the makeshift bars, the ice, and the bottles of water and wine. Eliot had straightened the fencing mats and marked out the shuttlecock court with masking tape. Michaela had set up a small table for the trophies. Overhead, the chandeliers flickered. The gold trophies, silver plates, and crystal glasses reflected the glimmering light. Everything looked perfect.
Always a bad sign.
-25-
Tom was still gone on his airport errand when John Richard and Viv Martini sashayed in, the first to arrive. Standing alone behind the makeshift bar, I was unnerved by their appearance. They glanced in my direction, then sniffed and looked away. John Richard looked handsome in an open-necked blue shirt, charcoal vest, and black pants. His twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend, slinking along in a clingy silver dress with matching spike heels, made my stomach turn over. Her dress was slit so far up the side, she should have been doing jumping jacks.
I, on the other hand, feared the worst, appearance-wise. Not only did I pale in comparison to Viv, I couldn’t bear the thought of how Tom would assess my appearance vis-r-vis that of Sara Beth, with her aristocrat-in-the- Peace-Corps beauty and moral high ground. I glanced at myself in the reflection of a silver tray. Working in the hot castle kitchen had made my hair very curly. My makeup was long gone; my face shone with exertion. The cavernous Great Hall was cold, and I needed a sweater over my thin caterers’ top, not to mention a new apron, as the one I had on was liberally dappled with curry sauce.
Julian took over the bar while I dashed back to our room, dragged a comb through my hair, dabbed on makeup and lipstick, and grabbed the only sweater I’d brought, the cardigan I’d worn to Eliot’s office. As an afterthought, I seized my cell phone from its charger and dropped it into one of the sweater pockets. Reception in the castle was iffy, but carrying a phone somehow made me feel more secure.
In the kitchen, I tied on a clean apron, rechecked my list, made sure the roasts weren’t cooking too quickly, started reheating the rice, and slid the potato casseroles into the oven. In forty-five minutes, Julian and I would bring forth all the food. I launched myself back up to the Great Hall. I didn’t care if I looked like a plump little ex- wife who was also the caterer; I didn’t care how I would stack up to the tall, gorgeous nurse from the jungle. I was not going to miss Arch’s fifteen minutes of fencing fame.
“The attack in foil is like a charge,” Michaela was saying to the assembled group of parents and students. Most were listening, but a few were milling about the shuttlecock court, where no one was playing, and the penny- prick game, where someone had already swiped the Susan B. Anthony dollar. Eliot, standing to one side of the group, looked depressed.
Arch and Howie, in fencing uniforms and masks, stood on the mat. Arch had his back to me; Howie, who looked frighteningly anonymous in his mask, faced me.
“We will have Arch,” Michaela gestured in my son’s direction, “and Howie,” she nodded to the taller boy, “demonstrate attack, parry, riposte. Then one of them will charge. En garde, boys.”
Arch and Howie moved smartly back and forth, their foils clanging, their feet slapping the mat. Howie attacked. Arch swiftly parried and riposted. The spectators tightened into a semicircle in front of the mat. Watching Arch, my heart swelled with pride and I didn’t care if John Richard was only fifteen feet away. I wanted to holler, That?s my son!
Without warning, Howie leaned forward, extended his sword, and ran toward Arch. I gasped so loudly half a dozen parents turned and glared. As Howie hurled himself toward Arch, my son froze, unsure what to do.
“Stop!” I shrieked, then wished I hadn’t. Arch tumbled backward just as Howie’s sword whacked his chest, then his leg. Unable to keep his balance, Arch flailed off the mat. Howie, in full launch, could not stop. I watched helplessly as his right foot came down hard on Arch’s left ankle. Arch screamed. Howie fell on top of him.
Michaela, John Richard, Julian, Buddy Lauderdale, and I all rushed forward. Howie seemed to be unable to extricate himself from the tangle of limbs. Buddy Lauderdale wrenched his son’s arm and demanded to know if he was hurt. Howie muttered something I couldn’t hear and clumsily righted himself. Leaning over Arch, Howie kept saying that he was sorry, very sorry, and why didn’t Arch parry? I was so intensely angry that I had to restrain myself from shaking Howie Lauderdale. How could a supposedly “good kid” have taken advantage of a younger boy like this?
Tears slid out of Arch’s eyes as Michaela and I removed his mask. His cheeks had purpled, but he made no noise to indicate he was crying. Instead, he croaked, “I think my foot’s broken. Dad, is it broken? Dad?”
John Richard shoved past Buddy and Howie Lauderdale. He removed Arch’s shoe, then probed with both hands along the foot and ankle. “Hard to tell.” He looked up, not at Arch, but at Viv, who had sidled up to the action. John Richard said, “It should be x-rayed.”
Viv said, “Now?”
“I’m taking him.” It was Julian’s voice. Our friend pushed forward to kneel beside Arch, who gave him an imploring look as tears continued to flow down his dark cheeks. “The father of my best friend at Elk Park is an orthopedist,” Julian explained matter-of-factly. “Dr. Ling. He lives by the lake, five minutes from his office, where he does X rays. He made me promise if I ever needed anything, I would give him a call.”
“I know Ling,” John Richard said.
You idiot Jerk, I raged internally, take your son to the orthopedic surgeon yourself. I turned my attention back to Arch.
He was trying not to writhe in pain. Tears still streamed down his cheeks. I knelt beside him and asked what I could do. Miserably, he shook his head. Michaela appeared with a plastic bag filled with ice. She gently laid it on the rapidly swelling ankle. I wondered if she was thinking of the coup de Jarnac.
I said, “Maybe he should go to the emergency room at Southwest - “
“Let me go with Julian,” Arch said to me, his voice low. “Just let me, okay?”
“Dr. Ling is closer and better than Southwest,” Julian insisted. “If the X rays show Arch needs to go to the hospital, I can take him. Arch, can you sit up, put your arm around my shoulders?” When Arch nodded mutely, Julian deftly hauled him to a standing position. My son’s left ankle dangled, and he winced.
“I’m going with you - “
“No way,” Julian told me firmly. “Stay and handle the banquet. Have a couple of parents help you out. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.”
“Arch, honey, do you want me to come with you?” I asked.
“I’m okay, Mom.”
“I’m really, really sorry,” Howie Lauderdale gargled, increasingly distraught. “I was just trying to be aggressive, the way Dad - “
“Howie!” Buddy snapped. To avoid strangling Howie, Buddy, or both of them, I accompanied Julian, who supported a hobbling Arch, to the hall’s east door.
“Wait!” called Michaela in her commanding-coach voice. “We have something for Arch.” She snatched a trophy from her table and strode over to us. She announced loudly, “For Ninth-Grade Fencer of the Year.”
Arch’s tear-streaked face instantly lit up. The parents and kids all clapped. I would have been elated, if I hadn’t felt so miserable.
Easing Arch into the Rover proved difficult. Away from his peers, he squawked at every move that jiggled his injured foot. Around us, midwinter darkness pressed in. A high-pressure system must have moved across Colorado, though, because the air felt unusually warm - which probably meant it was forty degrees instead of five.
“Friday the thirteenth,” commented Julian as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Go figure.”
“You all right, hon?” I asked Arch for the hundredth time.
“I’m fine, Mom. We’ll call you.”
I cursed myself all the way back up to the Great Hall. Buddy Lauderdale must have told his son to press hard in the attack. I’d heard enough tales of fathers sharpening football spikes and bribing sons to crash into hockey and soccer goalies not to be certain of that. But I never would have thought Howie would play along. Of course, I’d seen Howie fence, and beneath that cherubic face was an ambitious athlete. Once he was in a competitive situation, he might be unable to stop himself. No doubt that was what Buddy Lauderdale had been counting on, when he’d called Michaela and said he wanted the two boys to fence tonight.
Arch had frozen when Howie commenced his attack. Why? Because I’d gasped, and ruined his concentration?
Was everything that went wrong with my child ultimately my fault? I didn’t want to contemplate that
