Beautiful Day

DOUG

The band played “The First Man You Remember,” from Aspects of Love, and Doug took Jenna into his arms and danced with her alone in the spotlight while everyone else looked on. I want to be the first man you remember, I want to be the last one you forget, I want to be the one you always turn to, I want to be the one you won’t regret. Doug recalled sitting in the third row orchestra of the darkened Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway watching Aspects with Beth and Jenna. Doug had held Jenna’s ten-year-old hand during the song, and Beth had whispered over the top of Jenna’s blond head, “You’ll have to dance with her to this song at her wedding.”

Now here they were. Jenna’s blond head rested against the front of Doug’s tuxedo shirt, and she said, “Oh, Daddy, thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Doug felt himself choking up once again. He was unable to speak, but if he had been able to speak, he would have said, I wish I could give you even more. I wish I could wave a magic wand that would ensure that you and Stuart are as happy as…

Instead he squeezed her tighter. Stuart and his mother had joined them on the dance floor and were spinning in circles. Those two could really dance; it was lovely to watch.

Then, all too soon, the song changed to “One,” by U2, which was a song Stuart and Jenna had picked, and Doug realized it was time to hand Jenna over. Jenna and Stuart danced alone while Doug stood at the edge of the dance floor feeling bereft. Then Ann Graham led Jim Graham to the dance floor, and Doug knew he should dance with Pauline, but when he turned, the person his eyes settled on was Margot. Margot was sitting at the head table with tears streaming down her face. Tears? Doug had to check to make sure. Yes, Margot was crying. Doug walked over and offered his hand.

“Dance with me?” he said.

She followed him to the dance floor, and a murmur went through the tent.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Doug asked.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said into his ear. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

It took her two and a half songs to tell the whole story. She was weeping and trembling, and Doug held on to her, rigid with anger. Edge and Margot. Doug heard about the chance meeting outside Ellie’s dance class and the “dates” that followed. They were sleeping together. Doug knew there had been someone in Edge’s life, and he knew that Edge hadn’t wanted to tell him who it was. Because it was Doug’s daughter. Doug wasn’t going to lie-the thought of the two of them together made him physically ill. The cherrystone clams and the phyllo triangles filled with Brie and pear and the three vodka tonics churned in his stomach and threatened to come back up. Doug had always thought of Edge as a sort of uncle to his kids. He and Beth had toyed with asking Edge to be Jenna’s godfather; they had only decided against it because Edge had no religion to speak of.

He was godless. Lawless. He had no morals, no scruples, no guiding principles. He was a shark in the courtroom and a great guy to golf with, and Doug had loved him like a brother-but this. This!

Margot described what Edge had asked her to do at work. Doug couldn’t believe it-he couldn’t believe Edge had asked, and he couldn’t believe Margot had agreed. It was an egregious lapse in judgment.

What had Margot been thinking?

Well, she said tearily, she had been thinking that she loved him.

And then, Rosalie.

Doug had already believed that Edge bringing Rosalie to the wedding was ill-advised, but now it seemed downright cruel. Other couples danced around Margot and Doug-Kevin and Beanie, H.W. and Autumn, Finn and Nick, Ryan and Rhonda, and at least a dozen couples Doug didn’t know, although they all seemed to be having fun. Pauline was sitting at their table, where Ann and Jim Graham had joined her. Doug was grateful; he couldn’t think about Pauline right now. He scanned the tent for Edge. He and Rosalie were admiring the cake in the corner.

Shit, the cake.

Doug passed Margot off to Ryan, and Rhonda went to sit with her mother and the Grahams. Doug strode over to Roger. “How long until they cut the cake?”

Roger checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes,” he said.

“Perfect,” Doug said.

Edge saw him coming, and for a second Doug thought he might try to run. He ought to run, Doug thought. He couldn’t ever remember being this angry.

Edge held his palms up. “Doug,” he said. “Wait.”

Doug grabbed Edge’s forearm. “Rosalie,” he said. “Will you please excuse us?”

Rosalie nodded once sharply, and for an instant the three of them resumed their in-office personae: two partners and a paralegal. “Yes,” she said, ducking deferentially out of the way. “Of course.”

Doug pulled Edge out a flap in the back of the tent into the driveway, where they stood between Margot’s Land Rover and Doug’s Jaguar. It was dark and fairly quiet, although the caterers hustled in and out of the house, letting the back screen door slam each time. The noise seemed to startle Edge.

“You’re jumpy,” Doug said.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Edge said. “Throw me in the Jag, fill my pockets with stones, dump me in the harbor?”

“It’s not funny, Edge,” Doug said.

“I know it’s not, Doug,” Edge said.

“It’s my daughter.”

“What did she tell you?” Edge said.

“Everything,” Doug said. “She told me everything.”

“I’m sure she blew things out of proportion,” Edge said. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this business, it’s that there are three sides to every story, right? You’ll hear me out?”

“She didn’t blow anything out of proportion,” Doug said. “She didn’t exaggerate, she didn’t lie. Margot is as quality a human being as exists on this planet. She is smart and capable and strong. But-and you’ll appreciate this because you have Audrey-she is my daughter. She is my daughter, Edge.”

“I realize that,” Edge said. He ran his fingers through his clipped silver hair, then rattled his watch on his wrist. “I never meant for you to find out.”

“You put your disgusting hands on her,” Doug said. Edge had been married three times, and there had been dozens of women on the in-between. He was a player. Doug had always secretly admired this about him, if only because it was novel to Doug. It had been fun to sit down after a round of golf and a couple of beers and maybe a shot or two of good tequila and listen to Edge tell stories about the stewardess in first class on his flight to London or the gorgeous Filipino sisters who worked at the dry cleaners. There had been relationships with clients, too-Nathalie the most notable-but others as well. There had been that delivery girl from FedEx; there had been a first-year associate from a rival firm. There was Rosalie.

“Doug, you have to listen to me. I know you think I was some kind of predator. But believe me when I say, Margot came after me. She pursued me. There were texts from her day and night, sometimes so many texts I couldn’t answer them all. I tried to keep it casual, but Margot constantly pressed for more.”

“Yes, I know,” Doug said. “She got sucked in, she said. She fell for you, Edge, and you took advantage of that.”

“I never promised her anything,” Edge said.

“What about the favor you asked of her?”

Edge tilted his head. “Which favor?”

“You know damn well which favor. The favor you asked her to do at work,” Doug said.

“I wanted to see if she could help Seth out,” Edge said. “He was having a god-awful time, and she was in a position to save him. All I did was ask. She could have refused.”

“She said you took her to Picholine,” Doug said. “Plied her with good champagne and an expensive bottle of wine, and then you asked her to stay over at your apartment for the first time ever. It was intoxicating for her, she thought the two of you were finally getting serious. Of course after a night like that, she would have done anything you asked. You knew exactly how to play it.” Doug cracked his knuckles; he wanted to sock Edge right in the mouth. This kind of violent urge was foreign to Doug. Despite the thrill he got from beating someone verbally in the courtroom, he had never wanted to hurt anyone physically, much less his own partner, his closest friend. “You’re no better than the creeps we see in the office.”

“Come on, Doug.”

“I’m not even angry about the relationship,” Doug said. “If it had worked out, if the two of you made each other happy, I mean, I might have been a little uneasy at first, but I would have gotten over it. But the fact that you disrespected my daughter, that you used her, that you two-timed her with Rosalie, that you brought Rosalie here without telling Margot about it, that you hurt her, Edge, you hurt my daughter: that I cannot excuse.”

“Doug,” Edge said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry,” Doug said. “You have preyed on women for the thirty years that I’ve known you, and I didn’t judge you. I let you go about your business. I watched you divorce Mary Lee and marry Nathalie and divorce Nathalie and marry Suki, and divorce Suki. I stood by your side, I gave you good counsel, I was your friend. But today your victim is my child, and you’re lucky I don’t beat the crap out of you right here and now.”

“So are you telling me you’ve never hurt a woman before?” Edge asked. “You’ve never broken anyone’s heart? What’s up with you and Pauline, anyway? That was a pretty dramatic exit from the church. Want to tell me what that was about?”

Doug narrowed his eyes at Edge. He was one of the finest lawyers Doug knew, so a cross-examination shouldn’t surprise him. And yet Doug was taken aback. Obviously everyone at the ceremony had seen Pauline leave in tears, but Doug had assumed they would let it remain a private matter. He knew why Pauline had run from the church. He was as transparent to her as a piece of glass; she realized he didn’t love her anymore and that, possibly, he had never loved her.

Doug took a deep breath. Beth, he thought. She had died and left him to flounder through the rest of his life.

How to answer Edge? How to differentiate himself? Yes, he had hurt Pauline a little already, and he was about to hurt her a lot more. His affection for her, his desire to be with her, his stockpile of patience and goodwill, his like of her-intense as it was at times-was depleted. His emotional reservoir, where Pauline was concerned, was empty. This happened between husbands and wives every single day in every country in the world. How many hundreds of times had Doug heard a husband or wife say, “I don’t have a reason. I am just done.” And Doug, and Edge, and every divorce attorney worth his or her salt, would accept that answer without judgment. After all, human beings couldn’t control how they felt. If they could, everyone would most certainly decide to stay madly in love their whole lives.

“I don’t want to talk about Pauline,” Doug said. “This isn’t about Pauline.”

“I never said it was about Pauline,” Edge said. “I just wondered if you had ever hurt anyone.”

“Well, I never lied to anyone,” Doug said. “I never cheated on anyone. I never led a woman on.”

“I wonder about that,” Edge said.

Doug ground his molars together. “I want you off this property in five minutes. No. Less than five minutes.”

“What?” Edge said. “You’re throwing me out?”

“I want you and Rosalie to leave immediately.”

“I can’t believe this,” Edge said. “I can’t believe you’re throwing me out.”

“She’s my daughter, Edge,” Doug said. “And you hurt her.”

“What if the roles were reversed?” Edge said. “Margot is young and beautiful. What if she had hurt me? She might have, you know, and I would have had to live with it. Every relationship comes with risks.”

“You would have been fine,” Doug said. “You always are. Now get out.”

“Thirty years of friendship,” Edge said.

“Only family matters,” Doug said, and he headed back into the tent.

A few minutes later, Stuart and Jenna cut the cake, they fed each other nicely (as Beth had suggested in the Notebook; Beth strongly disapproved of shenanigans with the cake), and then it was time for Jenna to throw the bouquet. Doug watched Margot gather up the single women-Autumn and Rhonda and all of Jenna’s schoolteacher friends. Doug wanted Margot to catch the bouquet. He wanted to see Margot meet someone worthy of her in a way that neither Drum Sr. nor Edge was worthy.

When she had come to the end of her story about Edge, she had said, I don’t believe in love, Daddy. I just don’t believe in it.

And Doug had said, What about your mother and me? We were in love until the day she died. I’m in love with her still.

I guess what I mean is that I don’t believe in love for me, Margot said. Some people are lucky that way-you and Mom, Kevin and Beanie, Stuart and Jenna-but I’m not.

Oh, honey, Doug had said. He wanted to refute what she said, but he knew the truth. He had seen families broken and children caught in the crossfire. He had facilitated the dissolution of households and corporations and dynasties. He had brought about thousands of endings. Some of those stories continued on in a happier way-every Christmas he received dozens of cards from clients who had remarried. But not everyone ended up this way, of course. Doug had a client who had married and divorced five times. Some people tried and tried but could not succeed at love. Was Margot one of those people? God, he hoped not.

Catch the bouquet, he thought.

The bandleader had some kind of corny procedure to follow as the girls assumed the ready position. They looked like the offensive line for the New York Giants. Jenna turned her back and raised her arms over her head and flung the flowers through the air.

There was a great burst of animated laughter. It seemed that, out of nowhere, Stuart’s brother, Ryan, the best man, had appeared and caught the bouquet. He held it up in a triumphant fist, and everyone cheered. Then Ryan pulled his boyfriend up from his chair and kissed him on the lips and the band launched into “Celebrate,” by Kool & the Gang.

And Doug thought, Unexpected twist there. But okay, why not?

He found Margot a few minutes later, licking thick white buttercream off her forefinger.

“That was so great,” she said. “Ryan.”

Doug said, “I had a talk with Edge. I asked him to leave.”

Margot pressed her pretty lips together, and her ice-blue eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“I know you’re forty years old,” he said. “But as long as I’m alive, I’m here to take care of you.”

Margot set down her cake plate and gave him a hug. When they separated, she wiped her eyes and said, “And now there’s someone I need to apologize to.”

“Yes,” Doug said, as he scanned the tent for Pauline. “Me, too.”