Page 17 of Best Woman
Every day at my grandparents’ country club is like a bar mitzvah. This is only a slight exaggeration—my actual bar mitzvah was held here. From the complimentary valet parking to the ice sculpture swans taking flight above giant tureens of tuna salad, this is a place of luxury, comfort, and excess.
I’m not feeling very comfortable or luxurious, tapping my foot impatiently as a woman clutching a walker in one hand and a ladle in the other takes her sweet time with the chicken noodle soup.
I’d offer to help, as she looks about two days away from making everyone named in her will very happy, but I’m not having a good day.
The house was dark and quiet last night when I got home from Ben’s, though I saw lights flickering under the twins’ bedroom doors.
Everyone but Randy was gone this morning when I woke up, and we made uncomfortable conversation (on my part, at least, as Randy can happily chat with anyone, anywhere, anytime) over coffee before I escaped back to my room to spend a few hours remotely coordinating furniture delivery and a light installation at a client’s Hamptons house.
Mom picked me up for a girls’ lunch out and spent an hour offering unsolicited opinions on my hair, skin, and nails in between calls from various friends and family members.
I’d dropped her off at work and taken her car for the rest of the day on the condition that I had to pick Brody and Brian up from school, which had quickly turned into me chauffeuring them and their creepy little friend Eugene to an abandoned Best Buy parking lot, where they presumably mutilated stray cats for the rest of the afternoon.
By the time I picked Mom up from work, a migraine had started to throb at my temples, the pain ratcheting up another notch every time she asked me a question about my day or reminded me how excited I should be for the wedding.
I breathe in and out, willing the thunder rumbling in my head to quiet. I keep reminding myself that this week is a marathon, not a sprint, and I can’t burn out this early in the game.
Finally, the crone in front of me hobbles off with her soup and I ladle out a bowl, plopping in a gigantic matzoh ball and snagging a packet of oyster crackers. Back at the table, my grandpa is in the middle of a story I’ve heard roughly sixty times.
“So there I am, on top of the bar at the Hotel Biancamaria in Capri, pants around my ankles, while the accordion player starts playing ‘Moon River.’?” Grandpa holds court with ease, even though most of the table isn’t paying attention.
“I’m about to start singing when I notice someone climbing up onto the bar next to me. And do you know who it was?”
Everyone at the table knows their role in this tale. “Who was it?” we ask together.
“Audrey fucking Hepburn.” He holds a beat to let that sink in. “She says to me, ‘I think I know this one if you’d like to duet.’ And I turn to her, and do you know what I say?”
“What did you say?” I ask through a mouthful of matzoh ball. It’s too hot and burns my tongue.
“I said, ‘My dear, it’s rather loud in here, so don’t go lightly .
’?” He looks expectantly at Brody and Brian, the two people at the table who have heard this story the least and are therefore most likely to react to it, but they probably think Truman Capote is either a dead U.S.
president or a nonbinary YouTube vlogger and don’t look up from their phones.
My grandma rubs his hand reassuringly, her silver bracelets clacking. “It was very clever, dear.”
When I was growing up, my grandparents seemed shockingly young compared to those of my friends.
They were always jetting off on European vacations and African safaris, hosting cocktail parties full of interesting people, and taking Aiden and me to Broadway shows when we visited them in New York.
They were true snowbirds, spending summers in the Long Island home they’d lived in since before I was born and winters in Florida.
Once they hit their seventies and my mom had the twins, they’d moved down here full time.
Since then they’d suddenly been noticeably old, finally looking like the grandparents I’d always expected to have, slow and brittle and occasionally cantankerous.
But they certainly put on a good show. My grandma is immaculate—she gets a blowout on the same day every week, and her hair is huge and stiff.
Her nails are perfectly manicured and she’s wearing her signature Chanel lipstick.
Two years ago I asked what shade it was and she’d shaken her head sadly. “Oh, darling, you’d never pull it off.”
Grandpa is still wearing a polo shirt from his afternoon golf game but has a cardigan draped over it.
He gets cold so easily now, and the indoor temperature in Florida always hovers around frigid, even in early November.
His smile is as wide and impish as ever under the huge nose carved sharply down his face.
And his voice is still so loud, too loud, especially as he calls across the crowded restaurant.
“Over here!” We all turn to look, and Aiden is waving at us from across the room.
My brother is tall and handsome, all wide shoulders and big hands—traits I somewhat regrettably share.
His hair is darker, flat, and straight whereas mine tends to wave and frizz.
He’s got scrunchy little eyes that soften him, making him seem friendly and approachable.
He’s not as freckly as Mom and me, but with the Florida sun there’s always a constellation dotted across his strong nose.
When we were little, he had gigantic ears that he’s since grown into.
The twins have the same, and they’ll probably look just like him when they’re grown-up.
Everyone stands to welcome the groom-to-be and I wait my turn. Aiden looks at me for a moment before a smile breaks over his face and he reels me in for a tight hug. “Welcome home, Jules.”
I’m hit with an almost overwhelming rush of affection.
I like Aiden. Sure, he’s my brother and because of that, I love him by default.
We grew up together, endured our parents’ divorce and Mom’s remarriage, and suddenly had baby siblings as teenagers, feeling like the odd ones out in our own house.
We have the type of shared life experiences that means we just get each other, and even if I hated him I’d still understand him.
But I don’t hate him. Aiden is a genuinely nice guy and, even though we’re extremely different people, once we were adults and had to work to understand each other because we no longer ate dinner together every night and argued over how long one of us (me) took in our shared bathroom, we did the work.
We made a healthy, functional, loving adult relationship.
“It’s the man of the hour,” Grandpa crows. “How ya doing, kid? No cold feet, I hope?”
Aiden, playing along, reaches down to rub an ankle. “Nice and toasty, Grandpa.”
Mom starts interrogating Aiden on wedding-week updates, and he dutifully answers even her most insane questions (“Yes, the bar will have Diet Coke on tap. Not cans.”) before heading to the buffet.
I join him, filling him in on my trip and the first day back home as we load our plates with prime rib and mashed potatoes.
I’m lingering at the carving station, debating the merits of corned beef, when Aiden plops several bright-green half-sour pickles on my plate.
I’ve already gotten him a bowl full of black olives, which he used to put on his fingers and chase me around the club with when we were children.
We know each other the way only siblings can. So, as he tugs on my hair the way he has our entire lives and heads back to the table, why am I, left holding my overstuffed plate of food, feeling so damn guilty?