CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was after eight o’clock when dinner was finally served and almost ten when Ted Hamilton, responding to intermittent, halfhearted cries of “Speech, speech!,” finally pushed his chair away from his table in the center of the room and stood up to speak.
Joan breathed a sigh of relief. It meant the party was almost over and she could go home. She was exhausted. From smiling. From making small talk. From worrying about her daughter. From pretending to be having a good time.
The evening had proved more of an endurance test than a celebration. Joan had never enjoyed large parties, especially ones where she knew only a fraction of the guests. She suspected that at least half the room consisted of aging former employees of the company the two brothers had founded, and not actual friends. She wondered how many people Ted Hamilton would be able to identify by name. Her husband would have known every single one.
She glanced across the table at Paige, who’d barely touched her food all night. She’d been too busy refilling her wineglass and pretending to be oblivious to Noah, who sat three tables away, Heather at his side. Paige had spent most of the evening in conversation with her brother and his wife, laughing a touch too loudly at Michael’s jokes and pretty much ignoring Sam. This was a shame, Joan thought, because Sam seemed like a very nice man.
Which was exactly the problem, she understood. Paige wasn’t ready for nice. It was too early for nice.
Maybe in a few months. Maybe not for another year. What her daughter needed now was time. Time to get over Noah’s betrayal, to get him out of her system, to figure out what she wanted, to be receptive to a man like Sam.
This simply wasn’t his time. Like a premature baby, Sam had arrived too soon.
What her daughter needed right now was a man she could fuck and forget.
Joan blushed at her silent use of the crude phrase, almost as if she’d spoken it out loud. Robert had never approved of such language, let alone the thought behind it. She could barely believe she approved of it herself.
Not that she was a prude, by any stretch of the imagination. She’d had her share of lovers before she met Robert, her share of forgettable men. She was, as she’d recently reminded Paige and Chloe, a child of the sixties. She sighed, understanding that that decade was part of another era.
Indeed, another century.
Where had all that time gone?
“Mom?” a voice asked from beside her. Joan turned toward her son, who was staring at her through worried hazel eyes.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, sweetheart. Why do you ask?”
“You had this very strange look on your face,” he told her. “And you went all pink. Are you having a hot flash?” He grabbed her wrist, feeling for her pulse.
“I’m fine,” she told him, trying to shake free of his grasp. “And I’m a little old to be having hot flashes, don’t you think?”
“You’re a little old to be shaving half your head,” he said. “Besides, some women have hot flashes all their lives. Stop fidgeting and let me get a read. Your heart rate is slightly elevated.”
“What’s happening?” Paige asked from across the table.
“Your brother is playing doctor.”
“Iama doctor,” Michael reminded her.
My son, the cardiologist,Joan thought, half-expecting him to pull a stethoscope out of the breast pocket of his gray suit and hold it against her chest.
“What’s the matter with her?” Paige was already half out of her seat.
“Sit down,” Joan told her. “I’m fine.” She brought both hands to her lap, registering the worried faces around her: Michael and Deborah, Paige and Sam, a rather boring couple named Walt and Lisa Something-or-other, and two recent widows, both named Anne, all of whom were staring at her as if she were about to explode. “Honestly, everybody. Stop worrying. I’m fine. We’re missing the speech.”
“Everything all right over there?” Ted Hamilton asked, pausing in his opening remarks and causing the entire room to glance in their direction.
Joan caught Noah’s eyes drift toward Paige, then turn away when he saw her looking.
“Everything’s fine,” Joan said, forcing a laugh. “I’m so sorry. Please continue.”
“Well, as I was saying,” Ted Hamilton began again, referring to the notes in his hand, “I want to thank you all for coming tonight. I’m sure you have better things to do with your Saturday nights than attend an old man’s birthday party.”