No one had canceled Thanksgiving.
Graham found that remarkable. Although maybe that was the most stressful thing about holidays: they couldn’t be canceled. The holidays marched in unwanted and forced themselves upon you like Vikings invading a village, or a wet dog who shakes himself next to you, or the dirty and unshaven man who had once pinched Audra’s bottom at a midtown salad bar.
Still, this year, when Graham felt so—so unbalanced, so guarded, so wary despite himself—you’d think Thanksgiving might be canceled. Or postponed. But no.
There are rumored to be people who enjoy getting up early, but Graham was not one of them. He had to force himself out of bed at six on Thanksgiving morning. Audra slept on next to him, a dim humped shape under the comforter. Graham pulled on his robe and left the bedroom quietly, pulling the door shut gently.
The kitchen was almost literally bursting with food. The refrigerator shelves were stacked with all the dishes Graham had made ahead—the cheese spread, the crab dip, the three-bean salad, the glazed brussels sprouts—and heaped with balls of pie dough, cartons of heavy cream, and sticks of butter for the dishes he had not yet started. The vegetable bins were stuffed with celery, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and green beans. No room for the white wine—it was chilling in the dishwasher, which Graham had filled with ice the night before. He could hear the ice trickling as it melted. The counters were crowded with bread set out to stale for the stuffing, and net bags of onions and yams and potatoes. The turkey was defrosting in a roasting pan on the counter. Its skin was pale and dimpled, with a faint purplish tinge as though it were cold. Graham thought he’d never seen anything less appetizing in his life. He was not in the proper frame of mind for this. He wanted to be left alone to brood.
It wasn’t as though Audra behaved like someone having an affair—and who would know affair behavior better than Graham? Cheating spouses were supposed to be distant and preoccupied, to be secretive about their whereabouts, to be obsessed with their cellphones.
Well, cellphones! Sometimes Graham wanted to have an affair, just so he could benefit from the ease of cellphones. (It was like he sometimes wanted to take up skiing again now that there were fleece hats, which didn’t make your head itch like the wool ones.) But what if your wife had always been obsessed with her cellphone? She’d been obsessed with her landline! Accusing Audra of having an affair because she made too many phone calls was like accusing Tiger Woods of having an affair because he played too much golf. (Although, you know, maybe Tiger Woods was not the best possible comparison here.)
Graham started the coffee machine and cut open the bag of potatoes. He should peel them while the coffee perked but found he didn’t have the energy. Instead he leaned against the counter and stared at the guest list Audra had taped to the refrigerator.
Lorelei
Doug
Bitsy
Clayton
Pearl
Manny
Alan
Dr. Moley, Matthew’s pediatrician
Dinah, Dr. Moley’s wife
Mr. Vargas, Matthew’s piano teacher
Mrs. Bellamy, the old lady on Six
All the lonely people! Where do they all come from? Graham didn’t know where they came from, but he could have told the Beatles where all the lonely people go: they go to Graham and Audra’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.
And the final name on the list: Elspeth.
Elspeth! Elspeth was on the list, was apparently coming over for Thanksgiving dinner.
“I told you,” Audra had said last night when she showed him the list.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m sure I told you,” she said. Then she looked suddenly thoughtful. “Unless maybe I only thought I told you, and I actually told someone else.”
Why would she remember telling Graham? He was only her husband.
“But who else would I have told?” Audra continued. “I mean, it’s not like I would say to some random stranger, ‘Hey, my husband’s ex-wife is coming to our house for Thanksgiving.’ ”
It was exactly like Audra would say that to a random stranger. She would delight in saying it to a random stranger.
“I didn’t think Elspeth was even speaking to us,” Graham said.
“Well, she wasn’t,” Audra said, “and then I accidentally included her on this group email about Matthew’s school auction and she emailed back and said, ‘Please don’t bother me with your tacky fund-raiser,’ and I replied and we sort of went back and forth and I invited her.”
Graham was silent.
“Are you angry?” Audra asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m trying to estimate the minimum number of exchanges it would take to get from her reply to your invitation.”
“Oh, well.” Audra shrugged. “Not that many, actually. Fewer than you’d think.”
“And these other people?” he asked. “Why is the pediatrician coming? Why is Mrs. Bellamy from downstairs coming, when I’ve never spoken to her except once when she got a package for us?”
“Because none of those people had plans for Thanksgiving,” Audra said. “It made me sad to think of them all alone.”
Graham hadn’t had the heart to say it made him sadder to think of them coming over. He sighed and began peeling potatoes.
Around ten, Audra came into the kitchen in her melon-colored robe, yawning and sighing as though she, and not Graham, had been slaving away in the kitchen all morning. She poured her own cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. “I was thinking”—she interrupted herself with a huge yawn that made her jaws creak—“that maybe we should issue a last-minute invitation to the gay couple down on Five. First of all, they’re here in the building, which means that they could bring some chairs with them, and second, I thought they might have a nice friend they could fix Mr. Vargas up with.”
“Mr. Vargas is gay?” Graham said.
“Oh, yes,” Audra said. “Didn’t you know that?”
No, Graham hadn’t known that, but he did know the couple down on Five whom Audra was talking about and they were tall glamorous-looking men in their thirties who worked in advertising. It seemed unlikely they would have friends interested in a portly fifty-year-old Argentinian piano teacher.
“Anyway,” Audra continued. “When I invited Mr. Vargas to Thanksgiving, I said, ‘Now, if there’s someone you’d like to bring, you’re more than welcome,’ and Mr. Vargas said, ‘I’d love to but I’m unhappily single right now.’ And it turns out that up until about six weeks ago, Mr. Vargas lived with this very nice but very volatile violinist and then one day right in the produce section at Whole Foods, they had a big argument about whether ‘The Blue Danube’ was written in three-four time or six-eight time and the violinist said, ‘I can’t believe I’ve wasted two years of my life on someone who doesn’t know the time signature of “The Blue Danube”!’ And they broke up then and there and the violinist stormed off, leaving Mr. Vargas holding a bunch of kale. And now Mr. Vargas lives alone and he says that sometimes he plays ‘The Blue Danube’ in six-eight time and thinks that it sounds better that way, haunting almost, and I said, ‘Mr. Vargas, that is just beautiful, you should call the violinist up and tell him that,’ and Mr. Vargas said, ‘No, because it turns out he also never cared for my habit of whistling—’ ”
Listen to her. She was still Audra. She still watched him with apparent utter absorption when he spoke and then said something like, “Wait, I think I left my blue sweater in the dryer!” which showed she hadn’t been listening at all; she still believed Cub Scouts was a dreadful organization; she still exclaimed, “I didn’t realize how hungry I was!” at the start of every single meal; she still flirted with bartenders; she still drove around with the gas tank nearly empty; she still came up behind him in the kitchen and rested her cheek between his shoulder blades. What phone number? What affair?
“For God’s sake, Audra!” Graham snapped. “No more guests!”
She didn’t seem to notice his tone. “Maybe I could just invite their chairs.”
It seemed that Audra’s main contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was getting herself ready, which she took over an hour to do, while Graham whipped the sweet potatoes and mixed the stuffing. Though he had to admit that she looked very pretty when she finally appeared wearing a periwinkle-blue skirt and sweater she’d owned for many years but that were still as richly colored and soft-looking as the day she’d bought them. Her hair was pulled back in a silver clasp at the nape of her neck and she wore silver earrings that made a pleasant clicking sound whenever she turned her head.
To be fair, she also set the table, even producing a paper turkey as a centerpiece, the kind you popped open to reveal the round honeycombed tissue-paper body. Then she made little name cards, and irritated Graham unendurably by calling out to him about the seating plan as he struggled to roll out pastry crust. “Now, do you think Elspeth would enjoy talking to Clayton?” she called. “Do you think Doug and Pearl would have things in common? Do you think Dr. Moley would be interested in discussing Bitsy’s hives?”
Audra was just saying, “I feel like I’m seating a cat next to a dog,” when the buzzer sounded. “Now who could be rude enough to come right on time?” she asked.
The answer was Matthew’s origami club, that’s who. They all arrived together: Clayton, Pearl, Manny, and Alan. Alan was a large man with freckles and fading red hair. Manny resembled Clayton closely enough that they could have passed for brothers. (Was Clayton replicating himself? It was a disturbing thought.)
Graham took their coats and Audra herded them all into the living room, where they clustered around the coffee table with Matthew and pulled origami paper from their backpacks.
“I thought we’d attempt the Roosevelt Elk today,” Clayton told them all, and then the buzzer sounded again and Graham went to answer it.
It was Mr. Vargas, wearing a starched white shirt and bow tie. He was beaming and offering a bottle of red wine.
“Please come in,” Graham said, and they were halfway down the hall when they met Matthew coming in the other direction, probably headed to his room for his own supply of origami paper.
Matthew’s eyes got very big when he saw Mr. Vargas. “Do I have to have a piano lesson?”
“No, no,” Graham said soothingly. “Mr. Vargas is just here to have dinner.”
At that moment, the buzzer sounded yet again, and this time the door swung open before Graham even had a chance to move toward it, and a woman’s voice called, “Yoo-hoo!”
A man and woman entered. It was Dr. Moley, Matthew’s pediatrician, and his wife, Dinah. When Matthew saw Dr. Moley, his eyes got even bigger and he clutched Graham’s sleeve. “Do I have to have a shot?”
God, they were traumatizing him. The whole dinner was probably going to traumatize Graham, too.
“No, Matthew,” he said. “You go on back with everyone else.” And he turned to greet the Moleys.
Audra had always said that she could never make up her mind about whether Dr. Moley was a genius or belonged in a special home somewhere. But what Dr. Moley seemed like to Graham was an aging alcoholic. His eyes were bloodshot and he listed slightly as he walked. The faint smell of bourbon seemed to cling to his big gray walrus mustache.
Dinah Moley was a small spry blond woman with black shoe-button eyes. “I hope we’re not going to eat too late,” she said to Audra when they were all in the living room, “because we’re flying to Florence tomorrow.” Then she looked at Graham and said, “Vincent needs a drink.”
She said this in such a way that it caused Graham to think Vincent was either a very small dog she carried in her purse or an imaginary friend of some sort. He was about to ask cagily whether Vincent liked water or milk when he realized from the expectant way Dr. Moley was looking at him that she was referring to her husband.
“Certainly,” said Graham. “Bourbon on the rocks?”
“That’d be great,” Dr. Moley said, not seeming to wonder how Graham knew.
Graham stepped into the kitchen for ice cubes, and Matthew came up nervously behind him. “Who else is coming?”
“Just friends of Mom’s and mine,” Graham said.
“Not Dr. Alpen?” That was the dentist.
“No.”
“Would you tell me if he was?”
“Yes, of course.”
Matthew looked unconvinced but left the kitchen without further argument. Graham followed him with the ice bucket, figuring that otherwise he’d be making a lot of trips to the kitchen for Dr. Moley.
When Elspeth arrived, Graham was so happy to see someone normal, he nearly cut a caper right there at the door. Instead he said, “Welcome!” in a booming voice unlike his own.
How strange to see Elspeth here in their apartment—a single snowflake from a massive blizzard writ large once again. She carried her coat over her arm and wore a slim black skirt and plain white blouse. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. Her skin was as firm and cool as the skin of a chilled apple.
“Graham,” she said, smiling a little.
Before Graham could close the door, the elevator chimed again, and this time it was Lorelei and Doug. Graham sent them all down the hall into the living room.
Bong! went the elevator again. He turned back toward the door, and this time it was Bitsy.
“Graham, hello!” she said in her soft voice.
Graham blinked. “Bitsy, how nice to see you,” he said, holding the door open for her.
“It’s nice to be here,” Bitsy replied, but Graham wondered: was it nice for her to be back here, the scene of such unhappiness, the very square footage where she’d realized her marriage had come to an end?
He led Bitsy down the hall to the living room, where Doug was saying, “Origami!” in the sort of falsely excited voice people use when they talk about visiting a museum. “What are we making?”
“We’re not making anything,” Alan said. “We’re folding the Roosevelt Elk.”
Doug was not offended. “Well, let me pull up a chair here and see what I can do to help.”
Everyone huddled around the coffee table, reaching casually for Manny’s stack of lokta origami paper, which Graham knew Manny had special-ordered from Nepal.
Audra paused beside Graham and whispered, “I’m so embarrassed that everyone thinks we’ve planned origami as entertainment!”
Matthew looked wildly relieved to see Bitsy—undoubtedly he was thinking, One for my team!—and Bitsy ruffled Matthew’s hair as she sat down next to him.
Graham took everyone’s drink orders and headed to the corner of the room where he’d set up the bar.
“Everyone, this is Elspeth,” Audra said. Graham hoped that Audra wouldn’t feel it necessary to say that Elspeth was his ex-wife, but she probably would. She believed, he knew, that you had to give people a little bit of information as a conversation starter when you introduced them. Graham didn’t disagree with this policy, it was just that Audra always chose information he’d rather she not share.
And sure enough, Audra said, “Elspeth and Graham were married for eight years, and then separated for—”
Graham turned to the table in the corner where he’d set out the wine and opened the first bottle. It was tempting to drink straight from it.
Behind him, Audra continued introducing people and tossing out conversation starters. “Clayton, this is Dr. Moley,” she said. “Dr. Moley once removed a piece of Lego from Matthew’s ear. Doug, this is Alan. He’s allergic to beets. Dinah, this is Bitsy. She has very clean fingernails. Pearl, this is Mr. Vargas. He’s just been through a difficult breakup.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mr. Vargas said. “Have you ever been to Whole Foods?”
Clayton said aggressively, “I think we should have an advanced table and a beginners’ table.”
Dinah Moley said to Bitsy, “I hope we eat soon because Vincent and I are flying to Florence tomorrow.”
Who were these people? What was Graham doing here? Where was his life, the one he was meant to be living? He sighed. Maybe if he turned up the oven they could eat sooner and everyone would go home. He sighed again and began pouring wine.
Elspeth bustled into the kitchen. She opened a drawer and shook out a fresh dish towel, which she tucked into the waistband of her skirt.
“You don’t have to be in here,” Graham protested. “You should go out to the living room and have a drink with the others.”
Elspeth gave him a sardonic smile. “I’d rather stay in here,” she said. “And it looks like you could use the help.”
Graham couldn’t argue with that. “Okay.”
Elspeth opened the oven and looked at the turkey with narrowed eyes. Then she turned back to him and said, “Do you mind if I make the cranberry relish? I have a certain way I like to do it.”
“Not at all,” Graham said.
Elspeth was washing the cranberries in the sink when the kitchen door swung open and Audra entered with Mrs. Bellamy. Mrs. Bellamy was a short lady in her late seventies, so stout that she appeared to have no breasts and no waist, like a giant pincushion covered in blue fabric. She had fluffy white hair, which curved back from her face in two smooth wings. She was carrying a platter of deviled eggs.
“You remember Mrs. Bellamy,” Audra said. “This is my husband, Graham.”
“Of course,” Graham said. “And this is Elspeth.”
“Hello, dear,” Mrs. Bellamy said, shaking Elspeth’s hand. She looked at Graham. “And aren’t you smart, hiring a caterer!”
“I’m an attorney,” Elspeth said coolly.
“I’m not sure what you’ll make of my deviled eggs,” Mrs. Bellamy said, oblivious, “but I always take them to parties. It’s my signature dish.”
“And we appreciate it,” Audra said. “Let me just grab some napkins and we can go on into the living room.”
After they had gone, Graham put the butter and milk for the mashed potatoes into a small saucepan and placed it on one of the back burners.
“Oh, do you heat the milk for the potatoes?” Elspeth asked.
“Yes,” Graham said. “Some people skip it but I think it makes a difference.”
“I use a potato ricer,” Elspeth said. “Though for years I used a hand mixer.”
What a pleasure it was to have this conversation, thought Graham, who also used a potato ricer. He could remember that when he was having an affair with Audra, he could barely sit through dinner with Elspeth—she struck him as so maddeningly calm and deliberate. Always his mind would turn to what Audra might be doing at that moment, what she might be saying, and to whom. In fact, he couldn’t sit through dinner with Elspeth, and his main memory of those last few months was a constant restlessness at meals, hopping up and down to refill his glass, fetch the butter, look for pepper. Audra showed none of that restlessness; she seemed as deeply content with her life as she always had.
And yet—and yet—it had begun to seem to Graham that Audra had less time during the day than she used to. All through their marriage, Audra had run countless errands during the week: going to the liquor store for wine, to the dry cleaner’s for Graham’s shirts, to the post office for stamps, to the pharmacy for cough syrup, to the bakery for bagels, to the gourmet shop for truffle oil. But lately they seemed to run low on everything, and Audra would say, “The day got away from me! I’ll pick up your prescription tomorrow.” Or mail your package. Or deposit that check.
But could you really believe your wife was cheating on you because you ran out of truffle oil? Audra didn’t even like truffle oil. She said it smelled like feet.
As though his thoughts had summoned her, Audra pushed open the swinging door of the kitchen at that moment. “I’m sure it won’t be any trouble at all,” she called gaily to someone over her shoulder. She looked at Graham and Elspeth and said in a lower voice, “Apparently, Manny only eats food that’s white.”
Then she backed out of the kitchen and the door swung shut behind her.
Elspeth and Graham looked at each other for a moment.
“Is your life always like this?” Elspeth asked.
“Yes,” said Graham.
But the truth was more complicated than that. Because although Audra did make preposterous statements at least twice a week (more frequently than that if she had PMS), the truth was that Graham liked it. Or at least, he liked it and he disliked it in equal measure. But he didn’t tell Elspeth any of that. He let her think that life with Audra was maddening, and nothing more.
Graham had to admit it: he’d nourished a very small hope that this Thanksgiving would be a success. He had thought it was possible—or well, more accurately, he had thought that it was not impossible—that this eclectic mix of people would gel into a party. But when he finally took a break from the kitchen and joined his guests in the living room, the atmosphere was less like a party and more like a group of strangers stranded at a bus station.
There was even the equivalent of a drunken homeless person—Dr. Moley was nearly horizontal on the sofa, his drink balanced on his stomach. Pearl was perched on the other end of the sofa, speaking to him along the length of his body. “Clayton rearranged my recipe box,” she said. “He organized the recipes by frequency of use instead of alphabetically, and I have to say, I find it extremely efficient.”
(Graham felt an embarrassing thrill of interest in this, although he chalked it up to the extreme stress of the holiday.)
Doug was stuck talking to Mrs. Bellamy about her cats.
“Now, Arlo,” Mrs. Bellamy said in a happy, relishing voice. “Arlo I have to have professionally groomed because otherwise we run into a bit of a hair ball problem. But Iris from kittenhood has always kept herself impeccably clean.”
Audra, Lorelei, and Elspeth were sitting together, discussing Starbucks stock performance. Audra said, “The whole Starbucks experience has just been ruined for me since they started listing the calories next to all the drinks.”
There was no conversation here that Graham wanted to take part in and, even worse, no conversation that seemed to want him in it. It was dark out now and he could see his reflection in the windows, a lone figure looming over all the others.
He helped himself to one of Mrs. Bellamy’s deviled eggs, so it would look like he’d come out just for that, and went back into the kitchen.
The table groaned with food, and despite himself, Graham’s spirits rose. The turkey rested on the platter in golden brown splendor, garnished with sprigs of rosemary and wedges of lemon and bright red pomegranate seeds. All of their flowered serving dishes were out, filled with the mushroom and walnut stuffing, the white-wine gravy, the roasted carrots with dill, the pears and red onions, the maple-whipped sweet potatoes, Elspeth’s cranberry relish. The pure decadence and plentitude of Thanksgiving dinner had always appealed to Graham, and he took no less pleasure in it this year just because he had prepared it for people he didn’t especially like.
“Everyone, come to dinner!” Audra called. Then she said to Graham in a lower voice, “Why did you switch all the name cards around?”
“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting next to Pearl,” he answered, but that was not the truth. Graham had rearranged the seating on a sort of Asperger’s continuum, with Lorelei at the head of the high-functioning end, and Manny and the rest of the Origami Club at the low-functioning end. Doug sat on Lorelei’s left, Graham on her right, Audra, Elspeth, Bitsy, and everyone else in the middle. Matthew was seated next to Graham because Graham couldn’t bear to see him down at the other end.
“Well, now!” Mrs. Bellamy said brightly as she sat down next to Elspeth. “I think it is so modern and lovely the way you have the caterer eat with us.”
Graham thought Elspeth might stab Mrs. Bellamy with her salad fork.
Graham had prepared a separate plate for Manny: a slice of white bread with the crusts cut off, some cubes of feta cheese, a container of plain yogurt, and a few marshmallows. He was really quite pleased with his ability to improvise on short notice. But it turned out that Manny not only insisted on all-white food, he wanted an all-white plate, too. So while everyone else flapped open their napkins and filled up their water glasses, Audra tapped off to the kitchen and came back with a white fondue plate. Graham could have imagined it but he was pretty sure the rest of the Origami Club looked at the fondue plate with its segregated compartments wistfully.
“Here you are,” Audra said to Manny just as though he were a normal person. “We don’t have any white utensils, but if you need some, perhaps Graham will run down to the deli for plastic ones.”
“Oh, please, no,” Manny demurred. “I’m not particular.”
Graham stood up to carve the turkey.
“I’m glad we’re eating early because Vincent and I are flying to Florence tomorrow,” Dinah said.
Suddenly, Graham seemed to hear drums beating, very low. It was more a gently pounding sensation than actual sound. Random snatches of conversation reached him: Manny telling someone he hadn’t eaten colored food since 2002; Dr. Moley (who had perked up a bit) saying that no other animal besides a human can get a rash from poison ivy; Mr. Vargas describing a sexual position called “suspended congress” to Audra, who said, dubiously, “That’s not what I’m used to.”
The drumbeats were louder now. And then Graham realized he was sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been hearing drumbeats at all—it was just the foretelling of nausea. The body knew what was happening before the brain did and tried to send signals, a warning. Graham was having trouble swallowing. His saliva felt thick and mucusy in his mouth. He could barely stand. The carving fork was already buried in the turkey and now Graham dug the knife in, point first, like a pirate sinking a grappling hook into the plank of a ship. He swayed, and his vision swam with black dots. The turkey kept him upright while, fortunately, his vision cleared.
“I feel—funny,” said Pearl.
Doug jumped up suddenly and ran for the bathroom, his heavy body tilted forward and thick legs pumping. He looked like a linebacker rushing a pass down the hallway. It was perfect, really, for Thanksgiving, Graham thought distantly.
Then Mrs. Bellamy leaned over and threw up on the rug.
Of course, it was Mrs. Bellamy’s deviled eggs. Later, Graham would have an eerily vivid picture of the scene: Mrs. Bellamy tottering around her kitchen, humming to herself while she whipped up her signature dish, using elderly eggs and ancient mayonnaise, because how quickly did a single person go through either of those ingredients? Or perhaps she made them in the morning and left them out on the counter to remind herself to take them? And who was to say she didn’t help herself to a few deviled eggs for lunch, eating them whole in the greedy, unself-conscious way people are free to do unobserved in their own kitchens? Oh, Graham could see it, the fat slippery egg whites disappearing into her mouth, the yolky yellow smears on the corners of her lips. He would never feel the same about deviled eggs again.
But all that came later. At the time, the emergency was hot and there was only thought for the most basic triage.
“My rug!” Audra cried. “Someone get the salt!”
Pearl bolted from the table. Graham collapsed back into his seat. Lorelei jumped up to kneel by Mrs. Bellamy’s chair. Dr. Moley took her pulse, and Dinah Moley began taking a survey of who had eaten the deviled eggs.
It turned out that six of them had: Mrs. Bellamy, Pearl, Graham, Doug, Lorelei, and Audra. Audra felt fine (she had a very strong stomach, like a Doberman); Graham and Lorelei felt shaky; Pearl and Doug were in various bathrooms; and Mrs. Bellamy was tipped back in her chair, panting, her eyes ringed with white, her face pale and slick with sweat, her skin as shiny as greased plastic.
Matthew couldn’t stop staring at the puddle of vomit on the rug. “Who’s going to clean that up?” he asked.
“Mrs. Bellamy needs to go to the ER,” Dr. Moley said. “We can walk her over. It’s only a block.”
Graham said he would take Mrs. Bellamy to the ER—he felt responsible as the host. Dr. Moley offered to accompany them, and for a few minutes, everyone was frantically pulling on coats and searching for bags and finding a blanket to drape over Mrs. Bellamy’s shoulders since her coat was downstairs in her apartment.
Doug and Lorelei left, Doug with his arm slung around Lorelei’s neck.
Pearl came out of the master bathroom looking like a woman who had fought hard with a purse snatcher—breathless, disheveled, frightened—and Audra said to Clayton, “You go ahead and take Pearl home.”
“Oh, Pearl’s a warhorse,” Clayton said confidently, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets.
It was then that Graham realized that Clayton and Pearl, as well as Alan and Manny and Mr. Vargas—what Graham thought of as the low-functioning end of the table—were all planning to come with them to the hospital, as though this were a progressive party and the next course might be served there.
They left Matthew with Bitsy—how quickly Bitsy fit back into her old role as houseguest and nanny, Graham thought—and they went outside. The night sky was beautiful: thick, frosty, starry. Graham and Dr. Moley supported Mrs. Bellamy between them. Elspeth walked behind them, carrying Mrs. Bellamy’s purse and rooting through it for an insurance card.
“I hope this doesn’t take too long,” Mrs. Moley said. “We have to fly to Florence tomorrow.”
“Oh, are you going to Florence?” Audra asked, deadpan, and Graham’s heart, which had been cold with suspicion, flamed with desire for one bright moment, and then was ash.
The ER was mercifully uncrowded. Dr. Moley signed Mrs. Bellamy in at the front desk and she was whisked back to an exam room. The rest of them drifted over to the waiting room and sat in uncomfortable chairs with curved wooden arms. Alan complained that there were no flat surfaces for folding.
It began to seem as though Graham was trapped in some awful social quicksand and the more he tried to free himself, the deeper he sank. It seemed that he would never get out of the hospital and back to the apartment without at least one unwanted guest.
Mrs. Bellamy was admitted to the hospital overnight for observation, so she was no problem, but everyone else seemed determined to return. The old Graham might have let them; the new Graham could not bear it. And yet what could he do when Alan began wondering aloud about turkey sandwiches and Manny said he had low blood sugar and Clayton said Thanksgiving didn’t seem like Thanksgiving without at least one slice of pumpkin pie? Graham was afraid to open his mouth for fear the quicksand would flow in and choke him. He would sink without a trace.
Of course it was Audra who saved him. “Goodness,” she said to Manny and Alan, “weren’t you smart to bring your backpacks! We won’t have to go back for them.”
“We always bring our backpacks with us,” Manny told her. “We don’t want to get trapped somewhere without origami paper.”
“Well, now, that’s very forward-thinking,” Audra said. “Perhaps after you and Alan help Clayton get Pearl home, you can all fold something together.”
“I guess we could order Chinese food,” Clayton said thoughtfully.
“White rice, though,” Manny said quickly.
“So let’s see,” Audra said. “We’ll need one—two—three taxis. One to Clayton’s house, one for the Moleys, and one for Mr. Vargas. It’s so late! You all must want to get home. Thank goodness no one has any travel plans tomorrow.”
(It was possible that she didn’t say that last sentence, that Graham only imagined she did because he wanted to say it so badly himself.)
“Dr. Moley, can I ask you to flag the taxis for us?” Audra said. “Come on, everyone.” She put her hand on Graham’s arm and whispered, “I’ll see you at home.”
And they were off, everyone obediently trailing behind Audra like the world’s oldest human ducklings, and Graham and Elspeth were alone.
Elspeth wore a pale yellow coat, almost the same color as her hair. She looked, as always, tidy and poised and slightly starched, more like Graham’s vision of a nurse than any nurse actually here in the hospital.
“What a night,” she said to him.
He smiled. “It won’t be good publicity for your catering business.”
Elspeth gave him a narrow look. She had never liked his humor very much.
She tightened the belt of her coat. “It was good to see you,” she said formally.
“Very good,” Graham said, trying to make up for offending her.
She paused. “Perhaps we’ll see each other again soon.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
Her eyes flashed up to his instantly.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “How to be friends.”
She nodded, lifting her chin slightly. “If you want.”
Without really planning to, Graham stepped forward and took her in his arms. He felt her stiffen, and then she sighed and relaxed. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he thought of how long and slender her neck was, how vulnerable. He put his hand on the back of her head and held her that way for a long, long moment, not caring if anyone saw them. He didn’t do it because he felt guilty, or because he felt he owed it to her, or even because he wanted to. He did it because it was the one thing he felt he could do right.
He waited on the sidewalk with Elspeth until a cab came. She got into it the primly sexy way women wearing narrow skirts always get into cabs: with a slight swing of her hips and a little hop. Graham leaned forward to close the door, but she was already pulling it shut from the inside. That was Elspeth.
He began walking home. He should have been exhausted but he felt energetic. Maybe Audra would be waiting for him with a bottle of wine. He would make turkey sandwiches and they would drink wine and discuss Thanksgiving, and she would say, as she did after every dinner party they had, “On a scale of Delightful to Never Again, where would you rate it?”
Graham looked forward to that suddenly, looked forward to being with Audra.
And then tomorrow he would call Elspeth and that was something to look forward to also. He hadn’t realized he intended to call her until the plan was there, already in his mind. He would call Elspeth and they would meet for drinks. It felt like the right decision, as certain as death and taxes, as inevitable as bifocals and paper cuts and bad TV on Saturday nights.
This was where he had gone wrong all those years ago, he saw that now. He had gone too suddenly—too completely—from Elspeth to Audra. He was finally at a place where he and Elspeth could have a relationship that was free of bitterness, free of guilt. They could be close again. Not romantically—he didn’t want that—but close, intimate, even loving in some way that only former spouses could be.
This idea seemed so clear to him that for a moment he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. He felt something in his chest clutch and release, the way it felt when he thought he’d left his wallet in a restaurant and then touched his pocket and realized he still had it with him. Of course. He remembered. Things were different now.