The High Season(93)

60


THE TREES SHOOK like hula dancers. Down the lawn, a napkin flew into the air. The inflatable animals were whipping side to side. One of the enormous pool toys barrel-rolled free and a woman shrieked in happy fright.

“The sculptures,” Ruthie said. “They have to be deflated. This wind is gusting.”

“Where’s Lark?” Joe asked.

“Gone. And the crew is eating cake.”

Then a blur of someone running hard across the lawn. Doe? She vaulted inside the bouncy castle.

“I’ll get the crew,” Joe said, and turned and ran.

Behind her, the slap of running footsteps. Time slowed down as Shari ran toward her, carrying her pink heels in both hands. Calamity approaching, slowed down to the pace of a royal procession, Ruthie trying to read Shari’s face, her open mouth, ready to speak.

“Ruthie!” She stopped in front of her and put a hand on her arm. She was panting, almost doubled over. “Jem…the bouncy castle! We think she’s in there with Lucas. Mom-to-mom, you should maybe check.”

    “With Lucas?”

Now her mind speeded up in a flutter of images. Jem, expectant, every muscle quivering, staring at the entrance to the party. He makes me laugh. Lucas is going to be there. Is that his date?

Things went white.

She took off, running flat out. She felt a raindrop, she felt the sudden, surprising strength of a wind gust. The bouncy castle strained at its ropes, and one side lifted completely off the ground.

The events of the night now seemed inevitable, like the end of a play. She would pay. She would pay. The knowledge seared her with each thudding footstep, the grass slick under her feet. Ruthie now clearly heard someone screaming. Jem.

“Holy fuck!” someone yelled.

Another gust and the house rose, tilting, the wind now underneath it, lifting it, the last three ropes straining.

There was no breath in her lungs to shout. There was too much distance between her and the bright-pink inflatable prison, and panic and running had squeezed her lungs tight. The unfolding nightmare of this.

The house was now a good five feet in the air, and Lucas slid out, hitting the ground with a shout of aggrieved pain. She saw Jem’s face, white and scared, holding on at the opening as the house bounced.

Ruthie skidded to a halt underneath. Jem looked down into her face. Their eyes locked. Ruthie shook her head hard. She held up both hands to say stop. The castle was too high, she needed to wait for the gust to die.

Behind her daughter, Doe’s hands were on Jem’s shoulders, her mouth by her ear. Someone, one of the crew, threw himself at the rope and tried to grab it as it whipped out of reach. Joe was next to him, straining to catch it.

The wind flattened for a moment, the house tilting closer to the ground.

    Ruthie screamed a scream that could wake up a slumbering world. “Jump!”

Doe let go of her shoulders and Jem leaped out, in the air for less time than Ruthie could even cry or pray, and then she was on the ground, landing on her feet, legs bent, even sticking the landing for a moment, her daughter, her baby, her beauty, her treasure, her heart, her love, her life, miraculously summoning up three years of gymnastic training before she got bored and too tall, then tilting onto the ground and Ruthie was there almost in time to catch her. Holding her so tightly, sobbing into her hair, saying It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

And then the divots came loose and the house took off in a great galumphing heave, ropes swinging like Tarzan. Up, up in the sky, fifteen feet, twenty feet, and a wisp of twirling fabric drifted out of the opening, pirouetting like a tiny dancer as it fell so softly on the lawn. Jem’s bra.

And Doe was still inside.

Everyone looking up into the darkening sky, breaths held. People shouting holy shit, people screaming. The castle tilted past a tree, its branches scraping the bottom, past the museum grounds, riding another gust.

Joe and the crew frozen on the lawn, looking up, and Shari screaming.

And they all saw it then, something incredible, a blur of almost color, a dress made of light, a cloud, an angel, a girl falling through the sky.





61


YOU WOULD EXPECT Shari to be the type of person who would shatter. You’d expect hysteria, you’d expect appeals to Jesus.

She was calm. She spoke urgently but politely to the paramedics. She sat in the chair in the emergency room, bent double, her face against her knees. Ruthie kept her hand flat on Shari’s back. When she sat up again her face was pale. Ruthie recognized a mother who had tightened every string, screwed every bolt, to hold herself together because she was coming apart.

“One day I was upset about something,” she said to Ruthie. One tear trailed down her cheek. “What was it, I don’t know, probably money, it was always money. And I said out loud, What’s going to happen to us, Dora? She was, I don’t know, maybe four, maybe five? And she piped up from the floor where she was playing. We’re all going to die, Mommy. She was always a no-bullshit kid.”

“I know,” Ruthie said. But she didn’t know. The truth was she’d never gotten to know Doe very well.

None of them had seen Doe land. Within minutes they heard the sirens, even after everyone seemed to be running in circles. The paramedics arrived so fast no one at the party had time to find her. She had landed in Laura and Sam Beecham’s pool, right on top of one of the enormous inflatables that had blown into their yard. Earlier in the evening and with great irritation (it had almost hit their dog), Sam had wrestled it into the pool and tied it to the ladder. Sam was an orthopedist. He was the first one to reach Doe. He had called 911.