“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.