The next morning, before anyone else was up, Jenny left the house. The sun in the eastern sky looked like a spilled egg. She picked up a trowel and work gloves in the garage and drove across the city to the cemetery where her grandfather and sister were buried.
It was a cool, windy morning. A blackbird screeched from the top of a tree as she got out of the car. Her sister first. She weeded around the rhododendron they had planted. “Gail … hello, Gail …” She brushed the stone carefully and traced the letters cut into the small, flat piece of granite. Gail Jill Pennoyer. Beloved daughter and sister. She died too young.
Two bikers passed, their spokes clicking, heads bent low over the bars. Jenny moved to her grandfather’s stone. The little apple tree she’d planted was in tight pink bud. Only four years old, but already taller than she. And again, weeding, brushing the stone. Carl George Pennoyer. Beloved husband, father, and grandfather.
“I’ve been thinking about you, Grandpa.” He had been a man of character, of strong beliefs. Whenever life became confusing, too full of doubts and questions, she called on him, invoked his presence: the straight, stern mouth, the harsh voice, the plain words. “What should I do about me and Rob, Grandpa?” If he were here he’d know; he’d tell her. It would be this or that. No waffling. No confusion. Life hadn’t seemed puzzling to him.
She straightened up. The breeze had died down. The trees were still. Even the birds had momentarily stopped their racketing. Jenny, do what’s right. Did she hear his voice, that harsh, loving voice? Just do what’s right. “Grandpa?… What else? What’s right?” She waited, listening, but only heard the robins resuming their twittering, wind rising in the trees, and a motorbike screaming past.
But she knew.
Rob. I made a mistake.
A terrible mistake.
Chapter 27
As if Jenny needed them, there were suddenly signs everywhere that, in breaking off with Rob, she had been blindly wrong-minded. Her horoscope, for instance, read, “Believe in yourself and the one you love. Step boldly forward and beware of too much thought.”
Then Frankie, speaking to her once more with the ease and friendliness of old times (Why? Because she had given up Rob, proving him “right”? Or because he was happy now with the engagement to Mimi?), Frankie told her that, for Mimi, he would have, without a single moment’s hesitation, given up job, home, family—anything at all she asked.
He didn’t see how it hurt Jenny, how ironic it was that he could say with simple sincerity, “Jenny, when you love someone the way I love Mimi, nothing is more important.”
And in English, reviewing for the final the three Shakespeare plays they’d read that term, Mrs. Tedesco asked the class to consider the theme in Romeo and Juliet. “Think of the swift pace of the play, as well as the sun, moon, and time imagery used throughout.
“It suggests, class, that Shakespeare wanted us to reflect on the importance of cherishing those we love. Treasuring each moment given to us. Each moment,” she repeated, firmly scratching the word THEME across the blackboard, “is unique in time and will never exist again. Consider, class, the brief span of Romeo and Juliet’s love affair. Only four days. And yet think of the extraordinary intensity with which they lived those four days. Every moment of those four days. Their love affair was born, came to a blazing climax”—here, there was some giggling, threatening to spoil the intense effect Mrs. Tedesco’s words were having on Jenny—“and died. The people died. They lived an entire lifetime in four days. Who of us could say the same?”
All this Jenny took in the most personal way, reflecting with a growing misery that Juliet, though only fourteen, had been far tougher, far braver than she. Juliet had had no doubts: she had met Romeo, recognized what he meant to her, loved him generously, and thrown over not only her family for him, but ultimately and without regret, her life.
Miserably dawdling through the day in school, looking for Rob, she advised herself, Just go to him and tell him the truth. Say, I made a mistake, Rob. And then what? They had quarreled in the parking lot only three days ago. Would his blue eyes scan her coldly as he said, You sure did, Jenny, and now it’s too late. But she didn’t see him that day.
The next morning, for courage, she braided her hair, one long braid hanging over her shoulder, and put on moccasins and a red leather belt. Today she would find him, she would be brave, at least half as brave as Juliet, and no matter how coldly he looked at her, she would say her piece. All the way to school she rehearsed her speech, walking slowly and alone so she could go over it in her mind.
Rob, I love you. I should never have broken us up. What we had together was too rare, too beautiful, too sweet. I had no right to do that. It was a terrible thing I did. And then, humbly if necessary, she would ask him to forgive and let them pick up where they had left off.
Her stomach knotted as she imagined their meeting. What would he say? How would he act? By turns she was confident and despairing. Swung from the thrilling thought of his face breaking into a joyful smile to the chilling thought of his eyes blank and uninterested.
Second period there was an assembly, and, as she sat down, she saw him across the aisle. She looked at him, couldn’t stop looking, as if she were seeing him for the first time, freshly, as she had that morning so many weeks ago when she knew she had to know him.
In the half-dim auditorium a movie on skiing was being projected on a screen. Skiing in June? What was going on? Groans pulsed through the room as scenes of snow-covered mountains flashed on the screen and a deep, well-nourished voice said, “We are here in the ‘Alps’ of the United States.” More skiing shots, lean men and women in zingy blue-and-red ski clothes whipping down steep slopes. But Jenny only watched Rob. As yet he hadn’t noticed her. She studied his profile. Seen from the side his nose appeared bigger, more solid. He looked older and somber. Had he changed in these past weeks?
She followed Rob out of the auditorium. There were people ahead of her, people between them. She hurried, keeping his blond head in sight. Down the hall, up the stairs, and then, outside the art room she caught up to him. “Rob!” She reached out. He turned and looked at her, directly at her. A smile—something—went across his face; a flash of teeth, a grimace, as if he were about to embrace her ferociously, or bite her, or choke her. And then he walked away.
She stood in the hall, unmoving, as the bell rang and the classrooms gulped in the students. The hall emptied around her. So it was too late. She had made a mistake, yes, but she had hardly known how final. It was finished. All her brave resolutions meant nothing. She had made mischief with her life and couldn’t unmake it now.
“Pass?” a teacher said, frowning. Jenny shook her head and gestured up the stairs. “Get a move on, then.” Humiliated, sickened, she went up the stairs. Nothing to be done now but accept.
Accept, accept, accept.
Accept that she had lost him.
Halfway up the stairs, she paused and looked back, saw that the teacher, Mr. Glendarren, was still watching her suspiciously.
“Well?” he barked.
What a prison this high school was sometimes! She glared at him, then suddenly she called down, “Mr. Glendarren! Mr. Glendarren, how old are you?”
“What?”
“How old are you? Are you twenty-eight? Are you thirty? Do you remember being seventeen?”
“What?” he said again, his face expressing outrage and confusion. Was this some clever trick to undermine his authority?
“I’m doing an article for the newspaper,” Jenny improvised. “It’s to be called ‘Do You Remember?’ That’s your question: Do you remember being seventeen? I want to know, Mr. Glendarren. I want to know what it was like for you!” But without waiting for an answer she went up the rest of the stairs two at a time.
Chapter 28
“This is like old times,” Jenny said as Rhoda moved around the Rivers’ kitchen in slippers and a pair of frilly short pjs.
“Almost,” Rhoda agreed. Jenny washed her hands,
then sniffed for the telltale smell of fried food. It was Friday night, and she’d driven to Rhoda’s house from work. She was sleeping over.
“Except,” Jenny said, “in the past, your parents would never have left you alone for the weekend.”
“They’re not going away after all,” Rhoda said. “We had a fight last night; I don’t know who they’re punishing by staying home, me or themselves.”
“You had a fight with your parents? I don’t believe it.”
Rhoda sat down at the table across from Jenny. “I told them I didn’t want to go to college. I want to find a job, get an apartment, live on my own.”
Jenny put down the banana she was peeling. “I don’t believe this,” she said again. She’d always known Rhoda was going to go to college. The question was whether Jenny would go, whether her family would have the money. Rhoda’s parents had set up a college fund for her on the day she was born.
“I’ve got to find out what it’s like to take care of myself, Jen. I can’t go on for another eighteen years letting them do everything for me.” Rhoda’s voice was thin. “And please don’t tell me that college is necessary or that I’m going on a dead-end street. I heard enough of that last night. I know myself, Jenny. College’ll be like high school all over again for me. I’ll let things happen to me. I won’t make them happen.”
“What an incredible change. When did you decide?”
“It’s been creeping up on me. Yesterday, I just decided.”
“You never gave me even a hint.”
“Oh, you’ve been so preoccupied. You’ve had your own problems on your mind.”
“Rhoda, you should have talked to me anyway.” Jenny shook her head. “I’m trying to take it in. Are you excited? How do you feel?”
“Terrified,” Rhoda said. “But that’s only for you. As far as my parents are concerned, I’m a rock of confidence. They think I’m crazy, by the way.” She leaned toward Jenny. “What do you think? Do you understand what I’m going to do? You haven’t really said yet.”
“What difference does it make what I think, Rhoda?”
“It would be nice to know you were on my side!”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Of course I’m on your side. You should know that! But the point is, even if I wasn’t, you should still do what’s right for you. Look, Rhoda”—she leaned toward the other girl—“you can’t make decisions about your life based on what’s going to make everyone else happy. And that includes your parents. We’re too old for that, both of us.”
Later they went into Rhoda’s room and settled down on the beds. “I always thought you had the most wonderful room in the world,” Jenny said. “A room all to yourself. Such richness.”
“And I used to envy you sharing a room with your sisters.”
“Oh, you never minded being an only.”
“But your family always seemed to have so much going on, so many things happening. I thought you guys led a really exciting life. Jen, isn’t it hard to believe that in the fall you’ll be going one way and I’ll be going another? After all these years of always knowing where we each are and what’s happening. It’s so sad in a way. Don’t you wonder if anything will ever be the same?”
Jenny nodded.
“But no matter what happens to us or how far we go away, we’ll go on being friends, won’t we?”
“We will,” Jenny said, half with passionate conviction, half with an equally passionate hope. Wouldn’t letting their friendship lapse be as serious a mistake as giving up love? Were there, after all, that many friendships or that many loves in the world?
Chapter 29
In her room, fresh from the shower, Amelia dropped her towel, and, as she reached into her drawer for a nightgown, saw herself in the mirror. In a few more weeks she’d be a grandmother: images of false teeth, or no teeth, of rocking chairs and little old ladies with humped backs and shapeless bodies. Her? She looked hard at herself. Not the body of an eighteen-year-old, but not that bad either. Her legs had gotten a bit skinny and her arms a bit heavy, but she certainly hadn’t let herself go to pot. At the thought she drew in her stomach and straightened her spine.
Two months ago she had had her fiftieth birthday. Fifty years. How had she, Amelia Zenner of the flying arms and legs, become fifty years old? Half a century. And she and Frank married for over twenty-five years.
It was Friday night, the market stayed open late, and Frank wouldn’t be home until nearly eleven. Amelia put on her gown and got into bed, sighing with subdued pleasure. Climbing into bed with a book on Friday night was something she looked forward to all week. Sunday was Frank’s time off, Friday night, hers.
She stretched her legs. Whew, how good that felt. Seemed as if she hadn’t stopped moving for days, rushing from one thing to another. Meeting Mimi’s parents now that she and Frankie were officially engaged (she seemed nice, but him—oh, no, Amelia hadn’t liked him), involved with the fair the PTA was holding in Ethel’s school, the usual cleaning, cooking, shopping, dentist and doctor appointments. One thing and then another. Busy, busy, she was always busy. Sometimes she felt as if she were running a race with herself—and losing. In the fall, when Ethel went into first grade she’d look for a part-time job. They could use the money—Jenny in college, Vince and Valerie with a new baby, Frankie and Mimi just starting out …
She opened her book, something everyone was reading, called Lovers Leap. Her bookmark had been made for her by Gail, years ago, when she was a Brownie. A piece of green material clumsily hemmed at either end with the word MOM stitched on it in yellow thread. Awful little thing, really. Gail had never got the hang of sewing; she used to get frustrated just threading a needle.
It was quiet in the house. Frankie was out with Mimi, Jenny at Rhoda’s, Ethel asleep.
“‘And what exactly do you expect of me, Charisse?’ he said with an arch smile. Charisse raised a finely plucked eyebrow …”
Amelia read the sentence three times. The words remained separate and empty on the page. Relax, she told herself. Relax.
She sat up in bed, listening to the sounds of the house: the hum of the electric clock, floor creaking, refrigerator buzzing, a sudden scurrying and scratching in the wall. Mice, must remember to buy traps. And all these small sounds overlaid by a profound silence. The silence of an empty house.
She pushed her reading glasses more firmly on her nose. Empty house? Not yet, not quite yet. True, in the fall, Jenny would go to school and, soon after, Frankie would follow Mimi, but Ethel was still here. Would be here for years. She was only five; would stay home until she was eighteen, surely, unless … No. Amelia refused the cruel thought. Accidents like that only happened once in a lifetime. No, Ethel would be safe, all her children, her remaining children, would be safe. Had to be.
She began reading again—“But for you, Nelson, I would be a happy woman!”—and closed the book at once, remembering now what she had been putting off remembering. Nell Montana.
She had pushed the encounter in the shoe shop out of her mind. She had pushed what Jenny had told her out of her mind.
Mom, I thought you might want to know. Mrs. Montana is in the hospital.
Why would I want to know that, Jenny?
I just thought—
What, Jenny, what? Did you think I’d go visit her? Did you think I’d bring her flowers? Wish her a speedy recovery?
She—she took too many sleeping pills.
Yes, well, she should be more careful. She’s a careless woman!
Amelia closed her eyes, remembering how Nell Montana had said to her, I was a happy person, a person who liked to laugh and then …
For two years Amelia had clung to the picture of a “drunken driver.” A criminal person, a woman in a loose robe stained with egg, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her lips; a woman coarse-skinned, crude, and bleary-eyed with drink.
A slow flush rose into Amelia’s face. The woman had looked dreadful, yes. Sleeping pills. Liquor. No wonder. Still, Nell Montana had sh
ocked her. Amelia had not expected Gail’s killer to look like that: baby blue eyes and a little round mouth like a girl’s, yet over all, like a gauze mask, the tense, lined face of a woman in pain.
Was it possible that she, Amelia—she—had been the cause of someone else’s pain and anguish? Was it possible that this pain had been more than Nell Montana could bear? More than she deserved? How much pain did any human being deserve?
Agitatedly, she pushed back the covers. “Gail is dead,” she said aloud. “My daughter is dead.”
The dead must be buried.
“I can’t forget.”
Forgiveness is not forgetting. Why do you confuse the two?
No, she was not to have her quiet night off. Nell Montana was in the room, a presence demanding answers, begging forgiveness.
She went into the kitchen, looked around for a moment, then settled on the refrigerator, opened it, and emptied it of food. Her best thinking had always been done when her hands were occupied. She filled a pail with soapy water and began scrubbing the shelves, the metal grates, the vegetable bins.
For a while she was soothed by the work, scrubbing off the accumulation of bits of food, washing and rinsing, washing and rinsing.
She set the carton of milk in the right-hand corner of the first shelf where it was always kept, carefully filled the egg holder in the door with the fragile white eggs, and rewrapped the cheeses in aluminum foil. I could do this blindfolded, she thought. Her mother had done these same things; in California, Valerie might right now be wrapping cheeses in foil, and someday Jenny, too, would scrub a refrigerator, cover leftovers with waxed paper. Women’s work. Was there a woman alive who didn’t know her refrigerator as well as she knew her own face?
When We First Met Page 13
