The cell phone in her vest pocket chimed. It was Ellen calling for Jenn. One of John’s partners had a new trust case that needed research. Would Jenn like to interview for a temporary project clerk position? And did she know the landline was off the hook?
Maggie passed the phone to Jenn to follow through. She felt one of her bundle of cares slip away and evaporate. Jenn could spend her days with thoughtful people in a socially relevant context. Step one toward bringing her home.
Paul emerged from the basement. “Got my cultures taken care of. The new technician’s going to cover it. She’s new but she’s good.” He called to his daughter across the room, “Hey Jenn, wanna help me with the lights?”
“Shush. Jenn’s talking to Ellen’s husband about a job in his law office,” Maggie said.
“That was fast. Your usual efficiency.”
“It’s not settled yet, but I think she’ll make it work.” Rehearing “You were right,” she smiled deep inside. “I’m going to make a classic holiday dinner. Your reward for hanging the lights.”
Paul grinned and poured coffee into his mug. They heard a loud “Yes” upstairs. In a moment, Jenn flounced toward them.
“I meet John’s partner Monday morning. Someone died without a hard-copy will but with all sorts of things in email and online. They need a young brain to figure out what happened so they can prove the man’s intention in court. Sounds interesting enough, and we could use the money. I need to go Christmas shopping.”
“Not until you help me hang the lights,” Paul said, pulling her toward him for a hug. He turned to Maggie. “With the house all snazzy, maybe I should invite the lab over? Nothing elaborate. Drinks and snacks on New Year’s Day. We have a lot to celebrate.”
Maggie stared at him without comment. For years, he had refused her offer to throw a party for the lab. Why now?
“I’ll go get the ladder. Jenn, you need to put on better shoes.” He placed his mug in the sink and left the kitchen.
Jenn looked at her mother. “Do you know what that’s all about?”
“I’m guessing your father wants to encourage solidarity. He has new staff.”
Jenn lowered her voice, “The new researcher is female. Sandi told me the other day when I called Dad. Sandi doesn’t like her.”
“Sandi’s pretty possessive.”
“What about you?”
“Not anymore.” She focused on the computer screen, signaling the end of conversation.
Jenn laid her hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “I’m going to change my shoes.”
It’s true, she thought. It’s finally true. After so many disappointments, so much time spent hoping for better, her love for Paul had become a remnant, like a moraine, ground down by years of worry and jealousy and defeat. She no longer cared if he dallied with his new technician, or his old flame. She had grown immune to the pain of his deceptions. She would continue to keep her own counsel; she would continue to withhold her trust. But she required him to be reliable and paternal, and she wanted him to be discreet, for Jenn’s sake. Poor girl, watching her father fall off his pedestal. A sigh rose from the bottom of her belly, half sad, half relieved.
The landline rang. Maggie reached the kitchen extension at the same time that Jenn picked up the call upstairs. Arun, calling from Bangalore, telling her how much he missed her at night. Maggie hung up the phone. She didn’t eavesdrop. She hadn’t eavesdropped on Paul’s cheating when she could have. She hadn’t wanted to hear about his intimacies then, and she didn’t want to hear about Jenn’s now. Poor girl. Stars in her eyes for a crazy love.
Ellen had raised the issue again that morning, asking in her jovial way why Maggie couldn’t let time resolve things, as of course it would. Ellen had pressed her to articulate precisely what troubled her about Jenn’s romance. Each time Maggie gave a reason, like the incompatibility of their cultures or the flimsiness of their finances, Ellen said, “Trust Jenn to handle it.” Ellen thought Jenn a responsible young woman, far more mature than her own two sons, and insisted there was more to Maggie’s objection, an arrière-pensée she wouldn’t share. Maggie replied no, she had come clean. They’d pecked each other’s cheeks, and Maggie had left for home, list of names in pocket.
Alone in the kitchen, she cross-examined herself. She had not come totally clean. She had not told Ellen about meeting Brian Sayler or her urge to toy with him, which was, after all, under control. She had not wanted to confess because, as she realized in the shower that morning, the root of it all was wanting to be like Jenn, to exploit her body’s capacity for pleasure. How foolish to be jealous of a twenty-five-year-old! Yet understandable, Ellen would have said, and then discounted the rest of Maggie’s words. Her emotions spun: she distrusted her ability to stay objective, to keep her own needs out of the picture. The most important thing: preserve her child from danger. Paul objected to Arun out of ego. She objected because Arun, wrongheaded, would lead Jenn to harm.
She heard noise in the mudroom. Paul poked his head around the door frame. “This ladder is heavier than I remember. Where’s the Christmas elf?”
“On the phone with Arun. It may be a while.”
“Oh, boy.” He stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want to help me with the lights?”
“No, wait for Jenn. She’ll enjoy it.” She pretended to busy herself with the computer.
He eased his large body onto the banquette in the nook. “If she doesn’t get off the line soon, I’m gonna take a nap. Too many tissue cultures last night.”
Why, she thought, does he bother to lie? Doesn’t he know he has no secrets? For a brilliant man, he’s so stupid. So stupid that he squandered her trust, and her love. Yes, she had fallen out of love with him without feeling the fall. With a little spurt of pleasure, she realized that she could stop trying to restore their marriage. She could admit defeat and reap liberation. She felt another one of her bundle of cares fall from her shoulders and, crashing to the ground, disintegrate into dust.
Jenn appeared in jeans holding her sneakers. “Arun called,” she said, sitting on the banquette opposite her father and bending over to put on the shoes. “He’s very encouraged by a meeting with the microfinance group. He’s sending a link to their material. Oh, and his parents have sent you guys a Christmas present. He said it should come in time, but you never know with the Indian post office.” Her face flushed, clearly not from the effort of tying laces.
“Do his parents celebrate Christmas?” Maggie asked.
“No, it’s a gesture of respect to you.”
Paul said, “Or a gesture of hypocrisy.”
“Dad . . .”
“Okay, okay. But there are other possibilities. Maybe they’re angling for a big dowry. Ouch . . .” Jenn slapped his shin with a sneaker beneath the table. He pretended to rub his shin, obviously in good humor despite too many tissue cultures, Maggie thought.
“Is that an offer?” Jenn said. “Watch out, we’ll take you up on it.” She finished tying laces and stood. “I’m ready.”
They left through the mudroom. After a moment, Maggie put on the maligned fleece vest and stepped outside to watch. Paul had propped the ladder against the garage and mounted halfway. Jenn handed a string of icicle lights up to him, untangling it carefully as she lifted each successive piece. Maggie’s eye flitted past Paul, who no longer had the power to hold her. She focused on her grown-up girl, heart swelling with pride, and beneath the pride, fear of the alien forces threatening. Maggie pressed her lips together; she would make this a memorable Christmas, come what may.
SPRING
EIGHTEEN
In April in Westchester County you expected spring to come at any moment and rescue you from cold and wet, but instead winter dragged on and you waited. Maggie stood at the lilac bush beside the patio fingering the firm, green buds, wondering if they would burst open in time for Jenn’s birthday next month. The bush she had planted when they first moved to Pelham now stood head high, green most of the year, promising a few short weeks of e
xquisite bloom in May.
Twenty-six years earlier in Michigan, when they’d brought newborn Jenn back from the hospital, a vase of purple lilac blossoms had greeted her at bedside, their perfume so delicate and sweet that it made her cry. That was the first sudden bout of tears in her sad postpartum year. When Paul refused to have another child and she couldn’t persuade him, she accepted his decision, without rancor, as a judgment she deserved. But she had longed for a second child, so that Jenn wouldn’t have to face the adult world alone, as she had had to. Would the woman she was now have made a different choice?
Daylight was fading. She climbed the three steps to the mudroom door, looking at the corner window, where it would be so easy to build a shelf and add two glass panels to make a little greenhouse. Last fall she had thought about starting an herb garden that she and Jenn could tend together. Then everyone got so busy—Jenn with her lucky job downtown, Paul redoubled at work, and she with her new adventure, a community college course on Indian civilization that, she had thought, would help her understand Jenn’s attraction to Arun. It felt like months since she’d looked up a recipe, and her basket of mending had overflowed.
The course wasn’t supposed to take up much time, but it had. Three hours a week in seminar and then the reading: it seemed that every Indian scholar wrote in a style as convoluted as India itself. She could have audited the course, but being thorough, she’d joined a study group. The others insisted on submitting video instead of papers; they were busier and more scattered than she, so she wound up organizing them, to Jenn’s amusement, and struggling with video at her computer. It was worth the trouble; she and Jenn had had hours of good conversation about the mythology and centuries of invasions that had shaped Indian society. Whenever arcane terms confused her, Jenn refocused her thinking on the reality in the streets. She’d grown in respect for her daughter’s acumen and compassion, if not her taste in men.
India had proved to be more layered than expected, both fascinating and exasperating. She admired India’s respect for the wisdom of elders; she hated the superstition that tyrannized the uneducated. She applauded democracy in a country where banknotes had to be printed in seventeen languages. She suffered for families aborting female fetuses because girls require impossible dowries. She wanted to see the terrain and the temples, taste the spices, feel the relief brought by the first monsoon. She wanted to apologize for the mess the British had left behind.
And the course had yielded a bonus: she discovered she liked hanging out with the other students, the sorrowful twenty-year-olds trying to undo their mistakes and the mature people pursuing a hobby or a different slant on life. She’d forgotten how much fun it is to learn something new. She could imagine returning to campus again in the fall, and perhaps making a new circle of friends.
She hung her jacket on a peg in the mudroom and entered the kitchen. As she put on the kettle, Jenn walked in wearing the blazer-over-long-skirt costume she had adopted for work. Tossing her bag onto the breakfast table, Jenn flounced down on the banquette.
“This stuff gets more interesting the more I do. I’m going to miss seeing how the case turns out. They’ll post it, of course, but I’d like to see everyone’s face when the verdict gets handed down.” She unraveled the endless scarf around her neck. “What’s for dinner? Dad coming?”
“Salmon. No, your father’s having dinner with people from the lab.”
“He’s missed a lot of good meals lately.”
“You know that conference he goes to every year? This year it’s in June. He’s preparing to make an announcement. It’s a big deal, evidently.”
Jenn removed the filigree earrings Arun’s mother had sent. “Do you need any help?”
“No, go make yourself comfortable.” She waited a beat. “Brian’s coming over later to help me finish the final video.”
The course final was due the next day. For her segment, she’d interviewed Robert’s Indian doctor friend, who’d turned out to be a gentle soul. She’d asked him to explain, on camera, how the newly prosperous justified their middle-class consumption amid such poverty and human drama. His face had strained into a tight smile as he told her the story of his first clinic in Calcutta. He had bought cheap land near a dump but couldn’t start construction for almost a year because snakes kept creeping out of the garbage. While he waited, he went around the neighborhood, taking a census of people’s problems. He realized that he could focus only on two or three at best, or be overwhelmed. So he did wonderful work on a few disease conditions for thirty years, laboring at the height of his powers to lift up others less fortunate. Eventually, fatigue had forced him to the United States. Maggie had admired his candor, his bravery, and the grace with which he responded to her request.
“Would you like to see my segment now? I can show you everything after Brian finishes putting the pieces together.”
“You know, Mom, if it was anyone but you, I’d say you were having an affair with that guy. Tit for tat with Dad.”
Maggie flushed. “Careful with your accusations.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. But Dad can be such a jerk. I used to be so angry at him for what he did to you.”
“Are you still angry?”
“No. But I imagine you are.”
Maggie said nothing. How could she possibly explain that the wound had healed over and her loyalty had dissolved? Especially when Jenn herself was about to marry?
Jenn opened her bag. “Here’s a present. One of the partners came back from Seattle with goodies.” She handed her mother a jar of preserves.
Maggie held the jar in both hands, glad for a reason to look down. What might Jenn think if she could see her mother’s face?
Jenn stood. “I never heard of marionberries, but they’re supposed to be good in sauce. Maybe you could use them on the salmon.” She pecked her mother’s cheek. “I’m going upstairs to change.” She gathered her belongings and left the kitchen, scent of cloves lingering behind.
Brian had answered Maggie’s phone call in January. She’d told him she needed tech support for her course. Was he willing? Silly question. At first they met at Starbucks, tablets in hand. Then she went to his place. Then he came over one afternoon when he was on break and Jenn was at work. Then he came for lunch and lingered. She’d told Jenn that a friend with media savvy was helping her post. She’d mentioned Brian’s name but nothing about his person. Tonight, although she didn’t want Brian in the house with Jenn, she needed him to merge the files her group had sent in multiple formats. Paul staying away made it easy.
That first afternoon at his place, it had felt so good to be wanted. He was a solicitous lover, admiring her body with his words and hands, and she’d responded. Their lovemaking felt voluptuous; afterward, her passion faded fast. She didn’t really care about him, a hard, self-sufficient man. But she liked his leanness, his quiet, his animal grace. And she was grateful that that seemed to be enough. She called him every so often, when she wanted to leave the cooking and the All Saints’ accounts behind. It grew easier to pick up the phone each time. They made love in the afternoon. He kept the blinds open because he liked to look at her. She liked the way he looked at her body, appreciative, cool. She didn’t rush to shower after sex because she liked sensing the residue on her and in her. They didn’t talk much between visits, which suited her mood.
Of course she told no one, not even Ellen, who wouldn’t have judged her. Ellen would have pressed her, though, asking why now, after all these years of neglect? And Ellen would have come up with some theory about a secret motivation that Maggie would deny. No one at church, or the shelter, or the gym, or her book club would discover the liaison; she was safe from recrimination, except from her own conscience. Her bifurcated conscience. Getting to know Jenn as an adult these past few months, she’d seen how unlike herself her daughter was—Jenn so expansive and daring, she so careful and subdued. She had thought she’d transcended her own mother’s conventional formality, but no, not in
comparison to Jenn. The failure hurt more than her shame over screwing Brian just to feel juicy again. She forced herself to think about dinner; didn’t they serve salmon with huckleberry sauce in Seattle? She opened her computer to search for a recipe. She closed it; she’d wing it.
The kettle whistled. Deciding against tea, she turned off the gas and picked up the teapot to return it to its place on the shelf in the dining room. The faux-celadon pot was one of her favorites, a modern version of an ancient Japanese design with even sleeker lines. In past years, pots had been her one indulgence; pots of different kinds sat on the display shelves she’d had a carpenter build years earlier, and tall vessels stood in the corners of the rooms. She didn’t fill them with plants or umbrellas or anything else; their solid roundness, their very capacity to contain, satisfied her. But it had been quite a while since she’d added to the collection. She’d lost her fervor for enriching their home.
A vehicle crunched pebbles in the driveway. The bell rang. Brian stood in the open doorway in a clean T-shirt and jeans, no jacket, laptop under his arm. He slouched with the lean, sinewy look that had attracted her from the start.
“I got off early. We’ll finish the video and you can cook me dinner.” He walked into the living room and set up his computer on the coffee table, looking around for an outlet for the power supply. “Not enough wiring in these old houses. Got an extension?”
“You were supposed to come over later.”
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