Spring Fever (11 page)

He stared. “Did you really just say that? Did you accuse me of having an affair?”

“Aren’t you?’

“Have I ever lied to you, Annajane?” Mason’s voice was level, which was infuriating. “Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me?”

“What about last night?” she ignored his first question. “It was the company Christmas party. You were supposed to be there! Everybody was expecting you. I was expecting you. Do you know how humiliated I was? I worked my ass off putting that party together. For you. And your family and the company. But you didn’t even call. If you went to dinner at eight, you knew there was no way you’d be back in Passcoe. But you didn’t even call to let me know?”

He shrugged. “Okay, my bad. I should have called. But Dad was with me. And we had Eva and the Maxi-Mart folks with us, and everybody wanted to head out and celebrate. I would have looked like a wuss if I’d begged off. What was I gonna say? ‘Hey y’all, I can’t go to dinner. I gotta call my wife.’”

“And that’s worse?” Annajane asked. “Than letting me down? Breaking a promise to your wife?”

Mason was still holding the remote control. He tossed it onto the chair where he’d been sitting. “Okay. This is ridiculous. I was late last night. I missed the Christmas party. I should have called. For that, I am guilty, and I apologize.” He turned and stomped toward the front door.

“Wait a minute,” Annajane cried. “We’re not through here.” She shook the CD. “Just tell me how this got in your car.”

Mason had his hand on the doorknob. “ “I’m through. I am not talking about this anymore. Either you believe me or you don’t.”

“Where are you going?”

The door was open and he didn’t look back. “I’m going over to Mama’s. She’s always got something to eat. Unlike here.” He didn’t slam the door. In fact, he didn’t even bother to close it all the way.

Half an hour later, Annajane did slam the door. And she didn’t bother to lock it as she left. Nobody locked doors in Passcoe, especially at Cherry Hill. She tossed a hastily packed overnight bag in the backseat of her Acura, backed out of the driveway, and headed for the main gate. The snow had already begun to melt, and the ancient oak trees lining both sides of the drive looked menacing, with their twisted gray limbs blocking out the weak winter sunlight. A carpet of acorns crunched beneath her tires. A rusted-out pickup truck with an enormous Fraser fir poking out of the bed rolled past her, headed toward the big house. She gave a dispirited wave to Nate, the Bayless’s yard man. At the end of the drive, she picked up the remote from the passenger seat, mashed the button, and waited impatiently while the wrought-iron gates slowly creaked open.

Ten minutes later, she was on the bypass. At some point, she realized she didn’t really have a destination in mind. All she knew was that she had to get out of Passcoe and away from the Bayless compound.

An hour later, her cell phone rang. She picked it up, and, seeing the screen, tossed it back onto the passenger seat without answering. Mason. She blinked back tears, and a moment later heard the phone buzz, letting her know he’d left a voice mail.

Five minutes later, it rang again. Annajane’s hand hovered over the phone. She even picked it up, but then changed her mind. Let him call.

Two hours later, when she pulled into the driveway of the modest little frame house at Holden Beach, she paused before turning off the ignition. Had she really just done this? Picked a fight with Mason? Accused him of cheating, and then run home to Mama? This was crazy. She should turn around, go home, and talk things out calmly with Mason. Make him understand how badly he’d hurt her.

It was full dark. Multicolored lights were strung all across the eaves of her parents’ house. A silly plastic light-up snowman was posed on the front steps. Annajane and her mother hated that snowman and tried to persuade Leonard how tacky it was, but her stepfather delighted in hauling it out of storage every Christmas. She could see the glow of the artificial tree through the drapes. Somehow, she felt reassured. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

Before she could change her mind and turn around to head home, Ruth was opening the aluminum storm door, but instead of surprise or pleasure at seeing her only daughter, Annajane recognized something else in her mother’s face.

She jumped out of the car and ran to the door. “Mom? What is it? Is it Leonard? Is he okay?”

Ruth’s face was pale. “Leonard’s fine. Have you talked to Mason?”

“No,” Annajane said bitterly. “Don’t tell me he called you.”

Ruth held out her own phone. “Here. You need to call him.”

Annajane shook her head stubbornly. “Let him stew. Did he tell you what he did to me? He missed the Christmas party? Stood me up? Mama, I think maybe…”

Ruth shook the phone in her daughter’s face. “You are not listening. Honey, you need to call Mason right this minute. It’s Glenn. He’s … Just call Mason. All right?”

Her mind was a blank. Her hands were trembling. Ruth dialed and handed her the phone.

“Mason? I just got to Mama’s. She said…”

“It’s Dad,” Mason said. He sounded calm, detached even. “It’s bad. They think he’s had a heart attack. We’re at Passcoe Memorial.”

“Oh my God,” Annajane breathed. “When? How long ago?”

“We’re not sure. Mom found him on the floor of the bedroom when she got home this afternoon. They’re working on him, but … we just don’t know anything. Dr. Kaufman is in with him.”

“I’m so sorry,” Annajane said. “Mason, I am so, so sorry. I’m coming back. Right now.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve gotta go. The nurse is coming out to talk to us.”

“Call me,” Annajane said. “Let me know what they say. I’m on the way.”

*   *   *

She found Mason alone in the waiting room at the hospital, slumped forward in one of those hard-backed green chairs. Even with the harsh fluorescent overhead lights the beige room was wreathed in shadows. He didn’t look up when she sat down and called his name.

“Where’s Sallie?” she asked, looking around the room. “And Pokey?”

“Pokey had to go home,” Mason said, his voice a monotone. “To nurse the baby. Mama’s in the room with Dad. They tried to make her leave, but she raised holy hell and threatened to sue everybody, so they finally let her stay.”

“What about Davis?”

Mason shrugged. “He went up to Boone early this morning, to go skiing. Phone reception is lousy up there.”

“Is there … any change?”

“No,” Mason said. He sat up and stared at the television. “It’s not good,” he said bleakly. “Dr. Kaufman says his brain had likely been without oxygen for at least an hour or more by the time Mama found him. The EMTs managed to get his heart started in the ambulance, but Dr. Kaufman told us, even if he does make it, he won’t be the same. You know.”

Annajane nodded mutely. “I prayed the whole way back,” she said finally. “For your daddy. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed so hard in my life.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “That’s nice. Mama will appreciate it.”

They sat like that, not talking for another hour. Finally, she could stand the silence no more. “I’m gonna get some coffee,” she said, standing and stretching. “I’ll get some for you, too.”

“No thanks,” Mason said.

She got up and walked over to the coffee station in the corner, taking her time with sugar packets and instant creamer. She was about to sit down again when Sallie Bayless appeared in the doorway.

She was still dressed in the elegant black cashmere sweater and slacks she’d been wearing hours and hours ago, when Annajane had sat through that awful luncheon. But Sallie’s usually perfectly arranged hair was a tangled mess. Her face was pale, her lipstick chewed off, her eyes red-rimmed.

“Mama?” Mason stood.

She nodded. “He’s gone. They did everything they could, but your daddy is gone, son.” She burst into tears, and threw herself into her oldest child’s arms, while Annajane stood by, mute and heartbroken.

*   *   *

The next few days and weeks after the funeral were a blur.

Glenn Bayless’s sudden death shook his family, and the company, to its core. Sallie, his widow, wept constantly and seemed unable to cope with even the simplest detail of day-to-day life. The first few nights after Glenn’s death, she declared herself afraid to stay alone in the rambling old house. It fell to Mason, the oldest son, to move into his old bedroom down the hall to keep her company.

After two weeks, Sallie’s doctor prescribed sleeping pills, and Mason came home. To the lumpy pullout sofa.

He plunged into the work of settling his father’s estate and came home exhausted and ashen-faced from endless meetings with the lawyers. If Annajane inquired, he brusquely replied that everything was “fine.”

But things were not fine. Without confiding in his son, Glenn had quietly begun acquiring expensive parcels of land for a new bottling plant in the southern part of the state, anticipating increased demand for Quixie. But the owner of the key parcel, the only acreage with the direct rail access a plant would require, had suddenly backed out of the sale. The company was stuck with the land, bought at a top-of-the-market price, with a correspondingly high interest rate.

At the same time, Quixie’s sales had taken a worrisome dip. Vitamin waters, energy drinks, and flavored bottled iced teas were eroding their share of the soft drink market.

And Annajane and Mason hadn’t had sex since before the ill-fated Quixie Christmas party. They lived in the same house and worked for the same company, their offices only feet apart, but the chasm between them seemed to widen every day. When Leonard Hudgens fell and broke his hip and died of pneumonia a month after the death of Glenn Bayless, Annajane spent two weeks in Holden Beach with her mother. By the time she got back to Passcoe, Mason had moved out of the caretaker’s cottage. And the marriage was over.

9

The nurse who’d wheeled Sophie back to the exam room beckoned. “Dr. Kaufman wanted me to tell you that he’s gonna go ahead and take out her appendix,” she said hurriedly. “They’re prepping her now. You can go back, but only for a minute.”

They found Sophie clutching a teddy bear, with an IV-drip tube connected to her arm. Nurse Molly patted the child’s hand. “She’s been such a good girl,” she told Mason. “Didn’t even cry when we stuck her for blood or put in the IV needle.”

Mason laid his cheek against Sophie’s. “Hey kiddo,” he said softly. “Dr. Max is gonna fix up your tummy now.”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “Daddy?” she said woozily. “I got a new bear.”

“I see that,” Mason said.

Annajane took Sophie’s hand. “What have you got there?”

Clenched in the palm of her hand was an empty glass vial, probably from some drug that had been injected into her IV tube. Sophie was a magpie. From the moment she’d first started to crawl, she had a habit of picking up random small items. A misplaced earring, paper clip, discarded gum wrapper, all of these were treasures to Sophie, who would carefully tuck them in a pocket or hide them under her pillow. Or more often than not lately, in her treasured pink plastic pocketbook.

“It’s a baby bottle. For my new bear,” Sophie said.

“I’ll keep it for you,” Annajane promised, carefully placing the vial on the table out of Sophie’s reach. “Does the bear have a name?”

“Mittens,” Sophie said. “I’m sooo sleepy.”

“You rest,” Mason told her. “And when you wake up, I’ll be right here.”

“Annajane, too?”

“Me, too,” Annajane said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And then they were wheeling her into surgery.

When they got back to the waiting area, Pokey was there. She’d changed out of her wedding attire and was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt. “The nurse told me they’re gonna operate?”

Mason nodded tersely. “Did you go by the club? How’s Celia?”

“Fine, I guess,” Pokey reported. “Pete took Letha to help out with the boys. She made me promise to call her as soon as we know something. I talked to him a little while ago. He said people were a little shocked at first, just kinda standing around, staring at each other, but then Mama took charge, got the waiters passing appetizers and the bar up and running, and the band warmed up. Everybody’s dancing and having a high old time.”

She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “Mama has ordered me to make sure you call her with an update on Sophie.”

He exhaled loudly. “I can’t deal with her right now.” He looked at Annajane. “Could you?”

Annajane was in no mood for a long conversation with Sallie Bayless either, but she took the phone, made the call, and reassured her former mother-in-law that Dr. Kaufman had things firmly in hand. She heard the sound of music in the background, the clink of glasses and ice, and voices.

“Thank you for calling, Annajane dear,” Sallie said finally. “I know this can’t be easy for you.”

“Sophie is a little trouper,” Annajane said. “But yes, I’ll feel better once she’s out of surgery.”

“I meant the wedding,” Sallie said.

Annajane allowed herself a wry smile. “I’m happy for Mason. And Celia,” she added.

“Of course,” Sallie said. Her tone said otherwise.

When she rejoined the others, Mason was thumbing through e-mails on his BlackBerry, and his sister was staring at the television with a blank expression on her face.

“Hey,” Pokey said, standing up quickly. “C’mon, let’s go raid the vending machines. I’m starved. Mase? Can we bring you anything?”

“Nothing,” he said without looking up.

Annajane trailed along after Pokey. They found a bank of vending machines outside the hospital’s cafeteria, which was closed.

Pokey dug in the pocket of her jeans and came up with a handful of coins. She studied the candy machine. “Hmm. Almond Joy or Butterfinger?”

“Nothing for me,” Annajane said. “Maybe a bottle of water or something.” She looked at the other machines. “Although I could use some aspirin or ibuprofen or something for this headache.”

“Hangover?” Pokey gave her a surprised look. Annajane was almost never sick, and almost never drank to excess.

Her friend sighed. “I dosed myself with bourbon before leaving for the church this afternoon. Should have known it would come back later and bite me in the butt.”