“I do not weesh to walk barefoot. I weesh to wear my shoes.”
“Mrs. Wilcox,” the young man said, as if he were explaining to a small child, “we all decided that no one is going to wear shoes. It’s a barefoot wedding. It said so on the invitation.”
“But the feet. They are so ugly.”
“I’m sure your feet are very beautiful, Mrs. Wilcox, just like the rest of you.” The young man paused for a moment, looking around the room. “This is the social event of the season, folks. So let’s make it dazzle!”
There was a round of applause. Janey looked over at her mother. She was just as bossy and self-centered as ever. Almost since the moment Monique had arrived for the wedding two days ago, she’d been nothing but trouble, questioning the caterers, flirting with the cameraman (someone was making a documentary of the wedding for Lifetime), and terrorizing Digger’s mother, Pammy, to the point where Pammy, a small gray-haired woman with a perm, a flat midwestern accent, and a Samsonite suitcase full of Keds sneakers, now refused to come out of her room.
“Janey,” her mother had said within an hour of her arrival, “what is this nonsense I hear about you writing something? Patty is the smart one. You must work on your modeling and on finding a husband. In two years it will be too late for the children and then you will not be able to find a man. A man does not want a wife who cannot bear his children.”
“Maman, I don’t want a husband,” Janey said between clenched teeth.
“You girls are so foolish,” her mother said, lighting up a cigarette (she chain-smoked Virginia Slims). “This business of living without a man is nonsense. In five years you will be very, very sorry. Look at Patty. She is the smart one to marry this Deegar. He is young and he is reech. You don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“Well, Patty always was the perfect one, Maman,” Janey said bitterly.
“No, she is not perfect. But she is smart. She knows she has to work at life. You are very beautiful, Janey. But even if you are very beautiful, you must work at life.”
“Maman, I do work at life,” Janey said. “That’s why I’m writing.”
Her mother rolled her eyes and blew smoke out her nostrils. Her hair was perfectly coiffed into a blond helmet, and she still wore frosted pink lipstick. It was so typical of her, Janey thought. She was always
right and always dismissive of how she, Janey, might really feel; Janey’s feelings were completely irrelevant unless they dovetailed perfectly with hers.
“Your mother is soooo fantastic!” Swish Daily kept saying. He’d designed Patty’s and Janey’s dresses (Janey was the only bridesmaid), and had cut short his vacation on the Italian Riviera to be there.
“My mother is very old-fashioned,” Janey said dryly.
“Oh no. Quite the opposite. She’s absolutely modern,” Swish said. “So chic. And soooo seventies. Every time I look at her I want to start singing ‘Mrs. Robinson.’”
The wedding planner held up his arm and tapped his wristwatch. “Fifteen minutes until the guests start arriving,” he said. “Places, everyone.”
It seemed like everyone had been waiting weeks for Patty’s wedding. The guest list included four hundred people and was A-list, meaning the people on it were either famous, or had a recognizable tag line after their name, such as “editor in chief of fashion magazine” or “architect to the famous.” Janey didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. For the past ten years she’d been climbing the Hamptons’ social ladder, trying to stay in the best houses and going to the best parties, and in one season Patty had arrived on the scene and floated effortlessly to the highest rung. She and Digger had a genuine nonchalance about it, as though they really hadn’t noticed, which was coupled with an attitude of careless entitlement, as if it were completely natural—even inevitable—that they should find themselves in this position. And meanwhile, Janey felt like she was begging for scraps: allowing herself to become the secret lover of a powerful man who fucked her up the ass so she couldn’t get pregnant, and attempting to enter a new career in which even she, despite her arrogance, could see that she had no aptitude for.
How had this happened, she wondered, as she smiled and greeted the guests, delicately holding a glass of champagne between her thumb and forefinger. She had obviously made a wrong turn somewhere, but where? Why hadn’t anyone ever told her?
“Janey!” Peter called, sweeping her into his arms and lifting her off her feet. “I haven’t seen you all summer. You look fantastic, as always.” Peter! Well, of course he was invited, he was Digger’s lawyer. “I’ve been thinking about you. We should get together.”
“We should,” Janey said, noncommitally.
“Hey, you know Gumdrop died.”
“Oh Peter. I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Yeah, well, dogs are like women. They can always be replaced.” He moved on with a half smile. How sad he was. In ten years, he’d be fifty-five. What would happen to him then?
“Hello, Janey,” Redmon said.
“Oh Redmon,” Janey said. She kissed him on both cheeks. “I’m sorry about . . . about last summer . . .”
“What about last summer?” Redmon said. “All I remember is that I had a great time.”
“Well, then. So did I,” Janey said.
“Well, well, sister of the bride. I hope it’s not always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”
“Zack!”