marriage is still cool?” Celeste asked. “It’s still something girls your age want? I would have thought you all would be going over to some groovy, Swedish hipster model of commitment.”
“Obviously, marriage is cool,” Agatha drawled. “Otherwise Daphne wouldn’t be doing it.”
Daphne snorted. “If I had a baby out of wedlock, Daddy would die. Literally die.”
“You mean,” Celeste said, “you wouldn’t be getting married if it weren’t for your father?”
“Well, Mom, too. And the Duffs. But, no, if I really had my way, we’d wait a while so I wouldn’t have to be pregnant in the pictures.”
“I really want to get married,” Piper volunteered. “It’s so romantic.”
“Yes, it is,” Celeste agreed. She plucked a blade of grass from the soil and tickled her lips with its waxy edge. “But romantic and prudent are not the same thing.”
“That’s good, though,” Agatha said. “Imagine if there was only prudence.”
“Hmm,” said Celeste. “Then I never would have married, and the world would be a very different place.”
“My parents would have, though,” Daphne said. She had settled on her back again, and her voice drifted over her belly.
“That’s true,” Celeste said.
Agatha crossed one golden leg over the other and bounced her slender, dirty foot. “What was Winn like when he was young?” she asked. “It’s just that I can’t imagine it. Biddy I can picture, but not Winn.”
Celeste felt a prickle. The nymphet was interested. Never one to torture herself, she preferred not to dwell on the charms of young women and had only allowed her eyes to skim the girl before, assessing her as pretty (really, more than pretty but with the kind of looks that would turn vulgar before too long). But now she gave her full attention to the remarkable body on display in that ratty old bikini, worn to near transparency. Agatha was thin but not hard. Long limbed but still small. Totally devoid of pores or cellulite or stretch marks or stray hairs. Even something as mundane as her kneecap was finely wrought, worthy of study, top of the line.
But this girl must have her choice of men. Why would she want old Winnifred? What about him could possibly light her fire except his forbiddenness, his unlikeliness, the very triteness of his middle-aged crush? Not that any of those should be underestimated. Husband number three, Wyeth, had been the least handsome but most loved of her husbands, and now he lived off his fortune in St. Barts, the novelty of Bolivia having long ago worn off, though not, apparently, the allure of long-legged, horse-faced youth. But Wyeth had been stolen property to begin with, an unlucky penny, and Celeste, in the end, had come to accept the bulk of the blame for the sorrows caused by their marriage. Nothing like that should happen to Biddy. Biddy had always been such a docile creature, highly competent but docile, happy to be a kind of ladies’ maid to her sisters through her childhood and then an earnest bluestocking and then a selfless wife. To betray her would be the height of cruelty. But this was crazy. Agatha couldn’t possibly want Winn.
“Oh,” Celeste said, drawing an expansive sigh of phony reminiscence, “let me cast my mind back. I think—I think—yes. I remember now. Winn was exactly the same.”
Piper made a high squawk that Celeste supposed was laughter. “There has to be more. Tell! What was he like?”
“Really. I couldn’t possibly come up with one thing that’s changed.”
Daphne stirred. “Mom once said he had a bad reputation before they met. Apparently he liked the ladies.”
Agatha’s bouncing foot stilled.
“I think he started those rumors himself,” Celeste said. “Your father is a born monogamist. Boring as hell.”
“Mom seemed kind of proud of it,” Daphne said. “She’s funny.”
Agatha uncrossed her legs and sat up. The shade had fully caught her, and she rubbed her arms as though to brush it off. She said, “Some people like a little competition. You want to feel like you have someone desirable.”
“You would say that,” Daphne said. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
But Piper was nodding. “No,” she said, “I think that’s true sometimes. You want to feel like the guy had lots of options but chose you. Like you tamed him a little bit.”
“That is so retro,” said Daphne.
“Don’t you feel that way?” Agatha asked. “It’s not like Greyson was a virgin when you met. It’s not like Greyson was ever a virgin.”
“Well,” Daphne said. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
Sadly, but with a certain pleasure of anticipation, Celeste accepted that she needed a drink. “All right,” she said, hoisting herself to her feet and sliding back into her sandals. “I’ll leave you girls to it. Someone has to tell Daphne what’s going to happen on her wedding night, and I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“We’ll be in soon,” Daphne said. “We’ve lost our sun. Check for ticks.”
Celeste walked around the house and greeted Livia and Dominique, who were deep in conversation on the deck beside two bags of shucked corn. Inside, place cards and seating charts were spread over the table, but Biddy was nowhere to be seen. The bottle of gin was out on the counter, and after she poured a little into a tumbler and added ice and a dollop of tonic, she put it away in a cupboard, where people were less likely to monitor its level. The first sip, bitter and fizzy, was unspeakably delicious, and she felt her nerves begin to settle at once. The bottom line was that she was being paranoid about Winn. And even if she wasn’t, what could she do?
After retrieving the bottle and splashing out a tiny bit more gin, she climbed up through the house to the widow’s walk, where she could have some privacy and fresh air and take in the view. Reclining in a chair, she closed her eyes and pressed the sweating glass against her forehead. She wanted to tell herself she had once been as sexy as Agatha, but her delusions were not so strong as that. Still, she had been seductive. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to poach Wyeth from his mousy wife and three children. The best she could say for herself now was that she was the kind of woman people called well preserved. But despite all her restorative efforts, she looked tired. Which she was, in the existential sense. There would be no more seductions for her, no more ecstasy, no more destruction. She and Cooper had a pleasant life together, a sanctuary built by two reformed sinners around a policy of maximal calm and minimal communication. Quiet dinners out, long weeks apart when he was off sailing, compatible taste in TV and movies, mutual tolerance of each other’s friends, agreement that they would never marry. Maybe she had stumbled on the ideal relationship for a woman her age. Maybe, after all these years, she had solved the riddle. Even if things fell apart, she would draft another companion from the bush leagues of washed-up lovers, and they would wait out the violet hour together.
I’ve spent the past six months wishing he were dead,” Livia said to Dominique. Immediately, she regretted the melodrama of the statement. Melodrama did not fly with Dominique.
