My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (20 page)

Her besotted grandparents gave her everything. Unlike their behavior toward their late son, every benefit they conferred upon his posthumous child was innocent of any agenda save her happiness. When she became an articulate being, she had but to voice a wish, however fanciful, and all the social and financial clout of the AustinCowles family would be brought into play for the sole purpose of fulfilling that desire.

Overindulgence of the young is a perilous thing. Children spoil more readily than oysters in July. Her grandparents' inexhaustible worship might have caused little Wylda's life to go very bad very quickly if she had entertained any unsuitable desires, but she had none,
none!
She accepted all the gifts and benefits with which her adoring grandparents showered her, doing so with a quiet graciousness fit to make the Queen of England look like a mule skinner by comparison, yet not one of these was ever her idea. She requested nothing.

Shame on that jaded soul who would leap to the cynical conclusion that Wylda's behavior was sly in the extreme, that she was mistress of the ancient art of acquisition through the Request Indirect. It was not so. She never dropped a hint, never sighed over highticket gewgaws, never wondered aloud how much was that doggie, dress, or Daimler in the window. She never so much as wrote a letter to Santa Claus.

If it is truly more blessed to give than to receive, young Wylda was sanctified in spades. Her grandparents gave her worldly gifts, but she gave them something infinitely more precious: the sincere, bonedeep docility that her father had died withholding. She had not a single rebellious bone in her body, neither mutinous heart nor insubordinate mind.

In this she took after her mother. The AustinCowles manner of living was quite literally stunning to a woman of the former Miss Scruggs's social class. In the twentythree years between Wylda's birth and wedding, the erstwhile florist's assistant dwelled in nighnunlike selfeffacement in the shadow of her dynamic inlaws. Apart from the occasional command appearance at family functions, one would hardly guess she was there. This suited all parties concerned admirably.

I was in The Club bar discussing the finer points of bespoke golf balls with ten of my fellow members on that February day when Hilliard AustinCowles made the grand announcement. He drifted into our midst like a curl of bourbonlaced tobacco smoke, beckoned the barman, conveyed his desires in a whisper, then sat down in the leather armchair most removed from the rest of us. Within moments we knew that something was afoot, for through the bartender's particular sort of magic, there now appeared at our several elbows bottles of a buxom Veuve Clicquot champagne, served up in The Club's best crystal flutes.

We maintained the silence proper to the occasion. When a gentleman sets drink of such quality before so many, it would be uncivil to rush him into an explanation.

However, etiquette did not forbid us from sampling that effervescent nectar, and so we sipped and waited, waited and sipped. We knew that Hilliard was acutely aware of our painful curiosity and that, being human, he relished our mounting discomfort even more than we savored his champagne.

At last he spoke: "My friends, thank you for joining me in a modest drink. It's not every day that one's only grandchild becomes engaged to be married."

A politely muted clamor of congratulation went up from all our vintagemoistened lips. Bit by bit, we teased further details out of Hilliard's rockribbed old Yankee reticence. The name of the prospective bridegroomone Miles Martialwas universally unfamiliar and, once uttered, required a fair portion of explication.

"Do you know, it was the strangest thing," Hilliard said. "At first our Wylda was abnormally secretive when Margot and I asked her how she met the gentleman.

When we pressed herwe do have the right to know everything about our grandchild's lifeshe became vague."

"Good heavens!" cried Middleton. He was not quite our Oldest Member, but well enough advanced in years. "Was there something unsavory in the man's background, or was some aspect of their introduction . . . improper? Hilliard, I'm astonished that you'd give your blessing to any of this."

A brief frown flittered across Hilliard's patrician features. "And I am astonished at your level of selfdeception. Really, Cadby"long acquaintance permitted him the employment of Middleton's Christian name"your attraction to my granddaughter is common knowledge, as ill considered as it's ill concealed."

Middleton blushed and sputtered. "I resent your allegations deeply, Hilliard," he said. "Of course I'm fond of the child. I'm only concerned about her future happiness. If the circumstances surrounding her introduction to the man she intends to marry"here he could not prevent his voice from breaking just a bit"are so irregular that she withholds them even from you, perhaps you should stop this from going any farther. Purely for Wylda's sake, of course. She's young. With matters of the heart, the young tend to get. . . ideas, frivolous ones. In the long run, she'd benefit from the guidance of older, wiser heads."

"Tchah!" Thus Hilliard dismissed Middleton's clumsily veiled agenda. "My granddaughter hasn't had a frivolous idea in her life. As it happened, they met at a dog show last May. Martial's pedigreed mastiff, Champion Caesar Alexander's Philippi of AusterlitzManassas, took Best in Class. Her little school chum, Solana Winthrop, introduced her to Martial when Wylda remarked how much she would like to have a closer look at the winning canine. From that
most
proper introduction, mutual affection bloomed."

"Solana Winthrop ..." I mused aloud upon the name. "How could she have been in attendance at a dog show last May? We were told that she would be studying art history in Paris from April through December."

"Er, yes," said Elwood Porter, who had married Solana's elder sister Meredith.

"It turned out that her need to study art history was a false alarm."

"So you see, Wylda's reticence was motivated by discretion, not deception,"

Hilliard added. "Until Solana's family might find a tactful way to announce her reappearance in Society, Wylda chose to shield her friend. Once there was no further need for confidentiality, she was suitably frank with her grandmother and me. Of course we also made our own inquiries. Miles Martial's bona fides are impeccable. He comes from an ancient family with unimpeachable connections in the worlds of finance, industry, and politics. The bulk of his fortune is derived from munitions, with prudent diversification in aviation technology, shipbuilding, and applied biochemical research."

"In other words, he's worth a mint," Hasbrook whispered in my ear. "And likely to stay so. You don't go broke catering wars."

"Have the happy couple set a date for the wedding?" Porter asked our host.

"As a matter of fact, our Wylda has decided on a June wedding."

Here Hilliard spared a moment to glare at us en masse, in case anyone would have the supremely bad taste to begin counting the months between now and June.

A natural but unnecessary reaction on the part of that devoted grandparent: We had no need to resort to spiteful calculations in order to conclude that the girl was quite

out
of the family way. This was February. If Wylda had been in a condition delicate enough to oblige either marriage or the abrupt study of art history, a June wedding would display her indiscretion for all the world to see, even if she glided down the aisle in an oversized Empirewaisted bridal gown.

"Well, well, a June wedding!" Middleton affected a cheery air that fooled no one. "How nice to see that there are still some young people who value tradition.

And where will the event take place?"

"Why, right here, of course," said Hilliard. "At The Club."

Elwood Porter gave a little cry of distress and dropped his champagne.

It was about a month later, as the caterer flies, that I was approached by Porter and Middleton on a matter of some delicacy. Rather than discuss the matter over drinks at The Club, they instead invited me to join them in New Haven for a private dinner at Morey's. There they laid matters on the table.

"You
must
speak with Hilliard," Middleton said. "You must make him see that what Wylda has in mind is out of the question. There must not be a wedding at The Club."

"Who knows what will happen if there is?" Porter shuddered and darted his eyes to left and right, as though the physical embodiment of Dire Consequences somehow had managed to procure a neighboring table. (An impossibility, of course: Access to Morey's is reserved for carefully selected Yale men andreluctantly I concede itwomen. Dire Consequences and the Ivy League simply do not mix socially.)

"My friends," I said, "I understand your trepidation. I, too, feel somewhat less than sanguine at the prospect of such an event taking place at The Club, and with good cause: I have been a member since well before that dreadful day when Simpson turned our world upon its head."

"Ah yes," said Middleton, who had been a member of The Club for even longer than I. "Simpson." He pronounced the illstarred name with the same intonation that medieval folk might have reserved for remarking,
Ah yes, the Black Death.

To understand the enormity of harm that Simpson perpetrated upon The Club, it is best if first you comprehend The Club itself and all that it entails. Set amid the greenest of PGAworthy golf courses, it is a monument to exquisite sophistication and understated luxury. It is blessed with a dining room whose innumerable perfections of cuisine send the most fastidious gourmets into gales of frustrated tears when they find absolutely nothing about which to complain. The wine cellar and the bar are stocked and tended by men who are more like high priests in the Holy Brotherhood of Grape and Grain rather than mere names on The Club payroll.

In the past, The Club had been the site of winter balls, summer dances, spring fetes, autumn banquets, debutante cotillions, ladies' luncheons, gentlemen's smokers, high teas, and formal dinners to bewail or celebrate the outcome of The Game. (The
only
Game, that glorious struggle for gridiron supremacy between Yale and Harvard, beside which conflict the Hundred Years' War was a mere bagatelle, a historical hissy fit.) Indeed, as I have said already, The Club was the setting for the final chapter in my sister Katherine's matrimonial history.

Simpson changed all that.

He was one of that chancy yet unavoidable subgroup within The Club's membership, a Legacy. Had he applied for admission independent of his ancestors, his own character, attitude, and finances might not have permitted the Committee to accept him with open arms. As matters and the bylaws stood, they were obliged to do so.

Simpson was a rogue, a wild cannon, a smart aleck whose notion of an excellent jape tended to the exotic. It was this rather outre sense of humor that motivated him to bring back from his European travels a souvenir that changed both the fate and the face of The Club irrevocably.

It was a sphinx.

The sphinx in question was not of the Egyptian breed but Greek. Its leonine body did not stretch at ease upon the eternal desert sands but sat upright, winged like an eagle, poised for action. In retrospect, "it" is quite the wrong pronoun to apply to the beast, for it had a woman's head and pert, naked breasts. Moreover, lest you think that Simpson's sin against The Club was merely the donation of a somewhat vulgar statue, allow me to provide enlightenment: This sphinx was real.

None of us at The Club had any idea how Simpson managed to locate such a marvel, let alone transport her through Customs unmolested. We were too wellbred to ask, and Simpson was too much the slyboots to volunteer anything.

He was one of those tedious people who believe that sitting on information like a broody hen upon the nest gives the sitter a mystical superiority over those
not
in the know.

Simpson's sphinx was named Oenone, and she had her breed's taste for blood and riddles. Tradition taught that the monster could not tear you to bloody bitesized bits unless you failed to answer her sole riddle, so it was all rather sporting, in a ghastly way. Since everyone at The Club enjoyed the benefits of a Classical education, we all knew the answer to the sphinx's riddle from the story of Oedipus: What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, three legs at sunset?

Man.
Armed with this smug certainty, we agreed to Simpson's suggestion that Oenone be given prowling space on the back nine. It seemed wholly safe and somewhat piquant to permit her presence. It made The Club
different.

"Different" is not an abiding synonym for "better," as we discovered to our grief on the day that Oenone learned some new riddles. That was when the disappearances began.

When we finally discovered why so many members were not returning from their appointed round of golf, Oenone took off for parts unknown. So did Simpson, but the damage was done: The sphinx's residence somehow had imbued our beloved Club with an otherworldly musk that attracted other mythic entities as capital gains draw tax vampires. These incursions made up for in ferocity what they lacked in frequency, for which we were as thankful as the circumstances allowed. How much comfort can one derive from the phrase
Why, yes, we
do
have
bloodbaths here at The Club, but not really all that often?
The insecurity was almost as dire as the actual incidents: As with Democratic presidencies, we lived in constant fear, never knowing when the next one would occur.

This state of affairs tended to make most members think twice before engaging The Club as the setting for a grandscale private affair like a wedding. Of what use the perfectly set table, the superbly prepared meal, if ultimately it would be befouled by an invasion of harpies? Moreover, mythology burgeoned with tales of weddings gone horribly wrong.

The battle of the Lapiths and the centaurs at the marriage of Theseus' bosom chum Perithoos occurred when the caterer neglected to note that creatures half man and half horse cannot hold their liquor in either half. A bit too much of the grape caused one centaur to confuse the bride with a wedding favor. He attempted to carry her off and the melee was on.