Plain Jayne

by Hillary Manton Lodge

  I looked to Shane. He nodded. “That’d be really nice.”

  She beamed. “Excellent. Have you seen Beth yet?”

  “No,” I said, my face turning red. “I don’t think I have her current number.”

  “She switched phone services. Why don’t I give her a call? Do you have dinner plans?”

  We said no, and I watched as my mother all but skipped to the phone to call Beth.

  “What were you so worried about?” Shane set his coffee cup down. “Everything seems cool. Your mom even makes good coffee.”

  I smiled, thinking it was a comment Levi would have made. I forced myself back to the present. Standing, I walked around the living room and looked at the pictures sprinkled around the room.

  Beth and me as little girls, dressed for Easter Sunday. Beth looking like a princess, me looking like a princess who would rather be the scullery maid. There was Beth’s graduation photo, followed shortly by the wedding pictures, she and Gary smiling and looking so very young.

  There were other photos I appeared in—my first day of kindergarten, that sort of thing. But after my graduation, there were no more photos.

  I knew why. I had made it a point to not be available for photo ops.

  There were other pictures I hadn’t seen. Beth holding a newborn in her arms, a smiling Gary sitting on the edge of the hospital bed.

  I knew I’d visited briefly weeks before the baby was born and sent a card shortly after. But there were moments I’d missed, moments I’d never get back. I always thought I was fine with that. Now…I wasn’t so sure.

  My mom came back to the room. “I just got off the phone with Beth. She and Gary are free tonight, so they’ll be over soon. They’ll bring little Emilee with them. I can’t believe how fast she’s growing up!”

  “How old is she now?”

  “Turning five next winter.”

  I think I might have sent her a birthday present. Once. I certainly wasn’t in line for any “Auntie of the Year” awards.

  “They’ll be a little while, coming in from Neotsu,” my mom continued. “If you like, you could check out of the motel and get settled in here.”

  A part of me hesitated. If things blew up over dinner, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

  However, it also meant that I would have to stay and sort out my problems.

  Which was technically the reason for the trip.

  “That sounds nice,” I said.

  “I’ll go start dinner.” She frowned. “You’re not vegetarian, are you? Either of you?”

  Shane emphatically shook his head.

  “Excellent. When you get back, will you want your old room, Jayne?”

  I shrugged. “Fine with me.”

  “And Shane, there’s a bed in the sewing room.”

  “Sewing room?” I didn’t know Mom sewed.

  “Beth’s old room.” She sighed. “It’ll be so nice to have everyone here. I just wish…”

  Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she meant. She wished my father were there.

  I didn’t know if I could agree with her or not.

  The receptionist gave us an odd look when we checked out. I imagine it looked a bit shady that we’d only checked in a little while ago, but we were in separate rooms, for Pete’s sake. “My mom invited us to stay with her,” I explained, trying to make the woman’s expression go away.

  “That’s nice,” she said, but the expression only slightly softened.

  Back at my mom’s house, she led us upstairs to the rooms, even though I’d grown up there. Maybe she thought I’d been gone so long I’d forgotten.

  My room looked very little like I remembered. Granted, it had been eight years. My striped bedspread had left with me for university life. In its place was a floral-print quilt that coordinated with the soft green color of the walls. It was very soothing, very pretty. Made me think of my room at the Burkholders.

  Speaking of the walls, they looked different than I remembered. Probably because ACDC no longer scowled down on anyone who walked in.

  I went to check on Shane once I had put my bags down.

  Beth’s room really had been converted to a sewing room. Tubs of fabric lined a wall. Plastic sets of pull-out drawers held thread, scissors, and measuring tapes. A table against the wall held a massive sewing machine. Next to the machine sat a stack of…

  “Quilt squares!” I rushed over to pick them up. They looked so nice, so organized, their edges trimmed just so.

  Shane came up behind me. “Explain to me what you’ll do with them? Seeing as how you don’t quilt…”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Cut more squares so they’ll be with friends.”

  “You just have stacks of quilt squares?”

  “Aren’t they nice?”

  “Do you collect three-by-five cards too?”

  “Shane—”

  “Do you stack them as well? Or I guess you don’t need to. They come out of the shrink-wrap that way.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “You like me that way.”

  I leaned over to give him a quick kiss. “Define like.”

  Shane deepened the kiss but pulled away when the doorbell rang. “That’s probably your sister. She rang the doorbell.”

  I rolled my eyes and stepped away. “Seriously, the doorbell used to be very taboo in this house.”

  But it had changed. Obviously. I just wanted to know what other things—aside from our bedrooms—had changed as well.

  Chapter 21

  Shane and I headed downstairs, following the sound of people—chatter, the rustle of coats, Velcro, and zippers.

  As we came into the entryway, I could see Beth, Gary, and Emilee. My little niece looked a lot larger than I’d imagined. I hadn’t seen her at the memorial. Beth had elected to get a sitter rather than put a four-year-old through that.

  Beth looked up. I smiled. Her chilly expression caused me to stop where I was. Shane nearly ran over me.

  “Hi, Beth,” I said, hoping that maybe her expression was an anomaly.

  The corners of her mouth moved a fraction of an inch up. “Hi, Jayne.”

  “This is my boyfriend, Shane,” I said, attempting to distract everyone. “Shane, this is Beth, my sister, and her husband, Gary.” I flashed my most winning smile. “And Emilee is my niece.”

  Shane shook everyone’s hand, charming as usual.

  “Shane and Jayne?” Beth asked. “Do you date because you rhyme?”

  I heard Gary chide his wife under his breath, but Shane jumped in before I could form a non-incendiary reply.

  “More like, we date, therefore we are. I’ve always tried to be existential about my romantic relationships,” he said, and because he’s witty and charming, everyone but Beth laughed, even if they didn’t understand.

  Existentialistic humor not being for everyone.

  “Dinner’s going to be a little while,” Mom said, taking coats to the hallway closet near the utility room. “Settle in and get comfortable.”

  “Do you need any help in the kitchen?” I asked. Sitting around in this crowd wasn’t my idea of relaxing.

  Mom stopped still. Beth stopped still. It’s possible the earth froze in its orbit for a moment, at least until my mother caught her breath.

  “I’d love help.” My mom glanced at my brace. “Are you sure your wrist feels well enough?”

  Beth snorted. I refused to look at her. “It’s nearly healed.”

  “I thought I’d put a pie together. Would you like to help with that?”

  I could feel Beth’s gaze shifting from me to Mom.

  “I love pie.”

  “She can eat it, but she can’t bake it,” Beth mumbled, and I heard Gary mumble something back.

  Shane squeezed my hand. I left for the kitchen.

  “Do you have an apron I could borrow?” I asked, thinking for the first time that I might want an apron of my own. Not that I’d necessarily travel with it, but I kept going places and wanting one. At some po
int, I’d probably want one at home too.

  My mom produced a flowered apron that triggered childhood memories of cookie frosting and postdinner dishes. I slipped it over my head and tied it behind my back

  Something strange happened in that instant. Before the apron, a part of me felt out of place, like the object on Sesame Street that Big Bird would decide didn’t belong. But after the apron—I felt more settled. More centered, as though I were back at the Burkholder farmhouse, with a garden in the back and a loose pig and children underfoot and everything in a state of rightness.

  I measured out the flour the way Martha had taught me. I placed the measuring cup inside a slightly larger bowl, spooned the ingredient into the cup, then leveled off the top, all with my good arm.

  I could feel my mom watching as I worked, but I didn’t care. I was in my happy place. When Mom offered to help with the rolling, though, I didn’t turn her down. Within minutes, the lower dough layer was in place in the bottom of the pie pan.

  “What kind of pie are we making,” I asked, fingering the edge of the crust.

  “How does cherry sound?”

  “I didn’t know cherries were available,” I said, thinking about how much more they would cost at the coast.

  Mom raised a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Beth.” She opened a cupboard and retrieved three cans of prepared cherry filling.

  I stifled a laugh. I’d never known my mom to bake anything not from scratch. Even brownies never came from a box.

  “I drain them, so there’s less of the cherry syrup in the pie.”

  “Very clever.” Feeling like a coconspirator, I helped open the cans and dumped their contents into the sieve in the sink. We gave the sieve a tiny shake, then emptied the ripe, sugar-coated cherries into the pie pan. I watched as my mom made a lattice top out of the remaining dough, cutting strips and laying them out just so.

  When she finished, I went around and crimped the edges so that they waved in a perfect circle.

  I let Mom put it in the oven.

  She brushed the excess flour from her hands. “Do you bake often these days?”

  “Not until recently.”

  “Oh?”

  I ducked my head and smoothed my apron. “I, um, went to stay with an Amish family for a while.”

  “Really? What was that like?”

  What was it like? How could I begin? “Hard to describe,” I started, realizing I wasn’t making any mental headway. “It’s a society that makes so little sense to me. But there’s something really beautiful about it.”

  “Will you go back to visit again?”

  “I hope so.”

  And before I knew it, I was telling her about Martha and Sara, Gideon and the boys, about Leah and little Elizabeth. I told her about Ida, Naomi Zook, and her twins Mary Ellen and Becky, little Doyle and Baby Ruby.

  Woven throughout their stories was the ever-present Levi, whose face had followed me ever since I left the farm.

  I told her more than I had told anyone, even Gemma. I didn’t know why, either. I had never been one of those girls who had been able to confide in her mother. When I was a teen, I thought she’d criticize me for what I said.

  “Tell me more about this Levi,” Mom said when I was through. She stood at the stove, stirring a sauce. “He sounds like an interesting fellow.”

  I listened for a quick moment for Shane and the others in the living room. Shane was saying something, Gary was laughing.

  “Levi…is a puzzle. He left the Amish to use his mind, and then he left his corporate job to be back near them. He could befriend anyone.”

  “Like Shane?”

  Shane would befriend, yes, but name-call later. “Yes. And no. They’re different.”

  “How long have you and Shane been seeing each other?”

  “Six months.”

  “Is he serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you?”

  The chatter in the living room died down. I shrugged, rather than incriminate myself audibly.

  “The sauce is done, and I think the roast is too. The pie will bake through dinner. Shall we call everyone in?”

  “How’s the pie?” Shane asked when I returned to the living room.

  “Cheery cherry.”

  “Cherry?” Beth’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Where’d Mom get cherries this time of year?”

  “She has her ways, I guess,” I answered with a straight face. “Dinner’s ready, if you’d all like to come in to eat.”

  “I don’t think I heard,” Beth started, pointing at my arm, “how you wound up with a brace.”

  I opted for the condensed version. “I fell down.”

  “Out of nowhere?”

  The Beth I grew up with never pressed this hard. Somewhere along the line, she had become quite a pain. A pain with a backbone.

  “There was a short trashcan involved.”

  “Was that at the Amish house?” Shane asked.

  “No. It was…in town.”

  Gary chuckled. “There’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  Hmm, I didn’t like where this was going. I pointed to the dining room. “Dinner—hot—in there. Good stuff.”

  “Is the pie sanitary?” Beth asked innocently.

  I saw Gary give her a dirty look.

  “It should be,” I said with a straight face. “At least, once the E. coli cooks out.”

  Shane snorted.

  “Who’s Ecoli?” little Emilee asked, the first time I’d heard her speak.

  She had a sweet little voice. Reminded me of Naomi’s twins. Come to think of it, they were about the same age.

  “Don’t worry about it, honey,” Gary told his daughter. “E. coli is a kind of germ, but there won’t be any in your pie. Your aunt was just joking.”

  “Where is everyone?” Mom called from the dining room. “Dinner won’t be hot forever!”

  “Coming!” I called, walking in her direction and willing everyone else to follow suit.

  I could hear Beth and Gary arguing softly behind me, but their voices never seemed far away, which I took as a good sign. Shane came up beside me and squeezed my hand.

  I squeezed it back.

  “Shall we pray?” Mom asked, once we’d all settled at the table. “Gary, would you like to pray for us?”

  “We should check with Jayne first,” Beth said.

  My stomach sank.

  “Is it all right if we pray?” she asked me, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “It won’t disagree with your religion, will it?”

  “Beth—” Mom warned.

  “We don’t know if it would offend her, Mother. We’ve seen so little of her. She could be Baha’i by now. Or Buddhist. Are you Buddhist, Jayne?”

  “What is your problem, Beth?” I asked, crossing my arms. “I’m here. Need to get something off your chest? I don’t want you to wear yourself out. Potshots can be exhausting.”

  “I can’t believe you!”

  “What can’t you believe?”

  Gary pulled Emilee’s chair back out. “Honey, why don’t you go play upstairs for a little while? The grown-ups need to talk.”

  Beth reached to still Emilee’s chair. “She needs to eat, Gary.”

  “She doesn’t need to hear you—”

  “Hear me what? It’s past her normal dinnertime.”

  Gary lifted Emilee from the chair. “There’s a granola bar in your bag. That should tide her over.”

  With that, Gary and Emilee retreated to safety upstairs.

  I knew exactly how they felt.

  “I can’t believe you’d not visit for three years, barely show up at Dad’s memorial, and then waltz back here like nothing was wrong. Did you notice how Mom’s lost twenty pounds in the last month? Who helped take care of Mom when Dad was in the hospital? Who brought her meals? Who organized the caterer for the memorial, made the phone calls, wrote the thank-you cards for the bouquets?”

  “I’m sorry, Beth.” I struggled to keep my voice steady. “
You want to know why I came? I came because I didn’t like the way things were. Because I wanted to try, try, to make things right.”

  “Why didn’t you try five years ago? Did it occur to you that you might be five years too late?”

  “Beth, that’s enough!” Mom chided sharply. “If you can’t be pleasant, you can leave.”

  “Let me answer, Mom.” I looked back to Beth. “I did consider that it was probably eight years too late, but I wanted to try anyway.”

  “What if,” she said, “I wanted a sister that whole time?”

  I sighed. “What if I did too?”

  “I was here! We all were!”

  “You didn’t want a sister who was a reporter in Portland. You wanted a sister who could look through children’s clothing catalogs with you. I couldn’t do that.”

  “No. Instead, you ran away to the big city, doing big-city things so important that you didn’t need us anymore.”

  The room at the Sea Gypsy called my name, but I remained in my seat. “I’m sorry, Beth. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m trying. I’m doing what I can. The rest is up to you.”

  Beth closed her mouth, though she looked as though she had a lot of words still hanging around on the tip of her tongue. When she finally spoke, her voice was controlled.

  “Would someone please pass the peas?”

  “The pie was good,” Shane said, settling himself on the floor next to the couch where I was stretched out.

  “The cherries were canned.”

  “They were good.”

  “The crust wasn’t as buttery as Martha’s.”

  “Martha…”

  “Burkholder.”

  “Right, the Amish lady. Just use more butter next time.”

  “You don’t use butter in pie crust.”

  “Then how…never mind.”

  “My sister hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “Where’s my mom?”

  “Talking to Beth outside.”

  I groaned and buried my face in a throw pillow with an appliqué butterfly. “It’s like we’re six years old again.”

  “I can’t understand you when you talk into pillows.”

  “Sorry.” I lifted my face. “I said it’s like we’re six years old again, and we need Mommy and Daddy to help us get along. Never mind she’s married with a kid and I’m a working professional. We’re not adult enough to work this out.”