Beautiful Day(15)
For the first time all day, something struck Margot as funny. “You get lap dances?”
“Yeah,” Autumn said. “Guys love it.”
“Oh,” Margot said. She wondered for an instant if Edge would love it if she, Margot, got a lap dance. She decided he most definitely would not.
Autumn filled her glass with more champagne, and Margot watched the golden liquid bubble to the top. The kids were playing Frisbee with Emma in the yard below. Margot remembered when it had been she and her siblings playing in the yard, while her parents drank gin and tonics on this deck and turned up Van Morrison on the radio. Her mother used to wear a blue paisley patio dress. Margot would hug Alfie’s trunk, her arms not even reaching a third of the way around. A tree wasn’t a person, but if a tree could be a person, then Alfie would be a wise, generous, all-seeing, godlike person. She couldn’t let the tent guys cut the branch. The cut would be a wound; it might get infected with some kind of mung. Alfie might die.
Margot stood up and leaned over the railing. She felt dizzy. She felt like she might drop.
“We should go,” she said.
Jenna was driving.
They bounced across the cobblestones at the top of Main Street. Town was teeming with people who had come to Nantucket to celebrate summer. Margot loved the art galleries and shops, she loved the couple carrying a bottle of wine to dinner at Black-Eyed Susan’s, she loved the dreadlocked guy in khaki cargo shorts walking a black lab. She noticed people noticing them—four pretty women all dressed up in Margot’s Land Rover. Jenna and Finn were wearing black dresses, and Autumn was wearing green. Margot was wearing a white silk sheath with a cascade of ruffles above the knee. She loved white in the summertime. The city was too dirty to wear white—one cab ride and this dress would be trashed.
Jenna took a right onto Broad Street, past Nantucket Bookworks and the Brotherhood and Le Languedoc, and then a left by the Nantucket Yacht Club. Margot tapped her finger on the window and said, “That’s where we’ll be tomorrow night!”
No one responded. Margot turned around to see Finn and Autumn pecking away at their phones. Then Margot looked at Jenna, who was skillfully navigating the streets, despite that fact that pedestrians were crossing in front of them without looking. Margot felt bad that Jenna was driving to her own bachelorette party, but Jenna had insisted. Margot should have hired a car and driver, and then all four of them would be sitting in the backseat together. And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren’t present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.
Margot picked her clutch purse off the floor of the car and, against her better judgment, checked her phone. She had one text, from Ellie. I miss you mommy.
Margot decided not to be disappointed that her only text was from her daughter, and she decided not to be horrified that her six-year-old knew how to text. Margot decided to be happy that someone, somewhere in the world, missed her.
When she looked up, Jenna was pulling into the restaurant parking lot. Margot knew this was the time to muster her enthusiasm and rally the troops. The group was low-energy; even Margot herself was flagging. A glass and a half of champagne might as well have been three Ambien and a shot of NyQuil. If Jenna turned the car around, Margot would happily sleep until morning.
But she was the maid of honor. She had to do this for Jenna.
And her mother.
The Galley was a bewitching restaurant. It was the only fine dining on Nantucket located on the beach. Most of the seating was under an awning with open sides bordered by planters filled with red and pink geraniums. There were divans and papasan chairs and tiki torches out in the sand. There was a zinc bar. The crowd was buzzing and beautiful. Over the years, Margot had seen an assortment of powerful and famous people at these tables: Martha Stewart, Madonna, Dustin Hoffman, Ted Kennedy, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Robert DeNiro. The Galley was see and be seen. It was, always, on any given night, the place to be.
They were seated at a table for four in the main dining room, but in the part of the room that was closer to the parking lot. Autumn didn’t sit down right away; she was scanning the surroundings. Finally, she settled in her chair. She said, “I think we should ask for a better table.”
Margot felt something sinking and rising in her at the same time. Spirits sinking, ire rising. She said, “A better table, where? This place is packed!”
“Out in the sand, maybe,” Autumn said. “Where there’s more action.”
Margot couldn’t believe this. She’d had a hell of a time even getting this reservation for eight o’clock on a Thursday night in July. She had called on the Tuesday after Memorial Day and had been told, initially, that the restaurant was booked, but her name could be added to the wait list. And now Autumn—the so-called restaurant professional—was complaining? Insinuating that Margot hadn’t been important or insistent enough to score a better table? It was Autumn’s fault that the bachelorette party was being held tonight, at the very last minute, instead of weeks or months earlier, which was more traditional. There were five people’s schedules to accommodate, and so Margot had put forth options, all of them enticing. A ski weekend in Stowe, or a spring weekend out at the spa in Canyon Ranch. But Autumn hadn’t been able to make either one. Weekends are really hard for me, she’d written.