Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (16 page)

They were a couple. I knew that. But I wasn’t going to think about it now, not when I had a game of flashlight tag to lead.

Jeremy and Zack wrestled the flashlights from their stiff plastic packaging while the rest of us got our coats. We trooped outside, leaving Rose to be polite with Claudia and Mike. It was a clear night, and we called to Rose to switch off the outdoor lights. Without streetlights, which were apparently not allowed on these once country roads, or the neon glare from businesses, the sky was like a children’s picture book—inky black and filled with stars.

Dad, Zack, Annie, and I played against Cami, Jeremy, Finney, and Guy. Even though we were cutting Finney a lot of slack, I liked our team’s chances. Annie didn’t have much stamina, less even than my father, but she was quick and sly, good attributes in flashlight tag.

We had a great time. We started with one set of rules, switched to another, then modified those. Finney was not the only one who was confused.

Rose came out to watch for a moment. Dad and I tried to get her onto our team. “No, I should go back in.”

Oh, screw them,
I wanted to say.
I know what you want. You’d rather be out here with us.
But then Zack shouted at me to come help him rescue Annie.

We finally went in, tired, happy, full of talk about who had done what to whom. I was careful not to look at Mike. He would have loved playing as much as I did. It must have killed him to stay inside.

Guy and Rose took Finney up to bed. “So, Darcy,” Guy said
when they came back down, “is this what it means to be one of the ‘fun moms’? That’s what we learned about you at the engagement party. Jeremy’s friends said that you were one of the fun moms.”

“But not,” Zack pointed out, “one of the ‘cool moms.’ No one called her a ‘cool mom.’ A fun mom, yes; a cool mom, no.”

“What’s the difference?” Guy asked. “And make it good. I like linguistic distinctions.”

“The cool moms let you drink in their houses and the really cool ones buy the booze for you.”

“And the really
really
cool ones,” I put in, my Ritalin having long worn off, “have sex with your friends.”

“Mom!”
Zack was revolted. “We don’t want to hear about that.”

“And I don’t have anything to say because I’m not even one of the ordinary cool moms.”

“Ivan Coren’s mom went down on Tim Beauchamp,” Annie said evenly.

Everyone looked at her, shocked. “Annie, do not repeat things like that.” Rose was firm.

Annie shrugged her pretty little shoulders. “Everyone knows it.”

“We’re getting off track here,” Guy said. “This was a discussion of our language’s lexicon. Darcy, you are our authority on this. What’s involved in being a fun mom?”

“I have absolutely no idea. If I was a fun mom, it was by accident.”

“That’s probably it,” Cami said. “The cool moms are the ones trying to be your friends, the fun moms are just fun by nature.”

“So the cool moms are trying to hold on to their youth?” Guy asked.

“And we fun moms,” I announced, “have never lost ours.”

“So, Mom,” Annie challenged, turning to Rose, “what kind of mom are you?”

“A food-allergy mom,” she replied instantly, something she wouldn’t have said if Finney had been in the room. “After that I am a submarine mom. You’ve heard of helicopter moms who hover all the time. I am a submarine mom. I see all, I know all, I’m always there . . . you just don’t know exactly where.”

Annie grimaced. “I was afraid of something like that.”

Early in this conversation, Claudia—being no type of mom at all—had started collecting the stray glasses and other debris. When she was finished, she glanced at her watch and did not sit back down. Mike understood the signal. He got up and turned to Zack and my dad. “Do either of you want a lift back to the inn, or were you going to catch a ride with Darcy?”

Zack spoke without thinking. “Oh, no, we’re staying here. Mom is too.”

There was a pause, an awkwardness, as Claudia and Mike realized that they were the only ones not staying at the house.

Claudia knew that the house had twelve bedrooms, and she could count. She knew that there was room for Mike and her. Now it was her turn not to have been invited. Was she going to put that on her Web site?

Rose had told me that the house had a strong wireless signal, so I had brought my laptop, putting it on the bleached-pine desk that sat between two of the dormers in my room. When I got up there at the end of the evening, I checked to see if nursemom23 could get online. She could.

The only new things in my inbox were ads. I sent a quick message to my brother, saying that Dad and I had arrived safely, something that would not have occurred to him to worry about. I went to weather.com and checked on tomorrow’s forecast. I couldn’t think of any recipes I needed.

Oh, stop pretending. You don’t care about the weather.

I typed in the URL for Claudia’s Web site and went to the
Projects page. Placemats, napkins, or a table runner, I learned, always make a lovely hostess gift. She had elected to make all three for an “upcoming Thanksgiving visit to the Hamptons.” She had dyed silk organza amber and was layering it and quilting it over . . . I stopped reading and skipped ahead.

She wrote that white dishes were to be used at dinner so she had also chosen a fabric that had . . . I skipped that paragraph too.

The final picture was of a table set with all twelve placemats and napkins. A color-coordinated flower arrangement sat in the middle of the table runner. The plates were white, but they weren’t ribbed, and the table in the picture was darker than the one in the Zander-Browns’ house. Claudia had ordered flowers, set her own table with the placemats that she was giving to Rose, taken a picture, and posted it on the Internet, two days before she had given the placemats to Rose.

Jill Allyn dismissed the concept, saying that your work ought to be enough. Mike, to my surprise, said that he and his partners had brought in a consultant who had helped them brand themselves as well-meaning, no-tricks, smart guys.

“But isn’t that what you are?” I asked. “Don’t you feel like you’re playing a trick to get people to think that you don’t play tricks?”

He shrugged; and that was my last contribution to the conversation, because the person who knew the most about this was Claudia.

She had customers and clients, the people who purchased her patterns, attended her workshops, or came to her for custom clothing. She’d built her business on all of them, especially the custom clients, having an experience that was serene but also purposeful and energized. Saltwater currents suggested that experience, and so she had developed a brand around such imagery. All the “visuals” associated with the brand were derived from a conch shell. The color palette of her stationery, her Web site, and her home came from the shell. She had found a font in which the
s
mirrored one of the lines in the shell, and she had used that not only on the stationery and Web site but for the house numbers beside her front door.

I thought about her Web site. Whenever she wrote about Managed Perfectionism, she tagged the passage with a picture of the shell.

She was still talking. Her professional wardrobe—the one she wore when she was giving workshops—was “edited” to reflect the shell. When she wanted to be the most obvious about it, she told us, she wore a nubby raw-silk blazer in the golden tan of the shell’s rough exterior with a blouse of a pale, glowing pink. When she wore blues and greens, she chose ocean hues. Her jewelry was pearls or handcrafted necklaces of sea glass.

Annie was fascinated. “The color you’re wearing now . . . that’s oyster, isn’t it?”

Claudia was in tailored trousers and a blouse with an open neck and a high stand-up collar. Both were in a pale fabric that I assumed was a heavy but liquid silk. The only color was a washed-out-green belt and a necklace with small greenish stones floating on a thin silver wire.

“What about navy and black?” Annie continued. “Don’t you wear those?”

“Generally not. But if I have to wear black for a funeral or
such, I’ll use shell buttons and wear freshwater pearls because they look closer to nature.”

The shoes in which she hadn’t been able to play flashlight tag last night had been a sandy taupe with a bow of weathered blue. Her watchband was an intricately braided hemp. Now that she spelled it out, I could see how these added up to a picture of an empty windswept beach on a cool day.

“Do you ever get tired of these colors?” Rose asked. “Don’t you ever want to kick back and wear fuchsia or lime green?”

“No. I like subtle colors, and this is my professional wardrobe. If I felt the need to wear red and purple polka dots at home, of course, I would.”

She said that with a complicit little smile as if to imply that we all knew that no sane person would ever want to wear red and purple polka dots anywhere.

“Do you go to the beach a lot?” Cami asked.

“I don’t really have the time.”

I was willing to bet that she didn’t have the desire either. So far I hadn’t seen any evidence that she had outdoor interests. This shell-ocean theme was something she had picked because she liked subtle colors. It didn’t have a thing to do with her real self, whatever that might be.

What would my brand be if I had one? Nursemom23? Magenta and scarlet poppies on royal blue? Ritalin Queen? I was clearly too late to be Pie-bringer Queen; Claudia had already infringed on that trademark.

For store pies they were excellent . . . although I probably shouldn’t call them “store pies.” They were more “boutique pies,” and they were probably better than a lot of people’s homemade pies, but they certainly weren’t better than mine.

But within moments Claudia joined us, standing next to Mike. She slipped her hand into his arm, curving her fingers around the sleeve of his navy blazer. Her fingernails were filed into ovals and polished with a light pearly peach. The cuff of her oyster-colored silk blouse slipped down her wrist, revealing her braided hemp watchband.

He’s mine now. I belong here too.

He glanced down at her. I didn’t know if he’d been expecting her to join us, but he seemed okay with it.

“Listen,” he started, his voice heavy.

Zack immediately flinched, and I reminded myself that this wasn’t normal anymore. “Be careful, Mike,” I cautioned him. It wasn’t super-duper nice of me to criticize him in front of Claudia, but he was about to make a jackass of himself. “No one is going to take it very well if you issue a bunch of orders.”

Mike shot me a quick, hard look, but he didn’t argue. “Okay, then take this as some strong encouragement.”

“All right,” I said, trying to sound mild. “We’ll listen.”

“You know that Friday and Saturday are going to be spent on wedding plans.”

I nodded. Rose had begged everyone to enjoy Thanksgiving and not start fretting about the wedding until Friday. Mike and Claudia were not going to be around. First thing tomorrow morning they were driving to Philadelphia to see Mike’s mother.

“I spoke to Guy,” Mike continued, “just sorting out what we would pay for—and it’s clear that some very serious money is going to be spent on this wedding. When they said that everything was going to be here, I assumed that it would be a low-key home wedding, but—”

“Dad—” Jeremy interrupted. He didn’t want to hear any criticisms of Cami’s family.

Mike held up his hand. “And it is not our place to question their decisions. This is more than a family wedding for them; they have their own business and have obligations to Guy’s professional associates. But even if that weren’t the case, it isn’t our place to judge what they’re doing. We can say that we wouldn’t spend this on one evening, but on the other hand, if I had made his kind of money, I would be damn proud of myself too. I’d probably want people to know it.”