A Fortunate Age

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On a gray October day in 1998, Lillian Roth found herself walking down the stone-floored aisle of Temple Emanu-El, clad in a gown of dark ivory satin and flanked by her thin, smiling parents, who had flown into New York from Los Angeles a mere seven days earlier, still in mild shock that their obstreperous daughter was submitting to the ancient rite of marriage. The synagogue’s vaulted ceiling spinning above her, she took small, self-conscious steps toward the bima, where a serious-faced young man named William Hayes—saddled with the improbable nickname of Tuck—waited for her in an unfamiliar black suit, purchased two days earlier by his mother, who’d deemed the gray suit selected by Lil and Tuck inappropriate for an evening affair.

Four years and four months prior, Lillian had graduated from Oberlin College with honors in English (just plain honors, she often reminded herself in the years that followed, not highest honors, like her friend Sadie Peregrine, or even high honors, like their departmental nemesis, Caitlin Green). At her commencement brunch, dressed in another frock of dark ivory, she’d made a scene, feverishly arguing with her father about the purpose of marriage in the modern age. “It’s an outmoded institution,” she’d insisted, her dark brows moving closer together. The brunch, sponsored by the college, was held in a dank tent on Wilder Bowl, and the Moët was flowing perhaps a bit too freely. Lil had already spilled several sips down her dress. “Read any modern thinker—” Struggling to come up with a specific name, she looked to her friends, her “crowd,” as her father annoyingly called them—Sadie, Beth Bernstein, Emily Kaplan, Tal Morgenthal, and Dave Kohane—who sat around and opposite her, surrounded by their own parents, faces flushed proud.

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