Page 52 of The Dutch House

“What should I do?” my father-in-law asked. Maeve had picked them up and brought them in on the train because none of us liked the idea of Bill Norcross driving into the city. “Does she need an ambulance?”

“No,” Maeve said, still not turning her head.

“She’ll be okay,” I said to Bill, like this was our routine. A very old calm settled on me.

“I need—” Maeve said, then closed her eyes.

“What?”

Then Celeste and Kevin were there with a glass of orange juice and a cloth napkin full of ice. I hadn’t seen them leave and already they were back with what we needed. They had known. Standing in the row behind us, Celeste lifted the sopping wool of Maeve’s hair and rested the ice pack against her neck. Kevin handed me the juice.

“How did you get this so fast?” The aisles were packed with little girls and their minders excitedly recounting each jeté.

“I ran,” said my son, who had choked on his own excess of energy throughout the performance. “I said it was an emergency.”

Kevin knew how to move around people—a benefit of growing up in the city. I held my handkerchief under Maeve’s mouth. “Sip.”

“You know this will make your sister insanely jealous that you were the one who got the juice,” Celeste said to Kevin. “She would rather have been the hero than a mouse.”

Kevin smiled, his stoicism in the face of boredom rewarded. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Okay,” Maeve said quietly.

“You get everyone out to the lobby,” Celeste told her father, who, like Kevin, was looking for work. “I’ll be there in one minute.”

Maeve pressed her eyes closed and then opened them wider. She was trying to chew the tablets and drink the juice with minimal success. Some of it was slipping from the side of her mouth. I gave the glass to Celeste and fished a test strip out ofthe yellow box. Maeve’s hands were wet and cold when I stuck her finger.

“What do you think happened?” Celeste asked me.

Maeve nodded, swallowed. She was coming slowly into focus. “Dance so long.”

Everyone was always in such a hurry to leave a theater. They hoped to be the first to get to the bathroom, to get a taxi, get to the restaurant before the reservation was cancelled. It had been scarcely ten minutes since the raucous ovation and the distribution of roses and already the giant New York State Theater was almost empty. The last of the little girls, the ones who had been sitting in the very front rows, came pirouetting up the aisle in their fur-collared coats. All those velvet seats had folded back in on themselves. One of the ushers stopped at our row, a woman in a white shirt and a buttoned green vest. “You folks need help?”

“She’s okay,” I said. “She just needs a minute.”

“He’s a doctor,” Celeste said.

Maeve smiled, mouthed the worddoctor.

The usher nodded. “If you need something, you let us know.”

“We just need to sit here awhile.”

“Take your time,” the woman said.

“I’m sorry,” Maeve said. I wiped down her face. The test strip reported her sugar at thirty-eight. It should have been ninety and I would have been happy with seventy.

“You should have told someone you weren’t feeling well.” Celeste moved the ice to the top of Maeve’s head.

“Ah, that’s good,” Maeve said. “I didn’t want to get up. I thought—” She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes.

I told her to take another sip of juice.

She swallowed, began again. “I’d be disruptive?” Maeve was wearing a blouse with a sweater over it, wool slacks, all of it wet.

Celeste had Maeve’s hair gathered up in one hand, the ice pack in the other. “I’m going backstage to get May and we’ll go on to dinner,” she said to me. “When she’s feeling better, bring her over to the house.”

“Danny should go,” Maeve said. She still hadn’t tried to look at either of us.