Natalie yelped in surprise and dropped the plate she was holding. Pastries and wedding cake were strewn across the floor. Cream, berries and frosting were everywhere. The young man frowned and bent down to survey the damage.
“You scared me,” Natalie told Rose. Then she looked at the carpet. “This is a mess. Johnny, can you tell one of the waiters to bring a broom?”
“Sure thing.” The young man ran back in the direction of the ballroom. Rose thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him.
“Aunt Rose, are you feeling all right? Uncle Mort was looking for you when Mimi and Edward cut the cake. Why are you in the coatroom?” Natalie was trying to brush off some of the frosting that had landed on her shoe.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing, sneaking off to the coatroom with that man?”
Natalie laughed. “Man? Johnny’s my cousin—you’ve met him a million times. I told my mom we were leaving the ballroom for a while. The music’s too loud and Edward’s sister keeps making me dance with people I don’t know. Johnny and I wanted to eat our dessert where no one would bother us.”
“Hmph. You expect me to believe that the two of you were going to the coatroom to eat dessert?”
“What else would we be doing?”
Rose held up her hands in frustration. “Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?”
“Why are you being so mean?” Natalie could see that her aunt was irritated, but she couldn’t understand what was making her so upset.
Rose took two steps toward her. “Why do you think all those men wanted to dance with you? I saw the looks they were giving you in that dress.”
Natalie took two steps back. “I don’t even like this dress. They made me wear it.”
“Well, your mother never should have let you out of the house in it.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“Don’t you dare raise your voice to me!”
“Hey—quit yelling at her!” Johnny had returned from the ballroom. He had brought along one of the waiters, and Helen was just a few steps behind. When Natalie saw her mother, she started to cry. Johnny glared at Rose, and the waiter retreated from the scene, saying he would return later to clean up the floor.
“Shhh, shhh.” Helen held Natalie and whispered, “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right.” Then Helen turned to Johnny. “Take her back to the party, honey. You two go have dessert. I’m going to stay and talk to Rose.”
Once the kids were out of earshot, Helen’s composure evaporated. She was livid.
“What did you say to her?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” Rose retreated to the back of the coatroom, but Helen followed her.
“Nothing? She’s a young girl, Rose. You were attacking her!”
“If she’s such a young girl, why are you letting her parade around in that skimpy dress?”
“For heaven’s sake, Rose, it’s the dress Mimi picked! Dinah and Judith are wearing it too!”
“Dinah and Judith aren’t thirteen.”
“Why do you care what she’s wearing all of a sudden? Since when do you care about anything Natalie does?”
Rose almost smiled. “It isn’t easy having someone else tell you how to raise your own child, is it?”
“Stop it. I never told you how to raise Teddy.”
“Didn’t you? What would you call it, then?”
“At least I didn’t pretend he wasn’t there. You act like Natalie doesn’t even exist!”
“She’s your daughter, not mine. That was the deal we made thirteen years ago.”
Helen’s face crumpled, and she put one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We never made any deal. You know that. We never even spoke about it. That night … it was like we were both in a dream. Between the blizzard and Mort and Abe being away … it was like it was supposed to happen. I wanted a girl so badly. You needed a boy so much. I thought we’d raise them together in the house on Christopher Avenue. You must have thought that too. I thought we’d be a family—all of us, always, mothers to both of them, and it wouldn’t matter. You were like my sister—I thought you would love them both the way I did. I never thought it would turn out so wrong. I never thought you’d end up hating me. I never thought one of our babies would die.”
“Stop saying our babies. They were yours. They were always yours. You took Natalie and you never let me have Teddy. You had to have both of them.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is! I gave you Natalie and you were supposed to give me Teddy. You were supposed to let him be mine. But you never let that happen!” She was so focused on her argument with Helen that she never heard Abe’s footsteps coming down the hall.
“What the hell are you screaming about? It’s a wedding, for Chrissake!” Abe filled up the doorway of the coatroom, blocking the light from the hallway. How much had he heard? How much had he understood? Rose’s legs began to buckle, and she thought she would be sick.
But it was Abe who hit the ground first. Rose felt the tremor from the fall before her eyes even registered it. Helen was on her knees next, shaking her husband’s massive shoulders, listening for his breath and yelling to the coat check girl, just returned from break, to call for an ambulance. Rose stumbled back to the reception, amid the chaos and the noise, back to Mort to tell him the news. “It’s your brother,” she told him. “I think he had a heart attack.”
Chapter 54
MORT
In the chaos that followed Abe’s heart attack, Mort struggled with what to do next. On the one hand, he was in the middle of his daughter’s wedding. On the other, his only brother was being rushed to the hospital. He knew with certainty that Mimi would have no further need of him that evening. He couldn’t say the same, however, for Abe. Mort made his apologies and said his goodbyes to the groom’s family and guests. Then he left the wedding and drove to the hospital. Rose stayed behind with Judith and Dinah.
The first time Mort had visited the hospital where they brought Abe was when Teddy was two years old and got hit with a baseball. Helen had ridden in the back of the car that day, holding Teddy on her lap. After Mort had dropped them off at the emergency room entrance, he had gone to find cheaper parking because the hospital lot had been so overpriced. When he pulled into the hospital this time, he saw that the rates were three times what they had been back then. This time, he pulled in and parked.
He was almost an hour behind the others in arriving, but he finally found them in the cardiac waiting room on the fourth floor. He was glad Natalie had stayed behind with Arlene and Johnny. The waiting room was grim, and no place for a young girl. Through the closed glass door, he could make out the faded wallpaper, peeling at the edges, and the shabby green tweed furniture that filled the space. Sol was drinking coffee from a paper cup while Sam and Joe paced back and forth under the murky lighting. Harry and his wife, Barbara, were on one of the sofas, talking quietly, and Helen sat with George, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Mort hesitated before he opened the door—he felt like he was intruding on their family gathering. But after Helen looked up and spotted him, turning back was no longer a possibility.
Helen motioned for him to come in and got up from the sofa to greet him. “You didn’t have to leave the wedding,” she told him. “I feel terrible that you left.”
“It was almost over anyway.” He shrugged. “I wanted to come.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Helen said, and George patted him on the back. When the other young men came over to shake hands, Mort knew he had done the right thing by coming.
“What did the doctors say?”
“They wouldn’t say much, just told us to wait,” George answered.
“Then we’ll wait,” Mort said, and he took a seat in a chair next to Sol. The others resumed their hushed conversations.
Sol drained the last of his coffee and turned to Mort. “Nice wedding, by the way. Beautiful bride.”
“Thanks.”