Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

Helen Oppenheimer-who had, for a period of twenty-nine months, been Jim’s wife.

Ann’s best friend, Olivia Lewis, had nearly inhaled her cell phone when Ann informed her that Helen was on the invite list.

“But why?” Olivia said. “Why why why? Why did you let Jim talk you into it? You’re a strong woman, Ann. Why didn’t you stand your ground?”

“Jim was dead set against it,” Ann said. “It was my idea.”

“What?” Olivia said.

“Stuart asked Chance to be a groomsman,” Ann said.

“So?” Olivia said. “That does not require you to invite Helen to the wedding.”

Ann didn’t know how to explain it to Olivia, or to Jim or to anyone. When she was sitting on her sunporch the previous summer, composing a list of people to invite to the wedding, she had simply added the name Helen Oppenheimer, and it had felt… right. It had felt Christian-but if she told Olivia or Jim this, they would cry bullshit. Jim had cried bullshit anyway. When he saw Helen’s name, he said, “No way. No fucking way.”

“But Chance is in the wedding party,” Ann said.

“I don’t care,” Jim said. “Doesn’t matter.”

“She won’t come anyway,” Ann said. “We can look good for inviting her, we can look like the bigger people, and she’ll decline.”

Jim had stared at Ann for a second. “I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to do here.”

What was Ann trying to do here? When Ann was very young, her mother had explained the reason behind the spelling of her name: Ann was the saint; Anne with an “e” was the queen. Ann had felt the burden of her nomenclature since then. She yearned to be queenly rather than saintly. After all, no one liked a saint. Saints weren’t fun at parties; saints weren’t good in bed. Saints were altar girls, as Ann had been. Saints devoted themselves to a life of service. Ann had spent her entire adult life in service-first to Jim and Stuart and the twins, then to the population of Durham, North Carolina. Her acts of self-sacrifice bugged Jim and Olivia and her sons to no end, and yet she couldn’t help herself. Her spirit yearned to do the selfless thing, the right thing, the worthy, admirable thing.

Was inviting Helen Oppenheimer to the wedding just another example of Ann flaunting her innate goodness?

She didn’t think so. Deep down, it felt like the opposite. Deep down, Ann despised Helen Oppenheimer, hated her with a dense, black force. Helen Oppenheimer had seduced Jim right out of his marriage to Ann, Helen had allowed herself to get pregnant, she had forced Jim’s hand. Jim had divorced Ann and married Helen Oppenheimer. Helen Oppenheimer had massacred Ann’s family as surely as if she’d entered the living room with an AK-47 and gunned them all down. She had turned the Graham family-once a paragon of the community-into a mockery of a family.

And so admit it: the reason why Ann had written Helen Oppenheimer’s name on that list was because she wanted to prove something. Jim had come back to Ann a scant three years later. Jim had married Ann a second time, and this time they were far, far happier. They treated their marriage with care; they were vigilant about guarding its sanctity. Ann wanted Helen to see her renewed, nearly perfect union with Jim firsthand. Ann wanted to force Helen to gaze upon them operating in unison on this happy occasion, the marriage of their eldest son.

Ann wanted to gloat.

Jim had relented. He was powerless to overturn any of Ann’s decisions once she made up her mind. He had said, “She’d better decline. The last person I want to see on Nantucket on July twentieth is Helen Oppenheimer.”

Ann had thought, Well, then, you shouldn’t have climbed into bed with her, buster.

Even more shocking than issuing the invitation was Helen Oppenheimer accepting it. For all of Ann’s big ideas about showing off to Helen, she had never believed for one second that Helen would actually come. But she had responded yes. She was coming to Nantucket for the weekend, all the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she now lived with a man ten years younger than herself. But she was coming alone.

“Shit!” Jim had shouted.

He’d said, “There’s still time to renege.”

“We can’t renege,” Ann had said, although she was tempted. God, just the thought of Helen Oppenheimer among them all weekend long, and alone, was enough to make Ann physically ill. And she had no one to blame but herself.

“I’ll do it,” Jim said. “I’ll call and tell her you were temporarily insane.”

“No,” Ann said. “If she’s comfortable with it, then I’m comfortable with it.”

Jim had shaken his head and paced the room; she could see him doing battle in his mind. He had created this insufferable situation, and in the thousands of times the topic had arisen over the past fifteen years, he had never once denied the blame.

Finally, he’d taken Ann in his arms and said, “You’re amazing, you know that?”

Now here it was: showtime. Neither Ann nor Jim had been in contact with Helen about her arrangements, but she had RSVP’d yes for the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, and the brunch. They would see her tonight.

Ann wished like hell that Helen could see her and Jim right now: propped up against the pillows of the bed, covered by just a white sheet, sipping champagne at eleven o’clock in the morning.

“To Stuart,” Ann said.

“To Stuart and Jenna,” Jim said, and they clinked glasses.

Ann was experiencing typical mixed feelings about watching her oldest son marry. She had known from the beginning that Stuart would be the first, not only because he was the oldest but because he had always seemed like the marrying kind, sweet and devoted. He had had a girlfriend in high school-darling Trisha Hamborsky-and then in college and a few years after, a girlfriend named Crissy Pine, whom the family now referred to (like Voldemort) as “She Who Shall Not Be Named.” Stuart had very nearly married Crissy. Ann still rued the loss of her grandmother’s Tiffany-cut 2.5-carat diamond ring, although over the years Ann had reminded herself that it was only a ring, a physical object, which was a small price to pay for Stuart’s freedom and future happiness. He and Jenna were a far superior match. Jenna was a wonderful young lady, if perhaps a little liberal leaning with her devotion to Amnesty International and her extreme eco-consciousness. (She had once scolded Ann for throwing away her cardboard coffee cup from Starbucks.) Jenna would never have worn Grand-mère’s ring anyway, Stuart had said. She would have called it a blood diamond.

Blood diamond? Ann had thought. Good grief.

“We’re losing our little boy,” Ann said to Jim.

“Now, now,” Jim said. He took Ann’s champagne flute from her hand and set it on the night table next to his own. Then he came after Ann again.

She pretended to protest, but she couldn’t resist him. She didn’t want to think about Helen Oppenheimer, or She Who Shall Not Be Named. Ann wasn’t going to let either of them take anything away from her ever again. Ann was going to shine.

Table Linens

There are ten antique tablecloths in the attic of the Nantucket house in a box marked “Antique Linens.” These are the tablecloths that Grammie used for her wedding to Pop-Pop in 1943. They are ivory with exquisite, delicate twists of ivy along the border. Your great-grandfather J. D. Bond brought them home from Ireland as a gift for Grammie. They are handmade, classic, and elegant. They are family heirlooms. I have seen them, touched them, ogled over them, dreamt of them. Inanimate objects can’t express wishes, but I know in my heart that if those linens could talk, they would ask to be aired out and used again.

The mood in the backyard was funereal. At quarter to nine, Margot stood in her ersatz pajamas-an old blue oxford shirt of Drum Sr.’s and a pair of cutoff gray sweatpants-holding a cup of coffee that Rhonda had thoughtfully made at seven o’clock before she left for her twelve-mile run. Margot was in her bare feet, they were all in their bare feet-Margot, Jenna, the three kids, and her brother Nick. They were gathered in a semicircle a safe distance away from where the men were clipping the ropes of the swing. Ellie was crying.

The tent guys were young, handsome El Salvadorans. The one named Hector clipped the ropes, and the wooden plank of the swing crashed to the ground. Margot felt her heart drop.

Jenna hid her face in her hands. “Oh, God,” she said. “I can barely stand to watch. This is all my fault.”

Nick was wearing nothing but a pair of red Hawaiian-print swim trunks. His hair was overgrown and sunbleached, and his torso was tanned golden brown. He did have a job, right? He looked like he’d just spent two months in California surfing with Drum Sr. He turned to Margot.

“I don’t know about this, Marge,” he said. “Marge” was his nickname for her, bestowed in 1989 with the first season of The Simpsons, and Margot detested it, which only made Nick’s enjoyment of it more profound. “This is Alfie we’re talking about. This tree should probably be listed in the historic registry. It’s two hundred years old.”

“I know,” Margot snapped. She was impatient with Nick and everyone else who was lagging behind; she had traveled this emotional highway yesterday. “It’s just one branch! There’s no other way, believe me.”

Ellie sobbed into Margot’s leg. Margot watched Nick pick the swing up off the ground and loop the rope around his arm. The plank of the swing was worn smooth. Margot was forty years old, and the swing had been there as long as she could remember. Who had put it up? She thought it might have been Pop-Pop; she would have to ask her father. Forty percent chance of showers, she thought. There was no doubt in Margot’s mind that now, because the branch was coming down, there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky all day tomorrow.

Hector and his associates indicated that they should all back up even farther. He set up a stepladder, and one of the other guys brought out the chain saw.

“I can’t watch,” Jenna said.

It did seem morbid, all of them standing around, gawking like witnesses at an execution. Margot reminded herself that it could be worse. Alfie might have been struck by lightning. As it was, he would still stand guard over their property, still shade them; birds would still sing from their unseen perches in his upper branches. They were only taking off one limb-and Roger was right, that branch was hanging awfully low. It might have snapped on its own with the next nor’easter.

There was a honking, and Margot turned to see a silver minivan pull into the driveway.

“It’s Kevin!” Jenna said. “Oh, thank God!”

Margot made a face. Their whole lives it had always been “Thank God for Kevin.” Kevin was eleven months younger than Margot-an oops baby, Margot was certain, although neither of her parents had ever admitted to it-but because Kevin was a boy, he had often been treated as the oldest. And to boot, he had been born with the unflappable calm and unquestioned authority of an elder statesman. He had been class president all through high school, then had attended Penn, where he’d been the head of the Student Society of Engineers. While in college, he had performed CPR on a man who collapsed on the Thirtieth Street subway platform, and he’d saved the man’s life. Kevin had been awarded a medal by the mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Rendell. Kevin Carmichael was, literally, a lifesaver.

He unfolded himself from the minivan-he had no shame about driving the thing, despite ruthless teasing from both Margot and Nick-and stood, all six feet six of him, in the sun, grinning at them.

“We’re here!” he said. “The party can start!”

Beanie materialized at his side, all five foot two of her, and slid her arm around Kevin’s middle so that the two of them could be frozen in everyone’s mind for a second, posed like a photograph captioned “Happily Married Couple,” before the three boys busted out of the back of the car and all hell broke loose.

Kevin strode forward, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed at the tree and the stepladder and Hector with the chain saw. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

God, his tone drove Margot insane. Was it normal, she wondered, to have your siblings grate on you like this? As much as she was dreading the amputation of Alfie’s branch, she now wished it had already happened, just so she didn’t have to stand by and watch Kevin weigh in on it. Kevin was both an architect and a mechanical engineer; he had founded a company that fixed structural problems in large buildings, important buildings-like the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Like the White House.