The Last Great American Dynasty - A Folklore Novella

Champagne Problems

Chapter Six

Champagne Problems

There was no clock in Marjorie's guest room, but she had a feeling it was already the afternoon. She threw on some clothes and went downstairs. Rebekah was nowhere to be seen. The kitchen was bigger than any kitchen Marjorie had ever seen or even imagined before. In fact, there were actually two kitchens in the house, but Rebekah mostly would use the smaller one. The pantry and refrigerator were already stocked to the brim, completely full of a dizzying assortment of choices, when Rebekah came in with a mass of even more groceries and booze. She was stocking up for the Fourth of July weekend.

When Rebekah found out it was Marjorie's twenty-first birthday that weekend too, she screamed with excitement.

"We must celebrate. We will fill the pool with champagne! It will be absolutely fabulous. We need something to celebrate. It's supposed to be fun! Turning twenty-one! What an amazing age! I myself still remember what it felt like to be twenty-one! The world is yours Marjorie."

Marjorie had no time to say a party wasn't necessary. Rebekah was beginning to show even more of her authentic self to Marjorie lately. She loved to have a good time, and she was always up for a drink or a smoke to accompany lively conversation. Her nights were spent drinking and her mornings recovering. And she wasn't kidding when she told Marjorie she would fill the pool with champagne. She opened more than one bottle and the two took turns popping the cork and spraying it all over the pool deck and into their mouths. Some ballerinas joined them for a bit, it was the most fun the house had seen yet that summer. The party went late into the evening and Marjorie and Rebekah were the last ones up in the early hours of the morning. The two sat at the edge of the pool.

"This man of yours, John, do you think you will marry him?" Rebekah asked Marjorie.

"Yes." Marjorie didn't even hesitate. "I feel like he is the one."

Marjorie missed John so much, but the party had been really nice to not feel guilty about having a celebration. She wondered where John was now and what time it was in Europe. She felt the familiar sense of dread and anxiety creep back up into her chest.

Rebekah sensed she had upset Marjorie by asking about John. She jumped in the pool and began to tell Marjorie a story she had told to others before. It was the story of how William had proposed twice.

Rebekah floated in the clear water in the night as she began to share, with her toes up above as she was treading the water with her hands, within arm's reach of the champagne bottle sitting on the edge of the pool.

"The first time William proposed did not go very well!" She was laughing hysterically, Marjorie wasn't sure if this story was a comedy or a tragedy.

It was twenty years earlier and William had brought Rebekah to see his sister Isla's family on New Year's Eve. Rebekah felt nervous every time she visited the older Harkness sibling's home. Isla and her husband's house in New York didn't hesitate to show their wealth. Rebekah's family on the other hand was far from the high class in front of her, and the match made the family and William's sister feel uneasy. They didn't understand what William saw in Rebekah. She came across as crass, her conversation sporadic, and she seemed a bit self-absorbed. There was a twenty-year age difference between William and Rebekah, and William's family didn't like that Rebekah had been married once before and already had children. Rebekah was an artist and musician to her core. She appreciated art in all its forms. William's family was not familiar with the world Rebekah loved so dearly, which created a great divide between them. None of them would ever dare put these thoughts into words, to each other at least.

The dinner party had already been quite eventful - and it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. William's sister Isla had way too much champagne and was beginning to slur her words. Rebekah had joined her too, but she was more experienced in holding her liquor. Isla and her husband spoke and brought up topics of things you simply weren't supposed to bring up at the dinner table, steamrolling the dinner conversation with politics and war, money and family gossip. Rebekah looked around at the table and felt like an outsider. She loved William but didn't feel as though she fit in at all with the strangers he called family.

William had a secret that night. His mother's ring was in his pocket. He wanted to ask Rebekah to marry him, but was waiting for a good time to stand up and begin his toast. The perfect time never felt like it arrived, William had begun to panic with disappointment. He decided to just go for it halfway through dessert. He abruptly got on one knee and told Rebekah he had something to ask her.

"What the hell are you doing with Mom's ring?!" Isla spouted and interrupted him before his knee even hit the floor. To them, it wasn't just a ring. William and Isla's mother's diamond ring was one of the most valuable diamonds in America at the time.

"She gave it to me." William had underestimated the jealousy that Isla had harbored about their mother's diamond ring, 125 carats to be exact.

Rebekah sat at the table in shock. She hadn't talked about marriage with William, other than her speaking of the painful regret she had always felt the first time she walked down the aisle with her first husband.

The moment had been ruined by the presentation of William's mother's ring. Isla sprang up from the table, and in her drunken carelessness spilled the bottle of champagne and a nearby glass, an explosion of shards of broken glass scattering across the table and all over the tile floor.

Isla and William were now screaming at each other in the kitchen. Rebekah sat listening while Isla's husband and adult children and their spouses sat in awkward silence at the table with her, slowly eating their dessert, and sipping on what was left of the spilled champagne bottle. Rebekah didn't even get the chance to tell William her answer was no...

Rebekah decided she had enough and left hastily, catching the last night train back to her apartment. She left so quickly that she forgot her beloved red scarf. Her brisk walk to the train station was bitterly cold and she couldn't believe what had just taken place. She couldn't bear to stay a minute longer and left William to sort out all his family drama. Unfinished desserts sat forgotten on the fancy China dishes. The shards of broken champagne glass that had scattered across the dining room table and floor glimmered under the light of the chandelier above. William's mother's heavy diamond ring weighed even heavier in his pocket...

Marjorie and Rebekah realized they had finished their champagne, so Rebekah refilled their glasses and lifted them to propose a toast.

"Here's to John only having to propose to you the first time! "