Seating Arrangements. Maggie Shipstead
to begin with, an unlucky penny, and Celeste, in the end, had come to accept the bulk of the blame for the sorrows caused by their marriage. Nothing like that should happen to Biddy. Biddy had always been such a docile creature, highly competent but docile, happy to be a kind of ladies’ maid to her sisters through her childhood and then an earnest bluestocking and then a selfless wife. To betray her would be the height of cruelty. But this was crazy. Agatha couldn’t possibly want Winn.
“Oh,” Celeste said, drawing an expansive sigh of phony reminiscence, “let me cast my mind back. I think—I think—yes. I remember now. Winn was exactly the same.”
Piper made a high squawk that Celeste supposed was laughter. “There has to be more. Tell! What was he like?”
“Really. I couldn’t possibly come up with one thing that’s changed.”
Daphne stirred. “Mom once said he had a bad reputation before they met. Apparently he liked the ladies.”
Agatha’s bouncing foot stilled.
“I think he started those rumors himself,” Celeste said. “Your father is a born monogamist. Boring as hell.”
“Mom seemed kind of proud of it,” Daphne said. “She’s funny.”
Agatha uncrossed her legs and sat up. The shade had fully caught her, and she rubbed her arms as though to brush it off. She said, “Some people like a little competition. You want to feel like you have someone desirable.”
“You would say that,” Daphne said. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
But Piper was nodding. “No,” she said, “I think that’s true sometimes. You want to feel like the guy had lots of options but chose you. Like you tamed him a little bit.”
“That is so retro,” said Daphne.
“Don’t you feel that way?” Agatha asked. “It’s not like Greyson was a virgin when you met. It’s not like Greyson was ever a virgin.”
“Well,” Daphne said. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
Sadly, but with a certain pleasure of anticipation, Celeste accepted that she needed a drink. “All right,” she said, hoisting herself to her feet and sliding back into her sandals. “I’ll leave you girls to it. Someone has to tell Daphne what’s going to happen on her wedding night, and I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“We’ll be in soon,” Daphne said. “We’ve lost our sun. Check for ticks.”
Celeste walked around the house and greeted Livia and Dominique, who were deep in conversation on the deck beside two bags of shucked corn. Inside, place cards and seating charts were spread over the table, but Biddy was nowhere to be seen. The bottle of gin was out on the counter, and after she poured a little into a tumbler and added ice and a dollop of tonic, she put it away in a cupboard, where people were less likely to monitor its level. The first sip, bitter and fizzy, was unspeakably delicious, and she felt her nerves begin to settle at once. The bottom line was that she was being paranoid about Winn. And even if she wasn’t, what could she do?
After retrieving the bottle and splashing out a tiny bit more gin, she climbed up through the house to the widow’s walk, where she could have some privacy and fresh air and take in the view. Reclining in a chair, she closed her eyes and pressed the sweating glass against her forehead. She wanted to tell herself she had once been as sexy as Agatha, but her delusions were not so strong as that. Still, she had been seductive. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to poach Wyeth from his mousy wife and three children. The best she could say for herself now was that she was the kind of woman people called well preserved. But despite all her restorative efforts, she looked tired. Which she was, in the existential sense. There would be no more seductions for her, no more ecstasy, no more destruction. She and Cooper had a pleasant life together, a sanctuary built by two reformed sinners around a policy of maximal calm and minimal communication. Quiet dinners out, long weeks apart when he was off sailing, compatible taste in TV and movies, mutual tolerance of each other’s friends, agreement that they would never marry. Maybe she had stumbled on the ideal relationship for a woman her age. Maybe, after all these years, she had solved the riddle. Even if things fell apart, she would draft another companion from the bush leagues of washed-up lovers, and they would wait out the violet hour together.
I’ve spent the past six months wishing he were dead,” Livia said to Dominique. Immediately, she regretted the melodrama of the statement. Melodrama did not fly with Dominique.
The last of the corn had been shucked, and Dominique was leaning back in her chair and looking out over the lawn. Celeste had walked up the grass a minute before, and they could hear the murmur of bride and bridesmaids from around the corner of the house. “I doubt that’s what you were really wishing for,” she said tolerantly.
Livia considered. “Everyone thinks I should just get over it,” she said. “But I don’t know what’s on the other side of ‘it.’ I’m not even exactly sure what ‘it’ is.”
“No need to be all metaphysical about it. You know what you’re supposed to do. You just don’t want to do it.”
“I don’t want to give up prematurely.”
“No one could accuse you of that. I could read you back the fifty e-mails you sent me this winter detailing the ten million arguments you’d pitched to Teddy for why you should be together. But look, you’ve given it the old college try, he hasn’t come around, so cross your fingers and let go.”
A cry came from above and a crow swooped from the roof, trying to gobble something down as it flew, pursued by an enraged seagull. The birds disappeared over the trees. Livia said nothing.
“It’s been a while since you’ve talked to him, right?” Dominique pressed. “Just keep going with that. Invest some time. I mean, think of it this way. How do you think it looks if you go around mooning over him for months after he dumped you?”
“Why does it matter how it looks?” Livia said hotly, surprised at Dominique. “Why does everyone care so much about how everything looks?”
Dominique held up her hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not a member of this Great Gatsby reenactment society you all have going on. I just think it’s possible to trick yourself into feeling better by pretending you feel better.”
“Yeah,” Livia said. “Yeah, I know, but I keep thinking about how far along I’d be. I’d be just as preggers as Daphne.” Two weeks after her abortion, she had been summoned home for a weekend. Daphne and Greyson were coming up from the city for dinner. They had news. Winn roasted a duck. They were still on the salad course when Daphne bubbled over and announced she was pregnant and she and Greyson were getting married. Livia, to her enduring shame, had burst into tears and run from the table.
“Women,” Dominique said knowingly. “We measure our lives in months.”
“People kept telling me that at least now I know I can get pregnant. Like, phew, what a relief. I’d really be spending a lot of time worrying about infertility otherwise.”
“Yeah, but what do you say to someone about their abortion? The impulse is to grasp for silver linings.”
“I’m not beating myself up over it. I just want to meet someone else. Barring that, I just want to sleep with someone else. To at least create the sensation of moving on.”
“Fine,” said Dominique, “but beware the rebound guy.”
“I just want a distraction.”
“That’s what they all say.”
BIDDY WAS COLLECTING the last of Winn’s groceries from the Land Rover when he came walking up out of the trees, frowning and moving his hands to emphasize some speech he was giving in his head.
“Where