“Because it’s cheap,” Emily said, then turned to Beth. “How’s the place?”
“Fine, I guess. Pretty big.”
In fact, she’d barely examined the place. She’d gotten in so late and risen so early, nervous about finding her way to the Peregrines’, and preoccupied with the wedding—or not so much the wedding itself as the fact that she would soon find herself face-to-face with Dave Kohane, whom she’d managed to avoid for the four years since they’d departed for their respective grad programs, she to Milwaukee and he to Rochester, at which point he’d dumped her, in a strangely passive manner. Or not “dumped” her—she hated that term—but allowed their couplehood to peter out, for reasons she’d never understood.
“Okay,” said Rose, clapping her hands together, “let me get my list. We’ve got to get started.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the stove. “Beth, do you want to wake Sadie and Lil? They’ll be thrilled to see you.”
“I’m up,” came a gravelly contralto from the stairwell. Still in the old blue pajamas she’d worn in college, when they’d all shared a crumbling house behind the art museum, her curls flattened by sleep, Sadie padded into the kitchen, trailed by George, the Peregrines’ ancient orange cat, and gave Beth a silent, enervated hug. She had her own little apartment in Cobble Hill, but she’d spent the night at her parents’, as was her occasional wont. With a yawn, she glanced at the kitchen clock. She was a small girl, with a long-waisted figure that gave the illusion of height. Her dark, glossy hair and waxily opaque, vellum-hued skin came from her mother, Rose, a woman of Italianate good looks, as did her curious, formal way of speaking. But her hooded eyes and her bearing were pure Peregrine—as Rose often reminded her, in moments of anger. “Sadie,” said Rose, an edge rising in her voice, “we’ve got to get started. Did you wake up Lil?”
Sadie poured herself a cup of coffee before answering. “She’s at home,” she said finally, with another, larger yawn.
“At home?” Rose asked in alarm.
“She was supposed to stay here last night,” Sadie told Beth. “Tradition. You know. Spending the night before the wedding apart from Tuck.” Beth nodded. “But she couldn’t bear to be apart from him. Even for one night.”
“Oh,” said Rose, pursing her lips. “Well, then what’s the plan?”
Sadie took a long sip of coffee and made a face at Emily. “She has an appointment for a facial at ten—”
“At Arden’s,” said Rose.
“No,” Sadie told her. “She decided to go to some place in Soho.”
Rose emitted a sigh of deep disappointment and pressed her fingers lightly to her temples. “All right. So—”
“So, we’ll go get the flowers and meet her in Brooklyn,” said Sadie. “At the apartment. Her parents are already there.”
“All right,” Rose acquiesced. “We have to be back here by three, the latest, to get dressed.”
“It won’t take us that long to get ready,” said Sadie. “We don’t have to be at the synagogue until six, right?”
“I’m not talking about you,” snapped Rose. “I’m talking about Lil. The bride.” She shook her head at Emily and Beth. “And,” she added, “I have a manicure at three thirty. So let’s go, girls.”
And off they went: to Chelsea, with a big wad of cash, to pick up flowers—short-stemmed roses, monstrous tulips, assorted odd lacy things—then to Lil and Tuck’s new loft, on what turned out to be a grim stretch of Bushwick, where Beth and Emily found Lil’s mother, Elaine, directing a team of volunteers—various Roth cousins, some of Lil’s childhood friends—who were stringing tulle and candles around the room, wrapping fairy lights around the loft’s fat beams, and rinsing the old milk glass vases in the kitchen’s small sink. Lil’s father stood behind a small card table, manning a platter of deli meats and chewing openmouthed on a corned beef sandwich. “Better get to work,” he said, with a wink. “Elaine’s on the rampage.” The girls trimmed the stems off hundreds of flowers, filled the vases with tepid water, and cobbled together what Rose called “French bouquets.” “You don’t think those look sloppy?” asked Elaine, squinting at a drooping tulip. “I would have been happy to pay for arrangements.” But Lil hadn’t wanted arrangements, just as she hadn’t wanted to be married in a hall on Long Island, despite her mother’s insistence that it would be “so much easier.”
At lunchtime Tal and Dave arrived to set up the sound system and help with any heavy lifting. Some friends of Tuck’s—a slender couple with a tiny baby in a sling—dropped off case after case of beer and wine and champagne. They were followed by another couple—smiling, with Southern accents—who carried in the cake, covered all over with bright buttercream flowers. The florist came by with white cardboard boxes containing wrist corsages for the mothers, rosebuds for the girls’ dresses and the mens’ jackets, and Lil’s bouquet, which was paler than the other flowers and round in shape, so beautiful and perfect that Beth, against her will, said, “Oh!” and drew in her breath. A widowed cousin of Elaine’s showed up, already dressed for the wedding in a pink silk suit, and tied floppy white bows on the vases. Then Lil called, saying she’d been delayed and would meet them at the Peregrines’, and the band swooped in, setting up yards of equipment in a corner; then suddenly the caterers were bustling about, loudly creaking open long tables for the buffet, which would be in Lil and Tuck’s bedroom, at the rear of the apartment (“It used to be a meat locker,” Elaine kept telling anyone who passed within arm’s reach of her), and it was time, Rose said. “Girls, we need to go now.”
“We do, we do,” agreed Elaine. As they gathered at the door, they stopped for a moment and surveyed the room: its pillars shrouded in tulle and twinkly lights, dozens of white-covered tables scattered over the worn oak floor, generous bouquets at their centers.
“It’s beautiful,” said Beth.
“It is,” said Emily.
“It’s fine,” sighed Elaine, smoothing her crisp blonde hair. It had once been black, like Lil’s, but over the years had grown lighter and lighter. She wore it straight, with long bangs that covered her eyebrows, a trick, Lil said, to hide the wrinkles in her forehead, wrinkles she was forever asking Lil’s father to “fix,” much as his partner had “fixed” Lil’s nose between her junior and senior years of high school. “I still don’t see what was wrong with Leonard’s of Great Neck,” she sighed, raising her thin brows. “It would have been so much easier.”
“Come on,” said Rose. “It’s after two.”
They took the train, for there were no cabs to be found in Lil’s desolate section of Brooklyn, three stops in on the L, and Elaine smiled delightedly, saying, “I haven’t been on a subway in years. It’s so clean!”
“Giuliani,” the girls said, smirking.
“Too bad he’s a fascist,” Emily told her. They emerged, once again, at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Lex, in boisterous spirits, practically running to the Peregrine house. There, spread across the Peregrines’ four bathrooms, they showered and shaved their legs, the widowed cousin making dour remarks about the time, did they know (yes, they knew) they had to be at the shul by six at the latest? Quickly, they smoothed makeup onto their faces, fingered their hair into waves and ringlets, and pulled on stockings and variations on the wispy, girlish dresses popular that year. So dressed, they turned to Lil, who had spent the day alone, receiving the ministrations of various Eastern European women, and who now emerged from the third-floor bathroom to greet them clad in Sadie’s old striped robe, a foggy look on her face, which—they all noticed—appeared a bit too pink, particularly around the edges of her nose. “She should have gone to Arden’s,” Rose whispered to Sadie, who squeezed her mother’s arm in warning. Elaine rushed over to her daughter. “You’re all red,” she said, inspecting her face. “You’re going to have to wear foundation.”