Chapter 20
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Ada wrote the remarks at her kitchen table on Sunday morning between six and eight.
She wrote them on a single sheet of unlined paper torn from her notebook, in pencil, in the handwriting she had been using since she was fourteen — small, slanted, with a particular sharp uptick on her t she had never grown out of.
She drank a thermos of tea while she wrote.
She did not, while she wrote, look at her phone.
She did not, while she wrote, listen to music.
The light through her kitchen window changed twice.
The light went from the cold gray-blue of pre-dawn to the thin clean yellow of early winter morning.
By the time she was done, the light was bright enough to see the dust on her windowsill, which she did not, today, wipe.
She kept the remarks short.
She wrote them small and clear.
She read them through three times. She crossed out one sentence.
She added one sentence. She rewrote the third sentence.
She read it through a fourth time. She folded the sheet in half and put it in the inside pocket of her coat.
She put her thermos in the dishwasher. She washed her face. She put on the dress.
The dress was the color of a winter sky.
She had bought it three weeks ago, at Marin Pell’s request, with a Tidemark-issued allowance — long-sleeved, knee-length, with a small high collar.
It was the same one she had worn at the donor reception in Portland, because she had not wanted, in the end, to buy a different one.
It had done at Portland. It would do at the gala.
She put on the flat ankle boots from Portland too.
She did her hair up, the same way as Portland, two pieces loose at the side of her face.
She put on the lipstick the color of a russet apple.
She did not, this time, look at herself in the mirror for very long.
She put on her coat.
She drove to the rink.
She arrived at noon, with the remarks in her coat pocket and the small wax-paper sleeve of brioche her mother had pressed into her pocket at the door of Joanna’s office the evening before — after the wrong sentence, instead of the apology her mother could not yet say.
The brioche had been wrapped in two layers of paper. The thing Eilis had said low at the door, the thing Ada had replayed in the car, had been: for your morning, my love. Do not bring it to the gala. Eat it before the gala. Eat it slow. Eat it standing up at the lobby bench.
Ada had eaten it slow.
She had eaten it standing up at the lobby bench at ten minutes past noon, in her coat, with her tea, while watching the ferry come back from Tidewater Island in the gray winter light.
She had eaten the brioche cardamom by cardamom, in the bright cold lobby, with the heater set at sixty-three because a backup goalie had set it before sunrise.
She had finished the brioche.
She had folded the wax paper.
She had put it in her coat pocket next to the remarks.
She had gone upstairs to the mezzanine corner, where the long bench was empty.
She had sat on the bench for two minutes, alone, in her coat, with her flat ankle boots on the cold concrete, and looked down at the rink floor below.
The rink floor at noon on Sunday was halfway through becoming the gala.
The temporary platform was down. The folding tables were in position.
The string of small white lights along the boards was on.
The Tidemark banner on the lobby side was straight.
A long row of round dining tables had been set up across the platform, draped in dark navy cloths, each set with a small lantern in the center.
A small raised stage stood at the lobby end of the floor.
On the stage was a single microphone on a stand.
On the stand was a paper card that said, in Marin Pell’s brisk hand, Ada Halloran — opening, 6:05 p.m.
Ada had looked at the card.
She had looked at the rink.
She had looked at the mezzanine corner of the long bench where she had reached for a man’s hand three nights ago.
She had said, very quietly, into the cold air of the mezzanine, all right, then.
She had gone downstairs to the kitchenette to read her remarks to Joanna at noon as planned.
She had read them.
Joanna had listened.
Joanna had, at the end of the page, set down her good pen, looked at Ada across the desk, and said, in her plain weary sturdy voice: Halloran.
That is the speech. Do not let any other person see it.
Do not give Pete a copy. Do not give Marin a copy.
Bring it to the stage in your pocket. Read it from the page. Go.
Ada had turned to go.
“Ada.”
She had stopped at the door.
Joanna had been looking at the legal pad, not at her.
“Yesterday, in my office, I told you I needed clean before I needed kind. I have been hearing myself say it all night. It was true, and I should not have said it, and both of those things fit in the same chair. You gave me clean anyway, and it turned out to be the kindest version of the truth I have heard in this building in twenty years. And for the record — Wes was never the backup plan. He was the first answer. He volunteered before you knew there was a problem to volunteer for. I watched him do it. It is going in the notebook.”
She had underlined something twice.
“Now get out. I have a gala.”
Ada had nodded.
She had put on her coat.
She had gone home for two hours to lie on her couch with her right hip on a heating pad.
She came back at four-thirty.
By five the rink floor was filling. A hundred and eighty bodies in coats and scarves were finding their dining tables.
The string of small white lights was bright in the dimmed overhead.
The temperature on the rink floor had been raised to sixty-seven for the night because Marin Pell, very firmly, did not want her donors to be cold while signing checks.
The food was set up at a long buffet on the lobby side.
Three of Bridget Halligan’s cousins, in catering blacks, were carrying trays.
A small string trio was on the stage, playing something cheerful and very old and very Maine.
Wes was not in the room.
She looked for him the way she had taught herself, over six weeks, to find him — back wall, harbor side, hands in pockets — and the back wall, at five o’clock, held nothing but boards and banner.
I will be in the building, he had said.
The building was large. The building had a closet, and a dressing room, and a mezzanine, and a parking lot, and she had no way of knowing which of them held him, or whether in the building was going to mean in the room. She had one hour to stop checking the back wall and do the work of the front.
She did, in the next hour, do the work of the front.
She greeted city councillors. She shook hands with the brand director of a Portland law firm.
She let Iris the sixty-one-year-old take both of her hands in both of hers in the lobby and say honey, you look wonderful.
She let Glenn the forty-six-year-old, who had come in his Sunday sweater and a tie he had clearly tied himself, hug her once, briefly, with all the awkwardness of a man who had not hugged anyone outside his own house in fifteen years, and she had felt her right hip click, and she had let it click, and she had smiled.
She let her mother — who had come to the gala in a green dress Eilis had owned for twenty years — kiss her cheek once.
She let Conor — who had put on his good coat over a flannel — squeeze her shoulder once.
She let Bridget Halligan, in her catering blacks, intercept her in the lobby long enough to mouth, very fast, Wessie loves you, and disappear with a tray of canapés.
She did not, in the hour, find Theo.
She did not need to.
She knew Theo was in the room because she had seen his coat on the rack at five-fifteen. She would see Theo at minute six of her remarks, if she chose to.
At five-forty she saw two things in the same slow sweep of the lobby doors.
The first was a man with a small old-school point-and-shoot around his neck and a Bay Beacon lanyard.
Doug. Doug from Family Skate Night, who had asked for a kiss at the boards and been politely refused, standing now just inside the lobby doors with a glass of cider he was not drinking, watching the room the way press watched a room — for the version of the evening he could carry out of it.
Nobody had told her the Beacon was coming.
The frames were still out there. The sidebar was still unwritten. And the we do not know what they will run was standing inside her lobby with a camera, twenty-five minutes before her speech.
The second thing she saw was Wes.
He had come in through the rink corridor, not the lobby. He was at the back wall, harbor side, in jeans and a dark sweater and his work coat, off-shift, hands in his coat pockets, watching the room the way a goalie watched a faceoff.
He did not nod to her across the room.
He looked at her, and she looked at him, and neither of their faces performed anything, and the not-performing was the entire message either of them had the standing to send.
She turned back to the work of the front with her heart doing something unprofessional.
At five-fifty Marin Pell took her elbow, very lightly, in the lobby.
“Ada.”
“Marin.”
“Five minutes.”
“Yes.”
“Pete,” Marin said, “is going to introduce the night with two sentences. You will follow him. You have, in our run-of-show, four minutes for opening remarks. You can take four. You can take six. You can take ten. I do not care. I trust you with this microphone. Pete will say please welcome Ada Halloran. You will go. You will say what you came to say. Then we will do the dinner. Then I will, at eight, do my two-minute board update and we will, very quietly, sign the bridge, and we will be done. Are you all right.”
“I am all right.”
“Halloran.”
“Yes.”