And so, a week later, they drove out to Long Island on a perfectly good Saturday, all three of them (or five of them if you counted the horse-head bookends). Audra wore a short pale blue dress with a matching bolero jacket and a big white bow at the collar. This dress had always struck Graham as vaguely pornographic—it looked like a man’s fantasy of what a librarian would wear—but it was very pretty. Matthew was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt with one of Graham’s ties knotted at his throat. He had the same almost-auburn hair as Audra but much thicker and not as curly. Matthew’s hair was Audra’s delight—she said it was so perfect she didn’t even have to brush it.
Graham allowed himself a grudging approval of the wedding venue as he parked the car in the gravel parking lot of the church. The reception would follow immediately in the stately home next door—no drive, no re-parking the car, no waiting around. Ten minutes from wedding vows to a drink in every guest’s hand. Just as it should be.
“Tell me the bride’s and groom’s names again,” Graham whispered to Audra as soon as an usher had seated them.
“Bryant and Michelle,” Audra said in her normal speaking voice. “Bryant went to law school at Georgetown and now he works in multisomething finance in Boston.”
“And Michelle?”
“I know virtually nothing about her,” Audra said, “except that she gets very wet during sex. Don’t fidget, Matthew.”
An elderly couple in the pew in front of them suddenly sat up very straight, and the woman snapped the clasp on her purse shut with a startled click. Graham sighed. Perhaps Audra had once had a filter, but gossip overload had destroyed it.
It turned out to be an old-fashioned wedding with a receiving line, and Graham had to shake hands with the bride and wish her every happiness, all while trying very hard not to think about the only thing that it was really possible to think about now, or probably ever, in her presence. Audra seemed blissfully untroubled by this and hugged Bryant enthusiastically, saying, “Welcome to the world of marriage!” and then hugged the bride and said—actually said—“I’ve heard so much about you!”
The elderly couple were right behind him in the receiving line, and the man gave Graham a sort of sickly smile when he heard that.
Graham shook hands with the bride’s parents, and then Mrs. Luxe, a large woman in a battleship-gray dress, from which her satin-covered bosom protruded like the prow of, well, a battleship.
Next in the receiving line was Dr. Luxe. Now Graham remembered him—a big olive-skinned man with a large nose and abundant silver curls brushed back in what Graham’s mother called “finger waves.” His wife, clearly the second Mrs. Luxe, was much younger, blond, and timid-seeming.
“I’m sure you remember my husband, Graham,” Audra said to Dr. Luxe as Graham shook hands with him. “His ex-wife is the one who wants to move into your building.”
“Ex-wife?” Dr. Luxe looked startled. “I thought it was a friend.”
“Friend and ex-wife,” Audra said smoothly. “We’re extremely close.”
(This was possibly the biggest lie anyone had ever told in that particular church. Elspeth had refused to ever even meet Audra.)
“I admire that,” Dr. Luxe said.
“I didn’t want us to be one of those acrimonious couples,” Audra said. “That’s so hard on everyone. Actually, we enjoy Elspeth’s company immensely. We all go to lunch together and sometimes the movies. She even helped us with our kitchen renovation.”
“How refreshing!” Dr. Luxe said.
“Often Elspeth goes on vacation with us,” Audra said, completely carried away now. “Not if we’re going somewhere romantic, of course, like the Bahamas, but more like long weekends and things. You know, like if we’re going to the Berkshires, then we think, Why not take Elspeth? She’s so much fun! And so knowledgeable about nature and hiking and bird-watching.”
“That is the most civilized arrangement I’ve ever heard of,” Dr. Luxe said. “I think it’s marvelous.”
The second Mrs. Luxe’s eyes were huge. She was obviously terrified that she would now have to go mushroom hunting with the first Mrs. Luxe.
“But perhaps just maybe don’t mention my name to Elspeth,” Audra added in a soft rush, touching Dr. Luxe’s arm. “She’s terribly independent. She would want to think she got the apartment on her own.”
“My lips are sealed,” Dr. Luxe said.
“Anyway,” Audra said, “this is our son, Matthew! Matthew, Dr. Luxe is literally the first person who ever held you.”
Graham closed his eyes. Sex, divorce, lies, obstetrics—would this conversation never end?
But Dr. Luxe seemed delighted. He shook hands with Matthew and exclaimed over how tall he was while Graham shook hands with the second Mrs. Luxe. By then, there was such a traffic jam of wedding guests behind them that a kind of crowd surge pushed them out of the receiving line and into the bar, where Graham grabbed a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and drank it in one swallow.
But the rest of the wedding was okay, even more than okay. The manor house had French doors opening onto the grounds. It was a beautiful summer day, and teenage girls had been hired to organize all the children. Most of the children happily ran out onto the lawn, but Matthew stayed sitting at the table. One of the teenage girls—a pretty brunette in a soft lavender dress—sat next to him and Matthew made an origami tree frog that had 101 folds out of a cocktail napkin. The brunette ruffled Matthew’s hair and asked him to fold something else, and Graham thought perhaps there might be an upside to this origami business after all.
Graham and Audra even danced a little, and it was as they were dancing that it suddenly occurred to Graham to wonder how Audra had known anything about the bride’s sex life.
“Hmmm?” she said sleepily, her head resting on his shoulder. “Oh. Because it turns out through some weird coincidence that Bryant knows Doug’s old roommate and he told Doug and Doug told Lorelei, and she told me. In fact, Lorelei thought she and Doug might get invited, too, but they didn’t.”
Graham held her closer, and saw that Matthew was alone now. The brunette had wandered off. Still, it had been a better day than expected. Graham was relieved that Lorelei hadn’t come to the wedding, because if she had, she and Audra would have devoted the whole day to the most intensive type of conversation imaginable (they once talked so much they blew out the candle in a restaurant) and then he wouldn’t have had Audra to himself.
—