Джил Эмерсон - A Week as Andrea Benstock

“I think that was Adele more than it was Harry.”

“You could be right. But the point is that Harry would love to belong to Northlawn, and he could get in now and knows he could get in, but he was blackballed once and he won’t apply again. And that’s pride, and for that I have to give the man credit. I wouldn’t want him in the club, I wouldn’t care to play golf with him or have drinks with him, but I give him credit.”

“That’s funny.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t want him in the club but your daughter is marrying his son and you approve.”

“And that’s funny? I don’t think it is. For one thing, she’s not marrying Harry. She’s marrying Mark, and Mark will be a member. I happen to know he plans to join, and there won’t be a vote against him.”

“He’d join a club that wouldn’t have his father?”

“Oh, please. My own father couldn’t have joined Northlawn. Not that it was around at the time, or that he would have been interested, but he couldn’t have joined it. Did that keep me out? And is there any reason it should have?”

Andrea and Mark spent a little over two hours at the reception. She was kissed by a great number of men. Some of them she knew, some she recognized, and some she could not recall ever having seen in her life. She danced with Mark, with her father, with her father-in-law, with Phil Benstock, and with Jeff Gould. She cut the first piece of wedding cake, with Mark’s large hand over hers to guide the knife. She was complimented on her dress, her hair, her figure, and her general radiance. She was treated to an endless barrage of marriage jokes, none of which amused her and most of which struck her as in appalling taste. She ate two bites of wedding cake, drank a whiskey sour and two scotch-and-waters, and sipped a cup of very bitter coffee. There was a generous cold buffet but she did not have anything from it. She had no appetite at all, and thought that it had been good her mother had coaxed her into eating breakfast.

When Linda signaled her she excused herself from a conversation with an unidentified aunt of Mark’s and slipped away to a room upstairs. She changed her clothes while Linda smoked cigarettes and told her how good it was to be married. “Jeff and I have our bad times, sure. It’s not easy, and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy. Of course we have the advantage that we’re away from the family. We have to work things out for ourselves. Oh, I’m so happy for you, Andrea. I wish we had known each other better years ago, but Arizona isn’t that far, you know, and the planes fly in both directions. Mark’s a wonderful guy and he’s getting a wonderful girl and I’m so happy.”

“Oh, Linda.”

“And you were so sweet to ask me to stand up for you. I’ll never forget it, I swear I won’t.”

She went down a back staircase and outside to the parking lot. Mark was waiting for her. Their bags were already loaded in his brother’s car. Phil drove them to the airport and waited with them until their New York flight was called. “Well,” he said. “Don’t do anything I haven’t done, huh?” He shook hands with Phil, and Andrea threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Wow,” he said.

“That’s because I always wanted a little brother.”

“Well, I’ve already got a big sister, but she never kissed me like that. Jesus, get a move on, you’ll miss your flight.”

They boarded their plane. An hour and a quarter later they were on the ground at Idlewild. They checked in at the Pan Am counter and went to a lounge for coffee.

He said, “Mrs. Benstock.”

“The blushing bride herself. Do you mind if I don’t blush?”

“Not a bit. It went well, I’d say.”

“I think it did. I was in a daze.”

“So was I. Hey.”

“What?”

“Any regrets?”

“God, no,” she said.

She had flown from New York to Buffalo in the middle of August. It was early October when Mark first called her. Until then her life had been closely confined. She spent most of her time in and around the house on Admiral Road. Once or twice a week her parents went out to dinner, usually at Northlawn, occasionally at a restaurant. About half the time she would join them. Now and then she drove one of the two family cars downtown and saw a movie, but most evenings passed in front of the television set or in her room with a book.

Then one Wednesday afternoon the telephone rang and her mother told her it was for her.

She took the phone assuming it was someone from out of town. It did not occur to her that anyone in Buffalo would be likely to call her.

A voice said, “Hello, Andrea? This is Mark Benstock, and I’m sure that means nothing at all to you.”

“Well...”

“This is pretty complicated. My aunt Rhoda seems to be a good friend of your Aunt Claire, and it seems that — you do have an Aunt Claire, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, it seems that my aunt and your aunt were having a hot game of mah jongg or canasta or something, and the word eventually reached me that the most beautiful girl in Buffalo is only a phone call away from me. Uh. So I thought, uh, that perhaps we could have dinner some night.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a lawyer, I’m not married, and I’m kind to animals. Small children generally like me. What else? I’ve never been arrested. I did get a parking ticket last week, but that’s about the only blot on my escutcheon. And I’m sure this is the first time I’ve ever spoken the word escutcheon aloud.”

“I used to know a Linda Benstock.”

“My sister. I’m sure she’d supply a character reference if you’d like.”

She laughed.

“Friday night? Or Saturday better?”

“Saturday would be better, actually.”

“Around seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up.”

“Let me give you my address. Do you have a pencil?”

“I have the address, as a matter of fact.”

He was tall. He had wiry dark brown hair and a broad forehead creased with three deep horizontal folds. His cheeks and chin were lightly pitted with old acne scars. His eyes were a warm brown. His mouth was generous and his teeth were good and immaculately white. She was apt to take rather more notice of teeth than the average person, and supposed it was the inevitable consequence of being a dentist’s daughter. For many years she had thought it would be impossible for her to be strongly attracted to anyone with bad teeth. In New York she had learned that this was not entirely the case, but even then she had found herself more than a little put off by teeth that were out of line or badly cared for.

That Saturday he took her to a restaurant in Williamsville. The building that housed it had been an inn around the time the Erie Canal was dug, and so the waiters now wore Revolutionary costumes and the menu used f’s for s’s. They established that they had both gone to Bennett High School, that their families belonged to the same temple, and that they had a certain number of acquaintances in common.

He was twenty-eight. He had graduated from Cornell where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. He’d been accepted at Cornell Law, his second choice after Yale, but decided that four years in Ithaca were enough. And, since he intended to practice law in his home town, there were certain advantages in U. B. Law School. He’d naturally lived at home; his parents’ house in Eggertsville was as close to the University of Buffalo campus as any apartment he was likely to find.

After he’d earned his law degree he went into the Army for six months of active duty. He spent two months in basic training at Fort Dix and the rest of the time as a clerk-typist at Fort Polk in Louisiana. He had to go to reserve meetings every Monday night, but that would be over and done with in a couple of more years. And every summer he went to a camp in Watertown for two weeks. It was an idiotic waste of time, but it was better than giving up two years of your life in one chunk.