“How could he?” Lila asks. “We didn’t know each other yet.”
“But of all the paintings to be moved by,” High Bun says.
“Wasn’t it a nude?” Marla asks. “You always leave that part of the story out, too.”
“Wait, it was a nude?” High Bun asks.
“You definitely never told us that part,” Neck Pillow says.
Lila blushes. “Just a partial. And it’s a little abstract, so it’s like, she’s not even really a person. She’s more like a bunch of cubist nude color squares.”
“Color squares with breasts,” Marla says.
Neck Pillow and High Bun lean on each other as they laugh.
“Oh God, I bet your mother loves that part of the story,” Neck Pillow says.
“It honestly was really more about the garden behind her,” Lila says.
“Well,” Phoebe says. “That’s a really lovely story.”
But then it gets quiet. Nobody seems to have anything more to say about the nude painting, not even High Bun and Neck Pillow, who stand on either side of the bride like soldiers. Phoebe doesn’t know what she expected from these wedding people, but she expected conversation. They’ve been so loud from afar, so chatty on the patio last night. And Lila, so forceful in the room with Phoebe, now trying her best to be polite.
“Well, I guess we should go get the car,” Lila says.
“I thought we were waiting for the car?” Marla asks.
“No. We were just … talking,” Lila says.
As they walk out of the lobby, the men in burgundy rise. High Bun asks one of them to get the car, and then the women stand there in another long silence. Everybody looks at their phone or does whatever they can to pretend like the silence is totally normal, until Marla looks around, concerned.
“Where are Gary and Jim, anyway?” Marla asks.
“They’re meeting us at the wharf with your dad,” Lila explains.
“Oh,” Marla says. She is visibly disappointed by the answer, as if she had not realized she’d have to spend the morning driving with Lila and not her brother. Or maybe she’s just one of those people who look perpetually disappointed, with hair annihilated by a straightener, dyed so black that it makes her look like a grown-up version of Wednesday Addams. Her brown sweater, too stiff and formal for a day on a boat. And then there are the wrist splints, which Lila keeps periodically looking at, until Marla notices and finally says something about having a combination of carpal tunnel and tennis elbow.
“I don’t even really like tennis! Just something to do with other women, you know? I mean, there’s like no other sport you can just casually play with other women,” Marla says. “How sad!”
“I don’t think anyone should play sports,” High Bun says. She is anti-sport now. A nurse–turned–physical trainer during Covid who has officially grown weary of all competition. Now High Bun specializes in yoga and nostril-breathing and calming down her system. “Competition is not good for the body or the soul. That’s my gospel. It keeps us in trauma. Keeps us inflamed. That’s probably what’s going on with your hands. You’re all inflamed. Do you take vitamin C?”
“I’m not inflamed,” Marla insists. “I’m injured.”
“I had bad carpal tunnel once,” Neck Pillow says. She explains that she’s a musician. A harpist for the Detroit Symphony. “It was a total disaster. I couldn’t work for months.”
“You’re a harpist?” Phoebe asks.
“Nat is going to play for us at the clambake tonight, and she’s amazing,” Lila says to the group. “She’s an experimental harpist.”
Marla finally laughs. “An experimental harpist? Oh, that’s not a joke. I’m sorry, I thought you were joking. I truly didn’t know experimental harpists existed.”
“There aren’t many,” Lila says. “Nat sort of pioneered the style, isn’t that right?”
“You could say that,” Neck Pillow says.
“How interesting,” Marla says.
It is very easy to imagine Marla playing tennis or speaking in a courtroom or standing behind a podium running for mayoral office, less easy to imagine her in a hotel room, fucking a federal judge. But as they stand there in a new silence, Phoebe tries to imagine Marla giggling in lace lingerie, spread over the bed, the way she has imagined Mia laid out for Matt so many times.
“God, look at these cobblestones!” High Bun says.
Phoebe is starting to realize that this is a wedding like all others—here are people who came from very different corners of the bride’s life, only to gather in a room and have no idea what to say to one another.
“Lila got us a vintage convertible for the week,” High Bun says.
“Suz rented it,” Lila says.
“But it was Lila’s idea.” High Bun smiles and pets her braid.
“Only Lila would have thought of something like that,” Marla says, and it’s unclear whether this is a compliment or an insult. Marla looks back down at her phone, and Phoebe wonders what it was about the federal judge that was so irresistible. Why was Marla willing to give up her whole life?
“The car is here!” Neck Pillow says.
The man in burgundy pulls up the vintage convertible.
“What a beautiful car!” High Bun says.
“How are we all going to fit in it, though?” Marla asks.
