by Nicole Baart
Jenna sliced the bread and Angela drained the noodles while Lucas put the table together. He grabbed clean glasses from the dishwasher, then had a better idea and abandoned the etched tumblers in favor of three pristine wineglasses that he and Jenna rarely used. He had to wipe them with a towel because they were dusty, and almost gave up on his plan when he couldn’t find a corkscrew anywhere. But Jenna reminded him that they had a cheap one in the picnic basket.
When they were all sitting down, steam rising from the heaped serving platter between them, Lucas produced a golden bottle of unlabeled wine and proceeded to butcher the cork as he tried to open it.
“That looks like moonshine,” Angela said.
“Close enough,” Jenna said with a smirk. “Another gift from one of Lucas’s patients. She brews a pretty powerful homemade wine.”
“I don’t think you brew wine,” Lucas said, finally managing to extract the cork.
“Whatever.”
“What is it?” Angela asked. “There are no vineyards around here.”
“Dandelion.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Ugh.”
“That’s why we’ve never tried it before.”
“You’re experimenting on me?” Angela said, looking unimpressed.
“No, I think Minnie Van Egdom is experimenting on all of us.” Lucas measured out a little in each of their glasses and raised his hand in a toast.
“We don’t toast,” Jenna reminded him.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Though she rolled her eyes, Jenna reluctantly raised her glass and Angela followed suit. But when the light sparkled off the three crystal goblets, Lucas realized that he had no idea what to say. What was there to toast? Angela wasn’t in town for a casual visit, and things between Lucas and Jenna were as icy as ever. Catching Jenna as she danced so carelessly had loosened something in Lucas, and he had forgotten, if only for a moment, the impossible situations that they were each stuck in. It all came rushing back as the women across from him waited in skeptical expectation for his words of celebration and ceremony. He wished he had never brought out the dandelion wine.
Lucas swallowed. “Uh, to life,” he stumbled. “To our lives. May they be . . . more than we imagined.”
Jenna gave him a funny look, but she lifted the glass to her lips and tasted. “Not bad,” she said, taking another sip. “Not bad at all.”
They all agreed that the wine was, if not good, at least drinkable, and the pasta simply defied description.
“I’ve never tasted better,” Angela declared, and although Lucas lamented the whole-grain capellini that his houseguest had insisted on buying and mourned the absence of meatballs, he had to agree. Even a vegetarian version of his wife’s secret recipe was impossible to beat.
“Your best effort yet,” he complimented Jenna, hoping that she’d catch the wink he threw her way. But she had already begun to sink back into herself, to pull the folds of her heavy cloak tight around her where she could hide behind an impenetrable wall of stony detachment. Lucas knew that it was all an act—that Jenna excelled in the art of self-preservation. But it didn’t matter, she merely nodded at his praise.
“I did it for Angela,” Jenna said. “I wanted her to have a nice, home-cooked meal.”
“I get home cooking from time to time,” Angela assured them. She spun the tines of her fork through the tangled noodles on her plate. “Or, I guess I should say I used to.”
Jenna gave her a look of such genuine compassion and query that Lucas was shocked at how quickly his wife’s countenance could change. In anyone else, the transformation would ring false, but Lucas was only reminded of what an excellent social worker his wife had become. Strength and empathy and resolve and capability seemed to emanate from her in a subtle fog of understanding. All she had to do was soften her face like that and he longed to tell her his darkest secrets. He knew Angela felt the same way when she went on without being asked to.
“My boyfriend’s parents used to invite me over a lot. They had this incredible mansion in the hills . . . Every Sunday after church we’d go there for a big, formal meal.”
“Church?” Jenna wondered, her tone both uncharacteristic and indicative of her surprise.
Angela laughed. “Yeah, you know, the place where I used to go with you when I was a kid? The brick building with the bells and the pews and the boring sermons?”
Lucas watched his wife to gauge her response, but her features had gone blank. “We don’t really go anymore,” he explained.
“What?” Angela looked dumbstruck. “But you guys loved it. You actually believed all that stuff.”
“Still do.” Lucas shrugged a little and took a big bite of pasta so he had an excuse not to elucidate further.
“But you quoted scripture, and prayed around the table like Leave It to Beaver . . .”
“Just because we’re taking a little break from church doesn’t mean we’ve given up on God.”
“Maybe it means He’s given up on us,” Jenna muttered. Then she diverted the conversation back to where it had started without leaving room for discussion. “So, what happened to your boyfriend and Sunday dinners with the folks?”
“Oh, we broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
Angela smiled ruefully. “Don’t be. We weren’t meant to be.” She put quotes around the catchphrase with her fingers and sighed. “He came from a big, happy, functional family, and I just didn’t fit in. You know, I read somewhere that if you don’t learn love at home, it’s hard to learn it elsewhere.”
Lucas opened his mouth to object, to console her in some small way so she didn’t look so cheerless, but at that moment Jenna put her foot on his under the table and pressed down in warning. He held his tongue.
“And,” Jenna began, “do you believe that?”
Looking back and forth between the two of them, Angela contemplated the answer. “No,” she said finally, “no, I don’t think I believe that. At least, not entirely.”
Jenna didn’t comment on her answer in any way. She just nodded as if she understood, then passed the Caesar salad to Lucas for a second helping. He hadn’t even asked for it and felt a thrill of connection that she could still read his mind when it came to the little things.
There was a lull around the table then as the ladies pushed their plates away and sank back into their chairs. Lucas didn’t think the silence was comfortable exactly, but it wasn’t uncomfortable either, and he was grateful for that. As he chewed, he tried to come up with something to say, a question to ask or a funny anecdote from his day that would keep everyone around the table a little longer. It wasn’t the night that he had envisioned, but there was beauty in it, moments of peace that were worth the awkward pauses and the unsettling presence of Angela Sparks at his table. Again. After all these years. It was almost enough to make him forget about the woman in the barn, the ring in his pocket. Almost.
But before he could think up something interesting to say, Angela came up with a question of her own.
“Say,” she grinned, tapping her fingers on the table as if the thought had just occurred to her, “speaking of big, happy, functional families, what about you two? I thought you guys would have a mittful by now. Where’re all the Hudson rug rats?”
It felt to Lucas as if all the light, all the pleasure of their shared meal was sucked out of the room. Just like that the garlic smelled too sharp, the incandescent bulbs above the table were too bright, the music that they had turned on before sitting down was too loud. There was dressing-soaked lettuce in his mouth, but it was hard to swallow. He had to remind himself to chew, to be careful with his teeth, because they wanted to grind the insides of his cheeks. No, no, no, he silently moaned. Don’t do this.
He struggled to choke down the romaine and rush to Jenna’s rescue. They had agreed on a preplanned answer, a quick and easy way to put off overzealous well-wishers and people who seemed to think that a husband and wife couldn’t possibly be a family until children were inv
olved. Lucas was still trying to remember the words, the exact thing he was supposed to say, when Jenna spoke up.
“Actually,” she said slowly, “there was a baby. A little girl. She was stillborn.”
That wasn’t what they had planned.
Angela gasped, a little intake of horror and grief that Lucas couldn’t quite decipher. Was she aghast at their loss? Or ashamed that she had ever been so tactless as to ask the question in the first place? Maybe both. “I’m sorry, Jenna,” she croaked, reaching across the table for her mentor and friend. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
“We named her Audrey,” Jenna said. “She’s buried behind the church where we used to take you.” Then she slid her chair back and stood with as much dignity and composure as a queen. “Lucas, I’d like you to clean up the kitchen.”
He couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her hand, but she ignored his gesture. “Of course . . .” he began, but she swept out of the room without giving him another glance.
Jenna didn’t come downstairs for a long time, and Lucas knew that she was in the unfinished nursery. Audrey’s heart had stopped beating at thirty-eight weeks, full term, and Lucas and Jenna had long been rejoicing in her as if she was already theirs. From the day a pink plus sign appeared in the window of the pregnancy test, they considered themselves parents. A Mission-style crib in blond pine had been set up in a small room painted cornflower blue. There were pink daisies springing out of the baseboards and yellow chiffon curtains trimmed in eyelet lace. A handful of pink and purple pajamas already dangled in the closet on tiny hangers. It was the hangers that Lucas later couldn’t look at, though why their miniature design broke his heart, he never could understand.
While his wife mourned in solitude, Lucas cleaned the kitchen. He knew from experience that Jenna wanted to be alone, that she would resent any intrusion into the private hall of her pain, where she hung memories and regrets like pictures on the wall. She didn’t visit there often, but when she did, she liked everything to be in its place, every edge of sorrow to be sharp and ready so that she could reach out a finger and bleed.
It killed Lucas. He hated the way she clung and moped and grieved without end. Wasn’t two years enough? Shouldn’t she be moving on by now? Though Jenna lived a normal, productive, mentally healthy life most of the time, there were moments when it seemed as if Audrey had died yesterday instead of years ago. Worst of all, she had let what happened come between her and Lucas. And she still visited the nursery. Not often, but it was too much all the same.
As Lucas cleared the table and scraped leftovers into the garbage can, Angela worked wordlessly beside him. She had looked stunned when Jenna left the room, but a warning glance from Lucas kept her in her seat when it seemed like she would jump up and race after her friend.
“It’s okay,” Lucas told her. And those were the last words between them for nearly twenty minutes.
But when Lucas hung the towel through the handle of the refrigerator door and turned to give the room a last once-over, Angela finally found her voice.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Just over two years.”
Angela nodded once. “She doing okay?”
No, Lucas wanted to say. Isn’t it obvious? Instead, he tried to arrange his lips in a slight smile, a token of reassurance that everything was all right. It didn’t work, but he didn’t feel like baring his soul to Angela; he’d rather lie. “We’re doing fine,” he said. “I think you just caught her off guard.”
She nodded again, but this time it was clear that she didn’t believe him for a second. “I’m sorry I brought it up. That was really stupid—really insensitive of me.”
Lucas shrugged. “When you’re dating seriously, the question is always ‘When are you two going to get married?’ As soon as you’re married it changes to ‘When are you two going to have kids?’ It doesn’t stop until you have a child to show for it. It’s inevitable.”
“You must hear it all the time.”
“Not as much as we used to. For the most part, people know what happened and they leave us alone.”
“What about Jenna’s grandma, what was her name? This must be hard on her.”
“Caroline passed away last April. She had Alzheimer’s, but she remembered that Jenna had a baby. She just forgot that Audrey didn’t live.”
Angela put her hands to her cheeks and moaned, a little cry of sympathy that made Lucas want to crawl out of his skin. He moved away abruptly, leaving the kitchen in darkness and flicking on a lamp in the adjoining living room. Grabbing the TV remote from the coffee table, he flopped on the couch. Though he could feel Angela slink into the room behind him, and though he knew he should ease her discomfort in some small way, he did his best to ignore her.
The truth was, he was furious with her for showing up at all. Ever since she’d appeared in his driveway, everything had gone wrong. His theories about Jim Sparks, his disregard for the past, even his tenuous hold on his wife, were all in ruins because of Angela. It was so much easier when he could mourn her as the broken woman beneath the floor of the barn.
I ached for you when you were gone, Lucas thought. And then he was horrified with himself. What was he doing? Wishing that Angela was dead? That she hadn’t escaped her nightmare of a life and started over fresh, halfway across the country? No, he concluded. I don’t want her dead. I just want answers. Whatever they may be.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas saw Angela curl up on the love seat and pull a blanket over her lap. He wanted to be alone. A part of him wanted to tell Angela that she should leave, she could spend the night in Jim’s house; he and Jenna needed time alone. But that would be downright cruel. Asking Angela to go back there would be like asking her to return to the scene of a crime. Which it was, except that the crime Jim committed against Angela was never accounted for. Instead of saying anything, he found ESPN and turned up the volume. An hour of SportsCenter would do much to ease his mind.
But he only got to see a few minutes of football highlights. Jenna came downstairs shortly after he had settled on the couch, staring blindly at the glowing screen. When he heard her on the steps, he spun to watch her, his eyes seeking her face as if he could read the sad story of what she had gone through in the gravity of her dark features. But she refused to meet his gaze. Instead, she walked slowly into the room, one foot in front of the other as if each step took effort, and put out her hand for the remote. He passed it to her without complaint. Then she sank into the rocking chair, and flipped through a dozen channels until she found a rerun of Gilmore Girls.
“Something for the ladies,” Jenna said, her eyes fixed on the TV.
Nobody said another word for the rest of the night.
14
MEG
Meg continued to wear Jess’s ring, in spite of what it said, and even though the boldness of the etched claim made her want to slap him across his perfectly dimpled cheek. She chose to take for granted the assumption that deep down, the boy she had grown up with didn’t mean to upset her, to claim her with the imprint of those four loaded letters. It’s innocent, she told herself. It’s meaningless. A joke, a misguided term of endearment . . . She could almost make herself believe it.
The real reason Meg kept wearing the ring was that it was an indelible part of her, as much a part of her personal landscape as an engagement band on the finger of a bride-to-be. Of course, the little woven band wasn’t an engagement ring, but everyone would have noticed its absence. From her parents to her friends, there would be questions to answer, and she simply didn’t want to explain what Jess had done. It was too complicated. So she endured the bold claim engraved inside the ring, and with him so far away, it wasn’t too hard to ignore.
For the first week or two of college, Jess called every night, filling up an hour or more with small talk about his classes, his professors, his geeky roommate from somewhere in Wyoming. Meg half listened, and used the other half of her brain to finish homework or arrange her CD collection
according to her newest whim: by genre, album, or artist. She had inherited Bennett’s boxed set of the entire collection of The Smashing Pumpkins when he moved out and forgot to take it along, and she liked those albums organized by virtue of the emotion they invoked. For some reason she found her fingers on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness more often than not when Jess called.
But it didn’t take long for his phone calls to taper off. Meg couldn’t help but silently rejoice that his attention was shifting elsewhere. And then she missed him in the very next breath.
School was a good diversion as Meg teetered between the waxing and waning of her feelings, or lack thereof, for Jess. She threw herself into her academics with honorable abandon. And when that wasn’t enough, she tried to coax the girls’ PE coach into letting her start an intramural lacrosse league. Talking with Jess on the phone one night, she had happened across a History Channel special on the Native American origins of lacrosse, and decided that as an inhabitant of the Great American Plains, she’d instigate a Sutton-sized revival of the aggressive sport.
The answer was a very adamant no.
But Mrs. Casey was willing to stand behind powderpuff football, which Meg happily agreed to—providing they drop the detestable designation “powderpuff.”
“But that’s what it’s called,” Mrs. Casey argued, right after she pointed out that pastel pink T-shirts would be the perfect complement to the Sutton blue-and-white.
“It’s appalling.”
“It’s tongue-in-cheek.”
“It’s patronizing.”
Mrs. Casey pursed her lips and was about to put her hand on Meg’s shoulder when she realized that that would be patronizing. “Okay,” she said instead, giving in. “Fine. Whatever you want. What do you want to call it?”
