Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

Margot bowed her head. Edge would be looking at her and thinking… what? That she was a good, cool kid, a pretty girl, a great lay, but that it had been doomed from the start. Margot was Doug’s daughter. Edge had always held a part of himself in check because of this fact. But was dating his paralegal any better? Rosalie, from the look of her, was ten years younger than Margot; Margot put her at twenty-eight, so she was thirty years younger than Edge. Thirty years younger! Men were disgusting creatures; the younger the woman they took to bed, the more powerful they felt. Or something like that. Wouldn’t Doug have an issue with Edge and Rosalie together? Maybe not, maybe it was standard practice to screw the paralegals, what did Margot know? She knew nothing. Nothing at all.

Jenna and Stuart met at the altar. Doug kissed Jenna’s cheek and gave her a squeeze and then leaned in to shake Stuart’s hand, then pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes. There were sniffles in the church. Doug sat next to Pauline, who was wearing a rust-colored dress that made her look like a monk.

Reverend Marlowe raised his hands and in a commanding voice said, “Dearly beloved.”

Margot stood at Jenna’s side, she did not faint or falter, she did not throw up, she lifted Jenna’s veil and held her bouquet-and in between performing these duties, she sneaked surreptitious glances at Edge, who had put on his bifocals to read the program. Rosalie looked interested in the actual ceremony; her eyes wandered from Jenna to the groomsmen to the bridesmaids, then back to the groomsmen. Was she looking at Margot? Did she know who Margot was, beyond being Doug Carmichael’s daughter? Did she know that Margot and Edge had been lovers up until-well, until today, Margot supposed, although the last time she had been with Edge was eight days earlier, and the last time she had spoken with him was Monday night. Any way you sliced it, it was clear that Edge had been cheating on Margot with his paralegal Rosalie, although it couldn’t really be called cheating because Margot and Edge’s relationship had no official status.

Rosalie looked at the groomsmen again.

Beanie stood at the pulpit to do her reading. She was wearing a navy sailor dress with white piping-typical Beanie. People didn’t change, Margot knew this, and yet it constantly took her by surprise. People were who they were.

Beanie adjusted the microphone and cleared her throat. Margot was dying to sit down. The ceremony lasted twenty-five minutes start to finish. Margot was still an hour away from her first glass of wine.

Beanie started to read. “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink. Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain…”

It was a beautiful poem, an appropriate choice; Margot had really adored it until this moment. Now, she defaulted to her philosophy of Love Dies. Or, in the case of her and Edge, whatever was between them had died before it became love. At least for Edge. Margot thought she felt love, but probably it belonged in another category. It was pointless obsession with a man who had never wanted her the way that she wanted him. Whatever the case, the fact was that looking at Edge sitting with Rosalie hurt. It hurt.

“I might be driven to sell your love for peace, or trade the memory of this night for food… It may well be. I do not think I would.”

A stifled cry came from the pews. Margot snapped from her own thoughts at the very moment that Pauline stood up. Pauline pressed a tissue to her nose and mouth, but another sob escaped. She rustled her way to the aisle, then executed a half run, half walk in her high heels until she was at the back of the church. This caused no small disruption. Everyone murmured and whispered, and when Kevin took the pulpit to read the lyrics to “Here, There and Everywhere,” nearly everyone was facing the back of the church, eyeing the door through which Pauline had disappeared.

Margot looked at her father. He was sitting with his eyes closed, no doubt wishing that he could rewind the last thirty seconds and make them go differently.

Margot thought, Dad, do something. But what was he to do? Chase after Pauline and miss his daughter’s wedding?

Margot saw motion to her left. Rhonda stepped off the altar and hurried down the aisle in the wake of her mother.

The Tonellis, Margot thought.

The church was really a-chatter now. But Kevin, never one to doubt his own importance, took the microphone.

“Here, making each day of the year,” he read. “Changing my life with a wave of her hand, nobody can deny that there’s something there.”

The Prenuptial Agreement

I’m not talking about a legal document. If you feel you need a pre-nup, or if Intelligent, Sensitive Groom-to-Be comes from billions of dollars and wants you to sign a pre-nup, consult your father. The kind of “pre-nup” I’m talking about are the agreements you make with Intelligent, Sensitive Groom-to-Be before you marry.

It basically all boils down to who, in the marriage, will be responsible for the following:

Trash

Emptying dishwasher

Mowing lawn

Laundry

You take two, he takes two. I suggest taking the lawn mowing. You’ll recall I mowed the lawn in the sunny middle of the afternoon wearing a bikini top with my headphones on, playing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” as loud as it would go. Afterwards I always had an ice-cold beer and admired my perfect lines and the deep, green smell. Do not automatically gift that slice of heaven to your husband-enjoy it for yourself!

She had always drifted in church. No matter how hard she tried to pay attention, her mind wandered. The same had been true for long sessions of the state senate. Some windbag would have the microphone, loving the sound of his own voice, and Ann would doodle or pass irreverent notes to Billy Benedict from Winston-Salem. She would think, All the real legislating gets done in bars and good steak houses. Nobody’s mind gets changed in here.

Ann had thought it would be different with Stuart’s wedding. She had thought she would hang on every word so that she could re-create it for herself and others later. This was her son getting married; it was one of those things she was meant to reflect upon on her deathbed. But as soon as Jenna walked down the aisle and kissed her father and stood by Stuart, Ann started to float away. She thought, The best part of a wedding was seeing the bride walk down the aisle. Everything else was anticlimactic. Why was that? Did anyone listen to the readings or the prayers? Did anyone listen to the minister’s sermon or the vows? Did anyone care if the couple had children or miscarried, if they made their mortgage or were foreclosed on, if they stayed together or split up? People, Ann thought, were self-absorbed. They cared about themselves, and sometimes about one other person. And, of course, every mother cared about her child, that child being an extension of herself. Ann had long suspected that all human behavior boiled down to biology, and that the whole catastrophe with her and Jim and Helen could be chalked up to Helen wanting a baby and Jim following an atavistic desire to propagate the species.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister said.

Ann studied the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses. Such an interesting choice, that green.

Stuart was standing nice and tall, square shouldered, dignified, respectable. As the firstborn, Stuart had accepted the burden of perfection. He had never given Ann or Jim one moment of trouble; he had always been the exceptional child that every parent dreamed of.

The readings began. The love poem first, recited by the sister-in-law. It was the first and only poem Ann had ever really appreciated. She had taken a class on Frost in college and had found it boring���all snowy woods and stone fences. Helen was more of a poetry person. She had cultivated her flaky-literary dramatic persona to great effect back in Durham. Ann recalled a moment during the cabernet dinner at the Fairlee house when Helen had raised her enormous balloon glass of wine the color of blood and recited:

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like

musical instruments. Where there was silence

the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.

Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped

into fire.

The table had gone silent. Ann, and she suspected everyone else, realized that Helen was reciting something, but no one spoke up in recognition of exactly what. Helen had taken a long swill of her wine and then said gleefully, “Anne Sexton!”

Jim, Ann remembered, had chuckled and raised his glass to Helen, even though Ann knew damn well that Jim Graham had no clue if Anne Sexton was a poet or a prostitute.

Now, Jim’s eyes glazed over as he listened to the love poem. His head bobbled. Ann delivered a charley horse into his thigh with two knuckles. She realized he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep in the rental car, but she couldn’t let him fall asleep during his son’s wedding.

Suddenly there was a noise-a whimper or a cry-and Ann’s head whipped around in time to see Pauline Carmichael scurry from the church in tears.

Jim leaned over, fully alert now. “What happened?” he whispered. “What’d I miss?”

Ann wasn’t sure, although she knew Pauline was unhappy, or uneasy, in her marriage. But to run from the church in the middle of the ceremony? Ann stared over at Doug Carmichael, wondering if he would rise and follow his wife-but he remained in the pew. Ann craned her neck in time to see Pauline burst through the back double doors, and then Ann caught sight of Helen, four pews behind her. Helen was staring dreamily at the altar; she seemed not to have noticed the dramatic disruption. Typical. Really, what did Helen Oppenheimer care about another human being’s pain or disillusionment? She cared not at all. Ann considered going after Pauline herself, although that might seem strange and inappropriate. Someone else should go. At that moment, Pauline’s daughter stepped out of the green ranks and hurried down the aisle.