25 Years

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Tina’s heart pounded as she considered life without her. A world without Jolene would be a world without enchantment.

  Jolene turned off the ignition and bent to peer out the front windshield toward the building that had housed both their families for two weeks every summer of their growing up. Tina could feel Jolene’s sigh as though the rush of emotion had come from her own body.

  Perhaps the work would have to come later.

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  Always slim, Jolene’s five-foot-six-inch frame barely held up her jeans. Her sweater hung loose on her. “A little.”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose.”

  “So, what’s up?”

  Jolene continued to stare outside.

  Trees and shrubs encroached on the small patch of lawn surrounding the cabin. The grass was almost a foot high. Once they got moved in, they’d be mowing.

  “Life seemed so clear when we were kids, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Tina said, watching her friend. “Remember the spring our parents told us we were all moving away from Denver, and to two separate towns?” Jolene had gone to Boulder and Tina to Colorado Springs.

  “Yeah.” Jolene nodded slowly, still gazing sightlessly through the windshield. “I thought I was going to die.”

  Tina’s smile was bittersweet. “Me, too.”

  “I couldn’t imagine not seeing you every morning, noon and night. We managed, though, didn’t we?” Jolene said, turning to meet Tina’s eyes.

  “They thought we’d gradually grow apart, but we showed them.”

  They’d saved money from babysitting to fund frequent bus trips, wrote long outpourings in daily letters, were on the telephone whenever anything major—or seemingly major—occurred in their lives.

  “I called you the second I started my period, even before I did anything about it,” Tina said, remembering.

  “I cried for two hours straight to get my dad to fund an emergency bus trip that time James Scolaris kissed you,” Jolene told her.

  “It was our first kiss,” Tina added, grinning. Their first kiss they’d called it, meaning hers and Jolene’s. Because it had been the first for either of them. And that was how it had always been. What happened to one, happened to the other. Perhaps not physically. But it happened just the same.

  “All those summers we spent up here, planning our destinies—we really believed we’d do those things, you know?” Jolene said now, her voice sounding far away.

  Tina thought about those days sometimes. Occasionally with pride in their efforts or comfort in the sharing, and more often with melancholy.

  “We said we’d go to college together. We did.”

  “Harvard,” Jolene reminded her. “We said we were going to Harvard. We went to UC in Boulder.”

  “You were going to be a social worker. You are.”

  “Yeah.” Jolene turned, a hint of renewed energy in the movement of her shoulders. “And you were going to be a scientist, which you are.”

  Tina nodded. “I was sure I’d discover a cure for leukemia.” She finished describing that particular dream. The disease had robbed Tina of her little brother just months before the two girls had met. “And I haven’t.”

  “Not yet, anyway. And at the rate you’re going, you’ll kill yourself before you have a chance.”

  Placing both hands on the steering wheel, Jolene rested her head on them sideways, watching Tina.

  “I’m perfectly healthy!” Tina chuckled, a little uncomfortable with her friend’s concern. Jolene was the one needing comfort right now, needing a friend. Tina’s job was to be that friend.

  “I’m worried about you, Teen,” Jolene’s words carried a lot of impact for their softness. “Ever since you got in the car, all you’ve talked about is the lab. Every person you mention, every takeout meal you have, the cold you had last month, all revolved around either the lab or your students. Do you ever do anything outside it?”

  “Virginia Tech doesn’t have many full-time research professorships,” Tina explained patiently. “So I have a great deal of responsibility.”

  “You’re telling me that everyone else you work with spends evenings and weekends in the lab? Don’t any of them have families?”

  “Of course they do, which is why it’s natural that I’d be the one to cover evenings and weekends.”

  “So you take time off during workday hours?”

  She could if she wanted to.

  “Look,” she said, tilting her head slightly as she met her friend’s straightforward gaze. “I’m happy living my life in the lab.” She checked in with herself on that one often enough. “I know I might never find a cure for leukemia, but the work I’m doing is leading to that end. It’s what I’m here to do, Jo. I know that.”

  “I’m not arguing that point,” Jolene said, the concern in her expression not clearing at all. “I know that, too. But it doesn’t mean you don’t have other things to do, as well. Like get married again. Have a family…”

  Tina shook her head. “A family isn’t as important to me as it is to you,” she said, hoping she could make Jolene understand. “I’ve loved—and lost—as many times as I’m prepared to, Jo. I’m content with my life now. I love what I do. There aren’t many people who can say that.”

  “You’re half alive, Teen,” Jolene said. “There’s a lack of vitality in your eyes, your step, even in the way your shoulders are drooping. I see a difference just since you were out here at Christmas.”

  “I’m not the one who’s lost weight,” Tina reminded her, ready to get the conversation back on track. “Maybe what you see as a lack of vitality is really peace and calm.”

  “Maybe.”

  Tina had the distinct impression that Jolene didn’t think so. But she had the entire next week to set her friend’s mind at rest.

  “Look, I’ll admit that for a long time after Thad was killed in that structure collapse, I was only half-alive.” Tina was proud of how matter-of-factly she could say those words now. For years they’d been too painful even to think. “But I’ve accepted that he’s gone. I’m no longer denying it. No longer angry.” She sighed. “At least he was doing something he loved—crawling around one of the buildings his family’s company was restoring.”

  “And what about Thad Jr.?” Jolene whispered, her eyes moist.

  And just that quickly Tina needed a second to hold back her own tears. She’d never forget that day after her husband’s funeral when stress and heartbreak had sent her into premature labor. The little guy, born at five months, didn’t have a chance. She’d never forget Jolene there, holding her hand, staying by her bedside nearly twenty-four hours a day until she was once again up and walking around. If it hadn’t been for her best friend, if it hadn’t been for Jolene’s energy being enough for both of them, carrying both of them, she probably would’ve died right along with her small family.

  “He’s with his father,” Tina finally said, glancing at the woods, the cabin, imagining the stream that trickled lightly behind it. “I’m at peace with that.”

  “Peace at what cost?” The words were delivered with passion. “Your peace only counts if you spend the rest of your life alone in a lab?”

  Okay, time to stop.

  Yanking on the handle, Tina opened the door.

  “With all the students milling around, I’m almost never alone,” she said with unforced cheer. Or almost unforced… They’d talk about Jolene’s weight loss later. “Come on, woman, we’ve got varmints to relocate, shutters to raise, curtains to open, beds to make, groceries to unload and a lawn to mow.”

  Tina’s smile was a little hard to maintain when Jolene hesitated, her expression firm and unrelenting, but the moment passed. Jolene collected the cabin keys from the console of her Explorer and opened her door without further comment.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THEY’D ONLY FOUND one dead mouse. A can of soda had exploded in the refrigerator. And while swee
ping, Jolene had amassed a small mound of spiders and other insects that had expired in the cabin since her uncle’s visit earlier that spring.

  “Water’s on and toilet’s flushing,” Tina reported, drying her hands on a paper towel. She walked into the front room from the step-down tiled hallway that led back to the bath Jolene’s uncle Bruce had put in for Aunt Marilyn fifty years before, when he’d first bought the old stone hunting cabin. “You raised the shutters!”

  Jolene, busy with the sheets she’d brought for the twin beds on the porch, nodded. She and Tina had been sleeping there since early childhood.

  “Those shutters are heavy! You shouldn’t have done that by yourself!” Walking through the archway that led directly from the kitchen into the fully enclosed and screened porch, Tina picked up the pillows Jolene had brought, removing the protective plastic covers.

  Jolene yanked at the top of the first mattress, lifting it, maybe a little higher than necessary, to position the fitted sheet around the edge.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that, either,” Tina said. She grabbed for the sheet, sliding her fingers down until she got to the next corner. “I’ll do this.”

  “I can do it,” Jolene replied softly as she stood back and watched her best friend in the world attack their beds as though she could control all of life, make it perfect for both of them, with sheets folded military neat and smooth blankets.

  Tina moved wordlessly, only the sounds of swishing material and an occasional pat interrupting the quiet in the old cabin. Jolene let herself escape for a moment into the safe, secure world of “J and T” where there were only the two of them. It was a world filled with the certain knowledge of an unconditional love that would always protect them. A world in which their combined strengths could make anything possible.

  “So it didn’t work?” Green eyes wide, moist, sparking with anger and sadness, met Jolene’s.

  Beds made, Jolene went to retrieve the duffel she’d packed, carrying it to the leather luggage stool out of habit. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Tina’s voice rose. Her suitcase landed on the lower of the two dressers—just as it always had.

  “Uh-uh.” It was too early to change into the sweats she’d be sleeping in. And there was no need to unpack.

  Tina, standing there with her arms crossed, didn’t even unzip her bag. “So you didn’t get negative results from the in vitro?”

  Jolene shook her head, glanced quickly up at her friend and then away as she slumped on the closest bed.

  “Did you start your period?” The bed dipped as Tina dropped softly down beside her. Jolene, eyes locked on the thinly carpeted floor, could feel her friend’s gaze.

  “No.”

  “So you could be?”

  It was the shorthand of friends who’d been thinking for each other practically since birth.

  “I’m sure I’m not.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “I know.”

  “How can you know if you haven’t taken the test yet?” Tina’s voice wasn’t accusing as anyone else’s might have been. Her love and understanding broke through the hard wall of numbness keeping Jolene’s emotions in check.

  “How can I be, Teen?” she asked, engulfed with sadness as she turned to her friend. “We’ve done this so many times and there’s never even been so much as a miscarriage.”

  The warmth in Tina’s eyes calmed some of the tension inside her. “They didn’t do anything different this time than any of the others,” she went on. “It’s just more of the same, with absolutely no reason to believe that anything’s changed.”

  “Then why put yourself through this?”

  “You know why.”

  “Steve.”

  “I couldn’t tell him no.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “Same thing she always says. With our history—my problem—pregnancy doesn’t seem likely, but it’s not medically impossible.”

  Tina was quiet for a couple of minutes but, as always, her closeness was enough. Jolene sat next to her friend, thankful for Tina, and slowly started to relax.

  “We’ll get a test in town tomorrow.” Tina’s words brought back the tension.

  “I brought one with me. I knew I could survive the disappointment if you were there. We always cope with everything when we’re together, don’t we?”

  Tina stood. “Then let’s get this over with.”

  “Not tonight, Teen, please?” Jolene followed her into the main room of the cabin. The kitchen was getting warmer now that the propane heater in the middle of the longest wall had been lit. Jolene poured them each a glass of purified water from the bottles she’d put in the refrigerator earlier. “I need some time just me and you, remembering how life used to feel, before I face that.”

  “Okay, but we’re not leaving here until it’s done,” Tina said, the sternness in her voice belied by the long hug she gave her friend.

  Tina might not be able to make Jolene’s barren body capable of conceiving, she might not be able to dissipate Steve’s lifelong compulsion to have a child tied to him by blood; and she might not be able to find a cure for leukemia. But to Jolene she was all-powerful, somehow making life manageable just because she was part of it.

  “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you had sex?”

  If she’d been with anyone else, Tina would’ve choked on the iced tea she was drinking with the tuna and pickles and crackers they were having for dinner.

  “Two nights before Thad was killed.”

  Tina popped another cracker in her mouth. The answer was still the same, and Jolene still asked, pretty much every time they spoke.

  “Okay. But don’t you want to now and then?”

  It was a new question.

  “You really want me to answer that?” No one who knew Tina—private, quiet, calm and studious as she was—would believe she was having this conversation. No one but Jolene. No one but Jolene could get away with it.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Smiling, head tilted, Tina studied her friend. “About a year ago,” Tina said softly, sobering. “It was the last Sunday I took off work. I’d had some wine late Saturday night, trying to sleep, and had these incredible dreams about Thad.” Her gaze met Jolene’s. “You know the kind.”

  Jolene nodded, her expression open, understanding—and tinged with sorrow.

  “Anyway, I woke up with all this sexual energy. I wanted to have sex—with him. It was probably one of the loneliest moments of my life.”

  “A year ago, huh?” Jolene asked.

  Tina shrugged.

  “The dreams, the sexual energy, just stopped?”

  Tina didn’t lie often—and never to Jolene. She said nothing.

  “It’s time, Teen.” Jolene’s soft blond bangs highlighted her candid brown eyes. “Thad’s been gone six years.”

  “And when it’s ninety-six, I’ll still be missing him.”

  “I’m not asking you not to.” Jolene didn’t back down as easily as she had that afternoon. “Only to give yourself a chance to live.”

  “Thad’s death almost killed me,” Tina said. The emotion she was usually pretty adept at avoiding came unexpectedly, overwhelming her. “It did kill my son. I can’t risk that again.”

  Jolene watched her, chin on one hand, transmitting the compassion and love that was their mainstay. Tina knew she had her with that last remark; this part of the conversation had happened often enough for her to recognize its end. And yet Jolene, while quiet, never quite gave up. Secretly, Tina was kind of glad about that. Not that she was ever, ever going to be part of a couple again; she just couldn’t stand the thought of Jolene giving up on her. Not when she’d already given up on herself.

  “Even if you never love someone that completely, your body’s trying to tell you it’s ready to start living again.”

  Jolene’s words startled her. And were far more of a threat to Tina’s carefully maintained emotional equilibrium than anything else that had been
said. It was the first time Jolene had pushed her beyond this point. She wasn’t ready—even if her body was.

  “What are you suggesting, that I go stand on a street corner? Or put an ad in the personals? Hey, these days, I could probably just register on the Internet someplace and have a whole display of men to choose from.” The sarcasm wasn’t like her. Especially with Jolene.

  But her friend had broken the unacknowledged rule—to understand at all costs.

  “I’m suggesting you open your mind to the possibility that a less committed but perhaps long-term relationship might be okay.”

  “It wouldn’t be.”

  “Because you’re still hanging on to a six-year-old decision.”

  “And five, and four and…hell.,” Tina gave a grin that was halfhearted at best. “If we’re going to get technical, it’s probably been about twenty minutes since I decided—once again—that I’m happier single than I would be loving someone. I’d drive us both insane with my worrying every minute of every day that he’s going to be snatched away from me.”

  Jolene’s hand slid over hers, fingers wrapping around Tina’s palm. The warmth spread through her skin, into her veins, slowly reaching her heart.

  “Hey,” she finally said. “I’m not asking you to marry him, Teen, or even to meet him yet. I’m just asking you to realize you won’t always have to be alone.”

  It took her a long time, but eventually Tina could meet Jolene’s eyes. “I know,” she offered, although she didn’t need to. Jolene did understand. “And I know you’re right. I just can’t seem to make myself strong enough to actually do what you’re asking.”

  “All I’m asking you to do is think, Teen. Nothing else. Just think about not being alone. If the rest is meant to come, it will. If you meet someone and want to be with him, you’ll find a way to deal with the worries. But you aren’t ever going to meet him if you don’t open yourself to the possibility.”

  Normally Tina loved it when Jolene was right. This time she hated it. She started to tell her so, but a knock on the cabin door stifled the words.

  “Who could that be?” she whispered as she and Jolene looked at each other.