ANN
She had always drifted in church. No matter how hard she tried to pay attention, her mind wandered. The same had been true for long sessions of the state senate. Some windbag would have the microphone, loving the sound of his own voice, and Ann would doodle or pass irreverent notes to Billy Benedict from Winston-Salem. She would think, All the real legislating gets done in bars and good steak houses. Nobody’s mind gets changed in here.
Ann had thought it would be different with Stuart’s wedding. She had thought she would hang on every word so that she could re-create it for herself and others later. This was her son getting married; it was one of those things she was meant to reflect upon on her deathbed. But as soon as Jenna walked down the aisle and kissed her father and stood by Stuart, Ann started to float away. She thought, The best part of a wedding was seeing the bride walk down the aisle. Everything else was anticlimactic. Why was that? Did anyone listen to the readings or the prayers? Did anyone listen to the minister’s sermon or the vows? Did anyone care if the couple had children or miscarried, if they made their mortgage or were foreclosed on, if they stayed together or split up? People, Ann thought, were self-absorbed. They cared about themselves, and sometimes about one other person. And, of course, every mother cared about her child, that child being an extension of herself. Ann had long suspected that all human behavior boiled down to biology, and that the whole catastrophe with her and Jim and Helen could be chalked up to Helen wanting a baby and Jim following an atavistic desire to propagate the species.
“Dearly beloved,” the minister said.
Ann studied the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses. Such an interesting choice, that green.
Stuart was standing nice and tall, square shouldered, dignified, respectable. As the firstborn, Stuart had accepted the burden of perfection. He had never given Ann or Jim one moment of trouble; he had always been the exceptional child that every parent dreamed of.
The readings began. The love poem first, recited by the sister-in-law. It was the first and only poem Ann had ever really appreciated. She had taken a class on Frost in college and had found it boring���all snowy woods and stone fences. Helen was more of a poetry person. She had cultivated her flaky-literary dramatic persona to great effect back in Durham. Ann recalled a moment during the cabernet dinner at the Fairlee house when Helen had raised her enormous balloon glass of wine the color of blood and recited:
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
The table had gone silent. Ann, and she suspected everyone else, realized that Helen was reciting something, but no one spoke up in recognition of exactly what. Helen had taken a long swill of her wine and then said gleefully, “Anne Sexton!”
Jim, Ann remembered, had chuckled and raised his glass to Helen, even though Ann knew damn well that Jim Graham had no clue if Anne Sexton was a poet or a prostitute.
Now, Jim’s eyes glazed over as he listened to the love poem. His head bobbled. Ann delivered a charley horse into his thigh with two knuckles. She realized he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep in the rental car, but she couldn’t let him fall asleep during his son’s wedding.
Suddenly there was a noise—a whimper or a cry—and Ann’s head whipped around in time to see Pauline Carmichael scurry from the church in tears.
Jim leaned over, fully alert now. “What happened?” he whispered. “What’d I miss?”
Ann wasn’t sure, although she knew Pauline was unhappy, or uneasy, in her marriage. But to run from the church in the middle of the ceremony? Ann stared over at Doug Carmichael, wondering if he would rise and follow his wife—but he remained in the pew. Ann craned her neck in time to see Pauline burst through the back double doors, and then Ann caught sight of Helen, four pews behind her. Helen was staring dreamily at the altar; she seemed not to have noticed the dramatic disruption. Typical. Really, what did Helen Oppenheimer care about another human being’s pain or disillusionment? She cared not at all. Ann considered going after Pauline herself, although that might seem strange and inappropriate. Someone else should go. At that moment, Pauline’s daughter stepped out of the green ranks and hurried down the aisle.
The church broke into a rash of coughs and whispers—however, on the altar, the action continued. Jenna’s brother did the next reading. It was the Beatles, and who didn’t love the Beatles—but Ann drifted away again.
She thought, Pauline. What was the problem? Was it anything worse than what Ann herself had endured? Was Doug Carmichael having an affair? Ann recalled Pauline’s words from the day before, Do you ever feel like maybe your marriage isn’t exactly what you thought it was? Ann hated Helen, Helen was here at the wedding, ostensibly to see Chance, but really Helen had come to torment Ann with her undeniably magnetic presence. Or she had come to sink her teeth into her old Roanoke friend Skip Lafferty. Or she had come to call Ann’s bluff, and she was winning, damnit. Her presence was like a hot pink poker up Ann’s ass.