Gloria joined me at the window. “The Tanners are here. And the Becks. And who is that? The Everests. People certainly are punctual, aren’t they?”
She stepped to the closet and pulled a lavender suit from a dry cleaning bag. While she dressed, I leaned over Bette. She was staring at the ceiling and humming softly. “What’s going on in your head?” I said.
I could see her deliberate between fibbing and telling the truth. “I’m just lying here, minutes before my wedding, thinking about diving.”
“Just diving, or diving a wreck?”
She nodded. “There’s one in the Keys, an albatross—that’s a plane, not a boat. Jane asked me to go down this weekend.”
“You’re busy this weekend.” In fact, Bette and Benjamin planned to take Grady’s boat to Bimini for their honeymoon.
“Yes, I am.” She blinked. “Mother, could you please leave?”
She said this as nicely as possible, but still Gloria, who was not yet zipped, was surprised. “I beg your pardon?” she said. I rushed to help her zip up. “Thank you, Frances. Dear, I will leave, but only because I want to check to make sure they didn’t bungle the order of the buffet.” She paused before leaving. “You look very pretty,” she told Bette. “Refresh your lipstick. You have ten minutes.”
When she’d left, Bette hopped off the bed and stood by the window, biting her nails. “We’re serving cocktails first. That was Benny’s idea,” she said. “He said he wanted people to relax and enjoy themselves.” She started to cry. When I stepped forward to console her—how I would do it, I didn’t know, she wasn’t a particularly consolable person—she raised a hand to stop me. “Don’t. I deserve it. It’s my fault.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Poor Benny.”
“He wants you to be happy,” I said, which was not quite the truth. He wanted her to be happy with him.
She stopped crying and stared through the window at the driveway. More car doors slammed. I stood next to her and watched as carload after carload of people—older people, mostly, Grady and Gloria’s age—stepped out, holding their hats and smoothing down their skirts. “There are Benjamin’s parents,” said Bette. She waved ineffectually at the window pane. “Hi Maggie, hi Bud,” she said softly. To me, she said, “They are such nice people. All of these people, all the people who are here, are really nice. It was kind of them to come.” She turned toward me. “You should marry Dennis,” she said. “You’ll have a beautiful wedding. You’ll look so pretty, and he’ll look so handsome, and the way you two look together—the way you two look at each other—you should marry him.” She glanced back out the window. “Will you?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Promise?” she said, and again I said, “Yes.”
“My mother will be pleased. She likes you. I didn’t tell her you cut my hair.”
“I appreciate that.”
She started to undress, shoes and stockings first. Then off came her skirt, then her jacket, and then she was standing there in just a camisole, shivering. I handed her a pair of blue jeans and a blouse from her closet. “Are you absolutely sure?” I said.
“I’m so sorry.” She had her hand on the doorknob. “Will we still be friends?”
“Of course.” I reached out to touch her shoulder, and though she was not fond of displays of affection, she turned and hugged my neck, hard, before stepping through the doorway and hurrying down the stairs.
I found Dennis on the back porch with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Is the girl ready yet?” he said. “My mother is restless.”
Gloria was below us, on the patio by the pool, standing with a couple I’d never seen before. I caught her stare. Seeing my expression, she took a tentative step toward me, then stopped. She pointed at the back kitchen door. Dennis asked where I was going, but I didn’t stop to answer him. She reached the kitchen before I did and closed the door behind us. Inside, two black women in white aprons were stacking dishes and wiping down the counter. “Could we have a minute?” said Gloria, and the women left the room. She took me by the shoulders. “What is it? What did she do?”
“Gloria, she’s left.”
“No!” She smacked the counter with the flat of her hand, wincing, then smacked it again. “That little brat,” she said, but in the next moment her lip started to tremble. “Get Grady for me?”
I stepped out of the kitchen and signaled to Dennis. He came forward with long strides. “Get your father,” I said. He started to step into the kitchen—he could see his mother bent over the counter—but I stopped him. “Hurry.”
I led Gloria to the kitchen table and got a juice glass from the cupboard. I poured from a bottle of wine that was open in an ice bucket on the counter. She took several long swallows, then started to cry. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I know it’s not your fault.”
It had not occurred to me, until that moment, that she might think this was my fault. How could it be? But the timing of events—my arrival on the scene, Bette’s assent to setting a wedding date, our burgeoning friendship, and now this horror: I suppose it was possible my presence had stirred the brew of their lives, however subtly. Gloria finished her wine and handed me the glass. “More, please,” she said, and I rushed to refill it. Grady came in the back door, Dennis behind him, and in a second Grady was kneeling beside his wife’s chair, and she was in his arms, sobbing. “It’s my fault,” she kept saying. “That spoiled little girl.”
Grady shushed her softly and said, “Sometimes things just go haywire.”
Dennis pulled me to his side and we watched his parents. “Where is she?”
“She left. Someone needs to tell Benjamin.”
“I’ll do it,” Dennis said. I stepped onto the back deck to give Gloria and Grady some privacy, and Dennis crossed the lawn toward the bar, where Benjamin stood with a small circle of friends. Dennis led him toward the house, and when they were far from other people, he put his arm around Benjamin’s large shoulders and started talking. Benjamin stopped short, then put a hand over his face. When his hand came down I saw that he was not angry, not upset. He looked calm but weary, and he nodded and took several deep breaths. He even looked around a little, as if hoping to see her, then turned back to Dennis and shook his hand. Together they made their way back up to the house.
Back in the kitchen, there was some discussion of who should be the one to make the announcement. Benjamin volunteered, then Gloria, then Grady—it was as if they were fighting for the unpleasant task, attempting to revive the good manners one expects on a wedding day. But Gloria was a mess—it was clear she’d been crying—and Grady seemed unable to leave her side, even to refill her glass, which I was called on to do a third time. In the end, it was Dennis who stepped onto the back deck and tapped a spoon against a glass to get the crowd’s attention. The rest of us huddled behind him. Fifty pairs of stylish couples and the odd single (including Marse, whom I’d spotted standing with Dennis’s friend Paul) peppered the lawn and the limestone patio, and in a moment all eyes were on Dennis. He held on to the wooden deck railing as he spoke. His voice shook. “Good afternoon,” he said, then cleared his throat and raised his voice. “We are so pleased all of you could make it here today to celebrate with our family.” He paused. It seemed, from his first sentence, that he was going to make a very different speech. “I love my sister,” he said. “I know you love her, too. But let’s face it, she’s an odd duck. And that’s part of what we love about her.” There was some nervous chuckling. “We want you to stay and eat and enjoy the afternoon, please. But I’m sorry to say there is not going to be a wedding.” A gentle gasp passed through the crowd. Benjamin’s parents, who were standing by the swimming pool, clutched each other and his mother put her hand to her mouth. Dennis raised his glass. “To love and friendship,” he said. “In all its forms.”