Chapter 21 The Blow-Off Call
Chapter21 The Blow-Off Call
The Mother of the Groom
While the Merry Widows did their best to comfort Alexa after she revealed the details of the conversation with Penny, Abigail
snuck off to the library to call Chase. He picked up after four calls in four minutes. Abigail wasted no time with pleasantries
when a wedding with high-value press coverage was at stake. “What did you do?”
Chase must have expected the attitude because he wasn’t fazed at all. “Mom, I told you, I’m working this weekend.”
“I understand. But Penny just called Alexa and told her that the wedding is off. Off! And we’ve only just nailed down a beautiful
historic home for the ceremony and reception. It’s stunning. A showstopper. It’s a house called La Mariposa, The Butterfly.
Imagine the logo! Plus, we’ve nailed down the flowers and the wine and the guest housing. The rehearsal dinner at a fancy
surf club. I mean, who even knew those existed? It’s all set. You can’t call this off,” Abigail told her son, as if securing
a once-in-a-lifetime wedding venue trumped all, even his personal happiness.
“I can’t go into this right now. I promise you, the wedding will go on. Penny’s just having a freak-out, that’s all,” Chase answered before assuring a colleague that he’d be off in a second.
Abigail bristled. Penny was an accomplished young woman raised by a mother who was cool under pressure. She didn’t seem like
the type to “freak out,” a turn of phrase that even high school kids knew not to use anymore. Maybe Penny had cause for concern.
Abigail flashed back to her son’s declaration during the conversation in the car en route to the airport about their partnership
and all that blah, blah, blah about handling their relationship as fully equal adults. Chase had certainly made a short trip
from that approach to his fiancée “freaking out.”
She had to call him on it. “Please give Penny more credit than that. Perhaps she has reasons to be concerned and cautious.
You didn’t contribute to her doubts with this campaign? Or this move to Queens? No woman wants her concerns to be dismissed
as ‘freaking out,’” the mother of the groom said on behalf of all women. Suddenly, surprisingly, she was Team Penny.
“Penny has been with me every step of the way. She was part of the discussion vis-à-vis our futures. This has nothing to do
with Queens or the campaign, both of which she suggested and supported from the start. It’s the wedding industrial complex
that’s causing her concerns, Mom. Not me. She’s been to all those giant, over-the-top weddings with fourteen bridesmaids and
white doves and branded matchbooks or cocktail napkins or whatever the hell else they can put their initials on. She feels
the pressure to keep up even though that’s not our style. She’s getting sucked in. That’s a better phrase. Sucked in. Anyway, Mom, this is a short detour. I’m sure it will all work out. At least, I hope it does.”
“You hope? That’s not very encouraging.” Despite what her son had just said about the business of weddings, she was thinking of the personalized wine labels that Frannie had promised and the mothers’ tea that Ming thought would be a lovely event to add to the weekend. And Mitsy’s description of the arch of gathered roses and rosemary over the ceremony space that would echo some temple in Greece. Maybe Penny didn’t think she wanted all that, but now Abigail did. She wanted it all and her grilled-lobster tacos. “How are you going to make this right?”
Chase didn’t spare a second for his mother’s fantasies. “I’m in the middle of a planning session. I’ll call you next week.
You’re flying Monday, so I’ll call you Tuesday.”
“What are we supposed to do in Montecito?” she asked in an artificially mopey voice to convey heartache.
“Sit by the pool and drink some wine,” he responded without hesitation.
How did he know? Abigail thought. Had Sarah said something? Or Lloyd? “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” she said.
“I’ve gotta go. Don’t worry, Mom. This will all be fine.” And Chase hung up before Abigail could even sign off.
How will this be fine? she thought before silently correcting herself. How can I make this fine?
She knew the answer: by doing what she did best.
Abigail was at her most effective when she worked behind the scenes, using her good judgment and good manners and not getting
swallowed up by negative thoughts or her own biases. She’d learned about unconscious biases in a mandatory human resources
training at her former place of employment, Silliman School. At first, she resisted implementing the training, feeling put
upon as if the entire staff training exercise was aimed at Abigail and her so-called “snobbery.” (Paige, the librarian, felt
that Abigail snubbed her once in the dairy section at Stew Leonard’s because she went to public school back in the day. “Nonsense,”
she told her boss when questioned about the off-site incident. “The only reason she got into Yale was because she went to
public school. How could I hold that against her?”)
But it was when she took the job at the Black Rock Senior Cen ter that she started to understand the concept. Everybody there was not like her. She was the outlier in terms of race, background, or education. She watched how her young boss treated everyone with the same level of respect and authenticity and started to mimic her behavior. She found that opening up her mind had opened up her world. And that, to her surprise, she enjoyed herself among these interesting, fun, smart people who worked and played at the brSC. Like she was starting to enjoy Alexa and the Merry Widows, who also had a dialect of their own.
“Abby, open your eyes and use what’s in front of you,” she said out loud to herself. Now she had to look at her own biases
against Penny—not from Connecticut, not from a family known to them, not blond—and reexamine them. The answer to fixing the
situation was probably hiding in plain sight.
When she first met George all those decades ago, she felt an immediate comfort level with him because they spoke the same
language, a particular Connecticut/New York/New Jersey dialect of prep schools and private clubs and Main Line colleges (Bryn
Mawr for her, Haverford for him.) The crossover of mutual friends and connections and fashion sense created a safety net under
their relationship. What could go wrong with so much in common? They felt secure in the knowledge that they would make a good
pair.
It was only deeper into their marriage that Abigail realized that the similarity of their backgrounds resulted in the same
faults, like an unwillingness to talk openly about money or sex or really anything that was slightly uncomfortable or risky.
She and George both valued discretion, but where was the fun in that? She once tried introducing scented candles in the bedroom
for their Saturday night nooky and it was too much for her husband, both the light and the scent. They went back to an unscented,
lights-off interaction.
She learned that being married to George meant standing one step behind him so she had a view from the rear. She worked in the background, taking over the bills, making the hard choices about paring down their expenses and presenting her decisions to George as if they were the norm, the right thing to do so she didn’t hurt his pride. In exchange, he carried on with the appearance of success, wore the ties she picked out and mixed her drinks like he always had. The charade worked for them, and she didn’t want to change a thing about George or herself, really. Not that she could now anyway. But did she really want that limited kind of relationship for her children and their partners? Choosing comfortable and familiar over world-expanding?
No, she had to admit, she didn’t. Look at the blossoming of Sarah with this new beau who didn’t fit the Fairfield County mold!
And hearing all the praise about Penny on her home turf made Abigail realize that she was complementary to Chase in every
way he needed: global perspective, genuinely thoughtful of others, and possessed of an understanding of how money worked in
the real world. (Granted, she had grown up on “the wrong side of the tracks” in Montecito, but it was always the wrong side
of the tracks somewhere! She and George had shielded their kids from their money issues and now they were paying for a tent
they couldn’t afford. If the wedding went on, that is.)
As she ran her palm along the hand-carved library shelves and the leather-bound books, the MOG realized something: Penny was
a great match for her son. And Abigail was going to use all her new tools and her connections to make sure the Blakeman-Diamandis
wedding happened.