Jane stepped up next to Duncan.
“You make a gorgeous bride, kiddo,” he said.
“Thank you.” She didn’t feel gorgeous. She felt hot and flustered. But she smiled anyway. “Maybe you and Darcy will be next.”
“Oh, I expect Darcy will be moving along one of these days,” Duncan said cheerfully. “You know I don’t want to get married again.”
Yes, Jane knew that. Better than anyone.
“I didn’t want to get married the first time,” Duncan continued, “but I slammed Aggie’s mama’s hand in my truck door by accident when we were all going out to dinner. Mrs. Fontaine was a good sport about it, but Mr. Fontaine—he looked like he wanted to go home and get his deer-hunting rifle, and Aggie was crying and carrying on right there in the restaurant parking lot, and so I proposed.”
“But why?” Jane asked, fascinated that she’d never known this. It was the closest she’d felt to happy all day. “What does one thing have to do with the other?”
“I’ve asked myself that a time or two, believe me,” Duncan said, stroking his moustache. “It just seemed like a quick way to make everyone happy, and it did. Aggie and Mrs. Fontaine planned the whole wedding in the ER waiting room, and eight weeks later, we was man and wife. Of course, Mrs. Fontaine still had the cast on her hand in all the wedding pictures. I think you’d better go.”
It took Jane a second to realize that he meant it was her time to walk down the aisle.
“Oh, yes, of course,” she murmured. She took a deep breath and began walking. Luke smiled at her from the front of the church. Jane smiled back—
“Beatrice!” Reverend Palumbo shouted. “You’re rushing the processional!”
The music cut off. Freida gave Jane a look of such scorching vindication that Jane thought all the church hymnals might burst into flames.
Beatrice poked her head through the ferns like a soldier emerging from a foxhole. “I’m playing the same as I always do,” she said to Reverend Palumbo.
“And you always rush it,” he shot back. “These folks look like they’re marching to a polka.”
“Myself, I always play Pachelbel’s Canon in eight/four time,” Freida said in a loud, reflective voice to no one in particular. “But of course, not everyone agrees.”
“They certainly don’t!” Beatrice Mooney snapped, and ducked back into her foxhole.
“Let’s try it all again,” Reverend Palumbo said, and his shoulders slumped sadly.
* * *
—
After the rehearsal, they bid farewell to Reverend Palumbo and Beatrice Mooney (who gave Freida a final hot-eyed look through the ferns) and walked the three blocks down to the restaurant. Jimmy came running up to them on the street, his shirttail untucked and flapping. A wet patch with a red-dotted center covered the left breast pocket of his shirt—it looked like he had been stilettoed in the heart.
“I sure am sorry, Jane!” he said, panting. “I kept scrubbing and scrubbing, but it only seemed to make it worse.”
“Don’t worry,” Jane said, putting her hand through his arm. “Duncan will tell you what to do. And now you’re here to walk me to the restaurant.”
Jimmy ducked his head in a pleased way. It was so easy to make Jimmy happy. It was actually so easy to make almost anyone happy. Why didn’t she do more of it?
The rehearsal dinner was alcohol-free because Luke’s father was a recovering alcoholic. Apparently he’d been a moderate drinker up until about fifteen years earlier, when he began drinking more and more heavily, and finally hit bottom when he lost $350,000 on the pork belly futures market and had to go to rehab. (Jane suspected this had contributed to Edith-Louise’s sexy crow’s-feet.) He said he was more than happy for alcohol to flow at the wedding, and, well, amen to that, in Jane’s opinion. But tonight the waiters around the big round table at the restaurant offered only ginger ale, iced tea, or sparkling water. A few people raised their eyebrows, but no one said anything, not even Jane’s mother. (But, then, she was a teetotaler.)
The menu had been arranged in advance by Luke’s parents, and the appetizer was shrimp cocktail and the entrée was chicken or fish. Or maybe it was goat or spaniel. Maybe it was Styrofoam. Later, Jane could never remember. She just knew it was rectangular and covered with tan gravy, and she used her knife to cut a small piece off it, speared the piece with her fork, put the piece in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, took a sip of water, used her knife to cut another small piece, speared it with her fork, put it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, took a sip of water. And again.
Around her, conversation went on. The flowers in Freida’s hair were drooping slightly, and now when she turned her head to talk to someone, the flowers all turned their faces, too, as though she were a floral sort of Medusa. She was nodding, and saying, “I see…I see…” in an uncertain way to Raymond, who was explaining the importance of the voluntary investment component of her pension plan.
Duncan was giving Mrs. Jellico an estimate on the probable worth of her great-aunt’s cuckoo clock. “Now, in general, would you say you’ve wound the clock regularly for the past fifty years?” he asked, and Mrs. Jellico furrowed her brow in concentration.
Jane’s mother was sitting next to Uncle Gene and saying, “I don’t think anyone truly likes children,” while Jimmy told Edith-Louise about the time he knocked a bowl of potpourri into the toilet.
Darcy and Luke were talking about the healing power of essential oils, in particular tea-tree oil and whether it might help Luke’s foot fungus. “It’s a toss-up between tea-tree oil and eucalyptus oil, really,” Darcy said, and Luke told her he’d also tried soaking his feet in apple cider vinegar, but that just made him smell like a pickle and wasn’t all that helpful.
Jane looked out the window. The lake was a flat silver disk, the waning sunset a ripple of orange cream. She could see the deserted beach and knew how the sand would feel at this time of day: warm on top and cool where your toes dug in.
Across the table from her, Darcy was wearing a buff-colored sheath dress. Duncan had his arm around her; from time to time, he stroked her bare shoulder with his thumb.
Everyone smiled, and smiled, and smiled.
* * *
—
After dinner, on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, they all had a long logistical discussion, like generals making a not-very-important battle plan. Luke’s parents wanted to return to their hotel in Petoskey. (Edith-Louise had the hollow, defeated look of someone who needed alcohol badly and had failed to receive it.) Freida said she needed to go to choir practice—Jane gathered that some of the lesser singers were having difficulty with the fourth and fifth intervals—and would take Mrs. Jellico home on her way. Darcy had promised to go take some sunset photos for a tourism brochure. Luke, Uncle Gene, Duncan, and Jimmy were going to walk back to the church parking lot, where they’d left their cars, and then go out for an unofficial bachelor party. Jane and her mother would walk home, where Jane would—please, God!—be allowed to collapse in a heap.
While everyone was sorting out the details, Luke took Jane’s arm and pulled her gently to a deserted stretch of sidewalk. “Are you sure you don’t mind me going out?” he asked, holding both her hands.
“Not at all,” she answered.
“See you tomorrow, then,” Luke said. His blue eyes glowed down at her, and Jane squeezed his hands.
“Tomorrow,” she said softly.
Luke brushed her lips with his, and Jane had a sudden image of how staged they must look, holding hands and kissing chastely in the soft white circle cast by the streetlight. She felt embarrassed—fraudulent, somehow—and stepped away quickly.
“Make sure Jimmy gives his wallet to Duncan,” she said, “and tell the bartender to water his drinks down.”
She didn’t really need to say that. Here in Boyne City, the bartenders would already know.
—
Jane and her mother started walking back toward Jane’s house. They’d gotten almost to the corner when Jane became aware of a nervous panting behind them. She turned, and there was Mrs. Jellico puffing slowly up to them. What was she doing here?
Jane’s mother was saying, “Do you ever feel you have spinach stuck in your teeth and then—” and Jane made a shushing motion.
“Is there something we can help you with, Mrs. Jellico?” she asked.
It took a few seconds for Mrs. Jellico to catch her breath. “I’m afraid I left my pocketbook at your place.”
“Why, that’s all right,” Jane said, in exactly the way she might have said, Oh, for fuck’s sake. Mrs. Jellico looked startled. Jane forced her voice into a gentler tone. “Come with us.”
They all began walking, Jane ahead of her mother and Mrs. Jellico. She felt like a sled dog pulling a very heavy toboggan toward the lodge at the end of the day.
“Jimmy is a charming young man,” Jane’s mother said to Mrs. Jellico. “It’s a shame he’s a bit simpleminded.”
“Mom!” Jane snapped impatiently.
“Don’t be so sensitive, dear,” her mother said. “We’ve all been there.” She turned to Mrs. Jellico. “I was forty-two when Jane was born, and I was terribly afraid she’d be an imbecile. She was a very red, wrinkly newborn, and that certainly didn’t help matters—she just didn’t look intelligent. Then she rolled off the changing table when she was four months old, and I thought, ‘Brain damage on top of mental defect! We might as well just put her in a home right now!’ ”
“Oh my!” Mrs. Jellico breathed in a startled voice. She goggled at Jane slightly.
“And, look—she turned out just fine,” Jane’s mother said. “And I’m sure Jimmy will, too. Although we went through a rough patch when Jane was in the third grade and couldn’t memorize the times tables. Just absolutely could not learn them, not for love nor money! And I thought, ‘Well, now I surely am paying the price for taking aspirin in my fifth month.’ ”
They were on Jane’s street now, and as they approached her house, Jane put on a little burst of speed, like a marathoner approaching the finish line, and raced up the porch stairs, leaving her mother and Mrs. Jellico behind. She threw open the door and glanced wildly around the living room. Mrs. Jellico’s old-lady purse was perched on the loveseat like a black vinyl beetle.
Jane snatched it up—it weighed nothing at all, and she was suddenly sure that it contained only Kleenex and a lipstick, no money or valuables, not one single item that couldn’t have waited until tomorrow—and turned back toward the door. Her mother’s car keys were on the hall table, and Jane grabbed them by the fringed leather keychain.
She stepped back out onto the porch just as her mother and Mrs. Jellico were reaching the steps.
“Good Lord, Jane,” her mother said. “You ran off without a word! Left us both standing on the sidewalk! I said to Mrs. Jellico here, ‘I do believe she’s got cold feet and is rushing off to call the church and cancel. Either that, or the shrimp cocktail disagreed with her.’ ”
Jane smiled, slightly out of breath. “I just wanted to find Mrs. Jellico’s pocketbook,” she said. “I know it’s such a horrible feeling, not knowing where your purse is.”
It was easy to be gracious now that she knew her mother and Mrs. Jellico were not going to get inside and settle in for coffee and conversation. She handed Mrs. Jellico’s purse to her and gave her a little pat on the arm. “My mother will drop you off at home now, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jane’s mother looked startled. “You want me to drive her home?”
“Yes, if you will be so kind,” Jane said. She took her mother’s hand and pressed the keychain into it, then closed her mother’s fingers over it. This was a trick of the classroom: Jane did this every time she handed a child the wooden hall pass, or the magnifying glass, or the whiteboard pointer. This is yours now; hold it tight. It worked with everything but the class hamster, who didn’t take kindly to squeezing.
“Well, all right,” her mother said. She turned to Mrs. Jellico. “My car is right over there.”
The two crossed the driveway toward Jane’s mother’s elderly Ford Fiesta, Mrs. Jellico tottering, Jane’s mother stalking in her usual purposeful gait. The sight of them leaving was physically, bodily delicious, like seeing a glass full of cold Chardonnay resting on a white-clothed tabletop. And speaking of! Jane went inside, pulling the door shut behind her, and hurried into the kitchen.
She pulled a half-full bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge. She poured some into a glass—the wine as sweetly yellow as a buttercup—and drank half of it right there, standing in the cool swirl of air from the open refrigerator. She refilled the glass, shut the fridge, and went into the bathroom, shedding her skirt and blouse along the way. To be alone was heavenly; she felt it was all she could ever want.
She started the shower and rested her wineglass on the bathroom counter. When the water was hot enough, she peeled off her bra and underpants and stepped into the tub, her blistered feet stinging. She stood under the spray for a long time, shampooing and soaping and then just letting the water beat down on her face.
Jane turned off the taps and pressed the water out of her hair with her hands. She stepped out of the shower and stood dripping on the bath mat while she reached for her wine. The cold glass felt as smooth and cool as a polished river stone in her hand.
In the corner of the fogged-over bathroom mirror, written in the steam, were the words milk English muffins orange juice. Her mother must have written that after her own shower this morning. It was a leftover habit from Jane’s childhood, when she and her mother had kept the grocery list on the bathroom mirror, adding to it every day. Jane smiled, wondering why it was only possible to feel fond of her mother when she was not actually in her mother’s presence.
Jane pulled on her robe and walked down the hall, picking up her discarded clothing.
“Mom?” she called toward the living room. No answer.
She threw her clothes into the hamper and went into the kitchen to refill her wineglass.
The sight of the living room—half-filled glasses and plates with cracker crumbs everywhere, the cheeseball looking like someone had run a Tonka truck through it—was so depressing that instead of sitting there, she carried her glass outside.
The sky was lavender-colored now. The sun had set, but the light lingered, like a child reluctant to go to bed. Jane crossed the lawn, wincing as the grass poked at her sore feet, and sat at the round little wrought-iron table under the pergola.
Where was her mother? Perhaps she was having cocoa with Mrs. Jellico. (If so, she was a better woman than Jane.) Perhaps she’d gone to Glen’s for English muffins. Perhaps she’d gone to put gas in her car, or to the ATM, or to do some other last-minute errand. Did it really matter, as long as Jane had this peaceful alone time?
Jane took a sip of Chardonnay. She stretched her legs out and rested her bare feet on the other patio chair. She still had wedding-related things to do, but they no longer weighed so heavily upon her. Instead, she reached for the mantra of her college days: In twenty-four hours, this will all be over. She used to apply it to exams and doctor appointments, but she could apply it here, too. In twenty-four hours, she would be married, the wedding over and done with, the processional rushed or not rushed, the food eaten, the drinks drunk. She and Luke would be at the bed-and-breakfast in Traverse City, ready to fly out to Chicago and on to Calgary the next day. They would order room service and—
The sound of sirens whooping in the distance startled her, and looking up, Jane realized that the last light had slipped away. Night had fallen. She should go inside and try to get some sleep.
The sirens grew louder. Fire truck or ambulance—whichever it was, they were on Lake Street now, heading to some emergency, some acc
ident.
Knowledge bloomed in her mind like a black flower opening, and Jane jumped to her feet, then had to hold on to the back of the chair, swaying. She knew then that her mother was not having cocoa with Mrs. Jellico, or buying English muffins, or searching for an ATM.
She knew those sirens were racing toward her mother, but something else was racing toward Jane. Something shadowy, and bullet-shaped, and almost sentient was hurtling through the night. It was looking for her, and she knew that she must let it find her. She must take ownership of it. She must close her fingers over it and never let it go. This terrible thing. It belonged to her now.
2006
It was July again, and sunny. The weather was warm, sultry, almost literally seductive—the kind of day when even locals who hadn’t dipped a toe in the lake for years gazed yearningly in the direction of the beach. Jane sat at her kitchen table, picking the raisins out of a piece of raisin toast. The phone on the counter rang, and when Jane stood up to answer, she saw that the number on the caller ID screen belonged to her mother. She sighed and picked up the receiver. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, Jane. It’s your mother.”
Jane didn’t point out that she’d obviously known that, and that her mother would have known she’d known from the way she answered the phone. Conversations with her mother tended to get a little circular these days, and Jane didn’t want to start off that way.
Instead, she said, “How are you, Mom?”
“Not too bad,” her mother said. “I had a little indigestion after breakfast, but that’s to be expected at my age, I suppose. Anyway, I just wanted to read you an article.”
Jane heard the rustling of newspaper. Phone calls with her mother were full-body experiences. Jane heard whatever her mother was saying, obviously, but lots of times, her mother was eating and Jane heard that, too. Her mother had a particular fondness for root-beer barrels and butterscotch disks, and the suck of saliva and crunch of candy as she polished one off could make Jane’s own mouth feel sticky. Her mother also had a habit of settling into her recliner as soon as she got someone on the line, and the whistling clunk as she put up the footrest was enough to whizz Jane straight back to childhood and the feel of the deep, soft leather of the recliner holding her like a giant’s hand. Invariably, her mother said, “Now, don’t let me forget I have carrot cake in the oven.” Or blueberry muffins. Or chocolate chip cookies. Jane could smell them for hours after she hung up. Her mother also kept up a running commentary—“I’m looking at the Penney’s catalogue. Now, what do you call that shade of yellow?”—which provided a visual component as well. (Deep down, Jane was unsure whether her mother knew that the telephone was a two-way communication device and not a radio she could switch on and off at random.)
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