Nell’s parents were Jewish but they hadn’t done much to raise the girls in the faith. A year or two at Sunday school until Nell got kicked out for playing hooky too many times. High Holiday services every so often until Olivia realized that she’d
rather stay home and meditate. Nell’s dad still went to temple once in a while—a reform temple in San Francisco—but she suspected that he was more concerned about business contacts than spiritual salvation. Nell felt ambivalent about being Jewish—she didn’t like the religion but she did like the culture. Until she left for L.A., the family had Passover seders with their Marin cousins; it was all about the food, the wine, the good company.
She knew that a chuppah was some kind of covering that the bride and groom stood under during the service. She wasn’t sure what it meant—she’d check on her iPhone or Sébastien’s computer in the morning—but she liked the look of it, the sense of the couple being held by something. She needed to find a beautiful fabric and attach it at the four corners to sticks or poles. She imagined this: She, Carly, Fanny, and Emily could hold the four poles, creating a canopy over her mother and Brody for the wedding ceremony.
When she woke in the morning she found Emily and told her the plan. Emily loved it and suggested Nell head down to the Cassis farmers’ market right away—surely she’d find some great fabric there. So Nell borrowed Emily’s car, found the market at the edge of town, and wandered the stalls in the rain.
She bought croissants for everyone at one stand,
Camembert
at another, a floppy summer hat for herself at another. One seller had a long table of gorgeous Provençal fabrics—tablecloths and napkins and aprons. Nell browsed but decided that wasn’t what she wanted. At the far end of the market were some antiques dealers, their tables piled high with goods. She wandered among them for a while and then found what she
was looking for: an antique eyelet bedspread, white with pale yellow flowers in the design, worn thin yet unmarred. She bought it.
Now, after talking to her mother in the parlor, she was hiding in the pool house, where Emily had given her scissors, a sewing kit, an iron, an ironing board, and four bamboo poles that had once been used for landscaping. She was making her mother’s chuppah.
Someone knocked on the door of the pool house. She peeked outside. Fanny, who had her finger to her lips.
“I know what you’re doing,” she whispered. “Emily sent me to help.”
Nell slid the door open and let her in, then slid it back behind her.
Fanny rubbed her wet hair wildly, a little like a dog shaking itself out. When she was done her curls fell around her ears. She’s a poodle, Nell thought. An elegant poodle.
“I don’t know what a chuppah is,” Fanny said, “but Emily had a sneaking suspicion that you might not know how to sew.”
“I have no idea how to sew,” Nell said, smiling. “Thank you for saving me.”
She had already cut the material but couldn’t imagine how she would finish the edges. She found a chair for Fanny and put her to work.
“Where’s your sister?” Fanny asked.
“I told Emily to send her out here when she woke up so my guess is that she’s still sacked out.”
“Brody told me that she has a very important job.”
“She works too hard,” Nell said. “That’s for sure.”
“My husband used to work too hard,” Fanny said. “Sometimes I think people do that because they find it too hard to sit still.”
“What do you mean?”
Nell looked at Fanny but the woman kept her eyes on the needle and thread, moving swiftly along the edge of the fabric.
“Sam wouldn’t quit work. He was a doctor. Seventy-five years old and driving around the countryside, treating people who had grown up before his eyes.”
“He must have loved it.”
“He needed it,” Fanny said. “The minute he stopped working, he lost the fire inside him.”
“Why did he quit?”
“Oh, his eyesight was failing. He couldn’t keep up with the technology. Even out in Wyoming, young docs were reinventing medicine and he was an old fart.”
Nell laughed.
“But a person needs a life. Work shouldn’t take up all the space. I tried telling him that over the years but the man is stubborn. And all he cared about was medicine.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing,” Nell said.
“Two weeks after he quit working he stopped getting out of bed. Said he was tired of life.”
Nell thought of Chaney, curled in their bed, as if taking a nap. But his eyes were open.
“We think successful people are happy,” Fanny said. “That’s what our society fools us into believing. But my husband worked so hard as a doctor because he couldn’t find comfort in a good book or a long walk. He needed work like oxygen. I don’t think that’s a very good way to be in the world.”
Nell thought about her own life. She was very good at being alone, reading, walking, practicing yoga. She needed to get better at the work part of her life. She remembered Carly’s question for her yesterday: What do you do all day? She never considered the possibility that Carly might be bad at life even though she was so good at work.
“I heard that your husband is sick,” Nell said gently.
Fanny didn’t look up. “Cancer. Damn him.”
“I’m sorry,” Nell said.
“Well, it isn’t your fault, dear. He wanted to run away and die by himself. I took care of the man for fifty-five years and suddenly he thinks I’m not strong enough to take care of him.”
“But he wants you back,” Nell said.
“He’s not getting me back,” Fanny said firmly.
“Because you’re angry?”
Fanny straightened the fabric on her lap, then began sewing a new edge. “Women of my generation did it all wrong. You young girls are so lucky. I was already too set in my ways once the world began to change and women started working. Some of my friends got jobs, got out of the house and did something. I never wanted to. I had enough to do at the ranch and I guess I had never given much thought to what I wanted to do. I wanted a good husband and a child and a nice life. I got all that. I didn’t feel like I needed a career.”
She stopped talking and looked at Nell, as if surprised to see her sitting there.
“Taking care of them was your career,” Nell said.
“That’s right.” Fanny nodded. “And then one’s gone, off to college and vet school and a whole damn life without me.
The other one wakes up one morning and says he’s done with me. Gets up and walks out. After fifty-five years.”
“He was too scared to tell you he was sick.”
Fanny stood up. Her body swayed.
“Are you all right?” Nell asked.
“Damn him,” she muttered.
“He thought he could do it without you but he can’t,” Nell said. “That part was your job.”
Fanny sat down, smoothing her skirt over her legs. She looked around the room, her eyes finally settling on the fabric beside her.
“Hand me those scissors, dear,” she said.
Nell handed them over, watching as Fanny trimmed one edge of the material and then began hemming the next side.
“I should learn to sew,” Nell said.
“Why didn’t your mother teach you?”
“I don’t think she knows how.”
“Well, grab another needle and thread,” Fanny said. “I can teach you a few things.”
C
arly stared in the mirror. She had a throbbing headache. She pulled her bottle of Advil out of her toiletry kit and took three. The glare of the bathroom light hurt her eyes.
She had dreamed of Gavin at some point during the night, a blur of a dream that had them kissing in the belly of a boat. And then the boat was sinking or she was sinking—there was water everywhere. When she opened her eyes she saw the rain on the window.
Now she brushed her teeth, remembering his tongue in her mouth, flicking in and out. She shuddered.
She found clothes to wear—jeans, a polo shirt. She had plenty of time before the wedding. For what? To make things better with Nell. To show up for her mother. To figure out her life.
What do you do when you have it all at twenty-six and suddenly you realize you have nothing at all? What do you do when you’ve succeeded every damn day of your life and suddenly you realize you have no skills to deal with failure?
You haven’t failed, she told herself. You screwed up. Fix it.
She walked out of her room into a dark hallway. As soon as she began to walk toward the stairs, the door to another room opened. A woman appeared, a tall, voluptuous black woman, wobbling on very high heels. Her hair was piled high on her head, her makeup smeared on her face. She smiled at Carly.
“Bonjour,”
she said.
“Bonjour,”
Carly said.
“Et au revoir,”
the woman said merrily and winked.
She turned and marched down the hallway, her ample butt swaying from side to side in a form-hugging miniskirt.
Carly stopped in the middle of the hallway and watched her.
“That is a lot of woman,” a voice said.
Jake appeared in the doorway of his room, wearing a pair of jeans but no shirt. His chest, a young man’s chest, hairless and buff, glistened with sweat. Carly looked away.
“Your date?” she asked.
“It was a very good night,” he told her with a grin.
“Is she coming to the wedding?”
“God no.” He laughed.
“You make it look so easy.”
“Sex?” Jake asked. “Sex is easy. Relationships are fucking impossible.”
“Why?”
Jake slid down the wall until he was sitting on the hallway
floor. He stretched his legs out in front of him. Carly joined him. She could smell sex on him. The whole world suddenly smelled of it.
“Sex is play,” Jake said. “Love is work.”
“It’s that simple?”
“You in love?”
“I don’t know,” Carly said. “I thought I was.”
“I fell in love once,” Jake said, his voice a little gruff.
“What happened?”
“She married my best friend.”
“Brody?”
Jake nodded. He was staring down the hallway, as if still watching the lazy swing of his date’s wide hips.
“That’s lousy,” Carly said. “I’m sorry.”
“She never knew,” Jake said. “I never told her.”
“Did Brody know?”
Jake shook his head. Finally he looked at Carly. “It was a lifetime ago.”
“You never fell in love with another woman?”
“I never tried.”
Carly stretched forward, wrapping her palms around her feet. Her body ached, her muscles strained. The body and the heart, she thought. Two separate things.
“And sex fills up all the space?”
“It does a pretty good job,” Jake said, smiling. “Most days.”
“You seem happy,” Carly said.
“I had a nightmare last night,” he said. “The woman was trying to murder me. I woke up and there she was, sacked out, a dreamy smile on her face. So why do I still feel a little haunted?”
“She gets the good time,” Carly said. “I get the postcoital melancholy.”
Jake laughed. “You’re not a kid, are you?”
“Not really. You’re not an old guy, are you?”
“Not in the least.”
Jake leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment.
“It must be this wedding thing,” Jake said, the cowboy in him turning “thing” to “thang.” “My pal’s getting married again. It’s got me riled up somehow.”
“My mom’s getting married again,” Carly said, her voice quiet. “It’s got me riled up, too.”
They heard footsteps on the stairs. Brody appeared at the end of the hallway. He stopped and stared at them. His smile disappeared in an instant and he glared at them.
“It’s not what you think,” Jake said, standing up.
It could have been, Carly thought. Maybe
I
spent the night in his bed. She stood up, still leaning against the wall. She could feel Jake inch away from her.
Brody walked toward them down the hall. “Carly,” he said, his voice stern.
She looked up.
“Stay away from him,” Brody warned.
“You’re not my father,” she said, suddenly sounding very young.
“I know I’m not—”
“You have no right to tell me what to do.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Jake said. “She walked by—”
“He’s old enough to be your—”
“We didn’t do anything,” Jake insisted.
“I care about you,” Brody said, watching Carly closely.
“You don’t even know me,” she said, glaring back at him.
“Give me a chance to know you, then.”
“Brody, you’ve got this all wrong,” Jake said.
Brody looked at Jake and his face darkened. He put up his hands and then pushed Jake with so much force that Jake fell back onto the floor. His head slammed into the wall.
“Jesus, Brody,” he moaned.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Brody muttered.
“I didn’t have sex with him!” Carly shouted. “I didn’t have sex with anyone!”
Brody turned and marched down the hall. Jake stood up and stepped past her into his room, shutting the door behind him.
Carly was left in the hallway, alone.
The chef stood in the middle of the kitchen, mixing something in a bowl. He wore a white apron over his white T-shirt and jeans. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, his face streaked with a fine dusting of flour.
“Bonjour,”
Carly said, entering the room and closing the door behind her.
He looked at her and a smile lit up his face.
“Buongiorno.”
“
Buongiorno
, Paolo,” she said, remembering his name.
His brow creased with worry. “You are unhappy.”
“No,” she said, forcing a smile. “What are you making?”
“The cake for the marriage.”
“Wedding cake!”
“My English, it is very bad.”
“It’s good. It’s fine,” Carly said. “Can I help you?”
“With wedding cake?” Paolo asked, lifting his floured hands.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know how to do a damn thing in the kitchen. I don’t how to do much of anything, it seems. I can’t speak French, I can’t speak Italian, I can’t have a fling, I can’t get along with my sister, I can’t do anything except build a damn business. And you know what that business does? It’s a dating service. I don’t know a thing about love and somehow I’m the queen of the dating world. Does that make any sense to you?”