Twice Upon a Wedding Page 11

  “This is Andrew,” he said now, carefully omitting a last name in case Betsy Gardner had ever heard that Andrew David’s real last name was Kennedy. Not one of the Kennedys.

  “Ms. Gardner,” he said, while doodling very bad doodles of squiggles and flowers and anything to keep his hand racing as quickly as his brain. “I’m with Second Chances, the wedding planners for the Benson nuptials.”

  Ms. Gardner replied, “Yes?” in a tone that revealed she’d become network acclimated, poised for the defense, ready to say, “No, we’re not interested.”

  But Andrew gave Jo a thumbs-up signal because, after all, the intern hadn’t hung up on him. Besides, he needed Jo to get back to her own work and not watch him with those green eyes while he sat there, stuck between his two worlds like an elevator between floors.

  “We’ve decided to assist the media by blocking several rooms. New Year’s is a busy time in the Berkshires, and accommodations aren’t only hard to find, they’re at a premium. I’m calling to see if we can help with your arrangements.”

  Ms. Gardner paused a moment. Andrew pictured her in the PR office, the glass-walled cubicle just off the newsroom that would be stacked with heaps of binders filled with press clippings (hard copies always backed up online archives). Lining the perimeter, TV monitors would be set to every network and many cable stations, and no less than three computers would be present, though Andrew had never determined why the lowest-funded department needed three computers.

  He wanted to ask if she were nibbling on a glazed donut or if she’d rid herself of them.

  “I suppose we’ll send someone,” Ms. Gardner at last replied. “At least a photog.”

  “Three rooms, then?” As soon as he said it, Andrew gulped. Only someone in the business would know that every network “photog”—aka videographer—came complete with a soundperson and a field producer. Larry and Curly didn’t venture out sans Moe.

  “What’s your name again?” Betsy said. “I’ll have to get back to you.”

  At least she was still green enough to have missed his slip. However, if she hung up now, she might never call him back. “I can reserve three rooms in our block,” he said. “It won’t cost the network anything to hold them.”

  She sighed a little, well, why not? She no doubt had at least a week’s worth of work to do today, and another week’s tomorrow. By now Ms. Gardner probably had learned that the glamour of television was limited to precious few on-air personalities, while the other staff members were relegated to the heap of underappreciated grunts.

  “We’re only trying to help,” Andrew added, “so no one is turned away. I can reserve the rooms, then e-mail you confirmation. Just let us know for sure a week ahead.”

  “When is it, again?”

  This was, Andrew knew, a ploy to feign disinterest, to make it appear that “network” was a word and a concept superior to “tabloid.”

  “New Year’s Eve,” he said.

  “Oh. Right. Well, yes, then, go ahead and do what you said. I appreciate the help.” She hung up and Andrew felt deserving of a wide smile.

  “She bought it,” he said to Jo. “Now I can call the others and tell them we’re holding rooms for the other networks.”

  Jo nodded, but her green eyes narrowed. “Good. It’s good about your voice, too. You sound like yourself again.”

  Andrew cleared his throat. “Well, yes. Damn. I hate those allergies.” He turned back to the next media victim on his list and chuckled to himself that he had talked with Betsy Gardner and that he had pulled it off.

  And then paralysis overtook him the way it had overtaken him when he’d seen Buzz on Jo’s mother’s kitchen table. His jaw went slack, his pulse and respiration stopped. He suddenly realized that the game was almost done, history, finis. Because though Andrew might be able to fake allergies on the phone and steal magazines from Jo, what the hell was he going to do when the wedding actually was there and so were the photogs, the soundpeople, the field producers—some of whom he no doubt would have worked with over the years?

  And, OhMyGod, he thought with heightened panic, what about the guests? He’d know most of them, wouldn’t he? And they would know him, too!

  Why the hell hadn’t he thought of this before?

  And worse, why hadn’t John?

  22

  Men lie.

  Andrew typed the words without hesitation, knowing it was true, that even the kindest, most well-intentioned male was not above telling a fib or two if he felt it was for his own good.

  Men lie to women. They lie to other men. They even lie to kids if they have to, like when he told Cassie that Patty had left because she didn’t love him anymore, not because she didn’t want to be a mother, her mother.

  He supposed women lied, too.

  I think it’s harder for most women to lie, he added, because they hate keeping secrets. Especially from one another. He thought about the honesty Jo shared when she’d said she learned her new boyfriend was married. She could have made up a lie to cover her embarrassment.

  Now, however, Andrew had no time to worry about Jo or what she might or might not figure out based on browsing through a magazine. He had no time for self-indulgent thoughts right now: He needed to figure out what he was going to do.

  The phone rang: It was John Benson, returning Andrew’s call. Andrew quickly told him about the mess he realized they’d created.

  “Unless we can be sure that every photog and reporter and their cast-of-thousands crew has only been in the business for the past five years, I’m screwed,” he said to John. “And unless you dump all your friends who know me, too.”

  “You’ll have to find a way to hide,” John replied.

  “‘Hide’?”

  “Wait until the day before everyone is to arrive, then tell the women your mother died. And that she lived out in Seattle.”

  “They know my mother’s already dead.”

  “Okay, your father, then.”

  “They know about him, too.”

  “Okay, then, say you’re sick.”

  “They’ll never fall for that.”

  “What about Cassie? You can say her mother needs to see her and you must take her to Australia.”

  “They think Cassie is my niece, remember? That her real mother is dead, too.” His exasperation mounted. Was his mentor growing senile, now that he’d passed sixty?

  “Well, Jesus, Andrew. I don’t know what to tell you.” At least he didn’t add that this whole fiasco had been Andrew’s idea from the start, to write his column under cover, to . . . lie to the four women. “I only know you have to think of something. The column has become too important to the magazine.”

  Ah, yes. The magazine. The ratings. The money.

  “I can always quit.”

  “You can always hang yourself, too,” John said. “Either way, you’re screwed. Lose your jobs or lose your life. Not much of a choice.”

  He said “Lose your jobs” in the plural form, because if Andrew left Second Chances, he’d lose the best fodder any reporter could ever imagine for his column. John knew it, and so did Andrew.

  Andrew laughed. “I can always come clean,” he said. “Tell the truth. That would be a novelty.”

  Silence hung like wet socks on a clothesline. Then John said, “Don’t be so quick to discount that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t have to fess up to all of them. But what about one? If you took one into your confidence . . . told one of the women what was really going on . . . she could be your decoy.”

  Andrew laughed more loudly. John really was growing senile.

  “I’m serious, Andrew. We do it all the time in the media, you know that. Make one of your sources your new best friend. Your chosen informant. My bet is she’ll stick by you just for the fun of it.”

  “For the fun of betraying her practically-lifelong friends?”

  “Don’t position it as betrayal. Position it as protection. That you’re trying to protect
the others from being hurt.”

  “Hurt from what?”

  “I have no idea. Surely you can think of something.”

  He tried. “I could say I was trying to help Second Chances be a huge success, but what reason could I give for why I even cared?”

  “Tell her you’re in love with one of them, that you loved her from afar long before you applied for the job at Second Chances.”

  John knew how Andrew felt about Jo because Andrew had been stupid enough to tell him, the way that he’d told Cassie.

  “Well, then I’d have to tell all my secrets.”

  “I don’t see that you have much of a choice.” He’d said that twice now.

  Andrew sighed. “So which one should I pick?”

  “The one who’s the least likely to think she’d be your favorite, out of all the rest. The one who’d be picked last in dodgeball.”

  “Elaine,” Andrew said.

  “Whomever,” John replied. “I only know that you promised me six months’ of columns. Just do your job, my boy.”

  23

  How about lunch?” Sarah asked Elaine. It was Friday already: Lily, Jo, and Andrew had gone to The Stone Castle and nearby inns and motels to coordinate the Bensons’ guest list to the available rooms, and make a preliminary plan of who would stay where.

  Elaine had brought in egg salad, and was about to decline when Sarah added, “I’m sorry, Elaine. For the way I was the other day. Let’s have lunch. My treat. A peace offering.”

  A peace offering? It was odd, but sometimes so was Sarah.

  They went to Le Fusion, which Elaine hadn’t been to since the day the roommates had decided to open Second Chances.

  “I’ve been hideous lately,” Sarah said after they’d ordered salad greens and cheese soufflés.

  Elaine could have agreed, but she did not. Instead she wondered if she and Sarah had ever gone out for lunch together, just the two of them. Despite that their group was four—five now, counting Andrew—even back in college, Sarah had preferred to stay on an invisible periphery, the loner who would occasionally join in, usually when Jo or Lily had prompted her.

  All the years since college, though Sarah only lived in the next town, the only time she and Elaine got together was when they went to New York to meet Lily and Jo. They never just “did lunch,” the way they were doing now. They never even said they would. She’d only been to Sarah’s house once or twice, and had never met Sarah’s lover, but then, he was a rock star and always on the road.

  It was indeed odd, this peace offering. Just as it had been odd this morning when Andrew asked if Elaine would like company on her trip to Saratoga on Saturday. He said that Cassie had been in a blue mood and he thought a visit to the racetrack, maybe to the horseracing museum, might give her a boost.

  Elaine had said okay, just like lunch with Sarah. She wondered if her makeover was responsible for people wanting to be with her, that maybe people thought her attitude had changed for the better, like her hair.

  Of course, that wouldn’t be the case with Sarah.

  “I know you think I’m being silly,” Elaine said, “for wanting to change my life.”

  Sarah’s black eyes flashed with sparks of silver, like the silver she crafted into such beautiful jewelry. She shook her head; her long hair swayed like sheets of satin. “It isn’t you,” she said. “Besides, have you ever known anyone more tolerant of other people than me?”

  Well, that was true, Sarah was tolerant. She’d had friends back in college who were Buddhists and friends who were capitalists and friends who wore a mass of tattoos before tattoos were cool. She’d had her three roommates who each heard her own muse. Sarah didn’t criticize; she just did her own thing.

  “You’re pretty tolerant,” Elaine agreed. “You don’t make fun of people. Especially your friends.”

  Sarah covered her face with her long artist’s fingers. Unlike the sheen of her hair, her hands were dull and dry. They looked made of clay, as if she were a potter. “Oh, God, Elaine. I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time at home right now and I’m taking it out on everyone.”

  As long as Elaine had known her, she’d never known Sarah to complain of anything about her personal life. She never bitched about men (much to Lily’s chagrin), never complained about any frustrations regarding her son. She’d grumbled about the price of gas, unnecessary pesticides, the Bush administration. Never anything personal.

  “Jason wants to move into the city.”

  “New York City?”

  She nodded and sipped her tonic water.

  Elaine wasn’t sure if Jason was leaving Sarah or if Sarah would go with him, so she simply asked, “And?”

  “And I don’t want to go. I love my life here. I had my doubts about Second Chances in the beginning, but now I feel as if we might just make it. I’d hate to walk away from that.”

  “You can’t leave us, Sarah. You’re too important to the business.” She supposed she shouldn’t have said that; she recognized emotional blackmail when she heard it. But, gosh, Lily had the money and Jo had the brains, and if it weren’t for Sarah, there would be no creativity, no real creativity, the kind that turned an ordinary room into the Taj Mahal. “The last time I decorated anything was for homecoming weekend,” Elaine said. “Remember the red-and-yellow crepe paper? Everyone hated it.”

  Sarah laughed. “It was pretty ugly.”

  “And what about Burch? Where would he go to school?”

  “Oh,” Sarah groaned. “That’s another problem. He really wants to move. He’d see more of Jason. Half the time when Jason is on the road it’s because he’s in the city.”

  They talked back and forth throughout the lunch, Elaine trying to help Sarah come up with a solution, Sarah relating pros and cons and not coming up with any answers.

  But by the time the crème brûlée arrived, Elaine wondered if her makeover had indeed helped make her more approachable to Sarah and to Andrew, or if it was simply that, as people got older, they realized how important their friends really were.

  Elaine had said she’d pick Andrew and Cassie up at ten, but she got there at nine-thirty because she was ready and she didn’t want to wait around. She’d told Andrew she’d drive her minivan so there would be “room for my father’s archives,” or at least, that’s what she’d said. The truth was, Elaine wanted to drive so she’d have something to do to keep busy, something to focus on other than wandering thoughts about her father and how she would feel when she saw him. And when she saw the house, her home, the place she’d been avoiding since her mother had died, because it wasn’t the same, it would never be the same again.

  She knew she’d be nervous. Excited. Not unlike the seven-year-old girl she’d once been, who’d tried so hard to make her father’s favorite angel cake and present it to him for his birthday. She’d somehow been aware that hers didn’t stand quite as tall as when he made it for the restaurant, and it leaned slightly to one side. He’d said it was perfect, but Elaine had known it wasn’t.

  She hoped her father hadn’t let the house go, let the pewter-colored paint start to chip and peel, let the floorboards of the wide front veranda begin to buckle and crumble. She could not take that guilt, if she was forced to see that he’d been suffering, that he’d become despondent, an old, unhappy man.

  “Saratoga isn’t just a county,” Cassie interrupted, reading from the pages she’d downloaded off the Internet. “It’s like a country all its own.” She sat in the backseat next to a cooler that Elaine had loaded with root beer, Macintosh apples (the sweetest in the fall), and packets of string cheese because those were the things her kids had loved whenever they’d gone on a road trip, usually to Saratoga when her mother was still alive.

  It had been a long time since any of her kids were Cassie’s age, and Elaine felt envious of Andrew, who rode shotgun beside her, and wasn’t saying much of anything since he’d gotten in the van.

  “Hey!” Cassie said. “It has the oldest thoroughbred racecourse in the nation
!”

  “And the most beautiful,” Elaine added. She waited for a rebuttal from Andrew, but his head was turned out the window, and he seemed more interested in the trees that had long since lost their leaves and now stood naked in the margins of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

  “Dad, can we go to a mineral bath?”

  It was heart-wrenching the way that Cassie sometimes called him “Dad.” It was wonderful that Andrew had taken Cassie in when her mother, his sister, died. Elaine remembered he’d said the woman had been killed in a car accident.

  Andrew cleared his throat. “I thought you wanted to see the horse track. And the museum.”

  “I do. But after that?”

  Kory had been like that—the energetic child, the one eager to see and do it all, as long as “it” did not involve anything that hinted of schoolwork.

  “We’ll only be here a few hours,” Andrew said, “not a month or two.”

  In the rearview mirror, Elaine saw Cassie set down the papers. She wanted to tell Andrew not to be so hard on the girl, but he was not her husband and Cassie was not one of her kids.

  “You’ll have to excuse my Uncle Andrew,” Cassie said. “He’s having some personal problems.”

  Andrew didn’t speak: He just chuckled and shook his head.

  “Andrew?” Elaine asked. “Is it something I can help with?” He’d been so kind to her, so patient to endure all the female silliness at Second Chances.

  “Maybe we can talk about it on the way back,” he said. “Right now you need to think about your father’s recipes, and Cassie and I need to think about having fun. Right, Cassie?”