The Wedding People

Chapter 9

“Everybody, this is Phoebe,” Lila says.

The group says a collective hello, like they are all in a cult. High Bun is the first to hug her.

“I’m Suz,” High Bun says, though High Bun no longer sports a high bun. She now wears a long fishtail braid hanging casually over her right shoulder. Her hair is endless. There is something almost prehistoric about it. No wonder the bun was so high. “I’m Lila’s friend from Portsmouth Abbey.”

“Portsmouth Abbey?” Phoebe asks.

“Don’t worry, we’re not nuns,” says Neck Pillow, who now has a tiny diamond necklace resting at the center of her throat. “Just Catholic boarding school survivors. Hi, I’m Nat.”

No one else hugs Phoebe, but each wedding person continues to introduce themselves by stating their relation to the bride or groom. The groom’s sister, Marla. The groom’s daughter, whose name is Mel but prefers to be called Juice.

“Right,” Lila says. “I keep forgetting you want to be called Juice. And why is that again?”

Lila waits with a smile, as if she’s giving Juice the chance to tell a really funny story about herself. But the groom’s daughter just stands there, fiddling with a small green plastic circle in her hand. Her aunt is the one who speaks.

“We just always have,” Marla says with a cool tone, smoothing the dark hair that frames her face. She has gray splints on both her wrists. She takes a sip of her black coffee.

“Yeah, like since the dawn of time,” Juice says, with a learned coolness that sounds years older than eleven, which is what Phoebe guesses she is. Her outfit seems years older, too—big black combat boots, a cropped top that sits just below her navel. It looks uncanny against her childlike features—the baby fat, the missing canine tooth she must have recently lost.

Phoebe waits for Lila to say something snarky back, but Lila is flattened into silence by their tones. By their jokes, if that’s what they even are. Lila puts her arm around her future stepdaughter, and when Juice slinks away, Lila looks at Phoebe like, See? And Phoebe does see. Phoebe feels suddenly protective of Lila, who already seems different around the wedding people. Quieter, more subdued. She does not talk at length about all of her family members at once. She is polite, gracious, cheery to a fault, and Phoebe remembers feeling pressure to be the same way at her own wedding. She feels glad she can say things when Lila cannot.

“Like on the sixth day, God created the oceans, and on the seventh day, people started calling you Juice?” Phoebe asks.

“That’s very funny, yes,” Marla says, without laughing. “That’s exactly how it happened.”

“I’m pretty sure God created the oceans on the second day, though,” Lila says.

“Yeah, they were definitely, like, a priority,” Neck Pillow says, and the women laugh.

But Marla ignores them.

“And who are you again?” Marla looks at Phoebe’s outfit, as if the outfit will answer, though Phoebe has no idea what she communicates with this oversize sequined sweater, leggings made from some plastic faux-leather fabric that Phoebe avoided buying for nearly twenty years of her adult life, and sandals with a fake sunflower wedged between the toes that she bought from the gift shop.

“I’m Phoebe,” she says. It feels surreal to introduce herself to the wedding people. They can hear her now. “I was asked to be a body on the boat.”

The women laugh.

“Phoebe and I met at my mother’s gallery,” Lila says.

Phoebe is surprised by how coolly and quickly the lie comes out of Lila’s mouth. It seems unnecessary to Phoebe. But as soon as she hears it, Marla’s face lights up with interest.

“Oh, interesting, you work at the gallery?” Marla asks.

“No. I’m a professor,” Phoebe says.

“Phoebe just came in one day to look,” Lila says. “And we hit it off!”

“That’s how you met Gary!” High Bun says.

“Yes, we all know the story,” Marla says.

But that doesn’t stop Lila from telling it, because it seems that nobody, not even Lila, can get over the coincidence of it all.

“When Gary came into the gallery, I had no idea he was my father’s doctor,” Lila says. “At the time, I just thought he was this guy.”

“Wasn’t Jim there, too?” Marla says. “You always leave Jim out of the story.”

“Jim is not the point of the story,” High Bun says.

“Jim was just there for Gary,” Lila says. “Jim didn’t actually come to see the art.”

Gary was the one who cared about art, who was transfixed by the painting of her mother and just stared at it for what felt like ten minutes. Finally, Lila went over, and he had all these questions. Was this acrylic? Did Lila know the artist? Were they local? No—he was a painter who lived in New York. William Withers.

“I can’t believe Gary had no idea that the painting was of your own mother,” Neck Pillow says.

“How could he?” Lila asks. “We didn’t know each other yet.”

“But of all the paintings to be moved by,” High Bun says.

“Wasn’t it a nude?” Marla asks. “You always leave that part of the story out, too.”

“Wait, it was a nude?” High Bun asks.

“You definitely never told us that part,” Neck Pillow says.

Lila blushes. “Just a partial. And it’s a little abstract, so it’s like, she’s not even really a person. She’s more like a bunch of cubist nude color squares.”

“Color squares with breasts,” Marla says.

Neck Pillow and High Bun lean on each other as they laugh.

“Oh God, I bet your mother loves that part of the story,” Neck Pillow says.

“It honestly was really more about the garden behind her,” Lila says.

“Well,” Phoebe says. “That’s a really lovely story.”

But then it gets quiet. Nobody seems to have anything more to say about the nude painting, not even High Bun and Neck Pillow, who stand on either side of the bride like soldiers. Phoebe doesn’t know what she expected from these wedding people, but she expected conversation. They’ve been so loud from afar, so chatty on the patio last night. And Lila, so forceful in the room with Phoebe, now trying her best to be polite.

“Well, I guess we should go get the car,” Lila says.

“I thought we were waiting for the car?” Marla asks.

“No. We were just… talking,” Lila says.

As they walk out of the lobby, the men in burgundy rise. High Bun asks one of them to get the car, and then the women stand there in another long silence. Everybody looks at their phone or does whatever they can to pretend like the silence is totally normal, until Marla looks around, concerned.

“Where are Gary and Jim, anyway?” Marla asks.

“They’re meeting us at the wharf with your dad,” Lila explains.

“Oh,” Marla says. She is visibly disappointed by the answer, as if she had not realized she’d have to spend the morning driving with Lila and not her brother. Or maybe she’s just one of those people who look perpetually disappointed, with hair annihilated by a straightener, dyed so black that it makes her look like a grown-up version of Wednesday Addams. Her brown sweater, too stiff and formal for a day on a boat. And then there are the wrist splints, which Lila keeps periodically looking at, until Marla notices and finally says something about having a combination of carpal tunnel and tennis elbow.

“I don’t even really like tennis! Just something to do with other women, you know? I mean, there’s like no other sport you can just casually play with other women,” Marla says. “How sad!”

“I don’t think anyone should play sports,” High Bun says. She is anti-sport now. A nurse–turned–physical trainer during Covid who has officially grown weary of all competition. Now High Bun specializes in yoga and nostril-breathing and calming down her system. “Competition is not good for the body or the soul. That’s my gospel. It keeps us in trauma. Keeps us inflamed. That’s probably what’s going on with your hands. You’re all inflamed. Do you take vitamin C?”

“I’m not inflamed,” Marla insists. “I’m injured.”

“I had bad carpal tunnel once,” Neck Pillow says. She explains that she’s a musician. A harpist for the Detroit Symphony. “It was a total disaster. I couldn’t work for months.”

“You’re a harpist?” Phoebe asks.

“Nat is going to play for us at the clambake tonight, and she’s amazing,” Lila says to the group. “She’s an experimental harpist.”

Marla finally laughs. “An experimental harpist? Oh, that’s not a joke. I’m sorry, I thought you were joking. I truly didn’t know experimental harpists existed.”

“There aren’t many,” Lila says. “Nat sort of pioneered the style, isn’t that right?”

“You could say that,” Neck Pillow says.

“How interesting,” Marla says.

It is very easy to imagine Marla playing tennis or speaking in a courtroom or standing behind a podium running for mayoral office, less easy to imagine her in a hotel room, fucking a federal judge. But as they stand there in a new silence, Phoebe tries to imagine Marla giggling in lace lingerie, spread over the bed, the way she has imagined Mia laid out for Matt so many times.

“God, look at these cobblestones!” High Bun says.

Phoebe is starting to realize that this is a wedding like all others—here are people who came from very different corners of the bride’s life, only to gather in a room and have no idea what to say to one another.

“Lila got us a vintage convertible for the week,” High Bun says.

“Suz rented it,” Lila says.

“But it was Lila’s idea.” High Bun smiles and pets her braid.

“Only Lila would have thought of something like that,” Marla says, and it’s unclear whether this is a compliment or an insult. Marla looks back down at her phone, and Phoebe wonders what it was about the federal judge that was so irresistible. Why was Marla willing to give up her whole life?

“The car is here!” Neck Pillow says.

The man in burgundy pulls up the vintage convertible.

“What a beautiful car!” High Bun says.

“How are we all going to fit in it, though?” Marla asks.

“We’ll squeeze in it, no problem!” High Bun says. “We’ve put more people in a car than this.”

“Remember my wedding on the Vineyard?” Neck Pillow asks. “We fit seven people in that car!”

“I’m sitting in the front,” Marla says. “I get carsick in the back.”

“I’ll drive,” the bride says.

“You’re the bride!” High Bun says. “You shouldn’t have to drive.”

It’s the bride’s big week. The bride should be rendered helpless, given drinks, fluffed and complimented at every turn, put out like a kitchen fire, appeased like an angry toddler, prodded like a doll, then driven by a well-dressed stranger to the altar of her new life.

“But I want to drive,” Lila says. “That’s why I got the convertible.”

Nobody, not even Marla, challenges the bride. If the bride wants to drive, the bride gets to drive.

But when Lila gets in the car, she can’t. “Why did you ask for a stick shift?”

“I didn’t,” High Bun says. “I asked for their fanciest, most vintage-y convertible.”

“Well, of course it’s a stick shift,” Marla says. “It’s a car from like, 1940 or something.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” High Bun says.

“Does this mean that nobody here knows how to drive this car?” Marla asks.

Lila looks lost at the steering wheel.

“I can drive it,” Phoebe says from the back. “For the most part.”

“For the most part?” Marla says.

“I mean, I knew how to do it once upon a time,” Phoebe says. “My father taught me.”

“That sounds good enough to me.” Lila gets out of the car and looks at Juice squished in the back seat.

“Mel, would you be more comfortable sitting on my lap?” Lila asks.

“No,” Juice says. “And I told you I wanted to be called Juice .”

“Right. Sorry,” Lila says. She climbs in the back, and High Bun and Neck Pillow do a little dance to welcome her. In the driver’s seat, Phoebe puts her hand on the gear shift, her foot on the clutch. It’s been years, but it’s a kind of muscle memory from childhood that she’ll never forget, driving up the road in her father’s Saab, learning how to change gears as he said, “Easy, now, easy.”

“Onward,” Marla says, tapping the dashboard.

“Where am I going?” Phoebe asks.

“Bowen’s Wharf,” Marla says. “Waze will know.”

“I don’t have a phone with me,” Phoebe says.

The women are mystified. “Seriously?”

“I’ll pull it up,” Marla says, and hands Phoebe her phone.

As they drive, this is what they can all agree on: Newport is beautiful. The women in the back seat keep saying, Wow. Look at that mansion. And that one. And that one. And isn’t that the Vanderbilts’? Aren’t they all the Vanderbilts’?

“Who are the Vanderbilts?” Juice asks, but nobody answers, because the air is too crisp, the trees are too green. The people so rich-looking. The roads so roadlike.

“They were one of the richest families in Newport,” Phoebe finally says, following the directions and trying to ignore the messages that silently pop up on Marla’s phone from somebody named Robert.

I am thinking about your sweaty cunt , Robert writes.

Phoebe flinches. She wonders if it’s the judge. She looks over at Marla, but Marla seems to have no idea what’s happening to her phone, her gaze steady on everything outside the car—the high boxwoods, the crepe myrtles.

“ That’s the Vanderbilts’,” Marla says, pointing to the Breakers.

“I can’t believe that’s where you’re having your wedding!” High Bun says.

“I know. It’s amazing. Especially because they never host private events,” Lila says.

“Why did they let you, then?” Marla asks.

“My mother is on the board of the Preservation Society,” Lila admits. “She gave a very large donation.”

“Gary did tell you that our mother will never recognize your marriage unless you do it in a church, right?” Marla asks.

“Wait, what?” Lila asks. “Are you joking?”

High Bun leans over and turns up the music. Alicia Keys. She sings loudly, and changes the words to “Now we’re in New-pooorrrrt!!! These streets will make you feel poo-ooorr!”

“And rich people will juddddge you!” Neck Pillow sings.

“Let’s hear it for Newpooort, Newpooort, Newpooort!” Lila adds.

The three Portsmouth Abbey girls laugh hard at their song, and for the first time since Phoebe met them, she feels the shared history, the fact that High Bun and Neck Pillow are really Suz and Nat. Lila’s best friends from high school, curling their hair before parties and doing Tae Bo workouts in the mornings and making blueberry muffins on Sunday afternoons and menstruating at the same exact time and being so proud.

“I can’t believe we’re here!” Suz shouts and Nat adds, “Woot, woot, bitches!”

“What?” Marla says, turning around. “I can’t hear you over the music!”

“I just said, Woot, woot bitches!” Nat says.

“Hoot hoot?” Marla asks, then looks to Juice for help, but Juice is silent and humiliated against the door. She just shrugs, returns her gaze to her green toy.

I want to slam it with my hard cock , Robert writes.

“Turn right,” Waze orders.

At some point, Marla suggests putting the top up so they can all hear each other better, but Lila says that defeats the point of renting a convertible.

“We already have cars with tops,” Lila says.

Suz agrees immediately. “That’s true. All my cars do have tops.”

Phoebe heads down Ocean Drive and everyone squeals, hands in the air. Phoebe is quiet but is glad to be in motion. The wind makes talking almost impossible. Though Suz keeps trying anyway. Suz shouts something about convertibles being fun. And Phoebe can feel it, too. Some kind of satisfaction feeling the car sticking to the road as she rounds the curb a little faster. She never drove her father’s car like this.

“Jesus, slow down!” Marla says.

“I’m going the speed limit,” Phoebe says.

The child is in the back, entirely silent, traumatized. Her face looks comical in the rearview mirror—exactly the same when in motion and not in motion. Sort of like a dog. Phoebe wonders when the child will speak, what she might possibly report from the depths of her consciousness. Juice reminds Phoebe of herself when she was younger, always silent in the car. Silence is her communication.

“No, go faster!” Lila cries. “I love it. I just love it.”

But when they approach downtown, they hit traffic. A long line of red taillights in front of them. Phoebe can’t see the end of it. She slows down, and the car keeps lurching just enough to make them jostle. She is not very good at being in first gear, but nobody complains.

“I can’t believe we’re actually here!” Suz says.

The nurse, despite all she has seen these past two years being a nurse, lives in a constant state of disbelief about the most ordinary things.

“I feel like we’ve been planning this forever,” Nat says.

“We seriously have!” Suz says.

But Lila is concerned they are going to be late to the boat. “Does Waze say how long the traffic will be?”

“Twenty minutes,” Phoebe says.

“Guess this is what happens when you plan a destination wedding,” Marla says.

“This isn’t a destination wedding,” Suz says. “They live here.”

“Anywhere farther than thirty minutes in Rhode Island is a destination wedding,” Marla insists.

“We were actually thinking of doing a destination wedding in Germany, until Covid,” Lila says.

“Why Germany?” Nat asks.

“They got engaged there!” Suz says.

“I only vaguely sort of remember that,” Nat says.

“Ooohh, tell the story!” Suz says to Lila, clapping her hands. “Tell the story.”

“We’ve heard the story,” Marla says.

“Well, I don’t know it,” Nat says.

“Neither do I,” Phoebe says.

So Lila tells the story.

“Six months after we met, Gary and I decided to take a big trip to Europe because my father was doing really well,” Lila says, leaning forward. She sounds very excited to tell the story, and Nat and Suz are excited to hear the story, and Phoebe imagines they could probably listen to it a thousand times the way that her father could watch Vietnam War movies over and over again. Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night’s sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary’s love.

“Germany was our last stop,” Lila says. “We went to the Black Forest to see the Walt Disney Castle.”

“Oh, wow, you actually went to the Mad King’s Castle?” Phoebe asks. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“No, I said, the Walt Disney Castle ,” Lila clarifies.

“I know, but it’s also called the Mad King’s Castle,” Phoebe says. “Or, the Neuschwanstein Castle.”

“Well, I don’t know what it’s really called,” Lila says. “We just called it the Walt Disney Castle because Gary told me it was the castle that Disney used as a model for Sleeping Beauty’s. And Gary knows that I love all things Disney. So he planned to rent a car, drive us to the castle, and then propose outside the front doors. But we had been driving this stupid shitty rental thing that wouldn’t go above like sixty, and we were going to be late and miss the last tour of the day. So Gary stopped at a BMW rental place on the side of the Autobahn and picked up a new car that could go super fast.”

“There’s no speed limit on the Autobahn,” Lila adds. “It was exhilarating.”

Phoebe can see them so clearly. Gary, whoever he is, with his only-faintly-receding hairline blowing back in the wind, and Lila, her mouth big and full, laughing, eyes toward the sky.

“And when we got to the castle, he proposed,” Lila says with a smile. “I was actually really surprised. We had only been dating six months.”

“That’s so romantic,” Suz says

“He really is so wonderful,” Nat says.

But something isn’t sitting right with Marla. “Why is it also called the Mad King’s Castle?”

In the rearview mirror, Phoebe sees Lila’s eyes roll and Juice’s flicker up in interest.

“Because people thought the king who built it was insane,” Phoebe says.

“But why?”

“Because he built the castle using all his money, even though he had already built two other castles. He went into debt building this elaborate third castle just for himself, and so there were rumors that the king must be going mad.”

“Was he?” Marla asks.

“Eventually they found him drowned in the pond outside the castle.”

“He was murdered outside the Disney castle?” Lila asks.

“Actually, they suspect he killed himself,” Phoebe says, and meets eyes with Lila in the mirror.

“Of course he did,” Lila says, and leans back, defeated.

So Phoebe adds, “But not in front of the Disney castle. It was actually at one of his other castles.”

“Well, that’s good then,” Suz says, and like a loyal bridesmaid, she won’t let them linger on the Mad King’s suicide. “He went to Cornell, right?”

“The Mad King?” Marla asks.

“Gary!”

“Yale,” Lila says.

“He must be really smart,” Suz says.

“He is,” Lila says. “So smart.”

“He’s not that smart,” Marla says. “You know how many idiots get into Yale every day?”

Phoebe is irritated by Marla’s desire to ruin everything, even though Phoebe was the one ready to ruin Lila’s wedding last night. But there is something awful about doing it right in front of Lila’s face, in the middle of the afternoon.

“So wait, what’s your point?” Phoebe asks.

“My point is, Gary is not this Yale doctor hero. Sometimes Lila talks about him like he’s this god,” Marla says. “But I’ll have you all know that once, Gary lit our house on fire.”

“He lit your house on fire?” Lila asks. “How did I not know that?”

“He doesn’t lead with that,” Marla says. “Burned the entire kitchen down by accident and we had to live in a Marriott for a month. Best month of my life, to be honest. But don’t tell my brother that.”

The sun feels very hot above Phoebe. Marla starts covering herself with sunscreen.

I’m stroking it right now , Robert writes. Where are you?

Phoebe feels a twinge of delight, thinking about how embarrassed Marla will be at some point later when she realizes that Phoebe saw the messages.

“I really think we should put the top up,” Marla says.

“But it’s a convertible,” Suz says. “We got the convertible so that we could put the top down.”

“I’ve already had skin cancer and survived, twice, thanks. I don’t feel like dying because I got stuck in traffic,” Marla says.

“You’ve had skin cancer twice?” Nat says. “Holy shit.”

“Okay,” Lila says. “Fine. Let’s put the top up.”

In the enclosed car, in traffic, everything feels too quiet. There is something wrong here. People who are supposed to be bonding are not bonding.

“There’s never any traffic in The Gilded Age ,” Suz says.

“My wife is obsessed with that show,” Nat says. “But I think it’s a bore.”

But Suz doesn’t care. Suz will watch anything when the Little Worm is sitting quietly on her lap. “I literally watched seven hours of Wife Swap the other day because she had stopped crying and I didn’t want to move the Little Worm and get the remote.”

“The Little Worm?” Phoebe asks.

“That’s what Suz calls her child,” Nat says. “And why I, for one, am now no longer sure I want a child.”

“This whole time the Little Worm has been your child ?” Marla asks.

“I should check on her, actually.” Suz reaches for her bag.

“How far are we?” Lila asks again.

According to Waze, they are only a tenth of a mile away from the wharf.

“I bet it’s a beautiful fucking wharf,” Suz says.

“If we ever get there,” Marla says.

“Of course we’ll get there,” Nat says.

“Waze says twenty minutes,” Phoebe says.

“But it’s right there?” Lila says. “How can that take twenty minutes?”

Suz looks up from her phone. “Shit. The Little Worm is sick.”

“Oh, no,” Lila says, but nobody in the car asks with what.

T HEY SIT IN traffic for so long, Phoebe learns that each woman specializes in something. Suz, the trainer, specializes in celebrities. Nat, the musician, specializes in nontraditional plucking instruments like quarters and paper clips. And Marla, the lawyer, specializes in sexual harassment. She hears cases about whether something is or is not sexual harassment, and the women are intrigued.

“I didn’t know someone actually decided that,” Suz says.

“What did you think happened?” Marla asks.

“I don’t know, I guess I never thought about it.”

Then everyone starts wanting to know if they have been legally sexually harassed or not. Even Phoebe.

“On Monday, the Americanist in my department looked at me at the printer and said, ‘Woweeee! Nice dress!’” Phoebe says. “Is that sexual harassment?”

“If you think you are being sexually harassed, you are,” Marla says.

Phoebe didn’t think it was harassment at the time, because the Americanist was so old, in that abyss of age just beyond sex, but also because she agreed with him. Yes, the dress was nice. That’s why she bought it. That’s why she wore it. That’s what she wanted her husband to think! She wanted him to look at her and say, Woweeee, nice dress!

“So why would I be offended when the Americanist finally said it?” Phoebe asks.

“Of course the Americanist was the one who said it,” Marla says.

“What’s an Americanist?” Suz asks.

“What do you do ?” Nat asks.

“I’m a professor,” Phoebe says.

“A nineteenth centuryist,” Lila says, sounding proud.

“My point is, Phoebe,” Marla continues, as if she were actually providing legal counsel, “if you weren’t offended, you weren’t sexually harassed. That’s how the law works.”

“That doesn’t sound like the law,” Suz says.

“The law is partially subjective,” Marla says. “Would you have complimented the Americanist’s outfit?”

“No,” Phoebe says. “Never. But mostly because the Americanist just wears the same thing every day. Dockers and some blue shirt. I mean. What do you even say about that?”

“I have a lot to stay about that,” Lila says.

All the women laugh. Phoebe picks up speed. They lower the top again. Suz turns up the music. Katy Perry. “Teenage Dream.” “I hate this song,” Marla says, and they all agree that yes, they kind of hate this song, yet listen to it anyway. They finally get to the sign that says WELCOME TO BOWEN’S WHARF . Everybody on the street looks like they’re on vacation. Khakis and Nantucket reds. Soft baseball caps. Maybe they are all on vacation, or maybe this is just how you dress if you live in Newport. Phoebe parks.

“Lila! I can’t believe you’re getting married!” Suz shouts.

A T THE WHARF , all the men are dressed in polo shirts and khaki shorts except for one: the man from the hot tub. He stands there in his jeans and windbreaker with keys in his hand. It’s weird to see him dressed, in daylight, out in the open. He is no longer a man in a hot tub. He is taller than she expected and looks very prepared to get on a boat.

“Gary!” Lila shouts.

He kisses Lila, and everyone claps like they did on the patio last night. He pulls away, smiling, until he sees Phoebe.

“Hello,” he says, giving her a puzzled look.

He’s the groom ? The man in the hot tub is Gary? Even though he stands by Lila’s side, she can’t picture it. She can’t see him speeding in a BMW on his way to the Disney castle. She can only imagine him in the hot tub, so resigned, so solitary, so unconnected to anything else in the universe except for Phoebe and his beard.

But maybe that’s the trick night performs. Darkens everybody, highlights the nothingness around them. Maybe in the dark, everyone seems more alone than they are. Because he is clearly not alone. He is holding Lila’s hand. He is putting his arm around his daughter. He is standing tall in front of a handsome sailboat.

“Hello,” Phoebe says.

She suddenly doesn’t know what else to say. The tension between them feels so palpable to Phoebe, so embarrassing, but nobody else seems to notice. Marla starts slathering Juice in sunscreen. Suz starts asking one of the men if he got the orders to stock the boat with Lila’s favorite drink, which she keeps calling a Vacation in a Cup.

“Phoebe is a good friend,” Lila says to Gary.

“Is that so?” Gary asks.

If Phoebe is being honest, she has no idea if she and Lila are friends. No idea what it means to be a friend. She’s forgotten what it’s supposed to feel like. Mia was the last good friend she made in her adult life. So what does Phoebe know?

“And here I thought I met all your friends,” Gary adds.

“Well, here’s one more,” Phoebe says, and sticks out her hand.

“The more the merrier,” Gary says, and shakes it.

He isn’t going to acknowledge it, and so it is confirmed. Had everything been normal between them, he would have acknowledged that they already met. He would have said, Oh, how funny, I met Phoebe in the hot tub! But he doesn’t say anything like that, which makes Phoebe feel like their meeting was remarkable. Like when Phoebe used to say, “Mia is so beautiful” to her husband, and he would say, “Yes, Mia is a good laugh,” when what he really meant to say was: I want to fuck Mia.

“We already—” Phoebe is in the middle of saying when Juice screams.

“My dog is dead!” Juice shouts. She immediately starts crying, and Phoebe is shocked to see her transform from sullen teen into crying child in a matter of seconds.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Gary says.

Gary kneels down to become Juice’s size. In that one swift motion, Gary is no longer the man in the hot tub. He is no longer the groom. He is just a dad wearing white sneakers. Probably orthopedic. Phoebe can see their years of history, the way Gary must have held Juice after Wendy’s funeral. The meals he made her in the lonely afternoons. And is that what made him want to die? Losing his wife?

But then Gary stands up, puts his arm around Lila, and becomes the groom again, addressing his crowd.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s just a virtual dog.”

“It’s not just a virtual dog!” Juice shouts. She holds up the green plastic circle for all to see. “My mom gave her to me. Her name is Human Princess.”

The people are silenced either by the mention of the dead wife or the fact that the dog’s name is Human Princess. Lila does not speak. Marla does not speak. Not even Suz speaks. Nobody knows what to say to the crying child about the dead mother, except for Gary’s father.

“I told you to get the girl a real dog,” Gary’s father says, but this is not the right thing to say.

“ Dad ,” Gary warns at the same time that Juice shouts, “It’s real to me!”

Phoebe can see the wedding people blankly stare at Juice the same way her therapist stared at her when she told him Harry was sick—as if he wanted to care, but he just couldn’t, because who cares? It’s a cat. “And I know it’s just a cat,” Phoebe went on. “But Harry was with us that whole time we were married. Harry was there for us. And now he’s just going to slowly die?” And yet she could see that the therapist didn’t understand the horror of this.

“How did Human Princess die?” Phoebe asks.

Phoebe is starting to wonder if this is why she is here, to fill the silences between the wedding people that they don’t know how to fill, to ask the questions nobody can bring themselves to ask. Phoebe has nothing to lose here. She is not part of this family. She is not part of anything anymore. She is free in a way none of them are, so she kneels down and looks directly at the girl, as if it’s her from many years ago.

“Lung cancer,” Juice says.

“Since when do virtual dogs get cancer?” Gary’s father whispers loud enough to hear.

“Apparently, Dad, it happens.”

“Are you sure you didn’t drop it in the water, though?” Marla asks.

“No!” Juice says. “She just was in my hand and then she… died of cancer.”

“My cat died of cancer, too,” Phoebe says. What she would have given to have Matt there with her when she found Harry—to have anybody with her yesterday morning helping her figure out what to do. She extends her hand to Juice. “Come on. We’ll have a funeral for her on the boat.”

Juice nods. Suz and Nat look horrified. Lila just looks out at the water.

Suz takes a deep breath, puts on a smile, claps her hands, and says, “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready for a Vacation in a Cup.”

“Let’s get on this boat!” the other man shouts. He leans forward to shake Phoebe’s hand. “I’m Jim, Gary’s brother-in-law.”

“Phoebe,” she says.

Jim holds her hand for a moment too long—like maybe he’s checking for a ring, and maybe Lila is right. Maybe Jim really is always hitting on everyone. Even Phoebe.

“Very nice to meet you,” Jim says.

“You, too,” Phoebe says.

Jim lets go and takes a sip out of a bottle called Muscle Milk. Lila smooths out her shirt and adjusts her sunglasses.

“Okay,” the bride says, taking the groom’s hand. “Let’s get on this boat.”