I Take You Read online

  She’s a pussycat! I begin to relax. “That’s right, Mrs. Field,” I say. “It’s so unfair.”

  “Please,” she says. “Call me Anita.”

  I smile. “Okay, Anita.”

  She smiles back.

  “Anita,” I repeat. “Ah. Nee. Tah. Ahhhhneeeeetaaaahhhh.”

  She looks puzzled.

  “Anita Bobita.” I bob my head. “Super Beeta.”

  Why am I doing this?

  “Lily?” Will says in a low voice.

  I can’t seem to stop.

  “Anita.” I go deep. “Yeah.”

  Will is staring at me. I give him a reassuring smile.

  Our waitress arrives. Anita orders the salmon, Harry has the tuna, Will has the grouper. “Scotch on the rocks,” I say when it’s my turn.

  “And for your meal?” the waitress asks.

  I smile up at her. “That is my meal, sweetheart.”

  Will takes my hand. “You should order something.” He turns to his parents. “Lily works so hard she sometimes forgets to eat!”

  “I’ll have a steak,” I tell the waitress. “Rare.”

  “A steak!” Harry chuckles. “That’s how we know you’re a native Floridian.”

  I smile at him. “I had enough fish in my first decade to last a lifetime, Harry. I’m up to here with the omega-3s.”

  Anita is watching me closely. “Omega-3s,” she remarks. “Excellent for brain power.”

  “Which I need, to keep up with your brilliant son,” I tell her.

  We make some more idle chitchat. The waitress returns with our drinks. I help her out by taking mine right off the tray.

  “The waitstaff is gorgeous here,” Harry remarks after she leaves again.

  I slap him playfully on the arm. “Bless you, Harry. She’s a tranny!”

  He freezes for an instant, then chuckles. “I suppose I forgot where we are.”

  “You blush just like your son!” I cry. “Do you know that this morning, when he was—”

  “Before you got here,” Will says quickly, “I was telling my parents the story of how we met.”

  “In the bathroom,” I say.

  “In the bar,” he says.

  “In the bathroom of the bar,” I say.

  Will reaches for my hand but knocks over a glass of water. Or maybe I do. Either way, we sop it up with our napkins. His mother is silent, studying me.

  “Like I said, Lily works so hard,” Will says. “She barely gets any sleep at home. I think she really needs this week off before the wedding to,” he looks at me with a fixed smile, “chill out. Relax.”

  “I remember those days,” Anita says, after a longish pause. “Before I joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I spent eleven years at one of the biggest firms in Chicago. What a life.” She launches into some anecdote, but I can’t concentrate. I’m too distracted by her perfect hair. The breeze is stiff out here, but there’s not a tendril out of place. It’s superhero hair. I bet it could deflect bullets.

  I start laughing. She stops talking.

  “Sorry?” I say. “What?”

  “I understand it’s even worse now,” she concludes, kind of grimly. “The hours are long,” I agree. “But I love the work.”

  She looks surprised. “It’s rare to hear someone in our profession say that. Most young lawyers—”

  “Lily,” Harry leans forward. “I think your nose is bleeding.”

  I feel my lip. He’s right. “Sorry!” I say, standing up. “This happens sometimes. I have a nervous septum.”

  Anita frowns. “A what?”

  I excuse myself and clean up in the bathroom. I stop at the bar on the way back. “Triple pink squirrel please, Lloyd.”

  The bartender looks up from her phone. “What?”

  “Or a bourbon,” I say. “Neat.”

  She takes a glass down from the shelf.

  “Future in-laws,” I tell her, jerking my thumb toward the deck.

  She pours a stiff one and pushes it toward me. “On the house, sugar.” I come back to the table and sit down, a little too hard. Anita clears her throat. “Will told me you attended Harvard Law School. I’ve hired some of my best prosecutors from Harvard.” She says something else, but I don’t catch it because I’m totally hypnotized by the way her jaw doesn’t move when she talks.

  “Lily’s a genius,” Will says.

  I wave the compliment away. “Getting into Harvard was easy. I just had to blow the Dean of Admissions.”

  Anita stares at me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “She’s joking,” Will says, covering his face with his hands.

  “I am! Joking!” I say. “Sorry. Totally a joke. That definitely did not happen.”

  Anita’s fingernails are tapping the table slowly. They are a deep, bloody red. I am completely entranced by them.

  “We’re looking forward to dinner with your family on Thursday night,” she says. She’s relentless with the conversational topics, this one. Sister’s like one long, boring, conversational-topics steam train. But now she’s giving me this nasty little smile. “You certainly have an unusual number of parents. When I opened the newspaper yesterday, I wasn’t sure whether I was reading your wedding announcement or a review of some reality-television program.”

  “Meow,” I say.

  “Mom,” Will sighs.

  I’m not going to let her rattle me. No sir. I will maintain my dignity and composure.

  “Did the announcement run?” I say. “How is it?”

  For some reason I’ve adopted my father’s British accent.

  “It’s very nice,” Harry says.

  “Capital,” I say heartily. “Capital, capital!”

  “Got Will’s name wrong, though,” he adds.

  “Crikey! How?”

  Will jumps a little in his seat. “It’s no big—”

  “His first name isn’t William,” Harry tells me. “It’s Wilberforce.”

  “No it isn’t,” I say automatically.

  “Yes,” Anita says, “it is.”

  I stare at Will.

  “I never said my name was William,” he insists.

  “Wilberforce?” I burst out laughing. “Good old Wilberforce!”

  “Wilberforce was my father’s name,” Anita says.

  I nod solemnly. “Mine too.”

  Anita stands abruptly and leaves. Will leans toward me. “Lily? I think you should go back to the hotel.”

  “Why? I’m fine!”

  “You’re not fine,” he says. “You’re nowhere near fine.”

  “I just need to eat something. Look! Here comes food.”

  Will, Harry and I dig in, and the atmosphere at the table relaxes. Anita doesn’t come back.

  “I hope your mom didn’t get stuck in the bathroom,” I say. “The toilets in this restaurant are extra … extraord … I mean they’re really—”

  “Forget the toilets,” Will mutters. “We don’t need to talk about the toilets.”

  “So Lily. How long have you lived in New York?” Harry asks.

  “Technically since I was a teenager. That’s when I went north to live with Dad and my stepmother Jane. But they packed me off to boarding school pretty much right away. I only spent vacations and holidays in the city, until I moved there after law school.”

  “And are you as happy with the city as Will is?”

  “I love New York. It’s the greatest place in the world.”

  He smiles. “How do you like the Upper East Side?”

  “I hate it. It’s the suckpit of the universe.”

  Harry looks confused. “Then why do you live there?”

  “I don’t. I live downtown with Will.”

  Harry looks shocked. I glance at Will, whose face has turned pink.

  “Oh, wait!” I slap my forehead. “Ow. I do. I do live on the Upper East Side. We … we call it ‘downtown.’ It’s a real estate thing. Anything below Ninety-Sixth Street is ‘downtown.’ Property values. It’s … kind of crazy.”

&
nbsp; Harry stands up. “I should see how your mother is doing.” He leaves.

  I have another bite of steak. It’s so good! I should eat food more often.

  Will tosses his napkin onto the table. “That went well.”

  “You think?”

  “Fuck no!” he cries.

  I’m so startled that I drop my fork. Will almost never swears.

  “Will, I—”

  He’s staring at me, aghast. “What were you thinking, Lily? Were you trying to ruin that?”

  “Of course not!”

  “It was a disaster. I don’t even know what to say.” He’s furious. He’s never talked to me this way before. And he’s right. Of course he’s right. I see that now.

  “I’m sorry.” I touch his arm, but he doesn’t respond. He’s staring at nothing. “I wanted to make a good impression,” I say. “I talk too much when I’m nervous.”

  Will beckons the waitress over and orders a drink. He runs his hands through his hair. “What they must think,” he laments.

  I try to cheer him up. “Who cares? They’re only your parents.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Really? Are they also,” I pause dramatically, “your brother and sister?”

  “Goddammit, Lily!” he shouts. “This isn’t funny!”

  “Sorry sorry sorry.” And I am. I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. Things got out of hand. And now Will is despondent. I feel terrible.

  “My relationship with them is … challenging,” he says. “It’s important to me that they like you, that they approve. Otherwise … never mind. It’s impossible to explain.”

  He sounds so grim. Can it really be as bad as that? “Tell them I’m not usually like this,” I suggest. “Say it’s stress from the wedding, or work, or whatever. Tell them it’s driving me bonkers. And I drank too much on an empty stomach.” I reach out for his hand. “I’m sorry, baby. It won’t happen again.”

  Will thinks this over. His drink arrives. “Wedding stress,” he says. “It might work.”

  I let him ponder that. I’d love to order a glass of red wine to go with my steak, but I don’t.

  Maturity!

  “You could have warned me that they didn’t know we live together,” I say.

  He glances at me ruefully. “I meant to tell them this morning. I didn’t get the chance.”

  “Is it such a big deal? I didn’t think people cared about that sort of thing anymore.”

  “Lots of people do,” he says. “Including my parents. Not everybody’s family is as unconventional as yours.”

  “I guess. But … did you really have to tell them I lived on the Upper East Side? That’s like a knife, Will.” I tap my chest. “Right to the heart.”

  He half smiles. “What was I thinking?”

  “It’s okay.” I pat his hand. “It just means we’re even now.”

  He puts his head in his hands.

  “Will? I was kidding!” I tap his shoulder. “Will? Will?”

  8

  Will’s parents don’t come back to the table. Eventually he calls his dad and finds out that they’ve gone back to the hotel. I talk him into renting a scooter so that I can show him the island. He drives (obviously!) while I give him a tour of all my favorite places: the rocky beach at Fort Taylor, the quiet stretches of Louisa and Royal where I used to ride my bike. Bayview Park, where Mom played softball. The Bight, where sailboats from all over the world knock gently against the weathered docks. The parking lot of the federal courthouse, where an unhappy client put a Santeria curse on Gran using some chicken bones and a vial of goat blood.

  I rest my cheek against Will’s sun-warm back as we putter through the streets. I can feel him relaxing.

  “Down to our right is the southernmost point in the continental United States,” I tell him. “From there it’s only seventy miles to Cuba.”

  “Is it worth seeing?” he asks.

  “If you like that sort of thing.” I pause. “The monument looks like a giant red-and-yellow suppository.”

  He takes a right. “Can’t miss that.”

  We stop and take a few pictures of each other, and ask someone to take a picture of the both of us. Then we head back in the direction of Old Town.

  I try to guide him to the cemetery, but I get confused. “Turn left here.”

  “No, I think it’s to the right,” he says. He turns, and in a block we’re there. We stroll around for a while, reading the bizarre epitaphs, admiring the stone carvings. Then we scooter back up Duval. There’s a cluster of women outside Margaritaville. The drunkest and loudest is wearing a feather boa and bright-pink sash that screams Bride!

  Will drops me at the hotel and heads out to meet some college friends who arrived last night. I change into my bathing suit. The bartender at the pool tells me that Freddy is on the beach. I order two more of whatever she’s drinking and head out.

  She’s huddled on a chaise lounge under an umbrella, wearing a floppy hat and enormous sunglasses and wrapped in a white hotel bathrobe.

  I look down at her. “I hope the skin grafts are healing nicely.”

  “It’s freezing out here!” she cries. “What is wrong with these people?” She waves an outraged hand at the swimmers, the loungers, the frolicking children.

  I flop into the chair next to hers. “They’re enjoying life. You should try it.”

  Our drinks arrive, in steaming mugs. “Irish coffee,” Freddy explains.

  I sip mine and gaze out at the horizon. “Brides. They’re everywhere. What do they know that I don’t?”

  “So very, very much,” she replies. “How was your morning?”

  I describe my planning activities and the calls I fielded from Ana, Gran and Jane. “Then I had lunch with Will’s parents.”

  “How was that?”

  I hesitate.

  “Uh-oh.” She gestures to a passing waiter for another round. “What did you do?”

  I tell her everything. New drinks arrive. When I finish, she says, “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you’re doing.”

  “No? Glad I came to you, then.”

  “Hold up there, missy!” A warning finger emerges from her terrycloth cocoon. “Please recall that I am, officially, smarter than you are.”

  “Whatever, lady.”

  “Whatever with your whatever,” she scoffs. “I beat you in that online IQ test.”

  “Well I beat you in that online quiz that shows your real age.”

  She looks skeptical. “How did you beat me? It said you’re fifty-three.”

  I clink my mug against hers. “Age before beauty, my love. Age before beauty.”

  Freddy takes a towel from a nearby chair and wraps it around her feet. She takes a polka-dotted scarf from her bag and twists it around her neck. She blows on her hands. She settles back in her chair. “So,” she says. “Lunch. You did it on purpose. I bet you weren’t even that drunk. What did you have, five or six drinks in the space of a few hours? That’s nothing. That’s like back to baseline for you.”

  New drinks arrive. “But maybe I did it because I was nervous, not because I don’t want to get married. And if I’m nervous, that means I genuinely love him. And if I genuinely love him, that means we should get married.”

  “Do you really want my opinion?” Freddy asks.

  “Is it one I want to hear?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Then no,” I say.

  “You should call off the wedding.”

  “No way! We had the most incredible sex this morning.”

  “Oh, then marry him, by all means,” she says lightly. “Wouldn’t want that to stop.”

  We order another round. I know Freddy is waiting for me to stop joking and tell her honestly what I’m thinking. She always does this: she nudges me in one direction or the other, never pushing me too hard, always trying to help me come to my senses on my own. And I want to explain it to her, I really do. How this morning I was s
o convinced that marrying Will was the right thing to do, and how that conviction slowly ebbed throughout the day.

  But I’m tired of talking about it. I’m tired of thinking about it. There’s plenty of time for that later. “Where’s Nicole?” I ask.

  Freddy rolls her eyes. “Moping around somewhere. She’s such a drag, Lily. Why are you even friends with her?”

  “Law school. All those late nights. It was a bonding experience.”

  “She’s so annoying. And she says such shitty things about you.”

  “She’s usually not this bad,” I explain. “She hates her job. And her boyfriend dumped her. And her apartment has bedbugs.”

  Freddy looks appalled.

  “Had!” I say quickly. “Had bedbugs.”

  “You bitch!” she cries. “How could you not tell me?”

  “How was I supposed to know you were going to share a room? This isn’t band camp!”

  “I’m poor!” Freddy wails. “And now I’m going to have bedbugs!”

  “The guy came and cleaned. The bedbug guy. With the dog! She’s totally cured.”

  “She’d better be. Do you want another drink?”

  “Do you have any …?” I tap my nose.

  Freddy gathers the folds of her bathrobe and struggles to her feet. “Come with me.”

  As we pass the front desk, the clerk hands me an envelope. We go up to Freddy’s room and do a couple of lines. I open the envelope. It contains the guest list, an empty seating chart and a long, complicated note from Mattie. “Help me with this,” I call out to Freddy, who’s changing. “It’s the seating arrangements for the reception.”

  She comes out of the bathroom and examines the list. “How do you decide where to put people?”

  “No idea. All I know is that the Gortons and the Heydriches must be separated.”

  “Gortons?” she says. “Like the fish sticks?”

  “Sadly no. I think this one runs a hedge fund.”

  “I loved those when I was little,” Freddy says.

  “Hedge funds?”

  “Fish sticks! ‘Trust the Gorton’s fisherman!’” she sings.

  “We should serve them at the reception!” I take out my phone and text Mattie.

  —Pls investigate poss of srvg fish stx at wddng asap stat thx