The Wedding Sisters (3 page)

“You're really going to do this to Meg?”

“I'm not doing anything. This is about the choices you made, Meryl.” When her mother was angry, the Polish accent became more pronounced. “What did you think was going to happen when you married a man of poor character? Of course your daughter doesn't know any better.”

Meryl sighed. “Mom, it's just dinner. I'm not asking you to walk her down the aisle. It's a family dinner, and I'd like for you to be a part of it. Don't you want to meet her fiancé and his family?”

“I don't need to meet him. I know all about that family. A bunch of anti-Semites.”

“They are not anti-Semites, Mom.” Just Republicans. Stop it, she told herself.

“I can't sleep at night, you know.”

“Because of Meg's engagement?” Meryl asked incredulously.

“The club where they want to have the wedding used to be restricted. I expected more from Meg,” said Rose. “But then, why should I expect anything when you've done nothing to make them value who they are and where they come from.”

Meryl sighed. Rose's criticism was nothing new, but it was difficult to take from a woman who never spoke about the country where she'd been born, never shared photographs of her childhood, had not raised her particularly Jewish—and yet had been endlessly, blatantly hostile toward her marriage outside the Jewish faith. Her mother acted as though Meryl had turned her back on some rich heritage—as if she'd raised Meryl in some parallel universe.

Meryl had thought her relationship with her mother might mend when Meg was born. Surely there was nothing better for a mother and daughter to bond over than a new baby—a first grandchild! But any hope for a new beginning was dashed when, upon hearing Meryl and Hugh's choice of name for their baby, her mother refused to speak to them or to see the baby for the first month of her life. And then, the only thing she said to Meryl was that she had “dishonored” her grandparents by failing to name the baby after one of them so that “their soul can rest in peace.” To be honest, the Jewish tradition of naming the baby after a deceased family member had never even occurred to Meryl. She had been so charmed by Hugh's idea of naming the baby after a character in
Little Women.
Back then, she had found all Hugh's quirks and obsessions romantic and endearing.

Her mother turned back to the television, tight-lipped, her hands clutching the remote as if it were the controls of a plane losing altitude.

Meryl thought of the food hastily shoved into the refrigerator at home, the flowers that needed to be bought, and the unfortunate possibility of Meg, Stowe, and Tippy somehow arriving at the apartment before her.

“Look, Mom, I really would like for you to be there.”

It was an understatement. She was surprised by how very much she wanted her mother by her side for dinner that night. Yes, she had three grown daughters of her own. Still, she sometimes yearned for her mother. But she had learned long ago to accept Rose's limitations. As she used to tell Meg, Jo, and Amy: “You get what you get, and you don't get upset.”

Meryl took another deep breath, trying not to get too emotional. “And I know the girls want you to be there. It would mean a lot to us. But obviously I can't force you out of this apartment and into a cab. So I'm going to ask you one more time: Will you please just get your shoes and coat and let me take you to my place for a nice family dinner?”

Her mother turned, her blue eyes as bright and angry as the day Meryl had announced her engagement to Hugh. An anger that had forced them to elope; an anger that had not softened in three decades. And Meryl already knew her answer.

“No.”

It was Meryl's own fault, really. It always had been. In the earliest, fragile days of her relationship with Hugh, she'd shared a secret with her mother that should never have been shared.

And she'd been paying the price ever since.

 

two

“I'm nervous,” said Meg Becker in a stressed, quiet voice. Sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed in the hotel room overlooking Columbus Circle, she felt strange staying at a hotel in the city where she'd grown up.

Meg moved uneasily toward the window, pausing as her reflection overcame the view. Her blond hair skimming her shoulders, her slim frame hugged by a cashmere V-neck sweater and black pencil skirt. Elegant, symmetrical features had always greeted her—wide blue eyes, sharp cheekbones, sensual but refined lips. But today, her outer composure belied her feelings. Inside, she was a scattered jigsaw puzzle.

“What are you worried about?” Stowe, her fiancé—fiancé! She still wasn't used to the word—glanced up at her from his laptop.

“Your mother. My mother. My
grandmother,
” she said, sitting down on the bed again heavily.

“You're never nervous,” Stowe said as he slid closer to her, taking her hand. Kissing her neck, he sent a shiver of delight through her body. “And there's no reason to start now, sweetheart.”

“Untrue! I was nervous the day we met,” she said, smiling. Think about the beginning, she told herself. Focus on being in love. Forget about dinner!

“That's right. You were. But then, you were going on live television for the first time.” He gave her a wry smile in return. “So I think we can let that one slide.”

She first saw him in the green room at the show
Real Time with Bill Maher.
Meg, a senior editor at Poliglot, a political Web site, had gained notoriety with an article on Elizabeth Warren calling out ABA lobbyists on the Senate floor and had been invited on the show as a panelist. The other two panelists were in the room, a loud, liberal actor with a new movie out and a chip on his shoulder, and Reed Campion, a rising star in Republican politics and a Pennsylvania senator. Campion and the actor chatted each other up while Meg was left to anxiously check her e-mails and mentally replay her talking points. She was the first person from Poliglot invited on such a high-profile show, and her bosses had warned her not to fuck it up—in pretty much those exact terms.

And that's when Stowe, a member of Campion's entourage, approached her. If she hadn't been so nervous about the show, she would have been cowed by his staggering good looks. But as it was, she was just relieved to have someone keeping her mind occupied before it was time to go on live television.

It wasn't until the show was over, until after he had already asked her out for a drink, that she learned he was the senator's son.

They were both strangers to L.A., and this, at least, put them on equal footing. Unsure of where to go, they took a recommendation from someone on Bill Maher's staff and ended up at the Standard Hotel on Sunset.

They sat out by the pool, under the stars. Meg's first thought was that her sister Jo would fit right in, with her long hair and peasant blouses, her denim shorts and ever-present flip-flops. But Meg, with her ponytail and pearls and Chanel ballerina flats, was a fish out of water. Fortunately, Stowe—with his close shave and short dark hair, his fair skin that seemed like it had never seen a day at the beach, and his jacket and tie—was equally out of place. If anything, their contrast to the strange exotic birds of L.A. that surrounded them just made them seem all the more perfect for each other.

With the show behind her and her confidence back, Meg was finally able to notice that Stowe Campion was
GQ
-cover-model gorgeous. And smart. And ambitious.

And how hyperaware she was of his thigh next to hers.

“How did you manage to take time off to come out here?” she asked, smiling playfully. “Don't they keep you guys chained to your desk until you're in your fifties, at least?” At thirty, he was the youngest partner at the D.C. law firm Colby, Quills, McGinty, and Dean.

“The gods of timing were on my side,” he said, leaning closer to her. “We're taking depositions out here on Monday. I was able to swing an extra day or two.”

“Timing is everything in life. So they say.” Meg swallowed hard. She had never wanted a guy more. Her desire unnerved her. She had been so focused on work the past year and half that she'd barely even dated.

Finally, when it was nearing one in the morning, she reluctantly stood to leave. She could have sat there talking to him all night, but the control freak in her needed to be the one to punctuate the evening.

“So.” They locked eyes, and her stomach fluttered.

She was staying at a hotel on Santa Monica, and he was staying at a family friend's house in Beverly Hills—with his father. Clearly, if they were going to take their little party elsewhere, it would have to be to her place. But she couldn't bring herself to invite him. Meg Becker did not make the first move. Ever. Plus, if she was going to sleep with someone on the first date, it would at least have to be an actual date.

And yet she regretted her unflinching stance when, two weeks later, she still had not heard from him—despite the fact that he'd tapped her number into his phone before walking her to her car.

Back in D.C., Meg suddenly became overly interested in the work of the senator from Pennsylvania. She sat in on a few less-than-newsworthy votes on the Senate floor, justifying it to herself—and to her boss, Kevin—that he was an up-and-comer, a politician worth watching closely.

But she never managed to see Stowe, try as she might—though Meg would never, ever, admit to
trying
to run into him.

And then she got annoyed. Why hadn't he called? Just like that, her interest in Reed Campion's senate voting activity disappeared entirely. But one afternoon, while she was running up the steps to the carriage entrance of the Capitol to record a quick interview with the senator from South Carolina, Stowe was walking out.

He noticed her first. “Meg Becker,” he called happily.

Before she turned, she knew on some subconscious level, some animalistic part of her soul that was already half in love with him, that it was Stowe.

She pretended not to remember his name.

Stowe held out his phone, displaying her name and number in his contacts, and gave an apologetic smile. “I was premature in saying they don't keep me chained to my desk,” he said. “But I've escaped for the day. Is there any chance in hell that you're free for dinner tonight?”

And that, as they say, was that. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, Meg knew she was done—off the market. One year later, he put a ring on her finger. And it was official.

And now, they were mere hours away from their parents meeting for the first time. Well, his mother and her parents anyway. As soon as people got wind of Reed's calendar putting him in New York that weekend, his office started getting calls. Meg understood; after a year with Stowe, she knew that Reed—traveling constantly from their home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, to his office in the capital, Harrisburg, to D.C. for meetings and votes on the Senate floor—was difficult to pin down, family occasion or not. But her mother would never understand. She would consider this yet another example of the Campions “not making an effort.”

About six months into her relationship, Meg let it slip that the Campions were in New York for the weekend. Big mistake; Meryl thought for sure they would reach out and suggest coffee or a drink with the parents of their son's girlfriend. They didn't. Eventually, Meryl decided to just suck it up and do the reaching out herself. Phone tag ensued, and the end result was that the two mothers never actually spoke until the day after the engagement, when Tippy called Meryl to say she was “so delighted” for “the kids” and that they would be in New York soon to take them to dinner.

But Meryl didn't want to be “taken” to dinner. She wanted to host dinner at the apartment, so they could all get to know one another. “After all,” she'd said to Meg, “We're going to be family.”

Meg didn't have the heart to tell her mother they would never really be family—not in the way her mother envisioned. The Campions were a closed circle, and they had their own way of doing things. More was not merrier. The Campions were more like a club than a family, and they were certainly not looking for new members.

Patricia “Tippy” Gaffney Campion was a Main Line blue blood who had been born, bred, and educated in the rarefied air of the Philadelphia suburbs—the Baldwin Academy and then Bryn Mawr. She'd raised her three boys in a sprawling stone home in the woods of Villanova. They summered at “the shore” and at the country club, Philadelphia Racquet and Hunt. Meg, having grown up in Manhattan and attended one of its more exclusive private schools (albeit on a free ride since her father was on staff), was no stranger to elitism. But she had never encountered anything quite like the sheer myopia of Tippy Campion. Nothing, absolutely nothing, outside her sphere of interest and influence mattered.

Meg was already dreading the land mine that would be Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, when she would be forced to alternate between being with her parents and Stowe's. There was a chance the Campions would invite her parents to family events, but she knew that Meryl liked “having the girls at home.” Meg liked it too.

And what about Amy and Jo? They wouldn't want to travel to Philly to have holidays at the Campion house.

She rose again to look out the window. This was just part of merging your life with another person's. These things would work themselves out.
I just have to get through tonight.

“My mother is going to talk to your mom about the wedding planner,” said Stowe, coming up behind her, his arms circling her waist.

Meg turned, and mistaking the expression of surprise on her face for happiness, he kissed her.

“Stowe, I told you my parents aren't wedding-planner-type people,” Meg said. “Mom won't want a stranger getting involved and second-guessing her. My mother wants to just run with this—she's so excited about it. It would break her heart not to do it herself. And frankly, I'd rather just plan it with my mom.”