Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (21 page)

Peggy cradled the filthy bottle against her sweatshirt, glad she had thought to wear her rubber gloves but not as disgusted
as she might have been. This port had been in this house through World War II, the Kennedy assassination, the moon walk, the
Gulf War, the collapse of the World Trade Center, the election of Barack Obama. And Luke had chosen to share it with her.
She watched him, still kneeling in front of the empty space in the wall. Could it be he cared about her more than he was letting
on? And why was the possibility so tantalizing? His gesture seemed packed with meaning, despite his having said nothing.

Still, he sure was acting peculiarly. He reached into the alcove as if feeling around inside it.

“What are you looking for?” She hoped she didn’t sound overeager.

He got to his feet without replying. “Thanks. I can take that now.” He retrieved the bottle and slid it back into place. He
replaced the rock in the wall and wiped his hands on his knees. “You ready to tackle some fungus?”

It seemed that special moment wouldn’t be with her after all.

The fungus in question was growing up and out from the laundry room baseboards in undulating waves like the ruffles on an
old-fashioned petticoat. Luke explained its presence meant there was water seeping in from outside.

“Euw.” Peggy couldn’t look at it. Her skin was crawling.

“Do you want the shovel or the broom?”

They spent the next hour attacking the fungus, Peggy knocking it off with the broom, Luke picking it up with the shovel and
depositing it into the paint bucket. When they were done in the laundry room, they moved through the rest of the basement.
After a while, because she couldn’t stand not sharing the news with somebody, Peggy asked, “Did you meet my friend Bex in
the casino? You know…that night?” She shut her eyes and whacked away at a particularly large fungus formation. When she looked
again, she saw with a shudder that the fungus had flown four feet in every direction.

“I’m not sure.” Luke scraped the shovel along the floor. “I vaguely remember a woman with curly black hair trying to get you
to go upstairs.”

“That was Bex.” Peggy followed Luke as he moved the bucket a few steps down. “She’s my best friend, and she might be pregnant.
She and her husband have been trying for so long, and…” Peggy blushed. Luke didn’t want to know the intimate details of Bex’s
life. Or hers, for that matter. Personal issues were off the table. “Well, anyway, we’re hoping she is,” she finished self-consciously,
and turned back to her chore.

“Then I hope so, too,” Luke said.

Surprised, Peggy shut her eyes again and swatted another patch of fungus with her broom.

When they’d filled the bucket to overflowing, and Peggy feared the fungus’s mushroomy odor had settled permanently onto her
skin, Luke took the bucket and they climbed out of the basement, blinking, across the windy back garden.

He set down the bucket near the far edge of the lawn, which was bordered with trees. Freshly raked leaves were piled at intervals,
the wind lifting some and blowing them away; Luke must have gathered them up during the week. It had become clear to Peggy
ages ago that the gardener she’d assumed took care of the grounds was as much a fantasy as the ghost that whispered and rustled
in her bedroom at night. In fact, she was pretty sure the ghost would appear long before a gardener did.

“We can dump it here.” Luke made no move to pick up the bucket. Peggy couldn’t tell if he was waiting for her to do the honors.
The fungus was heaped so high, one good gust would easily spray it across the yard or onto Peggy. She didn’t want to touch
the bucket. She wanted to go inside and boil herself.

Luke squinted at her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“You have a big glob of fungus on your face.”

“Where?” Peggy swiped frantically at her cheeks with her forearms. Nothing fell away. She swiped again, hopping up and down,
desperate to get it off.

Luke picked up the bucket. A few repulsive gray brown chunks of fungus tumbled onto the lawn at her feet. She shrieked and
was sprinting to safety a few steps away when a thought occurred to her and she turned back around. Luke stood, a smile playing
at the corners of his mouth.

“There’s no fungus on my face, is there.”

He exploded into laughter.

Infuriated, embarrassed, she turned again, intending to storm up to the house. But a leaf pile caught her eye and she ran
toward it instead, catching up an armful and dumping it on his head. “Ha!” she yelled with victorious glee, and darted to
one side as he heaved his own hastily scooped armful. It missed her entirely, the leaves dancing and swirling in the damp
wind, which was delicious with smoke from the Fiorentinos’ chimney. She grabbed up two more handfuls of leaves and lunged,
smashing them against the front of Luke’s sweater with a satisfying crunch. She whooped again, leapt out of the way, and sprinted
for the house.

He caught up with her at the kitchen door. He was grinning, crinkles at the corners of his eyes, red patches on his cheeks.
“Impressive,” he panted.

She laughed, also panting. “You have leaves all over you.”

He brushed off the front of his sweater, his sleeves, his sides. “Any more?”

“Here.” Feeling daring, she took a bit of leaf from his hair and held it out to him. He carefully accepted the tiny piece
in his fingers, held it out, and let the wind carry it away.

She was breathless for reasons that had nothing to do with her sprint across the back garden.

“So I take it your friend Bex knows the truth about us—about this,” Luke said after a time.

“She and her husband, Josh,” Peggy told him. “And Padma, our salesgirl at the shop. But they’re all sworn to secrecy.”

“That’s it? No one else knows?” Luke was watching her closely. “You said you were engaged to be engaged. Surely you told your
boyfriend.”

Peggy blushed. “Don’t worry about him.” She was about to explain to Luke that she and Brock weren’t together anymore, but
Luke wasn’t interested in her personal life, and she decided she wasn’t interested in rehashing it anyway.

Luke was silent.

“Have
you
told anyone?” she asked, the wind whipping a strand of hair into her mouth.

“Just a friend.”

“Who?” Peggy couldn’t imagine. “I thought I met all your friends at the party.”

“She wasn’t at the party,” Luke said as a sprinkling of raindrops fell across the porch.

It was turning into quite a storm. The rain had started in earnest after Abigail and Peggy had retired to their rooms for
the night and Luke had gone up to his study to crunch numbers. Now it was well into the night—early morning, actually—and
the wind was hammering cold rain against his bedroom window and lashing the branches of the maple trees, which by dawn likely
would be bare. He lay awake in the dark, his mind full of thoughts like ricocheting tennis balls.

“Did you find it?” Abigail had asked over dinner. Luke had been about to help himself to seconds of Abby’s signature casserole,
a childhood favorite, the one made with chicken, celery, mayonnaise, and cheese and topped with crumbled potato chips.

Peggy had looked up with interest.

“No,” Luke had answered, distracted. Peggy had cleaned up after their day in the basement and wore a soft pink sweater pinned
with the Sedgwick brooch; she looked uncannily at home at the Sedgwick dining table. Still, he’d changed the subject to the
water problem in the basement. Peggy might pass for a Sedgwick, but she wasn’t one and didn’t need to know about Abigail’s
box with the star. That counted as personal business. He’d had a flash of inspiration that Abby might have hidden her “nest
egg” in the same secret spot as the last of the family port, but it was possible, he realized, that Peggy had thought he was
getting out the bottle to share it with her. He would have to phrase things more carefully in the future so she wouldn’t think
he was attracted to her. That wouldn’t do at all.

But spending the day with Peggy hadn’t been bad. She’d been a sport about the fungus and had taken him by surprise with the
leaf attack.

Another tennis ball sailed over the net: water in the basement. Luke couldn’t begin to guess how much that would cost to fix.
He would probably have to leave the task to the house’s new owner. He mentally knocked twenty thousand dollars off the asking
price.

Still, the sale of the property, if added to his meager investment portfolio, would go a long way toward allowing him a new
life, modest but unfettered at long last from his family name and New Nineveh. He would never leave while Abigail was still
alive, but eventually…He envisioned his possible future home. A Hemingway cottage in the Florida Keys, a cabin in the Rockies,
a sailboat to dock in any port that appealed to him. He’d do his investing during the day and write poetry at night. Nothing
to fix, no obligations, nothing to do but figure out who he was.

But just as he mentally ran to return that imaginary lob, a real and particularly strong gust of wind rattled his bedroom
window. He cursed himself for not having brought the rain bucket to the mudroom. Distracted by the leaf fight, he’d forgotten
it down on the lawn. He’d had a little fun and now would pay for it. He turned over in his bed with a groan. The bedsprings
creaked sharply. His predecessors would sneer at him, wallowing in self-pity over having to venture outside for a bucket and
going on about finding himself.
You are Luke Silas Sedgwick the Fourth. There is nothing else to know,
Silas Ebenezer Sedgwick scolded in Luke’s imagination.
Cease this self-indulgent melancholy. And get that rain bucket at once. I fear for your character
.

The fantasy tennis balls fell to the clay and stayed there. Action was the best antidote to worry, and there was an immediate
problem to deal with: the infamous three-floor Silas Sedgwick House leak.

Luke got out of bed in the dark, put on a sweater over his T-shirt and pajama pants, and jammed his feet into his slippers.
He padded past his study and then past Peggy’s closed door to the linen closet near the bathroom, where he got the third-floor
bucket, set it in the spot where the rain had already soaked through, and descended the new staircase to the second-floor
closet where he kept the second-floor bucket, placed it in its spot under the water dripping from the third floor, and went
down the final flight to the first floor. It was black as a tomb down here, but he knew the house’s every twist and turn.
It wasn’t until the dining room that he turned on a light, startling Quibble, who fled—perhaps toward the mudroom, where Abby
kept his food dish. Outside, the wind howled and rain pummeled the house. He strained his ears, and there it was: the
tap, tap, tap
of rainwater in the front entry. He stood, indecisive. He really should retrieve the bucket.

No. He’d take a chance, just this once.

The punch bowl was in the buffet cabinet, filled with folded table linens that Luke stacked neatly on the dining table. He
carried the bowl into the foyer and set it on the floor under the hanging lamp. At once the timbre of the drip changed, from
tap, tap, tap
to
tink, tink, tink
as it cascaded off the lamp into crystal instead of onto wood.

Satisfied, Luke climbed the front stairs, avoiding the creaky step. On the top floor he hesitated, and instead of turning
toward his own room, he tiptoed up to Peggy’s door. He moved closer and pressed his ear to it, straining to hear…he wasn’t
sure what. Perhaps a sign that he wasn’t the only one swatting at mental tennis balls at two in the morning. But the
tink, tink, tink
of captured rainwater echoed below, and the storm howled above, and Luke’s shame eclipsed his curiosity, and he retreated
to his vacant bed.

The paperweight was the only misstep, and who would notice it? A palm-size dome of glass with the three-dimensional pattern
Peggy remembered was called
millefiori
, it wasn’t the first, second, or tenth object any other Sunday afternoon lunch guest at the Ver Planck family compound would
see—not when there were so many other breathtaking things to look at. Such as the sculpture in the corner: a ten-foot heap
of tangled, rusted wire out of which reached a single pink-resin arm; or the rug fashioned from loops of wool the diameter
of rope; or the art on the soaring walls. From her spot on a geometric red sofa, Tiffany pointed. “That one with the giant
blue splotch drives my nana up a tree. She says she could do it herself blindfolded.” She laughed her infectious snorting
laugh. Through the wall of glass behind her, a sinuous steel sculpture took the place of honor in a goldening meadow of tall
grass that had surely been landscaped to look unlandscaped.

But Peggy kept returning to the paperweight on the coffee table, and at last Tiffany picked it up and passed it to her. “My
mom gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. Chachi—that’s our decorator—he hates it. Tom made him let me keep it, but when
Chachi comes in here he always goes”—she sang—”‘One of these things is not like the others…one of these things doesn’t belong…’
Remember, from
Sesame Street
?”

Peggy thought Chachi would sing the same thing if he saw Peggy herself, small and incongruous in her own chair, a gray upholstered
spiral whose twin she was certain she’d once seen at the Museum of Modern Art. She clutched the paperweight. It was solid,
feminine, comforting.

“I’m so happy you could come,” Tiffany said. “I’m sure you don’t like to be apart from Luke. You’re separated so much as it
is.” She stopped and drew together her eyebrows in concern. “Are you cold? I could turn up the heat.”

Peggy shook her head. It was overwhelming—the lunch prepared by an invisible chef and served by a housekeeper; this airplane
hangar of a house, with its pitched angles and lofty ceilings. Peggy’s parents could park their RV in Tiffany’s living room.
Peggy suspected she’d uttered no more than a dozen sentences since she’d driven this week’s rented car up the sweeping driveway
and spotted Tiffany waiting for her at the front door, bouncy haired and smiling in pressed jeans and cheetah-spotted needlepoint
slippers.