Between, Georgia

by Joshilyn Jackson

  I had expected something solemn, maybe even beautiful. Like a wedding, only backwards. Or maybe I had expected to drift into the divorce, a natural progression of one slow thing after another until there we were at an end, finished with each other.

  It struck me as ironic that I’d caught Jonno cheating when we were trying to make a baby. I’d married him mostly because I’d thought we already had. We hadn’t been dating even a year, and it didn’t seem possible that the result of all the astounding sex we’d been having could be a pregnancy. He was my first love, and sex seemed like something we’d invented. At nineteen, I knew how reproduction worked in theory, but it had never occurred to me that there could be an application. Anyway, we’d been careful.

  I’d been meticulously careful. After all, I was raised a Frett. So sex with Jonno was a lot of things, but it had never seemed like a viable way to procreate until the month my period didn’t show.

  I told Jonno in the same way I would have told him any other mildly interesting but improbable scientific fact: An ant can live underwater for fourteen days, Jonno, and I am six days late. He had shrugged, calmly, and said, “Maybe you should pee on a stick?”

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  “I can’t be pregnant,” I said.

  “Sure you can,” he said, and that made it a little more real. I felt the first stirring of panic. He saw my eyes widening and grinned at me. “Don’t sweat it, Gig. If the line goes pink, we’ll get married. I mean, hell. I love you, right? And you love me. No big deal.”

  So we’d gone to Walgreens and gotten a First Response. This was back when Jonno was living with his old band in an ancient rental house that probably should have been condemned. The den smelled permanently of feet, and one of the bedrooms had a gaping hole in the floor that led into the kitchen. Jonno called it Chez Crap. It had two bathrooms, and the one Jonno used was less revolting than the other, though not what I would call clean.

  But we went there because I didn’t want anyone in my crowded dorm to catch on to what I was doing.

  The bathroom was built long and narrow, and Jonno came in with me and boosted himself onto the counter to sit by the sink.

  I made him close his eyes and run the water. When I was done, we set the test down by the sink and stood over it, staring, for three minutes. We watched the test line slowly fade into being, getting deeper, going almost red. The window that would indicate a pregnancy stayed purely, blankly white.

  “There you go,” said Jonno.

  “All right, then,” I said.

  That might have ended it, except he added, “We could get married anyway, Gig. If you want to.”

  “All right, then,” I said again. Even then nothing would have happened if I hadn’t called my family and told them that Jonno had asked me and I had said yes. Mama kept asking if I was sure this was what I wanted, but all Bernese heard was “wedding.” All 229

  three of her boys were married, but the weddings had been planned by the brides and their mothers. Lori-Anne was only eleven, a weedy-looking, sullen child who claimed she would never marry because boys were revolting.

  Jonno and I were tugged bonelessly along in the huge wake of Bernese’s planning. She had Pastor Gregg marry us outside by the fountain in the middle of Between’s town square. My dress was a winter-white raw-silk shift, very simple. I’d worn short white gloves and a hat I now found embarrassing whenever I looked at the pictures. Genny’s idea, that hat. Jonno wore a lightweight blue summer suit bought for the wedding and never worn again.

  The entire town was there, Mama pressing her lips into a flat line, Genny sniffling into her hanky. Lou walked me down the aisle and Bernese sat with Isaac, presiding like the queen bee.

  Poor Lori-Anne was tricked out in a mint-green puffy-sleeved lace monstrosity that made her look jaundiced. She was my flower girl, and Lily Crabtree came home to be my bridesmaid, standing up with Boyd as best man.

  Even Ona Crabtree came. She was alone, and she sat twitching uncomfortably in the back row, wearing an ill-fitting rayon dress.

  She didn’t stay for the reception; it was dry.

  Jonno’s mother had passed, and his father and stepmother, who lived all the way up in Wisconsin, didn’t make it. They sent a check for five hundred bucks inside a Hallmark card.

  Had it rained, we would have gone inside the church, right beside us on the square, but we lucked out. We had a gorgeous day, not too hot, with bright yellow sunshine streaming idyllically down over everything. Bernese had farmed Azures like mad in the weeks leading up to the wedding. She had Ivy Marchant release them into the square right before the ceremony. The flower beds 230

  were thick with butterflies, and they seemed to fill the air around us, fluttering in romantic approval. While Jonno said the standard Baptist vows to me and put the ring Bernese had picked out on my finger, one of the Azures lit on his shoulder. It stayed the entire time he was speaking, opening and closing like a flower blooming and returning to bud, showing me its colors. I remember thinking it was a sign.

  And now this quick and businesslike undoing seemed shame-less in its speed, especially when filtered through the memory of our wedding. Jonno seemed to feel it, too. He stood with his handsome brow furrowed, stern and solemn. Or maybe he was simply adjusting his expression to suit the mood. There was no telling with Jonno. And then it was over.

  Our lawyer walked us out, his jouncy, cheerful gait making his head bob like a chicken’s as he all but skipped along between us.

  We thanked him, and he headed for the parking lot. The courthouse was closing. Jonno and I stood together at the bottom of the steps. The day was just beginning to die around us, the afternoon sunlight losing its heat and mellowing to gold.

  “I can’t believe you came,” I said.

  “I only showed up to see if you would,” he said. “I still don’t feel like you mean it.”

  I felt it, too, this open-ended unending. I said, “Maybe we need to go hit a ship with a bottle or cut a ribbon.” It didn’t seem possible that he could have another wedding planned for the next day. In typical Jonno fashion, he hadn’t yet brought Amber back up. I didn’t want to, either. It was none of my business as of fifteen minutes ago.

  He said, “Do you want your keys back?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to stay in Athens, Jonno. And 231

  you need to go by tomorrow and get Lewis. The neighbor’s kid has been feeding him.”

  “Where are you moving?”

  I didn’t answer him, and after a few seconds passed, he said,

  “Not my business. Gotcha. Okay, I’ll pick up Lewis tomorrow.

  Boyd hates cats, so that’ll be fun. Hey, you want to go get something to eat?”

  “No.”

  Jonno was looking at the courthouse, and I was watching the sun set over his shoulder. I waited for him to say goodbye or walk away. But he didn’t, and I didn’t, either. I said, “You know what, though? I could use a ride home.”

  “Home, the apartment? Or back to Between?”

  “Between,” I said.

  “Yeah, okay. That would be good. If I felt like I was driving you away from me, out of town, then maybe this would feel like it was true. Because right now you still look like my Gig to me.”

  “That’s almost charming,” I said tartly.

  “Don’t be an asshole. I said I’ll take you,” he said. “But real quick, I have to go meet Boyd’s friend at this warehouse and pick up our new amp, okay?”

  I should have said no. But part of me didn’t want to go home yet. I was still, at the core of me, so angry with my mama. So I said, “Sure. Let me give them a heads-up at home.”

  I got out my cell phone and called Mama’s house, dialing directly instead of using the relay service. While it was ringing, I said to Jonno, “Don’t talk.”

  He nodded, and I had a dizzying moment of déjà vu. So many times in the last year, I had called my family with Jonno hiding in the silence beside me.

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  I was ex
pecting Genny, but Bernese picked up.

  “It’s done,” I said.

  “Good! You on the way back?”

  “In a little,” I said. “I need to do a couple of things while I’m here, and I have to work out a ride home, okay?”

  “The whore can’t bring you back?” Bernese asked. It was rhetorical. “Lou just called. He’s closing up the shop, and then him and Fisher will be home. You took your keys off to Athens with you, so your car’s still parked behind the church. Do you think Genny’ll be okay with your mama, or should I stay here with them?”

  “Genny’s fine with Mama,” I said. “How’s Fisher?”

  “Mad at you,” said Bernese. “But you did the right thing, Nonny. She’ll get over it—especially if this means you’ll be around here for a good spell.”

  “It does. I’ll have to pack up at some point, get out of my lease.

  But other than that, I’m not coming back here at all if I can help it.” I got off the phone and clipped it back to my purse. Then I followed Jonno out to the parking lot where he’d stashed his Impala, and we got in. He negotiated his way out of the lot and paid. I flipped the radio on. He had it set to the college station, and they were spinning some weird alterna-crap. It sounded like an electric guitar backed up by a sitar and some singing mice.

  Jonno had about fifteen words of directions to the warehouse scrawled on the back of a parking ticket. We set off looking for it, and before I knew it, we had slipped sideways into Jonno time.

  Jonno time zoomed by faster than regular time and had no set boundaries except the moment that a sacred gig began. If the band had a spot, he was there, on time, impeccably groomed, revved up, and running hot like a huge engine of charisma. But 233

  everything else was mutable and flexed and changed within the moment. After a little while, the warehouse began to seem like mythology.

  He spent the next three hours running down my cell-phone battery, calling Boyd repeatedly to get new directions, yelling over the car radio and whatever music Boyd had going at the other end. At nine, we were parked in an otherwise empty lot behind yet another obviously incorrect warehouse. My cell was dead.

  We waited hopelessly for a guy named either Dale or Paolo whom Boyd was sending to lead us to amp-land. We sat through half a Pink Floyd album that had been remixed by someone called DJ Peep-Peep. Meanwhile, Dale-or-Paolo was no doubt sitting at some other warehouse seven miles away, cussing us out.

  I said, “This isn’t going to happen.”

  Jonno nodded, but he didn’t start the car. He sat there looking at me with his eyes half closing, becoming heavy-lidded and suggestive.

  “Oh, you’re kidding me,” I said.

  “Nuh-uh,” he said, and he leaned across the gearshift to kiss me. I put my hand up between us like a stop sign.

  He stopped moving forward, but he didn’t sit back. He froze, waiting for me to put my hand down.

  “Are you going to marry that girl?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Not if you tell me not to.” He dipped down and pushed his forehead into my hand, like a big dog wanting a pet, rubbing against my palm. He pushed my hand to the side with his head, and then he kissed me.

  It was a typical Jonno kiss, perfect, practiced, almost endless.

  And wrong. Dead wrong. I tilted my head, and he moved in closer until I could feel the heat of his body. On a physical level, 234

  it was working for me—he always worked for me—but it was wrong. I willed Dale-or-Paolo to show up and interrupt us, wished Jonno would feel the wrongness and move away from me.

  Instead, he put one big hand on my knee, sliding it slowly up my thigh.

  My purse was at my feet, stocked with the necessary condoms, and the parking lot was dark and deserted. It occurred to me that there was nothing that would come along and stop this, and he never would stop on his own. A thousand Ambers could knock on my door to demand him, and a million judges could bang gavels and call it over, but they couldn’t start the credits rolling, and Jonno wouldn’t.

  So I broke the kiss and leaned back, tapping the back of my head against the passenger window, once, twice, hard enough to hurt. Jonno was still leaning toward me across the gearshift, his hand halfway up my leg. I swallowed, surprised.

  It was only a broken kiss. I had only leaned back six inches.

  But I had ended us.

  Right then I wanted nothing more than to be at home. I wanted to see Henry, and I needed to talk to Mama. I had to tell her, tell them both, that yes, hell yes, there was a god in the machine. But it had nothing to do with Amber. It wasn’t her or even hers. The machine had been working this whole time, before I knew Amber existed. It had been the low hum underneath everything, droning in such a way that after a while I no longer heard it as it ground me toward my beautiful divorce. Maybe I had let it push me, and maybe I had gummed it up at times, but I had built it when I kicked Jonno out, and I had set it in motion when I drove us to a lawyer. The machine was mine. It had run on my time and no one else’s, and the only god in it was me.

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  “It’s no-go, huh?” he said.

  “It was a good game and all, Jonno. But I’m out. Take me home, okay?”

  He leaned toward me again, but I rolled the back of my head against the window until my temple rested on the cool glass. He stopped short before his kiss could land on my cheek.

  “Okay, Nonny,” he said. He sat back, his hand trailing away and coming to rest on the gearshift. I sat up, too. I wasn’t even angry with him. I wasn’t anything but longing to be home. And hungry. As my stomach growled, I realized I had never called Ona to cancel our dinner. I grabbed my cell, but of course it was dead as paint. Perfect. This was really going to help my peace negotia-tions.

  Not speaking, Jonno drove for Between. He had the radio up loud, and we listened to whatever the too-hip-for-TV college DJ

  said was cool until we lost the signal. Jonno knew from experience that once we lost the college station, there was nothing but country music, preaching, or an eighties pop station that leaned heavily toward Mr. Mister. He put in a tape.

  We were only a mile or two from my exit when the fire truck passed us with its siren on, lights blazing. Jonno canted right, easing toward the shoulder to let it pass. A minute later, we heard another siren. An ambulance this time. Then a state trooper and a fire marshal’s car. We followed them all down 78, and it didn’t even occur to me to panic until I saw they were pulling off at my exit, heading into my tiny town.

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  CHAPTER 18

  LIVING HALF MYlife in Between and half in Athens had made me an expert at finding the truth spread thin among at least three versions. I was adept at picking out key details from different narrators and combining them, interpreting through my family’s bents and prejudices. But that Friday, almost nothing that mattered to me happened in the presence of my family. The only witnesses were Crabtrees, and the only Crabtree eyes I trusted were Henry’s. I had to adopt his account in a single, un-broken piece, filling in blanks with nothing but my own imagination.

  Henry Crabtree spent his Friday checking inventory and waiting for me. He was good at it. He didn’t worry; he just waited.

  Around two-thirty, he saw Fisher playing in the gardens in front of the Dollhouse Store. He stepped outside and saw Lou framed in the display window, keeping an eye on her. He didn’t see me, and on Fridays after school, whither Fisher went, there I went also. He went back inside and found himself humming while he restocked the travel section. If Fisher was with Lou, I was in Athens killing two birds with one stone: getting divorced and making Henry cheerful. Unless I was hiding from him. He stopped humming. As off-kilter as I’d been the last few days, he wouldn’t put hiding past me. I wouldn’t have put it past me, either.

  He closed up at six, like always, and decided to stroll down to the end of Grace Street to see if I was home. He crossed the square on the diagonal and came to the crosswalk that led across Philbert, and like any former Boy Scout,
he looked both ways.

  That was when he saw them. The Alabama Crabtrees came caravanning off the interstate in two red trucks, first Teak Crabtree’s old Ford, followed closely by Grif ’s Chevy. As they approached, Henry could see that Teak had Jimmy Crabtree in the cab with him, but he couldn’t get a good look inside Grif ’s truck.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath, and walked back across the square, hoping they hadn’t noticed him. He went inside his store and locked the door, then walked swiftly to the back. He paused by the sitting area in front of the office, staring at the sofa for a moment, rubbing his long fingers against his forehead.

  He went upstairs to his apartment, where he spent a few minutes pacing and thinking. Grif and Teak were the only two of Ona’s nephews who had the same mother. They were almost identical, with long-nosed, bony faces and scraggly red hair. They could hardly stand to be in the same room, they loathed each other so, but neither one could bear to be outdone by the other.

  Grif and Teak together guaranteed that any bad idea let loose in the room would be taken further and applied faster.

  Jimmy, his red-gold hair razored close to the scalp to hide his receding hairline, had been easy to recognize as he sat in Teak’s passenger seat. Jimmy was a good old boy when left alone, but he liked to needle Grif and Teak when he was liquored up. He was almost always liquored up.

  Henry focused all his mental energy on hoping Billy hadn’t been in Grif ’s truck. If Billy wasn’t with them, they’d get drunk and trench Bernese’s yard and then go smash the Dollhouse Store’s front window, maybe drag off the register. Then they’d head back to Ona’s, and Jimmy would needle Grif and Teak until they beat the crap out of each other. In the morning, if they hadn’t been arrested, they’d convoy back to Alabama. They’d be hungover, feeling as mean as fifty snakes, but with all their venom drained. Probably nothing irrevocable would happen as long as it was just the three of them.

  But if Billy had come? If it was Billy and Grif and Teak, drinking, pissed off, with Ona demanding justice and Jimmy niggling and pushing them from behind like a seedy, balding sprite? It was the working definition of trouble.