Beautiful Day(64)

“I wasn’t thinking of Beth,” Doug whispered.

“What were you thinking of, then?” Pauline asked.

He didn’t answer. Pauline’s insistence that he was thinking of Beth led him to think of Beth. He thought about their wedding, which had been held in New York City. The ceremony at St. James’ on Seventy-first Street, the reception at the Quilted Giraffe, wedding night at the Pierre Hotel, where they had arrived, giddy and exhausted, at three in the morning, after a late-night excursion to Chinatown because Beth had been so busy talking and having her picture taken at the reception that she hadn’t eaten a thing, and she found herself with an insane craving for soup dumplings.

Doug remembered sitting across the tiny, soy-sticky table holding Beth’s hand as she slurped her soup dumplings. She was still in her white dress. The old Chinese women fussed over her; they petted her hair, they admired her ring. Doug remembered wanting to shoo them away like flies.

On the way back to the Pierre, Doug had asked Beth how many children she thought they should have.

“Four,” she said. “Two boys and two girls.”

That had seemed like a tall order to Doug, but all he’d wanted at that moment, and every moment after, was to make Beth happy.

“You got it,” he’d said.

In the next instant, Doug had watched all the traffic lights on Park Avenue, as far as he could see, turn green at once. It had been a moment of electrifying synchronicity.

The last page of the Notebook, he wondered. What did it say?





THE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 40


Dinner Menu


Beef, but not tenderloin. Something more flavorful. Ribeye? New York Strip?

Fish, not chicken. Swordfish, maybe, or striped bass, but only if you can get it locally from Bill Sandole at East Coast Seafood.

Baked potatoes with toppings—good cheddar, sour cream, crispy bacon, snipped chives. When I am gone, one of the things I will miss the most is a loaded baked potato.

Grilled or pan-roasted vegetables, not boiled.

Warm snowflake rolls.

A really good salad, sourced from Pumpkin Pond Farm.

Make it different from what people expect. Make it better.





ANN


She looked good,” Ann said. “Don’t you think she looked good?”

“Who?” Jim said. He was standing in front of the mirror, tugging at his necktie.

“Helen,” Ann said. “She looked beautiful, better than ever.” Ann hated saying the words, but they were true, goddamn it. They were true. Ann decided she would be the one to say them so the thought was out in the open and not festering in Jim’s brain. Ann was scared. She was terrified that Helen would steal Jim away again.

Jim approached Ann with open arms and pressed her against his chest. He ran his hands up and down her back in that way she loved. He smelled like melted butter.

“How was it at the hospital?” Ann asked.

“What do you mean?” Jim said.

Ann pulled away. “Did you sit with her in the waiting room?”

“I sat in the waiting room and she sat in the waiting room,” Jim said. “Was I with her? No, not really.”

“Did you sit next to her? ’ Ann asked.

Jim sighed. “Yes,” he said. “More accurately, she sat next to me. I couldn’t very well get up and move. That would have been awfully rude.”

Ann could not clear the color yellow from her field of vision. “What did you two talk about?”

“We barely spoke at all,” Jim said. “A little bit about Chance. We both marveled that his allergy to shellfish had escaped our notice for nineteen years.”

Ann did not love the phrases “we both marveled” or “escaped our notice.”

“I felt like Helen was blaming me because I was with Chance when he ate the mussel,” Ann said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jim said. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Ann sat on the edge of the bed and kicked her flats off into the room. She felt small and insignificant and ugly. Helen Oppenheimer had been making her feel that way for twenty years, since the wine-tasting group, since the hot air balloon ride. Ann was incensed by the image of Jim and Helen side by side in the hospital waiting room. It was too reminiscent of Jim in the hospital on that Easter Sunday, crowing to Ann over the phone about how large and healthy his newborn son was.

Ann said, “Did you talk about anything else?”

Jim said, “Not really. I read Sports Illustrated. Helen was texting.”

“Who was she texting, I wonder?” Ann said. “The younger lover?”

“No,” Jim said. “They broke up.”

“They broke up?” Ann said. “How do you know this?”