The Wedding Sisters (17 page)

“Honestly, my life isn't all that interesting.”

“I think that's going to change,” he said with a smile.

*   *   *

Afterwards, everyone went to nearby Hogs & Heifers for drinks. That's what you did after these things. Amy texted Andy,
We're on our way to Hogs. Want to meet us?
He wrote back that he was too slammed.
Do you think I should head back to the office?
she wrote. He replied,
No. Have fun, Brand Ambassador
☺

Only one in the afternoon, the bar was nearly empty except for two men at the end of the bar, Con Ed workers whose truck was parked out front.

Rupert ordered a round of shots for everyone, including the Con Ed guys. Amy fell into place near the edge of the bar, wedged between Brandi and Stella. She was extremely aware of gorgeous Marcus on the opposite side of Stella.

Rupert was busy telling a story about the early '90s, when Hogs was the only bar in the neighborhood. That was back when the Meatpacking District really was for meatpacking, and Rupert would come out of the bar in the early morning hours and there was literally blood in the streets from the butchers already at work. Meat hung from hooks outside the buildings that now housed shops like Scoop and DVF and Jeffrey Bruce. This was just a few years after Amy was born, a fact that made her feel blessedly young, but also as if she had missed out on something.

The bartender, a woman with inky black hair and tattoos and wearing an off-the-shoulder Metallica T-shirt, tight jeans, and a cowboy hat, poured them another round of tequila. Amy was torn between being uncomfortably buzzed with her boss, and eager for the alcohol to take effect and dull the jumpy feeling she had around Marcus.

At some point, the bartender began doing shots with them, and Stella left to take a phone call.

Marcus edged down a spot at the bar, now elbow to elbow with Amy. “Do you play pool?” he asked.

“No.”

“Want to learn?”

“I'm a bad student,” she said. It came out much more flirtatiously than she'd intended.

“Oh, come on. I don't believe that.”

She hopped down from her barstool and followed him to the pool table. While he set up, she examined all the framed photos of the bar's celebrity clientele. She squinted at one of Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow. She had very short hair and he wore a somewhat cheesy leather jacket. Had they been a couple?

“Okay, we're good to go,” Marcus said, the balls arranged in a perfect triangle at one end of the table. He handed her a cue, and when she took it from him, their knuckles brushed. The contact felt hot and electric. It was like the heat packet Andy's mother had given her once to keep in her gloves to stay warm while skiing—instant 150 degrees against her skin.

The little heat packets had amazed Amy at the time. It wasn't that they were particularly expensive or even difficult to find. It was more that it was yet another example of how there was never a moment of discomfort in the lives of the Bruces. And when she was with them, she was cocooned in the security that came with extreme wealth and celebrity. She had seen this kind of wealth when she went to school at Yardley. But then it had been secondhand. Her father was staff. In the Yardley family, she was the poor relation. But now, she was the real deal.

Marcus put his arms around her to show her how to lean forward, positioning the cue between her thumb and forefinger. Every cell in her body lit up, on high alert. Through the haze of alcohol, she was intensely aware of everything—his smell, woodsy and masculine. The song playing: “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2. She turned to look at him. A mistake. His intense beauty, the slope of his nose, the arc of his cheekbones, and his blue gray eyes focused on her, gave her the sense that the room was tilting. And the only way to right her equilibrium was to lean against him. His arms tightened around her, and desire shot through her like a drug.

Some animalistic sense of self-preservation caused her to glance up, across the room to where Stella was now watching her.

Amy abruptly pulled away from Marcus, startling him. She mumbled something about needing the bathroom.

The bathroom, a tiny, graffiti-scarred cabinet of a room, offered the refuge she needed to collect herself. There was no mirror, and so she could not confront her guilty reflection.

When she emerged, she headed for the bar. She would talk to Stella, assume her rightful place with the other Jeffrey Bruce executives. But Stella was nowhere to be seen.

“Where's Stella?” she asked Rupert.

“Called back to the office.”

“I should get back to the office, too.”

“Don't be such a suit. You're too young for that,” said Rupert. “Come on, we're going to my place.”

*   *   *

Rupert lived in a town house on West Tenth Street, a four-story building with a starkly modern and minimalist interior.

“Please take your shoes off,” Rupert told everyone. “These floors cost more than God.”

The walls were covered in photographs of all the celebrities Rupert had worked with over the years—ten years at
Rolling Stone,
fourteen at
Vanity Fair.
Kurt Cobain, Kate Moss, Princess Diana. He shot the Jeffrey Bruce ads only as a favor, because Jeffrey had given him his first break. Jeffrey was a genuinely nice guy; people told Amy this again and again, as if they'd stumbled upon a unicorn. For the millionth time, she thought about how lucky she was to be in his orbit, to be a part of his family.

She texted Andy,
I'm at Rupert's house. Leaving soon.

Ask him to show you the photo of Madonna and my dad.

Okay! Love you.

“Andy said I should ask you to see the photo of his father and Madonna,” Amy said. It was the first time all day she had acknowledged or referred in any way to the depth of her personal relationship to the company. She looked to see if the comment registered with Marcus, but he was absorbed in his phone.

“Oh, Jeffrey would kill me. He hates that photo. That was back when he dyed his hair, which no man should ever, ever do.”

“Amen,” said Brandi.

“You think?” said Amy.

“Um, yeah. Whom would you rather look like at fifty—Johnny Depp or George Clooney?”

“Gotcha.”

“Let's get the grand tour out of the way,” said Rupert.

There was an elevator, and they filed into it. Rupert took them to the top floor, and the doors opened to a short flight of stairs that led to a rooftop deck.

“Not too shabby, Rupert,” said Brandi.

They had a view of the entire West Village and a partial view of the Hudson. Amy knew the sunset must be phenomenal.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked.

“Long enough that I prefer the bar to the view. Shall we, people?”

Everyone followed Rupert back to the stairs, quickly and wordlessly, as if he were the pied piper of the West Village. Everyone but Marcus.

Amy didn't move. She had the sense that the moment was somehow precious, but couldn't quite put her finger on why. Maybe she was reluctant to leave the fresh air. Yes, that was it. Already, it smelled more like winter than fall. Soon it would be too cold to enjoy the outdoors.

Amy tried not to take too much notice of Marcus. She leaned over the brick balustrade, pretending to be absorbed in the scenery. Her heart pounded. She felt the weight of his presence as heavily as if they had planned this together, a secret rendezvous. She wondered if she had somehow missed a subtle cue from him, some inadvertent collusion that had passed between them.

She felt his eyes on her. The urge to look at him was excruciating. The fact that she didn't indicating a willpower she never knew she possessed. And the longer she resisted, the stronger she felt. This was nothing, she told herself. She needed to go back downstairs. But she was frozen.

Marcus was the one who moved first. Months later, when mentally flagellating herself, she would remind herself of this.

As if it made any difference.

At first, she thought he was just walking toward the farthest end of the balustrade to get a better view of the water. That was what her mind reasoned as she stayed rooted in place, even as he moved directly behind her, pressing his body against hers, moving her hair out of the way so he could kiss the base of her neck.

She felt it in her pelvis, in the deepest part of herself.

When she turned to face him, to find his mouth with her mouth, there wasn't a thought in her head. His lips, his teeth, his tongue—she devoured him, every part of her throbbing, and from her throat rose noises she didn't recognize, like the sounds a small animal would make.

He unbuttoned her jeans and slipped his hand between her legs. His touch was like an electric prod.

“Yes,” she gasped.

And then his pants were down, and he lifted her, somehow holding her against the balustrade as her legs wrapped around him and he pressed inside her with a soft moan.

“My God,” she said.

“Yeah, baby,” he growled, his mouth open and wet against her neck, his thrusts hard and even.

The only thing tethering her to the earth, to reality, was the hard brick wall grazing her back.

There was no condom. She was on the pill, but still.

“You can't—we aren't using any—”

“I'll pull out,” he said, and somehow in the alternate universe she currently inhabited, this was okay.

She looked at him; his eyes shut tight, his eyelashes long. That perfectly carved nose, like a caricature of male beauty. She threaded her fingers through his shiny, dark hair—and she came so hard, it scared her.

“Fuck,” he said, and true to his word, jerked quickly out of her. She felt the liquid heat of his come through her pants, and the logistical problem this created was not immediately clear to her; all she felt was a dizzying excitement.

She would deal with everything else later.

 

thirteen

Meryl could finally breathe easy.

The battery of tests came back negative. Her mother was healthy.

The CT scan, the X-rays, the brain MRI, and something Dr. Friedman called an MMSE showed no sign of anything wrong.

“I can refer you to a geropsychiatrist. Depression is very common at this stage of life.”

Meryl took the name and number, but knew her mother would never agree to see a psychiatrist. This was one of the few arenas in which she resisted embracing American culture: medication and psychiatry. That, and dieting. Though her mother never needed to diet; she was always incredibly, effortlessly slim.

So: no evidence of dementia, Alzhiemer's, stroke, or brain tumor. So what, then?

*   *   *

“Fancy,” said Rose outside the Monique Lhuillier bridal boutique on East Seventy-second Street. It was not a compliment.

Meryl shot her a look. “Mother, if you're not going to be positive—”

“Seriously, Meg. I feel like I should have worn a ball gown just to come along today,” said Jo.

“You look fine,” Meryl said, suddenly wishing she'd taken Meg dress shopping alone.

“Gran, she is the most incredible dress designer,” said Meg. “You're going to love everything, I just know it.”

“We'll see,” said Rose.

Meryl glared at her mother. The least her mother could do was fake it for an hour. She wasn't even sure why Rose had agreed to come along.

Meryl also wished Amy had mustered some enthusiasm and joined them. She had an image of all three sisters together on this occasion, but Amy had insisted she needed to be at work.

Not wanting to take no for an answer, Meryl had tried another tack: “You should at least see what Meg picks out so you know when you're telling Jeffrey what style you want.”

“I'm not
telling
Jeffrey anything, Mother. He's an artist. And I'm certainly not letting Meg's dress choice dictate my own.”

And that was the end of that.

The door opened and they were greeted by a woman in a charcoal gray pantsuit. She had dark hair and olive skin and she could have been twenty-five or forty-five—Meryl could not for the life of her tell which.

“Meg? So nice to see you. I'm Edith.”

Edith shook all their hands, and another woman trailed behind her, offering them water or a glass of wine. Everyone declined except for Rose, who asked if they had vodka.

“It's a bit early for that, isn't it, Mother?”

“Oh, it's not a problem,” said Edith. “When brides come here, it's like the celebration is starting! Would you like that on the rocks or with soda?” she asked.

“Rocks, thank you, dear,” said Rose.

“Do you have anything caffeinated?” asked Jo. Edith told an assistant to make her a latte.

The room was spare, with putty-colored walls and matching plush carpet. Edith led them into an interior room lined with two racks of white wedding gowns.

“I would have worn my mother's wedding dress if it had been available to me,” said Rose. The dress had been left behind in Poland, when they moved away, thinking they would have time to return one day for their belongings. Meryl had heard this story when she herself got engaged.

“Oh, I know, Gran. Mom doesn't have her dress anymore, either. Isn't that right, Mom?”

“That's right,” Meryl said.

The truth was, she hadn't worn a dress. She hadn't had the heart to tell this to her daughters when they first asked to see it as young girls, dressed up for their favorite game: playing wedding.

“I don't have it anymore—it must have gotten lost in the move,” Meryl told them.

“But what did it look like?” Meg had pressed, her intelligent eyes relentless for the truth and for answers, a budding journalist even as a third grader.

“Like a princess dress!” Amy had surmised.

“Yes,” said Meryl, “like a princess dress.”

She had not bought anything special for her marriage to Hugh, and even if she had gone dress shopping, she wouldn't have had the sort of entourage that Meg had with her that afternoon. Her mother, while not yet officially boycotting the wedding, had been barely speaking to her. Her best friend at the time was backpacking across Europe and unreachable. And she didn't have sisters.