Beautiful Day (24 page)

Griff’s eyes widened. “About what?”

“I
would love
an opportunity to vent my frustrations with my family to a kindly stranger. I would
like to detail the many ways they are destroying my spirit.”

Griff held up open palms. “By all means,” he said. “Detail away.”

“Have you ever lost anyone?” she asked.

Griff said, “You mean, other than when my wife walked out?”

Margot said, “Yes. I mean, has anyone close to you died?”

Griff said, “My younger brother. Highway accident. I was twenty-five, and he was twenty-one.”

Margot stopped for a second. She thought, My siblings, they drive me insane, I despise
two out of the three of them right now. But what if one of them died? Impossible to
imagine; they were her brothers, her sister. She couldn’t go on without them. “Oh,”
she said. “Wow. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

Griff nodded. “This isn’t supposed to be about me. This is supposed to be about you.”

Margot said, “You’re a good guy, right?”

Griff shrugged. “My daughter seems to think so, but she’s only twelve, so what does
she know?”

Margot’s guilt kept her silent. She thought about how painfully ironic it was that
the one person she had really and truly wronged this year was the very same person
she was now about
to confide in. Griff would hate her if he knew what she’d done. He would be right
to hate her. She should go. She couldn’t sit and tell him things with this insidious
secret gnawing at her, but she couldn’t confess, either.

He said, “Have
you
ever lost anyone?”

“My mother,” Margot said. “Seven years ago, to ovarian cancer.”

She could feel his eyes on her face, but she couldn’t look at him.

Margot said, “My mother left a notebook behind for my sister filled with instructions
for this wedding. She wrote them down because she knew she wouldn’t be around to see
it.”

Griff pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, man,” he said. “That’s tough.”

“Tough,” Margot agreed.

The song changed to “Watching the Detectives.” Griff tapped his thigh. “You like Costello?”
he asked.

Margot nodded. “Love him.”

“She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake,” he quoted.

Her favorite line.

She said, “My father remarried a woman named Pauline. Nice woman. I have no complaints
except that she’s not my mother. They’ve been married five years. This morning, as
I was driving my dad to Sankaty, he told me he’s going to ask Pauline for a divorce.”

“Because…” Griff said.

Then, together, they said, “Because she’s not my/your mother.”

Margot thought,
This guy gets it.

She said, “I also have two brothers. There’s Kevin, who is eleven months younger than
me, but who acts like he’s older. He’s got this superiority thing, he’s always right,
always in charge.” She stopped herself. Since Griff had lost his brother, it
might be in poor taste to complain about her own brother. She said, “What was your
brother like?”

“This isn’t about me, remember.”

“Just tell me,” Margot said.

Griff sighed. “Well, he was rebellious. He rode a motorcycle, he had a bunch of tattoos,
he started smoking in middle school, and drinking in high school. But here’s the thing:
he was brilliant, went to MIT for three semesters, then took a semester off and went
to mechanics’ school to learn how to fix classic muscle cars, Plymouth Barracudas,
Shelby Cobras, Corvette Stingrays.” Griff took a sip of his drink and a deep breath.
“And he could play the piano by ear. At my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary,
he had everybody singing until long after midnight.”

The song changed to “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

Margot said, “You like Zevon?”

“I went home with a waitress,” he quoted. “The way I always do.”

“How was I to know… she was with the Russians, too,” she said. Again, her favorite
line.

She said, “Then there’s my brother Nick, the lothario. Loves women, and can’t seem
to exercise any restraint.”

Griff nodded. “Familiar with the type.”

Margot wasn’t sure why Nick’s behavior surprised her. He had always been like this.
He had taken two girls to the senior prom. He had run through entire sororities at
Penn State. Margot had heard a rumor that he slept with one of his law school professors.
But Finn? Why Finn? There were plenty of single women at the wedding—any of Jenna’s
hippie-dippy teacher friends, or he could have had a reprise with Autumn.

“So tonight…” Margot said, but she trailed off. She didn’t feel like talking about
what Nick had done that night.

“Tonight, what?” Griff said.

Margot said, “My ten-year-old, Carson, barely passed the fourth grade. And my daughter,
Ellie, is a hoarder.”

Griff laughed. He had a very nice laugh, she remembered now.

She said, “Remind me of your kids’ names. I know you told me, but I haven’t been blessed
with your memory.” Many times a candidate would include a line on his or her résumé
that said something like
Married fourteen years, devoted mother of four.
And Margot would always tell them to scratch it. Everyone loved their kids, and half
of everyone loved their spouse. It didn’t belong on a résumé, and it shouldn’t be
discussed with a potential employer unless it directly affected the candidate’s work
history—as it had in Griff’s case.

He said, “My daughter, Colby, twelve, thinks I hung the moon. Sons Ethan and Tanner,
ages ten and eight, think Robinson Cano hung the moon. I don’t see them nearly enough.
Every other weekend.”

Margot said, “Mine fly to California the last weekend of every month to see their
father. Who informed me two days ago that he is getting married again to a Pilates
instructor named Lily.”

Griff rattled the ice in his glass. He was drinking something and Coke, maybe bourbon
like all the southerners at the rehearsal dinner, and Margot thought for a second
about how good he might taste if she kissed him, sweet and caramelish. She chastised
herself for thinking about kissing Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King, and then she
admitted to herself that she had been thinking about kissing him ever since she saw
him on the ferry.

Griff said, “My ex-wife, Cynthia, is due to give birth in a few weeks. To Jasper’s
baby.”

Margot finished her drink and waited for her eyes to cross. Griff’s wife had fallen
in love with his best friend, Jasper, who
was also his direct boss, which explained Griff’s sudden departure from the Masterson
Group and was the reason why Margot met him in the first place. Griff hadn’t wanted
to tell Drew Carver or the rest of the top brass at Tricom about Jasper and his ex-wife.
Margot understood: candidates never wanted to share the messy ways that their personal
lives intersected with their professional lives. But it hadn’t mattered; Tricom had
wanted him for the job… until.

She said, “That. Totally. Sucks.”

“Precisely,” Griff said. He flagged the bartender for the check. “You should really
get home. It’s late.”

Margot straightened her spine with what she hoped was a graceful, yoga-like movement.
The alcohol, rather than making the edges of things soft and hazy, had turned her
field of vision clear and sharp. Was Griff trying to get rid of her? Had she
bored
him? Did her problems seem petty and obvious, standard fare for an educated, upper-middle-class
white woman of a certain age? Her children were healthy, she had a job, money, friends.
She was divorced. So what? She had lost her mother. So what? Everyone lost his or
her mother eventually. There were people in this world with real problems. There were
children in the cancer ward, there were men in Bangladesh being paid twelve or fifteen
cents a day to dismantle old cruise liners for scrap metal, there were millions of
people across America who had to work the third shift. Margot had no reason to complain.

“You’re right,” she said. “I should go.” She collected her wrap and her purse and
plunked thirty dollars on the bar, which Griff pushed back at her.

“Please,” he said. “My treat.”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

“I insist,” he said.

She reclaimed her money and said, “Well, thank you for the drinks. And thank you for
listening.” He had been attentive, he hadn’t tried to offer platitudes or advice.
He had been a capital L Listener. Every family wedding, Margot realized, needed a
Listener.

“My pleasure,” Griff said.

Margot slid off the leather barstool. She felt even more conflicted than when she
had walked in here. On top of her other avalanche of emotions was regret about having
to leave Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King.

Griff said, “Margot, are you dating anyone?”

She said, “Oh, sort of.” Then she laughed because those three words had to represent
a situation so complex she couldn’t begin to explain it.

He said, “I figured I had some kind of competition, but I wasn’t sure what form it
took.”

He walked her home, holding her arm as she crossed the cobblestones of Main Street.
As they walked up Orange, Margot began to wonder about the rest of her family. Would
they be home? Would they be awake? Margot had, essentially, vanished, and her phone
didn’t work, so no one would have been able to reach her. She couldn’t believe how
liberating it was to be untethered.

The next thing she knew, she and Griff were standing on the sidewalk a few doors down
from her house. There was a fat gibbous moon above them, and the clock tower of the
Unitarian Church was illuminated.

Margot said, “Really, I can’t thank you enough…”

Griff put his hands on either side of her neck and held her like that for a second,
then he kissed her softly on the lips. Then again, then again, more urgently, then
there was tongue, and a
flood of desire. Margot was breathless. She thought, This is the best first kiss I’ve
ever had, and this is the worst first kiss precisely because of how good it is, because
once he finds out what I did, he will never kiss me again. Therefore she had to be
greedy now. Margot kissed him and kissed him, tongue, lips, hands, hair, she pulled
on him, she could not get
enough.
She thought,
Edge who?
Kissing Edge had never felt like this. Kissing Edge had been like kissing an old
man, sometimes their teeth clicked, sometimes his breath was sour. And yet Edge had
such a stranglehold on her, he held her captive, so much so that she had been willing,
eager even, to wrong this man right here. It was the secret of Edge that was addictive,
it was his beautifully cut suits and his expensive watch. It was the fact that he
should rightfully treat Margot like treasure, but he treated her carelessly, and the
more carelessly he treated her, the more obsessed she became.

Griff pulled away, and Margot thought,
No!
She worried that he wasn’t enjoying the kissing as much as she was. Was insane desire
and electricity like this ever one-sided?

He said, “I have a confession to make.”

She believed he was about to admit to a girlfriend, or even a fiancée, although his
pursuit of her had been zealous to say the very least. She thought,
I don’t care if he is married or engaged or if he’s been dating someone a year or
three months or a week.

“What?” she said.

He said, “I’ve had a crush on you since the first second I saw you.”

Her feet in her silver heels turned icy. They were suddenly so cold that they hurt;
she couldn’t move her toes.

“From the minute you first shook my hand,” he said. “I thought you were so pretty
then. But pretty was the least of it. You were smart and capable, and… so tough on
me. You asked
the most exacting questions. It was a turn-on. I couldn’t ask you for your number
then, obviously. I thought about calling you at work after I’d been signed off, but
I wasn’t sure if… well, I thought it might be awkward for you. I didn’t expect to
ever see you again, especially not on the ferry to Nantucket.”

“Oh,” she said. She flooded with shame, with panic.
Smart, capable, tough… exacting questions… a turn-on.
Jesus!

“And please don’t worry about the outcome of all of that,” Griff said. “I’m sure the
other guy was a better match.”

Margot said, “I… I can’t talk about it.”

“Of course not,” Griff said. “Obviously. I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry!
Margot thought.

He said, “Can I see you tomorrow?”

Tomorrow? Margot thought. Tomorrow was the wedding. She would be busy all day and
night, and Edge was coming. She had liked kissing Griff, she had liked it a lot, but
she hated herself for what she’d done. Griff was such a good guy. Margot had always
thought of herself as a good guy… until that phone call with Drew Carver, when she
had become a not-good guy. Margot could never confess to it. But she also couldn’t
see Griff again, or kiss him again,
without
confessing to it.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“No?” he said. “But…”

She waved good-bye and hurried down the street toward her family’s house, thinking
again that some nights had good karma and some nights were cursed, and for a few moments,
tonight had seemed like the former, but it had ended up the latter.

And as if Margot needed further proof of this, when she approached the house, she
saw Jenna sitting on the top step by the front door, which no one but the mailman
ever used. Jenna had her face in her hands. She was crying.