Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (16 page)

Tiffany was gazing up through the mist into a tree. “I’ve known Luke ten years, and he never talks about it, but my sense
always was he had no interest in carrying on the Sedgwick name, or living in the Sedgwick House, or anything else associated
with people like him.”

“You mean, like you—and me,” Peggy corrected herself quickly. She too was supposed to belong to this group.

“Oh, yes, ‘people like us.’” Tiffany laughed. “I’m not ‘people like us’; I’m from Queens. Anyway, I always told Luke as soon
as he met the woman of his dreams, he’d marry her in thirty seconds. And, voilà, I was right!”

More right than you know
. It had taken a little longer than thirty seconds for Peggy and Luke to get married, but Tiffany wasn’t far off, even if,
really, what had done it for Luke wasn’t meeting his ideal woman, but being rip-roaring drunk. But wait a minute. “I thought
you grew up in Westport.”

“I did. From age two to age eight, until my dad ran out on my mom and me, and poof—we were back in Flushing, living with my
nana.”

Peggy smiled. It was a good joke.

“I’m not kidding. Does this help? ‘My muthah bought me a sweatah,’ ” Tiffany said in a nasal accent, giggled, and went to
search more trees.

Peggy laughed, still not sure she believed Tiffany, and mechanically scanned the next apple tree in the row. Its bowed branches
arched darkly against the sky and brought to mind a familiar shape she couldn’t quite put her finger on, the Gothic windows
of a cathedral in Italy, or the base of the Eiffel Tower, or…

“Last night he dreamed he bought the Brooklyn Bridge,” Tiffany had said.

The Brooklyn Bridge.

Peggy was walking across it, an otherworldly midnight stroll, the air balmy on her skin, the bridge’s double arches framing
cables strung with white bulbs, like Christmas lights. And—she closed her eyes and concentrated—she was hand in hand with
somebody very special, asking him a question. And the first real details of her night in Las Vegas surfaced like a long forgotten
dream.

She and Luke had run out of cash, left the roulette table at New York New York, and ridden the hotel’s roller coaster outside,
across the desert sky. They’d wandered onto the Brooklyn Bridge—not the true bridge, a scaled-down reproduction leading nowhere,
a platform running along Las Vegas Boulevard.

“I don’t like bridges,” Peggy had admitted, and Luke had asked her why. She’d looked out across the traffic-snarled Strip,
where engines idled to the tuneless bass throbbing of car stereos. And she’d told Luke about the time she’d walked across
the real Brooklyn Bridge; and about how, when she’d reached dead center, at what had felt like a mile above the East River,
it had struck her that there was nothing underneath her but air. She didn’t tell Luke she’d been with Brock at the time.

Luke had taken her hand. “And yet you’re not afraid of a roller coaster.”

“My mind is a roller coaster,” she’d said—melodramatic but true. Precarious pitches and unexpected curves felt ordinary to
her.

“You don’t have to be afraid on this bridge.” Luke had put his hand on her waist. The night had been warm, windy, lush with
possibility. “I’m going to give it to you as a gift. You’ll own it, and then you won’t be scared of it.”

“That’s so generous.” Peggy had thought this the most romantic, the most madly improbable moment of her life. “But why?”

“For knowing Shakespeare. For blowing all my money on roulette. For making me ride the roller coaster.”

“You could have done that without me.”

“No,” Luke had said. “I couldn’t have.”

And then, because there couldn’t be another scene as romantic as this, there was no other appropriate step but to ask the
question every hopeful romantic longed one day to ask. And who could resist saying yes on this stage set, in this unreal,
idealized place where the Brooklyn Bridge was only a few feet off the ground and strung with Christmas lights; where it, and
love, and marriage, were better and cleaner and simpler than the real thing?

Even if it was the woman asking the question?

Peggy couldn’t breathe. Seriously—there was no air coming into her lungs. Her throat was closing, and her hands felt disconnected
from her body. She was going to suffocate here in this spent orchard, and Tiffany, who was deep into another row of trees,
wouldn’t return until it was too late. She attempted a small, shallow breath and then a larger, deeper one.

She had proposed to Luke on the fake bridge. She’d held both his hands and looked up into his eyes, her face a moving image
reflected in his glasses. “Will you marry me?” It had slipped from her mouth, but once the question was out, she knew she’d
meant it. And when he had answered instantly, she’d known he’d meant it, too. For one instant of absolute clarity, they’d
seen the future in each other’s eyes.

Peggy braced one hand against the cool, rough bark of the apple tree and smiled in spite of herself. No chain of events could
be less suited to people like her and Luke.

Damn. Those had been strong martinis.

She was about to call to Tiffany, suggesting they give up, when she looked into the tree one last time. There it was. She
circled the tree; the apple was perfect from every angle.

“I found one!” Peggy shouted, abandoning her thoughts of Luke. Tiffany came running with the pole and demonstrated how to
position it under the apple and squeeze the handle so the metal rim closed around the fruit and captured it in the net.

Luke watched them come marching up over the ridge, the upright pole between them, a small object swinging at the top.

For a good ten minutes, Ver Planck had been following Milo as the child zigzagged back and forth across the parking area.
Ver Planck’s eyes lit up with relief. “Look who’s back, sport.”

“Hi, peanut!” Tiffany waved.

“Mummy!” The child took off at a stiff-legged run, stepped into a tire rut, and fell, sprawled on his stomach, a few yards
from Luke. Luke stood still. He looked back at Ver Planck and then at Milo getting himself to his feet and staring wonderingly
at the mud on his pudgy, starfish hands.

“Baby!” Tiffany shrieked. She let go of the pole, dashed up the last few feet of the ridge, and swooped Milo into her arms,
his muddy front pressed against her jacket.

Milo began to wail. Tiffany looked at her husband—accusingly, Luke thought.

Luke rushed to Ver Planck’s defense. “Milo’s fine,” he told Tiffany, trying to reassure her. Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw Peggy scramble to the top of the ridge.

“Why didn’t one of you pick him up?” Tiffany was wild-eyed as Milo continued to scream.

Peggy was out of breath. “What’s happened?”

“It’s nothing.” Luke could see how quickly Peggy’s concern would turn to panic if someone didn’t show some common sense. “Milo
fell a little. He’s okay.”

The Ver Plancks were both hovering now, Tiffany clutching their howling child to her chest while Tom shepherded them both
toward the car.

Peggy reached up to get the apple from its net. She started toward the Ver Plancks, leaving Luke to hold the picking pole.
He watched her approach the trio cautiously and hold up the apple to Milo as one might offer food to a shy animal.

To Luke’s amazement, Milo stopped in the middle of a shriek. He extended a muddy hand. Tiffany took the opportunity to swipe
it clean with a disposable cloth from a plastic container.

“Isn’t it pretty? Your mommy and I picked it for you,” Peggy crooned, as if calming a screaming child were the most natural
thing in the world to her.

“Hold it.” Milo spread his fingers wide. Tiffany wiped his tear-streaked face.

“Would you like to hold the pretty apple?” Peggy passed the fruit to the boy, and Luke saw Tiffany mouth the words
Thank you.

At the farm market, Peggy waited by the cars with Tiffany while Luke and Tom took a now placid Milo to look at the cows. Peggy
was in no hurry for their return. She dreaded the empty afternoon awaiting her at the Sedgwick House nearly as much as she
did the silent drive back with Luke.

“Are you really from Queens?” she asked Tiffany. “Or were you joking back there?”

“Oh, it’s no joke,” Tiffany said. “Nobody jokes about being from Queens.”

Peggy took a breath, screwed up her courage. “Can you keep a secret?”

Tiffany was leaning against her mountain-size vehicle. Her quilted, corduroy-collared jacket was caked with mud. “Absolutely.”

“I’m not ‘people like us,’ either.”

“I know,” Tiffany said.

“You do?” Peggy’s heart beat faster; she hadn’t expected this. A gust of wind picked up, and she shivered; her own jacket
was simply no match for the foggy dampness. “How?”

Tiffany came closer, catching Peggy’s jacket hem between a thumb and forefinger. “There are clues. Your clothes, for example.
Don’t get me wrong; they’re gorgeous. But look at Liddy and Carrie and Creighton. It’s wool, not leather; navy, not black;
flats, not heels; loose, not tight; ChapStick, not lipstick—”

“You wear lipstick.”

Tiffany giggle-snorted again. “I get my hair colored, too—very
not
‘people like us.’ You can take the girl out of Flushing, but you can’t take Flushing out of the girl.” She smiled. “Where
are you really from?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere. It’s a long story. Luke knows, but do you think Liddy and the others can tell I’m not one of them?”

Tiffany shook her head. “I don’t think so. But if Luke doesn’t care, does it matter? Tom loves that I’m from Queens.”

Peggy wished she could tell Tiffany the truth about her marriage. “It matters,” she said softly. “I can’t tell you why, but
it does.”

Luke was quiet on the drive back to New Nineveh. Peggy watched the houses go by. With the trees half-bare, the hidden homes
emerged, unmasked: beautiful old clapboard Colonials with leftover Halloween pumpkins grinning on the porches and fall wreaths
on the doors.

“Why are all the houses white with black shutters?” The volume of her own voice startled her. She’d not meant to speak aloud,
to get between Luke and the silence that fell over him whenever they were alone.

But—“Didn’t you know? It’s the newest color combination,” Luke replied right away, pleasantly, as if all this time he’d been
waiting for her to start talking first.

“It’s new? Really?”

“As of about 1880. In Connecticut that’s new.” His eyes tilted up at the corners in what might be a smile—as rare and unexpected
as the last apple in an orchard. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not so good with change.”

“So hating change is a Yankee thing.”

“Exactly.”

“Then I must have a little Yankee blood. I hate change more than anything.”

“Really?” Luke looked at her. “One wouldn’t know it by your actions. Would you consider painting a house beige?”

“Beige?”

“To a Yankee, a beige house is flamboyant.”

“Then how do you Yankees give directions to your houses?” Peggy parried back, enjoying the camaraderie. “Do you say, ‘Turn
right at the white house with black shutters, pass the white house with black shutters, and then make a sharp left at the
white house with black shutters?’ ”

Luke smiled—definite, genuine. “‘Once you pass the white house with black shutters, you can’t miss our house. It’s the white
one with the black shutters.’ ” His front teeth overlapped slightly. The flaw suited him. He had the appealing, unfussy confidence
of a man who knew who he was and had nothing to prove.

“Wait!” Peggy returned to the view outside the car. “There’s a white house with dark green shutters.”

Luke slowed to a stop and leaned over a steel travel mug wedged next to the gearshift to look out her window. He said, his
voice hushed, as if murmuring across a pillow in the dark, “Their neighbors must whisper about them.”

He was so close. She could have touched his sleeve or laid her hand on his leg.

“What would they whisper?” Peggy almost whispered this herself.

“The neighbors? Oh, that those people are bohemians.

Troublemaking nonconformists. Or, worse, Democrats.” He looked over the tops of his glasses at her, as if they were real friends
sharing an inside joke. She could imagine the softness of his threadbare khaki pants under her fingers. He smelled of shampoo
and clean laundry and wool. A real man’s scent—not bottled.

She had to stop.
I am not attracted to Luke Sedgwick
. This was simply a reaction to weeks of celibacy. Luke had been the man of her alcohol-addled dreams for a few hours of one
night. What had he done since then to deserve any admiration on her part?

Luke accelerated past the green-shuttered house, left arm on the car windowsill, right hand loosely, lazily, on the steering
wheel.

I am not attracted to Luke Sedgwick,
Peggy repeated to herself.

It wasn’t working. She evidently had a thing for emotionally unavailable men. That would explain why she’d fallen for Brock
and why she’d taken it upon herself to pop the question to Luke outside a casino after too many martinis. Tee many martoonies,
as she and Bex used to say in college.

Well, no more. The next man she had a relationship with—Jeremy, maybe, or one she hadn’t yet met—would be friendly and personable
not just when the whim struck. The next man she got involved with would care about her. And besides, Luke was taken.

The new nineveh, pop. 3,200 sign flew by on the left, and Luke turned onto Church Street. They stopped at the traffic light.
On the green, picketers marched with their signs. Annette Fiorentino was among them. Peggy waved and started to ask Luke about
the demonstrations.

But Luke was pointing at a spot past the group. “I grew up in that white house with black shutters.”

Peggy followed the line with her eyes. “Which?”

“The smallish one with the potted mums on the steps.”

“I thought you grew up in the Sedgwick House.”

“No, just in its shadow.” The light turned green, and Luke turned left on Main Street, past two white houses with black shutters.
Peggy craned her neck to take in Luke’s childhood home: solid, handsome, traditional. Like Luke, she realized.