Circle of Three

by Patricia Gaffney

  I nodded; it was easier than speaking. Along with everything else, for some reason I was losing my voice.

  “And she’s fine. All that bull—that was just stupid, snotty talk, she did not sleep on any street last night. Her idea of paying you back.”

  My throat hurt, or I’d have said, “You didn’t hear it, the noise in the background, she was on the street.” Nightmare sounds; they’d kept me in a state of dread all night. My baby is in hell and I can’t find her.

  “She’s all right, Carrie. Come on, you can’t get like this.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Tsk. Let me do that.”

  “I’m finished. Is Jess still here?” He and Pop had been sitting beside each other on the sofa in the sunroom for the last hour, talking quietly, passing sections of the newspaper back and forth. I knew he was still here—I just wanted Mama to talk to me about him.

  “He’s here.” She stopped the sharp-fingered massage abruptly. “I told him to go, but he wouldn’t.”

  I turned around in dismay. “You told him to go?” She’d been civil to him last night, and almost nice to him this morning. She’d brought him coffee, called him Jess, asked him a polite, fairly astute question about the city council’s position on the school tax hike proposal—I thought she was making a real effort.

  “To the sailing. I told him to go see the ark float.”

  “Oh.”

  “But he won’t.”

  “No.”

  “Rather be here.” She sniffed, either in approval or disapproval, I couldn’t tell. “It’s a shame you both had to go and miss it. After all that work you did.”

  A stunning concession. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “It’ll be there awhile,” I said. That was a sore point with Mama, the fact that the town was allowing Eldon to keep the ark tied up on the river until the twenty-sixth of June—forty days and forty nights.

  “It’ll be there awhile,” she agreed gloomily. “Still. I know you wanted to be there when they put the animals on. I’m sorry, but your daughter has a lot to answer for.”

  “I just want her to come home. I don’t care what she’s done anymore.”

  “I know.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “You never worried me like this. It never occurred to me to say thanks.”

  Oh, I didn’t want to cry again. “You’re welcome,” I said, and tried to laugh. “It’s never too late to take credit for being the perfect child.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” she said, and hugged me.

  The phone rang. She stepped out of the way—she’d learned not to try to answer it herself.

  “Hello, Carrie?”

  “Yes? Is that—Landy?”

  “It’s me, I’m calling here from the Point. Things are starting to break up now.”

  “Oh—how are you? Did everything go all right? Jess is here—I’m sorry we couldn’t go down there. I don’t know if you heard about Ruth, but—”

  “Yeah, I did, Jess told me last night. So she’s not there yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I wondered about that. I didn’t want to call you for nothing, but then again, I figured if you knew she was back you’d be down here. It went real well, by the way. Daddy couldn’t stay long after the boarding, but he was just as pleased as could be with everything.”

  “Oh—good. But what were you saying about Ruth—”

  “Well, I saw her about halfway through it, about the time we were putting on the medium-size animals.”

  “What? What?”

  “I couldn’t stop what I was doing, and after that I lost sight of her—there was a crowd, even the TV people were down here, we were real pleased—”

  “Ruth was there? Landy, are you sure?”

  “It was her all right. It was still raining and she didn’t have no umbrella, so she was quite a—”

  “Is she still there?”

  “That I can’t say for sure. I haven’t seen her since then, and that was maybe an hour ago, but she could still be. I wished I could’ve got her, talked to her, but I didn’t know if she’d already gone home and come back and you knew it, or just what. Sorry if I messed up—”

  “You didn’t. Thank you—I’m coming right down.”

  “Ruth’s there?” Mama followed me out of the kitchen, into the living room, the sunroom, while I called all the way, “She’s back! We found her!”

  The men jumped up from the couch. “She’s down at Point Park, or she was, Landy just saw her.”

  Jess shook his head in amazement.

  “Who’s Landy?” Pop said, beaming, patting Mama on the shoulder.

  “Landy Pletcher, Eldon’s son,” Jess said. “What’s she doing down at the Point?”

  “I have no idea. Pop, can I have your car? He said the launch went perfectly,” I told Jess, “he said TV people were there.”

  My father dug his keys out of his trouser pocket and tossed them over. “Want me to come with you?”

  “I’ll go, too,” Mama said, looking around for her purse.

  “No, Mama, no. Pop—thanks. I’m going by myself.”

  In the hall, I grabbed an umbrella from the coatrack. I was halfway through the door when I remembered. “Oh—Jess, can you take my parents home?” They’d all followed me into the hall.

  “Glad to,” he said. We exchanged a secret look. We were enjoying the same mental picture, I knew: of Mama bouncing along between Jess and Pop in the pickup.

  * * *

  The Leap River was a glorified creek that began at Culpeper and flowed south through Greene County. The deepest part was at the Point and east for a few miles, past Leap River Farm, Jess’s farm; after that it turned back into a stream and finally trickled away into the Rapidan. Point Park, Clayborne’s main civic recreation area, started at the bridge and ran adjacent to the river for almost half a mile. It had hiking trails, picnic shelters, a children’s playground—soon to be refurbished with Eldon Pletcher’s money—pretty views, a jogging path, a band pavilion, ball fields. The centerpiece was two wide, side-by-side fishing piers made out of river rock and stretching halfway to the other side of the Leap. Jess, Landy, and the Arkists had constructed the ark between the two piers, which were slightly less than thirty feet apart—a perfect distance for a nineteen-foot-wide ark; if they’d built it at a shipyard they couldn’t have found a more convenient staging area.

  From the parking lot, I couldn’t see it clearly; too far away, too many trees in the way. But what I could see made me laugh, a quick, nervous explosion at the sight of an ark, an ark, bobbing on the khaki-colored river. They’d painted it a light charcoal gray to resemble weathered wood, with gay white and black for the doors and portholes and trim. It was a handsome ark, most impressive, you’d never have guessed it was hollow inside, a mere floating stage. What startled the laugh out of me was a glimpse of my lovely giraffe, head jutting up over the flat top of the third deck, so raffish and silly—and as I drove past, his mate on the flip side looking coy, batting her long black pipe cleaner eyelashes. Oh, it worked. Glory be, it really worked. It could’ve been such a disaster.

  The skies were clearing, but raindrops still fell heavily from the trees overhanging the paved lane leading from parking area to parking area. I turned on the wipers and huddled over the steering wheel, my face close to the steamy windshield. Cars and people still clogged the drive; if the crowd had “broken up,” as Landy said, it must’ve been enormous an hour ago. Food and balloon vendors were closing down their concessions. I passed a white van with a satellite dish on top—a TV crew? I slowed to let a mother and her little boy cross in front of me. In red letters across the chest, the boy’s T-shirt said I SAW NOAH’S ARK, and the date. What entrepreneurial genius was selling those? Not the Arkists, I was sure. Thank God Mama wasn’t here.

  I turned around at the dead end without seeing the Chevrolet. Could Ruth have gone home? We’d have passed each other, though, and I’d been watching carefully. Maybe she was on the other side of the river.
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  I steered slowly out of the park, across the bridge, and turned in at the gravel drive above the tow path. More people, more cars.

  There, I saw it. No—that Chevy Cavalier had a huge dent in the fender. I stopped next to it, blocking a car behind me, and rolled down my bleary window. Ha! There was Stephen’s expired faculty parking sticker under the rearview mirror. Ruth was nowhere in sight.

  A crumbling concrete lane led steeply up the hill behind the river to Ridge Road, where there was another, smaller parking area. Jess and I, a million years ago, used to go there and park. I found a place for the Honda near the overlook. Just as I was getting out, a fresh rain shower started. I opened my umbrella and started back down the slippery road toward the water. Watching my feet, I didn’t see Ruth until we almost walked into each other.

  “Oh,” she said involuntarily. Her surprised face shut down and turned stony. My impulse to reach out for her sank just as fast—but the dark thing, the deep dread inside finally slithered away, out of sight. Gone.

  She looked half-drowned. “Are you all right?” She gave a nonchalant nod. “Come on,” I said, and turned around. I tried to share the umbrella, but she made a point of slouching up the hill beside me in the downpour. Drown, then, I thought. Anger was working hard to overwhelm my relief; the urge to slap my daughter’s sullen face had never been stronger. But neither had the urge to grab and hold and never let go.

  Inside Pop’s car, I fumbled in the glove compartment until I found a clean handkerchief. “Here, dry your hair. At least dry your face.” She turned around to comply, surliness in every move, every line of her body. For a second I felt drunk on it, the old familiar sneering meanness, the intimacy, the dearness of it filling my throat like honey, like tears. We will get through this, and it will be awful, but oh I love you, I love you.

  The rain slacked off again, reduced to trickling streams down the windows. Through the murk and the trees, the little bit of river visible from here was only a muddy, moving blur. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head, staring straight ahead. She looked exhausted, red-eyed and disheveled, the wrinkled knit of her shirt sticking to her childish breasts. She wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “Why did you come here? Why didn’t you go home?”

  “I drove by, saw a million cars. Including the cops.”

  She must’ve seen Jess’s truck, too. “Are you all right?” I asked again.

  She shrugged one shoulder and stared out the window.

  “Did you get a tattoo?”

  Her nostrils flared. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  In spite of everything, I wasn’t prepared for more hostility. She leaned forward to wipe the condensation off her side of the window, then switched the wipers on for one swipe and turned them off. The message: anything outside this car is more interesting than anything inside.

  “I’m sorry for what happened,” I said. “Sorry for the way it happened. I know you’re hurt. But if you’re waiting for me to apologize for being in love with Jess, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Who cares, Mom, I don’t give a damn anyway.”I sighed when she folded her arms across her chest; fortifying the stockade. There was nothing to do but start further back. “You know Jess and I went to school together. When we were in high school, we fell in love. Eleventh grade.”

  “How come you never told me?” She made her voice sarcastic, as if the answer would be obvious to a child. “How come you kept it a secret?”

  “I told your father,” I evaded. “It wasn’t a secret.”

  “Oh, yeah, what did he say?”

  “Nothing. He—didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Poor bastard.”

  I blanched, not at bastard but at the casual cynicism. I’d never wanted her to be this grown-up.

  “Ruth. I know how you feel.”

  “Bullshit, you don’t know anything.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “No.”

  I took hold of the wheel and turned it back and forth until the steering lock clicked. “I’ll tell you how I feel, then. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’d rather hurt myself. If you wanted to punish me, you couldn’t have picked a better way. And I’m angry about that. Ruth, I am so mad at you.”

  She scowled straight ahead.

  “I do know how you feel. You think I dishonored your father. You think the two people you trusted most have been false to you, tricked you. You’re furious and you’re hurt.” Her cheeks turned bright red. She looked out the side window to hide her face. “How was I supposed to tell you?” I said thickly. “Do you think I did any of this on purpose? I didn’t want to fall in love with Jess again.”

  She said through a stuffy nose, “Why didn’t you just marry him in the first place?”

  “I should have.”

  She turned on me with burning eyes. “Oh, that’s great, Mom, then I wouldn’t even exist. Then you and Jess could have everything.”

  “Oh, stop it. I should’ve married him because he was right for me. I fell in love with Jess when I was seventeen. No— eleven, the first time we met.” I couldn’t help smiling, but that only made her flounce around in disgust. “The reason I didn’t marry him is because I chickened out. He was…a wild boy. Your grandmother couldn’t stand him,” I said with a careful laugh. Ruth wouldn’t look at me, but I could tell she was listening closely. “But he wasn’t wild, not like that. I doubt if he ever even broke the law—speeding, maybe. He was just different, he unsettled some people.”

  “Like Gram.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe she thought…” She stopped, remembering she wasn’t talking to me. But then she had to finish. “Maybe she thought it was catching. Jess’s mom’s disease or whatever.”

  He’d told Ruth about his mother? I hid my surprise. “I think you’re right, I think that was part of it. And I think that’s why he changed when he got older. Partly. Became more sedate. Cooler.”

  “All grown-ups do that.”

  “I suppose.” I gave up; I couldn’t explain Jess, it was beyond me. Especially to Ruth, especially now. And what a dangerous job, clarifying for my daughter why I loved someone else and not her father. However I phrased it, how could that do anything but wound?

  “Mom?” She fiddled with the radio dials, the heater knobs, hunched forward, giving me her closed profile.

  “When you, um, whatchacallit. Committed adultery, did Dad know? Was it…is that why he crashed the car?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because—it was years before—you were a baby.” She gawked at me, finally more amazed than angry. “But I’m not—this isn’t something I want to talk to you about. I told you, one time, and never after. It was a mistake, and I suffered for it.”

  “Oh yeah, I’ll bet.”

  “Ruth, listen. People can’t always choose who they love, sometimes it just happens. Sometimes we—”

  “We can choose who we sleep with!”

  Ah, the knife in the heart. She wouldn’t look at me, so I let my face crumple, breathing through my mouth, hoping I wouldn’t cry. “We can,” I said, voice fluttery. “You’re right.”

  “And you were wrong.” Implacable.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  She wiped the windshield with Pop’s handkerchief and turned on the wipers again. Needlessly; the sun was breaking out in patches. A billowy wind chopped the surface of the river, dulling the shine. It was clammy in the car; I rolled my window down a few inches. Finally I had no choice but to find a tissue in my pocket and blow my nose. When I did, Ruth glanced at me.

  “Jeez, Mom.”

  I couldn’t hear any sympathy. I wiped my face, sniffed in the rest of the tears. Amazing, how prodigiously well I was botching this job. “I was wrong, I admit it. But not only for what happened with Jess. I was guilty of a kind of cowardice, too.” But was she old enough for that revelation? No, I decided, backi
ng off; let Stephen stay the innocent, injured party a while longer. Forever, maybe. Yes.

  “The important thing is that your father never knew about us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know. I swear—you can let that go.”

  She stared at me fixedly for a long minute. “Okay,” she said, and we both relaxed slightly. A little light slanted through the murk.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “Eventually we have to forgive ourselves. I know you think I’m a hypocrite, a liar, a—a jezebel—”

  “What’s a jezebel?”

  “It’s kind of a…”

  “Slut?” But she blushed when she said it, and smirked, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  “The things you think I’ve done wrong—I did them out of love, and so I forgive myself.” Her mouth pulled sideways; I could practically hear her thinking, How convenient. “That’s not an excuse. Or—it’s the only excuse. Listen to me. If Stephen had lived, I don’t believe we’d have stayed together. Not because of Jess—don’t think that. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but I can’t explain this to you until you’re older.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not fair to your father. But Ruth—Jess is for me, I can’t do anything about it. Do you think it takes anything away from how much I love you? It doesn’t. It doesn’t. You’re the best part of my life, you’ve always been, that can’t ever change. Even if you—tattooed your whole body.”

  She snorted. And colored again, and stared down at her lap. She almost smiled.

  “I know I’ve been too easy with you sometimes. That’s been my biggest failing as a mother, but the reason—”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “The reason—and it’s hard for me to tell you, but I’m going to—it’s because I’ve always tried so hard not to be like my mother. Who, frankly, wanted to run my life for me—and this I’m telling you in confidence, woman to woman. But she did it out of love—again—so I’ve forgiven her, too.” The reality wasn’t as neat and tidy as these linked, symmetrical revelations implied, but I wasn’t trying to illuminate a moral lesson, I was just trying to tell the truth. Finally. “But that’s beside the point, we’re not talking about my mother, we’re talking about yours. I’ve tried—”I sighed, suddenly exhausted. I put my head back. “I’ve tried to be a good mother. And I know, I can hear that that doesn’t sound like much. And I’m sorry if I’ve been permissive or loose or if it’s felt to you as if I don’t care—”