma’am,” she said.

“Good morning.”

Frances waited for the elevator, willing it to come.

Finally, the doors opened, and there stood the blond elevator operator in her crisp uniform and white gloves.

“Tenth floor?” she asked, as she did every morning.

Frances nodded.

There was a strange sense of pride that came from a small moment like this—someone you didn’t know anything at all about knew something particular about you. It still gave her a thrill that she could tell any taxi driver in Philadelphia to take her to the Ayer building and they would know exactly where to go.

She got off the elevator and stopped at the typing pool in the middle of the floor. The wooden box that the stenographer, Alice Fairweather, and her four underlings worked in gave the impression that they were barnyard animals who needed to be penned. Frances always felt a bit silly talking to them over the low wall.

“Morning, Miss Gerety,” Alice said. “What have you got for us today?”

Frances handed over the honeymoon copy. “I’ll need it before the meeting.”

“Certainly.”

It would be returned to her in perfect shape before it moved along to the art department downstairs. The copy chief, Mr. George Cecil, was an absolute stickler for proper English. A ten-year veteran of the department had once let an ad go out with a typo. Cecil fired him the next day.

Frances was at her desk by 9:05.

The morning meeting would start at ten. Mr. Cecil would look at new lines and hand out more assignments. He was old-fashioned, buttoned up, but the execs loved him. He was considered the greatest copywriter alive, having created the lines
Down from Canada Came Tales of a Wonderful Beverage;
font-weight: normal;
all, and
for Canada Dry and
They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano but When I Started to Play!
—for Steinway, and about a hundred others.

Nora Allen two offices down was yapping into her phone at top volume. The cubicles had doors and high brown walls, but no ceilings. You couldn’t see anyone if you shut your door, but you could certainly hear them.

Frances tried to read over a memo on her desk. She was tired. Someday she’d have to start keeping normal hours, but she had always come awake at bedtime. She should have worked the night shift of a newspaper.

Some coffee would have hit the spot, but Harry Batten had forbidden them from drinking it in the building after an art director spilled a cup on an original finished photo that was ready to go to publication. The ban was particularly painful given that Hills Bros. was one of their biggest clients; there were cans and cans of coffee around, just waiting to be brewed. Mr. Cecil had even coined the term
coffee break
back in the twenties as part of the company’s advertising. Ironic, as there would never be a coffee break in the Ayer building as long as Batten lived.

Frances heard two voices in the hall, one of them the undeniable sound of Mr. Cecil in a foul mood.

“Who is that?” he said, irritated.

“Nora Allen, I believe,” his secretary replied.

“What in God’s name is she doing?”

“I think she’s talking to New York, sir.”

He scoffed. “Why doesn’t she use the telephone?”

Frances chuckled to herself. But in the meeting, she found that Mr. Cecil’s grumpiness had now made its way to her. When she presented her line, he rose from his chair and began pacing the floor, a sure sign that he was about to rip her idea up and down.

“Why did we go to school to learn grammar if you people are going to just disregard it?” he said. “You need an adjective here. If you said
A diamond is expensive
, or
A diamond is hard,
or
A diamond can cut stone
, that might work. But this?”

Frances was about to reply when he continued, “What do you think, Chuck?”

Her eyes met Chuck McCoy’s. He was a solid writer, good at his job, but certainly not the most forceful of men.

Chuck cleared his throat. “Every love affair begins with ‘I’ll love you forever.’ That’s the intention of a marriage, that it will last forever, right? I think I like it.”

Frances gave him a grateful nod, just as he turned to Mr. Cecil and spat out the words, “But it isn’t correct grammar, sir, you’re right.”

She shook her head.
Stupid sycophant
.

Frances spoke up in defense of herself. “As far as I’m concerned, the word ‘is’ means it exists. It’s a synonym for ‘exists.’ But change it if you like. I’m certainly not wedded to the idea.”

“No pun intended,” Chuck said.

Frances rolled her eyes. “If we talk about it, I’m sure we can find something similar that will do the trick.”

She considered adding,
I only gave it about th;
font-weight: normal;
all, and ree minutes’ thought in the dead of night
, but stopped herself.

“Yes, let’s talk about it,” Mr. Cecil said.

They tossed ideas around for the next three hours. The ashtray in the center of the table filled to the brim. Frances could feel her stomach rumbling. At this point, she’d accept anything Mr. Cecil wanted if it meant she could pop out to the Automat for a cheese sandwich.

Finally, Gerry Lauck poked his head in and said, “I’ve got to get to the airport now, George. What’s the word on the De Beers line?”

Mr. Cecil said, “Frances has come up with
A Diamond Is Forever
,” in a tone that almost made it sound like he was tattling on her.

Gerry looked up at the ceiling, thinking it ohttp-equiv="Co

Kate woke to the sound of her mother’s alarmed stage whisper in the kitchen.
They have nothing but soy milk in the fridge. You’d think when company’s coming—

Then, her sister May jumping to the rescue:
I’ll go find a convenience store and get some regular milk. Wait, do they even have convenience stores out here?

Because her cousin Jeffrey had decided to get married in the Hudson River Valley in April, Kate had six relatives—including the three kids—staying under her roof for the weekend. Above her head, the bedroom skylight revealed a square of perfect blue, the first sunny Saturday of spring. She could think of so many things she’d love to do today: take her daughter for a hike, dig around in the back garden, spend all afternoon out on the deck with a book. But none of that would happen.

“I hate weddings,” she said.

Dan lay beside her with the comforter pulled up under his chin like every morning. She could tell that he was awake, but instead of opening his eyes he closed them even tighter. “Why do we have to suffer just because they’re in love?”

Kate groaned. “I know it.”

She should have gotten up earlier, before everyone else. She should have been showered and dressed by the time they all came downstairs. She should have prepared a delicious breakfast. A strada or frittata or something like that. Usually, Ava was her alarm clock, but today someone must have swooped in and gotten her out of bed. Kate knew she ought to feel grateful, but it meant that now it was after eight, and her mother was already judging the contents of her refrigerator. As Jeffrey’s aunt and godmother, she would give a reading at the ceremony this evening. No doubt, this had her even more on edge than usual.

May and her husband, Josh, had brought along their three children, ages ten, eight, and five, because, as May had put it over the phone when the save-the-dates arrived, “It doesn’t exactly align with our beliefs, but a gay wedding is a teachable moment. It’s a coup these days to get your kids invited to one.”

They had driven out from New Jersey the night before, shattering the
country quiet as soon as May’s massive SUV pulled into the driveway. Kate went out to meet them, inhaling deeply, asking the God she wasn’t sure she believed in to give her strength.

Right away, May’s oldest, Leo, had produced a green tube of braided straw from his pocket and said, “Aunt Kate, stick your fingers in this.”

“Don’t!” his brother Max warned, coming up behind him. “It’s a Chinese finger trap.”

Kate remembered the toy from when she was a kid. They used to buy them by the bagful at the five-and-dime.

“Shut up, Max!” Leo said. “You just ruined it.”

“">She sighed. all she said. “ ceilingLeo. Language,” said Kate’s mother, Mona, who was the next one out of the clown car, followed by May’s youngest, Olivia, wearing a blue Cinderella dress.

“Hi sweetheart,” Mona continued. “How are you?”

She kissed Kate on the cheek.

“A girl we saw at the mall had to get her hand cut off after it got stuck in a Chinese finger trap,” Max said. “They’re really dangerous.”

“I made that up, you idiot,” Leo snickered. “I don’t know why she didn’t have a hand, but it wasn’t because of a Chinese finger trap. Come on, Aunt Kate. Try it!”

“Is that okay to say?” Mona frowned, looking to Kate. “Shouldn’t it be Asian finger trap now?”

“All right, let me see that,” Kate said, slipping her fingers into the holes at either end of the tube. She made a big show of being stuck.

“Let me try it on someone,” Max said.

“No,” Leo shot back.

“I have something better than that,” Max said with a pout. “I have a Mongolian finger trap.”

“No such thing,” Leo said, dismissing him.

May climbed out of the car, and rolled her eyes at Kate. “Please don’t encourage them.”

As if Kate had given them the Chinese finger trap as a welcome gift. As if she herself were eight years old.
And so it begins
, she thought.

They made it through the rehearsal dinner without any fighting, though May’s boys fidgeted and complained until they were allowed to play video games at the table, which Kate could tell her cousin Jeffrey hated. She had never respected May’s parenting style. May always told her,
Just wait. When you have kids, you’ll understand
. But Kate had been a parent for three years now, and she still objected to the strange cycle of bribing children to be good and scaring the shit out of them when they were bad.

Now she turned to Dan. “I guess I’d better go downstairs.”<19;s, playfull/p>

He pulled her close, his body warm beneath the sheets. “Let’s just stay here for the day. We’ll tell them we’re sick.”

She grinned. “Yeah, right. And deprive the flower girl of her parents’ adoring gazes?”

“We can tell her we’ll just check out the pictures on Facebook later. You know your sister will find a way to post them before the wedding has even started.”

May had documented what seemed like every instant of her children’s lives online, as if a birthday party or a t-ball game were somehow not quite real until she told 437 of her closest friends and acquaintances about it.

Kate and Dan were silent for a moment, which allowed them to overhear the following exchange:

The first voice belonged to her mother. “What is this? Orgasmic apple juice?”

“What?”
May said. “Let me see that! Mom, it says organic.”

Kate laughed.

“Wow, that must have been a letdown for her,” Dan said.

“I’m going in,” Kate said, getting to her fe?” Frances asked.94 a new l fet. “Wish me luck.”

In the kitchen, May’s three sat around the table eating Pop-Tarts. May and Mona stood against the counter, coffee cups in hand. Kate couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been together in the morning like this. Her mother and sister always wore makeup in public. They looked odd without it now, like some small but vital part of their faces was missing—an eyebrow, or an upper lip.

Ava, still in her footie pajamas, was strapped into her booster seat, a crumbling Pop-Tart in hand. At three years old, she was already fiercely opinionated.

“Mama,” she said. “I like this. I want more.”

Kate wanted to rip the thing away from her and shove it in the trash. She would need to decide quickly whether to fight this particular battle. She fed Ava all natural foods, nothing processed or full of sugar, even though she and Dan still ate greasy Chinese one night a week and scarfed down the occasional bag of Doritos. They did try to eat consciously, aware of the evils of factory farming. They had cut out meat almost entirely. But they still ate plenty of junk. In some ways, they were a lost cause, but Ava, beautiful Ava, was pure. Kate thought of asking her sister why she had felt the need to undermine her authority so early in the day.

“You brought your own Pop-Tarts?” was all she said.

May frowned. “Good morning to you too, Sunshine! Sorry. My kids won’t eat anything else.”

“They’re made with real fruit,” Leo pointed out, trying to be helpful.

Kate knew they thought she was foolish to care so much about what Ava ate. “You were raised on hot dogs and Kraft macaroni and cheese, and you turned out fine,” her mother had said on various occasions when the subject came up.