Still Waters

by Misha Crews

  “How did it happen?”

  Although she had been expecting it, she still caught her breath at the words so gently spoken. She felt as though she had told the story a million times already, and it hadn’t gotten any easier. So she rocked back in the swing and asked him a question to counter his own, a stalling tactic that she had learned from her father. “How much do you know?”

  He sighed. “Two weeks ago I was in Korea, and one night I found a telegram on my bunk. From your friend Stella, I guess.”

  He looked at Jenna inquiringly, and she nodded a slow confirmation. “I asked her to cable you,” Jenna said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it myself.”

  “You don’t have to insult me with apologies,” he said, not unkindly. “The telegram only said that Bud had — that there had been an accident, and that you were going to wait the funeral as long as you could so that I could be here. It gave the name of the funeral parlor. I pulled every string I could to get here at all, and I got here late.” He shrugged lightly. “And that’s all I know.”

  Jenna nodded again. It was her turn now; there was no escaping it. “It was a Sunday morning. Bud and I slept late.” She smiled faintly. “We have a standing invitation to go to church with Bill and Kitty, but we try to get out of it as often as possible. There’s a new bakery that opened a little ways up the road, and we’ve been going there far too often. It’s Bud’s favorite thing to do on Sunday mornings. I’ve warned him a dozen times that I’m going to get fat if he doesn’t stop bringing me donuts, but he says he doesn’t care.” She heard herself speaking in the present tense and decided that it didn’t matter.

  “And so that Sunday, he was getting donuts while I made breakfast. I was waiting for him to come back. It did seem as if he had been gone a long time, but that wasn’t too unusual. You know Bud — he always seems to find somebody to chat with. He can stand and talk for an hour and not even know the time has passed. He’s always been that way. So I was just making breakfast, as usual…”

  She trailed off. There hadn’t really been anything “usual” about that morning, had there? From the moment Bud had walked out the back door, giving her a casual kiss on the cheek, nothing had been the same. From that moment, life as she’d known it had stopped.

  Jenna placed a hand over the pocket of her robe, feeling the stiff cardboard outline of the photo inside. She had a sudden urge to show it to Adam, an almost overpowering need to share this mystery with someone. But she stifled it quickly. No one should know about this. She couldn’t defend Bud, and she wasn’t going to be the one to bring accusation down on him.

  On the day he died, Jenna had found the photo in his sock drawer. While the bacon simmered on low heat in the kitchen downstairs, she had been upstairs finishing Saturday’s chores by putting away the last of the laundry. The picture was tucked off to the side, facing away from her. She had reached for it casually, pulled it out, turned it over. Then she’d backed up two steps and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Funny how you can know someone for years, and not have any idea who they are.

  The photo was small — just a few inches on each side — and square, with curlicued edges. Bud was at the right of the frame. It must’ve been a sunny day, because the shadows in his dimples were sharp, and despite the black-and-white, she could see the highlights gleaming in his blond hair.

  A woman stood next to him. Her hair was black, as was her skin. She had the same kind of high cheekbones and deep, hypnotic eyes of a Nigerian princess who Jenna had met when her father was stationed in Africa. The woman’s mouth was stretched into a smile. Her eyes were bright and happy. The baby, cradled in her arms, was a bright-eyed cherub, dark skin set off by the white blanket.

  Sitting on the side of the bed that morning, Jenna had stared down into the picture, looking at her husband’s smiling face as if he were a stranger. Her stomach felt as if it was dropping away through the floor, and for a moment she was dizzy, as if she were going to be sick. She had thought briefly of morning sickness, wanted it to be that, then pushed away the notion as wishful thinking. You can’t get pregnant if you’re not having sex. Even she knew that.

  Then she had resolutely gotten up and gone back downstairs to see about the bacon. As her father would have said, these were things that needed to be talked over, not dwelled over. She had placed the photo square in the middle of the dining room table, where her husband would see it when he walked in. She hadn’t wanted either of them to be able to avoid the issue. When Bud came home, they would discuss things. But Bud had never come home.

  “There was a knock at the door while I was cooking. I thought it was the paperboy, collecting for last week’s delivery. I was worried because I’d given Bud my change purse before he left, and I wasn’t sure if I had any cash in the house. It didn’t occur to me at that moment that the paperboy never does his collections on a Sunday morning. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

  As she’d passed through the dining room on her way to the front door, Jenna had grabbed the photo off the table. Just in case it was a neighbor coming over for a chat, who would expect to sit and be served coffee in the dining room, she had tossed the picture into the drawer of the sideboard. And there it had stayed. Until tonight.

  She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m sure you can imagine the rest. The person at the front door wasn’t the paperboy. It was a policeman, who told me that Bud had been in an accident. Someone ran a red light and hit the car right square on the driver’s side. They say Bud probably never saw it coming, that he didn’t suffer at all. But how do they know that? I wonder. Maybe he saw everything. Maybe he felt everything, down to the metal tearing flesh from his bones and his blood slowly dripping away onto the asphalt.”

  Adam stretched out his arm, and put his hand next to hers. Not touching her, but near enough for her to feel it. Jenna pursed her lips. She was glad he was there. If she had said those things around anyone else, they would have run to get her a glass of brandy, a tranquilizer, anything to shut her up. But Adam just listened.

  “Stella saw the police car and came over. She sat with me while her husband called Bill and Kitty.”

  And there, Jenna faltered. She could stand her own pain, her own sense of loss and emptiness. What she couldn’t stand was what the loss had done to Bud’s parents.

  “First Denny, and now Bud,” Adam said. “It’s not fair.”

  Jenna looked at him gratefully. He had said just what she was thinking. “No, it isn’t. To lose both their sons…as if losing one weren’t bad enough…it doesn’t make sense.”

  “None of this makes sense.” Adam stood abruptly and walked across the porch. He leaned an elbow against the column and stood looking out into the rain. When he spoke again, it was as if he was talking to himself. But Jenna knew he hadn’t forgotten she was there.

  “None of it makes any sense. I met Bud on my first day of school when I was six years old. I got invited to their house that weekend. Kitty baked chocolate chip cookies for me. My mother had passed away the year before, and that was the first time I’d had cookies since then. My father never really had time to think about things like that.”

  He turned and looked at her. “That first day I spent at the Appleton’s — it was a really good day.” Jenna could see the streetlight striking his face, glancing off his prominent cheekbones, sending shadows dipping into the creases at the corner of his eyes, pooling dark crescents underneath. He looked tired. He looked very tired. “After that, we were….”

  “Family.” Jenna spoke without realizing it. “I know.”

  He continued to look at her without speaking. Suddenly she was very aware of how alone they were. Isolated by the rain, united by their grief. She shifted. “God knows how little we’ve both had of that. Family, I mean.”

  She saw the chilly expression on his face. “I didn’t mean anything against your father,” she said hurriedly. “He was a very dear man. But — ”

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  He
came and sat down beside her on the swing, leaving very little space between them. “I guess neither of us had much luck in the family department.”

  “Until we met Bud.”

  “Right.”

  Adam chuckled. “Do you remember the time Denny broke his ankle falling out of that tree? That time the four of us were playing in the McKennas’ backyard?”

  Jenna put a hand to her mouth. “I had completely forgotten about that! Oh, poor Denny! None of us believed he was really hurt, so we made him walk all the way home on a broken ankle. I’m surprised Kitty ever forgave any of us!”

  “Oh, she was plenty mad for a while. And Denny milked it for all he was worth, of course. ‘Adam, get me a Coke.’ ‘Bud, I’m bored; how about a comic book?’”

  “You think I got off easy?” Jenna laughed. “I was the girl, remember? ‘Jenna, make me a sandwich. Jenna, fluff my pillows!’” She laughed again. “That boy was such a brat.”

  Their smiles faded.

  “He’s been gone almost three years,” Jenna said sadly.

  Adam nodded slowly. “He was a good kid. Reckless, though. Never did have much sense.”

  “Not like Bud.”

  “No, Bud had enough good sense for all of us.” Adam smiled at her. “He married you, after all.”

  “Well, I don’t know if that was good sense. Inertia, maybe. We’ve all known each other so long….”

  “It was good sense,” Adam said, not looking at her. “Trust me.”

  They sat in silence, swinging gently.

  Moments passed. Words gathered between them, unspoken, building up charge like static electricity. Jenna felt the hair on her arms rising.

  At last Adam spoke. “Did you ever feel like there was something you wanted to say, but you weren’t sure if — ”

  “Don’t,” Jenna said softly. She was afraid to look at him, afraid of what would happen if she let her eyes meet his.

  But he evidently couldn’t stop himself. “From the moment I got the message about Bud, all I could think about was getting to you.”

  “Don’t,” she said again.

  “Trying to get here, to be with you. To stand next to you when they put Bud in the ground. To hold your hand. To be with you. It was all I could think about.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed. “Don’t.”

  “Because I knew you would need me. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Jen. I’m so very, very sorry.”

  The tears were starting again. She could feel them in her throat, swelling it, climbing up to press between her closed eyelids. She didn’t want this. Not now. She couldn’t take it. If she started crying again, she wasn’t sure she could stop.

  Then he touched her hand, and the tears dried up like magic. She turned and looked up at him.

  No, it wasn’t magic. It was something baser, more real, more elemental. Gravity…electricity…chemistry…

  * * *

  It had always been there. Jenna’s senior year, 1944. Bud was in boot camp, preparing to go to war. Adam had joined the Navy the year before. He had only come home for his father’s funeral.

  That day had been a scene eerily similar to this one. But it was fall, then. The leaves had just passed their peak, and the sky that late afternoon was the deep turquoise it only turned in the autumn. After the burial they had gone for a walk in the park. They found a dry bench and sat, not talking. But they were together, and that was a comfort.

  Jenna was Bud’s girl by then. Everyone knew it. She didn’t have a ring on her finger, but in people’s minds she had been branded. Private property. Hands off.

  Jenna hadn’t minded that too much.

  Until Adam came home.

  Sitting on the park bench that afternoon, all they had talked about was Bud. How funny he was, what a good athlete, what a fine all-around fella. They had told Bud-stories until the sun began to set. Then they had fallen silent, watching the sky turn gold.

  As the first star had lit up in the twilight sky, Jenna had reached for him. And Adam had pulled away.

  Bud’s girl.

  * * *

  “He was better than both of us put together,” Adam said, looking down at her.

  “He was the best man I ever knew,” Jenna agreed. She couldn’t take her eyes from his. The sound of the rain faded into nothing. She was only slightly aware that Fritz got up, nosed open the door, and went to find his bed.

  Even the rocking of the swing stopped.

  And this time when she reached for him, he didn’t pull away.

  PART TWO: LIFE

  “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

  — FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Spring 1956

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since Adam had experienced Washington, DC in the springtime. As he tooled smoothly down 23rd Street and across Constitution Avenue, he told himself he had been away too long.

  Unfortunately, he had arrived in the city too late to see the daffodils, which was really too bad. In March, the daffodils liked to make a spectacle of themselves. They blanketed the hillside in Rock Creek Park and thrust out boldly in alleyways and other unexpected places, yellow trumpets announcing the triumphant end of winter.

  But he told himself philosophically that he would be here for the daffodils next year. And the year after that. Besides, the tulips were blooming now, sharp reds and yellows lining the flowerbeds along the narrow city streets, dancing in the gentle spring air. And didn’t they just look fine?

  Adam’s father had been a gardener. He had spent his life planting, mowing, and coaxing beautiful things to grow out of the earth. He had taught Adam to appreciate the precision and attention that goes into making a garden grow. It wasn’t just cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row — although Adam had always been particularly fond of the latter. It took time, and care, and understanding of the mysteriously scientific elements of nature.

  Not unlike making a woman fall in love with you, come to think of it.

  Adam heard himself whistling, and he smiled. He was in a fine mood on that sunny Saturday afternoon, no doubt about it. He had the top down on his new car; and the sun, shining brightly through the green trees, warmed his shoulders as he turned right from 23rd Street onto Lincoln Memorial Circle.

  He crossed Memorial Bridge, shifting smoothly into third gear, marveling at how effortlessly all the parts of his automobile worked together. The ball of the gearshift was snug against his palm, and he could feel the feral engine hungering to go faster. The magnificent creature was Adam’s first new car, and as far as he was concerned, mankind’s progress had peaked with the 1956 Chevrolet Corvette.

  And it had certainly turned into a good day for a convertible. During the past week, the city had been roofed with a cover of benign gray clouds, sprinkling down the occasional burst of friendly rain. Adam wasn’t usually one to mind gray skies and gloomy weather, but Jenna had been planning a backyard birthday party for her little boy, and rain would have been a considerable inconvenience.

  So what luck it was that just this morning the clouds had broken, revealing a sky the color of heaven, and allowing the sun to warm the air to a perfect temperature. Adam could picture all those little rug rats running around Jenna’s backyard, trailing balloons and wrapping paper, in a complete frenzy of sugar and excitement.

  He glanced at the brightly-wrapped package on the passenger seat of his car, and he smiled. Secreted inside the large box were two baseball gloves, a bat, and an assortment of balls that were just right for whacking into the nearest gutter — or into an outstretched glove, depending on the circumstance. The way Adam figured it, the little guy had never known his father, so if he could treat Christopher to a game of catch, that would be fine. Mighty fine, in fact.

  Christopher Appleton. The thought of him still took Adam’s breath away. Bud’s son. Bud’s little boy.

  Miracles really did happen.

  Well, they all deserved a miracle, didn’t they? Especial
ly Bill and Kitty, losing two sons in a matter of years, as if Denny’s death hadn’t been bad enough.

  When Kitty had written to him in the early autumn of 1950 to share the joyful news that Jenna was going to have Bud’s child, all he had been able to think was, maybe God’s making up for it. And suddenly it had made sense that Jenna had never answered any of the letters he’d written to her. She’d been caught up in a private world built of grief and joy. She probably hadn’t spared him much of a thought since they’d parted so awkwardly two days after their unexpectedly intimate reunion.

  Adam had continued to write to Jenna in the following years, but she’d never replied. Well, Jenna had always done things her own way. And that was one of the reasons why he loved her, wasn’t it?

  Truth to tell, what had happened between them had never sat too well with Adam. She was Bud’s wife, after all. And when he learned that Jenna had been pregnant during their time together, he had felt nearly sick with shame.

  But as he read Kitty’s letters, read of her absolute joy and gratitude that she and Bill had a grandchild, that a piece of Bud would survive, Adam’s guilt had eased and had been replaced by happiness.

  Misery had never been natural for him, anyway. Although he had seen more than his share of tragedy, high spirits were his natural disposition. He and Bud had been a good match that way. There was no occasion so solemn that it couldn’t be lightened with a joke, no depression so heavy that it couldn’t be alleviated with a funny story or a simple heart-to-heart conversation. The two of them had seen each other through the frustrations and dangers of childhood, from scraped knees to bullies to exams, and always had kept right on smiling.

  So really, it wasn’t surprising that he and Bud would fall in love with the same girl. Especially when that girl was Jenna.

  And this moment, with the blue sky overhead and the spring breeze blowing his hair through the open top of his new car, Adam knew in his heart that when he asked Jenna to marry him, somewhere Bud would be cheering.