During the Wednesday morning excursion through the shops in Rehoboth, Arless watched as Miranda and a half-dozen of her cousins selected clothes and accessories costing more than she would make in a year at her part-time job at the campus bookstore. Arless wanted to concentrate and learn from these girls with their confident, polished style, but the constant stream of crisscrossed conversations made her dizzy. She pretended to study a display of tights — they were on sale and she was relieved to see she could afford a pair if she was pressed to buy something.
“You okay?” Miranda asked as she passed Arless and headed for the dressing rooms with an armful of clothes.
“Sure.” Arless said as she watched Miranda stop twice more to have giggly exchanges with her cousins before disappearing into the back of the store.
As she fingered the soft tights, Arless admired the laughing, speed-talking girls as they shopped. Since her arrival, she had watched Bridgewells simultaneously shooting words at, over and around each other. None of them listened. Arless began to think this shared trait might be the glue that held the family together. One Bridgewell couldn’t possibly know what was being said by the other family members, and maybe this was how they could all still like each other. This insight didn’t make her feel better, but as she rejoined the group Arless kept smiling, nodding and laughing in what she hoped were all the right places. She had to make the most of her time with the Bridgewells.
~~~
Thanksgiving morning began with mimosas, bloody marys and a large spread of pastries served in the morning room. Arless wasn’t sure what made it a morning room, but that’s what Miranda called it, and Arless had grown tired of asking her friend to explain things. Arless found she was growing tired, period. Tired of being nervous and hiding her true feelings. Tired of pretending she knew more than she did.
Fortified with a full glass of champagne, she waved in the general direction of a decanter of orange juice, Arless avoided being drawn into the small groups of diners and slipped out into the hall. She meant to hide in her room until lunch, but as she passed the doorway of the formal dining room, she stopped to stare at the twin twenty-foot tables laden with china, silver and crystal. How would she ever make it through such a complicated dinner? In Detroit, they would be eating on her mother’s plain white dishes. Her parents would need only one knife, fork and spoon and wouldn’t know what to do with more. Turkey from the deli, stuffing from a box, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. A frozen pumpkin pie burned at the edges and still frozen in the center. The images filled Arless with a sadness that startled her.
“Ruby Dear! Ruby, are you crying?”
Arless jumped but only a bit. It almost seemed natural now for Helene Bridgewell to appear out of nowhere and demand ‘Ruby’s’ attention.
“Crying? No, of course not,” Arless said. She quickly rubbed her eyes and was surprised to find tears on her lower lashes.
“Well, whatever’s the matter, I have just the cure. You can spend some time with NoNo. We’re having such lovely warm weather; I’ve moved her out onto the terrace. She’ll be thrilled to see you, and it would be a huge favor for me. Everyone else is busy or off doing something outside.”
“Or they are having sex in the pool house,” Arless thought sourly, thinking of the real Ruby and Brandon Bridgewell. She drained her glass of champagne and obediently followed Helene. As they walked back through the morning room and onto the terrace where NoNo was parked in the sunshine, Arless swapped her empty glass for a fresh one without Helene noticing. She was congratulating herself on her newfound stealth when she thought of the delicate gold chain necklace that was today’s gift from Helene. She felt her face warm with embarrassment.
“Mrs. Bridgewell?” Her voice sounded timid and whiney, and Arless winced as the words left her mouth.
Helene looked back at her with an encouraging smile and said, “Mother, dear. Mother Bridgewell.”
Arless sighed. “Yes, ma’am. I really need you to understand that I am not Brandon’s girlfriend. I am not …”
“Oh, don’t worry about a little spat. Whatever it is you two are quarreling over, you’ll work it out. You are one of us, dear. I knew it the moment I saw you.” Helene turned away to face her mother-in-law. “Look, NoNo, look who I have with me. Dear Ruby is going to visit with you for a while.”
Helene dropped an air kiss over NoNo’s head, whispered, “Just keep talking to her,” in Arless’s ear and sped away.
“I’m not Ruby,” Arless said to Helene’s back, but she was alone with NoNo by the time the words were out.
She tried her new personality on her silent audience but felt like an idiot blathering on about the weather and food. At the end of a ten-minute stream of prattle, she knew the new Arless needed more work. Gazing past NoNo, she watched the youngest generation of Bridgewells, a half-dozen blonde, blue-eyed cherubic children, engaged in a soccer game punctuated by shouts of “way to go!” “good shot!” and, unbelievably, “Let’s call it now while the score’s even, okay?”
~~~
“You are all winners, kids!” an enthusiastic Bridgewell mom shouted from the small knot of parents, aunts and uncles who were watching the game.
Where did these people come from, Arless wondered. Were they shot to earth in pods from Planet Nice? God, they gave her a headache. No, a toothache. They were so damn sweet, they made her teeth hurt. But she wasn’t giving up.
“Your family certainly is attractive,” she said, speaking slowly and smiling at NoNo. A quick blink of the rheumy blue eyes answered her. Emboldened, Arless asked, “Are you enjoying the sunshine?”
“DonnnnALD!” NoNo shrieked, causing Arless to drop her glass, which shattered into a million Waterford sparkles on the flagstone. As she tried to hide evidence of her accident by using a handkerchief to brush the crystal shards into nearby bed of boxwoods, Arless could have sworn she saw NoNo smile.
~~~
At first, everything Arless dreaded about the Thanksgiving dinner came true. She didn’t recognize half of the dishes she was offered, and those she did recognize, she was sure she wouldn’t like. She tried it all anyway. Fresh oysters, crispy soft-shell crabs and shad roe on toast points were followed by a creamy pumpkin soup. Arless ate with growing enthusiasm, pleased that she was able to navigate the elegant meal and watching her fellow diners, absorbing and trying on their mannerisms. She was wondering what kind of dessert would follow the odd menu when the chef and his staff filed in bearing platters of roast turkey and traditional trimmings. Everyone else seemed to expect this second dinner, and Arless tried to copy their happy and expectant attitude. Another glass of champagne steadied her. In her pre-Bridgewell existence, she hadn’t liked sparkling wine, but now she thought of it as Alka-Seltzer; and it settled her stomach. A hovering waiter kept her flute filled.
Three hours after it began, Thanksgiving dinner was over, and Arless felt as though she had won a battle. She hadn’t spilled anything, inadvertently insulted anyone or otherwise embarrassed herself. The food had soaked up a lot of the alcohol, but she was still tipsy, and this made her bolder. She firmly excused herself and left the library while after-dinner brandies were distributed.
Settling on the second step from the top of a sweeping staircase that rose to the second floor of the north wing, she watched Bridgewells with brandy snifters and Bridgewells who sipped coffee from dainty china cups. For four days she had tried to be one of them, but Arless thought this perch twenty feet above the party was as close as she could come to fitting in with the good-natured and cosmically blessed family. They were extraordinary, Arless thought. Even NoNo, in her own world, was a happy Bridgewell. Donald, it turned out, was her late husband. In NoNo’s mind, her Donald was still with her, and she called out to him when she got excited. Miranda teared up as she told Arless about her grandparents. Arless thought Donald had probably killed himself to get away from the overwhelming bunch of happy zealots he had spawned. Even Miranda — beautiful, charming Miranda — was irritating.
Arless immediately felt disloyal to the generous family. After all, what if the Bridgewells weren’t so odd? Maybe she was odd. Maybe the rest of the world outside her little Detroit home belonged to families that could maintain a five-day-long talk-a-thon and appear to emerge the better for it. Or maybe not. Arless went for door number two. All things considered, the Bridgewells just felt wrong.
So what if Arless’s family began to fall apart after a few hours of forced holiday togetherness? That didn’t mean they weren’t a good family. The Stanfords stuck together in hard times. Maybe not in a way Arless would like them to, but together all the same. When Arless talked, her family actually listened. She was sure of this, because her words were often tossed back to her in an “I-told-you-so” format. Still, her family listened, and that was something Arless had never even known should be appreciated.
She peered over the railing and looked once more at the tribe of friendly, funny and bossy people who had taken her into their home without hesitation. As usual, they were all talking at once and waving their hands to punctuate emphatic statements. Their bodies gyrated and bobbed in apparent illustration to endless stories. Deep belly laughs and high-pitched squeals signaled the level of excitement the speaker thought his or her statements should generate. Arless rose and took the last steps up to the landing, turning her back on the loud and happy Bridgewells. She smiled and thought for the umpteenth time, “These people are crazy.”
~~~
“Mom? I know it’s late, but can you talk for a minute?” In the quiet of her room, Arless cupped her cell phone to her mouth and whispered, even though she knew the Bridgewells couldn’t hear her.
“Arless? Where are you? You sound odd. Have you been drinking?” Her mother’s flat, accusatory tones sounded beautiful to her daughter.
“Oh, Mom, I’m coming home!”
It took twenty minutes of arguing, but her mother finally agreed to transfer enough funds to Arless’s debit card to cover the change fee on her return plane ticket. She got off the phone before her mother could change her mind, quickly changed out of her new clothes and packed the Louis Vuitton case. Standing back from the tall four-poster bed in the lovely guest room that faced the ocean, Arless looked around at the opulent space that could be hers for seventy-two more hours if she wanted. She didn’t, but what she was doing didn’t feel right, either.
She could feel the weight of Helene Bridgewell’s gold necklace.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
Was she really going to leave it all behind? With that simple question came a simple answer. She was ready to leave the Bridgewells and move on. She would have it all, eventually, but she would be wearing her own clothes.
~~~
The next morning Helene Bridgewell showed her daughter the mysterious note the maid had found in dear Ruby’s room.
Mother Bridgewell,
Thank you for your hospitality and the lovely gifts. I can’t accept them, but they and you made me feel special.
Fondly,
Arless
“Arless?” Helene called to Miranda. “Who is Arless?”
But her daughter was gone, swallowed up by a group of cousins on their way to the next adventure. Helene’s question was lost among the happy Bridgewells who filled her house.
About Cheril Thomas
