“This is it?” Ann said. “You’re sure?” She checked the piece of paper from her purse. “130 Surfside Road.”
The taxi driver was about twenty years old; he wore a blue button-down oxford shirt and Ray-Ban aviators and appeared to be the identical twin of Ford from Colgate, their waiter at the yacht club.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He wrote something on his clipboard. “This is 130.”
Ann climbed out of the cab, paid the kid an astronomical fare of twenty-five dollars (the same-length ride anywhere in the Research Triangle would have been seven dollars), and then felt utterly abandoned as the cab backed out of the driveway.
Ann walked to the front door, the damn Jack Rogers sandals torturing the tender spot between her first two toes, and knocked.
A moment later, H.W. answered.
Henry William, named after Ann’s father. Ann was nearly as happy to see him now as she had been when he turned up at the fairgrounds seventeen years earlier.
“Hi, Mom,” he said.
Of her three boys, H.W. was the least complicated. As a child, Ann and Jim had nicknamed him “Pup,” short for “puppy,” because he was just about that easy to please. Whereas Stuart was the dutiful firstborn and Ryan was the emotionally complex aesthete, all H.W. needed was to be run, fed, and put to bed. The occasional pat on the head.
“Hi, honey,” Ann said. “Is your father here?”
“Dad?” H.W. said. He turned around and peered into the house. “Hey, is Dad here?”
“No,” a voice said. Ryan appeared, smelling of aftershave, his hair damp. “Hi, Mom.”
Ann stepped into the rental house. It reeked of mold and cigarettes and beer. On the coffee table, she spied a dirty ashtray and empty bottles of Stella and plastic cups with quarters lying in the bottom. There was a sad-looking tweedy green sofa and a recliner in mustard yellow vinyl and a clock on the wall meant to look like a ship’s wheel. On the walls hung some truly atrocious nautical paintings. SportsCenter was muted on the big flat-screen TV, which looked as unlikely as a spaceship in the middle of the living room.
“Dad’s not here?” she asked Ryan.
“No,” he said.
“He hasn’t been here at all? Last night? This morning?”
“No,” Ryan said. He cocked his head. “Mom?”
Ann deflected his concern. She nodded at the walls. “Nice place,” she said.
“It’s like we’ve been beamed back thirty years to a time-share decorated by Carol Brady after the divorce and meth addiction,” Ryan said. “Jethro wants to burn it down solely in the name of good taste.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Ann said. On the far wall was a Thomas Kinkade print.
“But we drank and smoked like naughty schoolchildren,” Ryan said. “Went to bed so blotto that the plastic venetian blinds in the windows seemed whimsical.”
At that moment, Chance came down the stairs, wearing only boxer shorts. He was so long and lean and pale that seeing him in only underwear seemed indecent. Ann averted her eyes.
“Hey, Senator,” Chance said.
“Hi,” Ann said. “How are you feeling, sweetie?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I guess,” he said. “I can breathe.”
“Good,” Ann said. She had thought Jim would be here, he wasn’t here, that was bad, that was awful, and now she had to explain, or make up a story. Helen, she thought. Where was Helen staying? Did she dare ask Chance?
Suddenly she felt hands on her shoulders.
“Hey, beautiful lady,” Jethro said. He kissed the top of her head.
“Hey,” Ann bleated. She felt like a little lost lamb. To avoid further questioning, she gave herself a tour of the house. She stumbled through a doorway into the kitchen. A young woman was sitting at the rectangular Formica table, smoking a cigarette. She was wearing an oversized N.C. State T-shirt, and not much else. It was H.W. ’s T-shirt. And then Ann got it.
“Oh,” she said. “Hello. I’m Ann Graham.”
The woman stood immediately, setting her cigarette in a half clamshell that served as an ashtray, and held out her hand. “Autumn Donahue,” she said. She had hair the color of shiny pennies, and lovely long legs. “I’m one of the bridesmaids. I was Jenna’s roommate at William and Mary.”
Ann reverted to state senator mode and shook the woman’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Autumn.”
Ryan entered the kitchen. “I don’t understand why you’re looking for Dad at eight thirty in the morning.”
“He got up early and went out,” Ann said. “I thought he might have come here.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Ryan said. He eyed Jethro. “Isn’t she a terrible liar?”
“Terrible,” Jethro said.
“Plus, I wanted to make you all breakfast,” Ann said. She opened the refrigerator, hoping her bluff hadn’t just been called, and exhaled when she saw eggs and milk and butter and a hunk of aged cheddar (Ryan and Jethro must have done the shopping) and a container of blueberries and a half gallon of orange juice.
“I’m hungry!” Autumn said.
Ann took out a mixing bowl and cracked all the eggs; she added milk, salt and pepper, a handful of grated cheddar. She melted butter in a frying pan. She thought, Where the hell is Jim? It’s the morning of Stuart’s wedding, for God’s sake. Ann felt her temper smoking and sizzling like the hot pan. And yet how could she be angry when she had asked him to leave? She had told him to get out.
A Quaalude would be nice right now, she thought.
She poured the egg mixture into the pan, popped a couple of pieces of seeded whole-grain bread into the rusty toaster, and got to work on the coffee. Starbucks, in the freezer. Thank God for small blessings.
Ryan said, “Mom, you do not have to do this. I’m sure you’d rather be having breakfast at your hotel.”
“I’m fine!” Ann sang out. “It’s the last morning I’ll ever be able to do this for Stuart. Tomorrow, he’ll belong to Jenna.”
“Whoa!” Ryan said. “Sappy alert.”
“Where is Stuart, anyway?” Ann asked.
Ryan said, “The door to his room is closed. I knocked earlier, fearing he had been asphyxiated by the synthetic bed linens, and he told me to go away.” Ryan lowered his voice. “I guess he and Jenna had a spat last night concerning She Who Shall Not Be Named.”
“A spat?” Ann said. A spat the night before the wedding wasn’t good. A spat about She Who Shall Not Be Named wasn’t good at all. Why must love be so agonizing? Ann wondered. She moved the eggs around the pan, slowly, over low heat, so they would be nice and creamy. “This reminds me of when we used to visit Stuart at the Sig Ep house. Remember when we used to do that?”
“The Sig Ep house was nicer,” Ryan said.
“The Sig Ep house was nicer,” Ann agreed, and they both laughed.
A few minutes later, Ann had managed to plate, on mismatched Fiesta ware, scrambled eggs, toast, juice, coffee, and blueberries with a little sugar. They crowded around the sad Formica table: H.W., Ryan, Jethro, Chance, and Autumn.
“We need Stuart,” Ann said. “This is supposed to be for him.”
“I just knocked on his door,” Chance said. “He told me he’d be down in a minute.”
“It’ll all be gone in a minute,” H.W. said, helping himself to a second piece of toast. “No grits?”
“Grits?” Ryan said. “Please don’t tell me you still eat grits.”
“Every day,” H.W. said.
“Oh, my God,” Ryan said. “My twin brother is Jeff Foxworthy.”
“Well, your boyfriend is André Leon Talley,” H.W. said. He grinned at Jethro. “No disrespect, man.”