Beautiful Day (25 page)

I
n the master bedroom, in the king bed, Pauline reached for him. Her hands, with nails
newly painted the color of brewing storm clouds, wrapped around his biceps. She pulled
herself in
close and breathed in his ear. Then the flat of her palm ran down his bare chest,
over the softer flesh at his belly, and across the front of his boxers. Nothing.

This wasn’t unusual. Doug was getting older, and he didn’t always snap to attention
the way he used to. He had considered seeing Dr. Fraker and getting a prescription,
but that seemed like an admission of defeat. The only way he’d been able to sustain
an erection with Pauline recently was to imagine her with Russell Stern from the Wee
Burn Country Club. This was twisted, Doug knew—fantasizing about his wife with another
man. And it couldn’t be any other man, either; it couldn’t be Arthur Tonelli or George
Clooney. It had to be Russell Stern. Doug worried that he was somehow attracted to
Russell Stern. Perhaps this was an indication of a latent homosexual urge? But further
pondering brought Doug to the conclusion that he had been most attracted to Pauline
when he’d suspected that Russell Stern was pursuing her. It had increased Pauline’s
desirability. That Pauline and Russell Stern had once been a couple made it even better.
Sometimes Doug fantasized about Pauline in her short, pleated cheerleader skirt and
Russell in football pads taking her from behind in what he imagined to be the fetid
air of the New Canaan High School locker room.

But that vision wasn’t working tonight. Nothing would work tonight. Nothing, Doug
thought sadly, would work ever again. His sex life with Pauline was over.

He gathered her wandering hand in both of his and squeezed it. He wanted to be kind
to her, but so often, kind was mistaken for patronizing.

“Pauline,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I understand, I get it, it’s only natural that you’d be thinking
of her.”

“Thinking of whom?”

“Beth.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Beth.”

Pauline rolled over on her side so that her back was to him. “Of course you were.”

He wanted to say,
Don’t tell me what I was or was not thinking about. You aren’t a mind reader.
But Doug didn’t want to pick a fight. He didn’t want to act like any of his clients.
People going through a divorce faced heightened emotion every single day. Just last
week, Doug had received an e-mail in which the subject line read “Rough Morning.”
The message consisted of a detailed description of how contentious the before-school
routine in the Blahblahblah household had become. Mom and Dad both lived in the same
apartment building, and little Sophie and slightly older Daniel were shuttled up and
down on the elevator in search of clean clothes, breakfast, and homework while Mom
and Dad screamed profanities at each other on their cell phones. Doug had read and
answered a thousand such e-mails; he had a front-row seat for every imaginable variety
of domestic discord. He loathed the thought of anyone—another lawyer, a therapist,
or Rhonda—being privy to the inner workings of his relationship with Pauline. He just
wanted the marriage to quietly go away. He wanted it to be a soap bubble he could
pop with his finger.

“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?

S
he 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?”

“She told me,” Jim said. He whipped his belt out of the loops, removed his pants,
and tossed them unfolded into the gaping mouth of his suitcase. Ann, of course, had
placed all her clothes in drawers, neatly folded, except for the things she had to
hang,
which were in the closet. Neat Ann, Catholic school Ann, Saint Ann.

“She told you when?” Ann said.

“In the car ride,” Jim said. “I asked her how Brad was doing, and she said they’d
split. She got tired of him, she said.”

“
She
got tired of
him?
” Ann said. The lover Brad was ten years Helen’s junior, he was a successful doctor,
and
she
got tired of
him?
Ann didn’t like this one bit. Helen was single, she was free, and everyone, especially
Ann, knew that Helen didn’t do well alone. “And she told you this? In the car?”

“Ann,” Jim said. “If you wanted to know what Helen and I talked about, you should
have come along to the hospital. I wanted you to come. I was practically begging you.”

“It was Stuart’s rehearsal dinner!” Ann said. She was starting to hit her upper register,
which was never a good sign. She took a moment to regroup, but the vodka martinis
were wringing out her brain like wet laundry. For twenty years she had been a reasonable
woman when dealing with Jim and his situation. But not tonight. “Stuart is
my
son, and he’s getting married tomorrow! I didn’t feel like I should miss his rehearsal
dinner because Chance got sick. Chance… isn’t
my son, Jim.
He’s your son, and he’s Helen’s son.”

“Please calm down, Ann,” Jim said. “You’re absolutely right.”

“I
know
I’m absolutely right!” Ann said. She walked over to Jim and automatically turned
her back because she needed him to unzip her dress. He did so, and then he helped
to slip it from her shoulders, but she batted him away. The dress dropped to the floor
in a pink puddle, and she left it there. She pulled on the white waffled robe over
her bra and panties. “I hate her.”

“Ann…”

“I. Hate. Her.”

“Well, then,” Jim said. He paced the room as he unbuttoned his shirt. “Well, then,
you shouldn’t have invited her here.”

Ann thought,
And you shouldn’t have fucked her. And you shouldn’t have knocked her up. And you
shouldn’t have married her.

Inviting her
had merely been a generous, considerate way of dealing with the heinous predicament
Jim had put them in.

She pointed to the door. “Get out,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Get out!” Ann said. “I want you out!”

Jim took one, two, three steps in her direction, but she did not lower her finger.
“I’m serious, Jim. Get out of this room. I don’t want you here tonight.”

“But Stuart…”

“What do you care about Stuart?” Ann said. “What do you care about any of us?”

“So let me get this straight,” Jim said. “You decide for some reason unbeknownst to
me or anyone else to invite Helen to this wedding. It was
your
decision, Ann Graham, and yours alone. I was dead set against it, and I think I made
that clear. And now, because Helen is here and because Chance had an unforeseen allergic
reaction—where, I might add, he almost died—
I
am now paying the price.”

“Paying the
price?
” Ann said. Jim hadn’t “paid the price” the way Ann had paid the price, not by a long
shot. He had come back to Ann as contrite as a man could be; he had cried, he had
sent flowers, he had attended counseling with Father Art, their parish priest, he
had shown up for every one of the boys’ school and sporting events with his hat in
his hands begging forgiveness, he had done everything short of renting a billboard
on I-80 renouncing his sins—but had he actually paid a price? Ann thought not.

She dropped her arm. “Get out,” she said quietly.

“Annie?” he said.

“Please,” she said.

M
argot woke up in her bed, sandwiched between Ellie and Jenna. Her left arm was asleep.
Downstairs, the phone was ringing.

Margot extracted herself by climbing over Ellie, who wouldn’t wake up unless there
was an earthquake and an ensuing tsunami. She shook out her hand in an attempt to
get the blood circulating again. Outside, she noted, there was blue sky and birdsong.

I wish for you a beautiful day.

At least they had that.

Margot rushed down the stairs, nearly slipping on the next-to-last step; the treads
had been worn down to a satiny finish after so many years of bare feet up and down.
I’m coming, I’m coming,
she thought. A houseful of people, and somehow she was the only one who heard the
phone? Or she was the only one stupid enough to get out of bed at—she checked the
clock—6:15 to answer it.

“Hello?” she said.

“Margot? It’s Roger.”

“Good morning, Roger,” Margot said.

“You’re aware, I assume, that your sister left me a voice mail at eleven thirty last
night—I’m sorry I was asleep—saying that the wedding is off?”

“Yes,” Margot said. “I am aware of that.”