Page 56 of 28 Summers
“Cooper is getting married enough for all of us,” Mallory says. “Wanna come with me to the bar?”
“I haven’t had a drink in six years, nine months, and two weeks,” Fray says. “Since my trip to Nantucket.”
Six years, nine months, two weeks. This, then, is how long she and Jake have been together. “Just come with me and get a seltzer, then,” Mallory says. “I need a bodyguard to protect me.”
“From whom?” Fray says.
“Everyone,” she says.
There’s a seated dinner, salmon or lamb, new potatoes, tiny sweet peas. Mallory sneaks glances at the next table. Ursula isn’t eating; she never eats, Jake has confided—though tonight, Mallory isn’t eating either. She’s too anxious. Jake is talking to Geri Gladstone, who is seated to his right. Does Jake know that Geri is Leland’s mother? Leland and Fiella were invited to the wedding, but Fifi is on tour in Europe and Leland went with her. Geri Gladstone has gained weight, most of it in bags under her eyes and a pooch under her chin; Mallory doesn’t like to be ungenerous but she wishes things had gone the opposite way when Steve left her for Sloane Dooley—she wishes that Geri had become incredibly slender and started dating Cal Ripken Jr.
Mallory is drinking champagne but she’s carefulnotto dive headfirst into glass after glass. She doesn’t want to be the drunk girl at the wedding—at least, not yet. She thinks back to the sweet longing she felt for Jake at Cooper’s first wedding; it seems so mild and innocent compared to the wild jealous storm brewing within her tonight. She loves Jake now. Their last weekend on Tuckernuck was sublime, and Mallory doubts they’ll ever be able to top it. And yet, she says this every year, and isn’t every year just a bit better than the last? Their relationship grows like a tree—the roots go deeper and they add a ring around the trunk.
The band starts to play for the first dances. Cooper heads out to the floor with Kitty, Valentina with Senior. Valentina looks beautiful and happy—butisshe happy without her family? Or is she just pretending, like Mallory?
(She’s pretending. Valentina can’t believe lightning didn’t strike the altar, so blasphemous is this thing she’s doing, marrying without her parents’ blessing, without her parents’knowledge. Her parents are skiing in Las Leñas this weekend, for the elder Suarezes are very well off, very sophisticated, very active, and yet they are of one mind when it comes to the future of their daughter Valentina. They expect her to return to Uruguay for good and marry Pablo Flores. In fact, Señor and Señora Suarez willseePablo in the lodge, and the three of them will discuss Valentina’s return as though it’s a given, none of them expecting that she’s dancing at her own wedding with her brand-new father-in-law.)
Someone taps Mallory on the shoulder. It’s Fray. “Wanna sneak a cigarette?” he asks.
“Maybe in a minute,” Mallory says. Commiserating with Fray has its appeal but right at this moment, Mallory wants to be alone. She heads for the ladies’ room.
The ladies’ room at the club hasn’t been renovated since 1973, which makes it look hopelessly old-fashioned but also comforting. One enters a lounge with rose-colored wall-to-wall carpeting and a rose-colored Naugahyde divan and three stools with needlepointed covers that are positioned under a long counter. Above the counter is a mirror where, for generations, ladies have applied lipstick, powdered their noses, and stared into their own eyes pondering…what? Well, all kinds of things:What am I doing with Roger? Do I have a drinking problem? Why didn’t I pursue a doctorate? How much should I pay the babysitter? Do I look fat? Do I look old? Why can’t Roger stop bashing[Ford/Carter/Reagan]so loudly in public? Why is Helen giving me the silent treatment? How long until I can go home to bed?
There’s a cut-glass bowl of butter mints, individually wrapped in cream-colored cellophane. Out of habit, Mallory takes a handful and drops them into her clutch. Just as Mallory is feeling a small burst of joy at bumping into her old friend the butter mint, she hears a noise coming from the ladies’ room proper. Someone retching.
Mallory quickly enters a stall; the retching continues. Someone has had too much to drink—but who? This wedding reception is decidedly tamer than Cooper’s first. Where is Cooper’s friend Brian from Brookings? He was oodles of fun, and, if Mallory isn’t mistaken, he succeeded in making Jake jealous.
(Brian Novak is married with three children, and because he unwisely invested in a crepe restaurant in the town of Cheverly, Maryland, where he lives, he’s three months behind on his mortgage, his wife has had to take a weekend job as a receptionist at a walk-in emergency clinic, and he can’t come to Cooper’s wedding because he is stuck at home caring for the kids and worrying about foreclosure. At this very moment, Brian is fervently wishing he were in Baltimore, spinning Mallory around on the dance floor. She was cute, with her freckles, ocean-colored eyes, that tiny gap between her lower teeth, and she had a sense of mischievous fun, which is more than Brian can presently say for his wife.)
When Mallory comes out of the stall, she sees Ursula de Gournsey leaning over the sink, rinsing out her mouth. Mallory freezes.
“Are you okay?” Mallory asks. Was itUrsulashe heard retching? Apparently—they’re the only two people in the ladies’ room.
Ursula’s eyes meet Mallory’s in the mirror. Her skin is paste gray.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she says.
Pregnant.
It feels like several days pass while Mallory is sucked down into a spiral of agonizing self-pity, jealousy, anger, and spite. In fact, it’s amazing that Mallory is still upright. Let’s return to the tree analogy: It feels like Ursula has taken a freshly sharpened ax and felled the relationship between Mallory and Jake at its very base. Despite this, Mallory takes a step forward, turns on the water in the sink next to Ursula’s, pumps out a dime-size squirt of pearlescent gardenia-scented hand soap (another aspect of this ladies’ room that transports Mallory back to her childhood), smiles into the mirror, and says, “Wow! Congratulations!”
“No,” Ursula says, tears standing in her eyes. “This is awful. This is a disaster.”
Mallory dries her hands on one of the paper hand towels embossed with the country club’s logo and then hurls it into the trash. There’s a flare of pure fury: Having Jake’s baby isawful?It’s adisaster?
Mallory supposes that Ursula is upset about the pregnancy because it will interfere with her trying to make partner at the firm. Jake has made how Ursula feels about work crystal clear.
Just as Mallory is about to shrug and walk away—because Ursula has no right to feel anything other than blessed that she’s carrying Jake’s baby, in Mallory’s opinion—Ursula breaks down into full-blown sobs, and Mallory softens. Maybe Leland was right—Mallory is suggestible, easily swayed. Or maybe our girl is just kind and sympathetic.
“Come here,” Mallory says. She leads Ursula to the lounge and sits next to her on the divan. She places a tentative hand on Ursula’s back; Ursula is so thin, Mallory can feel the distinct knobs of her spine. She isn’t sure what to say, so she nods at the bowl on the counter. “Would you like a butter mint?”
Ursula shakes her head, though the sobbing subsides a bit.
“I’m Mallory Blessing. Cooper’s sister.”
“I know,” Ursula says. “I saw you at the first wedding.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset about this. Is it the timing or…”
