Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (22 page)

Pamela, the florist who was not a florist, mind you, but a
floral designer,
was causing one problem. She did not want to use Queen Anne’s lace in the bouquets.

For generations the women in Rose’s family had been named after flowers—Lily, Rose, Camellia, Daisy, Violet, Primrose, Holly. There had even been a pair of great-aunts named Iris and Pansy. But by the time Annie had been born, they had run out of names. Rather than name her Petunia, Guy and Rose had decided to name her Anne, after Guy’s mother.

Of course, when she turned four, Annie started to want a flower of her own, so her parents had declared that Queen Anne’s lace was her flower. That’s why Guy sometimes called her Queenie or Miss Queenie. Rose’s parents had joined in. They’d stopped mowing a dry corner of the Adirondacks property, and within two years the Queen Anne’s lace had taken over.

So Cami wanted the bouquets to be camellias, roses, and Queen Anne’s lace. Pamela-the-floral-designer objected. Queen
Anne’s lace—aka wild carrot—was a noxious weed. Other blossoms could provide a similar feathery texture.

Pamela was, she told us,
extremely
active in the local gardening societies, and one of the
oldest
organizations had recently presented a program on noxious weeds, including Queen Anne’s lace. So, as a commitment to the botanical integrity of the local communities, the use of such plants in any way was being
strongly
discouraged.

“We don’t intend to cultivate them,” Rose said evenly. “We want them in the bouquets, that’s all.”

Oh, no. Rose needed to
understand.
Truly. Pamela was offering only a little advice, the
littlest
bit. This would get Rose off to
such
a disadvantageou
s
start if people knew that she was insisting on this. Things were done a certain way out here, and of course Rose
couldn’t
be expected . . . not at first, but—

Even I, as inept as I was at the nuances of girl fighting, could see what was happening. Pamela-the-floral-designer was trying to lord it over Rose, make Rose feel like an upstart arriviste.

It wasn’t working.

“I’m sorry to say this.” Rose began gathering up Pamela’s various brochures and sketches. “This is a deal breaker. If you want this job, you are using Queen Anne’s lace.”

Pamela fluttered, her hands fluttered, her eyelids fluttered, her brain probably fluttered. Oh, this wasn’t a
job
to her. It was a creative opportunity.

I knew, Rose knew, and Pamela knew that she had already invested hours and hours, if not days, in this wedding. She had gotten Rose and Guy to hire her favorite landscape designer and her favorite lighting designer.

Rose stood up. “I’ve appreciated your time. I’m sorry we weren’t able to agree.”

Oh no no
no.
Rose sat back down, and we listened to another ten minutes of gushing and fluttering while Pamela justified why
she was deigning to work with a family so deeply unconcerned with botanical integrity.

On New Year’s Day, Guy and Rose had invitations to three open-houses that they felt obligated to attend, at least briefly. All the hosts had said that houseguests were welcome, but I had no interest in going. I couldn’t imagine wanting to go to a crowded stand-up event where I knew no one. Mike would enjoy such events even less than I, but when he came downstairs in the morning, he was wearing gray slacks and a good sweater. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, Claudia would want to go to these open houses. She wouldn’t know anyone either, but she could write about them on her blog.

I thought she was overdressed. She had on one of those straight knee-length Jackie Kennedy–type dresses with a little jacket over it. The jacket and dress were woven with twists of her sand-tan-beige colors. When she leaned forward, the lining of her jacket was a jolt of vivid coral. Her shoes were the same coral; the heels were high and narrow, the sides low cut.

But what did I know? I was wearing a fleece pullover that the boys had given me for Christmas.

At the last minute Guy took off the sweater he had had on under his blazer, draping it over the back of one of the sofas. As they were leaving the house, I asked Rose if she wanted me to take it back upstairs. She thanked me.

I had never been in the master suite before. It turned out to be a very large space with a seating area and doors leading to closets or dressing rooms. But it was nearly empty. The king-size bed was made with an ivory comforter and white pillowcases that didn’t quite match. The bed itself had no headboard or footboard. The nightstands didn’t match, nor did the two reading lamps. The parquet floor wasn’t carpeted, and although there was a loveseat in the seating area, it sat there by itself: there were no tables or lamps to
make it usable. The walls were off-white, and there was nothing on them.

For the first time, I wondered about Rose and Guy’s relationship. Except for the occasional jokes about what an extrovert he was or how he spent too much money on gifts for her and the girls, I’d never heard her criticize him, and he spoke of her only with respect. I’d never heard them disagree or even bicker.

But I’d also never seen them touch each other.

Above all, I hadn’t liked staying under the same roof as Mike and Claudia. They had been staying in the center front room that my father had been in, and all weekend long Claudia kept talking about “our” room. She never said,
I need to get a sweater.
It was always,
I need to go up to
our
room to get a sweater.
Unlike at Thanksgiving, she frequently touched Mike. When he’d been reading the paper at the table, she’d rested her hand on his shoulder and leaned over him, her breast brushing close to his hair. When he’d been sitting on one of the leather sofas, she’d sat down next to him and lifted his arm so that it was around her shoulders. On New Year’s Day, when they were waiting for Rose and Guy so that they could
all go off to the open houses as two happy little couples on a happy little double date, Claudia had straightened the collar of Mike’s shirt and then kissed his cheek.

We all know you’re a couple,
I had wanted to shriek.
Yes, you’re having sex. We get that.

But there was no point in talking to a Bobo doll. It would never stop bouncing back, never stop smiling.

He ripped open the envelope. A fierce joy flashed across his face as he read the letter. He handed it to me.

That he would be admitted was never in doubt. His record was better than their published averages, and, more important, this was the right school for him and he was the right student for the school. What he found so darkly satisfying was the amount of “merit money” he would get. I peered over his shoulder to read the letter. Stone-Chase College would discount his tuition to the extent that his education would cost less than if he went to one of Virginia’s state universities. The more money Stone-Chase gave him, the less he would have to take from his dad.

Zack must have e-mailed Jeremy his news, and Cami must have told her parents, because a few days later Guy called me in the middle of the day. “Tell me about this college Zack is so excited about.”

Annie was a junior at Berkeley Carroll, a private school in her
neighborhood, and apparently her high-school record was even worse than Zack’s. The Zander-Browns were hiring a private college counselor to work with her. The counselor had encouraged them to have Annie start visiting colleges. Perhaps being able to envision herself on a college campus would motivate her to apply herself more.

“Stone-Chase may not be a great fit,” I said. Its students were earnest, middle-class, even slightly provincial. Annie was trendy and urban. “But it will be an easy place for her to visit alone.”

But Zack desperately wanted the process to be over. Stone-Chase was his first choice. Why shouldn’t he accept its offer? He didn’t want to go to those other schools. Why should he give them a chance to turn him down?

Of course, he wasn’t going to admit to Mike that he was afraid of the other schools rejecting him. So the two of them fought every time they saw each other. It got to the point that I was almost relieved whenever Claudia was joining them. They didn’t fight in front of her.

When I worked the night shift, Zack left for school before I got home. One morning in early February I came home from work and found a note on the kitchen table: “Dad said it was okay if I withdrew my other aps so I did.”

I called Mike at his office. “Zack said you and he worked this out. I know it was hard for you to give in, but really this is the best thing for him.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice was sharp. “Zack
and I didn’t work anything out. If anything, last night was the worst ever.”

I reached across the kitchen counter to get Zack’s note. I read it to Mike.

“I never said any such thing,” he snapped. “Where did he get that idea?”

“Isn’t it possible that you said, ‘do whatever you want,’ or something like that?” When Mike was really angry, he got sarcastic, saying things that he obviously didn’t mean. I’d always hated that. How could I fight back?

“If I did say it, I didn’t mean it,” he said. “And he should have known that.”

“But if you’re going to say something you don’t mean, why shouldn’t he act on something he doesn’t believe?” I wasn’t sure that came out right, but my point was simple:
If you’re going to act like a big baby, why shouldn’t he?

When Zack walked in the door that afternoon, he was tense and defensive. He confirmed my sense of what had happened. “Dad told me to go ahead and do it. That I could shoot myself in the foot if I wanted.”

“You know he didn’t mean it.”

“It’s too late now. I mailed the letters already, stopped at the Palisades post office on the way to school.”

This was a kid who would wait until January 23 to write his grandfather a thank-you note for a very generous Christmas gift and then leave the note sitting on his desk until mid-March when I would finally address the envelope. But last night he had come home, written and printed seven letters, addressed seven envelopes, and found seven stamps. He was serious.

“Do you send in your acceptance to Stone-Chase?”

“Well, I did sort of not do anything about the U.Va. ap. But I’m not going to school with a bunch of preppies.”

Did sort of not do anything
. It took me a moment to figure that out. He hadn’t withdrawn his University of Virginia application. His defiance of his father had not been complete. In fact, it had been pretty toothless.

The University of Virginia was known as a “public Ivy”—one of the state-supported institutions that aspired to provide an educational environment comparable to those at the Ivy League schools. It had the highest admission standards of all the Virginia state schools, but Zack and I were now Virginia residents. Because of that, the college counselor had said that Zack had a chance at U.Va., not a great one, but if all the stars lined up right, he might get admitted or at least be put on the wait list.

I called Mike again. “He left U.Va. in.”

“So he’s not such an idiot.”

“Mike! Do
not
talk about him that way. You’re being a bigger idiot than he is.”