Bride & Groom

insufferability, but I hadn’t cured Carla of tucking him into her bosom, as if he were a silk scarf that prevented her from showing a lot of cleavage, a function that Anthony did not, in any case, serve. As usual, Carla’s dress plunged. A turquoise satin cocktail dress with dyed-to-match pumps, it looked like an especially hideous bridesmaid’s gown. Soon after Judith Esterhazy arrived, I was surprised to find that Carla, having learned that Judith was a famous novelist, had engaged her in what Carla clearly intended as literary conversation.
    “You write books!” Carla exclaimed. “I just love to read! I’ve always got my nose stuck in a book. My favorite is Cecilia Ann Vesper. Don’t you just adore her?”
    Slim and refined, Judith Esterhazy was possibly the last woman on earth who’d accessorize by sticking a dog between her breasts. “Vesper?” she inquired.
    “Well, some people think she’s old-fashioned. She doesn’t go in for these modern settings and career women and all that, but, hey, I live modern, and I’m a career woman myself, and when I settle down with a book, I want barons and baronesses and castles and ruins, because that’s romance, and if romance is what you pay for, romance is what you should get, right?”
    Judith’s sangfroid remained intact. “Cecilia Ann Vesper. I don’t think I’ve read her.”
    “Well, my favorite was Moated Passion, but Towering Love was pretty good, too. The new one is Highborn Rapture. I just got it, but I haven’t started it yet. So what do you write?”
    I abandoned eavesdropping. “Judith’s new book is about a woman warrior,” I told Carla. “A queen. It’s set in England during the Roman occupation.”
    “I love queens! And we’re Italian ourselves, my husband and me. What’s it called?”
    “Boudicca.” I didn’t offer to lend Carla my copy. She could afford to buy the book, and Judith needed every hardcover sale she could get.
    “Presents!” Ceci announced. “Let’s all get together by the fireplace!”
    As we gathered for the ritual, I spotted Rita at the periphery of the group. She was no longer talking with anyone, but lurking silently and looking as if she wanted to disappear altogether. When Leah joined me and nearly shoved me to a seat in the middle of the couch, I murmured, “Let’s get Rita to sit with us.”
    For once, instead of speaking so that everyone could hear every word she enunciated, Leah whispered. “One of her patients is here. She wants to keep a low profile.”
    Rita ran into her patients all the time at restaurants, at movies, in shops, and at parties. She saw them in the pool at her health club and, worse, in the sauna, where, of course, they saw her, too. When I was with Rita during these encounters, I could always identify her psychotherapy patients as such because Rita would suddenly make what I recognized as an effort to behave as if she weren’t privy to all sorts of secrets that these people hid from everyone but her. I was always itching to know the details of the hidden lives of these apparently ordinary people, but Rita never violated her patients’ privacy. On the contrary, unless she was desperate, she wouldn’t even admit that a particular person whose appearance had suddenly caused her to assume an expression of ultranormality was, in fact, one of her patients.
    The first present I opened was from Carla Guarini: a black lace teddy and a matching thong. The gift drew laughs and exclamations that delighted Carla, who, I felt sure, was not Rita’s patient. As I unwrapped the next package, it occurred to me that Rita had been outgoing and talkative, albeit in a rather brittle fashion, until the arrival of the last guest.
    Who had been the last to arrive? Judith Esterhazy.
     

CHAPTER 31
     
    More than any other human being I’d ever known, my stepmother, Gabrielle, established a special connection with everyone she met. When people described her as charming, they really meant that she made them feel uniquely understood and appreciated. They didn’t just feel that way, either; Gabrielle was genuinely fascinated by everyone. Consequently, the world worked better for Gabrielle than it does for the rest of us. Repair persons returned her calls and efficiently fixed her appliances. Auto mechanics took pains to make sure that her car was safe. Doctors and dentists squeezed her in ahead of other patients. Even my impossible father was in her thrall. For example, had it not been for