Beautiful Day

MARGOT

When Margot pulled into the driveway at a quarter to five with her three sand-encrusted children in the backseat, she let out a shriek of awe and amazement. The backyard of their house had been transformed into a wedding wonderland.

“Look!” she said to her kids.

No response. When she turned around, she saw all three kids absorbed in their iDevices. She couldn’t complain, however. It had been a magical afternoon at the beach, the exact kind of afternoon Margot remembered having as a child. Drum Jr. and Carson had boogie-boarded with their cousins like fiends all afternoon; Margot could barely get them out of the water to eat their sandwiches from Henry Jr.’s. Ellie had collected shells in a bucket, and then she sat on the shoreline and constructed an elaborate sandcastle. Margot, who was exhausted, drifted off to sleep under the umbrella. When she awoke, Beanie was sitting with Ellie, helping her mosaic the walls of the castle with shells. Margot watched them, and though she felt a twinge of guilt, she knew that Beanie loved spending time with Ellie because Beanie had only boys, and a little girl was a treat for her. Furthermore, Margot didn’t want to sit in the sand; she had never been the kind of mother who got down on her hands and knees to play with the kids, and if she left the shady confines of the umbrella, there would be the issue of freckles. Margot was vain and lazy; she wasn’t as nurturing as Beanie, perhaps, but she reminded herself that her own mother had never been a castle builder, either. Beth used to sit in her striped canvas chair and needlepoint and dole out pretzel rods and Hawaiian Punch from the thermos.

Margot had enjoyed the beach immensely, even as she spooled the conversation with her father and the conversation with Griff through her mind. She decided that it was a blessing she’d sunk her phone because it freed her from worrying about whether or not there would be any texts from Edge. And she wouldn’t worry herself about what the text from Edge last night had said. She would ask him tonight when she saw him at the yacht club.

It was only as Margot got out of the car and took in the staging for the wedding that she appreciated what a very special day tomorrow would be. She and Jenna had been talking about the backyard wedding for over a year, but that didn’t prepare Margot for the excitement she felt now.

The tree branch had been lifted so that the ropes were barely visible. And under the tree was the large, circular center-pole tent, which was bigger in square footage than the Manhattan apartment where Jenna and Stuart would live. Inside, the tent was decorated with ivy, entwined branches, and white fairy lights. There were hanging baskets of limelight hydrangeas and hanging glass bowls filled with sand and one ivory pillar candle. There were fifteen tables, ten of which were swathed in the antique linen tablecloths, embroidered at the edges with green ivy, that their grandmother had used at her wedding, and five were the replica tablecloths that Margot and Jenna had hired an exceptional Irish seamstress in Brooklyn to make. Margot could barely tell the difference. She and Jenna had set the new tablecloths out in the sun for three weeks to get them to age properly. The Irish seamstress, Mary Siobhan, had also made 150 matching green linen napkins, which were tied with strands of real ivy. The centerpieces were white and limelight hydrangeas and the pink climbing roses, cut from the house, nestled into large glass jars encased in a mesh of woven twigs. The bone-white china was set over dark rattan chargers, and Roger had found 120 Waterford goblets in the Lismore pattern, which was the pattern Beth and Doug had collected, and Stuart and Jenna would now collect. The overall effect was one of simplicity and beauty; the white and the green evoked the house and the yard, and the entwined branches and wooden baskets evoked Alfie. The pink of the climbing roses was the softest of accent colors. All of this had been her mother’s vision, and Margot had doubted it; she had cursed the grasshopper green dress, but now she saw how the green dresses and Jenna’s white dress would all make perfect aesthetic sense once they were under this tent.

“You’re a genius,” Margot whispered.

She peered up into the funneled pinnacle of the tent, where she imagined her mother’s spirit residing. She heard someone clear his throat, and she turned to see Roger enter the tent.

“It looks beautiful,” Margot said.

He moved a fork in one of the place settings a fraction of an inch. “I’ve done a lot of weddings,” he said. “But this is one of the prettiest. I always say to my wife that there is no accounting for taste. But you girls knocked it out of the park here.”

“Oh,” Margot said. Why was it always in the face of kind words that she felt like crying? “It wasn’t us.”

When she entered the kitchen, Margot was met with chaos. There were people everywhere. Margot’s kids and the Carmichael boys were still in their wet bathing suits, tracking sand with each step.

“I thought I told you to go to the outdoor shower!” Margot said.

“No, you didn’t,” Ellie said.

Margot allowed that maybe she had forgotten that instruction, but didn’t her kids know they should always head to the outdoor shower after the beach?

“Go now,” Margot said. “Be fast.”

Autumn, Rhonda, and Pauline were sitting in the breakfast nook, eating crackers with smoked bluefish pâté. The people from the catering company were trying to work around them, moving between the kitchen island, where they were prepping food, to the dining room, which was serving as a staging area, to their refrigerated truck out in the street.

Then Margot noticed a new face.

“Stuart!” she cried.

Stuart was standing just outside the screen door with three other men, who were all wearing coats and ties.

Margot stepped out to greet them.

“Hey, Margot,” Stuart said.

He looked terrible. He was pale, and he had bruise-colored circles under his eyes, and he’d gotten a haircut that was too short. He worked ridiculously hard in a stressful industry. He was a food and beverage analyst for Morgan Stanley; he never took time off. He had gone twelve months without a vacation to take today off, and the next two weeks for his honeymoon to St. John. It looked like he hadn’t left his office in twelve months-or rather, it looked like he had left it only once, to visit a really incompetent barber.

And yet there lived in Stuart a kindness so pure that it caused Margot to marvel. He wasn’t flashy, he wasn’t slaying the market like Finn’s husband, Scott Walker, he would never buy a thousand-dollar suit, he would never, probably, own a car as nice as her father’s Jaguar, but Stuart was devoted to Jenna. He sent her flowers at the school “just because,” he lit candles for her bath, he stood at the finish line with hot tea and a muffin whenever she ran a race in Central Park. In the five seconds that Margot spent taking in the sight of him, she felt badly for all the times she’d tried to talk Jenna out of marrying him.

“You remember my brothers,” Stuart said. “H.W. and Ryan, and… Chance.”

Margot studied the other three men. H.W. and Ryan were identical twins, impossible to tell apart until they opened their mouths. H.W. was an overgrown frat boy, and Ryan was gay. Margot deplored stereotyping, but she knew right away that the one who was better dressed was Ryan. Ryan came over to kiss Margot’s cheek. He smelled divine; he was wearing Aventus, Margot’s favorite scent, which she had bought for Edge but he had not, to her knowledge, even opened.

“How are you, Margot?” Ryan asked. “Tell me everything.”

Margot laughed. “Oh, believe me, you don’t want to know everything.”

Ryan slid an arm around her waist and leaned her back into a dip. He was one of those men whose every move was smooth and elegant. “I’ve been bragging about how lucky I am to be escorting the maid of honor.”

Ryan was Stuart’s best man. Margot wondered if it had been difficult for Stuart to pick between his brothers, but Jenna said they had shot rock-paper-scissors for it.

H.W. raised his beer bottle in Margot’s general direction. “Hey,” he said.

Margot smiled. H.W. was paired up with Autumn. They would have sex before the weekend was over, Margot was sure of it.

Margot had seen the twins on numerous occasions-at Stuart’s thirtieth birthday celebration at Gramercy Tavern, and then more recently at the engagement party in a private room at MoMA. But Margot had never met this other brother. Chance. Whereas the other three Graham brothers were square jawed and dark haired and built like hale and hearty tobacco farmers, Chance was tall and lean and had strawberry hair. Really, his hair was nearly pink, and he had a matching pinkish skin tone. One of these things is not like the others. Chance was Stuart’s half brother, the product of an affair Stuart’s father had in the nineties. He was nineteen years old, a sophomore at Sewanee, the University of the South, a math whiz, apparently, a good kid if a bit socially awkward.

Well, yeah, Margot thought. It was bad enough that he was a love child, the product of a midlife crisis, but then someone-Stuart’s father? the other woman?-had thought it would be acceptable to name him “Chance.” No wonder the kid was socially awkward. The other woman-Margot had never learned her name-had been married to Stuart’s father for a few years, then they had split, and Stuart’s father married Stuart’s mother a second time. It was the kind of story that people had a hard time believing, except for the Carmichael children, who had been hearing bizarre divorce-and-marriage stories their whole lives.

Jenna found the story of Stuart’s parents romantic.

Margot thought, Yeah, romantic-except for the living, breathing, six-foot-four reminder of when things had not been so romantic.

But this was a wedding, what had happened in the past could not be undone, and so everyone would simply have to roll with it-smile, chitchat-and then gossip about the darker reality later.

“Hi, Chance,” Margot said. Oh, how she would love to rename him something normal, like Dennis or Patrick. “I’m Margot Carmichael, Jenna’s sister.”

“Nice to meet you,” Chance said. He had an elegant southern accent; he sounded-and looked-just like Ashley Wilkes from Gone with the Wind. He gripped Margot’s hand and gave it a nice, strong shake. Margot’s line of work caused her to evaluate everyone’s handshake and eye contact. Eight, she thought. Not bad.

“Can I get you a beer?” Margot asked.

“I…” Chance said. He swallowed. “I’m only nineteen.”

“Who cares?” H.W. shouted, momentarily animated by his favorite topic. H.W. had a twangy accent straight out of The Dukes of Hazzard. “Grab a beer, Chancey, come on!”

Chance turned even pinker. Margot had never seen anyone with such unusual coloring. It was almost a birth defect, perhaps indicating the murky circumstances of his conception. And with this thought, Margot suddenly felt protective of Chance. Clearly he was a darling, scrupulous kid. It wasn’t his fault that Jim Graham had made an atrocious error in judgment.

“How about a Coke?” Margot asked.

Chance nodded. “A Coke would be great, thanks.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “It’s, uh, kind of hot out here.”

“It is hot,” Margot agreed. “And look at you guys, all ready to go.” She stepped back into the kitchen to grab Chance a Coke from the fridge and narrowly missed hitting a woman holding a tray of empty vol-au-vents. At the breakfast nook, Autumn, Rhonda, and Pauline were telling stories about the incompetent masseuses they had known; they were getting along like a house on fire. Jenna would be pleased about that, wherever she was. Probably upstairs, putting on the showstopper backless peach dress.

Margot handed Chance the Coke. She said, “It’s nearly four thirty.” Four thirty! Margot wondered if Edge was on island yet. She got a Mexican jumping beans feeling in her belly. “I’ve got to get cracking!”