Beautiful Day (22 page)

Ryan put his hand on her lower back and whispered in her ear, “Well done, Mother.
As always.”

Ann fixed herself a plate of food and went to sit with the Lewises, the Cohens, and
the Shelbys. On the way, she stopped at each table—most of them filled with people
she didn’t know—and reassured everyone that Chance would be fine, he was on his way
to the hospital to get checked out. As a politician, Ann had spent her career managing
crises; the soothing smiles and words and gestures came naturally to her. She wouldn’t
let herself think about Helen and Jim side by side in the front seat of the rental
car, or about how Helen’s intoxicating perfume would linger there for Ann and Jim
to smell every time they opened the door and climbed in.

Violet, you’re turning violet.
All the nights that Ann had read
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
to her boys, Jim had been living
in Brightleaf Square making love to the woman he was now driving to the hospital.

Ann closed her eyes against the vision, but all she saw was yellow.

Ann sat next to Olivia, who squeezed the heck out of Ann’s forearm but said nothing
except “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Of course he’ll be fine,” Ann said. She beamed vacantly at her friends, all of whom
were wearing plastic bibs and attacking their lobsters. The conversation turned to
allergic reactions that people had witnessed or merely heard of secondhand—a man going
comatose over his bowl of New England clam chowder, a fifteen-year-old girl dying
because she kissed her boyfriend, who had eaten peanut butter for lunch. Meanwhile,
in the background, the orchestra played “Mack the Knife” and “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Couples danced. Stuart and Jenna got up to dance, and there was a smattering of applause.
Those two made such a sweet, earnest, clean-cut, wholesome, good-looking couple. Thank
God Stuart had broken up with She Who Shall Not Be Named. When Ann used to gaze upon
Stuart and Crissy Pine, she had had visions of expensive vacations and overindulged
children; she imagined Stuart trapped in a soulless McMansion with a perpetually unhappy
wife. Stuart and Jenna’s union would be meaningful and strong; they would live with
a social conscience, serve on nonprofit boards, and be role models, envied by their
friends and neighbors.

Ann picked at a boiled red-skinned potato. Yes, it all looked good from here, but
who knew what would happen.

The Cohens got up to dance, and Ann buttered a roll that she had no intention of eating.
She checked her cell phone: nothing. Jim and Helen would be at the hospital by now.
They would be
sitting in the waiting room together, awaiting news. People who saw them would think
they were a couple.

Tap on the shoulder. Jethro.

“Dance with me,” he said.

“I don’t feel up to it,” Ann said.

“You have to,” Jethro said. “You need to show these northerners you didn’t bring me
along as chattel.”

Ann made a face. “Please spare me the self-deprecating black humor.” But Ann then
admitted she was powerless to resist Jethro under any circumstances. “Only you,” she
said.

She accepted his hand and followed him to the dance floor, where he swung her expertly
around. Ann and Jim had taken dance lessons right after getting married the second
time; it was one of the things they’d made an effort to do together, along with couples
Bible study, and antiquing in Asheville, and trout fishing on the Eno River in a flat-bottomed
rowboat Jim had bought. They had been happy the second time. Happy until thirty minutes
ago. Now Ann could feel herself cracking inside, a ravine opening up.

The song ended. She and Jethro clapped. She kissed his cheek. Ryan had told Ann and
Jim that he was gay during Thanksgiving break of his freshman year in college. Ann
would say she had handled it well. It wasn’t exactly her wish for him, only because
she feared his life would be difficult—and of course there was the issue of grandchildren.
Jim had taken the news in stride. He had said, “I’m in no position to judge you, son.
But for crying out loud, be careful.” Ann hadn’t been able to predict then how she
would adore her son’s future boyfriend. She felt even closer to Jethro than she did
to Jenna.

She looked at him frankly. “I shouldn’t have invited Helen to this fucking wedding.”

He grinned, and Ann spied his two overlapping front teeth, and she imagined him as
an adolescent in Cabrini-Green, saving his money to buy copies of
Esquire
and
GQ
. “I love you, Annie,” he said.

She hugged him. “I love you, too,” she said. “Never leave us.”

That was a wonderful moment, perhaps Ann’s favorite moment of the wedding weekend
so far. She wondered what everyone else made of their clan—Ryan with his black boyfriend,
Jim with the wife, the mistress-ex-wife, and the love child. Ann stopped at the Carmichael
table, where Doug was sitting with Pauline and Pauline’s daughter, who was a carbon
copy of Pauline, but thirty years younger. The three of them looked perfectly miserable.

Ann remembered Pauline’s words and her hot cashew breath.
Do you ever feel like maybe your marriage isn’t exactly what you thought it was?

“Great party!” Ann said.

Doug looked at his watch. The band launched into a Neil Diamond song, and some of
the younger people got up to dance.

Jethro escorted Ann back to her table, where she checked her phone. Nothing.

Olivia said, “Eat something, please, Ann.”

“I can’t,” Ann said.

Olivia gave her a knowing look, a look Ann might last have seen twenty years earlier
when Jim first left and Ann dropped to ninety-seven pounds.

“I’m going for a little walk,” Ann said.

“Want company?” Olivia asked.

Ann shook her head. She put on her wrap and headed out the back doors across the patio
and down the brick walk that cut between swaths of green lawn.

Ann imagined the scene at the hospital. Helen and Jim would
be standing hip to hip at the admitting desk, answering questions about Chance.

Date of birth?

April 3, 1994.

Ann remembered the day well. It had been Easter Sunday, and Ann had dutifully gone
through all the motions. She had insisted the three boys wear navy blazers, and she’d
ironed their khaki pants. They had attended Immaculate Conception; she had smiled
and greeted everyone, despite what she knew people were saying about her.

Ann Graham, state senator, her husband ran off with one of the women from their wine-tasting
group, he got the woman pregnant… Then there’s Donald Morganblue, who’s sure to take
her senate seat, he’s been campaigning like crazy…

Ann had cooked all her special Easter dishes: a honey-baked ham and corn pudding and
herbed popovers. The boys devoured the meal, but Ann had simply stared at her food.
Jim had especially loved her popovers, and she wondered if he was missing them. Missing
her.

The phone call had come at seven o’clock that evening, as Ann was doing the dishes
and wrapping up the leftovers and listening to the boys roughhouse in the den. They
were high on sugar after so many chocolate bunnies.

“Hello?” Ann had said.

“Ann?” It was Jim calling. The sound of his voice still caused her heart to shimmy
with anticipation. She continued to wait for the phone call where he said he was coming
back to her.

“Hi,” she said. “Happy Easter.” She was always civil on the phone. Despite all her
anger and pain, she couldn’t bring herself to hate the man. She was doomed to love
him.

“Easter?” Jim said.

“Yes, Jim,” Ann said. “It’s Easter.” Could he really not know this? Helen was a philistine,
that had been proved, but had she brainwashed Jim as well?

He said, “I’m calling to tell the boys that they have a new brother. Chance Oppenheimer
Graham, eight pounds, eight ounces, twenty-three inches long. Twenty-three inches,
can you believe that?”

Ann had started to sob, and then she hung up the phone. She couldn’t believe Jim had
just delivered the news so blithely. Did he not remember when it was
she
in the delivery room—the first time when Stuart’s heartbeat had dropped dramatically
after the doctors gave Ann a shot of Pitocin. The second time when she had popped
out not one baby boy but two. Nine pounds, two ounces; six pounds, five ounces; five
pounds, fourteen ounces. Stuart had been twenty inches long, the twins each nineteen.

Jim hadn’t realized it was Easter because Helen was in labor and had then delivered
a baby. Jim had another son. A new family.

Chance,
Ann thought. It was a bizarre name, not to mention unsuitable. That baby hadn’t been
born by chance. That baby had been in Helen’s plans for a long time.

Ann heard the strains of the band playing “Witchcraft,” and she decided to head back
in, find the boys, and enjoy the party. This was Stuart’s rehearsal dinner; she wouldn’t
spend it moping.

She danced like a woman who didn’t have a care—first with Ryan, then H.W., then Devon
Shelby, and then, finally, Stuart. She went to the ladies’ room to freshen up and
emerged just in time to see Jim, Helen, and Chance coming around the corner. The three
of them looked like they had just shared a joke; Helen was laughing. Ann had an urge
to fill her pockets with rocks and
drown herself in the harbor—but Jim saw her. “Ann! Ann, we’re back!”

Ann let them approach her. She looked only at Chance. “You okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” he said shyly. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ann said. “You didn’t know.”

“But we know now,” Jim said. “No shellfish for him, ever again.”

“I could have died,” Chance said.

“But you didn’t die,” Ann said. “Though I’m sure it was terrifying.”

“Terrrrrrrrrifying!” Helen sang out. “And now Chance is hungry. He’s
starving!
Can y’all get him a hamburger?”

Ann thought,
Do I look like a short-order cook?
Because Chance was going to be okay, Ann could now let her ungenerous thoughts float
to the surface: she hated Helen, she wanted to stab Helen in the heart with her stiletto
heel, the day of Chance’s birth had been one of the worst days of Ann’s life. She
resented that she had been forced to witness Jim and Helen fussing over
their
son when this weekend was supposed to be about Jim and Ann and
their
son. Ann was a strong woman, but Jim Graham was her kryptonite. When he’d come back
to her, crawling on his hands and knees, begging for her forgiveness, she should have
kicked him in the teeth. But she had only felt love and gratitude. She was a saint,
not a queen. Helen was a queen: imperious, demanding, entitled. Asking Ann to rustle
up a hamburger. Why don’t
you
find him a hamburger? Ann thought.
He’s your son!
Ann should never, ever, ever have invited Helen to the wedding. What had she been
thinking? She had been thinking that she wanted that thank-you, goddamn it. And while
she was at it, a big fat apology would be nice.

Ann said, “A hamburger? Why, yes, of course.” She cast her
eyes about the room for a server, someone to ask. Where was Ford from Colgate when
you needed him? Ann saw Olivia staring at her, eyes about to pop out of her head and
land in her ramekin of melted butter; she saw Pauline Carmichael throw back a healthy
slug of chardonnay. She saw Jethro blow her a kiss. Ann decided she would find Chance
a hamburger. She would make that happen.

N
o Edge.

The Nantucket Yacht Club was one of the last places on earth with a pay phone, and
Margot was tempted to use it. Call Edge���s cell phone, find out exactly what was
going on.

She was distracted from thoughts of Edge, however, when Stuart’s brother Chance went
into full-blown anaphylactic shock. Margot was pretty far from the center of the action,
but she quickly ascertained that Chance had eaten a mussel and his throat had started
to close. Someone on the yacht club staff produced an EpiPen, the paramedics showed
up, Chance was taken to Cottage Hospital, and Stuart’s father and the woman in the
yellow dress—who, it turned out, was
Chance’s mother
—followed in their car.

Chance’s mother was here. That was pretty interesting.

A hush followed, as tended to happen after unforeseen emergencies, but once it was
determined that Chance would be all right, people returned to what they had been doing
before. Ordering cocktails! Hitting the buffet line! Margot procured herself a glass
of white wine and a plate of food. She knew she should mingle; she should catch up
with her mother’s cousins, or with Jenna’s fellow teachers from Little Minds—but she
just didn’t feel up to it tonight. She wanted to eat with someone easy and familiar.

There was a seat next to Ryan and the black boyfriend. That would be good conversation,
but Margot would be sitting with Ryan the following night. There were empty seats
on either side of Pauline and Rhonda—but no, never.