by Leslie Gould
Before Caye could think of an evasive answer, the phone rang again. Turning away from the children and walking back through the door, she answered.
It was Rob.
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. We’re on our way to your house. We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
“You can leave the boys. Really. I’ll bring them up later. You guys need some time.”
“Jill wants to come to your house. She said she just wants to sit on your couch. Have a cup of tea. And then we’ll take the boys.”
Caye filled the kettle from the tap and turned on the stove. How could life change so drastically, so suddenly? How could she have taken it all for granted?
The phone rang again.
It was the sales manager of the magazine she’d interviewed with. “We’d like to offer you the job.”
The job. She’d forgotten all about the job. No use talking to Nathan about this one. There was nothing else to do.
“I’ve had a family emergency,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t take it.”
Jill and Rob walked up the front steps. Caye opened the door. She reached out her arms to Jill, and Jill floated into them. Caye held her, patted her back, pulled her hair away from her neck. Jill began to cry again. Soft, quiet tears.
Caye took her hand and led her to the couch.
“I’ll go check on the boys,” Rob said. “We heard them in the back.”
Caye imagined him kneeling beside both Hudson and Liam and hugging them, holding them. She wondered if he would tell them that Jill was sick, really sick.
“Do you think Joya is right?” Jill asked, curling her feet up under her, pulling a tissue from the box on the coffee table. “Do you think I will recover?”
“Yes,” Caye said.
“Not many people do.”
“But some people do,” Caye said, thinking of the statistics. But she meant it. If anyone could recover, Jill could. Audacious, bold, fun-loving, faithful Jill.
The sound of Simon crying came over the baby monitor that Caye had saved from Audrey’s babyhood. “Tell Rob,” Jill said. “He’ll want to go get him.”
Rob came down with Simon, who was giggling in his daddy’s arms.
“Hi, sweet baby,” Jill said. Rob sat beside her on the couch. Jill stroked Simons cheek.
“I guess this means no more babies,” she said.
Rob patted her knee. Caye expected him to say, “That’s the least of our worries.” But he didn’t.
Audrey and the boys came in; Liam’s boots tracked mud over the hardwood floor. Caye didn’t care. Rob and Jill didn’t notice.
“Hi, guys,” Jill said. “Give Mommy a kiss.”
Each traipsed over and kissed her, Hudson first and then Liam, two sweet kisses on the lips. Liam reached up and touched her cheek, streaking mud across it. Rob and Caye laughed.
Rob didn’t tell them. Caye pushed her cat out of the rocker and sat down in her place of safety.
“He’s marked you,” Rob said to Jill, “with war paint.”
“Good,” she smiled. “I need it.”
“We’re hungry,” Hudson said.
“Are you really sick? Bad sick?” Audrey asked, looking straight at Jill.
Jill looked at Caye. Caye shook her head. No, she hadn’t told Audrey.
“You look like you’ve been crying,” Audrey added. Jill began to laugh. Caye smiled. Rob looked at Jill. “Why are you laughing?” Audrey demanded.
“Because you’re such a little woman,” Jill answered, putting her arms out to Audrey. “Come here. Come give me a hug.”
Audrey rushed in, gave Jill a bear hug, and sat beside her. “We should go home,” Rob said.
“The tea. You didn’t have your tea.” Caye stood, remembering the boiling kettle.
“We should go. I’ll call you this afternoon,” Jill said.
“The crib,” Rob said to Caye across the backseat of the Suburban as he buckled Simon into his car seat and Caye strapped Liam in. “I forgot the crib.”
“I’ll bring it tomorrow,” Caye said.
“Call me,” she said to Jill in a pleading voice. “We can figure out meals and help.”
“When’s lunch?” Audrey asked, pulling on Caye’s hand, pulling her away from the sidewalk.
Back in the house, Caye told Audrey, “I need to go do something. I’ll get lunch in a minute.” Caye rushed up the stairs two at a time and hurried down the landing, racing her tears. She flung herself across her bed; her foot kicked against the crib. She began to cry; she pulled her pillow under her head and sobbed deep, deep, belly sobs.
“Mama,” Audrey whispered. “Mommy?” Audrey knelt on the bed and poked at Caye’s side.
Caye rolled over.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked.
Caye could tell her daughter was scared.
“Jill’s sick,” Caye said, sitting up and pulling Audrey into her arms and down on the bed next to her. “You were right. She’s really sick.”
“Is she going to die?” Audrey asked. “Are you going to die?”
“No. No,” Caye said. I could be lying. She stroked Audrey’s long hair. It hadn’t been combed all morning. I have no idea. Jill could live for sixty more years. Or not. I could die tomorrow. Or not.
Caye sat up and retrieved her brush off the dresser and the two clippies she’d left beside it.
“Sit up,” she said to Audrey. Gently she combed her daughter’s hair. Not the normal rushed job, but soft and lovingly. Then she snapped the clippies against her daughters head.
Nothing in life is a given.
“I love you, Audrey,” she said as she put down the brush and hugged her daughter. The words were good words. Right words. Still they only conveyed a minuscule amount of what she felt.
12
“I want the Fellowship to come and pray for me,” Jill said. “Tomorrow night.”
It was Tuesday morning, and Caye and Audrey had come over to Jill’s for the day after dropping Andrew off at school.
“I’ll have Rob call Thomas—around 7:30 would probably be the best time,” Jill said. “But could you call the rest?”
Caye nodded.
They were sitting in Jill’s living room on the sofa, in front of the bay window. Jill yawned.
“You should go get a nap,” Caye said, feeling unsettled.
“I’ll wait until after lunch,” Jill answered. She was wearing blue sweatpants and a long-sleeve lavender T-shirt and had her feet propped on the ottoman. Jill wrapped her legs in the variegated purple, blue, and green afghan Caye had crocheted for Jill in thanks for her help after Audrey was born.
Caye stood and picked up Jill’s cold blue china teacup. The smell of peppermint hung in the air. “I’m going to go finish up the breakfast dishes,” she said, heading toward the kitchen.
Caye had crocheted the afghan during the evenings while watching CNN and Nick at Nite after Andrew was in bed, between Audrey’s early and late evening feedings.
Jill had been impressed that Caye could crochet. “Who taught you?” she asked incredulously, as if it were an ancient art.
“My mother,” Caye answered.
It was after Jill’s miscarriage that Caye finally finished the afghan and gave it to her friend. It was the first thing she’d crocheted since high school, and she’d inadvertently dropped stitches, making it wider at the bottom than at the top. Caye, fighting the urge to rip the whole thing out and start over, gave it to Jill anyway. Jill ignored her apology. “Who cares?” she exclaimed. “I love it.”
Caye filled the sink with hot water. She rinsed the dishes carefully and put them in the dishwasher.
A week after Caye presented Jill with the afghan, they took Andrew, Hudson, and baby Audrey to Emigrant Lake for the afternoon. It was hot and dry, and temperatures had been in the high nineties for over two weeks. The lake was crowded
with swimmers and boaters. Andrew and Hudson had wriggled out of their life jackets and were playing with Matchbox cars in the grass. Caye and Jill sat on a blanket on the grassy hillside with Audrey between them.
“What else do you know how to do?” Jill asked.
Caye looked at her friend, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Like crocheting. What else do you know how to do?”
“Knit. Embroider. Cross-stitch.”
“And your mom taught you?” Caye nodded.
“Where did she learn to do all of that?” “From her mom.”
“How old were you when you learned?”
“Nine or ten.”
“Do you sew, too?”
“I don’t like to,” Caye said with a laugh.
“Tell me about growing up in the Wild West,” Jill said, flopping over on her stomach. Her one-piece black-and-blue striped swimsuit was cut high on the legs and low in the back. Although her dark wavy hair and blue eyes were striking, Jill wasn’t a glamour girl, but she was definitely pretty with an innate gracefulness. She didn’t work at being graceful—she just was. It was her confidence, her focus on others, the easy way she carried herself, the way she listened. It was how comfortable she felt with herself.
Caye couldn’t help comparing herself to Jill’s svelte grace, aware of her own postpartum body that was squeezed into last year’s swim-suit. At least her nursing breasts filled up the top this summer.
Caye picked up Audrey, who was starting to fuss, and pulled a towel over her shoulder, sliding one strap down so the baby could nurse. Audrey latched on immediately. She was the perfect nursing age—quick and efficient, but not old enough to be distracted by her surroundings.
“What is there to tell?” Caye chuckled, thinking of the term “Wild West.” She was only two generations away from the pioneers—that was true. Her great-grandparents had been part of the western migration, but it honestly had little meaning for her.
“But you did so much, learned so much. It made you so capable and independent. You’re the Western ideal—the product of manifest destiny, the rugged individual.”
“I think you’re romanticizing the West and my life,” Caye laughed. “And making me feel older than the hills.”
“But you did so much more than I did. What did I do?” Jill pondered her question. “Shopped. Went to Disneyland.”
“Did I tell you that Rob’s decided I’m not ambitious?” she asked, changing the subject, interrupting herself. “I hope he doesn’t think that I’ve tricked him. I’ve never been ambitious. It seems he just figured it out.”
Caye thought about this. She saw Jill as very industrious. Jill gardened, planned meals, did the grocery shopping, seldom took a nap, kept them all busy with picnics and outings. She was definitely ambitious when it came to wanting a family.
“Did I tell you that I didn’t graduate from college?” Jill asked.
“I thought you went to USC.”
“I did. And all I needed to take was second-year French.”
“So why didn’t you take it?”
“The honest answer?”
Caye smiled and switched Audrey to the other side. The baby began to suck, but not as aggressively.
“I think I didn’t finish just to spite Marion. She wouldn’t pay for college unless I went to a local one. I think that was my way of getting back at her.”
Caye smiled again but this time with a look of pity.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jill laughed. “It hurt me more than it did her. But it hasn’t really. If I open a gallery or a bed-and-breakfast, I can do that without my degree. Actually, your business degree would come in really handy. We could be partners.”
Jill rolled to a sitting position. Caye took Audrey off her breast, placed the milk-drugged baby across her thighs and slipped back into her suit.
“Here,” Jill said, reaching for Audrey. “Let me burp her.” She flung a cloth diaper onto her shoulder and positioned the baby. “Will you teach me to crochet?” she asked.
“If you can read, you can crochet. You just follow the instructions.”
Jill shook her head and chuckled as she patted the baby’s back. “How about canning? Do you know how to can? Like tomatoes and peaches?”
“No one cans anymore,” Caye had said. “Except my mother.”
Caye walked back into the living room. Jill was asleep. Caye returned to the kitchen. She poured herself another cup of coffee and took a sip. It was too hot. She put the mug on the window sill and began wiping down the counter.
A month after the crocheting and canning discussion, late in August, they loaded the kids into the backseat of Jill’s Jeep Cherokee and drove over the mountains to Kimberly, a wide spot in the road along the North Fork of the John Day River, to get peaches. Caye’s mom always said the best peaches in the state came from there. “Then that’s where we should go,” Jill said. “It will be an adventure.”
“It’s ridiculous to go that far,” Caye said. “We can buy peaches anywhere in the valley. The trip will take forever—with three cranky kids.”
“It’s a great excuse to see more of the state,” Jill said. “I’ve never been east of the mountains.”
They left at five in the morning with snacks and a lunch. The plan was to get to Kimberly by eleven, pick peaches for a few hours, and then head back. “We’ll stop and spend the night somewhere if we have to,” Jill had decided the day before when Caye went over the plan, the flawed plan as Caye called it, one more time.
It was Jill’s idea for Caye to ask her mother to meet them in Kimberly.
Both her parents decided to go, driving from Burns, although even after several minutes of discussion Caye’s mother could not understand why they would drive from Ashland to Kimberly just to pick peaches. “It has to be over three hundred miles,” her mother said.
“Jill’s from California,” Caye answered. “She likes to drive.”
All three kids fell asleep by the time they turned off I-5 onto Highway 62 on the north side of Medford. The day was beautiful as they drove into the morning sun that bathed jagged Mount Theilsen. Caye and Jill chatted away.
Caye thought about Nathan going back to work. It was his first day of the school year. He’d had only a two-week break between the end of summer school and the beginning-of-the-school-year meetings.
Caye knew he was tired. He’d barked at Andrew last night at bedtime about not brushing his teeth. “Do what your mother says,” Nathan had yelled. Andrew cried and then padded down the hall to the bathroom. Caye wondered if the pressure of being the sole provider was weighing Nathan down. He’d be helping with the football team in the fall too, doing everything he could so she could stay home with the kids.
But Caye didn’t tell Jill the whole story, just that Nathan was tired. It wasn’t that she was worried Jill would think badly of Nathan. Jill told story after story on herself and Rob. It was more that Caye wasn’t used to sharing about her family life.
Even in high school she held back. She’d been the honor society president and the student body treasurer her senior year. Her friends were the other brainy girls who studied every night and seldom went to each other’s houses. She talked with them about classes and tests, about colleges and entrance exams, but seldom about her family or even her dreams.
When it came time for college, even with scholarships, there wasn’t enough money. She stayed out for a year and worked with her mom in the housekeeping department at the Burns hospital. That year she decided Southern Oregon State would be the most economical. With work-study and loans she could pull it off on her own. She’d major in business.
Her mother had frowned at the plan. She wouldn’t say she thought it was a bad idea; she’d never volunteer advice. She’d barely say what she thought if Caye asked for her opinion. Her mother had always wanted to be a teacher, and Caye suspected she wanted that for her daughte
r, too.
“Your mom was right,” Jill said when Caye relayed the story. “I think you’d make a great teacher.”
“It would drive me nuts,” Caye laughed.
“But you’re so good with the kids. It never seems like they drive you crazy. And you teach them without effort.”
Jill went on. “It doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I have to remind myself to teach Hudson not to run out in the street, how to hold his spoon, how to pet a cat. It’s so much easier for me to just shout ‘no’ than to teach him the right way. But it comes naturally to you. I see what you do.”
“You think I should teach preschool?” Caye asked incredulously, thinking of the low pay.
“Not necessarily preschool,” Jill clarified. “How about elementary school?”
Caye thought of the long hours Nathan put in teaching high school. Grade school would be just as bad—or worse.
They stopped at the picnic area at Beaver Marsh, just past the Highway 97 junction, and changed the babies’ diapers. Jill fed Hudson bites of a banana while Caye nursed Audrey. It was only eight o’clock, and the traffic was light. The day was already growing warm as they sat at the dark green table. Andrew chased a grasshopper through the tall grass.
“It’s so peaceful here,” Jill said.
“It’s because we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Caye answered, thinking of the highway stretching north and south for hundreds of miles.
They reached Bend by half past ten and turned toward Prineville, where they stopped at the park next to the stone courthouse to eat lunch. Jill had packed enough for all of them—tofu “egg” salad on whole wheat bread, grapes, celery sticks, and trail mix. Andrew frowned at his sandwich, pulled the bread apart to lick the spread, and made his yuckiest face. Caye gave him a fruit snack from the bag of treats she’d brought along.
Hudson screamed when Jill put him in the car seat.
“I like it over here,” she said, ignoring Hudson. He continued to scream.
“I like the park,” Andrew said. “Why can’t we stay longer?”
“We’re going to go see Grandma and Grandpa,” Caye answered, looping the belt through Audrey’s seat. “Go to sleep, and when you wake up we’ll be there.”
