“Oh,” Margot said. She wondered for an instant if Edge would love it if she, Margot, got a lap dance. She decided he most definitely would not.
Autumn filled her glass with more champagne, and Margot watched the golden liquid bubble to the top. The kids were playing Frisbee with Emma in the yard below. Margot remembered when it had been she and her siblings playing in the yard, while her parents drank gin and tonics on this deck and turned up Van Morrison on the radio. Her mother used to wear a blue paisley patio dress. Margot would hug Alfie’s trunk, her arms not even reaching a third of the way around. A tree wasn’t a person, but if a tree could be a person, then Alfie would be a wise, generous, all-seeing, godlike person. She couldn’t let the tent guys cut the branch. The cut would be a wound; it might get infected with some kind of mung. Alfie might die.
Margot stood up and leaned over the railing. She felt dizzy. She felt like she might drop.
“We should go,” she said.
Jenna was driving.
They bounced across the cobblestones at the top of Main Street. Town was teeming with people who had come to Nantucket to celebrate summer. Margot loved the art galleries and shops, she loved the couple carrying a bottle of wine to dinner at Black-Eyed Susan’s, she loved the dreadlocked guy in khaki cargo shorts walking a black lab. She noticed people noticing them-four pretty women all dressed up in Margot’s Land Rover. Jenna and Finn were wearing black dresses, and Autumn was wearing green. Margot was wearing a white silk sheath with a cascade of ruffles above the knee. She loved white in the summertime. The city was too dirty to wear white-one cab ride and this dress would be trashed.
Jenna took a right onto Broad Street, past Nantucket Bookworks and the Brotherhood and Le Languedoc, and then a left by the Nantucket Yacht Club. Margot tapped her finger on the window and said, “That’s where we’ll be tomorrow night!”
No one responded. Margot turned around to see Finn and Autumn pecking away at their phones. Then Margot looked at Jenna, who was skillfully navigating the streets, despite that fact that pedestrians were crossing in front of them without looking. Margot felt bad that Jenna was driving to her own bachelorette party, but Jenna had insisted. Margot should have hired a car and driver, and then all four of them would be sitting in the backseat together. And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren’t present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.
Margot picked her clutch purse off the floor of the car and, against her better judgment, checked her phone. She had one text, from Ellie. I miss you mommy.
Margot decided not to be disappointed that her only text was from her daughter, and she decided not to be horrified that her six-year-old knew how to text. Margot decided to be happy that someone, somewhere in the world, missed her.
When she looked up, Jenna was pulling into the restaurant parking lot. Margot knew this was the time to muster her enthusiasm and rally the troops. The group was low-energy; even Margot herself was flagging. A glass and a half of champagne might as well have been three Ambien and a shot of NyQuil. If Jenna turned the car around, Margot would happily sleep until morning.
But she was the maid of honor. She had to do this for Jenna.
And her mother.
The Galley was a bewitching restaurant. It was the only fine dining on Nantucket located on the beach. Most of the seating was under an awning with open sides bordered by planters filled with red and pink geraniums. There were divans and papasan chairs and tiki torches out in the sand. There was a zinc bar. The crowd was buzzing and beautiful. Over the years, Margot had seen an assortment of powerful and famous people at these tables: Martha Stewart, Madonna, Dustin Hoffman, Ted Kennedy, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Robert DeNiro. The Galley was see and be seen. It was, always, on any given night, the place to be.
They were seated at a table for four in the main dining room, but in the part of the room that was closer to the parking lot. Autumn didn’t sit down right away; she was scanning the surroundings. Finally, she settled in her chair. She said, “I think we should ask for a better table.”
Margot felt something sinking and rising in her at the same time. Spirits sinking, ire rising. She said, “A better table, where? This place is packed!”
“Out in the sand, maybe,” Autumn said. “Where there’s more action.”
Margot couldn’t believe this. She’d had a hell of a time even getting this reservation for eight o’clock on a Thursday night in July. She had called on the Tuesday after Memorial Day and had been told, initially, that the restaurant was booked, but her name could be added to the wait list. And now Autumn-the so-called restaurant professional-was complaining? Insinuating that Margot hadn’t been important or insistent enough to score a better table? It was Autumn’s fault that the bachelorette party was being held tonight, at the very last minute, instead of weeks or months earlier, which was more traditional. There were five people’s schedules to accommodate, and so Margot had put forth options, all of them enticing. A ski weekend in Stowe, or a spring weekend out at the spa in Canyon Ranch. But Autumn hadn’t been able to make either one. Weekends are really hard for me, she’d written.
Well, it was nearly impossible to plan a bachelorette party during the week, but Margot gave it a shot and threw together something in Boca Raton the week of Jenna’s spring break from Little Minds, but again Autumn couldn’t attend, so Margot canceled.
Then Jenna told Margot she thought the real problem with Autumn was money. She was, after all, waiting tables.
Margot wondered why Autumn was waiting tables. She had a degree from the College of William and Mary, where she had majored in political science. She could have done anything with that-grad school, law school, think tanks. She could have taught like Jenna or gone into business, an Internet start-up, anything. Margot was impatient with people who didn’t live up to their potential. This, she supposed, was the result of having been married to Drum Sr. Drum Sr. was so unambitious, it was like he was moving backward.
Margot ignored Autumn’s dissatisfaction with their table. She asked the waiter (who was a woman, but one of the things Margot had learned over the years from Autumn was that the term “waitress,” like the term “actress,” was outdated) for a wine list. The wine list appeared, and Margot asked Jenna, “White or red?”
Jenna waved a hand. “I don’t care. Either.”
Margot didn’t ask Finn or Autumn for input, even though she could feel Autumn staring at her. Probably Autumn wanted the wine list. Well, too bad, Margot was going to exercise her sovereign right as maid of honor and pick the wine.
One white, one red. Margot preferred Sancerres and Malbecs. Sancerres reminded her of Drum Sr. (he had wooed her the first summer they dated by taking her to a restaurant called the Blue Bistro-which had since closed-and plying her with Sancerre), and Malbecs reminded her of Edge (that night at Picholine, which she could not allow herself to dwell on). Margot wished she could look at a wine list and not think of men at all. She wished she could look at a wine list and think about herself.
She handed the list to Autumn. “Would you mind picking the wine?”
Autumn looked so happy that Margot immediately felt petty for denying her this tiny pleasure in the first place. “I’d love to!”
Margot leaned back in her chair and tried to relax. Jenna and Finn were talking between themselves sotto voce, which Margot found rude, if completely predictable. Finn seemed to still be in foul humor. She had always been petulant and spoiled. When Finn was seventeen, she had landed a job on Nantucket, nannying for the Worthington family, who were friends of Beth and Doug Carmichael. Finn had lasted thirty-six hours before she quit. She missed Connecticut, she claimed, and she missed her parents. What Finn really wanted was to return to Darien in order to have sex with her boyfriend, Charlie Beaudette, while her parents-the ones she purportedly missed-were on vacation for two weeks in the south of France. Beth and Doug had tried to talk Finn into staying-she would outgrow her homesickness, she would have a wonderful summer-but Finn was determined to go, and the Carmichaels were powerless to make her stay. Margot had been on Nantucket that same week and had a front-row seat for the drama. Back then, Drum Jr. was less than a year old, and Margot was working as an associate principal at Miller-Sawtooth. As a new mother and a placement professional, Margot had determined that Finn lacked character, had no sense of responsibility, and no hustle. Margot could not abide people without hustle. Finn’s inner core, Margot suspected, was as soft as a rotten banana.