Property: A Collection

“How can you say that? I think it’s great! I think Paige is great! I think you make a great couple! One of those—unpredictable couples. Who might not be spit out as checking all the boxes on Match dot com, but who make a more interesting combination as a consequence of being unlikely.”

“Is that a tortured way of telling me that you think Paige and I are a bad fit?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, and not what I said, either. What’s with you? I swear, all summer you’ve been so out of sorts! Constantly taking things the wrong way. Being grumpy and distant. Ever since—”

“That’s right, ever since. Is this another plea to get me to call off the wedding?”

“When have I ever—”

“When have you not? It was obvious when I first told you we were getting married that you opposed the idea, and were hoping to talk me out of it. I don’t know what your problem is with Paige—”

“I don’t have a problem with Paige.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she leaned into his lap until he met her gaze. “I don’t. I like her. We have a few negligible differences of opinion. I don’t mind wearing a beat-up, used fur coat to keep warm. I could never give up veal chops. I’m of two minds about fracking because Virginia needs the money and I like the idea of energy independence, but that argument was stupid because I don’t actually care that much one way or the other. What’s important is she’s honest, and sincere, and genuine, and forthright. She’s nice-looking, she’s obviously loyal, and she must be pretty smart if she went to Middlebury, though I like the fact she doesn’t show off how much she knows. She’s got a way bigger social conscience than I do.”

Somehow the more Jillian piled on the compliments, the hollower they sounded, which drove her to pile on still more. “There’s something disarming about her—something vulnerable and unguarded, so I guess I understand your impulse to ‘protect’ her, but she doesn’t need protection from me. Why should she, when she’s been nothing but nice to me, to a point where I’ve almost been embarrassed—giving me that fringed shawl she found in Lynchburg, or the fig preserves from the Wine and Music Festival? Never mind if a present isn’t all that expensive, it’s the gesture. Thinking of me, even when I’m not there, and making a good guess as to what I might like. She’s never seemed wary or territorial, despite the fact that you and I are so close. Which is pretty amazing, actually.”

Throughout this panegyric touting the many fine qualities of his wife-to-be, Baba looked only the more miserable.

“Or we used to be close,” Jillian added, sitting back.

“See?” Baba pounced. “That’s what I mean. That kind of cutting aside, which says it all.”

“Oh, all what? I’m very, very glad you’ve found someone. I don’t know how to spell it out more plainly. Because what I appreciate most about Paige is that she loves you. It’s obvious every time she looks at you. In fact, there are times she can’t even bear to look at you, because it’s too much, it makes her feel too much. Why wouldn’t I want that for you?”

“That’s what I ask myself,” Baba said.

“I’m sorry if I didn’t burst into tears of joy, or whatever you hoped for when you told me. You seemed in a terrible frame of mind, like someone had died or something, and I was trying to understand why, not ‘talk you out of’ getting married.”

Yet the further she extolled his fiancée’s merits, the more Jillian was reminded of that feeling in the presence of a woman who detested her: that no matter what she said, she was digging her own grave.

ONCE BACK HOME, Jillian showered and put her feet up with a glass of wine in the glow of the chandelier. She considered whether the problem wasn’t talk itself, with its deserved reputation as cheap. She could blah-blah herself blue in the face, and Baba would never be sure that she wasn’t merely mouthing what he wanted to hear. That very afternoon, hadn’t Jillian sung the praises of the gesture, which spoke so much more forcefully than words? Perhaps in this case a gesture of larger proportions than a jar of fig preserves.

When the ideal course of action presented itself, she felt a twinge, like a stitch in the side—which is how she could tell it was right. A grand gesture should cost you. The agonizing back and forth on a second glass of Chablis was self-theater. She had already made up her mind, and by the third glass had moved from fraudulent indecision to the early stages of mourning. Baba would believe that she was thrilled he was marrying Paige Myer only when he saw how much she was willing to surrender to make the point.

PACKAGING UP THAT weekend was anxiety provoking, and required half a roll of six-foot Bubble Wrap and a full roll of packing tape. When tennis was rained out that Monday, Jillian was relieved; neither her game nor her friendship with Baba was going to settle until her alleged antagonism toward his impending nuptials was conclusively demonstrated to be all in his head. Though she didn’t want him to feel ashamed of himself. She wanted him to be touched. Cancel that; she wanted them both to be touched.

On Tuesday, the weather cleared. After the Chevaliers’ gardener, Lance, had finished for the day, he generously agreed to provide the services of his van. So extravagantly had Jillian wrapped her offering that, even with both of them manipulating the monster wad of pillowy plastic, it barely fit through the back doors. Lance drove, while she stayed in back to ensure their cargo didn’t rock, and he was equally sweet about helping her unload. “I didn’t go to this much trouble for me and my wife’s twenty-fifth!” he said, pulling on the bundle’s back end. “That sixty-inch Sony flat screen was a box of safety matches in comparison. Whoever these folks are, sweetie, you sure must like ’em.”

“Yeah, that’s the message, all right,” Jillian said. It wasn’t all that heavy with the two of them, but it was unwieldy, and got stuck again as she shoved it from behind. “Careful!” she cried. “Don’t put any pressure on it. Let’s just ease it back and forth.”

She hadn’t given Baba a heads-up about her visit, lest he be driven to “protect” his fiancée from her fearsome disapproval. Besides which, you didn’t give fair warning about a surprise; that was what made it a surprise. It was barely seven thirty p.m., still light, and Baba’s Escort was in the drive.

“Where you wanna carry this, missy?” Lance asked, once the bundle had cleared the van’s doors.

Dismally, Jillian appraised the A-frame’s entrance. If her delivery jammed between the roof and floor of the van, it wasn’t going to fit through the front door. “I’m afraid that to get it inside, I’ll have to unwind the outside layers. If you keep it steady upright, I’ll start slicing tape. Fortunately, I brought an X-Acto knife.”

This was poor dramatics. She had hoped to make the present look less like a lifetime supply of plastic wrap by belting it with the red ribbon tucked in her shorts pocket. But it was too late for the flourish, because their commotion had already drawn Baba to the door.

In the middle of his front lawn, she was in the midst of walking another layer off the wad, which with all the packaging stood eight feet tall. To keep from having to feed the accumulating Bubble Wrap between Lance and the bale, she’d sliced off a couple of sections, now fluffing in the breeze and trashing up the yard. As Baba emerged onto the porch, she had to chase after one of the rectangles to keep it from blowing away.

“What’s this about?” he asked, with an expression she couldn’t read. If he knew what the object was, he gave no indication, but he might readily have guessed had he applied himself.

She smiled shyly, arms full of plastic. “It’s your wedding present. I think I can get it through the door now. Want to help?”

The two men helped negotiate the slimmer but more fragile bundle, while Jillian, who was familiar with which bumps were the most delicate, directed its orientation. Once in the living room, she had them rest it on one side so that she could go at the bottom with the X-Acto knife, cutting away the packaging until she revealed the metal base. She’d been so busy with the logistics that it was only then that she looked up to meet Baba’s gaze, though he had to have surmised some time before what they were unwrapping. His smile was warm enough, but also colored by a wan quality.

“Are you sure you want to give this away?” he asked quietly.

“To just anybody, no. To you—to you and Paige—sure as shootin’.”

“But that thing took you six months.”

“Longer. But if it didn’t mean anything to me, it wouldn’t be a good present.”

They raised the new addition to Weston Babansky’s already eclectic decor to its upright position, and with the base unpacked it was stable. Jillian assured Lance that she could take it from here, thanked him effusively, and wished him good-night. Yet it was several more minutes before Paige finally emerged from downstairs, carrying a basket of clean laundry. Had Jillian heard visitors muffling overhead, while the scraping of an obscure object penetrated the ceiling of her utility room, curiosity would have gotten the better of her sooner. Some women had a vigilant relationship to a load in the dryer.

“Jillian!” Paige’s face quivered briefly, as if she were about to sneeze. “What on earth? Is this that—chandelier thing?”

“I was thinking”—Jillian had unwound the big sheet now, and was down to snipping the smaller squares cushioning each individual assemblage—“that during the party on the night of the wedding, it would be nice to have a centerpiece. Which also provides romantic, indirect lighting.”

“So this is a loaner?” Most people were a little graceless or flustered when on the receiving end of extreme generosity, and she wouldn’t have meant to sound so hopeful.

“No, no,” Jillian corrected. “That would make for a pretty feeble wedding present. It’s yours, and the welds are solid. As your grandchildren will discover, should you choose to go that direction.”

Insofar as Jillian had envisioned this presentation, she’d imagined a bit more hubbub, especially since Paige had never seen the “chandelier thing” before. But the betrothed couple was unnervingly muted, so that when Paige offered a cup of tea, Jillian said maybe a glass of wine instead, if a bottle was open. A steadier. The trouble was, the unveiling was too fiddly and protracted, what with unwinding the individual strips of Bubble Wrap first from the miniature toy box and then from the helicopter inside, unpacking the cotton balls from around the curlew skull, checking that the wisdom teeth were still securely glued in place, and peeling off every little scrap of residual tape from the structure. On reflection, the theater would have been flashier had she delivered the gift while Baba was home during the day. Then Paige could have walked in, and voilà! Jillian could have switched on the power. As it was, unpacking was so time-consuming that Paige drifted off to work on dinner, and Baba started reading “Talk of the Town” in last week’s New Yorker. With no outlet in reach, she had to ask for an extension cord, and lacking spares on hand Baba had to resort to a power strip whose disconnection would disable his stereo speakers.

At last, after Jillian had whisked around the floor filling three enormous black trash bags with Bubble Wrap, she tied her ribbon (alas, crumpled) around the trunk, and the moment was upon them. Baba called Paige away from her cutting board, and she returned to the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Baba had helped Jillian position the lamp at its most becoming angle—though some rearrangement of furniture might be required in order to show off her creation to its best advantage and make it look at home here. She hit the switch.

“Well,” Paige said. “That’s really something, isn’t it.”

Baba seemed to take in the chandelier anew. When he said, “It’s wonderful,” he hit a note of wistfulness as well as awe, and the assertion didn’t flush Jillian with quite the same heat as the first time he said that. But then, these infusions of perfect satisfaction don’t necessarily come around more than once.

“Thank you,” Paige said formally. “I’m sure no one else will give us a wedding present anything like yours. And it’s always going to remind us of you, isn’t it?”

As Jillian explained the derivation of a few elements, Paige’s expression remained more polite than fascinated, and she cut the museum tour short. No one sat down. She was mildly surprised not to be asked to stay for a bite, though she’d arrived without warning, and maybe they had only two stuffed peppers or something. While that shouldn’t have precluded a refresher of the wine, that glass must have been the end of a bottle. And sure, it wasn’t a long walk back to the cottage; the summer evening was soft. Still, even if she’d have declined, it might have been nice to have at least been offered a ride home.

“YOU HATE IT.” They had waited to speak until hearing Frisk crunch safely to the end of the gravel drive.

“I hate the fact of it,” said Paige. “Though I’ll grant it’s not quite as ugly as I’d pictured.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with it if you find it a torture.”

“For now, we’re not going to do anything,” she said, U-turning briskly to the kitchen to resume chopping onions. “One upside of the long-term prospects for that friendship—meaning, it has no long-term prospects—is that after the wedding, we can do whatever we want with it, and she’ll never know. In the meantime, on the off chance she comes back here again—unannounced, with the standard presumption—I guess we haven’t any choice but to let that hulking contraption take up a third of our living room to keep from hurting her feelings.”

It hit Weston then, the absurdity of protecting Frisk’s feelings for four more weeks, only to summarily crush them. The illogic recalled capital cases in which condemned men fell ill, and the state devoted all manner of expensive medical care to reviving convicts it planned to kill.

“I know you think she means well,” Paige recommenced at dinner. “But it’s so inappropriate! For a wedding present? For one thing, it’s physically intrusive. It’s huge. And I’d never seen it. She had no idea whether I’d like it.”

“Most people like it,” Weston mumbled.