by Roz Nay
“Is it? What would he do for you? How far would he go?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“Am I right that Freddy shares your contempt for Saskia?”
“I’d say he’s sympathetic.”
Novak slopes against the wall with his hands in his pant pockets. He looks like a menswear ad, the kind my dad would respond to. “Why didn’t you move in with him?”
“Because I wasn’t in love with him.”
“Who were you in love with?”
Novak wants my answer to be HP. He’s literally bending at the knee, waiting to pounce on it.
“I stayed in Cove, if that’s what you’re asking, because it gets comfortable living where you’ve grown up. You know? We’re all creatures of habit.”
Novak laughs quietly.
“My dad bought a little house by Cove Lake, so I moved into it. It was easier to stay than go.”
“Didn’t HP and Saskia live in a house by Cove Lake?”
“It’s a big lake. A lot of people live around it.” We stare at each other, but his eyes are colder than mine. “Mom came to visit me a lot. She liked Freddy even more than I did: he was rich, successful—”
“Wait, what?” Novak pushes forward and hurries to his chair. “Your mother had a connection with Freddy?”
There you go, Novak. You’re welcome. “I’m not sure if you’d call it a connection. I mean, if you ask me, it was a little one-sided. Mom liked that Freddy was articulate and refined. He’s debonair like a young Laurence Olivier, darling, or a Ralph Fiennes.”
He’s really scribbling now. It’s like I’ve opened a door to a whole new wing.
“So, did she make actual advances on him?”
“Advances?” I take pleasure in saying it: “Oh, I suppose. I couldn’t say for sure how Freddy responded to them. Sometimes guys say one thing and do another. Don’t you find?”
Novak spins in his chair and signals to the camera in the far corner. It’s a circular motion with his right hand, as if he’s twirling a tiny hoop on his forefinger. Run the tape? Check the facts? Go get Shelley Petitjean? It’s a call to action, that much is clear.
“What did your mother say when she heard Saskia was pregnant with HP’s child?”
“Nothing. She covered her face with her hands.”
Suddenly Novak smacks the table, making me jump. “Where’s Saskia? Who’s got her? Is it Freddy? Or your mom? Are we really going to have to do this the hard way?” He bends to get a proper view of my face. “Is Saskia dead, Angela? Is she being held? Or worse? If you know anything—anything at all—do you understand what it means not to tell me?” His next question comes out as a roar. “Why don’t you care?”
I slide my hands under my thighs. Novak sits down, knocking his chair back a few inches, and when I glance up he’s smoothing his hair back into place.
“Do you know where we found Saskia’s elephant necklace, Angela?”
“I’ve told you, no.”
“In your copy of Jane Eyre. On your bedside table. That is what we need to talk about.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The necklace was put into my book. She did it secretly. I swear I had no clue it was in there until Novak yelled the fact at me. It must have been pressed in a curl between pages near the back, the weight of the book holding it fast. Novak doesn’t believe me, of course. He won’t consider that someone else put it there. No, he’s convinced I’m the villain, even though one necklace can’t prove anything. He’s biding his time, one eye on the clock, one hand on his pager, hoping somebody will bring him something conclusive. In the meantime, he badgers me with endless questions. Why did you stay so close to the Parkers? Weren’t you just torturing yourself? His desperation to be done with me is sketched thick around him like a caricature. The interview’s draining us both: I’m as fidgety as he is. But we’re locked in now, two tired swimmers clinging to the same rope, neither of us able to let go until we reach the safety of an ending.
Why did I stay in Cove? It’s a good question, but at the time I just remember thinking that I needed to be around the familiar. And where else was I meant to go? HP was here. But as much as I wanted to run into him, our meetings were frustratingly rare. I suppose our schedules didn’t match any longer—once I was done with my degree, I worked every day until past four, and he was coaching full-time at Lakeside High—they’d delayed hiring him until he got back from Australia. I’m not sure what he did when he clocked off at 3:00 p.m., but most likely he went home to renovate his house. He built a home while Saskia built a baby. She wasn’t the only one doing that: quite a few girls I’d graduated with were now pushing strollers around the grocery store, looking shadowy-eyed and bewildered. The rest of my graduating class had fled the town—only the marrying kind remained. Beyond that, a new wave of eighteen-year-olds swaggered around like they owned the place. They had no idea how much harder life would get for them.
Unlike HP, Saskia was easier to find. In the months after their wedding celebration she grew more and more swollen. By Halloween, when we crossed paths in the furniture store, she must have been about eight months pregnant. She looked like the pumpkins on our porch.
“We hadn’t planned to start a family so soon,” she crooned, caressing the curve of her belly under her stretched-out Billabong fleece. “But you know, with HP, it’s hard to turn the guy down!”
I smiled with the lower half of my face. Mom was with me, shopping for new bedding for the lakeside house. At the time, I hadn’t realized it would be her who would sleep in it.
“You move fast,” I heard Mom say behind me. “Is that an Australian thing?”
“Pardon?” Saskia pronounced the word as if it contained four a’s.
“You know, early Australians battling through the mangroves, fighting back malaria, all convicts together building a home?”
Saskia brushed long bangs from her forehead, watching Mom test the thread count of cotton sheets by rolling them between her thumb and forefinger.
“Are you having a boy or a girl?” My tone was flat.
“Hopefully one or the other,” she trilled.
Nobody laughed.
Mom touched my shoulder lightly. “I’m sure it’ll be a little angel, whatever it is.”
“Thanks, that’s nice.” Saskia turned to me. “LJ, we should rent a movie together and eat popcorn in our tracky dacks. Girls’ night. It would be heaps fun.”
She hugged me goodbye and left us to wander on through the store. Mom turned to me.
“I can’t stand her.”
I didn’t say a word.
A week before the baby was born, HP called me from school and asked if we could meet up for a drink.
“What, in the evening time?” I asked. I was totally taken aback.
“Early evening for an hour or so? It’s nothing major; I just want to see you.”
I tried not to sound too excited. “Um, Friday’s free for me.”
“Perfect. Four o’clock at Fu?”
“Sure.”
It was the start of December and snowing for the first time. When I walked over to the bar, the flakes were fluffy and lovable in ways they would no longer be come February. There wasn’t much traffic, and everything felt still, quiet. Fairy lights twinkled in the apartment buildings above the shops on Main Street, and in some windows I could just make out the side of a Christmas tree. People were buying them earlier and earlier: Soon stores would sell them as a two-for-one deal with Thanksgiving turkeys.
At Fu Bar things had changed. Clearly the old manager had sold the joint and the new owners were trying desperately to wrench the whole place toward upscale. Tinkling jazz played on the stereo, a light flutter of piano keys here, a soft saxophone there. They’d bought new tables and reupholstered the booths, fixed up the lighting. The bar was empty, of course, because Cove still didn’t have enough suits and corporate wine drinkers to warrant the venue, but there were a few try-hard lawyer types murmuring on bar stools, drinking European beer
in tall glasses and shaking salted almonds in their fists like dice before dropping them into their mouths.
I took a seat at a table far enough from the door that I could watch it without being obvious. HP came in at ten past four. He wore a black bomber jacket and trendy, dark jeans that Saskia must have had a say in. His dockworker-style toque was pocked with snow; he took it off and banged it against his thigh.
“Am I late?” He checked an oversized watch at his wrist that looked like it would save him in a survival situation. “Sorry, I had to change out of work gear and the roads are ugly coming in from Cove Lake.” He settled into his chair, his cheeks flushed with cold. “Have you been here a while?”
“No.” I looked around. “Look at this place. Nothing’s the same.”
“You should see it out back. The ping-pong tables are gone and the back deck’s now a terraced barbecue area.…” He faltered as he mentioned the area where we’d kissed two short years ago. “Anyway, you look lovely. Elegant.” He stared at me in my thin black sweater.
“Thank you.”
“How’s life? Are you still working at the library?”
“No, I got a new position in vital statistics. It pays more and it’s more … interesting.”
“Well, good, that’s good. You need to be challenged.” He’d learned teacher-speak. Had he invited me here for career guidance? “How are things with your folks?”
“Oh, they’re all right, I guess. They fight a lot. You know how they are. Anyway, I’m less idealistic these days about true love and partnership.”
HP flinched just a little.
“Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” I said. “Imagine if the odds were the same with skydiving. Would you really jump?”
“Ha,” he responded, and squirmed in his seat. The bartender—a man in his early thirties with a Merlot-colored apron tied around the waist of his jeans—arrived at the side of our table.
“Is this a coffee thing, or…?”
“I’ll have a glass of the house red. It’s that kind of weather,” I said.
The bartender nodded.
“I’ll take a whiskey. Single shot, single malt, on ice.”
HP waited a second or two. “So … are you dating?”
“A little bit.” I wasn’t.
“Guys from around Cove?”
“Maybe.” I played with the delicate silver charm at my neck.
“Okay, well, look, I just wanted to meet up with you before—” The barman arrived with our drinks. HP waited until he’d gone again. “Before the baby’s born.”
“It must be any day.” My wine lilted thick and blood red as I lifted the curve of the glass into my palm. “I saw Saskia about a month ago and she looked ready to pop.”
“Yeah, she’s almost ready. We’re gearing up here.”
“I feel like everyone’s getting busier and busier.”
HP eyed me as I spoke, rocking his glass from side to side so that the ice cubes bumped. “Totally. Mortgages and taxes. Who saw that coming? The last time I checked, we were hanging out at the Tarzan swing and our only worry was avoiding a sunburn.”
“Where’s Ezra?” I asked. “He’s vanished.” Which wasn’t true—I’d seen him at the grocery store several times. He didn’t like Saskia and told me every time I saw him. Said she was a drill sergeant cleverly disguised. She’s changed him, LJ. She’s ironed him straight.
“Ezra hasn’t vanished,” HP said. “You have.”
“Oh.” I sipped more wine. “Have I?”
“I never see you.”
“How hard are you trying?” Be nice, Angela. Be nice or he’ll leave. “I haven’t vanished, HP. At least not from you.”
He rolled the base of his glass around his coaster in an orbit. “We worry about you, you know. Don’t disappear on me, okay?”
“Listen,” I began, pausing to wonder whether I was brave enough for this sentence, “it’s not easy. I get that you’re married and all that, but for me…” I took a deep breath. “… for me, it’s complicated. I’ve got leftovers.”
HP frowned.
“Feelings that don’t fit anywhere anymore.”
“Oh, I see.” He looked down at his glass.
“Don’t you?”
“Umm,” he floundered. He didn’t say no.
“That’s not to say I don’t want to be in your life,” I clarified.
“No, good.” HP scratched his head. “Because that’s what I’d really like. It would be nice if I could count on you. And Saskia thinks it’s important, too.”
Bullshit.
“We can be friends, can’t we?” He reached his hand across the table. I took it. His skin was as warm and smooth as I remembered but his fingers had thickened, probably from all the carpentry and housework. Still, I didn’t want to let go.
“Somebody’s got to tell my kid how cool I was in high school. Ezra will never admit it.” His eyes were soft and glassy. It was my touch. I was sure of it.
“We can be friends,” I said, still holding his hand, pushing my electricity through it. “That’s how it all began, right?”
“Right.” He pulled away, sat back, relieved, and then checked his watch. For a moment I imagined myself ripping it from his wrist and throwing it across the room.
“I’ve got to say, I don’t think I can tell your kid you were cool in high school. You know me.” I looked down at my wine. “I never was a very good liar.”
* * *
Novak probably thinks I’m a masochist, but that’s simply not true. Things changed when Olive was born. No, I didn’t visit HP and Saskia in the hospital, but I did take flowers over to their house once they were home with the baby. Carnations.
HP had been working on a fixer-upper down by the lake—a ramshackle old place with a wraparound porch. He’d already rebuilt the entire bottom floor. It smelled of sawdust and fresh paint. Olive slept the whole time I was there. She was painfully beautiful, her little fists clenched as she took milky, fast breaths. Blond, velveteen hair swept circular in a helix from the crown of her head.
“You want to hold her?” HP wore his old track T-shirt from high school, and his face was puffy with sleeplessness. It was two weeks since we’d sat in the bar together.
“Let’s leave her,” Saskia urged. She was already back in her skinny jeans. She craned in past my shoulder to peep into the crib and I could smell her—her faint, frangipani-petal sweetness. The three of us stood together, a line of faces, a little team of awe. I stepped back and away.
“It’s really nice of you to come over,” HP said. “You look well.”
“Appearances are deceptive.”
“You’re not well?”
“No, no. Just kidding. I’m fine.”
“Well, you should come visit us more, Little John.”
“You can’t call her Little John anymore. She’s Angela,” Saskia said. “Angela, it’s such a pretty name.”
“It’s true,” HP said. He put his hand on my shoulder but he was looking at his wife. “Listen, Saskia and I have been thinking, and we’d like to ask if you’d be Olive’s godmother.”
I tried not to look horrified.
“Uh, gosh,” I said. Godmother?
“Is that a yes?” Saskia was beaming at me.
“Of course!” Laughter, smiles and hugs, smiles and hugs.
I wondered why they welcomed me into their life with this invitation, but when I told Mom about it, she was uncharacteristically positive.
“You should take that opportunity and run with it, darling,” she said, sorting her clothes on the bed into piles of keep and giveaway. The giveaway pile was huge. “As much as we don’t like the show, we might as well get you a leading role in it.”
* * *
So as it turned out, Detective Novak, I got over myself and accepted the chance to be a part of the Parkers’ lives. I started to spend more and more time at HP and Saskia’s house, and began to actually feel useful.
“I told you we needed your help,�
�� HP said one day while I was holding Olive. “Your mom’s pleased, too. It’s a win–win.”
I wasn’t sure what my mother had contributed to the situation, but having Olive around me all the time was like a joint I didn’t know I had, clicking smoothly into socket. It was a physical improvement: Being near the baby as she cooed and discovered her toes meant that any blocked frustrations in me started to turn fluid and change color. A few months into being her godmother, what poured out of me into Olive was pure connection, a gentle force. I was almost a third parent.
Like my mom had predicted, it was good to be a strong influence in Olive’s life, and as she got bigger I grew closer and closer to her. I never missed a birthday, and every year I bought her a chocolate cupcake, replacing the fondant butterfly with a Lego Star Wars figurine. Saskia asked me not to buy the ones with the little, detachable helmets—choking hazard—but seriously, our parents never worried about stuff like that and we all made it.
Olive’s eyes were a deep, inky indigo, a feline curve to the edges. She was chubby as a toddler, with wrinkles at her wrists and thighs that looked like she’d wrapped her legs in hair elastics. Whenever I went to HP’s house to see her, she’d be dancing to tunes from The Little Mermaid or clapping homemade play dough between plum-thick fingers. She ran right into my arms the second I arrived.
At Christmas three years back, Saskia was threading tree decorations made out of pasta. On the floor Olive drew an oversized snowman on a wide sheet of paper, coloring his scarf outside the lines with a gold-glitter crayon.
“She has her dad’s temperament,” Saskia said. She tilted her head the way mothers do when all they can see in the world is their own beautiful creation. In the background, ABBA played on continuous loop.
“She’s lucky to be like HP,” I said, then added, “And you.”
“We all are lucky and so, so blessed.” Saskia got up from the breakfast counter and put her arm around my shoulders. Her touch baffled me, made me feel like plastic.
“Are you like HP?” I inched along the countertop so that my rib cage separated from hers.
“Hamish and I are peas in a pod,” she said. “I feel so lucky that we see life the same way: as a journey, a series of amazing adventures. Anything’s possible once you figure that out. Don’t you think?”