Beautiful Day (23 page)

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.”

Jenna’s eyes filled with tears, and Margot became confused. Did Jenna have a strong
alliance with Pauline that Margot didn’t know about? Did Jenna
love
Pauline? Pauline was fine, she was okay, on a good day she could be sort of fun—at
Halloween, she dressed up as a witch to give the children of Silvermine candy bars—but
Margot had no attachment to Pauline, and she assumed her siblings didn’t, either.

“Hey,” Margot said, patting Jenna’s back.

“It’s just…” Jenna said.

The door to the ladies’ room flew open, so that music floated in. The band was playing
more
Sinatra—“I’ve Got the World on a String” (her mother’s suggestion of “only standards”
had been obeyed). By now, Margot guessed, the blueberry cobbler had been served. She
glanced up to see who was coming in.

For the sake of poetry, Margot half expected to find Rhonda, or possibly even Pauline
herself, entering, so she was taken aback to see… Finn.

Finn wore a silver Herve Leger bandage dress, which Margot knew to cost fifteen hundred
dollars. Finn’s hair was a mess, and she appeared flushed. Her cheeks were bright
red with sunburn, and her eyes were shining and manic.

Margot thought,
Oh, God, no. He didn’t.

“Hi!” Finn said. She was glowing. She would have glowed with a paper bag over her
head.

He did.

Jenna spun around so quickly that her skirt flared; it was like a Solid Gold dance
move, and Margot would have laughed had it not been for Jenna’s tone of voice. In
twenty-nine years of knowing her sister, Margot had never heard Jenna speak sharply
to anyone, but now her voice was a glinting dagger.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Finn gnawed her lower lip, and Margot could tell she was trying not to burst out in
an explosion of bubbles and rose petals.

Jenna looked at an imaginary watch. “It’s eight thirty. You were supposed to be at
the church for the rehearsal at five. Three and a half hours ago. Where have you been?”

“Um…” Finn said.

“You’re my
best friend!
” Jenna cried. “I needed you with me. When you needed me last night, what did I do?”

Silence from Finn, who now looked appropriately contrite.

“I went home with you!” Jenna shouted. “I left my
own
bachelorette party, which Margot had been planning for
months.
I went home and let you cry on my shoulder about what an asshole Scott is. Oh—and
he
is
an asshole!”

Margot watched her sister with near-anthropological interest. She was watching the
first-ever fight between Jenna and Finn. Jenna could be a spitfire. Who knew?

Finn’s face dissolved. She was going to revert to type and cry. This Margot could
have predicted, and she further predicted that, upon seeing Finn’s tears, Jenna would
relent and apologize for her tone. But instead Jenna grew fiercer.

“Answer me,” Jenna said. “Where were you?”

“With Nick,” Finn said. “Paddleboarding at the beach, then
trying to get home from the beach.” Here she flicked her eyes at Margot. “Then we
took showers and got dressed at home, then came right here.”

No, Margot thought. It had not taken two hours for them to shower, dress, and walk
the half mile over here.

“Did something happen?” Jenna asked. “Did something happen between you and Nick?”

Margot couldn’t bear to hear the answer. She didn’t want Finn to admit the truth,
and she didn’t want to hear her lie. Margot put up a hand. “I’m leaving,” she said.
“You two can finish this in peace.”

“Thank you,” Finn whispered.

As Margot pushed open the door to leave, she heard Jenna say, “Tell me the
truth!
”

Outside, in the corridor, Margot surveyed the happenings in the rest of the club.
It was, from the look of things, a lovely party. The band was playing “One for My
Baby (and One More for the Road).” Margot’s father was dancing with Beanie, Kevin
was dancing with Rhonda, Ryan’s boyfriend was dancing with Pauline. Nick was standing
in the doorway of the kitchen, eating what appeared to be a club sandwich off a paper
plate. Unlike Finn, Nick was not radiating ecstasy and moonbeams. He seemed his usual
nonchalant, nonplussed self, maybe even a little subdued. Perhaps he was bummed because
he’d missed the lobster buffet, or perhaps he was suffering guilty pangs about the
sex acts he had just performed with the newly married childhood neighbor girl.

But who was Margot kidding? Nick didn’t suffer guilty pangs.

Margot had to get out of there.

You can’t tell me you wouldn’t love an opportunity to vent your frustration with your
family to a friendly acquaintance.

Goddamned Griff, Homecoming King, was right. She would love.

Margot told herself that the Boarding House was on her way home. She told herself
that she would just poke her head in, and if Griff wasn’t instantly visible, she would
leave.

She stepped into the welcoming energy of the Boarding House bar; the air smelled like
roasting garlic and warm bread and expensive perfume. The lighting was low, the good-looking
patrons were exuding a happy buzz, and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was playing.

Ha! Margot thought. Got that right.

She stepped up to the bar, where there was one leather stool available. She didn’t
see Griff, and she considered leaving. But the barstool looked comfortable; it would
be nice, maybe, to just sit and have a drink by herself. She was lonely nearly all
the time, but so seldom alone.

She ordered a martini. She tried not to appear self-conscious, although the word described
her exactly. She was conscious of herself sitting alone, sipping a stronger drink
than she should be having at this hour, waiting for…

A tap on the shoulder.

She turned around. Griff.

“You came,” he said. He sounded full of boyish wonder at that moment, as if discovering
the presence of Santa Claus on Christmas morning.

Margot sipped her martini. She would not let him rattle her. She would be her genuine
self. But she was struck by the ocean of colors contained in his eyes; she felt as
if she might drown in them.

“It was on my way home,” Margot said.

He was wearing a white button-down shirt and jeans and a navy blazer. He now sported
three-day scruff, which was even sexier than two-day scruff.

“You came to see me,” Griff said. “Admit it, you did.”

There was the smug confidence that Margot had expected. She juggled a dozen possible
replies in her head, but then she settled on the truth. “You were right,” she said.
“This morning.”