There was a seat next to Ryan and the black boyfriend. That would be good conversation, but Margot would be sitting with Ryan the following night. There were empty seats on either side of Pauline and Rhonda-but no, never.
Then Margot saw Beanie flagging her down. Perfect-except for the fact that Kevin would soon appear. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Margot sat with Beanie.
Beanie said, “Didn’t Nick and Finn come with you?”
“No,” Margot said. “They showed up really late, and they needed to shower and change, so I left without them. They walked here, I guess.”
“I haven’t seen either of them,” Beanie said.
Margot scanned the room. “You’re kidding,” she said. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to eight,” Beanie said.
Margot attacked her lobster, ripping the body apart, pulling the meat from the tail, cracking the claws, and dumping the empty shells in the bowl in the middle of the table. The clambake at the yacht club had been her mother’s suggestion. Margot understood the reasoning behind it-it was a regional specialty, extravagant yet casual. But it was a mess! All these southerners were dressed up. They might not feel like fighting with their dinner.
Margot dipped a lobster claw in drawn butter. Mmmmm. Well, there was no arguing with that.
Nick and Finn, she thought. Still at large. There was only one thing to assume, but even Margot couldn’t go there. Nick wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t. He had a moral rip cord. He would pull it.
Margot managed to get all the way through her lobster and eat half an ear of corn before Kevin appeared, hovering over Beanie’s left shoulder.
He said, “Come on, we have to sit with Dad.”
“What?” Beanie said. “I’m sitting here.”
“I know, but you have to move. Dad wants us to sit with him.”
“I’m sitting with Margot,” Beanie said. “And I’m halfway through my meal, honey. Just sit here, with us.”
“Dad wants us over there,” Kevin said. He pointed to the table where Doug was sitting with Pauline and Rhonda.
Margot threw her crumpled, butter-soaked napkin onto her plate. “It’s okay,” she said to Beanie. “You can go. I’m done.”
Kevin said, “I’m sure you’re welcome, too. I think Dad really wants his family around. This is hard for him.”
Margot barked out a laugh. “Yes, Kev, I know it’s hard for him. It’s hard for all of us.”
“But especially hard for Dad,” Kevin said.
Margot gave her brother an incredulous look, which he pretended not to see. She loved how Kevin was now taking the whole family’s emotional temperature and triaging them. But especially hard for Dad. What about Jenna, who was getting married tomorrow without their mother present? What about Margot, who was trying to serve as daughter and sister and surrogate mother? What about poor Pauline-now there was a phrase Margot had never expected to utter-who had to witness all the Beth Carmichael worship and be a good sport about it? And meanwhile her husband was about to divorce her.
Margot pushed her chair away from the table. She said, “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Excuse me.”
Margot stood at the sinks, washing the lobster juices from her hands. It was probably better that Edge wasn’t here, she thought. There was enough drama transpiring as it was. Margot couldn’t imagine having to deal with seeing Edge but not being with him, with having to ignore him, with having to pretend in front of her father and everyone else that they were just casual family friends. Edge had been right: Margot couldn’t handle it.
The toilet flushed inside one of the stalls, and Jenna stepped out.
When Margot saw her sister in the mirror, she grinned. She felt like she hadn’t seen Jenna in weeks.
“Hey!” Margot said. “That dress is foxy.”
Jenna’s rehearsal dinner dress was one place where Jenna and Margot had blatantly disregarded their mother’s advice in the Notebook. Beth Carmichael had suggested something conservative-a linen sheath, or a flowered print.
“Linen sheaths and flowered prints are what I wear to work,” Jenna said. “I want something sexier!”
Margot and Jenna had shopped for a dress in SoHo, and Margot had to admit that it had been almost the best part of the wedding preparations, probably because the task was infused with a sense of lawlessness. They were defying the Notebook!
They found the peach dress at the Rebecca Taylor boutique. It was a backless halter dress with delicate petals embellishing the short skirt. Jenna had a perfect body, and the dress showed it off.
Jenna did not smile back at Margot. Instead she opened her straw clutch purse and took out lip gloss. “What is going on with Dad?” she said.
Margot grabbed fifteen paper towels in a nervous flurry. “Dad?” she said.
Jenna leaned toward the mirror and dabbed at her lips with the wand. “I know you know,” she said. “Please just tell me.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Margot said.
“Don’t bullshit me!” Jenna cried, waving the gloss in one hand and the wand in the other like an irate orchestra conductor. “I’m sick of it!”
“Sick of what?” Margot said.
“Of you and Kevin and Nick always keeping things from me. Trying to protect me. I’m twenty-nine years old; I can handle it, Margot. Just please tell me what the hell is going on with Dad.”
Now was the moment in the family wedding saga when Margot had to weigh her loyalties. But she still had one more chance to stall.
“I think he’s feeling melancholy about tomorrow,” Margot said. “Giving away his little girl, throwing this wedding without Mom. I suggested he finally read the last page of the Notebook. Do you know if he did that?”
“Margot,” Jenna said.
“What?”
“Tell me.”
Margot studied herself and her sister in the mirror, and Jenna did the same.
Sisters, Margot thought. Eleven years between them, but still, there was no bond closer than sisters.
“He asked me not to tell anyone,” Margot said.
“Tell me anyway.”
Margot sighed. The yacht club ladies’ room wasn’t a great place to tell a secret. And yet it had been in this very bathroom that Margot had told her mother she was pregnant. It was during the Commodore’s Ball, Labor Day weekend, 2000, at the end of Margot’s second summer of dating Drum. Drum’s father had set up an internship for him at Sony, but Drum had decided to turn it down. He wanted to go back out to Aspen to ski one more time, he said. Margot had just accepted an entry-level position with Miller-Sawtooth; she was headed to adult life in the city. It looked like a breakup was imminent.
But then Margot had started feeling funny: tired, dizzy, nauseous. She had abruptly left the table during the Commodore’s Ball after being served a tomato filled with crab salad. And her mother, sensing something wrong, had followed Margot into the ladies’ room and had crowded into the stall with her and held her hair while Margot hurled.
Margot, teary eyed, had stared into the pukey toilet water and said, “I think I’m pregnant.”
Beth had said, “Yes, I think you are.”
Whoa. Margot sensed her mother’s presence so strongly at that moment that she steadied herself with both hands on the cool porcelain edge of the sink.
Looking at Jenna in the mirror-so much easier than looking at her directly-Margot said, “Dad is going to ask Pauline for a divorce.”
Jenna closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Um, no,” Margot said. “Not kidding. He said he doesn’t love her. I think… I think he’s just still really in love with Mom.”