by Nancy Rue
Jayne had always had a magical quality about her. Slender and supple, like all the tender, elusive things in nature. Blowing willows— tendrils of mist—puffs of lilac scent—she put them all to shame as she moved lightly, almost above the ground. She was not of this world, my daughter—as much as in her raw adolescence she tried to be.
The child moving toward me was not that Jayne. In four and a half weeks she had grown sunken and sallow, and her hair, darkened with pubescent oil, hung in languid strips on either side of a face I could hardly see because she kept it pointed toward the ground. I forced myself not to leap from the Jeep and scoop her into my arms and carry her to the nearest hospital.
She didn’t look at me through the window. She simply climbed in and sat, eyes pointed toward her knees. She didn’t even smell like my daughter.
I breathed in the odor of unwashed clothes and nervous breath, sucked back what was fast turning into shock, and tried to smile at the side of her head.
“Hey, Jay,” I said.
“Hey.”
“Thanks for not bolting.”
She shrugged, as if she’d been practicing.
“Are you okay?”
Again with the shrug.
I struggled. “Please talk to me, Jay. Even a yes or a no.”
“Can we just get out of here? Everybody’s looking at us.”
“I know the feeling. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know! I’m tired of figuring things out!”
It burst out of her like pent-up exhaust—cloudy and foul smelling and unwanted. I put the Jeep in gear and wheeled us out of the school parking lot and took backstreets to get to the main drag. By then Jayne’s face was ashen and she clutched the door handle.
“Do you have to throw up?” I said.
She nodded and plastered her hand over her mouth. I yanked the Jeep into a Dollar Store parking lot and reached over to fling open her door. She dove out and doubled over on the curb. I got to her just as she stopped retching. I didn’t care what kind of response I got—I put my arms around her. I might have been hugging a broomstick.
“What have you eaten today?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“How about yesterday?”
“I can’t eat!”
No kidding. I ran my hand down her side, and even through the too-big sweater she hid in I could feel her ribs like rungs on a ladder.
“Come on, baby,” I said.
I did try to scoop her up, but she stiffened, so I let her lean on me as I half carried her back to the Jeep. Inside, I lowered the seat back and covered her with my jacket.
“I feel stupid.” Her voice was thin as a spiderweb.
You aren’t the one who’s stupid, I wanted to say. And for once I wasn’t talking only about myself.
I got her to the Daily Bread as the afternoon crowd was filling the place and slipped her in through the back door. Mickey took one look at us and had Jayne in front of a bowl of chicken soup almost before I could hoist her onto the stool by the counter where I did my crying.
Oscar nodded Mickey away from us. She left with a reluctant, “You shout if you need anything.” Then she couldn’t leave without whispering to Jayne, “Your mother is a good woman.”
Jayne’s eyes were the size of nickels by then, and as pale. “Where are we?” she said.
“A safe place. Now—I want you to try to eat.”
I spooned soup into her. After the first few tortured swallows, she opened her mouth like a baby bird and closed her eyes to taste. The dearness of it broke my heart.
So did the stiffness that returned after she’d downed a slice of Mickey’s zucchini bread and polished off half the smoothie Mickey set on the table as she “passed through.” I could hear Oscar’s warning voice from the kitchen.
Jayne pushed the half-empty glass away from her and folded her arms, so pitifully scrawny, across her concave chest.
“Better?” I said.
“I guess.”
Should I wait her out? Try to force a conversation? Drop on my knees and beg her forgiveness? The fact that I didn’t know how to talk to my own daughter was the most depressing thing I could think of at that moment. But if I didn’t say something, she would pull back into her cocoon.
“I’m going to get to the point,” I said. “Okay?”
She only tucked her feet up to the top rung of the stool and spread her long skirt over her knees like a tent.
“Jayne, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I did something completely wrong. It is the most regrettable thing I have ever done in my life.”
She fixed her eyes on the wall above my head.
“I would do anything to undo it, because I’ve hurt all of you, and I hate that. I hate it.”
Still nothing. Except a learned hardening around her mouth.
“But I can’t ‘make it not be so.’ Remember that from West Side Story, when Maria finds out Tony has killed Chino, and she goes to God and says, ‘Make it not be so’?”
Jayne kept her eyes on the wall. “Bernardo.”
I blinked. “Sorry?”
“He didn’t kill Chino. He killed Bernardo. And he didn’t mean to.”
I held my breath.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.
“Okay. Can we talk about what’s going on with you?”
She finally looked at me. Something stirred in her eyes. “You don’t want to know about me,” she said.
“Of course I do. Jayne, I’m still your mom. No matter what I did, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“Then why didn’t you even come to my play?”
The air went dead—except for the echo of Christopher’s voice in my head. She didn’t want me there, he’d said. It would embarrass her.
“Christopher said you were probably too afraid to show your face,” Jayne said. “Like, people would be talking about you, and you’d be embarrassed.”
Ah. It was anger I saw in her eyes—only my Jayne didn’t know how to feel anger, and the thought of it sucked her dry.
I, on the other hand, would give full vent to mine—later. For now, I put my face close to my daughter’s.
“I got some bad information about that,” I said. “And I’m sorry I listened to it. But, Jay, I would have shown up naked if that’s what it took to be there.”
“Christopher told you not to come, didn’t he?” Her eyes flashed, and one almost transparent hand came up to slice the air. “I am so over him! He’s trying to run my whole life!”
I nodded.
“I’m not supposed to tell you about anything that’s going on at home. He says Dad doesn’t want us to.”
“But you haven’t heard Dad actually say that.”
“Dad doesn’t say anything. At all.”
I waited while she drew her knees in closer and hugged them into the curve of her chest. There was a decision going on.
“All right, look,” I said. “Christopher is obviously trying to hold it together because your dad is having a hard time. But, Jay, he is not the boss of you. He’s having as hard a time as anybody else.”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t say that anymore.”
“Say what?”
“He’s not the boss of me. That’s like so elementary school.”
My voice shook with sudden hope. “What are we saying these days?”
“That Christopher is a total jerk and I can’t even stand him and I go in my room and stay there because he’s evil in his soul.”
I put my hand up to my mouth. I couldn’t laugh—not even in the flood of relief I felt.
“He’s like taken over the house. He thinks he’s this cook, which he is so not—I could make dinners better than the slop he’s producing. But no, I have to do the laundry and clean the bathrooms. I’m like a slave!”
“What does your dad say about all this?”
“I don’t know. I never see him.” Her shoulders drooped again. “Christopher is gonna be so mad at me for telling
you all this.”
“What—are you going to run to him and confess?” I put a hand on her knee. She didn’t pull back. “You don’t have to answer to your brother.”
“Then who do I answer to?”
The plaintive plea went through me, the cry of sheer loneliness.
“You can come to me, Jay,” I said. “If you will.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me.”
“Honey—I’ve called you every day. Sent you e-mails.”
She stared, lips pressing until her skin went white. “I never got anything. I don’t understand.”
I did. I put my hand on my chest to make sure it didn’t shatter into livid pieces.
“I’m here now,” I said. “And so are you. I want us to—”
“Why did you have an affair, Mom?” she said. “That’s all I want to know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - THREE
Sully looked at the official board of trustees photo of Wyatt Estes. The studio name, address, and phone number stamped on the back had seemed like a good lead. So had the photo credits on the Estes Enterprises Web site. But nothing had panned out. The corporate photographers were out of San Francisco and had as many awards as Ansel Adams. The local photographer was so old and deaf, Sully was hoarse from trying to communicate with him on the phone.
“We go from the sublime to the ridiculous, Isabella,” Sully said to the Impala. He tucked his cell phone into his pocket and strolled around her.
If his first Impala were any indication, this one was going to purr like a lioness when he turned the key. She’d crouch over the pavement, energy gathering like a passion under the hood. They’d prowl the streets of Callow, engine growling . . .
“Yeah, baby,” Sully said to the car. “Just like old times. Have I told you I used to be a bad boy?”
“You are a bad boy,” Lynn had said to him the night he gave her the car.
He grinned at her, big and sloppy, the way he knew melted her. “Not since you tamed me.”
“I don’t want you tame—I want you you.”
He tucked her against him and rested his chin on the sandy hair that always smelled like clean itself. “You like your car?”
“I love my car—because you made her for me.”
“You think she’s you?”
She wriggled to face him and got her arms around his neck. Her brown eyes sparkled with the tears she was so easily moved to.
“What?” he said. “You’re crying?”
“She’s us, Sullivan,” she said. “Like everything is us.”
He smiled down into her face. “You won’t drive her like a maniac?”
She’d wrinkled her nose at him. “At least not when you’re looking.”
Sully dabbed sweat from his upper lip. Memories are like any other thought that carries emotion, he’d told more than one client. Expect the feelings to flood in with them. The only way out of them is through.
“And I’m through,” he told Isabella. “Good night, babe.”
He wasn’t tired though. It was only seven and unusually warm. He dragged the green papasan outside and sat back with a frappuccino and another one of Demi’s letters.
Dear Jayne,
I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.
Sully rubbed a finger along his nose. Totally different approach from the one she took with her son, whom she crept around like an uncertain cat. This one had an almost puppylike candor.
But as long as I have to stand it—as long as it takes for you to forgive me, or at least hear me, it helps me to remember what we were— you and me together.
We were always easy, weren’t we? Christopher and I were flinty with each other. Sometimes when you were small, and he and I were raising our voices higher and higher like we were chasing each other up a wall, you would cover your eyes with your little pink hands and squeeze your mouth all up in a knot. That’s how you taught me not to yell at Christopher.
That’s not all you taught me. You showed me how to be honest—to think through what I wanted to say and then say it. Outright. You were the one who finally said out loud, after one of our visits to Washington when you were five, “Why doesn’t Grandma Haven like Daddy?” I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know. I still don’t. She took that sad feeling to her grave, I’m afraid. But you asked the right question—you made me admit that she didn’t, you made me stop pretending that everything was wonderful. You never pretend that.
That’s why you were the one who came home from Mama Costanas’s that day and said to me, “Mama is acting funny.” I don’t know whether Christopher noticed or not. He’s so male, isn’t he? No, you were the one who said Mama forgot to feed you, so you had goldfish crackers for lunch, and she let you watch TV all day. No wonder Christopher didn’t tell me!
But you wanted the old Mama, who told you stories “with her mouth,” as you always said, not from a book, and let you help her fold the sheets like big girls did. Nobody else wanted to believe she was sick— and after she went to the nursing home—after Uncle Eddie found her in her nightgown in the backyard, looking for zucchini in the dead of January—you were the only one who still loved to go see her. You redecorated her room with your glitter pictures and balloon animals. Whenever they withered, you made more. You said she needed them.
That’s how you taught me, Jay, to respect a life in every stage. You taught me about soul—that it’s always there. You helped me live through the loss of my best friend. That’s what Mama Costanas was to me, and I haven’t had a friend like her since.
Sully rocked back in the chair and surveyed the wreath of mist forming around the light. That was a piece missing in Demi. As attractive and personable as she was—Porphyria would call hers a be-still-my-heart smile—she’d never mentioned female friends. She was probably the most alone client he’d ever had. And she wondered why she’d found unconditional comfort so irresistible.
“You’ve also taught me about yourself,” I read.
I glanced up. Jayne was still on the stool, watching me, chin resting on her knees.
“You want me to keep reading?” I said.
“This is going to tell me why you had an affair, right?”
Her face was so hopeful, my heart once again tore right down the middle.
“I’m telling you what I know so far about why.”
“’Kay. Then go on.”
I closed my eyes momentarily. Dear God, I hoped this was right. It meant everything.
“We raised Christopher strictly by the book—whatever that is. He has always seemed to know what it contains because he’s needed rules and consequences and consistent follow-through. He even knows how far to push at every phase—he never missed a stage ‘the book’ says a kid is supposed to go through.”
Jayne grunted. We exchanged glances.
“But not you. Your dad and I realized when you were three years old that you needed to show us how to raise you. Threatening you, telling you what would happen if you did this or didn’t do that—that seemed too harsh for a spirit born knowing good from evil and should from should not. All we had to do was explain—and then give you time to explore it in your own world. The only problem was finding out where that world was.
“Do you remember me searching the house in a panic after I told you Uncle Eddie had died, and finding you in the basement, sitting on a tuft of laundry with your eyes closed?”
I felt her nodding.
“You wouldn’t leave your spot. I had to bring two cups of hot chocolate, and we sat there with the dirty clothes until we decided Uncle Eddie was with Mama and Papa, and that it was still okay for you to be sad for yourself and us.
“I guess that’s how I knew not to panic that day when we’d been here in Washington for about two weeks, and you disappeared. Christopher freaked out and went off on his bike to check all the creeks. I made two cups of tea with honey and milk—you’d graduated from hot chocolate— and thought of hiding places where something might be normal for you. I found you i
n the storage shed, sitting on a stack of boxes we hadn’t unpacked yet—your eyes closed—trying to understand why we left everything we knew and loved and came to this place where no one wanted to be your friend because you were an angel, not a regular girl.”
“Mom,” Jayne said.
“Okay, so that last part is my interpretation. Humor me.”
“It was hard for you to sort all that out,” I read on. “Dad and I couldn’t help that Uncle Eddie died—but we were the ones who chose to rip you and Christopher out of your home, away from the friends you’d grown up giggling and dancing with. You didn’t know how to be angry. That’s still hard for you, I know.”
I swallowed hard. No crying—not when she was listening and hearing me be the mom.
“That must be why you won’t talk to me now, or answer my e-mails or text messages. You must be so angry with me—and that makes it hard for you to know how to be—at all. I’m angry enough with myself for both of us. That’s all I know right now, Jay—that for a reason I’m still trying to figure out, I went against God and turned to somebody besides your dad for what I thought I needed. I didn’t know how to be angry at all the things that had happened to us—I think I just wanted to feel better. I don’t know—and I’m getting help to find out. But I promise you, it’s okay for you to be angry with me. If you don’t know how, I’ll teach you— because I’ve had some practice. But I hope more that I can teach you how to love me again. It’s my turn to teach you, the way you’ve taught me. Please, Jay, let me try.”
“How do you explain an affair to a thirteen-year-old you’ve barely had ‘the talk’ with yet?”
Mickey tucked her feet under herself on my window seat. “I’m sure you were amazing.”
“How can you say that? All you’ve ever seen me do is cry over the mess I’ve made of my life.”
“Not true.” She pushed the bowl of sunflower seeds down the seat toward me and scooped a handful into her cupped palm to pick from, like a little bird-woman. “I saw you with Audrey.”
I fidgeted. Mickey held up a hand, two seeds poised between finger and thumb. “I’m not asking you to tell me what she said. As long as she has somebody like you to talk to, that’s all I care about. By the way, she was like a different person after she cried on your shoulder.”
