Beautiful Day

ANN

The wedding was on! Ann didn’t have many details about how Stuart’s gaffe had been fixed. All she knew was that Margot had found Jenna, Jenna had called Stuart, and they had made amends over the She Who Shall Not Be Named crisis. Or at least temporary amends, amends enough to proceed with the wedding. Ann knew from experience that Stuart and Jenna would revisit the topic of Crissy Pine again, and probably again.

Ann had butterflies as she ascended the steps of St. Paul’s Church. It was beginning!

As luck would have it, the first person Ann saw in the sanctuary was Helen. Helen was wearing fuchsia, which was just another word for the hottest pink the eye could handle-and a fascinator with pink feathers.

Really? Ann thought. A fascinator? This wasn’t a royal wedding, it wasn’t Westminster Abbey, Helen wasn’t British; she was from Roanoke, Virginia. The fascinator wasn’t fascinating; it was absurd. Ann felt embarrassed on Helen’s behalf. The pink of the dress was an assault on the senses. Ann had a hard time looking at the spectacle that was Helen, but she had a hard time not looking at the spectacle that was Helen.

Ann waited in the vestibule for all the guests to be seated, including the Lewises and the Cohens and the Shelbys in the middle pews of the groom’s side. Then the music stopped momentarily and started up again, a new song. Ryan appeared at Ann’s elbow.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered.

Ann beamed. She would never say she had a favorite son, but she was very glad that she had a son who could be counted on to constantly lift her spirits, like Ryan.

“Thank you,” she said. “So do you.”

Pauline was escorted down the aisle by Jenna’s brother, Nick. Ann waited for Pauline to be seated in the front pew on the left, and then she and Ryan stepped forward. All the assembled wedding guests turned to watch them, and this felt good to Ann. She was an important person here, the mother of the groom, and her dress was sensational if she did say so herself. It was a long sheath with cap sleeves in a beautiful shade of turquoise silk that gently ombréd into jade green around her knees. The only jewelry she wore was her dazzling new strand of pearls. She carried a small silver clutch purse that contained her lipstick and a package of tissues. She smiled at the wedding guests who turned to admire her, whether she knew them or not. She couldn’t help but remember when she had been the bride and had walked down the aisle at Duke Chapel to a lineup that included Jim, his fraternity brothers, and Ann’s roommates from Craven Quad. Jim had been grinning, and sweating out the shots of bourbon that he and said fraternity brothers had done only moments before the wedding. They had been so young, so innocent, and unaware that any roadblocks might lie ahead.

The second time they got married, it was just the two of them and the three boys, no trip down the aisle, but that hadn’t mattered. They were older and wiser, and they were resolved. Nothing would take them down again.

Ann knew she should be basking in the moment, but she was distracted by the fuchsia. Helen’s dress was another one-shouldered number that was inappropriate on a woman her age. But the problem wasn’t the dress. The problem was that the scrutiny wasn’t mutual. As Ann passed Helen’s pew, Helen was looking at her cell phone. She was… texting. Texting in church, during a wedding! What Ann wanted, what she required, was Helen’s attention on her.

Look at me, Ann thought. My son is getting married. I am the last to be seated. Look at me, goddamn it.

But no, nothing. Helen was determined to act as though Ann wasn’t even present on Nantucket this weekend. To Helen, Ann might have been a complete stranger.

Ann kissed Ryan-beautiful, elegant Ryan, whose attention she never needed to seek-and sat next to Jim, who reached instantly for her hand. By the time Ann had left the groomsmen’s house and made it back to the hotel, Jim was in the room. He had spent the night sleeping in the rental car, he said, and he had the backache to prove it. He had just emerged from the shower when Ann walked in, and his lower half was wrapped in a white towel. Ann had never been able to resist him in a towel or otherwise, and so she had jumped into his arms and he held her as though they’d been separated for twelve years instead of twelve hours. They said nothing, there was no reason to speak when they could read each other’s minds: he was sorry, she was sorry, they had been drinking, it was an emotionally charged situation and they had to deal with it as best they could. He kissed her and slid his hands up her very cute red gingham skirt and she kicked off the painful Jack Rogers sandals and they made love on the grand expanse of their hotel bed, despite his aching back.

It was as Ann was getting dressed that Jim handed her the long, slim box from Hamilton Hill jewelers.

“What is this?” she said.

“Open it,” he said. “It’s your son’s wedding day. You did such a good job with him, Annie, even when I wasn’t around…”

“Hush,” Ann said. “We did a good job with him.”

“Open it,” Jim said.

Ann opened the box, her heart knocking. If the box was from Hamilton Hill, Jim had bought this at home, planning all the while to give it to her today. And she had kicked him out!

It was a strand of pearls-a choker, which was her preferred length. And it had a sparkling diamond rondelle. Ann gasped as she fingered it.

“Do you recognize the stone?” he said.

She thought for a moment that it might be the stone from her grandmother’s ring, the one Crissy Pine had walked off with. Had Jim contacted Thaddeus Pine again and brokered a deal to get the diamond back? But when she looked more closely, she realized it was the diamond from her engagement ring. Her first engagement ring.

“Full circle,” Jim said. “I love you, Ann.”

It had been a romantic moment, more romantic by far than the day Ann had walked down the aisle to Jim thirty-three years earlier. It was more romantic because they had fought for each other, and they had survived.