Mating Rituals of the North American WASP by Lauren Lipton

Author:Lauren Lipton [LIPTON, LAUREN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780446550673
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

The paperweight was the only misstep, and who would notice it? A palm-size dome of glass with the three-dimensional pattern Peggy remembered was called millefiori, it wasn’t the first, second, or tenth object any other Sunday afternoon lunch guest at the Ver Planck family compound would see—not when there were so many other breathtaking things to look at. Such as the sculpture in the corner: a ten-foot heap of tangled, rusted wire out of which reached a single pink-resin arm; or the rug fashioned from loops of wool the diameter of rope; or the art on the soaring walls. From her spot on a geometric red sofa, Tiffany pointed. “That one with the giant blue splotch drives my nana up a tree. She says she could do it herself blindfolded.” She laughed her infectious snorting laugh. Through the wall of glass behind her, a sinuous steel sculpture took the place of honor in a goldening meadow of tall grass that had surely been landscaped to look unlandscaped.

But Peggy kept returning to the paperweight on the coffee table, and at last Tiffany picked it up and passed it to her. “My mom gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. Chachi—that’s our decorator—he hates it. Tom made him let me keep it, but when Chachi comes in here he always goes”—she sang—”‘One of these things is not like the others…one of these things doesn’t belong…’ Remember, from Sesame Street?”

Peggy thought Chachi would sing the same thing if he saw Peggy herself, small and incongruous in her own chair, a gray upholstered spiral whose twin she was certain she’d once seen at the Museum of Modern Art. She clutched the paperweight. It was solid, feminine, comforting.

“I’m so happy you could come,” Tiffany said. “I’m sure you don’t like to be apart from Luke. You’re separated so much as it is.” She stopped and drew together her eyebrows in concern. “Are you cold? I could turn up the heat.”

Peggy shook her head. It was overwhelming—the lunch prepared by an invisible chef and served by a housekeeper; this airplane hangar of a house, with its pitched angles and lofty ceilings. Peggy’s parents could park their RV in Tiffany’s living room. Peggy suspected she’d uttered no more than a dozen sentences since she’d driven this week’s rented car up the sweeping driveway and spotted Tiffany waiting for her at the front door, bouncy haired and smiling in pressed jeans and cheetah-spotted needlepoint slippers.

“Peggy, please.” Tiffany glanced at the wireless baby monitor next to her on the sofa cushion. “I know this place is a little much. It has this effect on people; they kind of clam up and stare. But we have exactly forty minutes left until Milo wakes up from his nap, and then it’s all over. Didn’t you have questions? Please, ask!”

“I don’t know where to start,” Peggy began. “I don’t know about anything Yankees are supposed to know about. I don’t even understand the difference between Yankees, preppies, and WASPs. I haven’t a clue about prep school or sailing or polo.

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