Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,99

straw hats and bathing suits, and I’d packed tuna fish sandwiches and cold dill pickles for lunch. Margo had brought my mother a copy of a novel she was reading for class—I’d read it years before, and declined to repeat the experience—and in the late afternoons they had reclined on opposite sofas, each reading and piping up every few minutes with a comment. After dinner, they’d discussed the novel at the kitchen table while I cleaned up. Margo had mentioned Stuart once or twice during the trip, I recalled, but only in her casual way. You are too young, I thought. “When?” I said.

“August,” she said. Hurricane season. Her eyes searched my face. “We can put up a tent in case it rains, and I’d like Marse to be a bridesmaid, if she wouldn’t mind.” Behind her, a family sat around a table like ours. The father lifted a forkful of pasta, the teenage boy chewed ice from his soda, and the mother cut her steak. A quiet diorama. It seemed to me that my family’s stress must have been evident, each gesture insincere and jolting.

“That all sounds fine,” I said to her. Then I had a thought. “Margo,” I said a bit loudly, “you’re not pregnant?”

“No!” said Margo.

“No way,” said Stuart.

Dennis took my hand. “That’s good to hear,” he said. He raised his glass. “Look, we trust our Margo,” he said. “I won’t lie, young man, we wish we’d met you earlier. But we look forward to getting to know you.”

I raised my glass and took a long sip. This was my husband telling me that there would be no more self-pity. It was time for support.

Margo and Stuart stayed in Gainesville after graduation—we drove up for the ceremony, and I sniffled while Dennis snapped photos of Margo onstage in her gown—and the summer that followed was busy with weekend visits and wedding-themed phone conversations. I grew used to Stuart, if not quite fond of him, and felt alternately exhilarated and saddened by the situation. They moved home the first week of August and we held the wedding at the house, the air conditioner on high and the lawn bedecked in ribbon and sunflowers. Bette flew home from Santa Fe, where she and Suzanne had bought an adobe bungalow behind a strip mall, and she and Marse came over early to help me dress. Marse wore a sleeveless red floral dress with a sweetheart neckline, and her chest was rosy from the heat. Bette wore a lavender suit that I thought aged her; I guessed that it had been selected by Suzanne, who preferred a more conservative look. Dennis was already downstairs, dressed and waiting for guests, and Margo was in her own bedroom with Beverly Jovanovich, who was her maid of honor. Marse insisted on plucking my eyebrows—it was something she’d wanted to do for a decade, but I’d never relented until now—and Bette brought up a bottle of white wine from the kitchen.

My bedroom door was closed, but still Marse lowered her voice to speak. She said, “Am I the only one who thinks this is a little old-fashioned? She’s practically a teenager.”

“Marrying young is back in fashion,” said Bette. I was reminded of the day years earlier when she had prepared to wed in the same backyard.

“That Stuart is handsome,” said Marse.

“In a way, I suppose,” said Bette.

“He’s a flirt. Margo will have to keep an eye on him,” said Marse.

They both looked at me, waiting for a reaction. “I hadn’t noticed,” I said, though I had. Just that morning a young girl had arrived with the florist’s crew, and he’d pulled a daisy from a bouquet to give her, he said, as a tip. He’d done this right in front of me, which told me that there was nothing beneath the gesture, no murky undercurrent.

“You could stop her,” said Marse to me.

“I could not,” I said.

“Well, I could,” she said.

“No one’s stopping her,” said Bette.

Marse studied my brow. “You’re done,” she said. She handed me a tube of lipstick and turned to Bette. “How’s life in the desert?”

“It’s just fine,” said Bette. “Come for a visit. We have a very nice guest room.” She topped off her own glass, then Marse’s and mine. In the time since she’d moved, this was as much as she’d revealed to any of us: Santa Fe was fine, the house was fine, Suzanne was fine. It had been rough for Suzanne to break into the real estate business, but