Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

“And I left for the yacht club,” Margot said. Because she was so anxious to see Edge. She should have waited for Nick and Finn. She should have stayed home and chaperoned.

“And it’s Nick,” Jenna said. “And apparently he just can’t help himself. Doesn’t matter that Finn is married, doesn’t matter that I was her maid of honor, or that she’s my bridesmaid and best friend.”

“You can’t let Nick’s behavior or Finn’s poor judgment influence you,” Margot said.

“Then we have Dad and Pauline. He’s sixty-four, and she’s… what? Sixty-one? This was supposed to be their great second chance at love; they were supposed to grow old together. But no. Love has died there as well, and now Dad will start dating younger and younger women-your age first, then my age, then Emma Wilton’s age…”

“Jenna…”

“And then we have Stuart’s parents. I used to think their story was so lovely-at least the part where they got married for a second time. But last night, when I met Helen, I felt sick, and that was even before she opened her mouth about Stuart and Crissy Pine. She’s this freaking Swedish supermodel-type woman, and she wore that look-at-me, center-of-attention dress when she was lucky to be invited to the wedding at all. Ann only included her because Ann is a saint.”

“Okay,” Margot said, thinking, Stupid Ann.

“And when Chance got sick and Jim and Helen left for the hospital, it became, duh, obvious to me that Jim had cheated on Ann, cheated badly. He had a child with another woman!”

Margot wanted to say, Oh, come on, that just occurred to you tonight? What kind of Pollyanna world had Jenna been living in? But instead Margot said, “You can’t let other people’s failings-”

“But worst of all,” Jenna said, “worst of all is you.”

“Me?” Margot said. Her thoughts twirled and tumbled. How could she be the worst of all? Worse than Nick? Worse than Helen in the yellow dress? What did Jenna know about her personal life, anyway? Had Autumn told her about Edge? Had she seen Margot kissing Griff? And why would either of those things matter to Jenna?

“Of all the marriages I’ve ever seen, yours was my absolute favorite,” Jenna said. “And you just walked away from it.”

“My marriage?” Margot said. “You mean to Drum?”

“Maybe it was because of our age difference,” Jenna said. “I was still in high school when you got married, and as we know, I’m a hopeless romantic.”

“There was nothing romantic about when I got married,” Margot said. “Hello? It was a shotgun wedding.”

“You two were the coolest people I knew,” Jenna said. “When you two surfed together, you were so… beautiful. Then you got pregnant and Drum took you to dinner at the Blue Bistro and he gave you the oyster that had the diamond ring in it.”

“And I puked,” Margot said. “I saw the ring embedded in oyster mucous and I ran to the ladies’ room and threw up.”

“You got that amazing apartment in the city,” Jenna said.

“Drum’s parents bought us the apartment,” Margot said. “They picked it out, they paid for it. That’s not romantic or cool, Jenna. That’s mollycoddling.”

“You had your job,” Jenna said. “Drum watched the baby, he cooked those gourmet dinners and always had a glass of wine waiting for you when you got home. You took those great vacations to Costa Rica and Hawaii and Telluride.”

“Because Drum wanted to surf,” Margot said. “And he wanted to ski. I always got stuck at the hotel watching the kids.”

“I wanted your life,” Jenna said. She sniffled a little more. “I wanted the beautiful babies and the doorman building and the trips to exotic places. I wanted someone to love me as much as Drum loved you. He worshipped you, Margot. You were a goddess to him.”

Margot snorted. It was astonishing how warped Jenna’s view of her marriage was. “Please.”

“I got a text from Drum yesterday, you know,” Jenna said. “He said he’s getting married in the fall.”

Margot felt a pang of guilt. “I meant to tell you.”

Jenna brushed off her dress, an exercise in futility. The dress would end up in the trash, along with Margot’s stained white dress from Thursday night.

Margot thought, We are a couple of girls without a mother.

“So, anyway, my dream of you and Drum getting back together is over.”

“Excuse me,” Margot said. She decided to pull out some Taylor Swift lyrics, maybe make Jenna smile. “We were never, ever getting back together. Like ever.”

The joke was lost on her. She made a face. “But you two were perfect together!”

“Honestly,” Margot said. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. And that’s the thing about marriage. It can look perfect to people from the outside but be utterly imperfect on the inside. The reverse is true as well. No one knows what goes on in a marriage except for the two people living in it.”

“I lied when I said you were the worst,” Jenna said. “You weren’t the worst.”

Margot felt stupidly relieved. She pursed her lips; they were so dry, she feared they were going to crack.

“The worst of all…” Jenna trailed off and stared out the window. Her eyes filled. “The worst of all was Mom and Dad. At the end. I was there, watching them.”

“I know,” Margot said.

“You don’t know!” Jenna said. “You don’t know because you weren’t around. You were living in the city with Drum and the boys. You were working. Kevin was in San Francisco that spring, and Nick was in D.C. I was at home with them by myself.”

Yes, Margot remembered. Seven years ago, Drum Jr. had been five, and Carson only three. Margot had been desperately trying to make partner at Miller-Sawtooth, which meant not only acting like a person without two small children at home but also acting like a person whose mother was not dying an hour north in Connecticut. Margot would use the fifteen minutes she took for lunch in those days to call Beth. They talked about normal things-Drum Jr.’s kindergarten teacher, Carson’s biting problem, the placements Margot was working on. Only at the end of the conversation would they address the elephant in the room. Margot would ask Beth how she was feeling; Beth would lie and say she was feeling okay, the pain was manageable, she was glad, anyway, to be finished with chemo. Anything was better than chemo. Margot would promise to come to Connecticut over the weekend and bring the kids, but more than once she had failed to do so. Drum Jr. had kinder-soccer, or Carson took a longer nap than Margot expected, or Margot sneaked back into the office for a few hours-and plans for the trip to Connecticut were dashed.

Margot knew her brothers had been busy, too. Kevin had been trying to save the Coit Tower, and Nick had just taken the job with the Nationals. They were, all three of them, inconsolable about the idea of losing Beth, but they hadn’t been right there the way that Jenna had been. Jenna had taken a semester off from William and Mary to go home and be with Beth. She moved back in at the same time that Beth went into hospice.

“You know what?” Jenna said. She was gearing up now, her voice taking on a scary intensity that Margot almost never saw. “For most of my life, I felt like I wasn’t even part of the family. It was always the three of you and Mom and Dad. When we used to sit at the dinner table, you all would be talking and arguing and I couldn’t understand or keep up. The three of you would have parties or go on dates, and you would break curfew and come home with beer on your breath. One of you ended up lost after a concert at Madison Square Garden, and Mom was on the phone with the police all night.”

Me, Margot thought. The Rolling Stones, the summer between junior and senior year.

“Nick crashed the car and then he got caught growing those pot plants in the attic, and Mom was certain Kevin was going to get Beanie pregnant. Mom and Dad were so consumed with keeping track of the three of you that they forgot about me.”

“That’s not true…”

“It is true. Kevin broke his leg playing lacrosse, remember, and they left me at Finn’s house for three whole days.”

“Well,” Margot said. “We were older.”

“And when you all moved out and moved on, we were like a family again. But a different family. A family with me and Mom and Dad. We would sit down to dinner and we might talk about you, but it was like talking about relatives in Africa or China, you were so far away. Which was fine by me.”

Margot made a face. What was this? Decades-old resentment about birth order?

“At the end of Mom’s life, it was just the three of us again. I had a front-row seat for her death and what it did to Dad.” Now her tears were flowing freely. “It was horrible, Margot. He loved her so much, he wanted to go with her. Hell, I wanted to go with her.” Jenna yanked at her blond hair, which was still in some semblance of a bun. “Love dies. I watched love die with my own eyes. She left, we all stayed. And that, that, Margot, was the worst of all.”

“You’re right,” Margot said. “Of course, you’re right.”

“And so now we have Finn and Nick, and Daddy and Pauline, and Jim and Ann Graham and horrible Helen, and you and Drum Sr. And as if all of that didn’t make me skeptical enough, Stuart lies to me about an enormous event in his life. Enormous!”

“But it’s not a deal breaker, Jenna,” Margot said. “When you said that he revealed himself to be just like everyone else, you were right. He’s a human being. He was scared to tell you about Crissy Pine. He wanted to pretend like it never happened. I’m not saying he wasn’t in the wrong. He was. You deserved to know. But do not cancel the wedding over this. It isn’t worth it.”

“He gave her his great-grandmother’s ring!” Jenna said.

“Since when do you care about things like rings?” Margot asked. “I promise you there are hundreds of thousands of diamond rings in this world that have been kept or stolen or thrown out of car windows in anger.”

“I care because he gave it to her-something precious, a family heirloom. He loved her enough to give her that ring.” Jenna sniffled. “I want him to love me that much.”

“He does love you that much!” Margot said. “He loves you more than that! He loves you enough to have gone out and found a ring with ethically mined diamonds! He didn’t recycle some fusty ring that belonged to his dead ancestor. He found a ring for you, one that you could love and be proud of.”

Margot thought this was a point well made, and she let her words hang in the air for a moment. Then she said, “I saw him this morning. He’s a mess.”

“I hope he is,” Jenna said.

“He is,” Margot said. “He looks god-awful. He said if you leave him, he will die-and I don’t think that was hyperbole.”

Jenna started to cry again. “I love him so much! I’ve just spent the past twelve hours trying to make myself stop loving him. And I can’t stop, I’ll never be able to stop, I’m going to love him for the rest of my life! But he lied to me! It’s like he’s suddenly become a completely different person-a person who was engaged and chose to hide it from me.”

Margot knew enough not to speak. They both stood at the window, the same one Kevin had pried open so that they could all toss handfuls of their mother’s ashes out over the island she adored. The breeze coming in the window was the only thing that was keeping Margot from fainting.

She pulled Rhonda’s cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to Jenna. “Call Roger,” she said. “Call Roger and tell him it’s definitely off.”

“Okay,” Jenna said. She accepted the phone and stared at the face of it for a second, and Margot thought, She won’t be able to do it. She loves Stuart, and they will end up having a marriage like Beth and Doug’s-a marriage that will be a fortress for all of them. Margot’s perfect instincts told her so.

But this time, it seemed, Margot’s instincts were wrong. Jenna dialed the number and held the phone to her ear. Margot had the urge to grab the phone from her sister’s hand and talk to Roger herself. The wedding is on, Margot would say. Jenna is just scared. She’s just scared is all.

Anyone who had listened to that laundry list of marital disasters would have been scared.

“Hello?” Jenna said.

Margot thought, Oh, honey, please don’t. It’s not a deal breaker. Stuart is just like everyone else, but you and Stuart, as a couple, are different. You two are going to make it.

She thought, Mom? Help me?

“Stuart?” Jenna said. “I love you, Stuart. You jerk, I love you!”

Finn Sullivan-Walker (bridesmaid): She hates me. Jenna Carmichael, who has been my best friend since we were eating graham crackers, drinking apple juice, and watching Barney, hates me. I went to the salon with Autumn and Rhonda at eleven o’clock. Just the three of us because Margot and Jenna were AWOL. I asked Autumn if she had heard from Jenna, and she pretended to think about it, then she admitted that no, she hadn’t talked to Jenna since the party the night before. Autumn went back to the groomsmen’s house with H.W., where they had wild, drunken sex, which she then described in lurid, pornographic detail to Rhonda, who lapped it up. Tell me more, tell me more, was it love at first sight? I thought maybe Autumn was being bitchy to me because she was jealous-she hooked up with Nick herself at Jenna’s graduation from college a bunch of years ago. I tried not to care about Autumn or Rhonda or even Jenna. If being with Nick means losing Jenna, then I guess I’ll have to live with that, because my feelings for Nick are overwhelming. It’s like they’ve existed forever but I’ve only allowed myself to acknowledge them this weekend.