“No. Seriously. I am. I just felt it when he said hello to me,” Gracie said with a serious look that made Victoria want to throw water on her to wake her up.

“Hello. This is college. Four years of fun, things to learn, and great guys. Let’s not get married the first day.”

“Leave it to your sister to find the richest kid on campus,” their father said proudly, assuming he was the Wilkes of Wilkes Hall. “He looked pretty taken with her.”

“So was half of Italy in June. Let’s not lose our heads here,” Victoria said, trying to be the voice of reason, but no one was listening to her. His name had done it for her father. His looks had done it for Gracie. And the word marriage did it for their mother. Poor Harry Wilkes was a goner, Victoria thought to herself, if the three of them got hold of him. “Listen, you,” she said to her little sister, “try not to get engaged before I come back for Thanksgiving.” She gave her a big hug then, and the two sisters held each other, wishing they could stop time and freeze this moment forever. “I love you,” Victoria whispered into her dark curly hair. Gracie looked like a child in her sister’s arms, and Gracie looked up at her with tears on her lashes.

“I love you too. I really meant what I said before. I just got this weird feeling about him.”

“Oh shut up,” Victoria said, laughing, and gave her a sisterly shove. “Have fun at tennis. Call and tell me how it was.” Victoria wasn’t leaving for New York till the morning. There was nothing to stay for once Gracie left the house, nothing to keep Victoria there. There hadn’t been in years.

The three of them walked back to the enormous parking lot and found her father’s car. Victoria got into the backseat, and they rode in silence all the way home, each of them lost in thought, thinking how fast it had all gone. One minute Gracie was a baby, a toddler careening around the room at full speed, Victoria was taking her to first grade and kissing her goodbye, then suddenly she was a teenager, and now this. And they all knew with sadness and certainty that the next four years would wing past them just as fast.

Chapter 16

Their collective fear that Gracie’s college years would rush by too quickly proved to be true. It happened in the blink of an eye, and the next thing they all knew, she was graduating from USC. She was in a cap and gown, and her parents and older sister saw her hat fly high in the air again. It was over. Four years of college. She had a bachelor’s degree in English and communications, and hadn’t figured out how to use it yet. She wanted to work for a magazine or a newspaper, but hadn’t started interviewing yet. She was taking the summer off and planned to look for a job in September. And she had their father’s blessing. She was going to Europe with friends in July, to Spain and Italy, and her boyfriend was going with them, and then the two of them were meeting up with his parents in the South of France. Her prediction on her first day at USC had almost materialized. They weren’t married, but Harry Wilkes had been her boyfriend for all four years of college, and Gracie’s father heartily approved. They were indeed the family that had donated the hall of the same name. Harry had graduated from business school the year before, and he was working for his father in an investment banking firm. He was solid as a rock, her father liked to say, and a very good catch. He was with them along with half a dozen of her friends when they went to lunch after graduation, and Victoria noticed them talking conspiratorially at the other end of the table, and then he kissed her and she smiled.

Victoria liked Harry, although she thought him a little too controlling, and she wished her younger sister had been more adventurous while she was in college. She had been with Harry constantly. She had left the dorms in junior year to live in an apartment with him off campus, and they were still living together now. Victoria thought she was too young to be so settled so early and limited to one boy. And he reminded her a little of her father, which made her nervous too. Harry had opinions about everything, and Gracie endorsed all of them, with no differences of her own. Victoria didn’t want her turning into their mother one day. A shadow of her husband, put on earth to enhance him and make him feel good about himself. What about her?

But there was no denying that Gracie was happy with Harry. And Victoria had been shocked when her parents made no objection to the two of them living together. She was sure they wouldn’t have done the same for her. And when she had mentioned it to her father, he told her not to be so uptight and old-fashioned, but part of that was because Harry’s family had so much money. Victoria was sure that they wouldn’t have been as easygoing if Harry Wilkes were poor. She had said as much to Helen, and Harlan and John, whenever she talked to them about it. She worried about Gracie a lot. She was always fearful that Gracie had been brainwashed by their parents into pursuing all the wrong ideals.

The luncheon celebration had started late after graduation and went on until four in the afternoon. They finally left the table, and Gracie went to return her rented cap and gown. She handed Victoria her diploma for safekeeping, and said Harry was going to drive her home. They were going out with friends that night. Harry was driving the Ferrari his parents had given him when he graduated from business school. Victoria saw them kiss as soon as they walked away, and it seemed only yesterday that he had been standing holding a tennis racket outside her dorm the day she moved in as a freshman.

“I must be getting old,” Victoria said to her father as they got in his car and drove away. She was turning twenty-nine. “She was five years old about five minutes ago. How did we get here?”

“Damned if I know. I feel the same way about you.” He even managed to look sentimental as he said it, which surprised Victoria.

During Gracie’s four years in college, Victoria had gone out with a few men she’d met here and there, an attorney, a teacher, a stockbroker, a journalist. But none of them had mattered to her, and the relationships had only lasted a few weeks or months. She was the head of the English department at Madison now, and still living in the same apartment. She shared it with only Harlan and John. They each used a second bedroom as a study. Bunny had gotten married three years before and had two children. She had just moved to Washington, D.C., with her husband and babies. He had a State Department job, which they all suspected was really CIA, and she was a stay-at-home mom. Harlan was still working at the Costume Institute, and John was teaching at the same school in the Bronx. And she had stopped seeing Dr. Watson two years before. There was nothing more to say to her. They had covered the same territory many times, and they agreed. There were no mysteries left to discover. Her parents had given her a raw deal and poured all their love into her sister, and had never had any for her, even before Gracie was born. In plain talk, she’d been screwed, but she loved her sister dearly anyway. And she had very little feeling for her parents, neither anger nor affection. They were selfish, self-centered people who should never have had children at all, or not her anyway. Gracie suited them. She didn’t. And Victoria was doing fine in spite of it. Victoria felt that Dr. Watson had helped her a great deal. She still had the same parents, and a problem with her weight, but she was dealing with both more successfully than before.

She still hadn’t found the man of her dreams and maybe she never would, but she loved her job, she was still teaching seniors, and her weight still fluctuated up and down. Her eating habits depended on the weather, her job, the state of her love life or lack of it, or her mood. At the moment she was heavier than she liked. She hadn’t had a date in about a year, but she always insisted that her weight had nothing to do with her love life and the two weren’t related. Harlan was always vocal about disagreeing with her, and pointed out that she gained weight, and ate more, when she was lonely and miserable. They had put a treadmill in the living room, and a rowing machine, both of which she had contributed to, and she never used them. Harlan and John always did.

Victoria was going back to New York the morning after Gracie’s graduation, and she had dinner with her parents at home that night. It was a sacrifice she made at least once in every trip. Her father was talking about retiring early in a few years. Her mother was still a fanatical bridge player. And Victoria had less and less to say to them every year. Her father’s jokes about her weight weren’t amusing, and now he had added to them comments about the fact that she wasn’t married, didn’t have a boyfriend, and wasn’t likely to have kids. He tied it all to her weight. She didn’t argue about it with him anymore, or try to defend herself or explain. She just let the comments and wisecracks go by without answering them. They never changed. And he still thought her job was a total waste of time.

At dinner, he talked about getting Gracie a job as a copywriter at his ad agency, after she came home from Europe. Victoria was helping her mother load the dishwasher after dinner when Gracie came home unexpectedly. Since she was living with Harry, she didn’t drop by very often, and they were all surprised to see her, and pleased. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were sparkling as she stood in the kitchen and looked at them. And Victoria had a sudden flutter in her stomach as Gracie blurted out the words she feared.

“I’m engaged!” There was a deadly silence in the room for a fraction of a second, and then her father let out a whoop and spun her around in his arms as he had when she was a child.