“She and my dad were never like this,” he says to Nathalie in the kitchen. “He was a cold bastard with her like he was with everybody else. Once he got them into bed it was all over. Conquest was the name of his game. Frankly, I never understood what she saw in him.”
Nathalie nods. After that divorce she and Nick had Leda over for dinner, and she got tipsy and confided that she'd married Rupert Thorne “for the sex.”
Nick said, “I'd really rather not know this about you, Mom.”
Leda shrugged, her cheeks a flourish of color. “It's not enough to base a relationship on,” she said, “not one that will last forever.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Nick told her.
Now he's in a corner with Martin and Leda, listening to them talk. All week long he worked on wedding arrangements during the day and on his various projects in the garage at night. He looks exhausted, dark shadows beneath his dark eyes. Leda, on the other hand, looks radiant, wearing a pink suit with a corsage — what Nathalie thinks of as a mother-of-the-bride outfit — and a flower in her hair. She's staring at Martin with a wide-eyed, loving stare. Martin's elaborating a joke that involves an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Belgian; Nathalie misses the setup, but the punch line is the single word potatoes.
Leda's laugh rises and flits across the room, a string of notes like pearls.
At dinner Martin rises and makes a toast. He is sixty-six; his ex-wife has moved to Florida, and his children live in Europe. His suit bags and pouches, and it looks like he's carrying rocks in his pockets. His eyes are watery; his nose hairs need clipping.
He raises a glass in Leda's direction. “To my darling bride,” he says, “I let you go once before, and I will never be so foolish again.”
Leda blows him a kiss.
Michael Thomas says, “Aw.”
After dinner, while Nathalie and Leda clean up, Nick and Michael Thomas take the groom out for his bachelor party. Since Martin likes to go to bed early, this is at seven-thirty. Nathalie drives Leda home, and when she gets back, at nine, the light in the garage is on. Nick is standing over the chair, looking down to where it rests on its side at a weird angle. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like booze.
“How was it?”
He grimaces. “Michael Thomas bought Martin a lap dance.”
Nathalie pictures a nineteen-year-old stripper hovering over Martin's hairy nose, shaking her pasties in his face. She laughs. “Did he enjoy it?”
“He did until he tried to get up and give her some money, and he pinched his sciatic nerve or something and we had to take him home.”
“Is he okay?”
“He says he will be. Let's go in, okay?”
Nick never wants to come in from the garage. His tools and handiwork are in here, all his gear and paraphernalia. She looks down at the chair and realizes it's not really lying at a weird angle. What it really is is broken. He has sanded it so hard that he snapped part of it off. He sees her see this and says, “I can fix it. You'll never even know.”
“It's my grandparents' chair, Nick.”
“It'll be even better once I fix it. It was structurally weak.”
She sighs, heavily and on purpose. The garage is a blur of dark shadows, of Nick's head, of wood pieces scattered like detritus on the ground. “I don't know why you had to start messing with it,” she says.
“This is what it's supposed to look like. Once I fix it, you'll see how much better it is.”
“If you say so,” she says. In the flick of his head she sees how annoyed he is that she won't get mad at him, won't lose her temper and yell. But what would be the point, anyway? She turns on her heel and goes to bed.
The wedding day is cool and blustery. It's November and all the leaves are golden and half gone from the trees. The small church smells overwhelmingly of potpourri, which Nathalie realizes comes from air freshener, the same spray Leda uses at home. Nick's aunts and uncles and cousins — all that could make it at the last minute — filter in, greeted by Martin, who's loitering by the door in a moth-eaten tuxedo that predates the Vietnam War. He shakes all the relatives' hands and cracks jokes.
“I guess you heard it's a shotgun wedding — but don't make any comments about Leda showing. She's kind of sensitive about it.” Nathalie, who is handing out programs, smiles at this, and he winks. To the next aunt he says, “We had to have another wedding because the presents were so disappointing last time. I hope you acquitted yourself well.” In a lull between guests he wanders over to her, his silver cummerbund rising halfway to his neck, and confides that he is nervous.
“You'll be great, Martin,” she says. “It's going to be great.”
“Where did your fine husband get off to?”
She shrugs. “Probably refinishing all the pews at the last second.”
Martin looks at her, his rheumy eyes gleaming kindly behind his thick glasses. “Now, sweetheart. Be grateful his hobbies are harmless.”
Harmless, Nathalie thinks later, as the organ plays the wedding march and Nick, his face a study in beleaguered patience, escorts his mother slowly down the aisle. She thinks, It's not enough. The minister, a solid twenty-five years younger than the two he is about to wed, greets the bride with a smile. She wonders if Leda knew, each time, that her marriage wouldn't endure— wonders when and how this knowledge dawned on her. And each time it happened, was she surprised? Behind her, one row back, Michael Thomas sighs with audible sentiment. Nathalie shoots him a look over her shoulder, and he leans forward and whispers in her ear, “Grouch.”
Nick kisses his mother on the cheek and takes his seat beside Nathalie without looking at her. Leda's wearing the floor-length gown she chose in the store, its wide skirt buoyant around her, her exposed chest and shoulders wrinkled, age-spotted, as soft as cushions. She's also wearing elbow-length gloves, a veil, and— Nathalie can just make it out, its gems nestled and sparkling against Leda's white hair — a tiara. She smiles at Martin, her thin lips parted slightly. She looks like a travesty and a fantasy, both.
She and Martin promise to love each other, to honor and obey. Martin lifts up her veil and looks into Leda's eyes; she looks back, then they share a gentle, dignified kiss. One princess-gloved hand reaches up and squeezes Martin's arm in its ancient tuxedo. What she's seeing, Nathalie can tell, is love — the real thing, stripped down and authentic — and as they walk back up the aisle together, she looks down at her hands.
At the reception, which is held back at the house, Martin tells her a joke involving a mailman, a fireman, a policeman, and a farmer's daughter. Leda and Nick are dancing in the living room, swaying more than moving their feet, their shoes scuffling against the bare floor. Leda's gloves lie where they've been flung, in postures of abandonment and repose, over the back of the couch. Nick smiles down at his mother. They've made up, as they always do.
He sees Nathalie watching them and glances away, a gesture that is half anger, half apology, and wholly familiar. Michael Thomas comes over and asks her to dance. He's been leaning against a wall since the party began, tapping his feet to the music and looking longingly at the people on the floor. Passing by him earlier, handing out hors d'oeuvres, she even heard him humming along loudly to “The Way You Look Tonight.” Now he stands before her, wide-eyed and eager. She shakes her head. Michael Thomas seems like the kind of person who's had dance lessons and isn't afraid to use them.