The Wedding

In the morning, Phoebe wakes to see her husband in bed. There he is again, the man who gets exactly eight hours each night. The man who wakes up without an alarm. The man who puts on clothes right after sex and maybe that is why he looks so strange to Phoebe—so naked—like some caveman unearthed and transplanted to the Cornwall.

She looks at her phone. No messages.

Should she text Gary? Should she call him? Should she say anything at all?

She looks outside the balcony for evidence of something, and she sees Aunt Gina and Uncle Gerald in their wedding attire, drinking coffee. So the wedding is on. Life is as it should be. And yet something feels very, very wrong. She has made a mistake. She has lost her opportunity. Not to mention, she has betrayed Gary, abandoned him for her husband, but that makes no sense. Today is Gary’s wedding day. And her husband is not her husband.

“Hey,” he says, reaching for her.

She slinks out of bed.

“I need to go to the bridal suite to get ready,” she says.

 

WHEN PHOEBE WALKS into the bridal suite, Suz and Nat are already on their way out with updos.

“We’ll see you at the Breakers,” Nat says.

They air-kiss Phoebe goodbye.

“Lila, the next time we see you, you’ll be getting married!” Suz shouts, but Lila doesn’t turn around.

Lila is unknowable, in a floral silk robe facing the big bay window overlooking the sea, which makes her look more like a widow waiting for something. She keeps her back to the room as the stylist curls the bottom parts of her hair.

“Your turn,” another stylist says to Phoebe.

Phoebe stares at the woman with her tools belted to her waist. Eyeliners and brushes and lipsticks and curling irons. She pulls out a comb with the disposition of a surgeon. She is dressed much cooler than Phoebe remembers ever dressing in her twenties. High-waisted black jeans and a crop top and eyelashes as thick as quarters. Phoebe supposes it’s part of her job to look cool in the way it was part of Phoebe’s job never to look cool. To wear tweed. To push up her reading glasses and say, “I should really double-check my sources.”

“I’m Tiff,” the stylist says. “What would you like?”

“Dealer’s choice,” Phoebe says.

Phoebe wishes she had access to Lila’s face. She wants to say something, but she feels the weight of the whole thing.

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Phoebe says.

But Juice is much more particular. Juice has been studying Instagram photos all morning. She holds up a picture on her phone. Juice has no trace of a hangover or the shame that comes with one. This morning, she is just a kid again.

“I want this exactly,” Juice says to her stylist.

Tiff makes general observations as she works on Phoebe’s hair, like, “Your hair starts really far up on your head,” and Phoebe says, “Is that bad?” and Tiff says, “Absolutely not,” and then, “But do you ever notice how large your forehead is? Or how you’re always putting your hair behind your ears?”

“Isn’t that what people with hair do?”

“No,” Tiff says, horrified. “You do that because you don’t have a side bang.”

“Do I need a side bang?”

“In my professional opinion, yes.”

“Then give me a side bang,” Phoebe says.

Maybe this is all she needed the whole time. Maybe this is the finishing touch of the grand makeover. Why didn’t she think of it earlier? A side bang!

“You’re so open! I love it.” Tiff pulls out the scissors. “It’ll keep the hair from falling in front of your face. Trust me.”

She takes out a pair of red scissors and scoops the front of her hair into her hand. “This is fun. No one ever lets me cut their hair on the morning of a wedding.”

Phoebe likes the warmth of Tiff’s fingers and thinks how lucky her future daughter will be. To have a mother like Tiff who will give her every haircut. Who will know exactly what she needs with just one glance. Phoebe wants to turn around and hug her, but that’s too weird.

“See?” Tiff asks.

Phoebe does see. Because the makeover scene always works. It takes one slight change. A side bang. And bam—a whole new face. A whole new feeling. She forgot how good she felt after a haircut. Like when she and Matt got new curtains for the house—the windows no longer depressing and barren, but cozy.

Someone knocks on the door, and this time it is Jim. He stands there with a tray of what looks like a hundred spoons.

“Jim, why have you brought us spoons?” Marla asks.

“One hundred and sixty palate cleansers,” Jim says. “Or well, one hundred and fifty-nine to be exact. I had one in the elevator.”

They all wait for Lila to react, but she doesn’t turn around or say a word. She is steady as the stylist pins hair all around her head.

“I found them in the fridge this morning,” Jim says. “And you were right, Lila. They were going to waste! They were just sitting there in the fridge, and the chef wouldn’t even let me take them.”

“So how did you get them?” Marla asks.

“I took them,” he says.

“You stole them?”

“I salvaged them.”

They wait again for Lila to say something, but she says nothing.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for being out of line last night. I’m sorry for a lot of things. Hopefully you’ll accept my apology in the form of … one hundred and fifty-nine spoons. They’re actually pretty tasty. Very … cleansing.”

After Jim leaves, Juice eats twelve in a row.

“How many palate cleansers do you have to eat until you’re fully cleansed?” Juice asks.

“Sounds like a question for your other grandma,” Patricia says.

Patricia is already fully poofed, starts to offer everyone champagne, and everyone accepts but Lila.

“I’d like to be sober for my wedding,” Lila says, and Patricia looks confused.

“I can’t see why anyone would choose that,” Patricia says and pours her daughter some champagne that Lila does not drink.

Phoebe waits for Lila to lash out at her mother, but there is something serene and stoic about Lila this morning. Maybe this is Lila’s better self. Or maybe something is wrong?

Phoebe wishes the others would go away. She wishes she could know what happened last night with Gary after he left. What did Gary do when he went back down to the fireworks? Did they sit under the exploding sky and hold hands and say very honest things and reaffirm their love for each other on the blanket? Did Lila confess to having a crush on Jim and did Gary confess to having a crush on Phoebe and did their confessions somehow make them stronger, the way that confessions usually do? Or did they say nothing at all? Did they just hold hands and smile at each other and proceed forward like normal? Is that why Lila is still here, in her bridal robe, the pastel flowers dotting her hair?

Phoebe doesn’t know. She can’t know. She must sit there, must tolerate Tiff’s hot breath on her face and answer each one of her questions.

“A professor,” Phoebe says. “St. Louis.”

It’s a relief when all the hair is up and off her neck. The other women are done, too, and headed out the door—Marla has ironed herself flat like usual in front of a tiny mirror. Juice has a series of braids woven into her hair. The three stylists pack up their things and say goodbye to the bride.

When they are entirely alone, Lila finally turns around. Phoebe stands there, waits for Lila to accuse her of something.

“How does it look from the back?” Lila asks.

Phoebe often thinks brides look cartoonish, and Lila is no exception on this morning. There is too much makeup, because it’s not done for the people in the room. It’s done for the photos.

“I went classic,” Lila says.

“It’s beautiful,” Phoebe says.

“And the front?”

“Even more beautiful.”

It’s true. Phoebe walks over to the bride, helps her put on her dress. “It’s Victorian,” Lila says.

But not truly Victorian, Phoebe thinks. Lila wouldn’t want that. Lila wants to be a Victorian bride, but without all the ruffles. Vintage, but hot. And this dress is hot. It has an entirely open back with delicate jeweled lace across the chest.

“Don’t mess up the hair, please,” Lila says, when Phoebe puts on the veil.

“I won’t mess up anything,” Phoebe says, and she means it.

Lila looks back out the bay window. “It’s not even going to rain. It’s a perfect day. I can’t believe it.”

“It really is.”

“Nothing is going to ruin my wedding.”

“No.”

“Not even you.”

“Not even me,” Phoebe says.

“I was so certain something was going to ruin it,” Lila says. “For two years, something kept ruining it. At a certain point, I was convinced it was never going to really happen. And when I saw you in the elevator that first day, I thought, Oh my God, this is it. This woman is going to turn my wedding into a crime scene.”

“But I didn’t,” Phoebe says.

“Then I thought maybe Gary was going to call off the wedding. Because he gets like that, you know? He doesn’t really get too invested in anything. Like if we’re trying to make it to a concert on time, and we’re running late, and then it rains, and everything gets too complicated, he gets overwhelmed

and says, Okay fine, let’s just not go? We’re adults! We can decide to do things like that.”

“But Gary would never call off a wedding,” Phoebe says, and as she says it, she realizes it’s true.

“You don’t think so?”

“Of course not,” Phoebe says.

“Why not?”

Because he doesn’t break his promises. Gary has an insufferable sense of loyalty. Gary is a doctor who doesn’t really like being a doctor and yet he continues being a doctor. He is a man who lost a wife and continues raising his child through the biting depression and dissociation and then goes out to shovel the driveway. Takes a drive just to try to admire a painting on his dead wife’s wedding anniversary.

“Because he loves you,” Phoebe says.

It’s what Phoebe is supposed to say as maid of honor. She is ready to tell any lie. So the transformation is complete: Phoebe is one of the wedding people now.

“Do you really think so?” Lila asks.

But Phoebe can’t bring herself to say it a second time. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what you think.”

“I hate when people say that.”

Pauline pops her head in. She announces details they already know: The new car will be downstairs in fifteen minutes. The champagne will be stocked.

“Thank you,” Lila says. She stands up. “It really is such a beautiful day.”

“It really is.”

The wedding is happening. And what did Phoebe expect? Gary is not the type to call off a wedding, and neither is Lila. Lila has spent a million dollars on this. The champagne flutes were shipped here from France six months ago. Brides who plan weddings this expensive actually go through with them. People do what’s expected. People get in their grooves and never crawl their way out. They make their decisions about plate patterns, then eat off them for the rest of their lives. She can’t think of one real

person she knows who ever called off their wedding the day of. And so that is it: Lila will marry Gary.

Yet Phoebe is in disbelief as they head for the door. She feels she is headed toward the wrong event, the wrong world.

“You look different,” Lila says.

“Side bang,” Phoebe says.

“No. It’s something else.”

Phoebe doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know how to explain the small and large ways this week has changed her.

“It’s the side bang, I’m telling you,” Phoebe says.

Lila stops just before the door. Looks at the one hundred and fifty-nine spoons. She picks one up. She eats it. She nods, like she’s had an experience.

“Anything in my teeth?” she asks, smiling at Phoebe.

“No,” Phoebe says. “Perfect.”

 

BACK IN HER room, Phoebe looks at her green dress. Six days ago, she was ready to die in it. In some versions of this story, she would already be buried in it. But in this version, Lila had it laundered by the hotel staff. It shimmers on its hanger. It’s green—just like the bridesmaids dresses. And it is remarkable to put it on for a different reason. Remarkable to have a beautiful side bang. Remarkable to see her husband here. There he is, in the shower. He is showering so they can go to a wedding together. It is all so familiar, the sounds of him humming “Yellow Submarine” without realizing it. His legs, which are still strong and muscular. She imagines they’ll be the last thing to go on her husband; when he’s older and losing parts of himself, his legs will be like the marble columns of Greece. So thick and strong, they’ll last centuries.

But will she be there to see it? She doesn’t know. Will she be there to hold his hand as he dies? They always imagined him dying first, something to do with him being a man, but also both his grandparents dying of lung cancer. They always imagined themselves as people who would never retire but would spend long summers on decadent cruises, going down the Nile

while writing their books. Their children would be happy at college. And they have thought about this so many times, it’s like it has already happened. She can see them, reading in the mornings, taking walks at four in the afternoon just before the sun sets in winter. Asking each other periodically, Do you think the kids are happy?

But she doesn’t really want this now, after everything that’s happened between them. She has spent too much time killing him off in her head. Killing herself off in her head. And now they are back, but they are different, because nobody comes back from the dead the same. You emerge always with a little bit of the underworld on you, the lesion, the scar, having seen unspeakable things.

“It occurs to me that I don’t have anything nice enough to wear to a wedding,” Matt says. “Should I stop to buy something?”

“I don’t think there’s time for that,” she says. She wants to suggest he not come. But that seems cruel. He has come all this way. “Just sit in the back.”

“These towels are amazing,” he says, and rubs his face down.

She looks at herself in the mirror one last time, and it makes her want to cry. She feels such a relief—like when she returned home after a brutal day at work and turned on the lights—to be home again, to see the place she knows light up.

Her husband comes to put his hands around her. He kisses the back of her neck.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

He seems to mean it. He has been trying to express himself more. He has started going to therapy. He has learned he was never really good at saying what he thought. He is learning now how to do this more. Learning how to actually talk. She turns around and looks at his belt. There it is, halfway through its life, smooth in parts, wrinkled in others. She feels the leather, expecting it to feel different, but it doesn’t.

“Let’s go,” Phoebe says.

Downstairs in the lobby, Matt kisses her goodbye and takes the shuttle with the other people to the Breakers like he’s been part of the wedding this whole time.

PHOEBE WAITS WITH the bride in the lobby for the new vintage car.

“The car is ready,” a man in burgundy says.

As Lila walks out, Phoebe holds her train, all the way out the entryway, past the giant candles. But when they see the new car, Lila stops.

“I’m sorry, what is that?” Lila asks.

“Your car,” the man says.

“I’m not getting in that car,” Lila says.

The new car is an ordinary black town car. Like the kind Phoebe took from the airport.

“What’s wrong with it?” Phoebe asks.

“It’s like an Uber Black,” Lila says. “Did Gary not ask for a vintage car?”

And suddenly it feels like they will never get to this wedding, like they’re trying to get to Bowen’s Wharf in traffic all over again.

“I asked for it,” Phoebe says.

“Is there a problem?” Pauline asks, coming out the door.

“This is an Uber Black.”

“I assure you this is not an Uber Black,” Pauline says. “It’s a 2022 brand-new Mercedes with a state-of-the-art sound system.”

“But it’s not vintage.”

“I’m so sorry,” Pauline says. “We had no more vintage cars available with such late notice.”

They wait to see how Lila will react. For a second, she doesn’t. But then without a word, Lila turns around. Walks back up the stairs, while Phoebe and Pauline follow, trying to protect the train.

“Lila,” Phoebe says. “What are you doing?”

“I knew it,” Lila says. She stops on the top of the stoop. She starts to rub her temples. “I knew something was going to ruin the wedding.”

“I hardly think this will ruin your wedding,” Phoebe says.

“Nobody can make me get in that car.”

“Technically, that’s correct.”

“We need a new car.”

“Absolutely,” Pauline says without hesitating.

“No,” Phoebe says.

“No?” Lila says.

“You don’t need a third car,” Phoebe says. “What you need is to be on time to your wedding. We’re already late.”

“So what? They can’t start without me,” Lila says. “I’m the bride.”

“Exactly. You’re the bride. It doesn’t matter what car you drive to your wedding. It really doesn’t. No one gives a shit. Everyone is already inside. They won’t even see it.”

“It matters to me.”

“But why?”

“It just does!”

“God, you’re being so ridiculous,” Phoebe says.

“Don’t call me ridiculous! I’m so tired of people calling me ridiculous!”

“Well, stop being ridiculous!” Phoebe says. “It’s just a stupid fucking car! It’s just a hunk of metal! It doesn’t matter what it looks like!”

“Then you get in it!”

“Fine! I will,” Phoebe says. She walks back down the stairs and sits in the car. It is, Phoebe thinks, a perfectly fine car. “Hey look, real leather interior. Smells like being inside a leather bag.”

“That actually does not sound very appealing to me,” Lila says.

“The Veuve Clicquot is in the copper ice bucket,” Pauline interjects.

But Lila looks so confused in her dress. Lila looks at Phoebe the way she did when Phoebe first told her she had food in her teeth, sinking under the weight of the wedding’s imperfections. Lila doesn’t move in either direction. Phoebe holds up the champagne.

“Well, are you coming?”

Lila doesn’t move.

“The car is just so … ordinary,” Lila says. “It’s just wrong.”

She sits down on the stoop in the fluff of her own dress. Phoebe waits for Lila to get up again, but when she doesn’t, Phoebe puts down the champagne, gets out of the car, and walks up the stairs to sit next to the bride.

“What’s wrong?” Phoebe asks.

“You lied,” Lila says.

“I swear I asked for a vintage car. I think.”

“I mean, you lied about Gary,” Lila says. “He doesn’t love me. Not the way I want to be loved.”

Phoebe doesn’t open her mouth, doesn’t risk lying again.

“And I don’t love him,” Lila says. “Not the way I want to love someone.”

Lila says she’s been thinking this for some time. Ever since her father died, she wondered if they were making a mistake. But she wasn’t sure. The pandemic—life without her father—it was all very confusing.

“And I thought that maybe if the wedding was perfect, it could feel right again,” she says. “Like it did those first few months. But it doesn’t. And I’m glad something ruined it.”

She puts her face into her hands like she did the night of her bachelorette party. But now it’s different. She can’t just turn over and go to sleep and hope it will all feel fine in the morning.

“What am I going to do?” Lila asks.

Phoebe feels the adrenaline of really being called into action.

“You’re going to go upstairs and take a very long bath,” Phoebe says.

“I can have Carlson start running it for you,” Pauline says.

Lila nods. “But how am I going to get this dress off?”

“Pauline will help you,” Phoebe says, and Pauline nods.

“That’s not Pauline’s job, though,” Lila says.

“It can be,” Pauline says. “Just for today.”

“And then what?” Lila asks.

“Then you’re free,” Phoebe says.

“Then I’m alone.”

“Then you can go wherever you want,” Phoebe says. “Where is that?”

“Somewhere I’ve never been,” Lila says.

But this is tricky for the bride, who has been almost everywhere.

“Except for like, Canada,” Lila says. “And Russia.”

“So you’ll go to Canada,” Phoebe says.

“I can use your credit card to book you a flight and into one of our Canadian hotels right now,” Pauline says. “We have one in Montreal. It’s

basically a stone castle.”

The bride nods. Takes off her veil. She holds it in her hands.

“What a waste,” Lila says.

It is. A waste. A huge waste of money, which is exactly what Phoebe wrote in her maid of honor speech, which Phoebe realizes is probably what Lila needs to hear right now.

“Every wedding, even a successful wedding, is a waste,” Phoebe says. “Every wedding is an egregious amount of money that could have, yes, been spent on much more practical things, like say, a house, a down payment, a school in a small, dying mill town. A wedding is always a fleeting spectacle that is one hundred percent going to become packed down into a teeny tiny garbage square that’ll wind up in your father’s landfill someday.”

“None of this is very comforting so far,” Lila says.

So Phoebe jumps to the final line.

“But it’s also true that this wedding will never be a waste,” Phoebe says. “Because I came here to die. And now look at me.”

This is when they both start to cry.

No, Phoebe will never be a mother. Phoebe will never know what it’s like to create life inside of her. But there are other ways to create. Other ways to love. Other reasons to live.

“Lila, every day this week, you gave me a reason to get up in the morning, to put on a beautiful dress and be part of something, and for that I will always be grateful.”

Phoebe takes the Mercedes alone to the Breakers. The ride is so beautiful, and stocked with so much champagne, that even without the bride, it still feels like an event. Phoebe studies the mansions along the way and wonders how many of the people living in them are happy. She wonders what they wish for when they wish for different lives. She wonders if this is why she has always been interested in nineteenth-century novels about rich people— it’s a giant human experiment. It asks the question: What does a person still need once a person has everything? What does a bride still desperately lack as she stands in the lobby just before her big, beautiful wedding?

It’s Phoebe who walks down the aisle to tell Gary. Phoebe makes sure to look at him the entire time. It’s tempting to look at the ocean behind him, but she doesn’t want to be a coward. She doesn’t want to hide from his eyes or leave him alone in this moment. He searches her face for some kind of information, even though he must already know. Why else would Phoebe be the one walking down the aisle?

“Lila is not coming,” she whispers when she is at his side.

And of course, of course. He nods his head with the stoicism of a soldier who has just been shot. It seems the man will go down without a single expression. He nods, looks at his shoes, nods again and again, like now he’s just watching the blood drip to the floor.

Phoebe turns around. Surely the wedding people know now, too. But someone has to say it aloud and make it official.

“Lila and Gary will not be getting married today,” Phoebe says. It is good practice, speaking with finality. Being direct. Saying the hard truths in front of the wedding people. Phoebe wants to get better at that. Phoebe will get better at that. Phoebe knows this is the only way she wants to live. She must say the terrible thing, even when it’s hard. She must think the terrible thing, even when it’s scary. “She thanks you all for your support and love, the time and money it took for you to get here.”

The crowd murmurs. Phoebe wonders how much they all spent. She wonders how many times Uncle Jim and Aunt Gina will say, “Five grand!

Five grand just to watch someone not get married!” all the way to the airport.

“Jesus Christ,” Patricia says. “What a production. Where is she?”

“At the hotel,” Phoebe says. She imagines Lila in the bridal suite, slowly undressing until she is no longer a bride. “But then she’s going to Canada.”

“Canada?” Suz asks.

“What’s in Canada?” Nat asks.

By the time Phoebe answers all the wedding people’s questions, the same questions they would have had about Phoebe if she killed herself (But did she say why? Did she leave a note? What was she thinking?), Gary is gone. Gary has left the Breakers. He must have slipped out the other door. He must be feeling something terrible, but what? Phoebe wants to follow him through the door, comfort him, be with him forever, but it doesn’t feel like her place to chase after him. It’s too soon.

And there is Matt, standing in the aisle waiting for her. They wait until all the wedding people file out of the Great Hall, just as they waited on their own wedding day. Then Matt and Phoebe get into the ordinary car like husband and wife.

 

“SO, WHAT HAPPENED to the bride?” Matt asks in the Mercedes.

“I’m not going back with you,” Phoebe says.

She has to say it right away or she’ll never say it.

“To the hotel?”

“To St. Louis,” she says. “I’m not returning. I’m just not.”

It is her fantasy, finally playing itself out. She is leaving him. But it doesn’t feel like her fantasy because he has already left her. And when she says it, he doesn’t shout “No!” and she is glad for it. She doesn’t want him to be upset by this. She doesn’t want this to feel like an Ibsen play. She wants him to just say, Okay. I understand. For the first time since he left her, she wants him to actually be okay. And this feeling of goodwill—it’s a promising sign.

“I was worried you would say that,” Matt says. He asks her a series of reasonable questions like, Are you ever coming back? What are you going to do?

“I’m going to go on medical leave,” Phoebe says, “assuming adjuncts can do that.”

It’s an old joke, an old feeling, this making fun of their university.

“Oh, I’m sure they can’t, now that I think about it,” Matt says, and they even laugh a little.

“I’m sure Bob will be like, Well, turns out, adjuncts aren’t allowed to receive medical treatment,” Phoebe says.

“Turns out, adjuncts have to pay the administration a small fee every time they get sick.” He reaches out for her hand. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says. “But you need to go home.”

He looks out the window while she tells him what she wants—to sell the house, to live in the nineteenth-century mansion and write.

“Write what?” he asks. “Your book?”

“Anything,” she says.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” he says. “I do have a lot of grading to do tomorrow.”

It’s a joke, his attempt to lighten the mood, but he bites his finger to keep himself from crying. He looks like a little kid. Like Jim standing up giving his speech. A little boy in pain. A little boy who wasn’t expecting life to be this confusing. She squeezes his hand, which makes him cry harder, as if the idea of joking with her, of laughing together after all these years of not laughing, makes him sob again.

“Shit, I need to get myself under control.”

“Why?” Phoebe says. “I don’t care if you cry.”

“I care,” he says. “You know I look like shit when I cry.”

“I’m not sure I ever really saw you cry.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is.”

“I cried when the Phillies lost the World Series.”

“My point exactly.”

The analysis of his own tears has calmed him. Brought him out of his emotions and into his brain. That’s where her husband likes to be. That’s where he’s comfortable. But Phoebe can’t live there anymore. Phoebe wants to be in her body. She wants to enjoy this beautiful dress. And her side bang. She almost forgot. She is embarrassed by how much of a difference it makes. But it’s the small things. She leans over and grabs the champagne. Pops the bottle open. Why not? Nobody is going to drink it now, except them.

“What are we toasting to?” Matt asks.

“Your first adult cry unrelated to sports?”

“I’ll toast to that.”

They clink glasses.

“This is good champagne,” he says.

She tastes it. “It actually is.”

She wonders how much Lila spent on it. She takes another sip. She is happy that she has lived long enough to learn the difference between decent champagne and really good champagne, which she now knows doesn’t just taste good on the first sip, but the entire way home.

The whole mood of the Cornwall is different without the bride and groom. It’s too quiet, and it feels rude to still be enjoying the spa water now that the wedding has been called off. Even Pauline seems subdued, fielding questions with a solemn voice.

“Yes, the pool is now open again,” she says, and, “No, I’m so sorry, but we cannot give you a refund for tonight,” and, “Had I known your husband was allergic to oranges, we would have left them out of the spa water.”

Phoebe gets in line behind Nat and Suz, who are already back in their high bun and neck pillow, making declarations about the wedding in low whispers.

“I truly can’t believe it,” Suz says. “And yet, I’m not surprised at all.”

“I knew Lila wasn’t in love with him,” Nat says. “I just knew it.”

“I didn’t know that,” Suz says. “But I knew something wasn’t right when we were with the Sex Woman.”

“Do you think Pauline will give us our money back for tonight if we really beg?” Nat asks.

“No,” Suz says. “But at least we got our flights changed.”

“You’re leaving tonight?” Phoebe asks.

Nat misses Laurel. Suz misses the Little Worm. Then they both go on a long tangent about their own wedding days, how fun they were, how in love they were. But Phoebe is not ready to leave. Phoebe wants to stay at this hotel forever.

“Checking out?” Pauline asks Phoebe as she approaches.

“I’d actually like to stay tomorrow night if there is room,” Phoebe says.

“I’m so sorry, but there are no more rooms available,” Pauline says. “There’s another wedding starting tomorrow. We’re all booked.”

“Oh,” Phoebe says.

Phoebe feels stunned by the way Pauline said “We’re all booked” with such a decisive tone, it left no room for debate. Pauline, too, has transformed this week—she wears a loose gauzy dress, with wavy beach hair cascading over her shoulders. And Phoebe feels proud, but also flustered; she is not ready to leave. Phoebe gives Pauline one more moment

to make a miracle happen, to look at the computer and say, Actually, I made a mistake! But Pauline just blinks, her thick lashes like gargoyle wings. It makes Phoebe feel dizzy.

“I’ll be staying just tonight then,” Phoebe says.

“Checkout is at eleven,” Pauline says.

 

UPSTAIRS, PHOEBE SITS on the balcony. She wonders where Gary is. She considers knocking on his door, considers texting him, but then considers that he probably wants to be alone right now, the way she wanted to crawl into the hole of her bed after Matt left.

But then she considers that this might be a very different situation. Maybe the last thing he wants to be is alone. Maybe he’s just fine. Maybe he’s scuba diving in St. Thomas right now. Maybe she doesn’t really know him, and again, this is the problem: She worries she doesn’t.

Phoebe watches Carlson fold up the tiny circular tables that he put out for the hotel after-after-after-party. He stacks them into one long ladder so tall it looks dangerous. He puts the ladder of chairs on his back and walks out of sight. In his wake, Ryun stabs the white and lilac balloons. He uses an obscenely large kitchen knife. Each pop makes Phoebe startle.

But then they are gone, and it’s just the sound of the ocean and a white ribbon flying off the cliff into the darkness. A waste. The idea is always lurking behind every object, every moment. She imagines the ribbon sinking, and for a moment, she feels herself go with it to the murky bottom.

But then she gets up, walks to Gary’s door. She knocks. When nobody answers, she turns around to see Marla.

“Where’s Gary?” Marla asks.

“I don’t know,” Phoebe says. “Did he check out of the hotel?”

“I don’t know,” Marla says. “He just texted and asked me to watch Juice until he gets back. But he didn’t say when that will be.”

Oliver is by Marla’s side.

“So why don’t you teach Percy Jackson?” Oliver asks. “Do you not like Greek myth?”

The randomness of the question makes Phoebe and Marla laugh.

“Been a little busy,” Phoebe says. “But you know what? I’ll read one of his books soon and let you know what I think.”

 

BACK IN HER room, Phoebe dawdles, drinks some Everybody Water, eats a complimentary macaron. In a strange way, she feels as she did that first night—unsure of what to do with herself. She will actually have to leave tomorrow, figure out somewhere else to go. Buy a suitcase.

The thought of leaving makes her feel nostalgia for the room. No, she feels love for it. She loves this room, the high ceilings, the marble bathroom, the old wood floors. She wishes she could take it with her, capture the feeling of being inside here forever, bring it everywhere she goes.

And maybe there is some way she can. She opens her notebook.

She rereads her wedding speech. As a speech, it’s terrible. But as literary analysis of the curious absence of weddings in Victorian marriage plots, it’s not bad. She likes the part about Jane Eyre getting married in under a sentence. And the paragraph about Jane’s failed wedding being the only wedding that Brontë describes in actual detail. And why would Brontë do that? Why spend more time writing the failed wedding than the successful one?

Her phone dings.

Geoffrey is interested in offering her the job. And yes, she can have a small dog, as long as it’s a breed common to the nineteenth century.

Reading the email gives Phoebe the same feeling she got when her father said she could go to summer camp one year. She wants to tell Gary. She writes out then deletes a series of possible texts.

Hey I got the job!

Hey there.

You okay?

Do you think I’d make a good winter keeper?

Instead, she downloads Jane Eyre on her phone. She rereads the scenes leading up to Jane’s failed wedding. On the hotel pad, she jots down any line that seems to foreshadow the wedding’s ruin. She tries to pinpoint the

exact moment when the engagement became a trap; was it on the way to town after he proposed? Or did it start much earlier than that, long before Rochester proposed? Eventually she calls down for another pad. She writes all night. She does not smoke. She does not drink. She is energized by the thought of not knowing what she is even writing, of getting to decide it with every sentence.