Margot knew her brothers had been busy, too. Kevin had been trying to save the Coit Tower, and Nick had just taken the job with the Nationals. They were, all three of them, inconsolable about the idea of losing Beth, but they hadn’t been right there the way that Jenna had been. Jenna had taken a semester off from William and Mary to go home and be with Beth. She moved back in at the same time that Beth went into hospice.
“You know what?” Jenna said. She was gearing up now, her voice taking on a scary intensity that Margot almost never saw. “For most of my life, I felt like I wasn’t even part of the family. It was always the three of you and Mom and Dad. When we used to sit at the dinner table, you all would be talking and arguing and I couldn’t understand or keep up. The three of you would have parties or go on dates, and you would break curfew and come home with beer on your breath. One of you ended up lost after a concert at Madison Square Garden, and Mom was on the phone with the police all night.”
Me, Margot thought. The Rolling Stones, the summer between junior and senior year.
“Nick crashed the car and then he got caught growing those pot plants in the attic, and Mom was certain Kevin was going to get Beanie pregnant. Mom and Dad were so consumed with keeping track of the three of you that they forgot about me.”
“That’s not true…”
“It is true. Kevin broke his leg playing lacrosse, remember, and they left me at Finn’s house for three whole days.”
“Well,” Margot said. “We were older.”
“And when you all moved out and moved on, we were like a family again. But a different family. A family with me and Mom and Dad. We would sit down to dinner and we might talk about you, but it was like talking about relatives in Africa or China, you were so far away. Which was fine by me.”
Margot made a face. What was this? Decades-old resentment about birth order?
“At the end of Mom’s life, it was just the three of us again. I had a front-row seat for her death and what it did to Dad.” Now her tears were flowing freely. “It was horrible, Margot. He loved her so much, he wanted to go with her. Hell, I wanted to go with her.” Jenna yanked at her blond hair, which was still in some semblance of a bun. “Love dies. I watched love die with my own eyes. She left, we all stayed. And that, that, Margot, was the worst of all.”
“You’re right,” Margot said. “Of course, you’re right.”
“And so now we have Finn and Nick, and Daddy and Pauline, and Jim and Ann Graham and horrible Helen, and you and Drum Sr. And as if all of that didn’t make me skeptical enough, Stuart lies to me about an enormous event in his life. Enormous!”
“But it’s not a deal breaker, Jenna,” Margot said. “When you said that he revealed himself to be just like everyone else, you were right. He’s a human being. He was scared to tell you about Crissy Pine. He wanted to pretend like it never happened. I’m not saying he wasn’t in the wrong. He was. You deserved to know. But do not cancel the wedding over this. It isn’t worth it.”
“He gave her his great-grandmother’s ring!” Jenna said.
“Since when do you care about things like rings?” Margot asked. “I promise you there are hundreds of thousands of diamond rings in this world that have been kept or stolen or thrown out of car windows in anger.”
“I care because he gave it to her-something precious, a family heirloom. He loved her enough to give her that ring.” Jenna sniffled. “I want him to love me that much.”
“He does love you that much!” Margot said. “He loves you more than that! He loves you enough to have gone out and found a ring with ethically mined diamonds! He didn’t recycle some fusty ring that belonged to his dead ancestor. He found a ring for you, one that you could love and be proud of.”
Margot thought this was a point well made, and she let her words hang in the air for a moment. Then she said, “I saw him this morning. He’s a mess.”
“I hope he is,” Jenna said.
“He is,” Margot said. “He looks god-awful. He said if you leave him, he will die-and I don’t think that was hyperbole.”
Jenna started to cry again. “I love him so much! I’ve just spent the past twelve hours trying to make myself stop loving him. And I can’t stop, I’ll never be able to stop, I’m going to love him for the rest of my life! But he lied to me! It’s like he’s suddenly become a completely different person-a person who was engaged and chose to hide it from me.”
Margot knew enough not to speak. They both stood at the window, the same one Kevin had pried open so that they could all toss handfuls of their mother’s ashes out over the island she adored. The breeze coming in the window was the only thing that was keeping Margot from fainting.
She pulled Rhonda’s cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to Jenna. “Call Roger,” she said. “Call Roger and tell him it’s definitely off.”
“Okay,” Jenna said. She accepted the phone and stared at the face of it for a second, and Margot thought, She won’t be able to do it. She loves Stuart, and they will end up having a marriage like Beth and Doug’s-a marriage that will be a fortress for all of them. Margot’s perfect instincts told her so.
But this time, it seemed, Margot’s instincts were wrong. Jenna dialed the number and held the phone to her ear. Margot had the urge to grab the phone from her sister’s hand and talk to Roger herself. The wedding is on, Margot would say. Jenna is just scared. She’s just scared is all.
Anyone who had listened to that laundry list of marital disasters would have been scared.
“Hello?” Jenna said.
Margot thought, Oh, honey, please don’t. It’s not a deal breaker. Stuart is just like everyone else, but you and Stuart, as a couple, are different. You two are going to make it.
She thought, Mom? Help me?
“Stuart?” Jenna said. “I love you, Stuart. You jerk, I love you!”
OUTTAKES
Finn Sullivan-Walker (bridesmaid): She hates me. Jenna Carmichael, who has been my best friend since we were eating graham crackers, drinking apple juice, and watching Barney, hates me. I went to the salon with Autumn and Rhonda at eleven o’clock. Just the three of us because Margot and Jenna were AWOL. I asked Autumn if she had heard from Jenna, and she pretended to think about it, then she admitted that no, she hadn’t talked to Jenna since the party the night before. Autumn went back to the groomsmen’s house with H.W., where they had wild, drunken sex, which she then described in lurid, pornographic detail to Rhonda, who lapped it up. Tell me more, tell me more, was it love at first sight? I thought maybe Autumn was being bitchy to me because she was jealous-she hooked up with Nick herself at Jenna’s graduation from college a bunch of years ago. I tried not to care about Autumn or Rhonda or even Jenna. If being with Nick means losing Jenna, then I guess I’ll have to live with that, because my feelings for Nick are overwhelming. It’s like they’ve existed forever but I’ve only allowed myself to acknowledge them this weekend.
I was in the chair having my hair twisted into a chignon when Jenna and Margot walked in. Everyone in the place started to applaud. The prodigal bride! Frankly, I didn’t understand Jenna’s disappearing act. She’s not usually one for drama.
I, on the other hand, am a magnet for drama. My mother always told me I was so flighty and so hard to please that she was sure I would end up married at least four times. She told me that on my wedding day, and I think that was what jinxed me.