Read Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) for Free Online

besides, she had wanted to be there
with
them,
for
them—and since then none of her jobs had the altruistic aspirations as those of her youth. Thanks to Ennis’s many connections, she’d dabbled in the arts: she had been the office manager for an experimental theater company, worked on the set of an indie film and as an assistant at a now-defunct literary magazine.
    Her present job had sounded interesting, even exciting, when she first signed on. She had been hired by one Virginia Valentine, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. Ginny, who was now married to a brilliant—and quite wealthy—neurosurgeon, was writing her memoirs, spurred on by the fat six-figure advance she’d received from a very important New York publishing house; it was Gretchen’s task to assist her in this undertaking. Ginny was vastly entertaining, and over many wine-fueled dinners, she regaled Gretchen with tales from her storied past. The two of them sat in her dining room, table swathed in raucous red linen, as the maid brought in course after course of rich, delicious food; no wonder Gretchen had been packing on the pounds. It was especially annoying since Ginny, slender as a stick of chewing gum, seemed to be able to down the duck and the veal, the cheeses and the desserts with no apparent effect at all.
    Gretchen would both record her subject and take notes as well; later she attempted to turn all this material into a coherent narrative. But Ginny would not leave one single thing to Gretchen’s discretion and instead would excise, alter, or curtail Gretchen’s every vaguely felicitous turn of phrase, every original thought or word. The project, which had been in the works for more than two years, had yielded exactly eighteen pages thus far, pages so arid, clichéd, and devoid of interest that Gretchen was certain the big important publisher would soon find out, and when he did, he would cancel the contract. Immediately.
    Since Gretchen was the only employee and worked out of not an office but the maid’s room of Ginny’s expansive Riverside Drive apartment, telling her grandmother that she had been promoted was something of a lie, albeit a white one. Still, as long as she was lying, she might as well use the lie again—get her money’s worth, so to speak.
    Lenore brightened. “Your mother didn’t tell me!”
    “She’s been preoccupied,” Gretchen said. “With the wedding.” As if that needed clarification.
    “That’s another thing,” Lenore said, quickly seizing on this new topic.
    “Angelica is getting married; Teddy has someone, and so does Caleb. But you—you’re alone.”
    “I have Justine and Portia,” Gretchen said, stung. “I wouldn’t exactly call that alone.”
    “But you’re not living with your husband. And you don’t have a boyfriend.” She paused. “Do you?”
    “No, but there’s still time,” Gretchen quipped. She reached for a packet of sugar; what if she tore it open and poured the white crystals right down her throat? Or maybe she could tackle the waiter the next time he sped by?
    “Not as much as you think,” Lenore said; her usual bravado seemed to crumble slightly around its edges. “You’d be surprised how fast it goes.”
    “I know,” Gretchen said, thinking of Justine and Portia’s astonishingly rapid transformations from babies to girls and now to perplexingly aloof and self-contained young women. Sometimes she pined for their infant days, difficult though they had been. “I really do know.”
    “Then
do
something,” Lenore implored. “Do something, and don’t let it all pass you by.”
    “Let what pass me by?” Gretchen said, moved despite herself by her grandmother’s urgency.
    “Everything, darling! Everything!”
    Gretchen looked into Lenore’s slightly cloudy blue eyes; were those tears, or were her eyes simply watering? Before Gretchen could decide, the harried waiter appeared with breakfast.
    “Finally!” Lenore said, releasing her knife and