Beautiful Day

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.

The vows now. Ann tried to focus. Through good and bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

Ha! Ann thought. She had said those exact vows, and while she was now sitting next to the man she had said the vows to, and while she did love him very much-more, possibly, than she had loved him then-she had not known what the vows meant, or the many creative and awful ways they could be broken.

Stuart and Jenna exchanged rings-platinum band for Stuart, and platinum with diamonds for Jenna, but they could have been aluminum or plastic. Expensive rings did not guarantee a happy life together.

Ann decided she would ignore Helen in the receiving line. Helen would approach, and Ann would look right through her; she would stand like a statue, gazing over Helen’s scandalously bare shoulder. She would not speak or take Helen’s hand. The moment would be awkward for a second, until Helen understood that although Ann had invited Helen to the wedding, Ann despised the ground that Helen walked on.

It would be a small passive-aggressive triumph. It would be a mean-girl silent treatment victory derived straight from the sixth-grade lunchroom. Ann couldn’t wait. She promised herself she would not break down, she would not buckle, she would not speak to Helen or touch Helen or offer any other indication that Helen was alive.

The minister said, “We will now observe a moment of silence to remember the bride’s mother, Elizabeth Bailey Carmichael.”

The church hushed. Ann bowed her head and sent a message out to Beth Carmichael, wherever she might be. You raised a wonderful family, and a beautiful daughter. They clearly loved you very much. Good job, Beth.

The minister raised his hands and said, “Thank you.” He beamed at Stuart and Jenna. “By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Stuart held the side of Jenna’s head, and Stuart and Jenna kissed. The kiss, Ann thought, was very tender. People clapped, the pipe organ celebrated, and Stuart and Jenna faced the minister for the final blessing.

“Almost out of here,” Jim whispered.

Ann felt a sense of elation, and she congratulated herself on an appropriate emotion. Her son was married, and she felt happy.

Jenna and Stuart-now Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Graham, another Mrs. Graham, that was odd-processed out of the church, followed by Margot and Ryan, Jenna’s brother Nick and the sunburned bridesmaid whose skin looked sticky with aloe, and H.W. and Autumn-who, Ann admitted to herself, didn’t look half bad together. Chance processed out at the end alone because his partner, Pauline’s daughter, hadn’t returned. Ann and Jim were meant to leave next. Ann stepped out into the aisle, and as she turned to face the back of the church, she saw Helen-with that bloodcurdling scream of a dress-step into the aisle, take Chance’s arm, and process out of the church before Ann and Jim. Ann gripped Jim’s arm, blinking furiously. How dare Helen presume to process out of the church with the wedding party! How dare Helen presume to process out of the church in front of Ann! Ann wanted to yank Helen’s blond hair. She wanted to stop dead in the middle of the church and scream. Chance seemed unbothered by his mother’s presence; maybe he was relieved not to have to walk out of the church alone. The quandary of being unexpectedly unpartnered had been solved by his mother. But Ann didn’t care how Chance felt about it. Helen had crossed a line. She had inserted herself into the wedding party without qualm or hesitation, exactly the way she had inserted herself into Ann’s marriage years ago.

“Can you believe her?” Ann whispered to Jim.

Jim didn’t respond, and when Ann checked on him, his head was held high and dignified, the way it always was when he knew people were looking at him, most often when he was attending some political event with Ann. Ann had always been proud to have Jim beside her, although she’d wondered over the years if the power differential between them was the reason he’d strayed. Jim made far more money than Ann, but Ann had influence and prestige. She was the one people sought out, she was the one who was photographed and named in the newspaper. State Senator Ann Graham. Jim must have wearied of it.

They stepped out of the church into the bright, warm afternoon, and behind them someone rang the church bells. Ann and Jim followed Jenna and Stuart and the wedding party and Helen out to the front lawn, where the receiving line was to be held. Ann narrowed her eyes at Helen. Helen would not stand in the receiving line, would she? For the fifteenth time that weekend, Ann wished for a Quaalude.

Helen kissed Chance on the cheek and appeared to bid him farewell. Ann stepped closer so that she could hear what Helen was saying.

“I’ll see y’all later, darling. I’m meeting Skip in town.”

“All right,” Chance said. “I’ll see you at the reception.”

“No, I don’t think so, darling,” Helen said. “Skip has invited me for dinner at the Club Car.”

“Oh,” Chance said. “Okay.” He didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, I guess.”

“Now, remember,” Helen said. “Don’t eat the crab cakes!” She laughed, kissed Chance again, and descended the concrete steps to the sidewalk without a further word to anyone. She sauntered off in a flash of shocking, hair-raising pink.

Ann stared after Helen with her mouth agape. Helen was leaving the wedding before the reception. She had RSVP’d yes; Ann knew there was a place card with Helen’s name on it, and a seat for her at a table in the Carmichaels’ backyard. Ann knew that $120 had been spent on behalf of Helen’s expected presence at the reception. She couldn’t just walk off to meet Skip Lafferty! She couldn’t just leave like that! When Jim found out that Helen had chosen not to attend the reception, he would be relieved. He would say, No one wanted her around, anyway. He would expect Ann to share his feelings. Now they could eat and drink and laugh and talk and dance without worrying about Helen. It would be just as Jim had wanted it; it would be as if Ann had never invited Helen to the wedding in the first place, or as if Ann had invited Helen and Helen had declined. But Ann found herself feeling vexed. Ann had wanted Helen to see her and Jim laughing and talking and dancing; Ann had wanted Helen to feel bereft and jealous.

But instead Helen had walked off.

Wait! Ann wanted to call out. You can’t leave! I haven’t had a chance to ignore you yet!