KAREN
She wakes up from her nap with the sun striping her bed and for one glorious instant, she feels no pain. She sits up without any help. It’s as if Nantucket Island—the quality of the air, the rarefied seaside atmosphere—has cured her. She’s going to be fine.
“B-B-Betty?”
Karen turns. Celeste emerges from Karen’s bathroom wearing a ruffled sundress the color of a tangerine, a sunset, a monarch butterfly. It’s bright and very flattering. Celeste may have the brain and temperament of a scientist, but she has the body of a bathing-suit model. She inherited Karen’s breasts, which used to be her best feature, round and firm. But along with the breasts, Celeste may also have inherited the predisposition to cancer. Karen has made Celeste promise that as soon as she and Benji are married and Celeste has comprehensive health insurance, she will go to Sloan Kettering for genetic testing. And if necessary, she will get screened every year. Early detection is key.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Karen says. “What are you doing here? Surely you have more important places to be? This is your time to shine.”
“I was putting your t-t-toiletries away,” Celeste says. “And now I can help you g-g-get ready.”
Karen’s eyes prick with tears. It is she who should be helping Celeste, she who should be fussing over her daughter, the bride. But there is no denying that if Karen is to get dressed and make herself presentable, she will need help.
“Where’s your father?” she asks.
“Swimming,” Celeste says.
There’s a stabbing pain in Karen’s chest. It’s jealousy. Bruce is swimming. Karen yearns to be with him, to feel the power of her four limbs. She had once been so strong; she remembers swimming the butterfly leg on her relay team, soaring from the water, arms stretched overhead, legs pumping behind. When she looks back at her life, she sees how much she has taken for granted.
Celeste is by her side. Karen takes a moment to look up at her face. Her eyes are sad, and Karen is concerned about the stutter, although she hasn’t mentioned it because she doesn’t want to make Celeste self-conscious for fear that the stutter will get worse. She knows that Benji and Celeste have whittled down their wedding vows so that all Celeste has to say is “I do.”
“Is everything okay?” Karen asks.
“Yes, B-B-Betty, of course,” Celeste says.
The nickname never fails to give Karen joy, even so many years later. She is Betty, for Betty Crocker, because Karen swears by the tattered, spiral-bound cookbooks she inherited from her own mother. Bruce, meanwhile, is Mac, for MacGyver, because he has a talent for unconventional problem-solving. The man can fix anything and prides himself on not having called a repairman in thirty years of marriage. Celeste gave them the nicknames when she was eleven years old and had outgrown Mommy and Daddy.
Karen strokes Celeste’s forearm and Celeste adjusts her smile so that it seems almost real. She’s pretending. But why? Is she feeling scared and anxious about Karen’s illness? The decline has been significant, Karen knows, even in the two weeks since she last saw Celeste. Karen had dropped thirteen pounds as of a week ago and maybe another ten since then. Her stomach is compromised; she eats a bite or two of food per meal and forces down enough Ensure to keep up her strength. Her hair is nothing but gray fuzz, like one finds on a pussy willow. Her eyes are sunken, and her limbs tremble. It has probably come as a shock to Celeste.
But Karen isn’t persuaded that she, Karen, is the reason for Celeste’s pensive, faraway mood. It’s something else, maybe the stress and pressure of being the center of attention. This wedding is huge; the setting is grandiose. Elaborate, expensive plans have been made, with Celeste and Benji at their center. It would be intimidating for anyone. When Karen married Bruce, there were six people in attendance at the Easton courthouse. She and Bruce celebrated afterward with a bottle of Asti spumante and a pizza from Nicolosi’s.
Or maybe the problem isn’t the wedding. Maybe it’s Benji himself. Karen thinks back on her ill-advised visit to Kathryn Randall, the psychic.
Chaos.
“Darling,” Karen says.
Celeste looks at her mother, and their eyes lock. Karen sees the truth in Celeste’s clear blue irises: she doesn’t want to marry Benji.
Karen needs to reassure Celeste that she’s doing the right thing. Benji is a good man. He adores Celeste. He keeps her on the exact same pedestal that Karen and Bruce placed her on at the moment of her birth. That’s really the wonderful thing about Benji: He loves their daughter the way she deserves to be loved. That… and he has money.
Karen would like to pretend that the money doesn’t matter, but it does. For over thirty years, Karen and Bruce have lived from paycheck to paycheck; 95 percent of their decisions have had to do with money: Should they buy organic fruit so Celeste wouldn’t be exposed to a lot of pesticides? (Yes.) Should they drive the extra twenty minutes to Phillipsburg, New Jersey, for cheaper gas? (Yes.) Should they take Celeste to the orthodontist who allegedly had been accused of child molestation but who charged half as much as the reputable orthodontist? (No.) They had enough money to pay their mortgage and send Celeste to college, but any financial surprise—a leak in the roof, a raise in property taxes, a cancer diagnosis—was enough to sink them. Karen doesn’t want Celeste to have to live that way. She has a college degree and a good job at the zoo, but Benji can give her everything. And everything is what she deserves.
As Karen opens her mouth to assure her daughter that she is doing the right thing, Bruce comes into the room with a navy-and-white-striped beach towel wrapped around his waist. Karen feasts her eyes on her husband—to her, he’s every bit as beautiful as he was on the pool balcony so many years ago. His shoulders are defined by rippling muscles; his chest is smooth and broad. They have never had money for gym memberships; Bruce does old-fashioned calisthenics—sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups—in their bedroom every morning before work. He has been outside for less than an hour and already his skin has a healthy golden glow. Karen always envied the Mediterranean blood he’d inherited from his mother. He would go outside to mow the lawn and come back a bronzed god.
“Both my girls!” he says. “What a surprise!”
“D-D-Did you get the Reds, Mac?” Celeste asks. “For t-t-tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Bruce says. He pulls a pair of pants out of the closet; they are the color of dusty bricks. “I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s certainly not the style. Is it the color? Mrs. Winbury, Greer, told me they would fade with every washing. It sounds like I’m going to need to spring for the dry cleaner.”
“N-N-No, you should wash them,” Celeste says. “That’s the idea. The m-m-more they f-f-fade, the c-c-cooler they are.”
“That makes no sense,” Bruce says. “Did you happen to notice the black jeans I had on earlier? Sleek as a panther.”
“The Reds are d-d-different, though,” Celeste says.
“It’s a Nantucket thing, darling,” Karen says to Bruce. She thinks she gets it; the older and more worn the pants, the more authentic they are. The sleek-as-a-panther look, shiny and new, doesn’t work on Nantucket; the preferred aesthetic is a careless appearance: faded pants, frayed collars, scuffed penny loafers. Bruce won’t understand this but Karen gives him a look that implores him to just get with the program. The last thing they want to do is make a fuss and embarrass Celeste.
Bruce catches Karen’s eye and seems to read her mind. “I’ll do as you tell me, Bug.” He throws on a T-shirt, then takes Celeste’s hand and Karen’s hand so that they form a human chain. But every chain has a weak link, and in their case, it’s Karen. She’s leaving them behind. The agony of this is exquisite. There is nothing more terrible, she has decided, than the ferocity with which humans can love.
“I came in to help B-B-Betty get ready,” Celeste says. “The p-p-party starts in a little while.”
“What about the rehearsal?” Bruce says. “Aren’t we all going to the church?”
“Reverend D-D-Derby’s flight from New York was d-d-delayed so we decided to scrap the rehearsal,” Celeste says.
Karen is relieved. She isn’t certain she would have made it through both the rehearsal and the party. Bruce, however, seems miffed.
“How are we supposed to practice our walk?” he says.
“We don’t have to p-p-practice,” Celeste says. “We link arms, we walk. Slowly. You hand me off to B-B-Benji. You k-k-kiss me.”
“I wanted to practice,” Bruce says. “Practice doing it without crying. I figured since today was the first time, I’d cry, but then tomorrow it would be old hat and maybe I wouldn’t cry. Maybe. But I wanted to practice.”
Celeste shrugs. “We d-d-decided not to d-d-do it.”
Bruce nods. “All right. I’ll help your mother. You go relax, Bug. Have a glass of wine.”
