“Of course,” I said, smoothing it over, “I know. I just—I’m okay, Mac. But thank you.”
Mac walked away from me and leaned against a wall. He pulled a cigarette from his inside pocket and lit it. Took a deep drag.
“He never told you everything, you know, Penny.” He exhaled thoughtfully. “A guy has to have his”—he reached around for the word—“confidences.”
“Right. Sure.”
“Don’t say it like that. So prissy. ‘Right. Sure.’ ” He mimicked me again. “See?” He gestured at me like I was proving something. Shook his head in exasperation. “That’s exactly why. You always acted like you were better than everyone else.”
I sighed. “Sorry. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think that, if it means anything.”
Mac made a face and blew out his cheeks. “Whatever.”
“I’m sorry, Mac. I know you miss him. I do, too.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes, like everything I said proved his point. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who misses the guy.” He got up and wiped his nose and headed for the door. Looked back and stopped.
“You know what, Penny?” He pointed a finger at me. “And I’m sorry I gotta say this, but it’s true: You maybe thought that you were too good for him, but he was too good for you. He was gold.” His voice was catching. “It is such … A fucking … Shame. You two,” he slurred a little, “you two never made any goddamn sense. You were not good for him. It coulda been different for him.”
My mouth opened and closed, and I blinked at him, suddenly afraid. And then the moment was gone. He turned on his heel and walked out, his boot crushing a stick as it hit the ground, making me jump when it cracked loudly. I heard him kick something out of his way, and it crashed into the darkness. And then he yelled out, a sob at the edge of his voice, “This is not your place, Penny!”
He slammed the door of his truck. I listened as it pulled away, the tires grumbling angrily, then paced the barn. I smacked the dry paper of one of my nature sketches, hating its sweet innocence, it’s stupid, hopeful naivety. It spun around on the clothes peg, tearing slightly at the top. I heard a mouse scratching in the rafters, and then suddenly an owl screeched and I started, my hands flying up to my face. I took a breath, exhaled whatever confidence I had left. I just wanted a life away from it all, away from the town, that house, those memories, and Hattie. My sanctuary, always, this barn, wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain if Mac Williams could find his way to me.
Not half an hour after Mac had left, I heard a car on the gravel again. It could only be Hattie, but I couldn’t bear to talk to her right now. And sure enough, I recognized the sound of her car, could almost smell the stuffy interior.
It was Mum’s old car, that bog-colored beauty with vinyl seats that would tear the top layer of skin off your leg on a hot day. Hattie had a habit of emotional hoarding, and I sensed that it was not just practicality that had forced her to keep that thing around as long as she had. I hated it. The long back seat had been the site of too many early make-out attempts, the knobs for the windows were prone to getting stuck, the brakes never worked that well. None of this had ever bothered Hattie, who had a knack for putting things out of her mind when there was something to be gained. A door opened, closed again, and I heard the jingle of keys in a hand. And for the second time that night, I arranged my expression in preparation.
There was a knock at the barn door, and the ridiculousness of this formality happening twice in one night would have struck me as funny if I hadn’t been so hopped up on nervous anxiety. What did a girl have to do to get some peace and quiet? I had turned this old barn into my shack-cum-hideout but it didn’t even work.
“Hi, Hattie,” I said loudly.
“It’s me, Penny. Jameson.” A pause, the shuffling of a shoe in the dirt. “Sorry, I should have called. Or, right, not called, but I should have let you know. Courier pigeon. Smoke signal. Anyway,” his voice faded. “Forget I came.”
I did, almost, just let him go. I held my tongue because I knew that the silence was the only thing keeping my mask on, and if I opened my mouth it would fall off, and I would be left standing there naked, apologizing for being rude, and rushing to open the door. He started to walk away, and I listened to his loafers on the hard dirt outside, but I had hardly been listening long when I gave in and hurried outside to stop him. My mouth was dry, a rough unfurling kind of quiet that had to be coughed out, my voice stammering. Jameson turned around when he heard me, and he stood there, all pressed and clean and curious-looking in a way that made me aware of my bag-lady squatter appearance.
“Sorry. Sorry, Jameson. I just … look, please don’t go. I thought you were Hattie.”
“Okay, sure.” A look passed over his face that was half smile, half reprimand. I stood there like the wild woman of St. Margaret’s. Wearing a quilt around my shoulders, my hair in all directions, I could have just as easily been pushing along a grocery cart with a stuffed parrot in it, talking to myself.
“You alright, Penny? You look a little,” he scratched his cheek, “out of sorts.”
I pulled the blanket tighter, my cape of denial. “I’m just fine. How are you?” I said primly.
He ignored this question but waited me out. He hadn’t turned all the way back towards me but wasn’t committed to leaving either. He gestured to two Muskoka chairs that were set up, paint peeling sadly, towards the sloping sigh of the escarpment. I realized then that he had with him a stylish brown satchel, a shoulder bag in army green, and from it he withdrew a thermos. Laying it on the grass, he pushed the chairs more tightly together and surrendered into the bucket seat of one of them. He smiled at me, and I joined him, offering up and spreading out my blanket on our laps like a map stretched out between explorers.
I didn’t feel like talking or seeing anyone. He began to speak into the black hole of my silence, revealing that he had come directly from work, having had a staff meeting at the end of the day. He batted around mindless details about the meeting, the people on staff of whom I had cursory knowledge, having seen them in and out of the school, hearing the parents of older kids gossip about good and bad teachers while dressing their younger charges for home. Jameson picked at the peeling paint of the chair, and I nodded disinterestedly at his chatter. I knew it was coming, the gulf between us, that vast desert of Hattieness that had become impossible to cross; I decided to head him off at the pass.
“Jameson.”
He looked at me.
“What the fuck? What is wrong with Hattie? What the hell made her think that—you know—idea was … was a good idea?”
He sighed and reddened, and in my frustration, I felt myself blush too.
“I dunno, Penny. Maybe it was a bad idea. It’s been hard. She’s in a state. She seems to think we’ll never have a baby. I’m really sorry that she tried to get you involved in this. You’re right, it’s total fucking madness. I know you two are close, but Jesus.”
“Not that close.”
“Right. Pushing it a little too far.” He deftly opened the thermos with his hand by holding it with his knees, and, propping the cups on the arm of his chair, poured out two cups of whiskey. It stung and warmed, and was perfect.
“Does she know you’re here?”
“No,” he said.
I looked out at the trees as their black shapes blended into the sky. Jameson put his arm around the back of my chair and I felt his fingers on my shoulder, making it sing and tingle. A mouse scurried in and out of the woodpile. I was blushing and full of desire for him. He cleared his throat.
“Not sure if Hattie told you, but she wants to have a big party at the house.”
“She does?” I immediately felt my stomach clench.
Jameson chuckled. “Yes, she does. She’s acting out a bit because we both said no. The only balm for any emotion, apparently, is a party. And, she said she thinks you and I are too insular. That we should branch out, share ourselves with the world. Plus piz
za and beer.”
I put my hand over my eyes. “God, my worst nightmare.”
“And mine!”
“Trust me, I am not a party girl.”
“That, my friend, is exactly why she wants to do this. She likes to, let’s say, keep us on our toes, don’t you think? Push us out of our comfort zones. But …” he said, “you know, she gets what she wants, our Hattie.”
“Always,” I murmured.
“Think we should do it? Might make our lives more bearable?” He was looking at me so softly, I would have agreed to anything.
“Of course. For our own sakes.”
“Naturally. This is a self-preservation party.”
We were quiet again.
“Even if she doesn’t know that she wants me to be the DJ, I’m glad to fill in the role,” Jameson said.
“Well, sure. One can’t call it a party without someone playing the Bee Gees.”
“Hey!”
I giggled and elbowed him. He looked at me, and bit his lip, and we stared at each other until he looked away, smiling shyly. A flirtation simmered. He moved his arm between us and gave my hand a squeeze. He didn’t stay long after that, although he did ask me to stop sleeping at the barn, to come back home to him and Hattie, who, he said, missed me.
“You need to come back. So we can keep this party to the right guest-list size: three.”
I nodded, but said nothing.
He hugged me, and I still felt his chest against mine long after he drove the car away. But something prickled at me. Worry. And a terrible thought slipped between the crevices of my mind. Did Hattie send him here? Did she think Jameson could talk me into that pregnancy plan of hers? No, of course not. That would never happen. Not because Hattie wouldn’t plot that, but because Jameson wouldn’t comply.
I stood in the chilly breeze, finally alone again. I listened to the wind licking the leaves off the trees. And in that solitary moment, I suddenly missed Mum something awful. I needed her now: she could have offered me advice, could have changed the course of things, the course of me. It really feels, after all of this time, that there is an actual hole in me. I was robbed of my father, I was robbed of my mum. What would she have told me to do? How could she have steered me differently, and would I have gone there? I touched my cheek where it had brushed against Jameson’s, and went back inside, sliding the door shut behind me.
12
Being back home brought the luxury of baths. Of water running in the background while my mind wandered, while I stretched out on top of the covers and allowed myself a tiny moment of mindlessness.
I didn’t know it had happened until I looked across the bed at my feet and thought a bath would be nice on a cold night like this. Then I remembered that I’d turned it on already. The roar of the water had just become background noise, like the whipping winter wind. I ran into the bathroom, slipping and splashing on the checkered tile, the water flowing over the edges of the tub. You think you will hear it if a bath overflows. You think that you’d know. It just all sounds the same until it’s too late. Hattie yelled up that there was water coming through the dining-room light, and we put out a bucket to catch it until it stopped.
I look back on that moment and see now that this is what we spent our lives doing: trying to contain the flood.
I was back in the fold, home to the cage of our house, just as the weather changed, and Hattie warmed me with her sisterly embraces once again. And I was grateful for her and so glad to see Jameson on a daily basis.
Hattie was desperate to plan the party, and although my initial response was to think this a bad idea, I began to soften in the face of her excitement. She agreed to my condition that she keep the party small. I didn’t want to open our door to the town, but with every discussion of the event, Hattie pushed it open further. In fact, she was happier throughout Christmas and leading up to New Year’s than I had seen her in a long time.
“This house is so amazing, it’s the perfect party house! We need to breathe some new life into it, people!”
Jameson and I, rolling our eyes, bonded over our shared instincts to keep things small, but did her bidding. We looked up recipes in long-forgotten cookbooks of Mum’s, Jameson doing rounds of testing different Swedish meatballs, digging out the fondue pot with the chip in it, trying out drink concoctions. The whole month of December was like one long New Year’s party in stages. Hattie marched about like a cruise director, making guest lists and buying shimmering decorations, finding a seemingly endless supply of party gear in our basement.
“Oh! I remember those,” I said, watching Hattie open a box of champagne and tinted shot glasses.
“Remember the parties with all the neighbors here?”
“We were the waitresses!”
“Child labor,” Jameson mused, lifting out a glass. “Think there are any local kids we could pay in meatballs?”
* * *
New Year’s Eve finally arrived. The house was full to bursting: throw a house party in a small town and everyone comes. All manner of St. Margaret’s people arrived, and they were the exact sort, in fact, who would be great fun at a stay-in New Year’s Eve party during one of the first blizzards that winter. A collection of singles and couples, young and old, shy, and the kinds of balls-out line-crossers who would have us knocking over wine glasses and mopping up the spills with our stocking feet to ring in the new year.
I was nervous and put off joining the party until the last moment. I was not great at crowds, preferred them from the outskirts. But it was seductive, the sound of the gathering crowd, and so I allowed myself to relax into it. I teased my short hair to make it stand up, wrapped a long string of cheap pearls around my neck and drank sparkling wine from a tumbler on my vanity before skipping down the stairs, my hand on the railing of my childhood, to greet our ragtag assortment of ball-dropping misfits. The night slipped silkily downward into a kind of reckless post-Christmas frivolity that marks the best kind of parties. She had done it: it was a hit.
A mess of tapes was scattered on the rug in the family room, spilling out of a box on the floor, and stacked in a tower on the stereo, which was set up beside a ceramic planter whose plant had long-since shriveled from neglect. People were dancing, twisting their socked feet into the braided rug that Mum had bought at an antique auction.
Jerry, an octogenarian patron of Hattie’s hair salon with very little hair to speak of, was flirting unabashedly with Hattie’s friend from work, Diane. Leaning in to hear each other, they were squeezed into the end of an overstuffed chesterfield. Three young women from the daycare took up the rest of the real estate, legs crossed over each other, arms linked, giggling boozily into one another’s faces. Jameson had his arm around Hattie, and he rocked her back and forth to the music, whispering in her ear, making her cackle and grin—in a trick of the light, she had a devilish pointed-toothed smile. And then it was gone, replaced by her closed red lips and happy eyes. Jameson looked at me and winked, and I blushed up to my ears. Hattie swung over, wrapped her arms around my neck and sang into my face flirtatiously. I laughed at her bravado, so pleased to see her swagger and stomp, throwing her worries away in a big, windmill-armed toss into the night. A good time. I could have a good time, right? I grinned and let myself go.
“This is better than sleeping in a barn, don’t you think, Penny?”
“It is.” I laughed, embarrassed to be outed. “It definitely is.”
Jameson shouted out to me, “See?” while Hattie refilled his glass.
* * *
Sitting with my old friend Sally, in my room later. She hadn’t been upstairs in our house since high school and had meandered about looking at my photos and knick-knacks before settling down on the carpet. Our legs crossed, a Ouija board and an overflowing ashtray between us. Sally’s hair was falling out of its hair-sprayed architecture, slanting sideways in faded, teased glory.
“Who do you want to contact?”
I took a haul on a joint and passed it back to her, thinking.
“Well,” I exhaled, “I think my mum is out. That is just too weird. Also I’d like to think she’s doing more than waiting around for calls from a Ouija board. Mind you, she loved this kind of thing. And Buddy, well, that’s just too sad.”
I was quiet in a fuzzy, stoned moment.
“How you holding up, friend?” Sally asked, her hand on my arm. “I hardly ever see or hear from you.”
I sighed for her benefit. “Hmm. Oh, you know. Alright, I guess. The nights are hard. Maybe I’m not deeply, subconsciously okay, but you know, okay by day. Like a superhero!”
Sally laughed. “The Grieving Widow: okay by day—”
“ ‘Panic-stricken insomniac by night!’ ”
“Yeah … That’s not too catchy.”
“I’m sorry I’m hard to reach. I’m not a great friend.” And for that minute, I almost meant it.
We were quiet again.
“Death sucks,” Sally said, inhaling on the joint.
“Yup.”
“Okay. Who, then?” I grabbed the Ouija piece. “What about your uncle, the one who had to buy two seats for his ass on the bus?”
Sally agreed, giggling, and we moved our fingers together across the board, the whole effort collapsing intermittently into stoned hysteria. Eventually we gave it up for a bad job, assuming that the obese uncle was in a huff in the afterlife, and was refusing to cooperate. We leaned against the legs of my bed and lapsed into silence, the music from downstairs thumping, punctuated by laughter and the occasional crash. It was nice, just sitting there, with a friend, relaxing. Almost normal. Like the glimpse into a life I might have had.
“Are you glad you moved back?”
“Sure. But, I mean, I didn’t really move out.”
“I know, I know. You did that outdoorsy thing for a while, though. Woman of the woods. I don’t know how you stayed in that creepy barn for so long. I didn’t even know you were out there until Hattie called to invite me to the party.”
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