The Romantics (19 page)

But even this cathartic act did little to relieve her boiling anger. She was haunted by this dress—as truly and terribly obsessed as she had once been by jellyfish. When she was seven, Chip had scarred her permanently by lifting one of the slimy invertebrates from the bay and chasing her with it, waving its slithering translucent flesh as she sprinted to the shore. She did not get back in the ocean until June of the next year.

But the trauma persisted long after that. For years, whenever she was swimming, she jumped at the sight of any ripple, clawing the arm of the closest swimmer or swimming madly for the shore. Even now, seven years later, she remained at the ready for the first swipe of flesh. The false alarms did not relieve her. Just the opposite; the absence of an attack only heightened her fear. By the time she turned ten, she actively wished for a jellyfish to sting her calf. It would be better to know the pain than to continue imagining the torment. It was just the same with the dress. She simply needed to touch it.

Earlier that morning, the dress had arrived with excessive fanfare. At the sound of wheels on gravel, Lila had raced Augusta
to the door, each of them nearly tripping the other in her haste to greet the messenger. Lila reached the door first, but Augusta circumvented, seizing the enormous box with the speed and efficiency of an ambulance worker. Lila abandoned the confused messenger, trailing her mother across the kitchen, cursing the designer who had promised its arrival days earlier. They stopped at the end of the kitchen and hastily set down the box, Augusta stabbing it with a steak knife while Lila clawed at it with her bare hands.

Finally, the box gave way, and Lila grabbed for the hanger, thrusting her arm inches from the path of Augusta’s serrated knife. A black zippered bag emerged, and Lila tugged at the zipper, as though she were a doctor performing emergency surgery. At last, the dress emerged without a trace of the bloody battle. The sugar-white satin rose from the box like an ascending angel, only to disappear as Lila thrust it back in the box, clutched it, and ran upstairs. The dress was ripped from Minnow’s sight even before its box had grazed the floorboards, leaving her to wonder if the whole thing had been an apparition. On instinct, she trailed Lila, following her up the stairs, but Lila quickly shooed her away, promising to ban her from the wedding if she took another step.

Luckily, a studious investigation led Minnow to the dress. Feigning obedience, she took a seat at the foot of the stairs. She listened carefully to the patter of footsteps as Lila progressed through the house and toward her hiding spot. Oddly, Lila did not stop on the second floor to deposit the dress in Augusta’s dressing room, nor did she pause on the third floor to hang it in her own closet; she climbed an additional flight to the house’s maligned attic, no doubt to secrete the dress in its fragrant cedar closet.

Until now, this closet had never been home to anything
auspicious—overgrown and seasonal attire were occasionally stowed in the back with a surplus of mothballs. But tonight, the closet would host the most refined guest ever to grace Northern Gardens. And it would do so without lock or key—with an utter absence of security. The sound of a closing door and, minutes later, Lila’s descending footsteps finally confirmed Minnow’s hypothesis—and assuaged her sorrow. Before tomorrow’s wedding, she vowed to see and touch the dress.

Now, with six hours until daylight, she realized her moment had come. Tomorrow, the dress would be guarded not only by Lila but her four other bridesmaids. And even the most lenient among them would guard it with her life. Without further delay, Minnow bolstered herself and thrust the covers from her bed, replacing her journal in its hiding place and tiptoeing across her room. For the first time in her life, she would stray from her firm policy never to enter the attic alone.

To date, she had only been in the attic accompanied by her mother, on missions to retrieve wool sweaters the week before Labor Day, and with her sister, to find costumes for the club talent show. These trips had proceeded uneventfully, but she was always grateful for the company. She imagined that a solo voyage would be a wholly different experience, that the first creak of the floor or the faintest moan of wind would compel an immediate retreat. Even the attic’s particular scent—cedar, mothballs, and rain—was chilling enough to inspire a sprint down the stairs, breath held until she landed safely in the kitchen, three flights below, terrified and gasping.

Mercifully, as she crept into the attic, desire overwhelmed fear. As she climbed from the second floor to the third, from the third-floor landing up the small, steep staircase, she was graced with an
unexpected reserve of courage. She suddenly felt like a much older girl—at least fifteen or sixteen—so that when she finally touched the dress, she immediately set her sight on a higher goal and yanked it off the hanger.

E
ven under normal circumstances, Augusta could not count on sleep. She slept, at best, six hours a night and even then, her dreams were plagued by an incessant procession of lists. It was as though her subconscious mind was cataloging the unfinished tasks of the previous day. The situation improved and worsened depending on the state of her children’s lives. It was worst during the holidays, when she doubled as an air traffic controller for her children’s travel plans, and best in the summer, when she retired the family to Northern Gardens for the season.

The house was her panacea. There was something intrinsic to its smell that was utterly transformative. The white gabled Victorian house might as well have been a white clapboard church. Every year, when she arrived in June, car stocked with produce and good olive oil, she felt a version of the same feeling, as though she would suffocate if she couldn’t immediately inhale Northern Gardens’ particular breeze, as though the car had pulled into the driveway just in time. Even before coming to a full stop, Minnow burst from the car, desperate to stretch her legs or else lose them to pins and needles. As Minnow sprinted toward the water, Augusta followed behind at a walk, equally anxious to hike up her pants and tumble down the lawn.

But she diverged from her daughter’s path at the end of the driveway, circling the house, picking up stray branches, noting the hedges that would need the most attention while William unloaded
the car. Satisfied with the first phase of her tour, she ventured toward the house, unlocking it ceremoniously and standing still, just inside the threshold, as though she had entered a stranger’s home. The next ten minutes were devoted to a tour of the interior. She attempted to gauge the severity of the winter by the state of the windows, the fade of the furniture, the presence of any leaks.

She walked through the whole house just like this, opening and shutting cabinets, rattling shutters, fluffing the occasional pillow. But only part of her mind was attuned to the physical house; every step was in fact a move toward a certain version of herself, a version that she adored and missed during the winter the same way she missed very old friends. With every step, she felt more like that woman and more elated by the reunion. As though on cue, the incessant scroll of lists slowed to a drift. Items like Lila’s travel plans and Chip’s precarious employment were replaced by things like blueberries and a new lobster pot. A lobster boil would be the perfect way to kick off the summer.

What a lovely summer last summer had been. This summer had been considerably less relaxing. Since early June, the house had been a circus grounds, host to a revolving population of visitors and guests. Between the interviews for florists and caterers, the trips to New York for fittings, the constant stream of phone calls—to this day, she had not installed call waiting on the Northern Gardens phone—it had been nearly impossible to enjoy her morning coffee without some pressing emergency calling her from the porch. And that was only June.

July had brought Lila’s arrival and with it, an increase in the house’s electrical output. As though on cue, Augusta’s lists had returned with a vengeance, crowding her brain with a torrent of uncompleted errands, unreturned calls, and unresolved decisions.

Sometimes, these lists had dared to afflict her even after tasks were completed, presenting themselves as a list of alternative, potentially superior decisions. Cruelly, these lists grew more oppressive when she was trying to sleep, surfacing in dreams when she was lucky enough to have them, and otherwise keeping her up for the better part of the night.

Tonight, she had been possessed by one such phantom list, a list of the various centerpieces she had decided against. Now, as she lay in bed, all of the ideas she had rejected seemed preferable to the one she had picked. A delicate candelabra of glass votives was the front-runner for a while, until the caterer dissuaded her with a horror story about a tablecloth that went up in flames. A summertime cornucopia presented a decent alternative until she considered the risk posed to formal attire by so much purple fruit—grapes and blueberries were particularly unforgiving. A crate crammed with cheerful clementines had appealed to her for a while, but ultimately, it seemed somehow too simple. A large glass vase filled with indigenous sea glass had promised to glisten beautifully in candlelight but threatened to resemble a gumball machine without the proper lighting; a large conch shell could be simple and elegant but would it look too spare on the table? And a pickle jar filled with limes had offered a welcome splash of color but had finally seemed too informal. This was a wedding, not a hoedown, after all.

The one she finally decided upon seemed right at the time. Like Lila, it was sufficiently beautiful and complicated. It had required the following three-step procedure. First, Augusta wandered the grounds of Northern Gardens, collecting fallen branches of a particular size; then, Minnow spent three weeks harvesting sea glass from the beach; finally, the florist mounted the branches on inconspicuous stands and threaded the blue and green crystals through
the branches so that they dangled like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The whole effect would be ethereal, turning the tent into a glittering underwater city.

But now, as Augusta lay in bed, she feared the idea was better in theory than in practice. Would the branches that held so much meaning for her look to others like gnarled twigs? Would the sea glass—a massive project for Minnow—even shimmer under so many artificial lights? Suddenly, the whole idea struck Augusta as ill-conceived. A simple vase of white tulips would have been a better choice.

Of course, last-minute second-guessing was the prescribed domain of the mother of the bride. But Augusta’s concerns about the centerpieces paled in comparison to her concerns about one other detail of the wedding. That Augusta was conflicted about Tom was certainly no secret. She had made it known to Lila for years and admittedly even to Tom. Lila wrote it off as typical maternal protectiveness—ambivalence that would slowly give way to love. But ambivalence, Augusta decided—if it was that—was much more problematic than aversion. Hatred, at least, lived on the same spectrum as love and was somehow easier to convert. Ambivalence never strengthened or abated; it simply remained—in the subtext of every conversation, the backdrop of every telephone exchange, in the midst of every holiday gathering. Ambivalence was arguably stronger than love. It thrived like a germ until death.

Furious, Augusta turned to her sleeping husband and rattled his shoulder, gently first, then more violently. In general, she didn’t mind—sometimes, she even relished his obliviousness, but in moments like these, she hated him for his indifference and his unfettered sleep.

“William,” she said.

His eyes still closed, he raised his eyebrows in response.

“William,” she repeated. “A terrible mistake has been made.”

In some ways, Augusta’s voice functioned as an alarm for William even when he was awake. “Yes, darling,” he said, opening his eyes.

“The centerpieces,” Augusta explained. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Gussie, come on.” William sighed. His eyelids fell against his will.

“William, wake up,” she demanded.

“I’m up,” he lied. “I’m up.” But his eyelids failed him again, falling slowly to close.

Augusta stared at her husband, newly enraged. But she was also somewhat relieved; she now had a legitimate object for her anger. It was easier to be angry at William than a gnarled tree branch. As she stared, it occurred to her that William had much in common with the branch. Both were handsomely weathered when appraised on their own. But both were depressingly mangled when compared to healthy branches. Once again, she was struck by overwhelming dread, as though she had set sail on a cloudless day only to find herself in a storm.

“William,” she begged. But it was no use; she had lost him again to sleep.

There was, of course, a time when she had been more optimistic about her husband. When they married, he possessed nine of the ten qualities on her childhood list for a groom. Unfortunately, a child’s wish list often fails to imagine the needs of the adult. Still, Augusta supported William’s decision when he left his job to pursue his artistic dream. It was a luxury of his circumstance that he could retire at such a young age—and in some ways a status symbol. Of course, she would have preferred if it had been something other
than a musical. Why not a novel? Painting, poetry even. But she did her best to hold her head up when friends asked how the work was going. William was terribly excited, she explained. It was sure to be fabulous. But when two, three, then ten years passed without a finished product, Augusta grew more skeptical—and more insistent. For years, she badgered William to share his work. When he finally did, she regretted it.

On a Friday night in July, William invited Augusta to sit by the piano in the parlor while he performed his work in progress from start to finish.
The Last Great Love
, as he called it, was an homage to his deceased parents, adapted from letters they exchanged during World War II when his father captained a minesweeper and his mother waited anxiously at home. The libretto was based on letters that documented, in excruciating detail, the tedium of war, the itinerary of the U.S. Navy, and the romance of a separated husband and wife.