Marcia Talley: Occasion of Revenge

“Urban legend.” The limo eased to a halt. “Or at least a village one.”

Connie leaned across the seat, her hand resting lightly on Dennis’s knee. The new half-carat diamond-and-platinum ring she wore caught the sun, sending a dot of light ricocheting across the upholstery. “Speaking of legends, Washington actually slept here, you know.” She indicated a second-story window on the far left of Dulaney House. “He was coming from Virginia to resign his commission at the Annapolis State House and he waited here for the weather to improve before crossing the Truxton by ferry.”

I ducked my head and stared at the spot where Connie was pointing. An ordinary window. “You sure?” I chuckled. “George Washington didn’t live enough nights in his whole life to sleep everywhere attributed to him. When would he have time for Martha at Mount Vernon?” We unfolded ourselves from the vehicle, Connie and Dennis first, and entered the house.

If old George had actually stayed at Dulaney House on that cold December day in 1783, I doubt he’d ever seen it looking so beautiful. Constructed solidly of brick with generous windows and bright white trim, the central three-story house was flanked by identical one-story wings, connected to the main house by passageways called hyphens. An ornately carved doorway led into an entrance hall where a central stairway curved up and away to our right. We passed straight through into the ballroom, where a string quartet had arranged itself on a fine Oriental rug near a wall of French doors leading out into the garden. They were playing one of Vivaldi’s seasons-“Winter,” I think, appropriate to that fine November day two days after Thanksgiving. In contrast, baskets of flowers screamed spring. Arrangements of tulips, daffodils, and lilies decorated tall pedestals flanking the doors. Smaller arrangements had been placed on circular tables covered with white damask tablecloths. Servers in black pants, white shirts, and festive bow ties snaked smoothly through the crowd bearing platters of crab balls, egg rolls, and shrimps, while two bartenders near a walk-in fireplace at the far end of the ballroom efficiently mixed drinks.

Daddy was already there, standing at the bar, holding a glass of wine in one hand while the bartender handed him what looked like a super-dry martini on the rocks. While Paul disappeared into the cloakroom with our coats I hurried over to greet my father.

“Two-fisted drinker?” I forced a smile.

“No.” He kissed my cheek. “It’s for Darlene.” He gestured with the martini. “Over there.”

I sighted along his arm until I saw, at the end of it, the blond woman who had been sitting next to him in church. I pasted a smile on my face-what Paul calls my perma-grin: stretched lips, full teeth, like rigor mortis had set in. “She doesn’t look like the martini type.”

“She isn’t.” He waved the glass under my nose and I caught the unexpected odor of mouthwash.

“Yuck. What’s that?”

“Peppermint schnapps.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “Want one?”

“Daddy, I’d rather drink battery acid.” I tipped my wineglass to my lips and took a sip of cool, crisp chardonnay, studying his lined but still handsome face over the rim.

“I’d have to agree, but Darlene says it’s not a special occasion if she can’t have her schnapps.” Daddy planted a light kiss on my forehead. “Save a dance for me, sweetheart?”

“Of course, silly.” But I was speaking to his back as Daddy turned and glided off to the lady-in-waiting, leaving me stranded by the bar, feeling like a wallflower.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“Paul!”

Confirming my suspicions about the lemon meringue pie, Paul said, “You look good enough to eat,” and nibbled on my neck in lieu of an appetizer.

“So do you. I wish we were sailing off to the Caribbean along with the happy couple over there.” I gestured with my glass in the direction of the hallway where Paul’s sister, Connie, was standing with her new husband in the curve of the staircase, manning an informal receiving line.

“Maybe on my sabbatical next year.”

“Hah! That’ll be the day! What’s a math professor going to do on a sailboat that will count as research?”

“Think.”

“About what?”

“Patterns.”

“Like what?”

“The parabolic arcs of flying fish trajectories.”

I laughed out loud. “I can’t believe that anybody would pay you to do research like that.”

Paul led me over to the bar where we joined a short line. “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, my dear. It’s rumored that someone’s about to offer a million-dollar prize to the first person who can prove Goldbach’s Conjecture.”

“What’s that?”

We wandered over to our table and sat down. “Goldbach stated that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes.” Paul patted the breast pocket of his tux jacket and I worried that he’d pull out a pen and start illustrating this for me on the tablecloth, but fortunately the only thing in his pocket was a decorative handkerchief.

“That seems fairly obvious,” I said, “even for a French major.”

“Ah, yes,” Paul replied. “But nobody’s ever been able to prove it.”

“I see.” I sipped my wine. “It’s like extracting the square root of pi. It could go on and on and on.”

He nodded.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure out something, and when you do-sweetheart, honey lamb, sugar pie”-I grinned at him, toothily-“I’ll be sure to sign on as first mate.”

“How about chief cook and communications officer?”

“That, too.” The way he was looking at me, I thought he might have a second honeymoon on his mind-starting that night.

“Look, there’s old Mr. Schneider!” Paul kissed the air next to my cheek. “Let me say hello to the old boy.” He loped off in the direction of a tuxedoed gentleman in a wheelchair being pushed by an attendant up a ramp from the garden and into the ballroom. Mr. Schneider was the father of Dennis’s deceased first wife.

“Oh, my poor ears and whiskers!” The bride, looking flushed, materialized on my right so suddenly that I nearly spilled my wine.

“Dennis deserted you already? The cad!”

Connie flopped into a chair, removed a punishing high-heeled shoe, and began massaging her toes. “We gave up on the receiving line. Dennis is off in the library, back-slapping with his buddies. Get me a drink, would you?”

“Wine?”

“That would be lovely.”

“White or red?”

Connie indicated the pristine white landscape of her wedding outfit and made a face. “Duh!”

I returned from the bar with a glass of white wine for Connie just as Daddy’s new friend cut loose with a high-pitched cackle that carried over the sawing of the strings launching into “Spring.”

“Who’s that?” I asked Connie, pointing toward the cackle.

She shrugged. “And Guest.”

“Huh?”

“That’s all I know. When your father RSVPed, it was for two: Captain George Alexander and Guest. I forgot to tell you.” She cast a fashion-critical eye over Darlene’s cocktail dress, a lacy froth of Pepto-Bismol pink with a flouncy skirt that hovered three inches north of her knees and a bodice that plunged a couple of inches too far south of her generous bosom.

“I hope she doesn’t sneeze,” I said. Darlene held the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefinger, laughed again, then pirouetted away toward the meats table on dainty toes stuffed into size five sling-back, open-toed stiletto heels. “That’s Daddy’s date ?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“But it’s only eight months since Mother died,” I managed to croak around the lump in my throat.