Lee kept bringing the mint julep pitcher around, forever topping off our drinks, and throwing them back himself. The only one not drinking much was Jeff. “He's on call,” Linda whispered to me, “but Lee doesn't believe a drink or two impairs a real man's ability to do anything. Jeff's decided it's easier just to play along.”
Despite how much Lee was drinking, though, when the phone rang an hour into the party he was quick to answer it. Kath's eyes started blinking and blinking, trying to save that mascara, but the call wasn't even for Lee, it was the hospital, for Jeff.
Kath sat frowning at Jeff through the glass doors as if she was annoyed that he was on call, that he hadn't arranged to swap with someone. But he rejoined us a minute later, saying it had just been a nurse with a question about a new patient's medication.
Jim, sitting between Jeff and me, quietly asked Jeff if he knew anything about a medicine called Tylandril. “I read something about it recently,” he said. “Is it safe?”
Jeff said it was a synthetic estrogen, that as far as he knew, it was safe. “The issue is whether it actually does anything to prevent miscarriages,” he said.
Jim shot a startled glance down the long table at Ally, engrossed in conversation with Lee at the other end. She was pregnant again, and Jim hadn't known—that was all over his face. He must have found the medicine and been reluctant to ask her directly what it was. I wondered if she kept the news of her pregnancy from him out of fear—the more she miscarried, the more she must have worried that Jim would leave her rather than remain childless himself—or if she kept it from him out of love. I wondered if she could bear to hear the heartbreak in his voice again as he sang his Indian lullabies to her empty womb.
“All the studies show that estrogen doesn't prevent miscarriages,” Jeff said.
“I see,” Jim said, and the way he looked at Ally now, it was hard to imagine she could think he would ever leave her.
Linda would learn more about it from Jeff that night: that studies had consistently shown since the 1950s that synthetic estrogen didn't help women who chronically miscarried; that every major obstetrics textbook but one was very clear that this “wonder drug” did nothing at all. He thought someone should tell Ally that—that she was wasting her money. But it seemed to Linda that Ally got so much comfort from believing the drug might help, and what harm could it do?
It was getting on toward post time, after two o'clock, and Lee and Kath were tipping rapidly toward sloshed, several of the rest of us not far behind, when the phone rang again and Lee popped up to answer it. I couldn't help overhearing him—okay, probably I could have, but I listened anyway. He didn't say much, just “sure” a few times (a word that had two syllables in his Southern accent), and “I will.” When he hung up, he said he was very sorry but he was on call and we'd have to excuse him, that was the hospital and he had to go in.
“Lee!” Kath protested, but Lee was already saying, “I know Kath will take good care of y'all,” already out the door and gone.
“Is he okay to doctor anyone?” I heard Jim whisper to Jeff.
Jeff just frowned.
On the television, they were announcing the horses for the Derby race, and we turned our attention to picking horses and making our bets. I said I was afraid I didn't have quite a thousand to put down, tendering my five dollars, and Ally admitted that was all she brought, too. Everyone agreed five dollars was the perfect amount to bet among friends. Winner take all.
Linda declared that she was betting on Fathom, the horse Diane Crump was riding. Jeff and Kath lightheartedly squabbled over Dr. Behrman—Jeff maintaining the horse was his by dint of his profession, Kath by relationship. “I'm friendly with one of the Lin-Drake Farm girls,” she said. “Her family owns the horse.” And Jeff suddenly preferred Terlago and Willie Shoemaker, while the rest of us picked solely on the curb appeal of the horses' names: Corn Off the Cob, Silent Screen, Action Getter, Holy Land, Robin's Bug.
The University of Louisville Marching Band struck up “My Old Kentucky Home,” and Kath teared up as she sang along with the crowd, “Weep no more, my lady, Oh! Weep no more today! We will sing one song for my old Kentucky home. For my old Kentucky home, far away.”
The horses loaded, finally, and the race began, and there was a flurry of excitement when Silent Screen and Terlago and Robin's Bug all came out fast. Then Brett's pick, Silent Screen, moved into the lead about three quarters of the way through the race, and Brett actually hopped up and down with excitement. Corn Off the Cob, my horse, made a move, and I was jumping with her. Jim's horse, Robin's Bug, was in it, too, and for a moment we were having a ball. Then several horses that had not been in contention came up from nowhere, and Dust Commander was suddenly well in the lead.