Page 22 of Endless Summer: Stories
Barbie picks out favors: hand-milled pillar candles in three autumnal colors—pumpkin, burgundy, and caramel. She orders fireplace matches with her and Glenn’s joint monogram on the cover—GDB—and secures a box to each candle using gold wire ribbon.
Responses to the invitations start to arrive. Glenn’s best friend from college declines, which seems to bum Glenn out. Madeline and Timothy are coming as well as everyone from the office. Glenn’s brother Bruno has a business trip to Dallas that can’t be rescheduled. He calls Glenn and says, “Who the hell gets married on aWednesday?” Glenn’s brother Leon can come with his wife and their grown son, Bodie, who is unemployed and living in their basement. Barbie’s friend Molly Brimmer-Crawley is coming alone—Jimmy Crawley has to work—but Molly seems to be happy to be flying solo, and she offers to take Barbie out drinking the night before the wedding.
“A little bachelorette party!” Molly says.
They end up withexactlyforty-two people attending. What are the chances?
To celebrate hitting their mark, Glenn takes Barbie out to dinner at Le Languedoc. They sit at an intimate corner table overlooking Broad Street. Their relationship has been secret for so long that going on a date like this still feels illicit. Le Languedoc is romantic; the service is impeccable; the French food is exquisite. It’scivilized.Barbie orders the chopped salad and the steak frites; Glenn orders the escargots and the duck and he selects an expensive bottle of Bordeaux.
Once their food is ordered and their wine poured, Glenn pulls a velvet box out of his blazer pocket and sets it on Barbie’s bread plate.
“For my beautiful bride-to-be,” he says.
Barbie gasps. He’s already given her a diamond ring worthy of Marilyn Monroe. What couldthisbe? She opens the box. It’s a delicate gold chain with a gold, diamond-encrusted sand-dollar pendant.
“Oh my,” Barbie says. “You…”
Glenn puts his hand over hers. “First of all,” he says, “you’re getting married, and every bride needs a ‘something new.’ And second, I can’t tell you how damn jealous it’s made me that you still wear the necklace that Earl Fischer gave you. But then I said to myself, ‘Now, Glenn, you can’t expect her to takethatnecklace off until you give her something to replace it with.’ So will you please, please take the pearl off and put this on?”
Barbie blinks. Now is the time to tell him that not only did Earl Fischer not give her the pearl, Earl Fischer doesn’t exist.Tell him now!Barbie commands herself.
Glenn notices her hesitation. “Do you not like it?” he asks.
“Like it?” she says. “I love it.” She hurries to unclasp the chain that her pearl hangs from. She hasn’t taken the necklace off since the day she bought it, eight years ago. She can’tbelieveshe is doing so now. The necklace—like her Triumph and her cottage, both of which she is relinquishing—definesher. It was the first nice thing she ever bought herself.
She should never have told Glenn that a man bought it for her. She should correct that misconception right now; she won’t get a better opportunity than this.
But… if she tells Glenn, the evening will be ruined. Barbie lays her pearl next to her bread plate and secures the sand-dollar pendant around her neck. The chain hangs longer than Barbie likes and the sand dollar feels light and insubstantial compared to the heft of the pearl.
“How does it look?” Barbie asks.
“Beautiful,” Glenn says.
Between dinner and dessert, Barbie rises and goes to the ladies’ room. As she’s washing her hands, she gives herself a long, hard look in the mirror. Without the black pearl, she feels like another person. But, she reminds herself, she is still the same. She is not defined by her possessions.
When Barbie emerges from the ladies’ room, she finds a tall brunette standing in the narrow hall, waiting. The woman looksveryfamiliar. It’s… it’s…
“Barbie,” the woman says. “Hi.”
It’s Andrea Kapenash, the police chief’s wife.
Barbie smiles. This is the civilized thing to do. “Hello, Andrea,” she says, and she scoots past.
Barbie can’t keep herself from peering into the other dining room. Sure enough, there’s the Chief, checking his phone. Barbie tries to steady her breathing, which is becoming rapid and shallow. The Chief definitely knows that Barbie was involved in the shenanigans on Low Beach Road. (Shenanigansmakes it sound like a sorority prank. What Barbie was involved in wasinternational underage sex trafficking!) Has the Chief told his wife? Has he toldanyone?
The Chief looks up, sees Barbie, and offers half a wave. Which means… what?
Barbie can’t stand to think about it. She heads back to her table.
She is still the same person she ever was. She is a woman who lies to the man she loves.
Later that night, after Glenn is asleep and snoring in her bed, Barbie tiptoes out to the living room and takes the crystal ball off the top shelf of her coat closet.
She puts her hands over the globe until it starts to glow.
Barbara Ann Pancik and Glenn Harlan Daley,she thinks.What does the future hold?
The ball glows with a dull gray light, just as it did the one other time that Barbie asked. Dark, thick clouds, like the kind one sees from an airplane, obscuring what’s below.
