Beautiful Day(54)

“A mussel,” Helen said.

There was talk and fussing, another shot of something, an oxygen mask. They lifted Chance onto a gurney.

Helen said, “May I ride in the ambulance?”

“You’re his mother?” the paramedic asked.

“And I’m his father,” Jim said. Jim and Helen were now standing side by side, unified in their roles as Chance’s parents.

“No family in the ambulance. You can follow us to the hospital.”

“Oh, please,” Helen said. “He’s only a teenager. Please let me come in the ambulance.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” the paramedic said. They whisked Chance down the hall and out the front doors.

Helen gazed at Jim—in her heels, she was nearly as tall as he was—and burst into tears. Ann watched Jim fight what must have been a dozen conflicting emotions. Did he want to comfort her? Ann wondered.

He patted her shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” Jim said.

“We have to go to the hospital,” Helen said. “Can I get a ride with y’all?”

“Okay,” Jim said. He took Ann by the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Ann hesitated. An old, dark emotion bubbled up in her, as thick and viscous as tar. She didn’t want to go anywhere with Jim and Helen. She would be an outsider; she wasn’t Chance’s mother. She loved Chance and was sick with worry, but she didn’t belong at the hospital with Jim and Helen. However, she didn’t want Jim and Helen to go without her, either. She couldn’t decide what to do. It was an impossible situation.

Suddenly Stuart and Ryan and H.W. were upon her. “Mom?” Ryan said. He circled his arm around her shoulders.

Stuart said, “Is he going to be okay?”

Jim said, “Your mother and I are going to the hospital with Helen.”

“Actually, I’m going to stay here,” Ann said. To Jim she said, “You go. Please keep me posted.”

“What?” Jim said.

Helen shifted from foot to foot. “Can we please leave?”

“Go,” Ann said. She gave Jim’s arm a push.

“Would you stop acting like a child?” he whispered.

“I need to stay here,” Ann said. “It’s the rehearsal dinner. It’s Stuart’s wedding.” These words sounded reasonable to her ears, but was she acting like a child? She didn’t want to be a third wheel with Jim and Helen. She didn’t want to have to watch them together in their roles as Mom and Dad. She hated them both at that moment; she hated what they’d done to her. She couldn’t believe that she had somehow thought having Helen at the wedding would be a healing experience. It was turning out to be the opposite of healing.

“Ann,” Jim said. “Please come. I need you.”

Ann smiled her senatorial smile. “I’m going to represent here. You go, and let me know how he’s doing.” She took Ryan’s arm and headed back into the party.

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.