You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.
CHAPTER 24
It made Patricia nervous when Carter used his cellular phone while
driving, but he was the better driver and they were already running
late for book club, which meant it was going to be hard to find
parking.
“And you’ll upgrade me to a king,” Carter said, letting go of the
wheel with one hand to put on his turn signal.
Their dark red BMW took the turn into Creekside smooth and
easy. Patricia didn’t like it when he drove like this, but on the other
hand this was one of the few times he didn’t have Rush Limbaugh on
the radio, so she took her blessings where she could.
“You can make the check out to Campbell Clinical Consulting,”
Carter said. “The address is on the invoice I faxed.”
He snapped his phone shut and hummed a little tune.
“That’s the sixth talk,” he said. “It’s going to be busy this fall.
You’re sure you’re all right with me being gone so much?”
“I’ll miss you,” she said. “But college isn’t free.”
He steered them down the cool tunnels formed by Creekside’s
trees, dying sunlight flickering between the leaves, strobing over the
windshield and hood.
“If you still want to remodel the kitchen, you can,” Carter said. “We
have enough.”
Up ahead, Patricia saw the back of Horse’s Chevy Blazer parked at
the end of a long line of Saabs, Audis, and Infinitis. They were still a
block from Slick and Leland’s house, but the parked cars stretched all
the way back here.
“Are you sure?” Patricia asked. “We still don’t know where Korey’s
thinking of going.”
“Or if she’s even thinking,” Carter said, pulling up behind Horse’s
Chevy but leaving a big buffer zone between their cars. It didn’t pay
to park too close to Horse these days.
“What if she picks somewhere like NYU or Wellesley?” Patricia
said, undoing her seat belt.
“The chances of Korey getting into NYU or Wellesley, I’ll take
those odds,” Carter said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Quit
worrying. You’ll make yourself sick.”
They got out of the car. Patricia hated getting out of cars.
According to the bathroom scale, she’d gained eleven pounds and she
felt them hanging from her hips and stomach, and they made her feel
unsteady on her feet. She didn’t think she looked bad with a fuller
face as long as she sprayed her hair a little bigger, but getting in and
out of cars made her feel graceless.
She waddled—walked—up the street with Carter, the October chill
prickling her arms with goose bumps. She readjusted her grip on this
month’s book—why did Tom Clancy need more pages than the Bible
to tell a story?—and Carter opened the gate in the literal white picket
fence around Slick and Leland’s front yard. Together, they went up
the path of the Paleys’ large, barn-red Cape Cod that looked like it
belonged in New England, right down to the decorative millstone in
the front yard.
Carter rang the bell and the door instantly swung open to reveal
Slick. She was gelled and moussed and her mouth was too small for
her lipstick, but she looked genuinely happy to see them.
“Carter! Patricia!” she cried, beaming. “You look fabulous.”
Recently, Patricia had surprised herself when she realized that the
main reason she kept coming to book club was to see Slick.
“You look wonderful, too,” Patricia said, with a genuine smile.
“Isn’t this vest adorable?” Slick spread her arms. “Leland bought it
for me at Kerrison’s for almost nothing.”
It didn’t matter how many Paley Realty signs sprang up all over
Mt. Pleasant, or how much Slick talked about money, or showed off
things Leland bought for her, or tried to gossip about Albemarle
Academy now that Tiger had finally gotten in. To Patricia she was a
person of substance.
“Come on back!” Slick said, leading them into the claustrophobic,
overstuffed roar of book club.
People spilled out of Slick’s dining room, and Patricia twisted her
hips to avoid bumping into anyone as Slick led them past the stairs,
past all the display cases for her collections—the Lenox Garden bird
figurines, little ceramic cottages, miniature sterling silver furniture—
past new wall plaques bearing even more devotional quotations, past
the collectible wristwatches mounted in shadow boxes.
“Hello, hello!” Patricia said to Louise Gibbes as they went by.
“You look fabulous, Loretta,” Patricia said to Loretta Jones.
“Your Gamecocks took a whupping Saturday,” Carter said to
Arthur Rivers, clapping him on one shoulder, never slowing down.
They emerged from the hall into the new addition at the back of
the house and the ceiling suddenly shot up over their heads, soaring
to a series of skylights. The addition stretched almost to the Paleys’
property line, a massive barn for entertaining, and every inch was
crammed with people. There must be forty members these days, and
Slick was just about the only person with enough house for all of
them.
“Help yourselves,” Slick said over the roar of conversation
bouncing off the high ceilings and the far walls, which were hung
with picturesque farm implements. “I have to find Leland. Did you
see this? He gave me a Mickey Mouse watch. Isn’t it fun?”
She waved her sparkly wrist at Patricia, then slipped away into a
forest of backs and arms holding rental glasses and hands holding
rental plates and everyone with copies of Clear and Present Danger
tucked beneath their elbows, or resting on the backs of chairs.
Patricia looked for someone she knew, and saw Marjorie Fretwell
over by the buffet. They kissed on both cheeks, the way people did
these days.
“You look wonderful,” Marjorie said.
“Have you lost weight?” Patricia asked.
“Are you doing something different with your hair?” Marjorie
asked back. “I love it.”
Sometimes it bothered Patricia how much time they spent telling
each other how good they looked, how wonderful they seemed, how
fantastic they were. Three years ago she would have suspected Carter
had called ahead and told everyone to make sure they kept Patricia’s
spirits up, but now she realized that all of them did it, all the time.
But what was wrong with enjoying their blessings? They had so
many good things in their lives. Why not celebrate?
“Hey, man!” a loud voice said, and Patricia saw Horse’s red face
rising up over Marjorie’s shoulder. “Is that husband of yours
around?”
He leaned in unsteadily to peck Patricia on the cheek. He hadn’t
shaved, and a yeasty cloud of beer hovered around his head.
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,” Carter said, coming up
behind Patricia.
“You won’t believe it, but we’re rich again,” Horse said, putting one
hand on Carter’s shoulder to steady himself. “Next time we go to the
club, drinks are on me.”
“Don’t forget, we’ve got four more who want to go to college,” Kitty
said, stepping into the circle and giving Patricia a one-armed hug.
“Don’t be cheap, woman!” Horse bellowed.
“We signed the papers today,” Kitty explained.
“When I see Jimmy H. I’m gonna kiss him,” Horse said. “Right on
the lips!”
Patricia smiled. James Harris had totally transformed Kitty and
Horse’s lives. He’d straightened out the management of Seewee
Farms, hired them a young man to run things, and convinced Horse
to sell 110 acres to a developer. That was what had finally come
through today.
It wasn’t just them. All of them, including Patricia and Carter, had
invested more and more money in Gracious Cay, and as outside
investors kept coming in they’d all taken out credit lines against their
shares. It felt like money just kept falling out of the sky.
“You got to come with me Saturday,” Horse told Carter. “Do some
boat shopping.”
“How are the children?” Patricia asked Kitty, because that was the
kind of thing you said.
“We finally convinced Pony to look at the Citadel,” Kitty said. “I
can’t stand the idea of him up at Carolina or Wake Forest. He’d be so
far away.”
“It’s better when they stay local,” Marjorie nodded.
“And Horse wants another Citadel man in the family,” Kitty said.
“That class ring opens doors,” Marjorie said. “It really does.”
As Marjorie and Kitty talked, the room began to close in around
Patricia. She didn’t know why everyone’s voices sounded so loud, or
why the small of her back felt cold and greasy with sweat, or why her
underarms itched. Then she smelled the Swedish meatballs bubbling
away in the silver chafing dish on the buffet table beside her.
Carter and Horse laughed uproariously over something and Horse
put his beer down on the buffet table and he already had another one
in his hand and Kitty said something about Korey, and the familiar
reek of boiling ketchup filled Patricia’s skull and coated her throat.
She forced herself to stop thinking about it. It was better not to
think about it. Her life was back to normal now. Her life was better
than normal.
“Did you see on the news about that school in New York?” Kitty
asked. “The children have to get there at five a.m. because it takes
them two and a half hours to go through the metal detectors.”
“But you can’t put a price on safety,” Marjorie said.
“Excuse me,” Patricia said.
She pushed her way past shoulders and backs, needing to get away
from that smell, twisting her hips to the side, terrified she’d knock
someone’s drink out of their hands, forcing her way through scraps
of conversation.
“…taking him up to tour the campus…”
“…have you lost weight…”
“…divest into Netscape…”
“…the president’s just a Bubba, it’s his wife…”
Kitty hadn’t visited her in the hospital.
She didn’t want to keep score like this but for the first time in years
it just popped into her mind.
“You were in and out so quickly,” Kitty had told Patricia over the
phone. “I was going to come just as soon as I got organized but by the
time that happened, you were already home.”
She remembered Kitty begging for reassurance. “With all those
pills, you just mixed up your prescription, didn’t you?”
That was what had happened, she agreed, and Kitty had been so
grateful it didn’t have to go any further or get any messier and she
had been so grateful that everyone had let it drop and never talked
about it again that she hadn’t realized how much it hurt that none of
them came by the hospital. At the time, she was just grateful. She
was grateful no one called her a suicide and treated her different. She
was grateful it had been so easy to slip back into her old life. She was
grateful for the new dock and the trip to London and the surgery to
fix her ear and the backyard cookouts and the new car. She was
grateful for so many things.
“Ice water, please,” she said to the black man in white gloves
behind the bar.
The only one who came to the hospital had been Slick. She showed
up at seven in the morning and knocked gently on the open door and
came in and sat down next to Patricia. She didn’t say much. She
didn’t have any advice or insight, no ideas or opinions. She didn’t
need to be convinced it had all been an accident. She just sat there,
holding Patricia’s hand in a kind of silent prayer, and around seven
forty-five she said, “We all need you to get better,” and left.
She was the only one of them Patricia cared about anymore. She
didn’t hold anything too much against Kitty and Maryellen and they
saw each other socially, but the only time she came near Grace now
was at book club. When she saw Grace she thought about things
she’d said that she didn’t want to remember.
She turned, cold glass in one hand, grateful she couldn’t smell the
meatballs anymore, and saw Grace and Bennett standing behind her.
“Hello, Grace,” she said. “Bennett.”
Grace didn’t move; Bennett stood motionless. No one leaned
forward for a hug. Bennett had an iced tea in his hand instead of a
beer. Grace had lost weight.
“It’s quite a turnout,” Grace said, surveying the room.
“Did you enjoy this month’s book?” Patricia asked.
“I’ve certainly learned a lot about the war on drugs,” Grace said.
I hated it, Patricia wanted to say. Everyone talked in the same
terse, manly sentences you’d expect from an insurance salesman
fantasizing about war. Every sentence dripped with DDOs and DDIs
and LPIs and E-2s and F-15s and MH-53Js and C-141s. She didn’t
understand half of what she read, there were no women in it except
fools and prostitutes, it had nothing to say about their lives, and it
felt like a recruitment ad for the army.
“It was very illuminating,” she agreed.
James Harris had turned their book club into this. He’d started
getting the husbands to attend, and they’d started reading more and
more books by Pat Conroy (“He’s a local author”) and Michael
Crichton (“Fascinating concepts”), and The Horse Whisperer and All
the Pretty Horses and Bravo Two Zero, and sometimes Patricia
despaired over what were they going to read next—The Celestine
Prophecy? Chicken Soup for the Soul?—but mostly she marveled at
how many people came.
It was better not to dwell on it. Everything changes, and was it
really so bad that more people wanted to discuss books?
“We need to find seats,” Grace said. “Excuse us.”
Patricia watched them retreat into the crowd. The track lighting
got brighter as the sky outside got darker, and she made her way
back to her group. As she got nearer she smelled sandalwood and
leather. People parted and she saw Carter talking excitedly to
someone, and then she passed the last person blocking her view and
saw James Harris, dressed in a blue oxford shirt with the sleeves
rolled up just so, and his khakis pressed exactly right, his hair
tousled by experts, and his skin glowing with health.
“You wouldn’t believe the schedule they have me on this fall,”
Carter was telling him. “Six talks before January. You’ll have to keep
an eye on the old homestead.”
“You know you love it,” James Harris said, and they both laughed.
Patricia’s steps faltered and she cursed herself for not wanting to
see James Harris, who had done so much for all of them, and she
forced herself to walk toward him with a big smile. James Harris was
Leland’s business advisor these days. He called himself a consultant.
He made up for not being able to go outside during the day by
working through the night. He pored over the plans for Gracious Cay,
he wooed outside investors at catered dinners he hosted at his home,
and sometimes when Patricia walked down Middle Street early in the
morning she could still smell cigar smoke lingering in the street
outside his house. He worked the phones, he encouraged people to
get outside their comfort zones, he convinced Leland to grow a
ponytail. He carried them into the future.
“We’re going to have to get you married so you can know what it’s
like to be tied down,” Carter said to James Harris.
“I still haven’t met someone worth giving up my freedom for,”
James said.
He and Carter were almost like brothers these days. He was the
one who’d convinced Carter to go into private practice. He was the
one who’d talked Carter into getting on the lecture circuit, where he
extolled the virtues of Prozac and Ritalin to doctors on paid vacations
in Hilton Head, and Myrtle Beach, and Atlanta, courtesy of Eli Lilly
and Novartis. He was the one responsible for all the money piling up
in their bank account that would let them send Korey to college, and
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