MATRON OF HONOR

In Bingham's last two, women were dog-tired and dog-tied within the fiefdoms of stultifying men (a lethally jovial politico in Small Victories; a nice rejecting husband and a not-so-nice rejecting lover in Upstate, p. 387). The women's revenges were outsize, if a shade comic. Here, Bingham takes on the mores of a patriarchal old southern family and the varying responses of its women—and men—as two sisters are netted in marriage. ``Apple,'' nÇe Adeline Mason, is about to marry Billy Long, horseman and employee of Apple's father Hammond. A cool climber with occasional nightmares, with a mother who'd sacrificed to give him country club advantages, Billy sizes up Apple: as one with ``bloodlines...you see the class...the way they look you straight in the eye, hold out their hands, invite you in.'' Apple's sister Cory comes home unexpectedly the day before the wedding, and tantrumming Apple immediately installs her as Matron of Honor, demoting Billy's sister. Mother Adeline Mason is shaken: she's fragile but wire-tough, one who ``dressed to do the flowers the way most women dress for a party.'' In a flashback to Cory's New York City, where she's married to ever-so-nice, frenziedly upwardly mobile Buddy, Cory begins a bad-kin journey—yakking to a stranger in Central Park and doing naughty stuff at a (hilariously) decrepit social club Buddy is frantic to join. And back home, the black housekeeper, Frankie (one of two outside narrators), treated with massive sugared callousness, explains why the Masons are not her ``family.'' The wedding draws closer, rawer emotions surface, and Billy smells vulnerability in the ``rich folks.'' The calamitous wedding, thunderous with organ music, is accomplished as Cory has the last antic word. Bingham's satire is softer, neater here, and you care for her people—with all their several moral glitches.