“I’d ask for your number,” he said, “but something tells me you wouldn’t answer when I called.”
She cackled some more, then clamped her mouth shut. She couldn’t encourage him.
“Just take my card,” he said. “And when you get a new phone, you can call me, how about that? There’s no reason why we can’t be friends.”
Margot stared at his card: Griffin Wheatley, V.P. Marketing, Blankstar. Friends? No, she couldn’t take it, but he was handing it to her, and she couldn’t not take it. She slipped it into her purse.
“I’m serious,” Griff said. “Call me. In fact, why don’t you call me tonight when you get home?”
“Tonight when I get home?” she said.
“From your land line,” he said. “I’ve heard homes on Nantucket are so quaint that they still have such things.”
“My land line?” she said. “What for?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The one thing I miss about being married is having someone to talk to late at night. Someone to tell all the stupid stuff.”
“Oh,” Margot said.
He said, “I’m sure I sound like an idiot.”
“No,” Margot said. “You don’t. You sound perfectly sane, actually.” She wanted to say that she agreed with him-more times than she could count, she had lain alone in bed, wishing that Edge was the kind of boyfriend she could call up to talk to about the pointless minutiae of her day. But he wasn’t that kind of boyfriend; he wasn’t a boyfriend at all. However, confessing this to Griff would just be another double fault. She looked up at him. He was gazing at her with earnest blue-and-green Homecoming King goodness-and all Margot could think was that the final injustice of her night was that Griff was Griff and not someone else. Anybody else.
She said, “I’m not going to call you, Griff. I can’t, you know I can’t.”
He said, “You signed me off. Why not start over?”
She smiled sadly, then weaved through the bar traffic for the door.
The bouncer said, “Have a good night!”
Ha! Margot thought. It was far too late for that.
When Margot got home, the house was dark and quiet. Jenna must have sent Emma Wilton home. Margot checked on her children. The boys were two lumps in the attic bunk beds, and then Margot spied a third lump in another of the beds, an adult-sized lump, snoring loudly. She pulled back the covers to find the shaggy golden head of her brother Nick.
Nick!
Nick, in general, was completely useless except when it came to procuring tickets to baseball games. He was the in-house counsel for the Washington Nationals, he was a confirmed bachelor, he partied his ass off and ran through women the way Margot ran through sandwich bread. He had never offered a single emotional insight that Margot could recall, and yet at this instant she was tempted to wake him up and spill her guts. He might have some useful advice; it was possible she wasn’t giving him enough credit.
But no. Nick wasn’t the answer.
Downstairs, in her own room, she checked on Ellie, who was spread-eagled in the bed meant for them both. She was still in her clothes (since she had packed no pajamas) and had a smear of chocolate around her mouth from the Fudgsicles Margot had bought. She probably hadn’t brushed her teeth. On the dresser was a pile of twigs, stones, acorns, and three blue hardy geraniums, chopped off at the head. These were the flowers that Beth Carmichael had worried about the tent guys trampling. They had survived the tent guys, but not Ellie the hoarder, who had felt the need to add the flowers to her collection of backyard detritus.
Margot swept the stones and sticks and flowers into her palm, hoping that by morning Ellie would have forgotten about them and would not wake up wailing over her missing treasure. Margot checked Jenna’s room-lights out-and then headed downstairs. She tossed the handful of collected nature out the back screen door, poured herself a glass of water, and picked up the house phone.
She dialed the number; she had called it so often during the past few months that she had it memorized. It was late, she knew, but this couldn’t wait.
He picked up on the second ring. Of course he did.
“This is Roger.”
“Roger, Margot Carmichael,” she said. “The branch has to come down.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know it does. I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
“You have?” Margot said.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Roger said. “There is no other way.”
“No other way,” Margot repeated. “You’re sure?”
“I’ll see you bright and early,” Roger said.
OUTTAKES
Jim Graham (father of the groom): I am a man who has lived and learned. I married the right woman, but I didn’t know it, I married the wrong woman and I did know it, I married the right woman a second time. My advice to all four of my sons has been “Look before you leap.” This may be a cliché, but as with most clichés, it contains a hard kernel of truth. I like to think that advice was what kept Stuart from making a mistake several years ago. But he’s got the right idea now. Jenna is a beautiful girl and she brings out his best self. Really, what more can you ask?
H.W. (brother of the groom, groomsman): Open bar all weekend long.
Ann Graham (mother of the groom): I was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, I attended Duke University, I have served in the North Carolina General Assembly for twenty-four years. When Jim and I take vacations, we go to Savannah or the Outer Banks or Destin. Once to London, once on a cruise in the Greek islands. But I can’t tell you the last time I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. It might have been New York City, 2001, when Jim and I went to the funeral of one of his fraternity brothers who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. It will be nice to head north this time for a happier occasion.
Jethro Arthur (boyfriend of the best man): Unlike Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket is no place for a black man. I told this to Ryan and his response was that Frederick Douglass spoke on the steps of the Nantucket Atheneum in 1841. Frederick Douglass? I said. That’s what you’ve got? Yes, he said. And you know who else spent time on Nantucket? Who? I said. Pip and Daggoo, he said. Pip and Daggoo? I said. You mean the characters from Moby-Dick? Yes! he said, all proud and excited, because literary references are usually my territory. I said, Pip and Daggoo are fictional black men, Ryan. They don’t count.
FRIDAY
ANN
There were only a few ills in life that a five-star hotel on a bright, sunny day couldn’t fix. This was what Ann Graham told herself at ten o’clock on Friday morning when she and Jim arrived at the White Elephant resort on Nantucket Island. Ann had personally seen to it that they would be able to check in right away; nothing would have driven her battier than having to sit around-possibly for hours-waiting for their room to be ready. And so, less than thirty minutes after arriving on Nantucket, Ann was standing on the balcony of their suite, overlooking the harbor, which was as picturesque as she had imagined. The sailboats, the ropes, the bobbing red and white buoys, the two blond teenagers in a rowboat with fishing poles, the lighthouse on the point. This was the real thing. This was East-Coast-Yankee-blue-blood-privilege-and-elitism at its very finest.
Jim came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Should we order up champagne and get naked?”
Ann willed herself not to shrug him off. He was being funny; he wanted her to relax. He did not want her to become the woman she was dangerously close to becoming: a woman who alternately expressed bitterness and hysteria because her son was getting married in a place where she exerted no influence.